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We meet Peyton Lachapelle, the First Lady’s father and an associate of Jack Tang, and begin to see the mechanism behind the mayhem while Chip Garrison meets Special Agent Kate Sakurai.
Tom Kagy (00:01.08)
Hello, this is Tom Kagy with Unconventional Wisdom.
While the president and most of the world speculate on the forces behind the First Lady’s kidnapping and Jack Tang’s butchering, at least one man appears to be in the know.
Meet Peyton La Chapelle, the First Lady’s father, and a man who has worked with Jack Tang to bring about mutually favorable changes in the world.
And they appear to have been engaged in dealings with powerful men on both sides of the Pacific.
Meanwhile, special aide chip Garrison finds himself in a hospital guarded by a very special special agent named Kate Sakurai, whose boss is determined to unravel the mystery ahead of his arch rival at the CIA.
And thus we begin to see the machinery behind the mayhem in Chapter eight of Midnight In Karakorum.
Chapter EIGHT
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about the extra half million!” growled Peyton Lachapelle, “just make damned sure you snip off the loose ends, every last one of them. And I don’t care whose aide he is.”
Lachapelle grunted as his big beefy hand slammed the receiver. Just like those stinking sewer rats to use the opportunity to take a few more bites out of his wallet! That was the hell of operating in an imperfect system. And as far as he was concerned, any system that wasn’t under the direct control of Peyton Lachapelle was an imperfect one. But hell—real soon he would have no more cause to bitch and moan. Now that he had delivered the last installment of his contribution, it was up to men on the other side of the world to move the plan forward to its conclusion. He hoped like hell it would be as rewarding as it would be spectacular.
The inspiring night view of Houston highrises wasn’t what Lachapelle was seeing as he gazed out through the full-height picture window of his penthouse den. He was exercising the kind of vision optic nerves couldn’t provide. For other residents of the city the workday ended several hours ago, but for Lachapelle it was in full swing. Much of his waking life was spent doing what he was doing now, using his versatile, well-informed imagination to get a fix on the likely motivations of other imaginative men in cities around the globe. More than any other faculty, more even than his awe-inspiring physical presence, it was his highly-developed imagination that had made him a lord of the earth at the age of 69 when peers who had once fancied themselves on the fast track were out putting divots in innocent golf courses after lives of turning hamster wheels for unseen masters.
One corner of Lachapelle’s mind lingered regretfully on the plight of his only daughter, but the main thrust of his thoughts had moved on to another powerful man in a city halfway around the world. For that man, known to most as Master Bang—what wonderful names these chinks had, Lachapelle mused with a grin—it was mid-morning. About now Bang too would be putting his impressive brain through its paces, perhaps with the help of a couple of young beauties working on his aging body. A main stop for Bang’s imagination express would be Lachapelle himself. The question on Bang’s mind would be whether Peyton Lachapelle had the power and acumen to deliver his end of the bargain, just as, for his own part, Lachapelle was mulling whether Bang had the guts, the balls, to stand up to the crushing pressure that would land on him soon after Lachapelle delivered. Could even he, Peyton Lachapelle, stand up to that pressure if he were in Bang’s Bally loafers? Lachapelle quickly dismissed the thought. It was as meaningless as asking whether Bang could handle Lachapelle’s end if he were dropped into his alligator boots. Bang hadn’t spent a lifetime learning how to feed and train American public servants with inflated self-images any more than Lachapelle had spent a lifetime learning how to keep three hundred million treacherous, hot-tempered northern chinks under his thumb.
Lachapelle had met Bang a little over three years ago in the presidential suite of Tokyo’s Akasaka Prince Hotel, along with five other men, six if you counted that American chink Jack Tang. The meeting had been arranged by Tang, probably the slickest damned chink Lachapelle had ever clinked glasses with. Or was he a gook? Both, Lachapelle decided. And a good thing too. It was reassuring to have a partner with a gut feel for at least three sides of an equation that had to balance six, maybe seven sides. Tang had engineered the scheme—so breathtakingly daring, yet so fundamentally sound—though Lachapelle liked to think that he himself could have come up with it sooner or later. Maybe not—the kid was a crackerjack strategist, with the devil’s own grasp of geopolitical pressure points. It was a damned good thing a sharp son-of-a-bitch like that wasn’t in the White House. That was too scary to contemplate.
Once things were underway, Bang’s ability to hang tough would be the key to success, Lachapelle had decided. Could Bang do it? He flashed on the Manchurian’s face—high-cheekboned, square-jawed, quick-eyed. Lachapelle had only met him face to face that once, but he could picture Bang’s face as though he stood in front of him. Tang had made one of his impudent cracks and Bang had laughed a laugh that could only have come from deep in his belly. The man was absolutely secure about his place in the universe, not someone who lived in fear of losing what he had but one who could gamble everything for a chance at more. Yes, Lachapelle decided, Bang was a man like himself. A man who would sooner die in a nuclear holocaust than buckle under pressure. And during the next two days Bang would be awaiting final word.
This old world had become a place where decent, hardworking men lived at the mercy of godless incompetents who cared only about glorifying and enriching themselves. That would soon change. If all went well, in a matter of days the world would see a complete realignment of the global power structure. Once they learned the role that he, Petyon Lachapelle, played in bringing about the changes—perhaps in a few years—Americans would applaud his courage. He didn’t need their thanks, however. A suitable reward had been devised—control of what was likely the world’s biggest oil and natural gas reserves to serve the world’s fastest-growing economy.
No longer would Peyton Lachapelle be jacked around by those arrogant southern chinks with their layer upon layer of corrupt bureaucracy and their maddening on-again, off-again decrees on oil-exploration joint ventures. They had wasted years of his life and tied up billions of dollars of drilling rigs that were costing Lachapelle Petroleum almost a million dollars a day. After all that they had cheated him out of the better part of his hard-won drilling rights and given them to the majors. Even more galling, all this had happened with the weak-kneed acquiescence of his own son-in-law. The craven bastard had caved to the big boys’ threats to make a stink about his having favored his father-in-law.
The plan would soon redeem all that had been lost, and more. Lachapelle’s only regret was that his daughter Megan had to get mixed up in it, however harmlessly. It would all turn out for the best. She would be much happier once she had put the First Bozo behind her.
Lachapelle sat back down and gazed out at the lights for another hour of deep thought, then his eyes happened to catch a rerun of his son-in-law’s press conference from earlier that day.
“We must never forget,” the President was saying, gazing deeply into the very soul of the TV camera, “that freedom is not free. As long as I am President of the United States, and as long as there are those who would test our resolve to defend our freedom, the United States will pay the price, whatever it may prove to be.”
“You damn betcha,” muttered Lachapelle. For a moment he let himself forget that he was the man who had engineered this little crisis and became a citizen hearing his president’s call for support. The Taylor boy had the balls of a ground squirrel, Lachapelle thought, but he looked magnificent milking a little crisis for votes.
Soon after graduating from FBI’s Academy in Quantico, Virginia, Director Samuel Hanson had begun cultivating the habit of being the first person in every morning. Seven-thirty was plenty early to get the jump on the laggards who staffed most of the eight offices he had worked during his thirty years as a special agent. This Saturday morning, however, Hanson had come in at six and puttered around for what seemed like an eternity waiting for Kate Sakurai, SAC—Special Agent in Charge—of the San Francisco office to drag her bony ass in by her laggard west coast clock. Hanson rarely worked Saturdays any more, simply because his new duties couldn’t justify putting in the kind of hours that had made him a legendary special agent. Today, however, he was a man with a real case to work. The kidnapping of a First Lady was excuse enough for the Director himself to roll up his sleeves.
What churned Hanson’s stomach was the hunch that the First Lady might be spirited out of the country. Once that happened, Martin Underwood—who as Director of Central Intelligence was also the statutory overlord of the US Intelligence Community, making him nominally Hanson’s superior—would lose no time elbowing the FBI out of the investigation. Sam Hanson would rather spend eternity in hell than lose the biggest case of his career to Martin Underwood and his James Bond wannabes. Hanson was personally taking charge of the case and Kate Sakurai could like it or lump it. He glanced at the clock. It was nearly 9:30, 6:30 even out there in California. Damn it, where was that woman?
The phone rang.
“Still getting in late, Sakurai?” harumphed Hanson.
“Kiss my badge,” Sakurai muttered. “I’m supposed to go to a wedding today.”
“Then you may thank me for sparing you the boredom.”
“My only niece’s wedding.”
“All the more reason for avoiding it,” Hanson snapped. “Now then, let’s hear what you got.”
“Yesterday we put every available agent—that’s three hundred agent hours—to checking out every guest and waiter at the AATA fundraiser. We figured at least two of the perps must have been in the ballroom before the lights went out. They only had four, maybe five seconds to snatch up the First Lady and carry her out before the Secret Service agents got on their night vision goggles and gave chase through the kitchen and down the utility stairs.”
“Good, good,” snapped Hanson, more to hurry Sakurai along than by way of praise. The woman had the longest damned rampups he’d ever heard! “So what?”
“I’m getting to it! You’re the antsiest son of a gun I ever saw.” Sakurai expressed her annoyance with a silence that seemed to last forever. Somehow Hanson kept himself from snapping again. “Anyway,” said Sakurai at long last, “some of the wait staff recalled seeing an Asian male waiter no one recognized, a well-built fellow. As for the guests, we ID’d every one of the six hundred thirty except one, another Asian male. This one sounds even bigger and beefier than the waiter. Apparently, he was sitting at one of the tables bought by Tang’s company. It was right up front, beside the podium. None of the others at the table knew the man. They all figured he was a friend of Tang’s or had just slipped into an empty seat near the front.”
“At a $5,000 a plate fundraiser? With the First Lady on the marquee? I wouldn’t think there was an empty seat in the house!”
“Right,” Sakurai said, annoyed. “Every seat was spoken for.”
“The perps were too sharp to leave that to chance. They wouldn’t have someone floating around the ballroom without a seat, not with the secret service all over the place. They must have known the seat would be empty. Did you check with the organizer for the official guest list on that table to see who didn’t show?”
“The only one was Jack Tang who, as it turns out, was indisposed.”
“Did anyone know in advance if and when he was expected?”
“One of the guests at that table was his secretary, a woman named Alice Chen. She wasn’t expecting her boss until shortly before the First Lady was scheduled to arrive because Tang was being interviewed by that magazine editor Rosefall while the fundraiser was going on. Then Tang called her cell phone a little before the First Lady got there to say he was running late and to have another Silicon Valley muckety-muck named Logan Chu introduce the First Lady.”
“Did she know the mystery guest?”
“Like I said, she figured he was a friend of Tang’s or someone from another table who wanted a better look at the First Lady.”
“So only Tang knew the seat would be conveniently empty,” Hanson muttered, almost to himself. “And Tang is dead.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Gruesome, wasn’t it? How’d they ID him?”
“No fingerprints in what the meatgrinder put out. Maybe just the secretary’s visual. I’ll check with the coroner. He hadn’t done the autopsy yesterday afternoon and I doubt if he’s working on a Saturday.”
“I want details on the positive ID. Also send someone out right away to grill Tang’s key people, like that Alice Chen. You may be that someone, Sakurai.”
“What a sweetheart. You’re another leading candidate for the meatgrinder one of these days, Hanson.”
“Hmmm. Is that how you’d do me, Sakurai, I mean when the time comes, seeing as how you hate my guts?”
“Me? I’m not good with grinders and electric carving knives. Maybe I’ll get my husband to work the appliances.”
“Seriously, is that how you Chinamen might express, shall we say, personal animosity?”
Sakurai was silent, catching Hanson’s drift. “To me, a Japanese American—not a ‘Chinaman’, as you so offensively put it—it seems more like something I’d do to scare someone else.”
“This Swede thinks so too,” Hanson murmured thoughtfully. “Now who in god’s name could this Rosefall possibly want to scare the bejeezus out of?”
“Thought you didn’t think Rosefall did it.”
“I don’t. But whoever killed Tang spun the bottle so it would point to Rosefall. If you wanted to frame Rosefall, would you take the time to grind off the victim’s arms and legs unless you were sure that was something Rosefall would do?”
“I see what you’re getting at.”
“Can’t imagine that Rosefall could possibly want to scare anyone badly enough to go through that much trouble.”
“Maybe another extortion victim?”
“You mean some other oriental tycoon?”
“From what I recall of his magazine—well edited, by the way—about half the pages are profiles of Asian—not ‘oriental’, Hanson—bigshots and the other half are economic and political analyses of the Pacific Rim, usually pretty egghead stuff.”
“Just to cover our behind, have a couple of your agents contact every Asian worth writing up and see if any of them received a direct or indirect threat. I don’t think we’ll find any.”
“You’re saying whoever set up Rosefall did a half-ass job?”
“I can’t quite figure the meatgrinder, but it smells like they picked Rosefall because he was the only candidate.”
“Because they knew Tang was under 24-hour surveillance.”
“Could be, could be. Otherwise, why frame a weak-ass suspect like Rosefall? Hell, if all they wanted was to snuff Tang, they would have been better off making it look like a bungled burglary. Smells to me like they knew about the surveillance.”
“You’re a genius, Hanson. You’ve just narrowed it down to every professional hitman in the world.”
“And they knew about Tang’s plans not to make it to the fundraiser on time.”
“But even Tang didn’t know he’d be late,” Sakurai protested.
“That’s Alice Chen’s opinion,” Hanson snapped. “I don’t share it.”
“Are you saying Tang had a hand in planning the kidnapping?”
“About time that rusty old gearbox of yours kicked in, Sakurai,” Hanson declared merrily. “Without Tang’s wholehearted participation, they couldn’t have timed everything down to the wire.”
“Then Tang puts the finishing touches by grinding off his limbs, then chopping off his own head?” Sakurai murmured. “Brilliant.”
“That part Tang may not have planned.”
“Since Tang couldn’t have chopped off his own head, especially after grinding off his arms, and Rosefall was the only other person in the house, it must have been Rosefall.”
“Not in a million years. The man had a couple of petty assault charges, which proves nothing except that he’s got a nasty temper. He has a wife and kids, had a nice law practice for about ten years, then poured what he saved into the magazine. It isn’t a cash cow, but according to the returns, about three years ago it started throwing off enough for him to live a few notches better than your average FBI senior agent. I don’t see him being hard up enough to risk everything to go into the extortion racket, much less snuff an old friend.”
“So how’d the killer get in and out without being spotted by the Pentagon security detail?”
“Tuesday evening Tang pulled a car switch with his CFO,” Hanson said. “The security idiots spent four hours watching a BMW while Tang was gallivanting around god knows where in a Chevy Blazer. He could have slipped someone into the house then.”
“Why would he sneak in someone who then kills him?”
“When you figure that out, Sakurai,” Hanson snapped, “we may have a clue to the First Lady’s kidnapping. Now don’t even think about calling me again until you have some real answers.”
“Chatting with you again, Hanson, ain’t much of an incentive,” Sakurai retorted and slammed down the phone before Hanson could reply.
Hanson sat back and chuckled, rubbing his hands in anticipation. He’d riled Sakurai. If he knew Kate, she’d get her skinny little ass in gear as soon as she was off the phone and start making life miserable for her kids until she figured out who had done what to whom for what profit. It wouldn’t be too long now before that slimy little Martin Underwood would be peeling off several big ones, with the utmost reluctance, for a case of Wild Turkey, the old mellow stuff, to settle their little wager, friendly or not.
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