The Artifact Page 19

  “Who?”

  “Nineteen-thirties first baseman they named her disease for. Told 60,000 Yankee fans he was ‘the luckiest man on the face of the earth’ to have their support.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember.” Duncan had to refrain from laughing. “An excellent idea for Andy.”

  “I’m sure NNC will want to take the lead in this, Rand. We’ll need to coordinate airdates and content so we don’t all run the same thing. I assume you’d be willing to share tapes of the most significant stories she‘s turned in lately.”

  Rand was still trying to catch up with this embarrassing idea. “Of course, of course, Dick.”

  “The rest of us agreed to present this in a positive light, not dwell on the terminal aspect or incapacity of the disease.”

  “Understood. I’ll have my people pull her tapes together and wait for your call to coordinate.”

  Rand hung up the phone laughing. When he recovered, he pressed his intercom. “Maria, get that still photographer up here right away. Tell him to clear the decks for a special assignment, and make sure he has one of those telescopic lenses.”

  Out in his reception area, while Duncan had been speaking to Nuzzo, Maria had been stealing surreptitious glances at the two burly men in business suits seated in the padded armchairs against the left wall.

  She looked down at the two calling cards on her desk, speaking softly into the mouthpiece. “Detectives Kruger and Leonard are here to see you, Mr. Duncan.”

  “Who?”

  “From the District Police Department.”

  A motorcade lead a caisson carrying Hannah’s remains behind the traditional rider-less horse, silver spurs glinting on polished knee-length riding boots reversed in the stirrups of a burnished leather saddle. A contingent of several thousand disciples and a covey of vocal antagonists protesting her message trailed the funeral procession proceeded by police motorcycles, a military honor guard, airborne officers and non-coms and a few brave dignitaries. Their journey through the streets of the Capital was less than two miles, onto Independence Avenue, skirting the circle around the Lincoln Memorial, over the Arlington Memorial Bridge to the Virginia Hills and the Cemetery itself.

  When a CBS cameraman covering the entourage behind the caisson zoomed in to pan across several faces of the airborne officers marching before the caisson, Andrea almost fell off the sofa shouting, “Callaghan! Callaghan!” pointing an accusatory finger at the television screen.

  Sammy starred wide-eyed at the brief image of the retired general and his Major Geoff attired in full-dress olives, their chests plastered with the silver airborne insignia above overlapping rows of sparkling medals hung from colorful ribbons, brazenly marching in cadence to the rolling

  drumbeat, slow-step dirge of the procession.

  Andrea’s weakened arms had forced her to succumbed to the necessity of using the motorized wheelchair, and she reached for it now where Sammy had propped it against the arm of the couch. “Get me out there, Sam! I’m gonna grab that man and stay on him like stripes on a zebra!”

  Seventeenth Street, Henry Bacon and 23rd Streets were cordoned off at Constitution Ave., so Sammy took the access ramp to Roosevelt Bridge to cross the Potomac, then doubled back southeast on Jefferson to Memorial Drive and the Cemetery entrance. Andy produced her press pass for the gate guards, described her incapacity, and Sammy followed directions to Weitzel Drive at the far north end of the national graveyard.

  Only the first hundred or so mourners and no protestors were admitted to the internment site. Sammy had to park the car in a narrow cutoff some distance from Hannah’s final resting place. Andy continued to badger Sammy to hurry as he pulled her wheelchair out of the trunk, opened and locked it carefully into operating position. She started the motor and drove off toward the crowd ahead, admonishing Sammy to speed it up.

  “Now you know why I call you Princess,” Sam said as he jogged beside her.

  Annoyed looks and grumbled epithets followed Sammy guiding Andy through the crowd toward the flag-draped coffin resting on a catafalque at the edge of the open grave. General Callaghan stood at attention at its head reading the 23rd Psalm.

  “...though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

  Callaghan closed his Bible. The lieutenant in charge of the burial detail raised his sword and

  uttered the commands; the five soldiers on the opposite side of the grave raised their rifles and fired a three volley salute. The crisp sound of a bugle cut into the echoing report of the rifles with the sorrowful lament of Taps.

  Two of the uniformed pallbearers removed the American flag from her coffin, folded it into a precise triangle and presented it to Callaghan, who saluted, turned on his heel and strode away through the parting mourners with Major Charles Geoff a half step behind.

  “General Callaghan!” Andrea called out.

  When he didn’t turn or acknowledge her shout, she put the wheelchair into motion, nearly rolling over several people’s feet as she chased the two officers. “Sam, go slow them down, will you? We can’t lose them now, dammit!”

  Sammy sprinted ahead to accost the ex-general and managed to get him to stop. Callaghan cast a pained look back at Andrea approaching, shaking his head in mixed admiration and bewilderment.

  “Have you no sense of propriety?” he asked.

  “We found the experts you commissioned to translate the ancient artifact document.” she

  blurted, out of breath.

  “I was saddened to learn about your condition,” he replied.

  “Never mind that, where and what is it?”

  Callaghan smiled. “Your sweet disposition hasn’t suffered with adversity.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Will you help me break my story before I croak?”

  “It’s almost over, Miz Madigan. You and the entire country will have all your questions answered very soon.”

  “This is my story, General! And you’re going to release it unadorned to the entire press to

  misinterpret and spin?”

  Major Geoff said, “We’d better move out General. They’ll have seen you on television.”

  “I’ll get you on television,” Andrea threatened, “with a version of this probably treasonable theft and obstruction of justice that could land you in Leavenworth.”

  “You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” Geoff said.

  “Lieutenant Mitchell’s squad found the artifact in the desert, you smuggled it back to the states in a coffin, denied its existence, then paid and/or coerced ancient language experts to translate it.”

  Callaghan’s eyebrows shot up beneath the gold braid on the visor of his cap. “You have done a commendable job of ferreting out facts from an extremely well-planned strategy of denial and obfuscation.”

  “You admit it! Progress, General, thank you.”

  “Denial and obfuscation for very good reasons,” Geoff told her.

  “Which in circumstances of national interest, is for the people and their government to decide, not a one-man military renegade.”

  “If you will give us a few more days, a week perhaps, I will call you in for an exclusive

  interview during which I will reveal the entire history of the document in question.”

  Andrea looked up at him from her wheelchair, shaking her head in disagreement. “Not good enough, General. Time to change, hide, destroy the manuscript, or whatever other devious intent you may have for it. Give it up now.”

  “Or what?” Geoff asked her.

  “Or I go to the authorities, lay it all out in the press.” Andrea produced the photo she had taken of demented George Mitchell in the VA sanitarium. “Your theft, denial, secreting Mitchel away in an insane asylum, y
our responsibility for his murder, falsifying KIA and MIA statistics, your connection to the Preacher Lady, Mitchell’s Second Platoon Sergeant, Hannah Ogie—I’m sure the FBI, Military, State and Justice departments would all have a vested interest in your arrest, trial and incarceration in Leavenworth for a very long period of time.”

  “Goodbye, Miz Madigan,” Callaghan said, turning to follow Geoff to a black limousine shorn of his fender flags of rank. A tall soldier with a thick brush mustache and aviator sunglasses, wearing dress greens held the rear door open.

  Andrea began wheeling toward Sammy’s car parked in a handicapped space nearby. “Come on, Sam, they’ll be slowed by traffic, we can follow.”

  Sammy ran ahead to his SAAB, and was standing beside it with hands on hips frowning at his right rear tire when Andy arrived, breathless, from jolting along the cement path. “Open the door,” she told him.

  “Might as well. It’ll take me a while to fix the flat.”

  On the way back to her condo, they agreed that Callaghan had not only been lying to keep the artifact secret, but was personally involved in its theft. Since he was now the single best lead they had, Andy called Ft. Bragg again, this time posing as the general’s mother, anxious to learn the whereabouts of her son because his father had just had a stroke. She was finally put through to Callaghan’s battalion adjutant, who reluctantly divulged that his boss had ordered his early retirement kept from the media and their annoying questions regarding the artifact theft. Where he had gone was anyone’s guess, but if he or Major Geoff contacted Bragg again, the acting battalion commander would have him call home immediately.

  It sounded as though Geoff had accompanied Callaghan to wherever they had gone, and might be on their way to their artifact hideout. Sammy reasoned the thieves had probably picked some remote location from which to await verification of the artifact contents by experts and avoid the curiosity of inquisitive neighbors. Geoff’s army pilot’s license would enable the two officers to fly direct to that site without the encumbrance of commercial airline schedules, rental cars and stopovers.

  Sam used her condo phone and Andy her cell, to canvass private airports around DC to determine if Geoff had chartered or kept a plane there. When they had exhausted the private facilities in the area, Sam suggested that Andy call Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, about 15 miles southeast of the Capital, using the same subterfuge with the dispatcher there as she had at Ft. Bragg. Her inquiry regarding Geoff’s flight plan was met with a sympathetic response to Callaghan’s father’s stroke, asserting that the Army Major had filed Machias, Maine as his destination.

  That evening, they watched the retrospective of the twenty-three year news career of Andrea Madigan, aired as a low-key half hour simulcast program by most of the major news networks in the country. In deference to the tragic end to her renowned contribution to investigative reporting spanning almost a quarter of a century, competitive news organizations ran her video narrative in a positive mode, concentrating on the highlights of her exclusive interviews with national and international politicians, dictators, military personnel and celebrities. Most stations offered only a brief rationale for the Madigan program, stating that illness had forced her to leave the profession, with best wishes for good health and luck in the future.

  The exception to this upbeat, congratulatory attitude was her own network, NNC, who not only reported that Andrea had been fired for irresponsible on-air comments, but had a mysterious, debilitating terminal disease, accompanied by a series of unflattering still photos of Andy in her wheelchair coming and going from her condominium and doctor’s appointments at the hospital

  “That bastard,” Sammy said.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Machias, ME

  November 2004

  When he heard the distinctive whupp, whupps of the approaching helicopter, Callaghan issued several instructions, including an order to extinguish all the lights in the house. Then sent Franks out to the front porch to observe the landing, and the two gray figures silhouetted by a beam of light sweeping a narrow path before them as they approached the house across the covering of pristine snow. The ex-airborne trooper put down his M-16 rifle as Samarri ordered, when he realized Sammy was advancing toward him with an Uzi machine pistol prodding his back, one hand on his head, the flashlight in the other.

  The trio entered the living room, and the wild-eyed Iraqi pushed Sammy against the parlor wall, ordering Callaghan, Alvarez and two other troopers to turn on the lights, drop their weapons and lie on the floor.

  “Madigan’s in the chopper?” Callaghan asked from his prone position.

  Sam turned to face his captor, Sadiq Samarri. “I need to get her in here before she freezes!”

  The Iraqi jabbed Sam in the ribs with the barrel of his Uzi. “Shut mouth!” He kicked Callaghan in the head. “Where is artifact?”

  Sammy’s brain had been reeling for the past five hours since he had used his Marine Corps reserve pilot’s license rated for fixed wing and the helicopters he had flown in the Gulf War to charter the six-passenger Sikorsky S-76C+ on open-end contract from Butler Aviation at National Airport.

  After filling out the rental forms and checking the aircraft, Sammy went back to his car to get Andy, who had insisted on going with him despite her wheelchair confinement. When he approached his SAAB he noticed a distressed expression on the usually composed face of the investigative reporter in the passenger seat. It wasn’t until he leaned down to her open window that the gunman on the floor of the rear compartment raised his head. Sadiq Samarri pressed his automatic to the back of Andrea’s neck as he spoke to Sam. “Get in car.”

  Sammy felt a presence behind him and turned to confront the anxious visage of Amar Razzaq, his right hand bulging meaningfully in the pocket of his black raincoat.

  “You must know our beliefs,” Razzaq said. “If you resist or call out we kill you, then ourselves to the praise of Allah.”

  Andrea had sized up the situation as soon as the dark-skinned, mustachioed men had approached, but could do nothing more than frown and bite her lip. When Sam got into the car behind the wheel, Razzaq joined his partner in the back seat. Samarri threatened Andy with a curved eight-inch blade forcing Sam to reveal Callaghan’s destination and his own plans to follow him. Razzaq called an associate on his cell, speaking rapidly in Farsi. The only words Sam recognized in the short conversation were ‘Machias,’ then the repeated the cities of ‘Augusta’ and ‘Bangor,’ leading to his assumption that the Iraqi had called for reinforcements to meet them in Maine.

  The two Arabs followed Sam and Andy into the chain-link enclosure where Sammy explained to the manager the unexpected addition of two more passengers. After takeoff, buckled in the two center seats of the helicopter, the Iraqis demanded silence from their hostages, occasionally uttering terse comments to one another in Arabic.

  It was dark when Sammy touched down at 1730 at the Machias airfield, just before the manager turned the lights out and closed the office. When Sam inquired about Geoff’s recent flight in, the airfield manager pointed to the four-passenger single-wing Cessna tied down on the tarmac banked with cleared snow from an earlier storm. He accepted Sammy’s allusion to a weekend army reunion without suspicion and gave Sammy directions to the secluded farmhouse occupied by friends that Geoff and his tall passenger had been visiting off and on for the past several months. Assured that there was an open field near the house on which a helicopter could land, Sammy took off again for the secluded retreat of the artifact thieves.

  The chopper hovered over the clearing next to the old farmhouse as Sam inspected the snow-covered ground in the harsh glare of its landing lights before setting the aircraft down two hundred yards from the sturdy old structure of white clapboards to which compatible additions had been attached over the years. The Iraqis were clear and quick in what they were about. Samarri made a brief phone call, then instructed Sam to shut down the engine and precede him into the farmhouse. Razzaq remained in the chopper w
ith Andy.

  Eddie DiBiasio had known that the guards at the entrance to Arlington would have prevented them from following Sammy’s car into the Cemetery even if the roadblocks around it did not. He had instructed Johnny Shiv to circle the area until the internment of the Preacher Lady seemed complete, then follow the GPS homing device in Andrea’s wheelchair that lead them to National Airport.

  Eddie told Johnnie to keep an eye on the Madigan woman in Simkowski’s black SAAB parked at the private Butler facility while he followed Sammy into the Butler office where he overheard his negotiation for a helicopter rental to Machias, Maine. From the office window, he observed the Iraqis accosting the two news people in the SAAB, then shepherding them back through the gates. Eddie made his second call that day to his uncle Vinnie requesting the immediate availability of a local pilot and plane from that facility. His third phone call was made from the right-hand seat of a Cessna Skyhawk to request several Mafioso in northern Maine to meet him as soon as possible at the Machias airfield with appropriate transportation.

  In retrospect, Paula Najarian would take full responsibility for allowing her agents to concentrate on looking in the gay world for their elusive quarry and failure to pursue more aggressively the false flight plan filed by Geoff from Grannis Field in Fayetteville, NC to Augusta, Georgia, where her local agents had reached a dead end.

  In her intensive search for the ex-army officers, she had simultaneously thrown a broad net over every mode of public, commercial and private transportation facility in the northeast, concentrating on the few known habitats of Callaghan and Geoff to no avail. They were both professional career soldiers whose social life seemed limited to military functions, whose hobbies consisted of competing on the Ft. Bragg rifle and pistol team and occasional fishing trips off the outer banks of North Carolina.

  Their virtual inseparability on the fort, in the officers’ mess and elsewhere on base became evident, as did their apparent caution in never leaving the base together. The assertion of Geoff’s landlord that a man of Callaghan’s description had visited his tenant regularly, supported the early presumption that the two men were lovers. Paula’s gut intuition, however, demanded a deeper background profile of Callaghan’s personal life, which revealed a brief, though childless marriage in his twenties, and several close, relatively long-term female relationships, the most recent ending the previous year. This information derailed their assumed homosexuality of the general, and clarified his relationship to Geoff, who apparently remained a closet gay in the army under the prevailing concept, ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and Callaghan’s protection thereof. As it was, Paula’s frustration and anger were mounting with the uneasy feeling that her efforts were quite a few steps behind the general: if she did not catch up quickly, he would accomplish whatever he had planned for the artifact before she found them.