“You don’t speak for Democrats. I’m the party leader.”
“I’m sure Chang’s good at math. But you need people skills to be a VP.”
“He doesn’t do math.” Talking to him gave her a headache. “He’s a professor of political science with more skills than the losers you’ve backed.”
“Want me to resign as DNC chairman?”
“Go, stay. I don’t care. Just don’t get in my way.”
“I’ve not always done right by you, Dallas, but—”
“To you, it’s not Dallas anymore. It’s Ms. President or Madam President. Got it?”
“We know each other, Madam President.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I want to work with you.”
“I don’t want to work with you.”
“You made a mistake picking Chang for veep.”
“Then so did Congress,” she said. “They approved him for vice president of the United States by an overwhelming bipartisan vote.” He had no response. “He’s not a Democrat but he’s what the country needs. We’re done. Goodbye.”
The speed of congressional approval for her choice to fill the vacant office of vice president didn’t come as a surprise. Congress and the country were exhausted after the roller-coaster events following the assassination of FDW. Picking David Chang, a political rival from another party, also gave her brownie points with voters for tamping down the partisanship now a clear and present danger to the future of the United States.
She had let word out that unless Congress approved Chang, she would submit no other name to fill the vacant office. Congress got the message. If something happened to her, the United States would lack a VP ready to take over. No one wanted to risk another crisis. Republicans voted for Chang because he wasn’t a Democrat, and Democrats voted for him because he wasn’t a Republican.
David Chang was part of her solution to the complex puzzle of putting the United States back together in working order. His nomination symbolized that she would not allow the two-party system to turn into two packs of mad dogs tearing the country apart as well as themselves. In unifying the nation behind her programs, she would signal the blinkered vision of party partisanship was over. She was a Democrat but an American first.
Chang would make an excellent vice president. He brought to the table a broad-minded view of the world that only an academic like him could offer. He would be her Henry Kissinger with a Chinese heritage. Chang knew both Chinese and American cultures and could bring them closer together for the sake of world peace.
It wasn’t just his friendship, his brilliance, and his polish that made him a distinguished choice. He had the further endearing trait of not being a potential rival. She didn’t want a team of rivals waiting to stab her in the back. More than just his integrity protected her from his betrayal. He and the National Independent Party were novices when it came to the brass knuckles of American politics. He couldn’t rival her political infighting skills even if he had wanted to. Chang would be more than a figurehead vice president without being a political danger. A win-win all the way around.
To relieve her excitement, she went over to the three windows facing the twilight creeping over the south lawn of the White House. So much good news had washed over her in the past week, it was no wonder she felt woozy but happy. Champagne was known to do that to her. Even more than bourbon and branch water.
She looked out, beginning to sense the impending burden of her new office. Through relentless efforts she had achieved the dream goal of the presidency. She fretted that her next goal would be using whatever means it took to stay in power. Over her life, it struck her that goals faded with increasing rapidity and became only means to other ends that faded equally into mere means.
Would pedaling faster on the cycle of ambition bring her closer to the promised land of peace and joy that tap dancing had given her? She aborted her inconvenient reflection. Navel-gazing might undermine her drive to prove she was no longer a little girl from the wrong side of town with the wrong skin color.
She scurried from the windows to bury her gray thoughts in a whirlwind of work set before her on the Resolute desk. Dropping into the executive chair, she took a document from the pile.
Fatigue flooded her body. The chairs and sofas wore halos. Something shook her like a rag doll. Unseen pins and needles pricked up and down her left arm as heavy as bricks. Her thoughts swirled in pain. She hit the panic button concealed under the desk. The room tuned blindingly white before fading to black.
Chapter Seventy
Sebastian Senex executed his Plan B as the guest of a Cuban government lacking an extradition treaty with the United States. From his Havana safe house with a clanking air conditioner, he called Daisy on the secure phone system the Cuban Intelligence Directorate had set up to prevent gringo wiretaps. Maybe she’d answer this time. The ringing turned into voice mail. “You have reached—” “Hello?”
“It’s me. Please don’t hang up?”
“I won’t, Daddy. Where are you?”
“Cuba.”
She’d called him Daddy. He had a chance. “I need you.”
Fanning himself with a tattered Playboy, his Cuban handler pierced him with coal-black eyes. The stare set off the shakes plaguing him in mind and body ever since his arrival. Cuban suspicion made him wonder how long the safe house would remain safe.
“Of course. Your needs come first,” she said. A pause. “Are you OK?”
“I’ve been better.”
The mononucleosis had grown worse or become something else. Pain ran up and down his spine like fingers on a piano keyboard. Black spots had broken out along his back and chest. He felt exposed and alone. He had to confess and seek absolution like those Papists. He had no choice but to go through the ritual.
“I’m sorry about Vinnie . . . but I had to do it. I need you to forgive me.”
“I understand your need.” A pause. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
“Your words make me so happy, Princess, so happy.” The sweat rolled down his forehead over his closed eyes. “What changed your mind?”
“What a bubblehead I was. I didn’t see things clearly.”
His handler ordered him to wind up the call.
“I need you to come to Cuba with money. The Cubans say they’ll protect me. But they want my financial connections . . . and US dollars, plenty of them.”
“It’s the least I can do for not seeing things as they were.”
“The Cubans will contact you with instructions. Keep this confidential. Understand?”
“Oh, I understand fine.”
His handler came toward him with a finger drawn across his throat.
“Hafta go now. Miss you, Princess.”
The handler wrenched the receiver from his hand.
“What news, Bert?” The mental fog lifted from Dallas Taylor’s head at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Out the window of the acute-care room, treetops swayed in the morning wind as gray clouds scudded across the sky. A nurse in blue scrubs ran past the open door. Beeps and buzzes sounded from unknown locations. Taylor’s left arm tugged on an IV. At the foot of the bed, two doctors in white lab coats with stethoscopes coiled around their necks spoke in medical jargon. Dr. Bert Gaines nodded to them. They left.
“No news from the stroke team,” Dr. Gaines said. “Stroke’s tricky.”
“Aren’t you going to stay . . .” Stay wasn’t the word. She struggled to find it. “Say . . . I told you s-so?”
“I’m your doc and then some.” He smiled. “Not your accuser.”
“I have hard time speaking.”
“It’s the stroke. It’s called aphasia.” He caressed her right cheek. “There’s a weakness here.”
She traced a forefinger down a sag on her face.
“Your stroke did that.”
“How long the poop?” Droop was the word she wanted. Her laughter collapsed into worry.
“I know what you mean.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “As you recover, the droop should fade away.” He let the hand go. “Speech problems aren’t unusual.”
“I . . . I . . . must go back to building . . . the office. I”—she forced out the rest of the words in an explosion—“must work to do.”
“You can’t, Dallas.” He pulled a chair over to the bed and sat. “You’re lucky the stroke team administered a clot-buster drug right away. But you’re in danger of another stroke.”
“How long here?”
“It depends on test results. Earliest would be a day or two.” He ignored the heartbeat ringtone of his cell. “Whatever it is, you’ll need rehab therapy.”
“They will make me . . . leave office.”
“No one knows how bad this is. We’ll know more soon.”
“Does he . . . they . . . know I have stroke?”
“Your press secretary put out a cover story. You’re here for observation after exhaustion from work stress.”
“It buys time.”
“You know it’s all coming out, eventually, don’t you?”
She said nothing. Maybe it won’t.
He stood up. “Can you lift your right arm?”
She lifted it up a few feet. It collapsed on the bed like a dead branch.
She looked away from the arm to his face. “Pretty bad?”
“Bad enough.”
“Say I am doing well.”
“Look, Dallas. I love you and I’ll stall until we know more.” He pulled his shoulders into a military posture. “But I’m not going to lie. This wasn’t just a TIA, like the last time.”
“You look.” She took his hand. “I will be fine.”
He kissed her on the forehead. “Dallas dear, will you marry me?”
Chapter Seventy-One
Disguised as tourists, Jim Murphy and Marco Leone waited inside the José Martí International Airport on red plastic chairs for the Miami flight to arrive in Havana. A man in a yellow T-shirt with a taxi service logo sat down on a chair facing them. He tapped his Cuban straw hat three times. Jim touched his Cuban straw hat in the same way. “That’s our contact,” he said to Marco.
Although Daisy had denied knowing her father’s whereabouts, Nicole tipped him off that Daisy was . . . supposedly . . . going to visit Miami’s beaches to unwind. FBI agents uncovered her plan to hop a flight from Miami to Havana where her father had contacts in Cuban pharma.
Things would go smoothly with the help of this Cuban double agent provided by Bryan’s CIA connections. When Daisy arrived on American Airlines, the agent would find out her destination even if she refused his offer of taxi service. They’d then tail her to Sebastian Senex’s hideout.
The double agent’s operatives would snatch Senex with as little force as possible and, if they were lucky, with just deception or bribery. They’d secure his hands with zip ties and cover his head with a black bag before handing him off to an undercover fishing boat off the coast. Jim’s brother called the international kidnapping an involuntary rendition with a matter-of-factness that made him uncomfortable.
“There she is.” Jim nodded toward a statuesque blonde strolling in a stream of arrivals with a pink suitcase on wheels. Right on script, the double agent sauntered over to Daisy. She stopped. They talked. She smiled and shook his hand as though she knew him. Daisy and the double agent starting walking toward an airport exit reserved for VIP pickups.
“Let’s follow,” he said to Marco. “Something’s not right.”
At curbside, the double agent helped her through the rear door of a black Mercedes. The agent took a seat next to the driver. The Mercedes squealed out of the airport to an unknown destination.
“Do you know what I conclude?” Marco asked.
“We’ve been conned.” Jim smashed his fist into the palm of his hand. “Our double agent is a triple agent.”
“Precisely.” Marco rubbed his chin. “I have an idea. Let’s go to the Italian embassy.”
The chief of staff poked her head inside the Oval Office. “Dallas, your congressional execution squad is here.”
President Taylor examined her face in a pocket mirror. The facial droop had diminished. She sat back in her executive chair and gripped the edge of the Resolute desk with her left hand as if she were flying through air turbulence. She kept the cold and numb right hand under the desk. She struggled to keep the fingers from curling.
Madison Malone, the new Republican Speaker of the House; the Republican majority leader; and the Democratic minority leader filed into the Oval Office with pallbearer faces. They stopped at the front of the president’s desk. In the middle of the three stood Malone, with hands on hips and dressed in her power ensemble of a lavender pantsuit over a white blouse.
“You know why we’re here,” the Speaker said. She wore a twenty-two-karat gold necklace nestled on the blouse. The bling signaled she was top gun in the legislative bloc of multimillionaire representatives bored with making money and eager for a political career.
“Why do you want me . . . to go?” she said to Malone. To go? What was the word she really wanted? “You missed the boat. Congress made David Chang vice president. You are not next . . . in line . . . to take over.”
She enjoyed the if-looks-could-kill face of the Speaker.
“Sorry about that,” Taylor said, sticking the knife in a little further. The Speaker was a Vassar-educated snob who had blackballed her when she tried to join the Chevy Chase Country Club.
The Democratic minority leader stepped forward. “Madam President, with all due respect, you’re overreacting. We all want your medical results from Walter Reed hospital.”
By provoking an unnecessary catfight with the Speaker, she caused self-inflicted damage. She was even antagonizing the minority leader, a trusted ally. What had come over her? It wasn’t like her to lose her cool when political stakes required winning friends and influencing people.
“Sorry, I was short. I’ve been working over . . . overworking.”
“Are you OK?” the minority leader asked.
“A little tired. That’s all.”
She had better control her words.
“I went to . . . the . . . hospital for observation. Exhaustion from work stress. I feel fine now.”
“Walter Reed referred us to the White House physician for further information,” the minority leader said. “What does Dr. Gaines say?”
“Dr. Gaines resigned this morning,” she said. “Our social relationship is now personal. Medical ethics prevent him from being my doctor.”
“When do we get your test results?” the Republican majority leader asked.
“Soon . . . if relevant.”
“You don’t decide that,” the Speaker said. “We do.” She stood with feet apart and hands on her hips. Toes and fingers aimed at the president like knives. “We want all your other medical records in the meantime.”
“You have the medical notes from Dr. Gaines.”
“That’s not enough,” the majority leader said.
“What are you hiding?” the Speaker tapped her foot. “Give us all your medical records.”
Taylor rubbed her cold and numb right hand with her left under the desk.
“Why should I? No president has done that.”
If she didn’t release all her medical records, there’d be political hell to pay. If she did, they’d find out about the abortion she had and there’d be political hell to pay.
“We don’t want another disabled Woodrow Wilson in that chair,” the Republican majority leader said. “Will you allow us to examine all your medical records?”
“Over my dead body.”
“That’s exactly what we fear,” the Speaker retorted. The majority
leader snickered, and the minority leader looked at the floor and shook his head.
The Speaker stepped toward the desk. “We’ll use the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove you for inability to do your job.”
“You’re bluffing,” Taylor said. “Even if you have enough cabinet votes, you need the vice president to . . . go along. Concur. Do you think David Chang, my former professor, the new vice president, will concur?”
He might, she worried. David Chang would do what he thought right. And if the medical tests showed a problem, he’d be another problem. The trouble with philosopher kings like Chang was that they put the general welfare above friendship, family, and personal interests.
“He might like the idea of becoming acting president,” the Speaker said. “Politics has its addictive magic.”
“Even if Chang concurs,” Taylor said, “you need two-thirds vote of the Senate and the House to over . . . overrule my objection to your finding of disability.” She pointed at the Speaker with her left forefinger. “You know you don’t have the votes. Why waste my time with scarecrow tactics?” She was rolling now. “I’m president. Get over it.”
“We’ll return when you’re feeling better,” said the Democratic minority leader.
After they left, she took her cold and numb right hand out from under the desk.
Chapter Seventy-Two
The beat-up Cubataxi bounced to a stop at the corner. Jim Murphy piled out of the rear seat and rubbed his butt. Marco Leone paid the cab driver off meter while a passing teenager belted out a salsa beat from his boom box.
“Your idea won’t work,” Jim said.
“Do you have a superior one?” Marco pointed to the Italian embassy. “Andiamo.”
They wove their way through a swarm of Cubans checking and scrolling their cell phones near a Wi-Fi hotspot. At the gates of the Italian embassy, a security guard called on his cell. He opened the gates and escorted them toward the embassy entrance. A slender man walked out in a blue seersucker suit and a yellow bow tie as if an oversized butterfly had mistaken his throat for a flower. The man and Marco hugged on the pathway between gate and entrance.
American Conspiracy Page 29
