Charlie was dead quiet. Sam had expected him to say something. At a minimum he should have insulted him. “So, ah, Charlie, what do you think about that?”
“Mostly that vice presidents don’t get to sign pardons.”
“But presidents do. Three years from now the boss’s term is up. Then, who’s the party’s logical nominee? The vice president, that’s who. In other words: me. And as soon as I’m elected, you get a pardon. I swear on my mother’s —”
“Hogwash,” Charlie shot back. “The public doesn’t know you. You’ve never held elected office. You’ve got no organization. You’ve got no campaign chest. You’re too damned fat!”
Sam smiled a perfect smile. “Three years as vice president. A lot can change in three years.”
“Not enough. There are a dozen hungry senators waiting for the primary, and there’s not a one of them who isn’t better funded than you. It takes what — sixty or seventy million bucks to win the primaries. And to get elected, hell, then you’re talking about real money. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe your boss spent something in excess of three hundred million to buy his chair in the Oval Office.”
“I can spend more.” Ha! Just look at the expression on your face. “I’ve got friends, friends you don’t know about. We’re talking major muscle and major money, enough to steamroll the other candidates. Make no mistake, I am going to be the next president.” Sam showed his teeth. “Anyone who gets in my way is roadkill!” He started to rise from his chair.
“Sit down!” Charlie snapped.
Somewhere in Sam’s mind a faint alarm bell rang.
“Sam, either we finish this conversation now or we don’t finish it at all.”
What was the fossilized old dinosaur up to? He sure as hell couldn’t have bugged the room. Sam’s NSA team carried equipment tuned to detect the most advanced high-tech recording gear. It’s just an act, he told himself, Charlie being Charlie, thumping his chest like a goddamned alpha-male gorilla.
Choosing to obey the order of a man who was losing (although he did not know it) this particular bargaining session, Sam slumped back into his seat. Then spreading his palms in a well-rehearsed gesture of candor, he spoke intimately, a hushed secret shared between two friends. “Look, the president is behind me. Even back before the reelection campaign, he knew the veep was sick. Two years ago, he picked three of us — me, a congressman from Southern California, and the secretary of state. He explained what’s what with the vice president, and then he gave each of us a couple of balls to run with. I was assigned Whirlwind and diplomatic relations with China —”
“The most treacherous sonsofbitches I know. Present company excepted.”
“They’re eating out of the palm of my hand. Things have never been more cordial.” He stopped himself short. Boasting about the Chinese was a mistake. Charlie was the last person Sam wanted to know about his little diplomatic coup.
“Just give me the bottom line, Sam. I don’t have much time here.” Charlie’s eyes darted toward his bookcases again. Why the hell was he looking at it? Nothing there but dog-eared books, a couple of cameras, and some crap souvenirs.
“China and Whirlwind were my babies. If I managed them right, then I’d get the nod when the vice president retired. Which I did. Come this fall, I’ll be vice president of the United States.”
“Except that Whirlwind has gone lost, stolen, or strayed.”
“Which you will handle for me. Otherwise, I’m toast.” Honesty, honesty — who says it doesn’t pay? Every now and then. “If I’m toast, I don’t get to be president. If I don’t get to be president —”
“I don’t get pardoned.”
“But you will.” Sam felt good. Sam felt fine. Sam felt like he always did when he’d brokered a winning trade. “Find that Russian bitch, find Whirlwind, and your name gets cleared.”
“The only thing that will clear my name is you admitting that Kahlid Hassan was your fault.”
“Not in a million years.” The negotiation is over, Charlie. Give it up.
“But it was, right?”
“Of course it was. I already said that, didn’t I?” Charlie smiled the smile of a profoundly satisfied man. Sam wondered why.
“Sam, under normal circumstances I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you. However, these are not normal circumstances. I’m going to accept your offer.”
Charlie held out his hand. Sam stood and shook it.
Done deal, sucker.
Disappointed that he hadn’t succeeded in detonating Sam’s volcanic temper, Charlie shepherded the security advisor out of his house. As they walked down the porch steps, Sam said, “Once I’m airborne, I’ll order the equipment you asked for. There’ll be a chopper on your lawn in two hours. Agency Falcon at —”
“I’d prefer a Gulfstream. A GV actually.”
“Your wish is my command. It will be waiting for you at Bolling. Fully equipped with onboard secure radio, secure cellular, secure network access from anywhere, all that technology crap.”
“Which you will bug.”
“Correct. Also you get temporary credentials with your old rank back and a renewed security clearance. Full-time Agency librarian. Four squeaky-clean credit cards, one in each flavor. Twenty grand in walking-around money.”
Charlie glanced over his shoulder. Jason and Molly had their faces pressed to the window. Carly, hands on her hips, stood at the screen door. “All in twenties and fifties. I presume it will be marked.”
“Of course. If you cut and run, I want a way to track you down.”
“Don’t you wish.”
Sam shrugged, continuing to read from Charlie’s neatly printed shopping list. “A Steyr sniper rifle with a Trijicon scope…whatever that may be…and two FBI-accurized .40 calibers. That’s everything you asked for. Anything else you want?”
Sam’s Marine Corps pilot had fired up the helicopter’s engine. Its blades were high above both men’s head’s. Neither Sam nor Charlie could keep himself from instinctively ducking.
“The father.”
“Excuse me? What father?”
“The girl’s. The Russian navy guy. I want his full dossier. Digitize it, and send it to me once I’m in my Gulfstream.”
“It’s been looked at. There’s nothing useful in it.”
“Send it to me anyway.”
“It’s your ballgame, Charlie. Ask, and you shall receive.” Sam lumbered toward the helicopter’s boarding steps. He did not, Charlie observed, offer to shake hands again.
“One other thing, Sam. I want your promise that you won’t be bringing anyone else into this business.”
“Of course I won’t, Charlie.”
“No hired guns at all.”
“You have my word on that.”
It was in his eyes, pure deceit, Charlie read it like a book. Samuel, you are a vile lying yellow dog. Stepping back, he gave a friendly wave as the helicopter lifted off his lawn. The gesture cost him nothing and was bound to make Sam feel good.
But not as good as Charlie felt now that he had — compliments of an outdated video camera so low-tech that the NSA’s high-tech whizkids ignored it — Sam’s full confession on videotape.
3
Introducing Mr. Schmidt
Tuesday, July 21.
0930 Hours Central Time
Irina read him. Within seconds she cold-read who and what he was.
They’d taught her well at the Institute, spicing the course with old American movies. Hollywood knew better than any intelligence agency how garb and gesture subliminally communicate persona to an audience. Posture, intonation, and expression transform the servile butler from The Remains of the Day into Hannibal Lecter, cannibal epicure. A red-robed cancan dolly in Moulin Rouge! applies putty to her nose, and dressed in stark austerity incarnates neurotic Bloomsbury’s most neurotic novelist.
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…. Who then, she asked herself, was the actor who’d found her breaki
ng into his truck?
A cowboy sidekick. Never the leading man, but always a good one. He would be Slim Pickens, Ward Bond, Ben Johnson. Sitting in a darkened classroom she had seen him in a dozen films.
Walking with an ill-disguised limp, he was compact and muscular, although with an unbecoming bulge around his waist. The corners of his eyes were engraved with squint lines — sure sign that he worked outdoors. Yet his complexion was sallow; he had not been beneath the sun for months.
His dress told a simple story — inexpensive clothing recently bought off the rack at a discount clothier. New chinos purchased for a newly ballooned stomach. A white shirt bearing the creases of a garment fresh from a store, freshly put on. However, his elaborately stitched cowboy boots were expensive, and probably custom-made. One other costly thing: a heavy silver belt buckle decorated with turquoise and lapis. Words she could not make out were embossed around its rim. Was it some sort of prize — an award for athletic prowess?
No wedding ring, he eyed her with the gaze of a proud man used to women’s admiration.
An athlete — he could be nothing else. He broke his leg in an accident, and was invalided for months. Whatever his sport — rodeo, I think — he was injured so badly that he can play no more. His recuperation was long and expensive. Now he has little money and no work. He wears new slacks and shirt because his old clothes no longer fit, because they are as flamboyant as his boots, because this morning he wishes to make a good impression. He is a man who is — who has been — interviewing for a store clerk’s job.
The phrase “target of opportunity” came to mind.
“Lady, listen up. I’m talkin’ to you.”
Irina’s English was too perfect. Its unaccented precision proclaimed her a foreigner, although none who heard her could guess her nationality. Slurring her words drunkenly would disguise that. “’S not your truck. ’S my truck. You think I dunno my truck when I shee it.”
“Ma’am, I’m tellin’ you that one ain’t yours.” The hardness in his bearing loosened, and his voice edged toward courtliness — an almost imperceptible change in tone revealing a vulnerability, telling her how to exploit it.
She tossed her head, let her hair fall over her face, giving him a peek-a-boo look. “’S too. I got my keys right here…oops-a-daisy.” Her purse tumbled to the pavement, its contents scattering. The man glanced down. Irina slid her shim into her hip pocket. “Aw, now look what you’ve gone and made me do.” She fell to her knees. He, chivalry in his warm brown eyes, squatted on his hams, helping her pick up wallet, coin purse, nail clippers, hair brush, and (with some embarrassment) a paper-wrapped Tampax.
“Shee. Shee right here. My keys. My truck. Jus’ like I said.”
“Ma’am, with respect, them ain’t Dodge keys. That there is a Ford logo.” Politely spoken — a cowboy gentleman who was always courteous to the ladies.
She held the keys up, closed one eye, focused the other a little beyond where it should have been. “Awww, you’re right.” She stood, as did he. “Usin’ my sister’s car today. Awww, I’m sorryyy.” With that she fell forward, her arms around his neck. “Forgive me?” She let herself slump, her breasts rubbing against his chest. “I jus’ got a little confused. We had us a party las’ night. All us waitresses. Boss man’s gonna be sore when he opens the wine cellar. Whoops! I bet I gotta go on unemployment again.”
His smile said he was on her side. “Must a-been some fine party.”
“Didn’t end ’til the wine was allll gone. Now everyone’s gone. All gone home. An’ I gotta find my car an’ go home too.” She forced herself to burp. “ ’Scuse me.”
He reacted to her intentionally foolish proposal as she’d hoped. “Ma’am, I’d say you ain’t in any condition to drive. ’Sides which the local law takes DUI pretty serious.”
“Aw, that’s nothin’ to worry about. I just give ’em my phone number an’ they tear up the ticket. I got nothin’ against datin’ big guys, y’know guys with muscles jus’ like you.”
Drunkenly seductive, she smiled sweetly. He seemed at a loss for words, although clearly his thoughts were turning in the direction she wanted. “My car, sister’s car actshully, oooo…now where could it be? Big blue whatchy-macallit Ford thingy. I’ll just get in an drive out to the innerstate an’ ever’thing’ll be just fine.”
“I’d reckon that to be really one seriously poor idea.”
Irina smiled inwardly. His face told her that the seed was well planted. “You gotta better one? What? You wanna drive me home instead? Okay. Thass an okay idea.” She leaned against him again, watching his cheeks flush. In a moment or two, he’d be hers.
He pursed his lips. “I suppose. Problem is, if I drove your car, then once I got you home I’d have to call me a taxicab to get back to my truck. That’s an expense I don’t need at this present time.”
She gave him a look. No, she gave him the look. “Silly. I didn’t mean my house. I meant your house.”
A half hour later, he — Mitch Conroy was his name, and yes he was a disabled rodeo rider — pulled his truck into a cluttered carport. Covered with an old tarpaulin, a stolen secret, brown and oblong, sat in the pickup’s back (“’S a surprise,” she’d said as he moved it from the Aerostar. “No peekin’ ’cause the surprise is gonna be for you.”).
The neighborhood was run down — stucco houses, dying lawns, thirsty dogs sleeping in the shade. You moved here when life dealt you a losing hand; you stayed here after you bet all your chips on the wrong cards. Last stop, the bus line ends here.
Mitch unlocked a side door, holding it open. “Hope you’ll pardon the mess. I ain’t the best housekeeper in the world. And like I said, things ain’t been all that easy for me since I had to give up my old place.”
“’S not a problem.” Although it was. Unwashed dishes were piled in a rust-stained sink. Crumpled fast-food cartons and pizza boxes decorated the kitchen table. The small living room looked like it hadn’t been vacuumed since — a month earlier, Mitch had said — the previous renters had vacated the property. Except for a dozen rodeo trophies, his few personal possessions still lay in cardboard boxes lining the wall.
“Bedroom’s right through here. If you…uh…want to freshen up any, the bathroom’s that door over yonder.”
She nodded so hard that her hair tumbled over her face again. Before they’d left the shopping mall, she’d told him she needed to stop at a drugstore. “Girl stuff, y’know. For when we get home.” Wearing the expression of a man who knew little about girl stuff, and who did not wish to learn more, he’d stopped in front of a Rite Aid. She dashed in, then dashed back out with the brown paper bag she still held tightly in her hand.
The bathroom was what she expected — little more than a closet with an enameled shower stall, a toilet that had seen better days, and a sink that needed scouring. Mitch’s shaving tackle, hair cream, toothpaste, and toothbrush sat on a small glass shelf above it.
Irina emptied her bladder, wiped herself, and took a deep breath. She wished what had to come next would be as easy as what had come before.
Mitch was a nice — indeed decent — man. He’d been sweetly polite to her. She liked his wry sense of humor and roundabout way of talking. And he’d earned her sympathy; the tough times he’d endured since breaking his leg saw to that. Under other circumstances…
But there were no other circumstances. The only condition was the present condition. Irina regretted pain she could not avoid inflicting, and wished she had another choice.
There was none. She’d made a vow. Only by bringing the computer disk and the heavy brown object home could she keep the pledge she’d silently sworn a year ago, both hands clasping her mother’s secret Bible: On my honor and before God, I will outrank him, I will, and I shall make him salute me, he shall stand at attention before me and raise his hand and he shall salute me!
She would keep that promise. No power on earth could stop her.
Setting her jaw, she studied herself in the mirror. It wa
s not Irina Kolodenkova who stared back. Then whose remorseless face was it? Were those loveless eyes, that stony look, familiar? Could it be a despotic Navy captain…?
She splashed water on her cheeks, washing away nothing.
Then, still clothed in denim and a blue pullover, she stepped into the bedroom exclaiming, “Ta-TA!” and striking a model’s pose, one arm stretched high over her head, hip thrust left.
Spartan, male, not the least feminine touch, the bedroom made her pause, a caesura in time, a frozen moment during which she was transported from a ramshackle Texas cottage to the joyless room in which she had grown up. She closed her eyes, swallowing hard.
Mitch sat on the bed. He’d removed his boots, but nothing else. “My, my. You sure are a pretty thing.”
Shivering, she took a step forward, a reluctant actor in an unwanted spotlight. “Awww…” She flopped down on the bed and steeled herself for a role she did not wish to play. “You’re sweet. Bet your kisses are pretty sweet too.” She knew she sounded forced and stilted.
Apparently Mitch did not notice the insincerity in her every word. “Well now, there’s only one way you can find out about that.”
She feigned a cat purr sound, fumbling at her belt as she did. “Lemme…lemme get into nothin’ comfy before we start. Gee, Mitch, you know it sure is hot. You got AC ’round here somewhere?”
“That I do. It ain’t worth much, though.”
“Be a doll and turn it on. Then you get to turn me on.” He’d want to hear a giggle now. She did her best.
Mitch walked to the window, flicking a switch on an antiquated air conditioner. Irina unbuckled her belt and unfastened the button on her Levi’s. As Mitch ambled smiling to the bed, she slurred, “Aw, damn! Zipper’s stuck.” Then in the teasing tones of a little girl, “You know how to get a zipper un-stuck, Mitch? Do you, huh?”
“I believe I can handle that.” His smile widened. Reaching the edge of the bed, he began to bend at the waist. He was where she wanted him, and in the posture she desired. She lashed out her foot, a soccer kick aimed at his groin.
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