The Run by Wood Stuart

Author:Wood, Stuart [Wood, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2000-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

32

Freddie Wallace let himself into his hideaway office and found another envelope waiting for him, this one of the plain brown variety. He took it to his usual comfortable chair, poured himself his morning shot of bourbon, and opened the envelope.

Sir:

Enclosed please find the lists you requested of employees and inmates at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Some corrections have been made, which makes the lists accurate as of yesterday. Please be assured of our discretion in this matter, and please let me know if you require further assistance.

The note was typed and not signed, but Freddie knew whom it was from. He switched on a reading lamp and, sipping his bourbon, began reading the list of employees. Somewhat to his surprise, he knew two of them—the warden, who had once testified at a hearing before a committee on which Freddie sat, and the captain of the guard, a former constituent who had once sought his help in obtaining employment in the federal prison system. He thought carefully about both men, then discarded them both as potential authors of the letter he had received. The warden would have had no motivation to write it, and the captain of the guard was in his debt.

Next, he turned to the list of prisoners, which was considerably longer than the list of employees. Freddie had a prodigious memory, and he recognized a number of the names as belonging to people whose cases had made the newspapers when they were tried. Finally, he was left with three candidates for Jonah: the first, Emilio Costas, was a real-estate developer whose backing turned out to have been from the Cali Cartel of Colombian drug lords and who had made a substantial contribution to Freddie’s last campaign for the Senate. The contribution had been returned when the man’s backers became known. The second was a lawyer who had actually worked in Freddie’s Senate office more than ten years before and who had been imprisoned for stealing from a government agency by whom he had subsequently been employed. The third was the notorious CIA mole and traitor Edward Rawls.

Freddie gave careful thought to each candidate. Certainly, Costas was capable of doing anything that might get him out of prison, but Freddie could not see how threatening a United States senator could aid in that effort. The lawyer, he had known a great deal better than in passing, but Jonah’s description of their acquaintance could have been to simply throw Freddie off the scent. Still, he had helped the man, getting him transferred to Atlanta, to be near his family, and Freddie did not judge him aggressive enough to be the kind of threat in question, nor would he have had any reason to protect either the vice president or Will Lee.

Edward Rawls was another matter. He had, indeed, met Rawls in passing on a number of occasions—a dinner party at the home of a CIA official, when Rawls had testified before a Senate committee; at a White House diplomatic reception; and on at least two other such occasions that Freddie could recall.

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