Scott Roarke 01 - Executive Actions Page 6

  Everything the FSRTC people needed traveled with them in a black van, flown in the belly of a Lockheed-Martin C-130E transport, on loan from the Marines. The plane’s cargo hold with its rear loading ramp, was perfect for quick response agency use. It rolled on at Quantico Marine Corps Air Base in Virginia and off at Columbia County airport eight minutes north of Hudson on Route 9H. The plane used every inch of the 5,350 foot-long runway before it came to stop.

  Seven FSRTC team members followed their vehicle down the ramp. They each had their expertise and instructions from FBI Director Robert Mulligan. “Make no mistakes. We want this killer.” If anyone could piece the puzzle together, they could. The agents—scientists as much as criminologists—had remarkable tools at their command. They operated on the cutting edge of forensics technology. They developed, tested and applied the latest breakthroughs in latent fingerprint and footwear identification, DNA analysis, firearms identity, thread examination and computer imaging.

  Case Officer Roy Bessolo was in charge. He looked and sounded like a Marine; tough, all business, with a deep voice and a monotone delivery. He kept his hair closely cropped. His clothes were always pressed and his shoes were never a day away from their last polish.

  Bessolo looked military, but he was a career FBI man, one of the most respected forensics investigators in the bureau. He lived by facts and made certain that the people in his command searched everywhere for them.

  “I want every square inch documented,” he commanded his investigators; four men and two women. “Remember, we’ve got only one chance to search the scene properly. One chance, people. The local gendarme has done a good job closing the city down, but it may be too late. So we’re looking for clues for a man named McAlister.

  He was convinced that even his own mother wouldn’t recognize him; in a crowd or up close. Sidney McAlister. Roger C. Waterman. These were only two identities he had perfected. They were so completely different from each other. From appearance to age, to stance, body language, facial expressions and voice. It wasn’t only a matter of hair color, glasses, or contact lenses. Of course, they helped. It went beyond that. He created distinct personalities, each with his own idiosyncrasies and speech affectations. Here was the proof he loved. He could stand face to face with a woman who both liked him as one man and despised him as the other.

  He was a great performer; classically trained by drama coaches, but a true method actor at heart. Private lessons, of course. He didn’t merely play a part, he entered into the psyche of the characters he inhabited. Waterman, the refined and intellectual art dealer. McAlister the smarmy salesman. It was theater on a grand scale. Every day was a performance for the man known only to himself.

  In truth, there was no Waterman. There had been no Christianson, Martinez, Collins or Hammacher before them. But they had all played on his stage and then disappeared just as McAlister had, even before he fired the shot that killed Jenny Lodge. Waterman pulled the trigger. And soon the antique dealer would vanish, unless of course he decided to come back to fuck Carolyn Hill. He fell asleep early with the thought working its way into his dreams.

  11:45 P.M.

  Before he went to bed, the President had Louise Swingle place another condolence call to Congressman Lodge. He’d already tried earlier, but he hadn’t been able to speak to Lodge in person. The President of the United States usually could reach anyone in the country on the phone. But not tonight. Newman wouldn’t put him through.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President, But I’m sure you can understand, ” Newman said. “He hasn’t been able to talk to anyone. It’s been too difficult.”

  “Of course,” Taylor said. “It has been a terrible day.”

  After an awkwardly quiet moment, Taylor continued. “I’ve assigned Secret Service protection for the congressman. If you haven’t seen them already, they’re outside of your hotel rooms now.” Newman and Lodge were in Manhattan, rushed there by motorcade after the shooting. “The officer in charge of the detail will begin working out the routine with you in the morning.”

  “Thank you. I saw them briefly. They introduced themselves. I realize it wasn’t required by law…yet.” Newman intentionally added yet as if to say Mrs. Lodge would still be alive if they’d been there earlier.

  “It’s the least we could do.”

  “Appreciated.”

  “Well, again please convey my deepest sympathies and those of my wife and the entire nation. Oh, and rest assured, we are giving this top priority. We have a good team investigating.”

  “I spoke with the FBI before we left Hudson. I told them we’d cooperate in every way. But just not right now.” Newman had no doubt that the FBI was briefing him at least hourly.

  “And Mr. Newman, I will find out what happened today.”

  Newman heard the tone exactly as Taylor intended. It was a message. Taylor was a hunter. He was no longer in the cockpit of a jet fighter on a bombing run, but he was no less lethal.

  “I’ll convey your sincere condolences and your commitment…to the candidate.” Newman’s use of the word candidate was equally intentional. He gave just the right emphasis to it, but concluded it would be useless to continue the dialogue with its political jousting.

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” he said. “Now goodnight.”

  “Goodnight Mr. Newman,” the president replied. He really didn’t like this man.

  CHAPTER

  6

  The FBI confiscated the camera-original footage that Chuck Wheaton shot at Park Place, but not before he uplinked the entire reel to WRGB and dubbed a copy for himself. It immediately aired in edited form, and then was fed in its entirety to the network in New York. Other news services picked it up and telecast the shocking footage with their own commentary.

  NBC: “…Murder in a small town.”

  ABC: “…An assassin casts a final vote.”

  Fox: “…Who, what, and why?”

  Elliott Strong’s edgy all-night radio show, Strong Nation, fielded dozens of conspiracy theories from listeners. And the next day, The New York Times ran five pictures above the fold. The governor’s endorsement, Jenny’s kiss during the parade, and the fire commissioner desperately applying CPR, the congressman holding his wife, and the photo that would appear on the cover of Time and Newsweek, the high school girl dazed with the turmoil swirling around her.

  A sidebar story ran in the left column written by Michael O’Connell. The agressive, young writer had been chronicling the New York State primary for months. He had recently interviewed Jennifer Lodge and quickly wrote a 1604-word story Sunday night. He hit “Enter” on his computer and the text worked its way through the editorial system to headline writers, layout arts and eventually to the front page. The Times syndicate picked it up for national play. By the time the paper hit the stands Monday morning, O’Connell had the go-ahead to clear his other assignments to tell the Teddy Lodge story from the beginning.

  O’Connell reserved a seat on the noon shuttle to Boston; from there he’d go to Marblehead and begin to put the pieces of Teddy Lodge’s life together. From what he had already learned it had been full of tragedy long before Jenny’s death.

  He wouldn’t be the only one on the trail. After reading the account in his Presidential Morning Briefing package prepared by the chief of staff, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DCI) and the White House staff, President Morgan Taylor decided to dispatch a man named Roarke to do the same. It wasn’t intended as an investigation. The FBI had that authority. As a member of the Secret Service, Roarke was asked to prepare a comprehensive profile of Congressman Lodge in order to provide him with maximum security.

  In all, America’s phone books listed 5,241 people with the name S. Roarke or Scott Roarke. None of the numbers would ring through to the President’s man. Nor would this particular Scott Roarke come up in any Internet on-line search. A computer hacker might find an extract on an Army Special Forces lieutenant by that name. But there’d be no record of any mission.

/>   He wasn’t ever officially in Beijing, Tehran, Behrain, or Mazar-I Sharif. But a number of people at the Pentagon knew he had been there and what he had done.

  Roarke maintained Secret Service credentials, but that didn’t begin to describe his access to the president or his work. Scott Roarke was definitely the president’s man, a friend and confidant ever since Morgan Taylor met him a number of years ago quite by accident.

  The accident was caused when a Soviet designed SAM-16 surface-to-air missile found one of the General Electric F-110 engines aboard Commander Morgan Taylor’s F/A-18C during a less than successful mission over Iraq.

  Simply put, the meeting occurred when Roarke rescued him. Roarke, a young lieutenant in the Army’s secret Defense Intelligence Agency, was operating well inside the lines of Saddam Hussein’s fierce Republican Guard when Taylor dropped in on him.

  Taylor paid a surprise, uninvited visit to a pair of suspected biological weapons plants from 25,000 feet. He had one more Rockeye bomb left in his stores and was coming around on his second target when a trio of SAM’s locked on to him from a portable launch facility. He evaded two. The last caught Morgan Taylor’s left intake.

  Taylor was pissed off he couldn’t bring back the $24 million machine he’d signed out. But his Air Wing commander onboard the USS Carl Vinson was happy that an Army puke had saved Taylor’s sorry butt to fly another day. He’d even take home the Navy Cross, commending his valor in the presence of great danger and at great personal risk.

  As a result, Taylor established a special bond with Roarke. The Annapolis pilot and the inner city kid. They helped each other many times over the past decade. Three years ago, at the request of the first term president, Roarke came to the Secret Service. A personal request with private duties.

  A few years following the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center towers, then-Senator Taylor resolved to personally address the level of uncertainty that surrounded the near certainty of future attacks.

  As Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, he identified the need to centralize much of the internal anti-terrorist intelligence-gathering process. Taylor proposed the creation of a hybrid FBI/Secret Service/Homeland Security unit, piggy-backing on already funded programs.

  Behind closed doors he urged the White House to make the paradigm shift from viewing the Secret Service as walking bullet proof vests for the president to strategists and combatants in the terrorist war. Their tools would be political sleight of hand utilizing misinformation, domestic and foreign investigation and, when necessary, outright deception.

  He received solid support in the Republican-held Senate, but his measure was undermined when it hit the House. The head of the House Ways and Means Committee was a young congressman named Teddy Lodge. He argued in the Caucus Room of the Old House Office Building where the House Un-American Activities Committee once held its historic hearings, that “President Taylor was willing to risk too many freedoms; freedoms Americans must not be willing to abandon.” The sound bite that led the news and killed the proposal in conference committee sharply stated, “We don’t need an enemy within.”

  The plan was dead, but only for awhile. When Taylor took the Oath of Office as president he finished what he had started, this time without the approval of Congress and the oversight of Congressman Lodge. He simply reassigned “unique” Secret Service duties, transferred vast sums, created new budget line items, and brought in an ex-Army special ops commando named Roarke to join the team. Few people beyond the CIA, NSA, and FBI chiefs knew about it. The fewer the better. He designated it PD16, short for Presidential Directive 1600; an homage to his new forwarding address.

  No one’s the worse for it, thought the president as he signed the papers to reorganize the Secret Service. Except maybe Lodge.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Monday 23 June

  Hudson, New York

  An assassin fired one round through the silencer of his assault rifle yesterday. It made no sound, yet its impact was heard across the country. The target was a congressman. The victim was the woman he loved. It was time for Theodore “Teddy” Lodge to bury another memory.

  Many voters knew that Lodge had cheated death himself before and buried too many people close to him. But Michael O’Connell brought the story forward with facts from the archives and the breaking news of the day. His report in The New York Times was written with a passion that left readers more closely connected to the congressman’s pain.

  Teddy Wilson Lodge cried once more. His tears streamed down his cheeks as he cradled his wife’s head in his lap. Another family member was taken from him before he had a chance to say goodbye.

  O’Connell took readers through three generations of Lodge family history. Though he represented Vermont voters as a congressman, his roots were in Massachusetts.

  Teddy Lodge was born in Marblehead, just north of Boston. He had a famous New England political name, however he wasn’t related to the more famous Lodges and their relatives the Cabots. His parents were successful and no less wealthy, but their fortune was owed to his grandfather’s Northshore real estate holdings.

  During the Depression, when everyone was selling off property to survive, Oliver Lodge leveraged the small bus company that he owned for cash from a prominent Marblehead doctor named Elias R. Crannell.

  They had met quite coincidentally during a snow storm in February, 1930. The good doctor’s 1929 $4,500 luxury Dusenberg had spun off Route 129 on the way to a reception at Tedesco Country Club. Lodge, driving one of his three buses, stopped to help the stranded doctor. Despite the fact that it was nearly 10-degrees below zero, Oliver offered to assist the doctor. He dug out the Dusey, then pushed and pulled until the vehicle rolled back on the road. He followed the doctor to his destination just to make sure he made it safely.

  One week later Dr. Crannell wrote a thank you letter and expressed his willingness to help the young man. Oliver Lodge was not shy and his wife was out of work. He had come from a hard working apple farming family in the Connecticut River Valley near Springfield, Massachusetts. But unlike his father and grandfather, he didn’t want to live his life climbing ladders. So one day he told his wife Edna they were leaving for Boston. They packed up their family and what little they owned in their 1924 Model T four-door touring car and set off across the state.

  Boston was the first real city they had ever been in and he soon realized it was too big. They followed the roads up the North Shore and settled in Marblehead; a town with a name that he recognized from sea stories he’d read as a kid.

  After a number of years and a variety of jobs, Oliver scraped enough money together to put one bus, then two and three into service. Then the Depression hit everyone’s pocketbooks. Even bus fare was a luxury. So his chance meeting gave him an idea. His wife told him he was crazy, but Oliver Lodge decided to propose an outrageous business proposition to the rich doctor with the expensive car.

  “Give me $3,500 cash for 80 percent of my bus company. All but $500 of the money will go into real estate. I’ll split any of my profits in that business fifty-fifty.”

  The bus company was a nickel and dime business. Dr. Crannell didn’t expect any kind of return. But the doctor saw merit in Lodge’s business plan and he admired his entrepreneurial spirit in the worst economic times. His land grab could mean tens of thousands, if not more, when the economy recovered. Crannell agreed to the terms without argument.

  Actually, neither Oliver Lodge nor Dr. Crannell could have imagined what this simple deal ultimately would be worth. They acquired, developed and sold their way from rural property to city blocks. There was prime real estate along the ocean for homes and farmland that the state bought up for highways.

  By the late 1940s, the $3,500 loan paid dividends of $2.4 million. By the mid 1950s, the Lodge estate was valued at $14 million dollars.

  Oliver Lodge died in the mid-1960s, four years after his grandson Theodore Wilson Lodge was born.

  Teddy’s fathe
r, Oliver Jr., continued to manage the business, Lodge Properties. His mother, Katharine, donated her time to proper Northshore charities. They enjoyed their second-generation wealth, but raised Teddy in a supportive, normal small town environment.

  O’Connell wrote extensively about the next years in Teddy’s life. He noted how Lodge excelled in school and in sports. He was reading well in First Grade, winning the spelling bees in Second. In Fourth Grade he won a Library Association Achievement Award for submitting the most book reports in a year. In Fifth Grade, he was introduced to music. He loved rock, and felt that James Taylor was writing just for him. But the 20th Century classical composers touched his soul. Copland. Gershwin. They captured the American spirit. The feeling haunted him and stirred his budding political consciousness. When he ran for Middle School President, he promised to advance the music program. And he won.

  Outside of school, he threw himself into Boy Scouts. He made it to Eagle, and would have stayed with it longer if he hadn’t been distracted. He discovered girls in the Ninth Grade. During this typically uncomfortable period he tried out “Ted” instead of Teddy. He hoped it might give him stature over the amazon women in his class. But it never really suited him well. His first girlfriend told him so.

  Debbie Strathmore, adored his wavy locks, his sense of humor, and his brilliance. Teddy loved her body and the pleasures it taught him.

  They were, by every definition of the words, “Going together” freshman year at Marblehead High. According to some friends, “Probably doing it” by the spring. Though no biographies really delved into his early sex life.