Maybe Eddie can think of something. But if the feds are talking about espionage, they’re talking about national security. They’re talking about the Patriot Act.
They can do pretty much whatever they want to me.
It is over ninety degrees outside today, but I have never felt a greater chill running through my body. They are doing everything in their power to destroy me, and now they’re doing something even worse. They are destroying my newspaper, and hurting my employees with it. People who depend on me to put food on the table.
I have to do something. I have to save my paper and the people who’ve made it so great. But what can I do? Where can I confirm anything I suspect? I can’t even separate the good guys from the bad guys, much less turn to any of them for help. And my friends will now be risking a prison sentence for so much as loaning me five bucks or answering a question. I can’t jeopardize any of them. But take them out of the equation, and who do I have left? I don’t even have a newspaper anymore.
I’m out of money, resources, and friends.
And probably time.
I can only think of one other thing. I take a breath and hope against hope.
“What about Jonathan Liu’s computer?” I ask. If there is any place where I can find proof of what’s going on—not supposition, but proof—it will be on that computer.
Ashley Brook is quiet for a long time.
“They took it,” she says.
Chapter 78
Eddie Volker parks his Mercedes sedan in the parking garage below his law office. The place is hot and sticky but also dark and private, so it’s not a bad place to wait for him when he comes off the elevator past seven o’clock tonight after a day’s work.
I show my hands when I step out from between the cars. As anyone would, he stops, retreats, and assesses, but then he relaxes when he sees it’s me.
“You’re gonna give me a heart attack, Ben.” He loosens the collar on his dress shirt and takes a couple of breaths.
“Can we talk in your car?” I ask.
Eddie joins me in his Mercedes. The passenger side is full of napkins and food wrappers and unpaid bills. It looks like the interior of my car, which I hardly ever drive.
“You need to know everything, Eddie,” I say. “Before we decide what to do, you need the full picture.”
I give it to him in fifteen minutes. It’s a lot to digest, going back to when someone jumped off Diana’s balcony to now. But he already knows much of this, and say what you want about Eddie’s personal habits and clientele, he has a sharp mind.
He lets out a nervous giggle. “I’ve had all kinds of clients,” he says. “But you may have won the prize for stepping into shit.”
“So what the hell do I do, Ed—”
“First things first, Ben. Right now, if you go online to the Beat, it says the website is under repair and maintenance and will be back soon. It’s an agreement I worked out with Justice. So okay, it’s not ideal. You’ll lose advertising revenue and readers, sure. But it’s not fatal. Nothing about the DOJ shutting you down, nothing about espionage or anything like that. The paper’s reputation is intact.”
“For now,” I say.
“For now,” he acknowledges. “If I were you, I’d focus on solving your personal problems first. Which are considerable, I’ll grant you.” He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “So…the president is having an affair and the Russians know about it. They’re blackmailing him so he’ll keep quiet while they start rolling their tanks through the old Soviet bloc countries?”
“Basically, yeah.”
“And Diana Hotchkiss is the president’s mistress.”
“That’s my guess. It makes sense.”
“And the US government has made it a point to tell the world that Diana, not some stand-in, is dead.”
“Yeah. The president said it in a press conference. The MPD is saying it. They’ve even coerced Diana’s family into saying it. So the Russians are supposed to believe Diana’s dead. I guess this is how the CIA thinks they’ll thwart the blackmail. If there’s no ‘she’ in the he said she said, then the president can deny the affair and nobody can contradict him.”
Eddie takes all this in. Then he turns and looks at me.
“So if our government has taken care of the problem by faking Diana’s death, why are they still afraid of you, Ben?”
“Because I’m not accepting that Diana’s dead.”
He shrugs. “Yeah, but so what? You’re just some reporter without proof. The president will deny it, Diana’s parents will deny it, and that will be the end of the discussion.”