Midas Read online

  So back to the question: Why did those three benefit? Because the government could do whatever it wanted now. If Anderson passes the Triumph of Freedom Act, it becomes his legacy, his holy grail of legislation. And it sets up his party as the one to turn to in times of fear and danger. There’s an even greater benefit for VP Dandridge: He’s running for president. He was losing—now he’s a shoo-in. Attorney General Stuller reaps the same benefit. The Triumph of Freedom Act gives him extraordinary power. Lots to gain for all three of them, particularly the last two. Lots to gain . . .

  But how can this be? The heads of the U.S. government perpetrating terrorist acts on their own people? It can’t be. It doesn’t make sense. It can’t make sense. There’s something wrong, there’s got to be a gap in the logic.

  And yet . . . Why the cover-ups? Why the misinformation? Why else would there be so much resistance to and so much obstruction in the way of the truth?

  Okay. Let’s go with it for the moment. As crazy as it seems, say it’s real. It still doesn’t solve the second part of the Harper’s equation: Who’s masterminding the bombing? Who was on the other end of the cell phone? That’s the key because even assuming the crazy assumption that Anderson, Dandridge, and Stuller—or any combination of the three—are involved, they couldn’t possibly be hands-on. They’d have to be many times removed from the physical reality of the plan. The FBI? Hard to imagine. Even someone as bloodless as that guy Schrader . . . no. Just can’t see it. They might cover up the investigation under orders, but to actually perpetrate a terrorist act. Uh-uh . . .

  Hold it. Take a break. Getting ahead of yourself. Getting too complicated. Keep things simple. One step at a time. Time to see where we are . . .

  First Plateau: The explosion at Harper’s Restaurant was designed specifically to kill Bradford Collins. Collins was murdered to stop him from talking about EGenco’s illegal business dealings. His revelations would have implicated people who could not afford to be implicated—the list possibly goes as high as the attorney general, the vice president, and the president of the United States.

  Unanswered Questions: Who was actually behind the bombing? Who made the cell phone call? And what was the specific information that Collins had that was so dangerous to such important people?

  Okay, go to the next step. It’s related. It’ll help pull you up the mountain.

  Step Two: . . .

  The door to the room opened, Justin was so absorbed in his thought process that he didn’t hear the initial sound, but when he realized that someone was coming in, before he even looked up, he stretched out casually on the floor, obliterating his scribblings in the dirt. As he slowly stood, he dragged his foot over the same area, further obscuring any trace that he’d been doing something other than staring blankly off into space.

  His interrogator stood just inside the doorway. He was still wearing fatigues. They’d been washed and newly pressed.

  “Tell me about Hutchinson Cooke,” he said.

  Justin nodded accommodatingly. “What do you want to know?”

  “Why were you talking to Martha Peck?”

  “Looking for information.”

  “What information?”

  “Cooke was killed in my town. I was trying to solve the case.”

  “Who killed him?”

  He thought about his answer, decided to go with the truth. He had nothing to gain by lying. Not now. “I’m not positive. I didn’t get far enough. But I think it was someone who worked for Martha Peck. Someone named Martin Heffernan. He either rigged the plane or knew who did it and decided to cover it up, I don’t know which.”

  “Did you kill Hutchinson Cooke?”

  “For Christ’s sake.” He would have screamed but his throat was still too raw. Then he just nodded and said, “Yeah. I killed Hutch Cooke, and to throw everyone off the track, I decided to spend the rest of my life pretending to find out who did it. I arranged for myself to get thrown in here ’cause I knew that would really confuse the hell out of everybody.”

  Justin waited for the attack, but it didn’t come. The man in the fatigues didn’t change his expression, just waited a moment or two, then said, “Tell me everything you know about Midas.”

  For a moment, Justin thought he might burst into tears. Forget the pain and the horrendous conditions. He was being driven mad by the idiotic repetition, the boredom. “Look,” he said, “I’d like to tell you about Midas. I’d really like to tell you about Midas. But I don’t know what it is, where it is, or who it is. All I know is they paid Hutch Cooke’s salary. That’s it. I swear to God.”

  “Who runs Midas?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who owns it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where does their money come from?”

  Justin shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”

  “Tell me about Theresa Cooke.”

  Justin closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them before answering. “Some stupid bastard killed her because he thought she told me something. That’s all I know about her.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What did Theresa Cooke tell you?”

  “She didn’t tell me a goddamn thing.”

  “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? If you knew something, you’d tell me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you want to get out of here.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t want to be beaten anymore, do you?”

  “No,” Justin said quietly. “I don’t.”

  “And you’d like to be clean. And have a good meal.”

  “Yes,” he breathed. “I would like that very much.”

  “Then just tell me what you know.”

  Justin took a deep, long breath. The air that came in through his mouth and his nostrils felt particularly tropical. Warm and wet. “I don’t know anything,” he said. “I don’t know a thing.”

  The man in the crisp, starched fatigues looked at Justin, who’d stayed standing during the entire conversation, and said, “I almost believe you.”

  Then he left Justin alone again. From the world outside his tiny window, Justin thought he heard a bird screeching. It was a high-pitched noise, piercing and mournful. When the sound came again, Justin wasn’t quite so sure of its source. It was piercing enough to be a bird. But it was also mournful enough to be a human being.

  He scribbled all the names into the floor again. He’d done it so often by now, he didn’t have to think or pause while pushing his finger through the dirt. As he’d done each time, he rearranged them in a slightly different order than the previous time. Looking for patterns and connections. To the left he kept the victims in one column. For the first time, he added Elliot Brown’s name to that column. Next he organized any of the names connected to either the military or the FBI—anyone with a connection to the government’s investigation of terrorism. To the right of that column he listed all government officials. In a column all by itself, he listed the Saudi connection and, after a bit of hesitation, added a final column: Midas. At first he left it blank under the company name, then he added Cooke, who worked for them, and then he remembered that Colonel Zanesworth had told him that it was the vice president, Dandridge, who had made the call asking Cooke to be assigned to Midas as a pilot, so he put Dandridge’s name under that column, too.

  Collins Zanesworth Stuller Mishari Midas

  Cooke Schrader Dandridge Cooke

  Brown Stuller Anderson Dandridge

  Heffernan Cooke Peck

  Billings Ingles

  Lockhardt Heffernan

  T. Cooke

  R. Cooke

  H. Cooke

  He stared at the columns, saw no new connections to be made. Took a deep breath—almost reveling in the horrible smell; he’d seen how repulsed Mr. Starched Fatigues had been this last time and somehow it gave him a kind of strength to know he was used to it, was no longer overpowered by it—and he went back to t
he puzzle . . .

  Step Two: Hutchinson Cooke’s plane is rigged and he is murdered.

  Theory: Cooke was on non-Air Force business. He was working for a company called Midas. Cooke flew into East End airport before the Harper’s explosion. Cooke was killed because he’d made a connection between his cargo on the plane and the explosion. He was killed so he couldn’t make that connection public.

  Thought Process: What was the cargo? Two choices: the explosives used to destroy the restaurant or the man who used the explosives—the man who made the cell phone call. Or perhaps both.

  Where was Cooke flying from? Unknown. Find that out and it should help to know who or what he was carrying.

  Why was Cooke killed? Again, find out exactly who or what he was carrying and find out exactly why he was killed. Best bet: Cooke had been suckered into the flight—he didn’t realize quite what he was doing; when he realized the connection between his cargo and Harper’s, he panicked, maybe threatened to expose his bosses—the people who ran Midas?—and so he was killed.

  Who killed Cooke? Heffernan either killed him or covered up the killing.

  Justin looked at the list he’d drawn into the dirt. He’d put Heffernan down as a government official. True—he worked for the FAA. That counted. One more government connection. One more signal that this whole thing had to be government-connected . . . and high up in the government to reach this level of manipulation.

  Okay. Time to take a breath.

  Plateau Two: Cooke was killed because he was a link to Collins’s murder and to the explosion at Harper’s. The link is the cargo. The key questions: Who or what was Cooke flying into East End Harbor? And for whom? If he was flying for Midas, what is Midas and who is behind it?

  Time to start climbing again . . .

  Step Three: Martin Heffernan is killed in the explosion at La Cucina restaurant.

  Theory One: Same as Harper’s. The explosion is an elaborate and deadly cover-up to mask the murder of one man: Heffernan.

  Question: What did Heffernan know that got him killed?

  Thought Process: He knew about Hutchinson Cooke. If Cooke was the link to Midas—and had to be eliminated to remove the link—then Heffernan was the link to the government. Heffernan had called the Justice Department to pass along information about Cooke’s death. But Cooke didn’t work for Justice—his boss was Martha Peck, FAA. She didn’t seem to be tied in to this. Although . . . she was a link to the murderer or murderers. Despite Martha’s protestation, she knew who removed Heffernan’s file from the FAA office in Oklahoma City. She had to know. She had probably removed the file herself at the person’s request. Find that person, find a closer connection to the murderer.

  Justin went through the next deaths quickly. Chuck Billings was clear-cut. He’d been brought in through official channels and, because of his expertise, he found out exactly what those officials didn’t want him to find out. He’d been lured to his death, most likely by the same bureaucrats he’d so distrusted. Justin would put money on Hubbell Schrader as Chuck Billings’s killer.

  Lockhardt was also simple. He was killed because he was a final loose end in the murder of Hutchinson Cooke. He knew about Heffernan’s connection and that was enough to seal his death warrant. Justin mentally penciled Schrader into the blank space next to the question, Who killed Lockhardt?

  Theresa Cooke was killed because she, too, knew something about her husband’s murder. Or, more likely, about her husband’s job. Theresa was dead, Justin was certain, because she knew something about Midas . . .

  Justin took another look at his markings in the dirt floor and decided to draw in a new column: Organizations.

  So at the far right of his scribblings, he added:

  Midas

  U.S. government

  Yale

  Saudi government

  He decided to go one subset further:

  Midas

  U.S. government

  Executive

  Justice

  FAA

  Yale

  Saudi government

  He went back and, remembering Stephanie Ingles and her Yale connection to Dandridge and Stuller, added “EPA” under his “U.S. government” heading. And then suddenly he decided to add another organization. A business that seemed to be at the center of all of this. EGenco.

  He began scribbling separate columns for each listing:

  Midas Exec Justice EPA FAA Yale Saudi EGenco

  Cooke Anderson Stuller Ingles Heffernan Ingles Mishari Dandridge

  Dandridge Dandridge Peck Dandridge Cooke

  Stuller

  Anderson

  What jumped out at him was Dandridge. He popped up everywhere. Justin twisted around so he’d have a clear space on the dirt floor—he’d begun to think of it as a giant blackboard—and he wrote the name Dandridge, and under that, every possible connection to the vice president that was relevant to the puzzle.

  DANDRIDGE

  Midas

  EGenco

  Cooke

  Anderson

  Stuller

  Ingles

  Mishari

  He erased that list, rubbed it out quickly with the heel of his right hand. Then split the list into two—people and companies.

  Cooke Midas

  Anderson EGenco

  Stuller

  Ingles

  Mishari

  In his mind he went over the connections one more time:

  Dandridge had made the call to Zanesworth to get the colonel to release Cooke from his Air Force duties so he could pilot for Midas.

  Dandridge had been CEO of EGenco.

  He’d been piloted by Cooke as vice president. He’d made the call to Zanesworth to get Cooke to come to work for Midas.

  He was Anderson’s vice president. They’d known each other since their Yale days.

  He knew Stuller from Yale. Stuller was reporting to Dandridge as point man in the government’s search for the suicide bombers.

  Dandridge knew Ingles from Yale.

  As CEO of EGenco, Dandridge had to have a close relationship with Mishari. EGenco did too much business with the Saudis for that relationship not to exist.

  Dandridge was a connection between EGenco and Midas. Dandridge was a connection between Midas and the government.

  Justin studied the names on the list. Rearranged them several times. Stephanie Ingles still seemed to be the weakest point: he couldn’t see any connection between the terrorism, the conspiracy he was convinced existed, and the head of the EPA. There just didn’t seem to be any political link between her area of expertise and the events of the past two months. So he erased her from his list and mentally shoved her off to the side.

  After the third time he’d put the names in different order, something began to gnaw at him. Something was trying to burst through. He tried to empty his head so whatever was in the back of his brain could make its way forward. It felt close. Very close . . .

  But something else struck him now, rushed at him with a burst of clarity. As he saw the list of names, he realized there was a new piece to the puzzle that suddenly fit in. He’d been wondering one thing since he’d been brought to this godforsaken place: Why? Why had they done it? Whoever had given the order to take him couldn’t possibly want him to give damaging information to his interrogator. They didn’t want anyone to know what he knew. They wanted him silenced. So why question someone if you don’t want to know the answers?

  Because, he thought, they don’t want to know what you know. They want to know what you don’t know.

  So what didn’t he know?

  What were the questions the starched little prick kept asking him: What was Midas? Who runs Midas?

  They weren’t looking for those answers! Whoever was behind the questioning knew the answers! They wanted to make sure that he didn’t know.

  So what the hell was Midas? Who the hell was Midas?

  Goddammit, he was close. He could feel it coming. He was so close his brain felt like i
t was exploding. Information was rushing at him—the reports he’d read, the background on the lawsuits, the history that Roger Mallone had thrown out to him. It was there. It really was. It was all inside his head . . .

  He heard the familiar noise at the door, immediately ran his hands over the dirt, obscuring everything he’d written, and as he did he felt the bubble burst.

  He felt his brain shutting down, the pieces of the puzzle dissolving into nothingness.

  He sagged with disappointment.

  That’s when the door swung open. Two soldiers stood in the doorway, both holding rifles. They didn’t seem to care about the obscured swirls on the floor or why Justin was on his hands and knees. Behind them was the man in starched fatigues. He didn’t seem to care either. And when the man spoke, Justin didn’t particularly care about them either.

  “Clean him up,” the man in the starched fatigues said to the two guards. “He’s going home.”

  30

  He was thrown into an outdoor shower stall that was big enough for ten men.

  The sun at first burned his skin and scorched his eyes, but the fresh air enveloped him like a lovely ocean wave. As he was propelled to the shower area, he was vaguely aware of steel mesh pens that looked like animal cages. It took him a few moments to realize that they were for humans. These were the human voices he’d heard drifting into his cell.

  The cleansing water made him aware of the sores on his legs and the bruises on his arms and chest and face. But they didn’t really hurt. Or if they did, the pain seemed unimportant. He let the warm shower water stream into his mouth and drop down his chin and thick beard. He scrubbed himself with soap, scraping off feces and layers of dirt and dead skin, and used some shampoo provided for him to wash his hair three times. He’d been handed a toothbrush, too, already slathered with toothpaste, and he ran the brush across his teeth over and over again until the paste was long gone, periodically spitting water and foam and blood from his mouth in the direction of the drain. The minty taste of the toothpaste tasted like fine wine. It was as if the sun and water were breathing life back into him.