Accounts

By Hal Williams

Collins works his way through a maze of government bureacracy and financial complexity. He is attacked more than once, and learning the reason appears impossible. Even the FBI becomes an adversary based on unreliable information. Aided by a comely former FBI agent and distracted by an attractive, amorous neighbor, Collins eventually tracks his suspect into the woods of West Virginia, where it will require all his skill, cunning, and determination just to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hal Williams
• Release date: Aug 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310135859

Hal Williams

Native Texan and Vietnam veteran Hal Williams is the author of twenty four novels including foureen books of the "Persephone of the ATF" series. His writing style reflects his wealth of experiences ranging from rock-n-roll musician and racecar driver to working journalist and book manuscript editor. In addition to writing and still working around racecars, Hal enjoys playing bridge, target shooting, and collecting vintage revolvers. He lives in the Dallas area.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1991

A SECRET REMAINS a secret only for as long as just one person knows it.

Government advisor Douglas Lawlor harbored a few secrets as he bent down to pick up his morning newspaper. Some of them bore international implications. On that serene Saturday morning in a quiet Maryland neighborhood, Douglas Lawlor took all his secrets with him when a bullet smashed into his skull.

Trent Collins walked into the cocktail lounge of downtown Washington’s J.W. Marriott hotel and scowled. He had no appreciation for the lounge’s sterile chrome-and-glass appointments and not much more for the balding bureaucrat who had chosen the site and now awaited his arrival.

Have a seat, said Roland Miller, somehow failing to notice the eyebrows that bunched into fists.

Collins despised officious men like Miller, but he dropped his five-eleven frame into a vinyl-upholstered chair that felt as uncomfortable to him as an Inquisition rack.

Miller, overweight and balding, wore a three-piece charcoal wool suit, white shirt, blue paisley tie, and a titanium Breitling watch—de rigueur apparel for alphabet-soup types from FBI, CIA, OMB, or in Miller’s case, DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency. Collins had on faded jeans, a plaid wool work shirt with frayed cuffs, and a black, military-style Timex. His blue-collar attire and occasional blue-collar vernacular belied his advanced college education and experience as a naval officer with SEAL training.

Collins hid a smile as he pictured the contrast—a rose and a cactus side-by-side in the same flowerbed. Each had its thorns, but the similarities ended there. He much preferred representing the cactus.

The bar had few customers; most of official DeeCee had begun its three-day weekend at or before noon on Friday. When a waiter approached their table, Miller waved him away.

Hey, Collins called. He doesn’t speak for me. I’ll have a Coke on the rocks.

The waiter frowned. Just Coke? Nothing in it?

You heard right the first time.

As the waiter strode away in a huff, Collins turned to face Miller’s disapproving glare. Look, Roland, you dragged me away from an Atlantic Coast Conference game and made me drive ninety miles to get here. I hope you have a good reason for screwing up my Saturday.

As Miller began his explanation, Collins realized immediately that he had heard about the shooting on WTOP while driving into Washington but it had not sounded to him like a national security crisis. A federal civil servant named Douglas Lawlor had been gunned down outside his Rockville, Maryland, home shortly after dawn that morning. The DIA man spent nearly two minutes regurgitating WTOP’s twenty-second broadcast because he used characteristically convoluted Washington lawyer language.

Local investigators have no suspects and no motive, Miller said at last. They believe this was simply a random act of senseless violence.

What do you believe?

I’d rather not say just yet.

Okay. What did this Lawlor guy do, exactly?

I can’t go into detail, Miller replied. All I can say is that he conducted economic research and served as an advisor.

That’s it?

Basically, Lawlor functioned as a kind of librarian. He studied hypothetical situations, economic forecasts, that sort of thing.

Bullshit. Collins’s sotto voce whisper did not dilute the intensity of his denunciation.

That’s it, Miller responded, his tone similarly laced with irritation. I can’t tell you any more than that.

Can’t, or won’t? Miller glared at him. Come on, Roland. I’ll get more information than that out of tomorrow’s Washington Post. If you can’t do any better, I’m going next door to finish watching the ball game.

Threats won’t work, Collins. Your boss assigned you to me, and in spite of what you may think, you have a responsibility.

But not to you.

I can fix that with a phone call.

That’s bullshit, too. Why didn’t you call the FBI?

It’s not within their jurisdiction.

Nearer theirs than yours.

Roland Miller was infringing on professional courtesy for the cooperation he sought. He had been in Washington for many years and had always managed to avoid having the swinging door of changing administrations hit him in the ass. Even so, he had not been around long enough to render him omnipotent. He had occasionally stepped on toes in ways the aggrieved parties did not soon forget, and such memories could modify the definition of professional courtesy. There were still some people Roland could neither bluff nor bully, Jules Hunt among them.

Now look, Collins said, you’re telling me this Lawlor was a borderline nobody who got dinged by some street punk. All I can figure from that is that I have fallen asleep on the couch and I’m seeing you in a bad dream.

You arrogant bastard.

Quit trying to sell me smoke and mirrors, Roland. There’s a half-dozen layers of law enforcement out there to deal with street punks and drive-by shootings, so I have to ask myself, what do you want from me?

Miller pulled his head down between his shoulders and spoke in a low, conspiratorial voice. We believe Lawlor’s murder was politically motivated and was carried out by a professional assassin.

Collins thought about that for a moment. Okay, fine. You guys tell the Post whatever you want about Lawlor, but don’t jerk me around. Nobody pays a hit man to take out a librarian. There has to be more to him than that.

Trent had been surprised that WTOP mentioned the shooting at all. It was not what journalists called a slow news day. Washington media dogs had spent the past twenty-four hours gnawing the previous day’s bone—the caustic verbal sparring between Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and a former Thomas subordinate named Anita Hill. Her accusations of sexual impropriety and his denials would provide titillating fodder for every outlet from CNN to the supermarket tabloids for at least a week. Alleged indiscretions by prominent political figures generated upward spikes in ratings points and ad revenues, which always pleased the bean counters on the upper floors.

Miller finally broke a tense silence. You know, Collins, you really aggravate me.

Why? For wanting to know what I’m getting into?

For being such a smartass.

Trent refrained from voicing the retort that came to mind, one that Miller obviously expected.

Miller frowned, then began to elaborate. As he explained it, Lawlor worked somewhere well down the State Department food chain and reported to a protocol officer there. Few people in Washington had ever heard of him or cared what he did. Lawlor constituted a department of one, all to himself. He had a vague title and a tiny office at the Library of Congress. He studied political events as they related to world finance and vice-versa. A near-genius, he could separate the wheat from the chaff and provide detailed abstracts on various possible outcomes of those events and the net effect of each on the U.S. economy. His audience for these presentations included personnel from the Federal Reserve, Treasury, CIA, Foreign Affairs, NSA, and usually a representative from the President’s staff.

I’m still not seeing a motive here, Roland.

Miller sighed. Supposedly, Lawlor also suggested proactive ways of abetting or preventing a given event, depending on the projected benefit or damage to the country’s economic health.

You’re kidding. Trent was no finance wizard, but he did not need a Wharton MBA to recognize the implication that Lawlor’s briefings could include life-and-death recommendations. If the CIA took any of his suggestions to heart, one could readily imagine what might come next. That could make Lawlor a potential target. Numerous less-than-friendly foreign interests would take a number and wait in line to expose such a sinister agenda and embarrass the United States. But if someone believed killing the pivotal individual would paralyze the activity, then Lawlor’s murder might well come at the hands of a professional assassin. Of course, whoever hired the shooter would have to know that Lawlor was the focal point. How would someone learn that?

That’s one of the things we need to know, Miller said. That’s what you’re to find out.

Does anyone actually put Lawlor’s information to use? Miller’s presence seemed to confirm that someone did. The concept did not fit the self-image America liked to show the world, but it was not so different from other recent events. In democracies, economic disasters can destroy political careers, and politicians are turf protectors of the highest order. How many military campaigns over the past three decades had been elaborate veils for purely domestic political objectives?

Collins left through the hotel’s brightly lit, overpriced shopping mall on the lower level. As he walked to his car, he thought back over what he had heard, still doubting that Miller had been entirely candid. Questions nagged at the fringes of his mind, but they remained unanswerable for the moment.

He could not recall the quotation exactly. It had something to do with greatness being thrust upon a man. In this case, dumped might be a more appropriate verb because he did not think that what he smelled resembled greatness in any way.

Once clear of downtown Washington’s tourist-clogged one-way streets, Collins drove out Wisconsin Avenue. He wanted to get a quick look at the Rockville suburb before dark.

Lawlor had lived on a yawningly ordinary residential street in a neighborhood of mostly two-story homes, mature shade trees, and sidewalks with a few cracks. Collins drove past the house expecting to see police cars and sawhorses and yellow streamer tape, but the street had returned to its usual ordinary-ness.

Miller had said the verbal reports he received indicated that nearly everyone in the community had been asleep at the time of the killing, and many slept on, undisturbed by the sound of the shot, only to be awakened by sirens minutes later. A preliminary forensic report stated that Lawlor was hit in the head by a bullet from a high-powered hunting rifle. Montgomery County would let Miller know for sure when the medical examiner had recovered the bullet and determined the caliber.

The cops had no eyewitnesses. Grant Bailey, a neighbor who lived across the street and one house over, told the police that he heard the shot and went to his front door. He saw Lawlor’s body sprawled backward on the stoop, he said, so he called 911, then ran across the street. Another neighbor reported hearing Bailey shouting, so he, too, called 911.

Nobody saw anyone, nobody heard a car door slam, nobody had noticed a stranger around.

Collins had encountered that time and time again; the average person is a lousy observer. He had developed his own observation skills in a setting where second chances were rare and fatalities were not. Two duty tours as a Navy SEAL platoon leader in Vietnam provided the backdrop. Then, after other American combat troops had been withdrawn, the Navy sent him back again, this time as part of a core team of advisors. Officially not even there during the final, frenzied evacuation from Saigon in 1975, he nonetheless attracted Jules Hunt’s attention.

After driving past the Lawlor house, Collins turned left off Camellia, then took another left onto the next street, which was just as quiet, just as ordinary. A For Sale sign piqued his curiosity, and he made a mental note to himself.

He made his next stop at a public telephone booth twenty-five miles from Rockville.

Roland Miller spent far more Saturdays inside Washington’s Executive Office Building than he cared to recall. Except for his brief trip to the Marriott Hotel and numerous interruptions spurred by the Lawlor killing, he’d devoted most of this one to distilling sixty pages of already-condensed CIA reports from Turkey. His final product, a meat-and-potatoes assessment of the latest developments within the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet, could be no more than ten pages in length. His document would be distilled and incorporated with several others that his boss would deliver to President Bush. It would be his secretary’s first job on Monday morning to decipher his notes and instructions and prepare a clean copy.

No, Tuesday, he realized with aggravation; the coming Monday was a federal holiday.

And after all of this, the President would probably give it to someone else to read, and that someone would condense the whole package down to a half-dozen paragraphs, which would then end up with hundreds of other such reports in a filing cabinet in the basement.

He had just stricken all the CIA text on page forty-nine when the telephone rang. Again. It was Collins. Miller silently cursed Jules Hunt for sending him.

Where are you?

Pay phone in Laurel.

Give me the number.

Miller had had to deal with Collins before, but he could hope this would be the last time. He made a mental note to tell Hunt that as he dialed the number.

You know better than to call me, he told Collins.

You called me.

You know what I mean. What do you want?

Hey, who needs the help here? The line went dead.

Miller stared at the silent handset in the same way one might look at left-too-long leftovers. He would have enjoyed letting Collins sweat, but he did not have the luxury of time. He hit REDIAL.

Okay. What do you need? Miller realized that his choice of words suggested an accommodation of sorts, but it was too late to recant.

Any more news?

Hang on.

Another indicator had lit up, and Miller put Collins on hold to answer the incoming call. Twenty seconds later, he punched the blinking button.

That was Montgomery County pathology with a report on the bullet. The lab says it was a two-seventy caliber, probably a hundred and seventy grains.

Did they mention an angle of trajectory?

Yeah. Roland glanced at his penciled notes. The impact was high on the forehead. The projectile then traveled down his spinal column and lodged in his left hip bone. Their best guess is that it was around fifteen degrees from horizontal at impact, assuming Lawlor was standing erect at the time he was shot. Why?

He got no answer. Collins had hung up, and Roland knew there was no point in calling again.

That doesn’t make sense, Collins thought. Even if Lawlor paused long enough to look at the morning’s lead headline, he might have his head bent slightly, but not that much. A bullet fired from a car driving past would strike at ground level. One that caught Lawlor while he was bent over to pick up the newspaper might account for the travel inside his body to the iliac bone. A pro would never take the shot while an unsuspecting target was in motion. No need to. Nor would he risk firing from a moving car. Too many things could go wrong. Were they supposed to believe that somebody parked at the curb and waited patiently for an opportunity to pop Lawlor?

Collins dialed another number, and a telephone rang in the cluttered office of a dingy warehouse in Dundalk, Maryland.

You’re working late, Cody.

I’m just about to leave. What do you want, Collins?

Why do you always say that?

The only time you call here is when you want something.

Cody Braswell was not the kind of guy you would choose for a college roommate. Even if you got stuck with him, you would not dare invite him to your mother’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. Cody wasn’t felonious, necessarily, just shifty. He knew the shady side of the street, which made him a valuable contact.

I’m looking for somebody.

You always are.

This one uses a two-seventy, Collins explained.

Two-seventy? You looking for an antelope hunter?

Man hunter.

No way. Nobody I ever heard of, anyhow.

Well, do a little active listening for me.

Braswell sighed. Yeah, sure. Gimme a call Monday.

I won’t forget you, Cody.

That would be too much to hope for.

Trent splurged on a steak dinner, then considered going home to his apartment in Frederick, Maryland. Doing so would mean a drive of nearly two hours, and it was already past eight o’clock in the evening. Then he would face another two-hour drive back into Washington on Sunday morning. It did not seem worth it, so he checked himself into a chain motel in Laurel.

CHAPTER 2

REAL ESTATE AGENTS do plenty of business on Sunday, and Jane Fondren was no exception. She arrived fifteen minutes late for her eleven o’clock appointment at 205 Melrose in Rockville.

I’m sorry I’m so late, she told Collins. I was with a couple that is on the way to a divorce, I swear. She wanted one house and he wanted another one, and neither one of them would even listen to me when I tried to tell them about a different house that had just about all the features they both wanted. It was awful. She gulped a breath.

Once inside, Trent nodded politely as the woman rambled about exquisite tile work in the kitchen and the abundance of closet space and the extraordinary livability, not to mention the shamefully low price.

Please go ahead and look around, she said. I’m going to dash out to my car for a second and call my office.

Two back bedrooms separated by a bathroom and a linen closet occupied the partial second floor, and each room had a window at the rear of the house. Trent was particularly interested in the view.

A towering maple tree stood outside the first bedroom, its autumn-gold foliage blocking any view at all. The bathroom had frosted glass in the panes, and the wood window frame was stuck shut by dried paint. He opened the door to the second bedroom at the left rear of the house and walked to the window.

Bingo, he whispered to himself.

Across the yards and through a gap between mature oak and hickory trees, he looked directly at Douglas Lawlor’s green-painted front door. The window sash slid upward in its tracks easily. The aluminum-framed window screen appeared new.

He met the returning real estate agent at the front door. Listen, I like the house, but I really have to talk it over with the family. We have to decide if we want to live this far out, and it’s right in the middle of the school term, too.

Well, here’s my card,’ the woman said. If you’d like to bring your wife by, just give me a call."

Thanks. I want to look around the outside, but if you need to go...

Well, I should get on to my next appointment.

Go ahead and lock up. I’ll call you in a day or so.

Collins let himself in the side gate. He did not need much time to confirm that only one window screen was new; all the others were in good condition, but older.

He did some mental calculations based on distances he paced off around the empty structure. Hitting Lawlor from that second-floor bedroom would mean a shot of perhaps eighty yards, no trick at all for someone even moderately skilled with a rifle.

Everything about the second-floor scenario seemed ideal for an assassin. Lawlor’s house faced east, which added favorable sunlight conditions to the other advantages of concealment and elevation. The combination of an elevated firing position and the possibility that the victim’s head was tilted would yield just about fifteen degrees of trajectory. Now it all fit.

Well, not all of it. Why use a damned .270?

Another thought struck him. The vacant house backed up to Bailey’s place. Bailey, so the report said, had been in the kitchen having coffee at the time of the shooting. Bailey’s kitchen was at the rear of his house, so if the sniper did fire from that upstairs bedroom, Bailey would have been more or less in front of the muzzle, and the bullet would have passed within a few yards of his home. Why did he go to his front door?

Inspecting the Lawlor house might have seemed the thing to do under other circumstances. Trent’s boss could probably pull enough strings to make it happen. But based on what Miller had told him, he figured every alphabet-soup agency in Washington would soon have people inside tearing out the walls and picking through the attic insulation with tweezers. Might already.

Collins carried his gym bag into the McDonald’s. When he emerged from the men’s room a few minutes later, he wore a dirty Oakland Raiders sweatshirt with the sleeves ripped out, faded jeans, beat down Nikes, and a gray wool watch cap. He stashed the bag in his Toyota rental car and rode Metrorail as far as downtown, then transferred to a bus that went into a part of Washington seldom seen by tourists.

The nation’s capital regularly led the country in per capita homicides. About half of them took place within an area of six square miles, the very poverty-plagued area in which he circulated that Sunday afternoon renewing a few acquaintances. He had a beer and watched the second quarter of the Redskins game at one place, then engaged in lively speculations on the Hoyas’ coming basketball season at another. What about the Terps? Or Kansas or Duke or UNLV? He survived by making a point of fitting in just enough, but when he boarded another bus four hours later, he had learned nothing about anyone shooting people with a .270-caliber hunting rifle.

He had only a couple of questions as he waited by the pay phone at an Arco station, the first stop on an established schedule of contact locations. He had used the same system with Miller previously. It was a seven-day schedule, but it used eight sites, which meant that he did not have to visit the same telephone on the same day of the week for almost two months. It was merely a precaution; it made it more difficult for anyone to forecast a pattern to his movements.

Miller’s call came just over a minute late.

Open the book on the Bailey guy, Trent said.

Who, the neighbor? Why?

Because he has a lousy sense of direction, that’s why. Do it, okay? Also, find out who owns the house at 205 Melrose.

There was a brief silence, one which Collins wrongly assumed meant that Miller was writing down the address. We can get that from the phone company.

No, Roland, it’s vacant. It’s for sale. But somebody owns it. Check with the tax collector. Send a clerk to Montgomery County maps and plats. Whatever. Just do it.

Okay, I’ll get on it in the morning. But—

You probably won’t have any luck tomorrow morning.

Miller swore again as he remembered the holiday. Okay, first thing Tuesday, but tell me why.

That’s where the shooter was.

You’re sure?

Upstairs bedroom, southwest corner.

Why haven’t the police figured that out?

They will, Collins said, but they’re slow and methodical. If they don’t have a search warrant already, they probably won’t get one until Tuesday.

What did you do, break in?

Roland, the house is for sale. The real estate agent’s telephone number is on the sign.

Moron, Trent added silently.

He again thought about making the trip to his apartment and again decided against it. His bag held clean socks and underwear, and the motel in Laurel had a decent TV. A leisurely Sunday—what remained of this one, anyway—would do him good.

CHAPTER 3

MELINDA CARTER entered her second-floor office a few minutes before nine and found an inch-thick mound of paper on her desk.

He’s done it again, she muttered to herself when she saw Roland Miller’s yellow sticky note affixed to the top sheet. If she could have her way, her boss would be forbidden to enter the building on weekends.

She thumbed through the stack and saw cryptic notations in the margins on numerous pages. Well, except for this, it might as well be Monday, she said aloud, a crooked smile wrinkling her mouth. It was Columbus Day and she had the building almost entirely to herself.

Carter placed her purse in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet and hung her wrap on one hook of a brass coat rack. Then she went into Miller’s office and looked at his desk blotter. He had a bad habit of scribbling important notes and telephone numbers there.

She counted on it.

On a map, Washington, D.C., combined with Arlington County, Virginia, looks precisely like a baseball diamond. Home plate is at the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, and appropriately enough, The White House sits on the pitcher’s mound. Tiny Falls Church is just outside the third base line, which puts it in foul territory.

Allan McGill’s townhouse was part of an enclave located near second base, in Washington’s northernmost corner not far from Walter Reed Hospital. McGill was retired now, but he had spent a lifetime as a journalist and analyst on global economics for daily newspapers and weekly news magazines. Collins had secured an appointment on a federal holiday by using his boss’s name.

McGill’s height matched Trent’s, but he obviously supported more than 190 pounds on his frame. McGill proved a cordial host, despite the short notice and Collins’s having resorted to name-dropping. He led the way to a sunny, comfortable room at the rear of the residence. A brace of capacious armchairs faced a tall, multi-pane bay window offering a panoramic view of the modest rear lawn and flower garden.

Collins thought there might be similarities between Lawlor’s killing and those of other, more prominent financial leaders over the past few years. He relied on memory and hoped that McGill could fill in the gaps; he had not had time to visit the public library archives. Besides, he was looking for a common thread, and to find it, reading the news accounts would not be enough. He needed the insight that someone like McGill could give him.

That’s pretty complex, McGill said after Collins had stated his request, imparting only enough about Lawlor’s connection to justify it. How many weeks are you planning to stay here?

The retired writer began by presenting a brief lesson in recent financial history. Collins was no economist, but he recognized that propping up an ailing U.S. dollar was not a priority in Germany, where the chasm of the newly opened East threatened to swallow up D Marks by the trillions. Nor would it be in Japan, which was struggling to overcome the humiliation of its first-ever stock market scandal.

McGill progressed into the more esoteric realm of exchange rates, money supplies, forward buying of currency, discount rates, trade imbalances, and...

A look of total bewilderment on Trent’s face stopped him.

You don’t really need to know all that. The bottom line is that if you can influence a nation’s economy, you can influence its politics, and the reverse is usually true. McGill stood, tugged down the crotch of his wrinkled corduroy trousers and went to the kitchen to fetch more coffee. Okay, so where were we? You wanted to know about the killings, didn’t you?

Collins nodded.

Well, let’s start with Alfred Herrhausen. At the time of his assassination, he was easily the most powerful man in German finance. He was the top official of Deutsche Bank and was on the board of Daimler Benz. It would be no exaggeration to say that he could influence the flow of many billions of D Marks.

Collins remembered seeing a picture in The New York Times. A powerful bomb blast had turned Herrhausen’s armored Mercedes into a distorted pile of scrap.

Herrhausen’s murder was a real high-tech effort, McGill continued. "The perpetrators used a bomb planted along the roadside near his house. It detonated just as his car passed by, and the main force was directed at the curb side rear door, which is where he always sat. I don’t recall the technical details, but if my memory serves, the driver was only injured.

Mirabeaux, McGill went on, "was an economic consultant to the French government. He openly