MJ Rose.com

Prologue

At six a.m. the third floor of the CIA building was as quiet as a cemetery -- which was exactly how Peter Murphy liked it. Marching down the hall, the fifty-year-old ex-Marine nodded at the security guard who nodded back. In ten years they had never exchanged a single "good morning" but if one of them hadn’t shown up for work, the other would have been concerned.

Murphy opened his office door and squinted in the sunlight. As he jerked the cord and lowered the vertical blinds, he made a mental note to remind his new assistant she was supposed do that before she left at night.

Breaking in new assistants every six months was tedious, but he had been trained to put prudence and privacy over convenience and comfort. Assistants were not the only ones dismissed with regularity. Girlfriends lasted even less time: they were far more capable of noticing patterns and making observations.

After pouring his first cup of coffee, Murphy sat down at his desk and turned on his computer. For the next hour and a half no one would call, pop in or request his presence in an emergency meeting. He was free to scan the news and prepare for the day.

There was nothing important on The New York Times site, but Murphy clenched his jaw when he saw the Washington Post's lead headline.

Investigation into Penville Campaign Funds

Washington D.C -- Yesterday serious allegations set in motion an investigation into Arthur Penville’s campaign contribution fund. "We believe Penville has collected a debt owed him by high ranking Japanese businessmen, the same men who benefited from Penville’s deregulation of import restrictions in 1983," said an unnamed source.

Penville became Secretary of Commerce when his successor, Tom Norris, committed suicide on January 19^th, 1983. Within months, Penville relaxed Norris’s policies and allowed Japanese businesses easy access to the American marketplace.

Murphy was neither pleased nor surprised. Once Arthur Penville had announced he was running for office, it had only been a question of time until some reporter began connecting the dots. The past was never really buried: it just lay dormant waiting to be exposed.

At this point, panic would be premature. Mild concern was more appropriate. There were no loose ends, Murphy reminded himself. Only two other men knew what had happened seventeen years ago. One was dead and the other was Arthur Penville.

Without invitation, a memory returned. There was a third man. But Frank Rizzo had been a witness to only one act of the play. He still didn’t know he’d been put in place from the beginning as an insurance policy: someone trustworthy who would tell the authorities exactly what he saw. And that what he had seen was a suicide.

It would be wise to keep an eye on Rizzo now, Murphy thought as he typed instructions into his computer and hit the send button. Just to play it safe. After all, nothing was more important than protecting Penville; the man who had been his mentor and would be the next President of the United States.