Sedition (A Political Conspiracy Book 1) Read online

  “This is Harrold.”

  “Who are you? Who is Harrold?”

  Matti listened to the voice. It was somehow different. The tone was lower maybe.

  “I’m Matti Harrold.”

  “Matti Harrold? From the art exhibit tonight?” There was something tentative and confused in the asset’s voice. “You were wearing a black dress?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know who this is?”

  “No.” Matti sat down at her desk. Something was off.

  “Do you recognize my voice?”

  “No. It’s the same robotic tone you’ve been using with that alteration device,” Matti said. She reached into her desk, pulled out her notepad, and started taking notes.

  “Where do you work?”

  She noted there was hesitancy, as if the asset really didn’t know the answer.

  “You know where I work.”

  Matti was concerned now that whoever was calling her was not the asset. She heard a rustling sound on the other end of the line.

  “Where do you work?” It was a man’s voice now, the robotic quality gone. Whoever it was had disconnected the device. Matti found the voice familiar, yet she couldn’t quite place it.

  “I saw you tonight, running away from three men. They were chasing you. You had your shoes off and you looked frightened.”

  “You suggested I attend the event. You thought it would be a good idea. Don’t you remember?”

  “I didn’t suggest anything. But I was there. I saw you run out.”

  Matti suddenly realized who it was on the other line. It was the only conspirator not chasing her. She’d seen him as she turned the corner to run out of the building.

  “You’re Bill Davidson,” she said in sudden realization.

  Davidson stood in his boxers and undershirt, finally beginning to grasp what had happened. “You work for the government, don’t you? CIA? FBI? Which is it?”

  “Something like that,” Matti said vaguely. “You’re not my asset, are you?”

  “No.” Davidson looked over to the dead body lying on the floor. He thought about his journal and how it had ended up in her hands. His mind raced through all of the things he’d told his girl in confidence. He edged on hyperventilating as he thought of the access she’d had to his written thoughts whenever he slept next to her or showered in the adjacent bathroom. He shuddered. Holding the phone in his right hand, he brought his left to his head.

  He squeezed his temples. “Your ‘asset’ is dead.”

  PART THREE: THE EXECUTION

  “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

  —Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence

  Chapter 29

  The smell of death was a counterintuitive aphrodisiac for Laura Harrowby. The odor was more a mixture of embalming fluid and lemon-scented Pledge than the exceptional stench of putrefaction, but it was the scent she most associated with her father’s funeral home.

  The fact that the funeral home sexually stimulated her was as much an unspoken commentary on her “daddy complex” as it was on her relationship with the much older Professor Arthur Thistlewood. When she stumbled into the lamp-lit office in the back of the building, she inhaled deeply and moaned, clumsily punching the four numbers on the alarm console to turn it off.

  “Shhh!” Thistlewood was already on edge. He didn’t want to alert anyone to their presence. He checked the door as he walked in and made certain it was unlocked.

  “There’s nobody here now, silly man,” she said, tilting into him and burying her face in his neck. “Just you and me. And me and you and tea for two.” She hummed as she flicked her tongue on his neck and sucked.

  He put his hands on her shoulders and forcefully pushed her back to look her in the eyes. She was sloppy drunk and still attractive. He would oblige her, but not in the office.

  “Didn’t you tell me that you wanted to show me something as soon as we got here?” he reminded her. “You’ve been anxious about it for hours.”

  “Oh yes!” Her eyes widened from the reminder. She giggled. “Yes! Follow me.” She grabbed his hand and led him through a narrow hallway to a wide door. She opened it and reached inside to flip on a light switch.

  The light revealed a set of stairs leading down a flight to the basement. She carefully negotiated the steps by bracing herself against the wall to her right and gripping the circulation from Thistlewood’s right forearm.

  They reached the bottom of the steps, and Laura flipped another switch, which illuminated a large open room. It extended in front of them some twenty feet and another fifteen feet to either side. The floor was smooth cement. It appeared remarkably clean. Except for a wide doorway at the far left side of the room, the walls and ceiling were a series of crossing two-by-four studs separated by sheets of pink insulation. The room smelled like furniture polish and cedar.

  In the middle of the room, on what looked like a gurney, sat a single casket. It was deep brown with hints of red.

  Thistlewood could tell it was hand-rubbed mahogany. The fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling reflected against the sheen of the polish. Along its sides were stainless steel support bars that ran the length of the large box. Its Dutch lid was open. Thistlewood could see that the cream-colored satin lining wrapped the entirety of the interior.

  “That’s the president’s casket,” Laura said, holding the professor’s right hand with both of hers. “That’s what they’ll put him in.”

  “So that’s the coffin, huh?” Thistlewood was studying the wood box for more than one reason.

  “Casket,” she corrected him. “Not a coffin.”

  There actually was a difference. Modern caskets didn’t come into use in the United States until the mid-nineteenth century. The metamorphosis from the simple coffin to a more ornate casket was first widely recognized in 1885 when President Ulysses S. Grant was buried in a metal casket with a full plate-glass top. There was no question about what was buried in Grant’s tomb, even if the who was debated for more than a century.

  Those in the profession of serving the dead were sensitive to the vernacular. Undertakers had become funeral home directors, and coffins had become caskets.

  “Sorry,” he said, but he wasn’t. “It looks heavy.”

  “Most of the wooden ones weigh about one hundred to one hundred fifty pounds,” Laura informed him. She released her hands from his and moved them gently to the area between his legs. “Any wooden ones here?” She laughed from her throat.

  He flinched and smiled at her. “Okay, just a couple of minutes. I’ve never been in a room like this before.”

  “It’s called a reposing room,” she offered. “This is where the casketing will happen. You know, when the body gets put into the casket and arranged. It’s where we keep the body until the funeral.” Laura turned away from Thistlewood and leaned back onto him. She wrapped his hands around her waist as they looked at the casket.

  “It’ll get rolled to the dumbwaiter over there and hoisted up to the main floor,” Laura said, motioning to the right side of the room with her head. Thistlewood was surprised that he hadn’t noticed the large elevator-like hole in the wall. There was an electric panel next to the hole with a pair of large buttons.

  “Obviously the president isn’t here. If he were, he’d be through the doors to the left. That’s where the embalming room is. Usually that’s where the body would be until after it’s dressed.”

  “When does the president get here?”

  “Mmm,” she purred, “I’m not sure. I just know that my father said some other company was preserving and dressing the body. For security reasons or something. My father doesn’t know who’s doing it. I think it’s sometime tomorrow morning.”

  Thistlewood looked at his Timex. It was late. He knew the others had to be waiting for his signal by now. He lowered his head and placed his lips against her left ear.

  “Should we move to another room?” he
whispered.

  “It’s about time.” Laura turned her head to the left to kiss her boyfriend. She found his lips and sighed. He could taste the bitterness of long ago consumed wine on her tongue.

  She pulled away after a moment and then took his hand to lead him upstairs. She was still intoxicated and found the flight up a bit challenging. But she managed it and led Thistlewood into a small parlor at the far end of the hall from the back office. He left the door to the reposing room open.

  Laura found her way to the chenille sofa and lay down with her head on the rolled arm. She motioned for Thistlewood to join her.

  “Let me just turn my phone off,” he told her as he locked the door behind him. “I wouldn’t want to be interrupted.”

  “No, we wouldn’t want that.” Her eyes were closed.

  Thistlewood pushed C on his phone before sending a brief text message and turning off the phone. He joined his girlfriend on the sofa. She would be preoccupied long enough for her desire to be satisfied and her trust betrayed.

  *

  Bill Davidson sat in his room at the Mayflower for what seemed like hours, the day’s events running through his head.

  His recollections filled only a few minutes, but time had slowed. He leafed through the pages of his small blue notebook. Dotting the lines were names, dates, and addresses. There were thoughts about the country, about each of his co-conspirators, and about the plot.

  How much of it had his now dead lover seen? What had she told the feds? Was he implicated? If he hadn’t been previously, he was now. He’d made the mistake of calling the handler. That handler had been at the art opening earlier in the evening. There was no coincidence there.

  The girl had clearly told Matti to be at the opening. Matti so much as admitted it. This was bad and getting worse.

  Davidson looked down at his lap and noticed blood on his pants. He stood and untucked his shirt. He looked disheveled, but it hid the stain. The AG looked around the room as if he expected the scene around him to have changed. It had not. Straight ahead of him, toward the door, were the legs and feet of a woman who, only an hour earlier, was sipping wine and making small talk.

  He needed to take control of the situation. Somehow, he had to find a way out of the predicament where there seemed to be none.

  He picked up one of the cell phones from the bed, pressed C and dialed a familiar number.

  “You have my information?” the knight said smugly with no greeting.

  “Yes, I have it.”

  “I’m listening.” The knight pulled his Meisterstuck Rollerball from his jacket pocket and jotted down the specific times of the various events planned for the procession, the Capitol service, and the graveside funeral at Arlington. He already had the information, but getting the exact times from two different people made him more comfortable.

  “And the rest?” He was relentless. “I need the rest.”

  “I’ve arranged it,” Davidson acknowledged. “The people at Hanover are prepared.”

  “Excellent,” the knight hissed. “That wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be, was it? All you needed was a push.”

  “You’re right. A push.” Davidson looked again at the lower half of the dead body extending from his hotel bathroom. “That’s all I needed.” He started to push the button that would end the call when he heard the knight call his name.

  “Bill?” Apparently the knight wasn’t finished playing. “Bill, are you there?”

  “Yes.” Davidson was acting the part of a masochist, as he sometimes had more joyfully done with the girl now suffering from algor mortis.

  “You should have known better, Bill. If you didn’t have the stomach for a revolution, you would have been better off as the laughingstock of a politico you’ve been for most of your adult life.” The knight was riding his high horse again. “You wanted so badly to become something you were never really capable of becoming. It’s sad really. I pity you.”

  If Davidson hadn’t convinced himself of the next necessary step before the phone call, he had now. The knight had done it for him. Davidson didn’t respond. He disconnected the call and picked up the other cell phone on the bed. He redialed Matti Harrold to arrange a meeting.

  Chapter 30

  Matti was about to leave her office when the door swung open. Her boss stood there blocking her exit. His hair was uncombed and the soft skin beneath his eyes was dark and swollen. He hadn’t shaved in nearly twenty-four hours, though to Matti it appeared to have been longer than that. He was dressed in a UCONN sweatshirt and tan Dockers. Most pronounced, she noticed, was a thick vein bulging vertically from his hairline to his brow.

  “Harrold, why am I here?” He was talking through his teeth while gripping the doorknob such that his knuckles were white. “Why am I here at this ungodly hour?”

  “Well, sir—”

  “I am here because you have disappointed me.” He’d let go of the door and folded his arms. His neck and cheeks were flushed; his jaw was clenched as he spoke. “You disobeyed direct orders. You failed in the simplest of tasks.”

  He was not wrong. Matti knew that.

  “Sir,” she began again, fully expecting to be cut off at the knees.

  “What?”

  “The asset is dead.”

  The supervisor’s glare softened almost imperceptibly as his eyes darted around the room, trying to visualize the words that flew from Matti’s mouth. How did he not know this already?

  “She was shot and killed in the hotel room of a conspirator. The conspirator claims he did not do it. He inadvertently called the gray line, using the asset’s cell phone after her death.”

  “How do you know this?” The bulging vein in his forehead had shrunk, but the frown lines stretching diagonally outward from the edges of his nostrils were profound.

  “The conspirator told me.” Matti suddenly felt flush for being so green; she’d trusted the word of a man plotting terrorism. She fought through the doubt if only to convince herself. “I believe him. He was panicked.”

  “First of all”—he was heating up again, the shock of the confession wearing off—“if she were dead, I would know it. I just spoke to her earlier today. And secondly, Bill Davidson is as capable of deceit under duress as anyone in Washington.”

  “I didn’t say it was Bill Davidson who called me, sir.”

  “Gimme a break, Harrold. Who else would be with the whore? His relationship with her was the reason we went after her in the first place.”

  “You went after her?” That wasn’t what her supervisor had led her to believe.

  “Grow up!” He laughed at her question as though it was unworthy of asking. “We knew that Davidson was involved in some rogue group, but we couldn’t get a hold on it. Little splinter groups pop up and go away all of the time. When a former cabinet member gets involved, we have to pay attention.”

  “Why her?”

  “She was the entrée into the group. We appealed to her sense of self-preservation. She either helped us or we made life very difficult for her.” His anger softened as he talked about the ingenuity of the Daturan infiltration. “She didn’t really want to help. We pushed. She’d give us tidbits here or there. We got names and meeting times. It helped with surveillance.”

  “How long has she been an asset?”

  “Two years.”

  “So why bring me in now? Why get me involved?”

  “She was clamming up, and we believed that something was about to go down. We thought a new voice, a woman, might help.”

  “Oh.”

  “But that’s over. And you’re done.” His tone was firm. “You blew the cover of three agents at the art exhibit and jeopardized the mission by consorting with the targets. You’ve compromised everything. Go home. Take the rest of the week off. I don’t want you here right now.”

  He didn’t know whether or not to believe the asset was dead. He believed that Harrold thought she was. He could find out quickly enough. They had surveillance on the Mayflower.


  “Sir, I do think I have some important information to share with you before I am dismissed.”

  “What is that, Harrold?” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

  “One of the Daturans is dating a woman whose father owns a funeral home.”

  “And?”

  “She claims the president’s remains will be at that home.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences, sir.”

  “What are you saying, Harrold?”

  “Could they be planning something large in scope, timed to coincide with the cortege or the funeral?”

  “That’s exactly what they’re planning,” he said impassively. “We don’t believe Thistlewood’s girlfriend has anything to do with it. That’s a coincidence, regardless of what you choose to believe. We have no intel that leads us to think that either she or her father is involved. Our intel does suggest the Daturans want to blow up Arlington to make a statement about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and about our continued involvement in the Middle East. We know they think our economy will recover only after we’ve left those two theatres. Those elements are well documented. You read that in the dossier, right?” The question was rhetorical.

  “We know that a violent statement like that would swing foreign opinion and hurt our coalition,” he went on. “We’re already weakened throughout the region. The Arab Spring did nothing to help us. What you’re telling me is something I already know.” He was dismissive, bordering on mean.

  Matti had things to say and wanted to counter his theory. As much as she’d grown in outward confidence in the past three days, she knew better than to challenge her boss. She nodded silently as if admitting defeat. It did not soften her supervisor.

  “Now shut up and go home.”

  “Sir?” Matti had one more question. “You said you spoke with the asset today. Why was that?”

  Her boss winced. He seemed caught off guard. He replayed the conversation in his head until he recalled having slipped. He nodded with recognition but said nothing.