by Fritz Galt
The man grunted with dissatisfaction and left the room.
Sean had had real conversations with real people at the resort as well.
He remembered how interested Sandi DiMartino had been in his long sob story. One afternoon lounging around the pool with daiquiris in hand, they had talked in lofty terms about his business. She knew oil and enjoyed his anecdotes. Gazing down the length of her long, beautifully tapered legs splayed out on the lounge chair, she remarked how his stories reminded her of her own corporation.
Then he had launched into a diatribe against the morals of his superiors. “Asshole hustlers,” he had called his bosses. “All of them.”
Thinking back, the daiquiris had really loosened his tongue.
Feeling their personal space shrinking, he had moved his lounge chair up against hers to reveal some corporate secrets that he had hoped would make her skin crawl.
He remembered her lifting her heart-shaped face up to him. She had such a delicate nose and a wonderful structure to her chin.
“Yeah, the assholes go way beyond the company,” he had declared. “All the way up to the White House.”
“No kidding,” she had concurred. “I’ve been following the Chinagate scandal.”
At that point, alarm bells had gone off in his head. He had examined the light that played in her pale blue eyes more closely. He supposed it was natural that she would be interested in the independent prosecutor’s investigation. After all, she had introduced herself as a lawyer.
“Do you believe the president’s guilty of taking kickbacks?” she had asked innocently.
He nearly spewed out the drink he was sipping. “Guilty? He’d make Saddam Hussein blush. Oh yeah, the president took a bribe all right. I should know, that was the petroleum company I worked for.”
She had seemed to make a mental note of his working for the company at the center of the Chinagate scandal, but said no more at the time. Instead, they had swum circles around the pool bar, with her playfully chasing him.
He had let her tickle his toes a few times.
Jerking back to the present, Sean drew his toes away from the cold metal deck and flexed his numb, bare feet. Heavy boots approached in the open doorway.
“Budut vamy?” a man shot out. Just his luck. There was a native Russian-speaker onboard, and Sean had no clue what he was saying.
He turned his head away, feigning arrogance. That might work for a minute. Not longer.
“Vi ne govorite russkogo,” the man shot out accusingly. Something about him not speaking Russian.
Sean slumped his shoulders and hung his head, hoping it was an appropriate response.
“Vrushko!”
Sean knew that term. Fake.
“Okay, so you’re onto me,” Sean said in English. “What do you want with me?”
Even in his darkness, he could tell that he had stymied the two men for a moment. Then the Russian speaker stomped out of the room.
That left Sean with the grunter, who said, “So what is your name?”
Sean felt his wallet in his pocket. The slob could surely have determined his identity from the passport and credit card they would have found when they checked his wallet on the motorboat.
But maybe the guy couldn’t read.
What kind of meeting was this anyway? How could he be of any value to these idiots if they didn’t even know who he was? He felt like storming off the ship.
The man approached and towered over him.
“Okay, enough already,” Sean said. “I’m Casper the Friendly Ghost.”
There was a grunt.
“What do you want me for? You’ve emptied my bank account. You’ve got all the money I have.”
“We didn’t rob any bank account,” the man growled. “And you don’t have a penny on you.”
Some professionals these were. They didn’t even know his identity, much less have the wherewithal to swipe the money from his offshore account.
If that was the case, then who was tampering with his bank account? Nothing seemed very cut-and-dried that day. And they had picked the wrong day to tangle with him. He felt his patience reaching a breaking point.
A weary President Bernard White looked up as his shiny-faced chief of staff walked across the plush blue carpet of the Oval Office with a buoyant stride. By evening, the seventy-year old president was usually exhausted from visitors and meetings at which he was supposed to be decisive and in command. He needed the energetic Chuck Romer to boost his energy and help him chart his way through the shark-infested waters of national politics.
Preparing for that night’s Academy Award thank-you bash for party donors held in the East Room, he needed to display as strong an image as he could muster. He could not let them smell blood.
As he had quickly learned on the job, half of a president’s life involved deciding important matters of state, and the other half was spent trying to keep his political party afloat. And the two parts were virtually one and the same. Every decision he made had a political dimension. So whenever he funded a charity, he needed to appease the fiscal conservatives with language about it helping the economy in the long run. He couldn’t even throw out an opening pitch in Kansas City without assuring the Cardinals fans that he was on their side, too, not to mention a fan of the East and West Coast teams, as well as an advocate of both the player’s union and the owners. And that wasn’t to imply he wasn’t an NFL and NBA fan as well. If only he knew how to play ice hockey…
What Chuck gave him was a rudder with which to steer, a political basis on which to proceed with the national agenda.
Sure, it was a cop-out as chief executive to let his party’s interests determine the government’s agenda, but he believed in the fundamentals of his party like he believed in the Bible. They were the bedrock of his existence.
Chuck slapped the early edition of the Washington Post on Bernard’s desk. “The latest USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll shows your approval rating sinking below forty percent.”
Bernard considered the news for a moment. If forty percent of Chico bought the Chevys he used to sell, he’d be a happy man. But Chuck wasn’t exactly exuding happiness.
“Is that bad?”
“Yeah, anything below forty-five percent is in the danger zone.”
“Okay, so how do we boost it?”
Chuck dropped into the chair opposite the executive desk. “I’m afraid that’s not the question. The question is how do we keep from sliding further.”
“It’s that Chinagate fuss,” Bernard said, jumping to his feet and circling the desk. “Why did the Chinese have to transfer the money directly to my account? It’s so crass! Anyone knows you have a whole bevy of legal options. You can donate it to a 501(c) group or 527 committee or PAC or special interest group or get it to me through soft money contributors. You don’t put money from a foreign government directly into my pocket. It feels so…dirty! And the whole affair’s sticking to me like dog poop.”
“It’ll wash off,” Chuck tried to reassure him. “They can’t make it stick.”
Bernard examined his shoes, and then twisted to check out the back of his pants. “Without a case against me, it will eventually blow over, right?”
“It has to dry first before it blows over, and we don’t have the luxury of time before the general election.”
“How about if I use a stick and pry it off,” Bernard said, leaning over to pick up a sword given him by some head of state from the Middle East.
“Then it’s on your stick.”
Bernard examined the sword with distaste and leaned over to set it back on the bookshelf. While he was bent over, he looked around for anything else to be done while he was down there. Had John F. Kennedy, Jr. lost a Lego block? Had President Nixon left a bug?
“No!” Chuck cried, rising. “We need to stick it in someone else, and bury him in it.” He grasped the sword from the shelf, twirled and lunged for the president’s derriere that remained unprotected as he tightened a shoelace.
Just then, Gertrude, the presidential secretary walked in, deftly dodging the sword to deliver a message to the president’s desk.
The two men watched her come and go.
“But we don’t want to stab me in the back,” Bernard said straightening when the door clicked shut.
“No, who would want to do that? We’ve pinned this Chinagate affair on someone else.”
“Stanley Polk’s witness?”
“That’s right, sir. He’s a fugitive from the law. As long as Polk’s main witness is on the run and looking guilty as hell, he can’t make his case.”
Bernard took the sword from his chief of staff and studied the keen edge that jutted from the elaborately carved hilt. “Exactly where is this witness, this Sean Cooper?”
“We set him up with funds in Shanghai to abscond. He took the bait and is on the lam.”
Bernard nodded with approval and began to put the sword away. “Whose money did he steal?”
“That’s why it’s so perfect. It’s your money, sir.”
“My money? I want it back,” he turned and growled, leveling the sword at his young chief of staff. “I don’t want my money swimming around out there where Polk can find it.”
“Don’t worry. You’ve already got it back.”
That was a relief. Bernard gently returned the sword to the shelf and took his seat behind his enormous desk. He spread his hands out on the burnished surface. One thing still bothered him. It wasn’t a loose end to his defense, rather a concern for a fellow human being. “Doesn’t the witness, er, doesn’t Sean Cooper have a wife and kids?”
“We took care of them, too.” A sinister note crept into Romer’s voice.
“Don’t tell me any more,” he said, turning away. “I just don’t want that man to surface again.”
“Don’t worry about him. But what’s our strategy, sir?”
“For what?”
“You know. Boosting your approval rating.”
Bernard sank further into his seat and swiveled completely away from his chief of staff. Hadn’t they just been through all that? With luck, Chuck’s efforts to shut Cooper up would reverse his skid in the polls.
Snow was falling through the darkness. That reminded him of his entertainment for that evening, the Academy Awards party he was throwing.
“Can’t we just forget about politics for a few hours?”
He sighed contentedly and began to relax, an indulgence he had rarely allowed himself for the past three, grueling years. He would spend an evening among friends.
The limo ride into Kennedy was smooth. Salt trucks prevented the bridges from icing over, and soon Hiram and Tiffany Klug were past Staten Island and zeroing in on Kennedy.
Hiram tried to follow the highway signs as their chauffeur sped them through the night, but entombed as he was in the cavernous back seat of the limousine, he found it hard to see out the front window.
Tiffany dug her fingers into his biceps.
“Take it easy, Rammy,” she told her husband. “Let him do the driving.”
“Old habits die hard,” he said.
“Well, this trip should break us of a few bad habits,” she said.
The limo driver couldn’t wait long dropping them off at the departure terminal. A policeman was whistling at the poor guy as Hiram tried to factor a healthy tip into the total payment.
“Will you wait a minute? I’m paying the guy!”
The young man took the money with a smile of accomplishment.
Just don’t go back and bang my daughter, Hiram wanted to say.
The policeman was whistling at him, now. He had to move his luggage off the sidewalk.
“Geez, what are sidewalks for, anyway?” Hiram shot at the cop as he dragged the pair of suitcases along the wet surface.
“Hey, I don’t make the rules,” the cop shot back.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“Come on, Rammy.”
He plucked both pieces of luggage off the sidewalk and marched them in through the sliding glass doors.
He didn’t set them down until they figured out which line to get in. He didn’t want to “break any rules” by setting his luggage on the floor.
He was in for even more aggravation. Before he could take his place at the back of the long, snaking line, a young woman who was stuffed into a one-size-fits-all airport uniform began peppering him with questions.
Apparently, the little plastic nametag on her lapel gave her the right to pose the nosiest questions about what he had packed in his luggage. She demanded to know if he had packed it himself. Was he carrying any wrapped gifts from someone else? Was he transporting any items for another party?
All he could think of was…the mysterious bag from Victoria’s Secret. He wiped the back of his wide neck with its permanent sweaty ringlets of black hair. Then he rubbed the perpetual stubble on his cheeks and glanced at his wife.
“Uh, none of dose things, miss,” he told the security agent.
She seemed to buy it. She slapped an orange sticker on both his bags and let him join the long line of those checking in.
“And this isn’t even an international flight,” he remarked to Tiffany.
“That’ll come soon enough,” she replied in her knowledgeable way.
After finally extracting their boarding passes from the ticket agent, they found themselves in yet another security check. Hiram looked around. Okay, it was a busy place. People were flying in from all sorts of countries. He wasn’t sure whom to trust. Should he watch out for the woman in a headscarf? How about the swami in bare feet? And was that group of Koreans from the North?
Tiffany seemed to be reading his mind. “Certainly is a hodgepodge of people.”
“Your passports, please,” the security agent asked.
“This is a domestic flight,” Hiram protested.
“Your ticket reads through to Purang. I need to see your passport.”
Tiffany had both passports in her handbag.
They looked so new and unused, Hiram was overcome by embarrassment. He hoped the Purang INS would manhandle his booklet, drop it on the floor and stomp on it by accident. Give his passport enough wear and tear that someone might look at it and ask, “How many times have you been around the world?” And he would proudly open it up and point out the Purang visa. After all, that was halfway around the world.
“Will you take your shoes and belt off, please?”
“Huh?”
“Your shoes and belt?”
“We’re blasting off in under half an hour, and you want me to take my clothes off?”
As soon as he said it, he realized that he couldn’t force the man to skip any of the steps he was hired to perform. Hiram sighed.
“Just stay patient,” Tiffany said, reading him like the tax code she knew by heart for her CPA job. “We’ll be leaving all this far behind.”
At the glamorous art deco Kodak Theater in Los Angeles, veteran actor Tudman Grier was as well known as any star in Hollywood. He had augmented his major Hollywood roles in romantic comedies with frequent guest appearances on television game and talk shows. He was neither too glib, nor too stupid. Just the kind of guy anyone would want to watch bantering all evening with Jay and David.
But this night his star was shining most brightly.
At last, all his hard work sucking up to distant, stuffy celebrities had paid off. All his best-buddy lunches with producers and talent agents had landed him the Mother of all Roles. He had to be smart, he had to be honest, he had to supplicate, he had to rule. He was hosting the Academy Awards.
The evening was rushing by much faster than he had anticipated it would after endless dry runs. Following several tedious weeks spent talking to numbered seats, handing out Styrofoam statuettes to stand-ins, and reworking his lines with a team of professional writers, he felt the actual event washing over him like an uncontrollable tidal wave. Sometimes he barely kept his head above water, other times he was going under and desperate to come up for air.<
br />
In the frenzy, he had called the Iranian filmmaker by his last name first. He had tried to converse with a lighting director who only spoke Polish. His mind kept racing backward and forward through his lines, and he could hardly remember where he was in the script. His producer had assured him that any blunders had gone “off to Pluto.” In any event, he didn’t have time to worry about his mistakes.
But he did worry about how he was coming across. He didn’t want to play the bumbling fool. He was supposed to be the thirty-something teen idol with no ego. Okay, he was already fifty, but makeup and a rigorous workout routine in the gym took care of that.
But teen idols didn’t lose their lines when confronted by Jennifer’s bosoms. And if he really had no ego, certainly he could take a joke at his own expense. The least he could strive for was to look on the ball.
It didn’t help that Mr. Martin was feeding him adlibs a mile a minute over his earpiece.
The low point so far had come when the documentary producer collected his Oscar for a film on wife-burning in India, and Steve quipped over his earpiece, “His pants are on fire,” and he cracked up before a television viewership of well over a billion.
But Tudman Grier was a professional, and the show had to go on.
Chapter 6
While Sean languished under the suffocating hood, his abductors stood outside the room arguing over what to do with him. Someone had tampered with his bank account, but certainly not these fools. What these guys had in mind, even they didn’t seem to know.
Maybe while he had a chance, he could sneak a glance around. He leaned forward and rubbed a shoulder against the sack that covered his head. Without much effort, he could tilt it back and take in the room.
It appeared to be a storage compartment. Fishnets lay heaped along the side walls. Ropes with buoys snaked across the floor. It was probably a driftnet operation. Illegal, no doubt.
