Clear and Present Danger

"Not in yet - that is, I don't think so." Bright checked his watch. "They were due in about ten, but they got called in on a rescue last night. Some fishing boat blew up and the cutter had to get the crew off. It made the morning TV news. Nice job, evidently."

"Super," Murray observed. "We're going in to grill a friggin' hero, and he's gone and done it again."

"You know this guy's background?" Bright asked. "I haven't had much chance to -"

"I've been briefed. Hero's the right word. This Wegener's a legend. Red Wegener's called the King of SAR - that means search-and-rescue. Half the people who've ever been to sea, he's saved at one time or another. At least that's the word on the guy. He's got some big-time friends on The Hill, too."

"Like?"

"Senator Billings of Oregon." Murray explained why briefly.

"Chairman of Judiciary. Why couldn't he just have stayed with Transportation?" Bright asked the ceiling. The Senate Judiciary Committee had oversight duties for the FBI.

"How new are you on this case?"

"I'm here because DEA liaison is my job. I didn't see the file until just before lunch. Been out of the office for a couple of days," Bright said as he walked through the door. "We just had a baby."

"Oh," Murray noted. You couldn't blame a man for that. "Congratulations. Everyone all right?"

"Brought Marianne home this morning, and Sandra is the cutest thing I ever saw. Noisy, though."

Murray laughed. It had been quite a while since he'd had to handle an infant. Blight's car turned out to be a Ford whose engine purred like a well-fed tiger. Some paperwork on Captain Wegener lay on the front seat. Murray leafed through it while Bright picked his way out of the airport parking lot. It fleshed out what he'd heard in Washington.

"This is some story."

"How 'bout that." Bright nodded. "You don't suppose this is all true, do you?"

"I've heard some crazy ones before, but this one would be the all-time champ." Murray paused. "The funny thing is -"

"Yeah," the younger agent agreed. "Me, too. Our DEA colleagues believe it, but what broke loose out of this - I mean, even if the evidence is all tossed, what we got out of this is so -"

"Right." Which was the other reason Murray was involved in the case. "How important was the victim?"

"Big- time political connections, directorships of banks, the University of Alabama, the usual collection of civic groups -you name it. This guy wasn't just a solid member of the community, he was goddamned Stone Mountain." Both men knew that was in Georgia, but the point was made. "Old family, back to a Civil War general. His grandfather was a governor."

"Money?"

Bright grunted. "More than I'd ever need. Big place north of town, still a working farm-plantation, I guess you'd call it, but that's not where it comes from. He put all the family money into real-estate development. Very successfully as far as we can tell. The development stuff is a maze of small corporations - the usual stuff. We've got a team working, but it'll take awhile to sort through it. Some of the corporate veils are overseas, though, and we may never get it all. You know how that goes. We've barely begun to check things out."

" 'Prominent local businessman tied to drug kingpins.' Christ, he hid things real well. Never had a sniff?"

"Nary a one," Bright admitted. "Not us, not DEA, not the local cops. Nothing at all."

Murray closed the file and nodded at the traffic. This was only the opening crack in a case that could develop into man-years of investigative work. Hell, we don't even know exactly what we're looking for yet , the deputy assistant director told himself. All we do know is that there was a cold million dollars in used twenties and fifties aboard the good ship Empire Builder. So much cash could only mean one thing - but that wasn't true. It could mean lots of things, Murray thought,

"Here we are."

Getting onto the base was easy enough, and Bright knew the way to the pier. Panache looked pretty big from the car, a towering white cliff with a bright-orange stripe and some dark smudgemarks near midships. Murray knew that she was a small ship, but one needed a big ocean to tell. By the time he and Bright got out of the car, someone got on the phone at the head of the gangway, and another man appeared there within seconds. Murray recognized him from the file. It was Wegener.

The man had the muddy remains of what had once been red hair, but was now sprinkled with enough gray to defy an accurate description. He looked fit enough, the FBI agent thought as he came up the aluminum brow, a slight roll at the waist, but little else. A tattoo on his forearm marked him for a sailorman, and the impassive eyes marked the face of a man unaccustomed to questioning of any kind.

"Welcome aboard. I'm Red Wegener," the man said with enough of a smile to be polite.