The tollbooth operator would have a story to tell tonight. “Two idiots at the same time! It’s a wonder we can even field an Olympic team, when these people can’t hit a two-foot-wide basket that’s a foot from their car.”
Of course, if the guys following him were any good, they already had somebody waiting on the toll road to pick up the tail, but he’d be off by then.
When he got to Reston Town Center he wasn’t sure how to proceed—surely they wouldn’t all be sitting at a big table eating guacamole.
He didn’t get a chance to see the inside of the restaurant. As he pulled up past McCormick and Shmick he spotted Mingo—Domingo Camacho—who crossed the street in front of him, pointing once at the parking garage across the street. Reuben made the left turns to get up into the garage and kept going up to the third level, where Mingo stepped out from the elevator area just in time to stop him. A car pulled out of a parking place as if on cue—because it was on cue—and Reuben pulled his car into the spot.
Mingo put his fingers to his lips and walked to the passenger door. Reuben rolled down the window and through it, Mingo handed him the shopping bag he was carrying. Chino shorts, T-shirt, flip-flops.
Reuben slid past the gearshift and changed clothes in the passenger seat. He thought of keeping his briefs on but decided against it; and that was apparently what Mingo had thought as well, because when he got the clothes out of the bag, there were briefs among them. Everything his size. These guys were good. Thank heaven he hadn’t gained any weight since his Special Ops days. This was where the endless workouts paid off. Reuben was determined never to be one of those sad fat officers who no longer even pretended to live in a battle-ready state.
If he stayed in the service long enough to be a general.
If he stayed alive and out of prison.
With his clothes completely changed, he put the cellphones into his new pockets, put his keys above the visor, and locked the car. It would be easy to open the car later, with the codepad on the door.
He walked with Mingo, still wordless, to a car parked in a handicapped stall. But these guys had been so thorough that a legal-looking handicapped tag was hanging from the rearview mirror. It probably was legal, given how pathetically easy it was to get those tags these days.
Mingo pointed to the rear passenger seat, where Reuben lay down on the floor as Mingo closed the door behind him, then got in front and drove. Reuben didn’t try to look and see where they were going—trust meant you didn’t expose your face in order to second-guess the route.
That didn’t mean Reuben could turn off the part of his brain that automatically counted turns and estimated distances. When he figured they were on Route 7, heading back toward Tyson’s Corner, Reuben finally spoke.
“Am I supposed to stay down here till we get where we’re going?”
Mingo picked up his cellphone from the cup holder in the center console, flipped it open, and only then answered Reuben, so that if someone saw him talking they’d think it was on the phone. “Safer, don’t you think? We go to all this trouble, it’d be pretty dumb to have one of your tails spot your big happy white face just by chance.”
“Destination?”
“Play along, Rube. I want you to guess.”
“Not a restaurant where we have a waiter who can overhear us. But a place where it’s okay for a bunch of guys to gather around and talk in Farsi. So that means something like a Starbucks or a bookstore with a café in it. We’re on Route 7 so I’m betting on the Borders across from the Marriott in Tyson’s Corner.”
“Shit,” said Mingo.
“Is that a good shit or a bad shit?”
“Bad.”
“How much you lose?”
“Just a dollar, but you know Benny. ‘Never bet against the Rube.’ ”
“Is that what he says?”
“I wasn’t betting against you” said Mingo. “I was betting that Benny’s plan sucked so you’d think of a better one and assume that’s what we’d do.”
“Good plan so far,” said Reuben. “But I have one more man to bring to the party.” From the floor of the van he called Cole and spoke only a single sentence, in Farsi: “Borders on Route 7 in the Corners now.” Couldn’t say “Tyson’s Corner” because “Tyson” didn’t translate.
Not that the people tailing him wouldn’t already have gotten a Farsi translator after Load’s words to him in the airport. So if Cole had been careless, or somebody had opened DeeNee’s lunch in the break-room fridge, this would bring his tails right back on him, and implicate everybody else in whatever conspiracy they supposed him to be part of. But you had to take some risks, or you might as well pull a Saddam and hide in a hole somewhere till you were arrested and put through a show trial.
They got to the Borders and soon had taken over two tables and eight chairs in the coffee shop.
Speaking quietly in Farsi, Reuben quickly explained how his own plan had been used to kill the President. Cole arrived—in civvies, mercifully—and Reuben introduced him around.
But Cole had to know more than just names. “Were you a team once? I mean, in-country?”
“We’ve all been in the same team with Rube, one time or another,” said Arty Wu. “But that was long ago and far away.”
“We’re his jeesh now,” said Mingo.
Cole knew his Arabic, even when the word was dropped into the midst of Farsi. “His army?”
“His little tiny army,” said Load. “Because he’s our hero.”
“We’re guys who trust each other,” said Reuben.
“And were really good at killing bad guys,” said Drew.
“So we gave our club a scary Arabic name,” said Babe.
“Cole, tell them about the meeting we had outside the White House,” said Reuben.
If Cole wondered why Reuben, who knew more, was having him make the report, he didn’t show it. Cole’s Farsi was okay—good enough, and now and then when he struggled somebody would supply a word. The idea wasn’t to impress them with his language ability. They needed to hear Cole’s voice and see that Reuben trusted him, despite having met each other only today.
“My family is with Aunt Margaret Diklich in West Windsor, N.J.,” said Reuben in Farsi. “Unless I can think of a better plan, I’m driving up there tomorrow, because by now the FBI or whoever’s tailing me knows I have a ticket to La Guardia. I have no plans beyond that, except that I’d like to not be arrested while I’m trying to find out who gave those plans to the terrorists and what their goal really is.”
“You mean you don’t think it stops with killing the President and Vice President?” asked Arty Wu. “That’s kind of like Al Qaeda’s idea of nirvana right there.”
“I don’t think the terrorists planned anything more than what they did today, no,” said Reuben. “But the people using them have to have something more in mind. Surely we didn’t have Steven Phillips inside the White House and whoever ‘shared’ my plans from inside the Pentagon acting out of a desire to see the President and Vice President dead. I’m assuming that these Americans did this with some goal in mind that has nothing to do with Al Qaeda.”
“Destabilization,” said Cole, in English. He continued in Farsi. “But that’s obvious.”
“Yes,” said Reuben, “but we believe in saying the obvious. We’re not here to impress each other with our guessing ability. Except for Benny and Mingo.”
Benny raised an eyebrow, and Mingo handed him a buck.
“What we’re looking for,” said Drew Linnie, who was now a professor at American University, “is what they plan to do next, so we can be there first and catch them with their pants down.”
“An image both colorful and vaguely gay,” said Babe Austin.
“Cui bono?” asked Cat Black, who was a lawyer. “If America is in chaos, who benefits?”
“Showing off by speaking Latin,” muttered Load.
“We can rule out LaMonte Nielson,” said Reuben. “Cessy knows him and he’s a decent guy. Besides, I have
a feeling nobody in their right mind would consider being President right now a ‘benefit.’ ”
“Nielson’s going to have this big sympathy thing for a few minutes,” said Cat, “but it’s not likely to translate into a lot of support. He could never have been elected President, and he’s too conservative not to be a lightning rod.”
“Assassinations aren’t enough to really destabilize the country,” said Load Arnsbrach. “We’ve had them before and the country goes on.”
“We’ve had unelected Presidents before, too,” said Benny.
“One, anyway,” said Load.
“So, we’re all political geniuses here,” said Cat. “Anybody else figure that this is only Step A?”
“I think,” said Cole, “that Step B is Major Malich, here. I think that the people who gave the info to the terrorists didn’t care if the assassinations worked or not—the fact that Al Qaeda or whoever it was succeeded might even appall them. The purpose was to set up Major Malich.”
“Reuben,” Reuben corrected him.
“Rube.” Mingo corrected his correction.
“I think to find out who did this, we need to look at Rube,” said Cole—it was clearly painful to break protocol like that—“and see who would benefit from having him put on trial for betraying his country and conspiring to assassinate the President and Vice President.”
“You mean Rube, specifically, or Special Ops war hero Major Reuben Malich, symbolically?” said Arty.
“It’ll be Rube, specifically, who goes to jail,” said Cat.
“So if Rube takes off running,” said Benny. “Or hides. Anything that makes him look guilty. They win. From that moment on they don’t need him alive, because he’s guilty in the public mind. In fact, he’s more useful to them dead. Because nobody will feel much urgency about clearing the name of a dead man.”
“Assume that’s the plan,” said Drew. “Rube is painted as part of the conspiracy and then he’s dead. Excuse me for the hypothetical fatality, Rube.”
“I’m checking my pulse,” said Reuben.
Drew went on. “What, exactly, could anyone do with Rube’s death?”
“Discredit the right wing?” offered Mingo.
“I’m not that right-wing,” said Reuben. “My wife’s a Democrat, for pete’s sake.”
“You don’t have to be an extremist to be called one,” said Mingo. “Hell, you’re a soldier, man. Look at you. The poster child for the anti-war image of the mighty Aryan warrior.”
“I can’t help being an incredibly good-looking Serb in perfect shape,” said Reuben.
“For an old fart in his forties,” said Benny.
“I’m thirty-seven,” said Reuben.
“An old thirty-seven, though.”
“Look,” said Cole, “we still aren’t there yet. What can you do with the image of a red-state warrior who planned the assassination of the President? You can’t win an election with it—the President was a red-stater and his successor is too. Who’s in favor of presidential assassinations? How can you win elections on the basis of being anti-assassin? Who’s your opponent?”
Only now did Reuben put it together. “Who said anything about winning elections?”
“Well, what else?” said Mingo.
“Maybe it’s not my being a red-stater. Maybe it’s about my being Special Ops. The elite of the Army. Maybe it’s an attack on the military.”
“The p.c. crowd attacks the Army all the time,” said Load dismissively. “They’ve never let go of the Vietnam-era baby-killer slogan.”
“Yes, but sane people ignore them. Not now,” said Reuben.
“This still isn’t it,” said Drew. “Nothing in this justifies such a monstrous act.”
“Al Qaeda—” began Cat.
“They’re in the monstrous-act business,” said Load. “It’s the other guys. The American guys. Why would they go after Reuben, the Symbol of Militariness? Why discredit the Army in such a drastic way?”
Babe slumped farther down in his chair. That meant that he was about to say something he thought was important. Sometimes it even was. “I don’t think we’re going to find out what they mean to do with Rube until they do it.”
“But then he’ll be dead,” said Arty.
“Since we won’t let anybody kill him,” said Babe, “what I mean is this: We have to see how the story is spun, and who does the spinning. Then we’ll know what they set him up for.”
“So we do nothing?” said Cole.
“Not at all,” said Babe. “What we got to do is, don’t give them anything to work with. And meanwhile, we spin back. Or, I guess, Rube spins back.”
“Nothing for them to work with,” said Reuben. “So you mean I shouldn’t go to Jersey? Nothing that could look like I’m hiding?”
“No, I mean you should talk to the press first,” said Babe.
“About what? All my work was classified.”
“How long do you think that’ll last, once they start leaking about how you came up with the plans?” said Babe. “How classified do you think any of this shit will stay when the investigation turns ugly and political?”
“It’s a crime to reveal classified information.”
“That became irrelevant the second your classified information was used to kill the President,” said Babe. “Besides, just the fact that you met with us here, that’s already enough for the press to infer a conspiracy.”
“Babe’s right about that,” said Load. “The fact that he ditched a tail is probably enough. Shows a guilty conscience, right, Cat?”
“You watch too much Law and Order, Load,” said Cat.
Cole laughed in disbelief. “Come on, are you saying Major Malich should hold a press conference?”
“No,” said Babe. “You got to announce those in advance and the feds can shut you down. I think that right now, while he’s still not being tailed, we get his ass over to The Washington Post.”
“Why The Post?” said Reuben. “Why do I have to go to the people who are most dying to destroy me?”
“Because their story will get picked up and used everywhere,” said Babe. “Even if they mock you for it, your statement that somebody deliberately set you up to take the fall for this will resonate with people. Then, if somebody kills you, it will backfire on them. A lot of people will believe that someone killed you to shut you up.”
“I don’t want to find out what people believe about why I was murdered,” said Reuben. “This is a really disturbing conversation.”
“If they don’t think it will help them, there’s no reason for them to kill you. Tell it all to The Post. Name all the names you can.” Babe grinned. “I’m in p.r., and I’ll tell you what I’d tell Brad Pitt and Russell Crowe—don’t wait for them to tell the story on you, you tell it on them first.”
“They’re not your clients,” said Arty.
“I didn’t say they were,” said Babe. “Rube’s nowhere near as pretty as they are. Though I will say he’s almost as manly.”
Which is why, at eleven o’clock at night, Reuben found himself in a conference room at The Washington Post, with his whole team around him, as he and Cole sat there to be photographed and questioned by the reporters and editors working on the assassination story.
“We’re not answering questions for the first while,” said Reuben. “I’m just going to tell you exactly what happened, including some classified stuff whose classification got blown all to hell. But I’m getting set up, and I at least want my story out there to compete with the lies that are going to be told about me.”
They didn’t like it that he wanted to be in control of the interview.
“Just listen to what I have to say and then decide whether it was worth getting out of bed for.”
The lead reporter on the story was Leighton Fuller. He was their top political reporter, and he also had his own weekly column in which he had already killed every idea the President had ever had. Though he never admitted they actually rose to the level of being called
ideas.
“I don’t see what this is about,” Leighton said. “You’re a hero, you tried to save the President. Who’s trying to set you up?”
“Okay, I’ll pretend I’m answering your question,” said Reuben. Then, with Cole affirming or correcting or supplementing him all the way, he told about the day’s events. Including how on his own Reuben would never have seen the signs of the submersibles.
And at the end, Reuben explained about the manuscript of his plan for assassinating the President. “If they find my fingerprints on the copy the terrorists worked from then you’ll know something important.”
“What will we know?” asked Leighton.
“I never touched the final report with my own hands. The division secretary delivered it electronically to the printing office and they printed it and bound it and she delivered it around. I wasn’t making a point of not touching it, I just wasn’t in the country when I finished it and emailed it to DeeNee. If my fingerprints are on it, then it’s a rough draft. One of the ones I hand-carried to people for comment.”
“Which people?”
“The division secretary is putting together the list.”
“Can I have it?”
“No. I’ll turn it over to the FBI. But I want you to know it exists in case it gets ignored there.”
“You do realize how paranoid you sound,” said Leighton.
“Yes, sir,” said Reuben. “And if they never do any of this stuff I’m anticipating, then I’ll have to agree with you. But which of you would have been paranoid enough to think the President and Vice President might be killed within minutes of each other—that the President could have been blown up right through a West Wing window?”
“I’ll give you this,” said Leighton. “You two are the only people who even tried to stop this assassination when there was still time to have a chance to stop it. I didn’t like this President, but I didn’t want him dead. He was the President. So you’ve earned a fair hearing on your completely wacko account. Does everybody understand that?” Leighton looked at his editor. “I don’t want us to screw around with the headline or the captions to paint this guy as guilty.” He turned back to Reuben and Cole. “Unless we get evidence confirming that you really did collaborate with terrorists.”