Hidden Agendas nf-2 Read online

  "All right. Anything else I need to know?"

  "Nope. I got me an appointment with a masseuse this afternoon. She's gonna relieve my tensions allll over."

  Hughes shook his head again. Platt didn't know it, but he'd been under surveillance for six weeks, by a very discreet — and very expensive — investigative firm hired to keep tabs on him. Since Hughes trusted the big man about as far as he could throw him one-handed, he thought it wise to make sure Platt wasn't playing any games he shouldn't be playing. No doubt Hughes would hear from his hired operatives about the street fight later. As he would hear about the "masseuse" who came to minister to Platt's needs.

  The woman would be black, of course. They always were.

  Platt had availed himself of outcall massage services fourteen times in the last six weeks; had sampled the wares of half-a-dozen prostitutes in Guinea-Bissau during his stay there, along with a streetwalker working the airport during his long stopover in Cairo. All had been black women, more than twenty of them. He did not mistreat any of the trulls, as far as Hughes's investigators could determine, nor was he interested in anything other than heterosexual-style relations, no whips or chains or funny clothes.

  Platt's racism was apparently not wide enough to encompass females of African heritage. A wonderful dichotomy, Platt. He would beat up a black man in the morning, then fornicate with a black woman in the afternoon. Hypocrisy was such a wonderful thing. The world wouldn't be able to run without it.

  "All right," Hughes said, "I'll call when I have something else for you."

  "I hear you," Platt said. "See you later, alligator."

  Chapter Eight

  Tuesday, December 21st, 8:25 a.m. Washington, D.C.

  The Senate meeting room was too warm by at least five degrees, which certainly didn't help Alex Michaels feel any less sweaty. He sat on the hot seat at the table reserved for victims of the inquisition — more euphemistically known as "witnesses called to give testimony" — facing the panel of senators, whose dais was raised high enough so there was no doubt who was in charge. That had to be, in a society that equated height with superiority. Next to Michaels sat Glenn Black, one of the FBI's top legal eagles. The two of them, backed by a gallery of other witnesses and interested watchers, faced the eight senators of Robert White's Governmental Finance Oversight Subcommittee.

  Net Force's budget was the only item on today's docket, and after a pretense at politeness, the charge, led by White, was in full attack.

  It was going to be a long day.

  Michaels hated this part of his job, sitting in front of committees whose members might — and usually did — range from idiotic to brilliant, but who almost never knew what was really going on about much of anything. No matter how smart, the senators were at the mercy of their staff people who supplied them with information. While some of those on various staffs were pretty sharp, they were usually limited in what they could find out. A lot of agencies were reluctant to be totally forthcoming when called for information that might whittle away at their budget for the next fiscal year. What the senators got from their people was generally on a par with reporting on the six o'clock news. Like a rock skipping across the surface of a pond, only the information that was in easy view was even touched upon, and that only briefly. The depths below were hidden and, for all practical purposes, inaccessible.

  Being ignorant of the truth never stopped men like Senator White, however. And while he wasn't the dimmest bulb on the string, his wattage was hardly what you would call blinding on his best day.

  "Commander Michaels, what exactly are you trying to tell this committee? That Net Force doesn't care if some nut makes public information about how to build bombs that kill young newlywed girls?"

  "No, sir, Senator White, I did not say that." Michaels was beginning to get pissed off, and his reply was a little more clipped and sharp than it ought to be. Black leaned over, put his hand over Michaels's microphone, and whispered, "Take it easy, Alex, it's only eight-thirty. We're going to be here all day. He's just playing to C-SPAN's cameras and the audience at home."

  Michaels nodded, and under his breath said, "He's a fool."

  "So when did that become a liability for holding public office?"

  Michaels grinned. Glenn was right. It was going to be a long session; no point in losing his temper. Michaels usually kept a low profile at these things, and that was considered a good idea. Let them rant. When it came to the actual vote, the sound and fury before didn't count for much. He knew that. Still…

  White went on: "It sounds to me as though you're saying that Net Force has more important fish to fry, Commander. And I have to tell you, sir, from where I sit, your oil doesn't seem hot enough by half."

  He must have a new speech writer, Michaels thought. Somebody trying to downplay his rich man image and give him a little folksy touch. Good luck, writer boy.

  Michaels knew that his boss, Walt Carver, the Director of the FBI, was in the audience behind him. So far, Carver had been able to keep White at bay, using his network and ties from when he'd been in the Senate, but White was getting more aggressive all the time. At the very least, Michaels had to put on a decent performance while on the hot seat, and not embarrass himself or the Bureau.

  "I'm sure I don't know as much about oil as the honorable senator from the state of Ohio does."

  Michaels hadn't really planned to say that, it just kind of slipped out. There were a few chuckles. It was a small dig at White's wealth, some of which had come from petroleum shipping, a business run by his grandfather.

  White frowned. Michaels held his smile in check. Maybe it wasn't smart to pull the lion's tail, especially when the lion had you in the cage with it, but it sure felt good.

  "There seem to be some serious problems in your organization," White said. He shuffled through some hardcopy. "We are talking about issues of national security, about which I will not speak in public, but these are grave matters that Net Force is failing to address properly." He looked at Michaels. "What is the point in funding an agency that doesn't do its job, Commander Michaels?"

  "I'm sure, Senator, that you know much more about agencies that don't do their job than I."

  More laughter, but Michaels caught a warning look from Glenn, and it was easy enough to interpret: Easy, boy. Not smart to get into a fight with the man who controls the microphone. Especially not smart to make him look bad on TV. Michaels sighed. He had to watch his mouth. And even if he did, it was going to be a very long day.

  Tuesday, December 21st, 10 a.m. Dry Gulch, Arizona

  A day's ride from Black Rock was the Western town of Dry Gulch. Jay Gridley hadn't been disposed to spend that much time in the scenario, so he'd logged in on the edge of town. Black Rock had been a bust, no sign of the bad guys, so Gridley had moseyed on.

  It was close to high noon, and the sun hammered the bleached road so dry that clouds of reddish-gray dust hung in the windless air after every step his faithful steed Buck took. Just before he reached the outbuildings behind the blacksmith's shop and livery, Gridley took the U.S. marshal badge from his Levi's pocket and pinned it on his shirt. The silver gleamed brightly in the hard, actinic light. He didn't want anybody catching that mirror-shine on the trail, but in town he wanted the official muscle the badge offered.

  Like Black Rock, Dry Gulch looked like a place from a Western cowboy vid, circa the mid-1870's. The main street — and the only street — was fairly wide, situated between rows of false-front shops. Here, among others, were the dust-spackled Tullis Good Eats Cantina, Dry Gulch General Store, Mabel's Dress Shop and Tailors, Honigstock & Honigstock Attorneys-at-Law, King Mortuary and Undertakers, the Dry Gulch Bank, the La Belle Saloon, and the sheriff's office and city jail.

  Jay nodded and tipped his hat at an elderly woman in a long dress crossing the street. "Howdy, ma'am."

  The old lady gave him a suspicious glare and hurried on, stepping onto the boardwalk next to the storefronts. The walk was a foot higher than the street, an
d that made sense. It probably flooded here during the infrequent rain, and you'd want to be above all that sudden mud.

  A couple of boys chased barrel hoops down the dirty road, driving the flat metal rings with short sticks, laughing. A quail offered his song in the distance, not the usual "bob-white" whistle, but the more urgent "baby! baby! baby!" mating call.

  Jay reined Buck up in front of the sheriff's office. A gray-whiskered old man sat on a wooden chair, whittling on a big stick with a jackknife. He looked like a miner, with a leather vest over a grubby red-and-black checkered shirt, tan once-upon-a-time canvas pants, and black boots.

  The saddle gave out a leathery creak as Jay put all his weight into the left stirrup and dismounted. He wrapped Buck's reins around the horizontal hitching post.

  The old man spat a foul-looking brown stream at a lizard scurrying along the boardwalk looking no doubt for shade. Missed him by two feet.

  "Missed ‘im, damn," the old man said. He had a voice that sounded as if it had been soaked in a barrel of whiskey, then pickled in heavy brine, and then left out in the desert for thirty or forty years.

  Jay nodded at the old man and started for the door. His boots clumped on the boardwalk.

  "You lookin for the shurf, he ain't around," the old man said.

  Jay stopped. "Where would I find him?"

  "Boot Hill!" The old man cackled until the laugh turned into a wheeze, then a cough. He spat more tobacco juice, but the lizard was already well out of range. "Damn, missed ‘im."

  "There a deputy around?"

  "Yep — planted right next to the shurf!" This brought on another round of cackling, wheezing, and coughing.

  Must have been sitting here praying for a stranger so he could say that.

  When he managed to get his breath back, the old man said, "The Thompson Brothers came to stick up the bank three days back. I ‘spect you bein' a marshal, you know who they are. They kilt two tellers, the shurf, and the deppity. Shurf got one of ‘em, and Old Lady Tullis blowed ‘nother one off n his horse as they were ridin' out, cut him down with that old 12-gauge coachgun she keeps behind the counter o' her cantina. Course that left three of ‘em still ridin' hellbent for leather, but they didn't get no money and they ain't likely to come back to this town real soon, nosiree Bob!"

  "What's your name, old-timer?"

  "Folks ‘round here call me Gabby."

  I can't imagine why. "Well, Gabby, I'm trackin' down some shysters from back East. Bad hombres."

  "Ain't been no tinhorns stop off here lately," Gabby said. "Maybe some passin' through on the stage. Wells Fargo office's down't'other end o' town." He pointed with the stick he'd been carving on. "Past the whorehouse there."

  "I'm obliged, Gabby."

  Jay walked back to Buck, mounted, and walked the horse toward the Wells Fargo office. He nodded again at Gabby. Of course, the old man could be a firewall. Might be the sheriff was snoozin' in his office, his feet propped up on his desk or in a cell bunk. Or maybe he was havin' a drink at the cantina or the La Belle, and Gabby had been posted there to stop any strangers lookin' to talk to the local law. Jay would check out the stagecoach office, check with the telegrapher — he saw the telegraph poles so he knew the town was wired — and if he didn't get anything there, he would circle back and bypass Gabby to be sure he was tellin' the truth.

  Jay smiled. Who would have ever thought of a firewall as a tobacco-chewing, lyin' old fart who looked like a forty-niner?

  Jay was almost to the Wells Fargo depot when a big, swarthy, black-haired man with a drooping handlebar mustache and a pair of holstered guns stepped out into the street in front of him. "Hold up there, pard."

  There was a definite air of menace about the man, who wore a black suit over his boiled white shirt and tie, and a derby hat instead of a cowboy hat.

  Jay looked at the man. The guns he wore weren't Colt.45 Peacemakers like Jay's; they looked like Smith & Wesson Schofield.44's, top-loaders with seven-inch barrels. Powerful and accurate, damn fine weapons, but slow from the holster. When it came to fast draws, size mattered. Shorter was better…

  Jay dismounted and led his horse to another hitching post, this one next to the whorehouse. Four horses were already there. There were three large windows on the second story of the big house, and three or four pretty women in colorful petticoats and underwear leaned out of the open windows to look down at the two men in the street. Jay tipped his hat to the women. "Afternoon, ladies," he called out.

  The women tittered. One of them waved. "Come on up, Marshal!"

  Jay grinned, then turned back to face the man in the derby hat. He moved away from his horse so Buck wouldn't be directly behind him. "What can I do for you, amigo?" Jay said.

  "Fact is, I don't like lawmen. I think mebbe you need to turn around and head back where you came from." The big man cleared his coat back from his holstered revolvers. "It would be good for your health."

  "You got a name?" Jay said.

  "Name is Bartholomew Dupree. Folks call me Black Bart," the man said.

  Well, of course they do.

  Jay dropped his hand next to the butt of his Colt. "Sorry, Bart, I got business at the stage depot. Why don't you just stand aside and let me pass?"

  "Can't do that, Marshal." He waggled his fingers, loosening them.

  Definitely a firewall, and a tough one. So Jay was on the right track; his quarry had passed this way. And he wasn't about to give up because there was a roadblock. Lonesome Jay Gridley hadn't gotten to where he was by accident. He was the best.

  "Make your play then," Jay said.

  Bart went for his guns. He was fast — but Jay was faster. The.45 spoke a hair before the twin.44's, a throaty roar, belches of thick white smoke erupting around tongues of orange fire. Speckles of unburned propellant stung Jay's hand. He recocked the big single-action revolver, but it wasn't necessary. Bart dropped to one knee, guns falling from his suddenly nerveless fingers, then toppled to one side. Dust splashed from the street, joining the stink of black powder smoke.

  Jay uncocked, then holstered his gun and walked over to where Bart lay on his side in the dirt. Got him right between the eyes, Jay noted with satisfaction.

  Teach you to mess with Lonesome Jay. Pard.

  He thought he heard music coming from the saloon behind him, a kind of echoing wah-wah-wah sound that was more synthesizer than upright piano. He grinned. Too many Eastwood movies when he'd been a kid.

  A dark-haired man in a gray banker's suit and steel-rimmed spectacles came out of the arcade next to the house of ill repute and walked to where Jay stood looking down at the corpse. "Perhaps you might have need of my services, friend?" He tendered a business card. "Peter Honigstock, Attorney-at-Law," it said.

  Jay turned so his marshal's badge was visible to the lawyer. "Nope. Just the undertaker."

  "Ah," Honigstock said.

  He turned back, nodded at the soiled doves in the whorehouse, then headed for the stage depot. And after that, he was gonna mosey on back to the sheriff's office and have a few words with old Gabby. The lyin' bastard.

  Chapter Nine

  Tuesday, December 21st, 3:25 p.m. Washington, D.C.

  In his study at home, John Howard leaned back in his chair, looked away from the terrain maps of the Pacific Northwest and glanced at his watch. He realized he was going to have to leave for the airport to pick up Nadine's mother in about five minutes. The idea of fighting rush hour traffic made him feel even more tired than he already felt, which was plenty tired enough.

  He didn't know what the problem was, or why he was so worn out lately. He couldn't get a pump working the weights, was winded so bad after a couple miles into his usual run he had to slow down almost to a walk. And he wasn't sleeping real well either — dropping off early, tossing and turning all night, then waking up tired and groggy. What it felt like was overtraining, but he hadn't been working that hard, no more than maintenance stuff. And there wasn't anything pressing at work: some training exercises in the
high desert in Washington state coming up, and some winter work in the snow, in the hills of West Virginia, in mid-January. Other than that, nothing.

  Could he be getting old?

  No, he was only forty-two. He knew guys ten years older who could run him into the ground; it couldn't be something that simple.

  No? Some folks age faster than others, don't they, Johnny boy? Remember your twentieth high school reunion? Some of the guys you graduated with had so much gray hair and so many wrinkles they looked old enough to be your father. You'd pass them on the street, you'd never know who they were. Maybe your clock is running fast…

  Howard shook his head. He didn't need to be going down that road, thank you very much. He didn't even have any gray hair yet, and he looked better than he had at twenty, with more muscle. Maybe he just needed some vitamins.

  He pushed away from the chair and stood. It wasn't going to do anybody any good sitting here thinking about being old, not when his mother-in-law would turn into a black volcano spewing hot bile if he was late fetching her. That woman had a mean streak on her, and a mouth to go with it. He'd best get moving.

  Nadine was in the kitchen, working on supper, and Howard started in that direction, to tell her he was fixin' to take off. Might as well stir up Tyrone while he was at it.

  The boy was in his room. But instead of being glued to the computer chair as he usually was, he was lying on the bed, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

  "You okay, son?"

  "I'm fine."

  "About time to go pick up Nanna."

  Tyrone turned his head slightly. "I think I'll stay here."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I mean, I'll see Nanna when she gets here."

  Howard stared at his son as if he had. suddenly sprouted horns and a tail. Not go to pick up his grandmother? What happened to the boy who used to chant, "Nanna! Nanna! Nanna!" over and over, bouncing all over the car the entire way to the airport? Who'd practically knocked the old bat down, hugging her and dancing around like he was demented?