Conspiracy

“Why would they be traveling together?” Lia asked Rockman when he briefed her after she got up.

“No idea. There’s a slight possibility that they’re working together to solve this.”

“I doubt it,” said Lia. “What about the rental place? Did they have a video?”

“Don’t you think that was the first thing we checked?” said Rockman testily. “Clerk doesn’t remember her. Probably didn’t even look at the card. We’re checking to see if there are other video cameras in the area.”

“Did the FBI forensic team find anything in her car? Like blood?”

“Nothing. The car was vacuumed recently; that was about it. You can interpret that any way you want.”

Lia thought back to Amanda Rauci’s condo. She hadn’t struck Lia as a neat freak. Then again, maybe Amanda had cleaned the car before leaving on a long trip. Some people were like that — they wanted to start fresh.

Amanda checks out the police chief; then she leaves her car at a train station.

Maybe she didn’t leave it there — maybe Ball left it there after he got rid of her.

“You with me?” asked Rockman.

“Yeah, I’m with you,” said Lia.

“We’re going to send the clerk an e-mail with Amanda Rauci’s photo and see if he can remember her. You may have to go up there and talk to him. We’ll let you know later.”

“Peachy.”

“In the meantime, do you think you could get a sample of Chief Ball’s DNA?”

“As soon as I see him I’ll ask him to spit into a cup.”

“A few strands of hair would do it,” said Rockman. “Ask his wife.”

“You think she keeps it in a locket?”

“Hair in a comb. Listen, even a sweaty shirt will do.”

“All right.” Lia dreaded going back to the house and talking to Mrs. Ball; the woman’s pain registered transparently on her face. What ever the truth, this was going to end very badly for her. Lia, so stoic about pain when it came to herself or the sort of enemies she usually dealt with, suddenly found she had no stomach for inflicting it on a bystander.

“Check in every hour,” said Rockman. “We’ll call you if there’s anything new.”

“Fine,” said Lia. She pretended to turn off the sat phone, then signaled the waiter for another cup of coffee.

124

Some guys wore the fact that they had served in the Marines on their bodies — literally with tattoos and more figuratively in the way they spoke and thought and acted. They were lifers, and proud of it, and went out of their way to make sure everyone knew they were Marines.

Capital M.

Charlie Dean wasn’t one of them. He’d been an active Marine for a substantial portion of his life — but being a Marine wasn’t all of his life. If the ser vice had helped define him, the key word was “helped.” Charles Dean was a good Marine, but he’d also been more than that. He’d been a successful — and unsuccessful — small businessman, a private investigator and bodyguard, a clandestine employee of the government, a hunter and outdoorsman. While there was a great deal of truth in the old adage that a Marine never became an “ex-Marine,” from his earliest days in the Corps Charlie Dean had known there was more to the world than his drill sergeant would have had him believe.

And yet if there was one thing that Dean believed in deeply — believed in so firmly that it was rooted to his soul—

it was the values that the Corps preached. Some of them had a way of sounding trite or even shallow when explained to someone else, but then, simple things often did. That didn’t make them any less important.

So the idea that a Marine had stolen from the government and betrayed, maybe even killed, a fellow Marine hit Dean like a blow to the chest. As he thought about Senator McSweeney, Dean recalled the first time he’d been shot, an AK bullet going through the fleshy part of his calf. It had burned like all hell, and sent his body into shock, but the thing he remembered now, the bit of the experience that remained vividly with him, was the disbelief, the sheer wonderment at the wound — the realization that he wasn’t invincible, or charmed, or special, or above the action, or any of the other white lies a man might believe when he went into combat the first time.

A Marine could betray his fellow Marines and his country. It didn’t seem possible.

Dean was not naive. He’d seen plenty of poor Marines and a few out-and-out cowards, not only in Vietnam but also afterward. He’d seen, and at times had to deal with, terrible officers. But this was magnitudes worse. It seemed a product of evil, rather than weakness.

“You’re not to accuse him of any wrongdoing, or involvement,” Rubens told Dean, instructing him on how to deal with McSweeney. “Simply let him know about Tolong.

Study his reaction, but nothing more.” Senator McSweeney was now the leading candidate for President in his party; it was very possible that he would beat Marcke in the next election.

A traitor as President.

Maybe the assassin felt the same way. Maybe that was why he wanted to kill McSweeney.

“Mr. Dean, are you still with me?” Rubens asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Charlie, can you do this? Can you talk to him?”

“Absolutely.”

It was the same word he’d said when he’d been given the mission to assassinate Phuc Dinh. It was the thing he’d always said, as a Marine.

125

“I need picture ID for the plane ticket,” said the attendant.

“Rules.”

“Oh yeah, right.” Ball reached into his pocket for his wallet. He’d tried to think of a way around using his actual ID

but just couldn’t come up with one. His only solution was to buy tickets to other destinations with the hope of throwing anyone looking for him off the trail.

“Here you go,” said Ball, pushing his license forward on the counter.

He hoped they weren’t looking for him yet. Or if they were, that the usual efficiencies of government bureaucracies would mean they wouldn’t find him until it was too late.

126

Dean wondered whether Senator McSweeney might recognize him from Vietnam somehow, and vice versa. But there were many captains and many, many more privates, and nothing registered in McSweeney’s face as he shook Dean’s hand and gestured for him to take a seat in the hotel room.

Nothing clicked for Dean, either. He’d seen McSweeney so many times now in the briefings that it was impossible to visualize him as he was thirty-some years ago. And this was a good thing — insulation from his emotions.

“I’m supposed to give you the update alone,” Dean told the senator. More than a dozen people were milling around the room.

“Oh, that’s all right. These people know just about everything about me anyway, right down to the color of my un-derwear.”