Chapter Seven

IN THE MIDST of trying to juice my shaky legend, whisperer got a phone call from the family room. That was where his two special assistants – each with a security clearance high enough to have access to most government documents – were stationed.

Whisperer went out to see them and returned a few minutes later with a file that had just arrived from the State Department. It contained a ten-paragraph account – brief, sketchy, frustrating – of the death of an American citizen several days previously in Bodrum.

A young guy had died and, I have to admit, as grim as it was, it sounded like good news to us – such a death might warrant the FBI’s legitimate interest.

Whisperer handed me the file and, while the victim’s full name was at the top, I didn’t take it in. It was one of the later paragraphs that caught my attention: it said he was known to his friends and acquaintances as Dodge.

‘Dodge? Why Dodge? ’ I asked Whisperer.

‘Like the car, ’ he replied. ‘The guy was twenty-eight years old and the heir to an automobile fortune – he was a billionaire. I guess his buddies could either call him Dodge or Lucky. ’

‘Not that lucky, ’ I said as I read on. According to the account, he and his wife were staying at one of Bodrum’s clifftop mansions – known as the French House – when he either slipped, jumped or was pushed on to the rocks a hundred feet below. It took boats and divers over two hours to retrieve the body from the pounding sea.

‘I don’t think it’s going to be an open-casket funeral, ’ Whisperer said when I had finished looking at the attached photos and laid the file down.

There was no evidence, and maybe I was prone to looking for connections where none existed – I admit I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person – but I couldn’t help wondering about a link between a scrap of paper found in a drain at the Eastside Inn and the mangled body of a billionaire.

‘What’s your bet? ’ I said as I turned. ‘Just chance, or are Dodge and the woman’s murder in Manhattan connected? ’

Whisperer had read the files on the woman’s case when we were working on my legend and he was as qualified as anyone to make a judgement.

‘Almost certainly – but I don’t care, ’ he replied. ‘All that concerns me is that half an hour ago, as far as a legend was concerned, we were polishing brass and calling it gold. Now we’ve got a billionaire American who has died in questionable circumstances. A well-connected American—’

‘How do you know he’s well-connected? ’

‘Show me a family with that much money that isn’t. ’

‘There is no family – just the wife; the report says so, ’ I argued, playing devil’s advocate.

‘So what? There’ll be aunts, godparents, lawyers, a trustee. I’ll get the back office to start checking, but with a billion dollars there’s gonna be somebody. ’

He was right, of course – growing up with Bill and Grace, I knew that. ‘Okay, so a trustee or lawyer hears Dodge is dead. What then? ’

‘I ask the State Department to call him. They say they have concerns about the death but they need someone with authority to request the government’s help. The lawyer or trustee agrees—’

‘Yeah, I’d buy that part – he’s got a duty, ’ I added.

‘The State Department suggests he call the White House and make a formal request, ’ Whisperer said. ‘The chief-of-staff takes the call. He says he understands – the trustee wants a proper investigation. It’s a foreign country; anything could have happened. So what does the White House do? ’

‘They tell the FBI to send a special agent to monitor the inquiry. ’

‘Exactly, ’ Whisperer said. ‘And here’s the best thing – Grosvenor can call the President of Turkey personally to organize it. A billion dollars and the name of a great automobile family – it’s believable that he would do that. ’

We both knew: as of that moment I was an FBI special agent. ‘What name do you want? ’ Whisperer asked.

‘Brodie Wilson, ’ I answered.

‘Who’s he? ’ Whisperer said. He knew the drill – he wanted to make sure that if sometime very soon the questioning got really tough, I wouldn’t get confused about my name.

‘A dead guy. He was my stepfather’s sailing partner. Bill said he was the best spinnaker man he ever saw. ’ Suddenly – I couldn’t explain why – I felt a great wave of sadness roll over me.

Whisperer didn’t notice; he was too busy being a case officer. ‘Okay, you were born on Long Island, sailed every weekend, birth-date is the same as yours, next of kin is your widowed mother – okay? ’

I nodded, committing it to memory. The information was for the passport – a dog-eared version with plenty of stamps which would have to be produced by the CIA within the next few hours. Whisperer was already picking up the phone – conferencing in the family room, kitchen and dining room – to start organizing it and a host of other details that would transform a fake name into a real identity.

I took the opportunity to think: on the ground in Turkey I would need a conduit, some way of communicating with Whisperer. I couldn’t call him directly – an FBI agent would be of interest to the Turkish version of Echelon, and they would almost certainly be listening to every call. But if I was investigating the link between Dodge’s death and the murder at the Eastside Inn, I could legitimately speak to the New York homicide detective in charge of the case.

My idea was that Ben Bradley could act as our mail box – taking cryptic messages and relaying them between the two of us. As soon as Whisperer was finished on the phone, I explained it to him. He wasn’t sure.

‘What was this guy’s name again? ’ he asked.

‘Bradley. Ben Bradley, ’ I said.

‘He’s trustworthy? ’

Whisperer was somewhere far beyond exhaustion but even his face came alive when I told him about the Twin Towers and what Bradley had done for the guy in the wheelchair. ‘He’s a patriot, ’ I said.

‘Sixty-seven floors? ’ Whisperer replied. ‘He’s not a patriot, he’s a fucking athlete. ’ He picked up the phone and made arrangements for the FBI to go and collect him.