by Stephen Frey
“Good.” Forte was tired of waiting, tired of sitting in this dingy room that looked like it was rented out by the hour more often than for the night. He’d answered all the e-mails he had the patience for and slashed through several quarterly reports from companies he owned—dashing off terse notes to a couple of the CEOs on how they could improve operations. “How many people does Jesse have with him?”
“Just two.”
“Not Osgood and Stephanie, right?”
“No. Just the two security people, like you wanted.”
Forte could tell that Johnson didn’t like the idea of Jesse having only two bodyguards. “Jesse’ll be fine, Heath. Don’t worry.”
“We’ve put a lot of time and energy into Jesse Wood, boss, and we’re finally on the brink of making history. We should be more careful about protecting him from now on. He’ll be a target, you know that. There’s plots being hatched out there right now, no doubt, by people who understand that Jesse will probably be the next president of the United States. We shouldn’t get careless or cut corners this late in the game.”
“I never get careless and I never cut corners,” Forte answered firmly. “You know that.”
“Until Jesse is officially the Democratic party’s nominee, he doesn’t get Secret Service. Until then, it’s up to us.”
“This has to be at least the fiftieth time you’ve told me that. I understand, believe me. Like I said, he’ll be fine.” Forte needed to get Johnson thinking about something else. He was starting to obsess about Jesse Wood’s personal safety, which could get in the way. “A while back you told me the one big thing you didn’t like about Christian Gillette being Jesse’s running mate was that we might be handing the Oval Office back to a white man eight years from now.” Forte watched Johnson ease back into his chair. “Right?”
“Yeah, I said that.” Johnson crossed his arms over his chest defensively. “Christian Gillette has star power. He could easily get elected after Jesse’s done. The other thing is, we don’t know how Gillette’s going to react to the platform yet. He’s got a lot of friends on the other side of the fence, in Whiteyville, and he might not like some of the things we want Jesse to do. Gillette might not be wild about Puerto Rico becoming a state, might not want us trying to restructure voting districts so blacks have more power and whites have less, might not like us raising the capital gains tax rate, naming as many black judges as we can, taking away big business deductions in the—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Forte said, waving away Johnson’s concerns. “Jesse isn’t going to tell Christian about any of that at their meeting, and once we’re in the White House we’ll keep Christian on the road. He’ll be nothing but a goodwill ambassador. He’ll be in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America. He’ll have more miles on him than the space shuttle, and he’ll be completely in the dark. He won’t know what we’re doing until he reads it in the newspaper.”
“That doesn’t solve the first problem,” Johnson pointed out. “Him being elected president when Jesse’s done. What about that?”
“I’m gonna do the same thing to Gillette I’m doing to Jesse. Except in Gillette’s case, I’ll actually use what I find.” Forte chuckled. “Or claim I find. The way I see it, we’ll feed it to the press halfway through the second term. Gillette will be forced to resign and Jesse will name a black man as Gillette’s replacement. That’ll give the country two years to get comfortable with whoever we bring in.” Forte chuckled. “I told you, Heath, don’t worry so much. I’ve got it all under control.”
“What’s the it, boss?”
“What do you mean?”
“What are you going to find out about Gillette?” Johnson asked.
“Don’t know yet, but we’ll find something. Maybe him talking bad about blacks while he’s actually in office. Using the N word a few times.”
“Gillette would never be stupid enough to do that, not in front of a camera, anyway.”
“You probably would have said that about Jesse before you saw the clip.”
Johnson nodded grudgingly. “You’re right.”
“We’ve got six years,” Forte said confidently. “You know me. I’ll find something.” Forte glanced over at a bureau in one corner of the room. Atop it was a portable combination television/CD player Johnson had brought with them from California. “Everything ready?” he asked, standing up.
“Yeah.”
Forte walked to the window, pushed up one of the slats of the closed blind, and peered out at the gloomy day. It had been raining off and on since last night. Through the drizzle he saw a gray sedan approaching. As he watched, it turned into the motel parking lot and rolled quickly toward him. Jesse Wood hopped out of the backseat and sprinted for the door. Forte opened it just as Jesse reached for the knob.
“Hi, guys,” Jesse said enthusiastically, brushing water from his jacket as he moved into the room. He pumped Forte’s hand, then Johnson’s. “God, we just had a great rally, guys. I mean, it was awesome.”
Forte pointed to a chair in front of the bureau. “We need to talk.”
Jesse’s mood soured instantly. “Let’s not get into the bad stuff now, Elijah,” he pleaded. “I don’t want to talk about firing Stephanie and Osgood. I’m on a real high. God, I think we might actually carry Ohio after all. You should have seen the people down there, thousands of them, a lot of them with tears in their eyes. And not just blacks.”
“That’s fine, Jesse, just fine. But the mark of a truly great politician lies in his ability to handle any situation, moment to moment, good or bad, and stay calm. This is one of those tough situations. This will be good training for when you’re actually president.”
Jesse shook his head. “I told you, Elijah, I’m not firing Stephanie or Osgood, and that’s final. I’m not getting rid of two people who’ve been so loyal to me over the last few years. You’re just going to have to accept that.” He hesitated. “I’m not sure I’m going to accept your choice of vice president, either,” he said, his voice strengthening when Forte didn’t try to cut him off. “Nothing against Christian Gillette, he seems like a decent guy. But I want someone else, someone I choose. I’m in charge now. I’ve made decisions, and I’m not going to change them. Not for anything or anyone.”
Jesse had become empowered, Forte saw, caught up in the euphoria of the rally downtown, starting to think he could call his own shots now. “Really? Not for anyone?”
Jesse stuck his chin out defiantly. “Nope. Not even you.”
Forte glanced down, trying to seem discouraged.
“You’ve been good to me, Elijah,” Jesse continued, “and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. And of course I’ll always listen to your counsel when I’m president. But it’s time for me to take over. It’s the natural progression.”
Forte took a deep, defeated breath, then motioned to Johnson. “Heath.”
Johnson moved to the portable television and turned it on.
“What’s going on?” Jesse asked, watching Johnson. “What’s this?”
Forte sat down beside Jesse and put his hand on Jesse’s knee. “This, Jesse,” he said in a quiet voice, “is your smoking gun. Your Monica Lewinsky, your Watergate, your Waterloo. The good thing for you is that no one knows about it except me and Heath. Not yet, anyway. And no one else ever will know about it, as long as you play ball. As long as you don’t get cocky on me ever again.”
The screen cleared and images rolled. The same ones Forte and Johnson had watched at Johnson’s house. Jesse, Osgood, Stephanie, and Jefferson Roundtree standing in a tight group; Jesse starting his Whitey diatribe; the others chiming in.
When it was over, Forte pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Jesse. “Here.”
“Thanks,” Jesse mumbled, dabbing at the beads of sweat covering his forehead. “Can I have something to drink?” he asked, like a man condemned.
“Heath, could you get Jesse some water please?”
“How did you get that?” Jesse asked, his voice
barely audible.
“It doesn’t matter how I got it, I got it.”
Johnson was back quickly from the bathroom with a glass of water. Jesse took it and finished it in several gulps.
“More?”
Jesse wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “No.”
“What we have here is a game of chicken, Jesse,” Forte said calmly, nodding at the television. “You might think I’d never show that clip to anyone. You figure I won’t, because then I’d lose everything I’ve worked so hard for: a black president. So you start thinking you can do whatever you want to at this point. That you’ve got me by the balls.” He held his palm out flat, then slowly curled his fingers until he’d made a tight fist. “But what you need to understand, Jesse, is that this isn’t just about having a black president for me. It’s about more than that, much more. It’s about having a black president who does what I want when I want. Frankly, without that control, I don’t care much, I really don’t.” Forte gathered himself up in his chair, then put a hand on Jesse’s shoulder, ready to deliver the final, fatal blow. “You disobey me in any way from this moment on, and I release that clip to the press. You know what will happen then? It’ll become one of the most-played videos in history, it’ll become part of our national lore. You’ll be destroyed, you’ll become an outcast. I’ll go back to being a billionaire, but you’ll end up resigning from the Senate and begging your ex-partners to let you practice law again so you can put your kids through college. But your ex-partners won’t want you. No one will. You’ll sell your story to the History Channel for one of those sad biography documentaries, but that’ll be the end of the road. After that, you’ll be begging on street corners. Or selling some racquet you claim you won the U.S. Open with on eBay just to make a few bucks. It’ll be pathetic.” Forte leaned back and smiled over at Johnson behind Jesse’s back. Jesse had his face in his hands. His defiance had disintegrated. “Just do what I tell you, Jesse,” Forte said softly, “and everything will be fine.”
Jesse swallowed hard.
Forte smiled thinly. He loved it when a plan came together. He’d waited for just the right moment to go for the throat. When Jesse was on a high, when Jesse could just about taste and smell the Oval Office. Forte checked his watch. Almost four o’clock. “Don’t you have a fund-raiser back downtown tonight?”
Jesse nodded.
“Well, you better get going.” Forte was about to get up but hesitated. “There’s something at the end of the clip I want to ask you about.”
Jesse looked over. “Huh?”
Forte nodded at Johnson. “Play it back, Heath.”
“Sure.”
“There,” Forte said, pointing at the screen. Pointing at Jesse touching Stephanie’s thigh. “What’s that all about?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s not the kind of gesture I’d expect you to make to a coworker.” Forte raised one eyebrow. “Or a friend. Anything going on with you and Stephanie I should know about?”
“No.”
“Or maybe your wife should know about?”
“No, I swear it, nothing. Please, Elijah.”
Forte loved it. Jesse was back on his side, right back where he was supposed to be, as malleable as he’d ever been. Forte pointed at the television again. “What the hell were you thinking about when you said those things?”
Jesse’s expression turned glum. “Obviously, I wasn’t.”
TODD HARRISON stared at the photograph he’d taken from the frame in the kitchen of the lodge on Champagne Island. In it were nine men, two of whom he’d recognized immediately from newspaper pictures: ex–United States senator Stewart Massey and former Federal Reserve chairman Franklin Laird. And then there was that third face.
Harrison put the picture down on the desk and began to boot up his computer. George Bishop had disappeared; there’d been no word from him for a while. His boat was moored where it always was, but his car wasn’t in the apartment complex parking lot. Harrison had gone to the police, but they wouldn’t start looking for Bishop without probable cause—which they said they didn’t have. They’d said he was a drifter, in and out of town, and assumed he’d show up again at some point when he needed to make a few bucks. He was on a joy ride somewhere was the explanation they’d given. In the Caribbean getting drunk, like he was known to do every few months.
Now Harrison was worried about himself. He’d quickly moved into a place a few miles away and holed up, putting off deadlines by not answering the phone, then calling back at times when he knew his editors wouldn’t be around. But he wasn’t sure moving around was going to do him any good. He’d thought about going way far away and starting over, maybe even out of the country. But these people in the photograph were obviously powerful, very powerful, and he was afraid they’d track him down no matter where he went. He wanted to go to the authorities to get help for himself, but he knew he couldn’t go to them with just a picture and a ghost story from an old man.
He typed Stewart Massey’s name into Google and clicked “search.”
FROM THE BACKSEAT of the sedan, Jesse stared out at an endless string of strip malls lining the wide, four-lane road as he headed back downtown for the fund-raiser. It had stopped raining and the sky was clearing in the west. Maybe that was a sign, he hoped. He shook his head. Wishful thinking. He was a puppet and that was that.
How the hell had Forte gotten that damn clip?
Jesse had always worried about that thing being out there somewhere—Osgood had gone after the guy when they realized what was going on, but the cameraman had gotten away. It was his only mistake in hiring Osgood—it took the guy two days to run the hundred-yard dash. Osgood had come back from the chase looking like he was about to have a heart attack. Jesse closed his eyes. He’d almost convinced himself the clip was gone, that it would never be a problem.
“Senator Wood.”
Jesse opened his eyes. It was the bodyguard in the passenger seat in front of him.
“Sorry to disturb you, sir.”
“It’s all right.”
“We’re going to stop at the next gas station to fill up. It’ll only take a few minutes. We’ll have you back downtown no later than five thirty, in plenty of time for the dinner.”
“Thanks.” He sighed. He was going to have to let Stephanie and Osgood go now. He didn’t have any choice.
THE MAN checked his watch as he stood on the roof of the warehouse, leaning on the cinder-block retaining wall, waiting for the sedan to appear. It was late; it should have been to him by now.
Then he saw it, coming through a light three blocks up, swerving out from behind a furniture delivery truck. He took a quick look through his binoculars to check the license, just to make sure, to confirm that this was what he’d been waiting for. It was.
He picked up the hunting rifle, sighted in the target, and fired.
DON ROTH gazed at the photograph Harrison had left in the frame in the lodge kitchen. Harrison had taken the one Patty had painstakingly put together, the one that had been in the frame when they went to the kitchen after finishing the tour of the lodge’s third floor. And Harrison had left this one. Switched them before he left—while Roth left the kitchen the second time. They’d never actually said a word to each other about doing that, but somehow they’d understood what was going to happen. Clearly, Harrison had realized that Roth intentionally left the picture of the nine men who came to Champagne Island for him to find. In return, Harrison had taken the photograph of the old man he’d snapped in the bar that night out of his backpack and left it for Roth. The photo of the old man who’d told Harrison the story about Champagne Island.
Roth shook his head. He’d recognized the old man in the photograph Harrison had left right away. It was one of the men who came to the island, the one he’d overheard the others call Benson. The one who’d committed suicide down by the ocean with the Colt revolver, whose body he’d carried to the freezer in the basement of the lodge that night after Hewitt had roused him.
Obviously, Benson had been trying to get Harrison to investigate what was going on at the island. Why, he didn’t know. Maybe because Benson knew there was something wrong but couldn’t be the whistle-blower because he’d put his own life in jeopardy. But then why would he commit suicide?
Patty had thought he didn’t know what she was doing the whole time she was sneaking around the woods, taking pictures of the men as they got out of the helicopters or went down to the ocean to fish. She thought he didn’t know what the magnifying glass and the tweezers were for. She’d given him the photograph the night before they’d killed her, telling him he might need it someday. Roth felt the lump in his throat growing bigger as he thought about her. He missed her so much—and he owed her.
He put the picture down and glanced over at the young woman lying on the couch, hands and feet bound. She didn’t have a chance without him.
“WHAT! OH MY GOD! ”
Forte glanced over at Johnson, who was on the phone again. Forte had been thinking about Stephanie Childress. How pretty she was, how he hadn’t taken much time for romance in his life, how he was getting old. How Stephanie was getting old, too.
“Jesus Christ! I knew it.” Johnson ended the call and glared at Forte. “Somebody took a shot at Jesse while he was on his way back downtown to the fund-raiser. Goddamn, it, Elijah, I told you this could happen.”
“Was Jesse hit?” Forte asked calmly.
“No, he’s okay, but one of the bodyguards took a bullet to the shoulder. He was taken to a hospital. They think he’ll be all right, but he’s critical.”
“Well, the important thing is that Jesse’s okay.”
Johnson gazed at Forte, awed by his nonchalance. Then his jaw dropped. “You didn’t,” he whispered.
Forte chuckled. “You kept making the case for me, Heath. You were the one who said Jesse wouldn’t get Secret Service protection until he was officially the nominee. I’ll bet the Secret Service protects him now. If they don’t, the government will look pretty bad, almost like they want him dead. So you know they’ll give him Secret Service, probably a bigger force than normal. Which serves two purposes. First, it’ll be almost impossible for anyone to get to Jesse now. Second, now he’ll look like he’s already the president.”
