Brink of Chaos

  Boling had two thoughts. The first was really a question — even in bankruptcy, don’t they let you keep one vehicle at least? But he knew the answer: Yeah, but you still need money for gas, insurance, repairs …

  The second thought was a flashback to the old black-and-white movie he saw as a kid. This is The Grapes of Wrath. Only bigger.

  After Boling had finished examining the corpse, he stepped over to the deputy in charge of the investigation. “You’re sure about the ID?”

  “Yep. Perry Tedrich. Local guy. Thirty-five. Divorced. The culprit did a nice job of stripping the body of any identification. Even cut the skin out on the back of his hand where he had his BIDTag laser imprint. But they missed one thing …”

  “What’s that?”

  “For some reason, the victim kept his gym membership card in his shoe.”

  “You sure about his political connections?”

  “Absolutely,” the deputy said, “he was the city campaign manager for Wichita’s Hewbright for President Campaign.”

  “Coroner been here yet?”

  “She showed up an hour before you got here. Doubted if we’re going to get a definitive cause of death, considering the state of the corpse. They’re sending someone to collect the remains so she can do an autopsy, though she might be able to get a fix on an approximate DOD, estimating the month of death at least. That’s what she said anyway.”

  Boling flipped his daybook open and scribbled some notes.

  “I thought you guys were high-tech and everything,” the deputy said with a smirk. Then he pulled out his electronic Police Data Pad and displayed it. “Everybody in our department’s using these.”

  “Sure,” Boling shot back, “real neat way for headquarters to keep tabs on your investigation. I have one of those too. Routine issue for every agent at the Bureau. They log your notes as you write them into the master computer back at headquarters. I don’t use it.”

  “How come? They sure work for us.”

  “That’s the point. They work too well.”

  The deputy screwed up his face for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, we’ll keep you informed.”

  “Better than that. If you really like being all digital, then why not email me a data file of everything you have on Perry Tedrich?”

  “Sure — we can do that.”

  Boling thanked him and trotted back to his car.

  As he put his finger to the imprint starter on the steering wheel and the engine started, he flipped his daybook open to what he had just written. He plucked the ballpoint pen from his top pocket and underlined the part that read: “Hewbright for President.”

  Denver, Colorado

  Abigail Jordan watched as Senator Hank Hewbright shook hands with a group of supporters who had come to the Convention Center to hear his speech. He was standing right outside the door to the greenroom suite assigned to his campaign staff.

  From her seat inside the suite, Abigail could see Hewbright through the glass door. She had driven down from Hawk’s Nest to hear him, with the intention of just slipping in and slipping out. But Bob Tripley, a Colorado lawyer and a Hewbright volunteer, recognized her and urged her to meet the senator personally.

  Abigail tried to beg off, but the attorney was insistent. Abigail was afraid she’d be too much of a political lightning rod. If the press started snapping photos of her with Hewbright, wouldn’t it be used to smear the candidate?

  The senator breezed into the greenroom, followed by Abigail’s lawyer friend and the national campaign manager.

  “Senator,” Attorney Tripley said, “this is someone I want you to meet, one of the sharpest lawyers I know.” He opened his arm toward Abigail, who rose to her feet with her visitor tag dangling around her neck. Then he added, “Mrs. Abigail …”

  “No need for introductions,” Hewbright said briskly, reaching out his hand. “Mrs. Jordan, it’s a pleasure and an honor. We’ve never met before, but I know about you … your courageous fight for this nation, the risks you’ve taken, and the trouble you’ve been through.” The Colorado lawyer slipped away to talk with some of the staff as Hewbright continued, “And I’ve met your husband, of course. Unfortunately, a pretty formal setting back then. And highly charged. He was testifying on the Hill at our intelligence committee hearing about his RTS system.”

  “Yes, I remember. Josh told how fair and evenhanded you were.”

  “Thanks. Though confidentially, it looked like Senator Straworth was trying to slice him and dice him.”

  “Josh couldn’t tell me details because it was a closed hearing, but it sounded rough.”

  Hewbright tossed her a smile that told her more than he could share in words. “On the other hand, Senator Straworth’s bullying backfired. Let me just say that in that hearing Joshua was a tough customer, a tower of strength.”

  “That’s my husband!” Abigail said. Then she shared her concern. “Senator, I’m a great admirer of yours and a strong supporter, but I was reluctant to meet with you. I don’t want to hurt your chances. You know, guilt by association. I know this election is going to be vicious.”

  “We’re ready for it,” he said with a square-shouldered look that made Abigail smile. It reminded her of Joshua.

  Hewbright signaled for her to accompany him to a quieter corner of the greenroom, which was filling up with chattering staffers, volunteers, and high-value campaign donors.

  “How is Josh doing?” he asked.

  “Holding strong. But we both hate being separated by oceans and continents. So hard …”

  “I’ve been briefed on this ridiculous case. It’s an outrage.”

  “We still hope to get the whole thing dropped.”

  “And this rescue effort in North Korea. Really outstanding. I know the president is avoiding any mention of Josh, but my sources in the Pentagon said he was instrumental.”

  “He was in the thick of it. But he’s safe now, thank God.”

  “When I’m president,” Hewbright said. “Josh will be getting another medal for valor — from me this time.”

  Two women — Abigail assumed they were campaign workers — strode up to Hewbright, Styrofoam cups of coffee in hand. She knew the senator was scheduled to speak that morning at a technology convention in Las Vegas, which probably meant a redeye flight while the staff worked through the night on the plane. They were clearly pushing caffeine to keep up the pace.

  The senator turned to introduce the women. “Mrs. Jordan, this is Zeta Milla, one of my foreign-affairs advisors. She may look young, but she’s had lots of experience in the State Department,” he said with a playful wink. “She recently left the State Department to come on board with my campaign. As a young girl she escaped from Cuba. Unfortunately, her parents didn’t make it out alive, but she did — much to the benefit of my campaign. And America. I work closely with her.”

  The beautiful Cuban woman smiled warmly and grabbed Abigail’s hand in both of hers and squeezed. “Like you,” Zeta Milla said, “I am a lover of freedom.”

  Abigail, an admirer of fine jewelry, noticed the unique red sapphire ring in an unusual silver setting on Milla’s index finger. “That’s a beautiful ring,” Abigail said.

  Zeta glanced down at the huge diamond cluster on Abigail’s own hand and nodded at it with a grin. “Thanks.”

  Then Hewbright turned to the other woman. “And here is my assistant campaign manager, Katrena Amid, a brilliant strategist and tough as nails.”

  Katrena gave Abigail a half nod and a tight-lipped smile. The woman seemed to size up Abigail. She looked uneasy. Then she handed a note to Hewbright. “Senator, here’s that donor I mentioned to you. If you could give him a quick call, I think it would be beneficial.”

  “Well,” Hewbright said, “duty calls.”

  He excused himself. With Hewbright out of the room, the donors and supporters started to drift out of the suite. Abigail followed.

  As she made her way to her car in the parking ramp, Abigail was overcome by an oppressi
ve feeling of dread. She struggled to describe it to herself. She should have been thinking about her flight to Washington, D.C., the following day with Cal or the new lead she would be pursuing in her husband’s case. But she wasn’t. Her mind was somewhere else.

  Women’s intuition? Or maybe spiritual discernment?

  Whatever it was, Abigail found it hard to shake. She found herself seized by the fear that Senator Hank Hewbright was in danger. It was palpable. She had an inexplicable feeling of being trapped. As if she had been locked into an airless trunk.

  When I get back to Hawk’s Nest, she thought, I need to check into something. Maybe it’s nothing … but I can’t take the risk. I can’t ignore this.

  FOURTEEN

  Fair Haven Convalescent Center, Bethesda, Maryland

  “So, Cal, your mother’s doing well?”

  Cal Jordan nodded politely. He was still coming to grips with the fact he was sitting across from the former first lady of the United States. A guy who looked like a Secret Service agent was posted just outside the lavish sunroom with its curved wall of glass and its view of the trees and gardens outside. This was all too surreal. Cal had racked his brain to sort out the reason behind this meeting but couldn’t get to first base. He asked himself, Why me?

  He did have one guess. A little more than two years earlier, before the president’s health problems, Corland had made a dramatic turn in his policies, much to the chagrin of his vice president, Jessica Tulrude. As part of that reversal, President Corland had decided to honor Joshua at the White House for his bravery in foiling the terrorist-led hostage plot the year before at New York’s Grand Central Terminal. Perhaps that was the point of connection — particularly because Cal himself had been the hostage, handpicked by the terrorist in an unsuccessful effort to pressure Joshua into giving up his RTS design plans.

  But now that his dad had been exiled from the United States, Cal wondered whether Corland wanted him to be a messenger to his father — or to the Roundtable — or both.

  Cal responded to Mrs. Corland. “My mother’s in Washington on legal business today. I tagged along. I’m glad I was close so I could stop in to see you and the president.”

  He thought back to the warning in Mrs. Corland’s email that he was to keep their meeting secret. He hadn’t even told his mother. Abigail was meeting with a lawyer in downtown D.C. that day. Ordinarily, she would have included him, but since this meeting was particularly sensitive, Abigail had explained that she had to keep Cal out of it. Before they went their separate ways, Cal only told Abigail that he would be “nosing around town, checking the sites.” Cal had formulated a lame justification in his mind — meeting with a former president and first lady — they were political monuments of sorts, weren’t they?

  Rising from her chair, Winnie Corland smoothed her dress. “Well, I will leave you two alone. Virgil is insistent that he speak with you privately.”

  Cal rose as well. As he shook her hand, she gave him some last words of instruction. “Virgil communicates better some days than others,” she said. “But even if he can’t tell you everything on his mind … his heart … I am sure he appreciates having the company.”

  She walked out of the brightly lit sunroom. Now it was just Cal and the former president, who was seated in a wheelchair. He was the same man who had once run the country, but he was pale now and thin, his eyes listless.

  After a few moments of silence, Cal started the conversation. “I am honored to meet you, Mr. President.”

  Corland took at least half a minute before it looked like he registered. Then he nodded slowly.

  “My father speaks highly of you,” Cal added.

  Only a blank stare from Virgil Corland.

  Cal kept talking. “My dad is Joshua Jordan. He told me about meeting you at the White House, the day that you gave him the Medal of Honor.”

  Something in what Cal said, or maybe something else, a random memory perhaps, generated a look of urgency, almost desperation, on Corland’s face. He spoke, hesitantly, with an athletic kind of effort to each word, “I was president once …”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  But Corland shook his head, as if trying to move the conversation away from the cordial and superficial. “Vice President …,” he strained to say.

  “Yes, Mrs. Tulrude was vice president then, before she stepped into your shoes … into the Oval Office … when you had your health problems.”

  “No, no,” he groaned.

  Cal feared that he may have upset him.

  Then Corland looked up at his young guest. “Never had … a son.”

  “You didn’t?”

  Corland shook his head slowly. “Your father. Got the medal. New York …”

  “Yes, for saving me in New York. Right. The terrorist who had kidnapped me —”

  “But you … too … you too,” he said. There was a twisted, labored attempt at a smile on Corland’s face. “You … brave too … like your fat her.”

  “I was just the victim …,” Cal said.

  “No. No. I read … the … reports … FBI.” Then Corland added, “Brave,” and when he said that word, he lifted his right hand and pointed a limp finger right at Cal’s chest and gathered up an earnest expression. “Brave,” he said again. Then Corland took a deep breath as if he were going to swim underwater. “Tulrude. What happened … no, oh no.” But he ran out of breath. His head dropped to one side, as if a string had been cut.

  The day nurse from the other side of the room quickly made her way over to Corland. “I think, young man, that the president has had enough for today. He’s still quite fragile.”

  Cal reached over and rested his hand on the wrinkled hand of the former president and said good-bye. As he turned to leave, Cal heard three words, barely audible, from Corland’s dry lips.

  “Come … back … again.”

  Clyde’s Restaurant, Georgetown, Washington, D.C

  Abigail stirred her Cobb salad with a fork. She wasn’t hungry, but she had to go through the motions — the perfunctory professional lunch — to wrangle this meeting with Harley Collingwood, the lawyer now sitting across from her.

  Since both had been trial attorneys in D.C., they swapped stories about arguing cases in the District. Collingwood said he knew about her work in Harry Smythe’s prestigious law firm and had heard secondhand about her being a top-tier litigator. They exchanged law-school jokes, keeping everything light, amiable.

  Eventually Collingwood pushed his plate away and said, “Okay, Abigail, I know you didn’t come all the way to D.C. for a nice salad, some chit-chat, and to exchange law-practice war stories with me.” She let him continue. “Here’s what I think,” he said. “I think you found out I just left the Department of Justice and know I was on the prosecution team, going after your husband in his criminal case. So here you are …”

  Abigail kept a pleasant, interested, but nonplused look on her face. She let him go on.

  “And,” he said, “you’d probably love it if I were to slip you some helpful information about your husband’s case.”

  She was silent for a moment, then asked a simple but disarming question. “Have you found work?”

  “Of course,” Collingwood shot back.

  “Which firm?”

  He hesitated. “Consulting for a few different offices. I’m picky.”

  “In other words,” Abigail said with steely calm, “you have not found steady work since you voluntarily left your position at the DOJ, where you were the second highest assistant attorney general in the criminal division. Harley, my point is, you’d been handpicked by Attorney General Cory Hamburg himself, and you left all that — voluntarily — so you could be picky in looking around for other employment?”

  Collingwood stiffened. “My law practice is really none of your business.”

  “True,” she said, “but justice is. And so is the truth. If I know anything about you, the truth is your business too. You’re regarded as one of the most aggressive prose
cutors in Washington — and one of the most ethical. I need your help. My guess is that you discovered something rotten in the prosecution of my husband — so rotten that it led you to report it to DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility.” The former prosecutor was stone-still, listening. Abigail continued, “But knowing what I do about Attorney General Hamburg and his deference to the Tulrude administration, I’m betting he made sure that OPR stuck your ethics complaint in the permanent out basket. Which put you in a real dilemma.”

  Collingwood still didn’t move a muscle.

  “Now that you’re out of the DOJ, either you can keep what you know to yourself and see an innocent man — my husband — hunted down around the globe for the rest of his life by federal authorities and railroaded with phony criminal charges … and maybe you could salve your conscience by saying that by your silence you’re actually protecting DOJ’s privilege of lawyer’s confidentiality. Or else, and here’s the kicker, you will actually have to do something about what you know — tell someone — someone who can take your information and do what ought to be done. For justice and for truth.”

  Abigail looked Harley Collingwood squarely in the eye. “Have I stated the matter accurately, counselor?”

  FIFTEEN

  In the Desert of Southern Israel, Near Eilat

  Joshua’s mind had been fixed like a metal rivet on the test he had just witnessed at the IDF weapons site. His RTS system had failed. Again. Not that it hadn’t reversed the test missile and sent it back to its point of launching. The problem was, for some reason, it had not captured the guidance system in the nosecone completely, so that the ground crew could manipulate its flight and send it in new directions. He had already been on the phone with Ted, his senior engineer at the Jordan Technologies headquarters in Manhattan, trying to work out the glitch.