Rubicon, page 17
The shouting subsided to a dull murmur and then the room went silent. Reading from a prepared text, Hart explained why he had disappeared.
“A week ago yesterday, two men broke into my home in Georgetown and murdered Dieter Shoenfeld. They were also there to murder me. Mr. Shoenfeld had been followed from Germany, and before that, from the Middle East. I had apparently been under surveillance for some time. The reason that someone wanted both of us dead is that each of us had come into possession of certain information about the attack in Los Angeles. Dieter Shoenfeld had discovered, through sources of his own, that what happened in Los Angeles was part of a larger plan and that this plan had a name. It was called Rubicon. The evening he was killed he was about to tell me everything that he had learned.
“I left Washington that same night because there was someone I had to see, someone Dieter Shoenfeld was supposed to meet, someone who had what Shoenfeld called the missing piece of the puzzle.” Hart folded up the sheet of paper and put it in his jacket pocket. “That’s where I went, and that is what I did, and that is the reason that I did not tell anyone where I was going or when I would be back. Now, I’ll be glad to take your questions.”
The shouting started all over again.
“But I’ll take them one at a time.” He pointed to a reporter at the back of the crowd, one of those who regularly covered the senate.
“The New York Times is reporting today that you met with someone by the name of Mohammed al Farabi, and that al Farabi claims that what happened in Los Angeles was not part of a terrorist plot at all: that it was part of a conspiracy here at home. The first question is did you meet with this al Farabi?”
“Yes, I did, and what the Times is reporting - that terrorists held at Guantanamo were used to recruit and train terrorists for attacks inside the United States - is exactly what he told me.”
There was a moment’s stunned silence, and then the place exploded. Everyone screamed questions at once.
“But, senator, the real question is whether you believed him. The White House has already issued a categorical denial. They insist....”
“A categorical denial? How would they know what was going on at Guantanamo? They didn’tt know anything about Abu Grahib, at least they said they did not,” Hart shot back. “But now, without so much as bothering with an investigation, without taking any steps to find out if someone inside the government, or with connections to the government, could have been involved, they just dismiss it out of hand, issue a categorical denial?”
“Leave the White House out of it for a minute,” demanded a cable news reporter. “What made you think that what this Mohammed al Farabi said was credible? What made you think that it was not just some attempt to shift the blame for what happened in Los Angeles from the terrorists who did it? How do you know you weren’t being used, senator?”
Hart surprised the reporter with his candor.
“That’s a fair question, and an important one. It’s certainly the first question I would have asked if he had come looking for me. But I went looking for him. He did not know I was coming. He had an appointment with Dieter Shoenfeld. So if this was some story, some fiction, he wanted to peddle, he was scarcely making much of an effort to find an audience. But that’s not the only reason. What he told me was simply what he had heard, what he had been told by other prisoners at Guantanamo. He didn’t claim to know who was doing it, he didn’t claim to know the reason. At the time he heard it, he didn’t think it meant much at all: another rumor that might or might not be true. And that might have been the end of it, even after the attack in Los Angeles, except for the fact that a year earlier, while he was still in Guantanamo, he heard this rumored plan called by the name Rubicon. It did not mean anything to him, but it meant everything to someone who had heard the same name used in connection with a rumored plan to assassinate someone in the United States.”
“So you do believe him that there is a secret organization, here in the United States, that for reasons of its own planned the attack in Los Angeles?” asked a network correspondent with a cynical look in her eyes.
Hart stared right back at her.
“I can understand why there would be a reluctance to believe any of this possible. I was reluctant to believe it. But consider the facts, consider what we know. No group in the Middle East has taken credit for what happened in Los Angeles. As soon as we started looking into Rubicon, trying to figure out what it meant, people began to die. The deputy director of the CIA appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee and was asked to look into whether that word, Rubicon, had been picked up in any of their surveillance. A few days later Raymond Caulfield was murdered ....”
“His car went off the road,” someone objected. “The police said his death was an accident.”
“Caulfield was murdered,” insisted Hart. “If you want to believe that he wasn’t, fine; but then explain who murdered Dieter Shoenfeld and came to kill me. I saw them, I heard them talking. They were Americans, hired killers. Who do you think hired them - al Qaeda? No, Rubicon was designed and carried out right here at home. Someone in the United States is trying to change the politics of this country, and they don’t care who they have to kill to do it.”
“I want to go back to Mohammed al Farabi,” shouted a determined reporter who had wedged himself into position just behind the first row. “Sources within the CIA claim that there is no record of anyone by that name ever having been a prisoner at Guantanamo or at any other location where prisoners in the war on terror have been held.”
A tight, caustic smile cut across Hart’s mouth.
“ I’m glad to hear the CIA keeps such meticulous records. I’m sure they won’t have any objection to allowing a group of reporters - or a few members of the Senate Intelligence Committee – access to all the prisoners who were there at the time Mohammed al Farabi claims he was there. It would certainly prove one way or the other whether Mr. Farabi is telling the truth.”
Another reporter wanted to know how Hart would respond to the vice-president, quoted in the story in the Times, who claimed that these allegations were nothing more than - the reporter read from his notes - “a reprehensible and desperate attempt to shift attention away from the failure of the Democratic candidate for president to take a strong stand in favor of the war on terror.”
“Prentice Alworth was murdered in Los Angeles. I was there. I saw it. Others have been murdered to keep the rest of us from finding out who was behind it and why it was done. They murdered my friend, Dieter Shoenfeld; they tried to murder me. If the vice-president thinks I’m wrong, then let him stop hiding behind claims of executive privilege and answer the questions that will help us get to the truth. Or is it possible that the vice-president know more about this than he is willing to admit? I’ll even give him an incentive to come forward and tell us all he knows. Prove I’m wrong, Mr. Vice-President, and I’ll resign from the Senate!”
Hart spent another half hour answering questions, all of them variations on what had been asked already. As soon as he said it, promised to resign if he was wrong, the evening news shows had their opening lead, and Quentin Burdick, writing the next installment of the story he had just started that morning, had his opening sentence.
Finding itself in the middle of a firestorm, the White House softened its approach. They did not deny their categorical denial, they still insisted that nothing like what Hart had said was possible, but they suggested that, as the White House press secretary put it, “everyone should just calm down.” Hart was wrong, he went on to say, but it was not his fault. “The senator has been through a lot. We need to understand that. He was there in Los Angeles, friends of his were killed. He himself was one of the heroes on the ground that day. He helped save lives. And then, after going through that, two men break into his house - burglars, killers; we still aren’t sure - and shoot to death someone who is a guest in his home. That would have an effect on anyone. Now, why did he then choose to run off to Europe somewhere and talk to this Mohammed al Farabi - if that’s his real name - I think you’ll have to ask him.”
After watching the press secretary on television, Hart turned to David Allen and laughed at the absurdity of it.
“Not guilty by reason of insanity. Don’t blame Hart: He’s been through too much to know what he’s doing.”
Allen turned off the television and sat back in his chair. They were sitting in his office, eating a sandwich, while they watched the coverage of what Hart had done that afternoon. Allen thought it had gone as well as they could have expected.
“Better, actually. You got it all out in the open. Now everyone knows about Rubicon. All over Washington, people are trying to figure out what to do next. This story isn’t going to go away. It’s too big. Whatever stupid things the White House tries to do, you’re not some crazy who thinks there is a conspiracy behind every corner. There are going to be investigations, serious ones. The Senate, the House, every committee that thinks they can get away with it is going to want to look into this. The presidential debate is a week from tonight. It’s going to be the first question that gets asked. What is Arthur Douglas going to say? That he doesn’t think there should be a full investigation? That he doesn’t think the CIA and anyone else that has had anything to do with what goes on at Guantanamo should at least tell committees of Congress what they know? He’ll get buried if he tries to do something like that, and he knows it.”
Hart got up to go to his own office next door. Allen’s telephone rang, the line from the receptionist. He flipped on the intercom.
“Is the senator with you?”
“Right here,” said Hart.
“There’s someone who has been calling all morning. He called again just a minute ago. He said it was important, and that he was sure you would want to talk to him. Someone from the police: a Detective Coleman, Leonard Coleman.”
Hart and Allen exchanged a glance.
“Call him back, if you would. I’ll take it in my office.”
Two minutes later, Leonard Coleman was on the line.
“I wonder if you could come down to the station.” There was a low chuckle as he realized what that could lead to. “No, that’s probably not a good idea, is it? Half the press corps in Washington would end up blocking the street. But there is something that I need to talk to you about. Maybe we could meet later tonight.” There was a short, awkward pause. “Are you going to be staying back at your house, or are you...?”
“No, not yet. Last night I stayed at a hotel. I’ll be there a while longer, I think.”
“That’s probably a good idea. But if you wouldn’t mind, senator, perhaps you could meet me back at the house, around nine o’clock. There is something I want you to see.”
Because he thought it would be painful, and even a little terrifying, for Hart to go back for the first time to where he had nearly been murdered and a friend of his had died, Leonard Coleman got to the house in Georgetown and turned on all the lights. He was sitting on the front step, the door behind him part way open, when Hart came up the walk.
“These places always have ghosts,” explained Coleman, as he stood up and shook hands. “Better not to see them in the dark. The back door has been replaced. Everything has been put back pretty much the way it was before. Come out here on an afternoon. Decide then what you want to do.”
Hart gave him a look that Coleman had often, too often, seen before. It was a question he had never quite known how to answer.
“Some people, after a thing like this happens, never go back. They put it up for sale and move to a different town, or at least a different neighborhood. Other people, sometimes because they feel that moving would only add another injury to what had happened, sometimes because all the memories of their lives, good and bad, are wrapped up in it, never even think of leaving.”
“But you - if it were you?”
“If it were me?” With his hands shoved deep into his pockets, Coleman studied the pavement, wondering if he even knew. “It’s like I said,” he said finally, “these places always have ghosts. So if it were me, I suppose I’d just put it up for sale and go someplace where every time I turned a corner, every time I heard a noise, what happened would not all come rushing back. But that’s just me, senator; everyone is different.”
They walked inside, and suddenly, as clear as if it had been that night, Hart heard Dieter Shoenfeld’s voice, telling him he was almost certain that he knew what Rubicon meant.
“I agree with you, lieutenant. I don’t think I’ll be coming back here again.”
Coleman led him into the dining room and pointed to the crystal chandelier. He reached into his pocket.
“We found this. Tiny, isn’t it? But it picks up sound perfectly. We found others, too - listening devices all through the house, and in the telephones as well. I don’t know how long they were doing it, but they would have heard everything that was said.”
Hart’s mind flashed back to the night he and Raymond Caulfield sat in his kitchen, talking about Rubicon and what Caulfield would try to find out. Caulfield never had a chance. They knew what he was going to do before he ever started.
Coleman had left a file folder on the dining room table. He pulled out a chair and motioned for Hart to take the one next to him. There was something else he wanted to show him. Opening the folder, he removed a smaller, manilla folder and placed it in front of them. Hart could tell that there were photographs inside.
“These aren’t very pleasant, senator, but I need you to tell me if this is one of the men who broke in and murdered Mr. Shoenfeld.”
It was a morgue photo, a man in his late thirties or early forties, laying face up on a metal table. Part of the left front corner of his forehead had been blown away.
“Shot in the back of the head, execution style. Is he one of the men you saw?”
Hart kept looking at the photograph. He was certain that this was one of the men who had murdered Dieter Shoenfeld and would have murdered him, but there was something else he wanted to see.
“You won’t find it, senator; it isn’t there anymore. You can’t see it when they’re dead.”
“Sorry, - what?”
“You want to know what makes someone do this, become a killer. You can’t see it now; or you can, but it doesn’t mean anything. It’s only when they’re still alive that you notice that their eyes are dead.”
“Yes, but how...?”
“Did their eyes go dead? Some of them are born that way; some of them....” He glanced at the photograph and shook his head. “This is Frank DeStefano. Murder for hire was a sign of upward mobility. He started out as a two-bit enforcer, a guy who went around collecting gambling debts, a low level mobster who took whatever small jobs someone in the New Jersey organization would give him. - You were right, when you said you thought one of them had an accent.”
Coleman kept the file opened, but he turned the picture of the dead man face down so Hart would not have to look at it.
“DeStefano had a long, relatively uninteresting record - served some jail time, even did a two year stretch in prison for things like assault, robbery, extortion - serious, but never anything close to murder. If the mob wanted someone taken care of, there were plenty of other names they would have thought of before they ever thought of his. Then, two years ago, Frank DeStefano disappeared, fell right off the radar. No one knew what had happened to him; no one much cared. Maybe he had been caught stealing from the mob, maybe he had been killed. No one knew and, as I say, he did not have many friends. And now, two years later, this same Frank DeStefano murders, or helps to murder, someone in a way that involved not only careful planning but very sophisticated surveillance, and then, just days later, he’s found in a vacant lot, his hands tied behind his back and part of his head blown away.”
Coleman rubbed his chin, and then, both puzzled and amused, he scratched his ear. He looked around the dining room and then through the open doorway to the living room where the murder had happened.
“A guy like DeStefano - all he would have known how to do was pull the trigger, and he probably would have failed at that if he had tried to break in here by himself. But this guy….” Coleman pulled a second photograph from the file and tossed it on the table in front of Hart. “This guy could come in here and sit right next to us and we wouldn’t even know it.”
The photograph was of an army officer in dress uniform. The face was younger, clean shaven, and the haircut much shorter, but Hart was sure it was the other man, the one he had seen with DeStefano.
“Meet Henry Lattimore, former army ranger, former special forces, former - well, we’re not sure. Like DeStefano, Lattimore disappeared. Left the army. Strange though, that he did that, only a year or so before he would have qualified for full retirement. The army has no record of him, no address, nothing. At least nothing they’ll tell us.”
“But how did you find him? The cigarette, the one you picked up that night?”
Coleman raised his eyebrows, a wry, but knowing commentary on the inevitability of chance.
“One cigarette, one mistake. It was the only thing he left behind. He killed DeStefano that same night. It was a couple of days before the body was found, but the time of death seems to match up pretty close. There isn’t any physical evidence that says Lattimore did it, but its the only explanation that seems to make sense. And if that’s what happened, if Lattimore did kill him, then it must have been something that was planned from the beginning: use DeStefano for the job - someone no one would miss - and then get rid of him before he did something stupid that would give it all away.”
Hart’s gaze kept darting back to the living room. The sofa where Dieter had been sitting, when he jumped to his feet after he heard the noise and then saw them and knew what was going to happen; the sofa that had been soaked in blood, Dieter’s blood, was gone. It seemed odd that he had not noticed it until now. Coleman had watched his eyes.
“We took it in - it’s evidence, but I don’t think you’ll want it....”
“No,” said Hart firmly. “When you’ve finished with it, get rid of it.” He moved his chair so that the living room was behind him and his eyes, with their rampant curiosity, could no longer betray him.
