Room 1515

by Bill Wetterman

  “German owned electronic manufacturer specializing in military and aircraft technology. Am I right?”

  She wondered why the water from the shower didn’t affect the implant in her head.

  “Yes. One of your guests today is a lobbyist for Stromiehre. His name is Steve Nash. He’s coming with Congressman Snell. Ursa wants you to get close to him.”

  “How close?”

  “If you can develop him as a client, even see him outside of work, Ursa would be pleased. Stromiehre is bidding on an enormous number of U.S. military guidance and aircraft systems.”

  Her involvement in an international assignment intrigued her. “What is it about these bids that upset him?”

  “Ursa doesn’t like the fact that European corporations are involved in manufacturing our most critical military technology.”

  “Okay, I’ll get close to Nash.”

  Peacock heard the customary signal indicating Polaris was back on listening-mode. She toweled off and left her hair wet. Her beautician would be here any moment to prepare her for the day. With her hair a natural auburn color and with creamy skin and blue eyes, matching up blushes, lipsticks, and eye shadows was an impossible task for her. Beauticians needed to be relied on.

  She examined the schedule that had been slipped under her door by Felicia, her second-in-command. Lunch from noon to one-thirty in the Valley Forge Room with General Ruttman and his aide, on the floor from one-thirty to three o’clock, which meant meet, greet, and watch out for unseemly behavior. At three, she was to meet with Congressman Snell and Steve Nash, the dynamic duo Polaris had mentioned and entice them into the secret Lagoon Room.

  She’d compare Nash to her image of a perfect man and see how close he came.

  She turned the page of her schedule to see how the rest of her day looked. Ghastly, if Ursa wanted her to build a relationship with Nash, she’d have to extend an invite for another day. You didn’t consummate the deed in Room 1515. You warmed up the client for contact later.

  Peacock wondered at the changes she’d experienced. A new life had been created for her. She owned a house in Bethesda she’d never visited. Her estate appraised for over seven billion dollars, inherited from a father who didn’t exist. The social register of Who’s Who listed her among the top one hundred wealthiest individuals in the world along with people she’d never met. Laverna Smythe was an illusion.

  Peacock considered herself a very lucky girl.

  #

  “Good morning Ms. Smythe,” a front desk trainee waved a greeting.

  Peacock waved back, but didn’t slow her pace. “Morning Eddie, business seems slow this morning.”

  “It’s almost eleven. The morning crowds checked out and the afternoon tourist groups won’t arrive until close to two.” His eyes followed her as she hurried across the lobby. “You look sharp this morning.”

  You’re out of your league. “Thanks.”

  Men weren’t original. Of course, she looked sharp. The thought struck her that Eddie was only a couple of years younger than she was, yet hardly a man at all.

  Peacock rushed past the indoor pool to a stairway with a sign reading Authorized Personnel Only. Down five steps she went, rounded the corner to the left, and came to a set of gold, engraved elevator doors with the words Emerald Executive Club etched on them. Peacock pulled out her club director’s keycard, put it in the slot, and the doors opened.

  This elevator had entry doors on both sides. The side Peacock entered from connected to the hotel where she and her employees also lived. The other set of doors opened one floor up revealing a marble indoor walkway that connected to the new Congressional Tube—the Speedway some called it.

  Members of Congress could board the exclusive underground rail at the Capital and ride to where the old Farragut West Metro Station used to be. Congressmen and Senators arrived at the hub to the White House in less than a minute, putting them a three-minute walk away from the elevator to the Emerald Executive Club.

  Peacock pushed the only selection other than the White House hub next to the other door, the fifteenth floor. She glanced at her watch, almost eleven o’clock. She had time to check on each employee before General Ruttman and his guest arrived for lunch.

  At the fifteenth floor, the elevator jerked to a stop. Jolts had negative effects on Peacock since the accident. Her mind flashed back to the day her parents and her brother died. She heard the screeching of brakes. Blood splattered as it had nine years before, this time landing on the elevator doors and side rails, dripping to the floor in vivid reds.

  The elevator doors opened. She forced herself back to reality and swallowed the memory. Before her was the gold and forest-green corridor that led to Room 1515, and Room 1515’s doors were open. Two very large men, Browne and Holden, greeted her, saying “Good morning, Laverna,” in unison.

  “Good morning, Browne,” she answered, “you too, Holden.”

  Browne, she’d handpicked the first day she came to work. He did his job. People felt his presence. They thought first before making trouble. Holden was picked by Ursa. She hadn't been told whether he was a Herculean or not. She presumed he was. The CIA built the hotel under a shell company name. All her female employees were handpicked Herculean agents.

  She’d taken no more than five steps toward the reception desk, when Felicia rushed up, her black hair flying as she came. “The word’s out. Apparently, I’ve drawn a following. A group of senators nicknamed themselves ‘The Coffee with Felicia Club.’ Thank God, my clients don’t work nights. These early risers keep me busy enough.”

  Clients? Peacock frowned at the term. Felicia must have meant customers. Of the five hundred or so visitors to Room 1515 daily, only two percent were clients. They were the moles Ursa used inside Congress to do his bidding, and whoever accompanied them to the Lagoon Room unawares.

  Ursa selected who was to be a client, and who was not. The rest didn’t know the Lagoon Room existed. They were visitors to Room 1515 for other reasons, a place to relax, have a meal, and have important conversations. Felicia only entertained two clients a week on average.

  “Update me as I make my rounds.” Peacock headed over to the reception desk. She grabbed her planner. Felicia focused on Peacock, seemingly waiting for her to move. She hurried off into the lounge with Felicia tagging along behind.

  “My first guests arrived at five this morning,” Felicia said. “Congress is taking a week’s break starting tomorrow. No wonder they don’t get much done.”

  Peacock didn’t reply. Instead, she inspected the slate-top tables, leather chairs, and carpets with a critical eye. VIP’s expected a VIP look. She sniffed the air. “Good, the no smoking rule seems to be working.”

  “Is everything okay?” Felicia asked, her big brown eyelids batting expectantly.

  Peacock sensed a need for approval and said, “Everything seems in order.”

  “Tell her she did a good job.” Polaris’ voice slammed her back to her new reality. She was never alone. She smiled at her assistant. “I approve.”

  Concern left Felicia’s face. Her head bobbed back and forth at Peacock’s words. She thought Felicia looked rather like a puppy, a brown-eyed black lab ready to fetch. “Let’s check the bar and restaurant area.”

  Room 1515 covered 45,000 square feet, taking up the whole 15th floor, plus 4,000 additional square feet of the 14th. A line was already forming for lunch as the clock struck the eleventh hour. Peacock recognized several White House staffers. The Secretary of the Treasury waved and called to her. “Hello, Lovey.”

  “You look spiffy, Dick,” she replied.

  Secretary Wilson was a morally correct man in her eyes. He didn’t cheat on his wife. He didn’t accept political favors. If she were ever ordered to kill him, she’d snap his neck. He wouldn’t feel a thing.

  “I wonder how much a guest key costs our esteemed members?” she asked.

  “Golly, I don’t know,” Felicia answered. “Who cares anyway?”

  “I used to be
a taxpayer. I guess I should have cared then.”

  The two passed the cigar room. Its two large brass-plated doors were shut as was customary. Peacock pulled up the shade on the glass side-panel. She focused on four gentlemen a distance away by the window. They were engaged in intense conversation and half-hidden in a mist of smoke. “I’ll avoid going in and take your word for the room’s condition.”

  “The Korean Ambassador and Secretary Scoffield are hammering out some deal in there.”

  “The room’s bugged, Lovey.” Polaris said, and sang a little song to her. “She’s lovely. She’s Lovey. She wouldn’t hurt a buggy.”

  Damn it. She couldn’t respond to him with her assistant present. His irritating rhyming needed correction. If she ignored it, Ursa might think she wasn’t reacting as she should to sarcasm. She’d be stuck with more training. She grunted.

  “What’s the matter?” Felicia asked.

  “I had an ugly thought. Nothing you can help me with.” She heard Polaris laugh and then the disconnect signal. “I don’t like the color schemes they used for the décor in the lounge and restaurant. I’m an autumn color. I show best in warm, earthy surroundings.”

  “They used modern Dick Tracy,” Felicia said. “It’s supposed to be in contrast to what customers have to look at all day long. Government offices are pretty drab.”

  Felicia took out a key and opened another door. They walked down a hallway and around a corner to their right. There stood the door to the Lagoon Room. Felicia pulled out her card.

  No guest entered The Lagoon Room without an escort.

  Peacock supervised eight consorts besides Felicia. All of whom had cards as well. Two of them, Phyllis and Melanie, were swimming nude in the lagoon with three men Peacock didn’t recognize.

  “The older man is a lobbyist for the tobacco industry,” Felicia said. “The other two work for the Democratic National Committee.”

  Mel, as Melanie was called, excused herself from her client and climbed out of the lagoon. She sauntered over and dried off with a towel. “I turned the water temperature up a tad. Little Charley was shriveling away.”

  She pulled Peacock close. “A company called GreenAire has supposedly perfected a filter that can be used to purify everything from cigarettes to smokestacks. The old fat man wants to block the patent application.”

  “Thanks, Mel. Good work.”

  “Better work than you know.” Polaris’ voice burst in. “We’ll make sure he doesn’t succeed.”

  The first two weeks, Polaris drove her nuts. Now she handled the interruptions a tad better. Peacock gave Mel a hug and a gentle pat on the butt. “Back to work, honey, your partner’s being overwhelmed. Have her join me at the front when she’s finished.”

  Peacock turned to her assistant and said, “Looks like another typical day.”

  Chapter 4

  Thomas Reed meticulously brushed his teeth in front of his master bath mirror in Lasswade, Scotland. He flossed and brushed again. He repeated the process several times. He scrubbed his ruddy face immaculately clean and trimmed his nails down to the skin. Then Reed washed his hands four times and rinsed them with Clorox and water.

  Not a scrap of identification existed in the name of Thomas Reed. Not that he wasn’t human, he was. But he went by seven different names outside the ‘Sons of Tiw,’ none of those names Thomas Reed. He had the ear of Arthur Pendleton of the World Financial Corporation. Reed joined the Sons of Tiw after hearing Pendleton speak on the future of the world.

  Reed coveted Pendleton’s friendship. At the drop of Pendleton’s name, doors opened for Reed within respectable circles. Pendleton valued Reed almost as much as he valued his concept of a future utopian society.

  In the world of espionage, Reed’s reputation excelled. He was sharper than most and arguably the best mind for running a KGB-style organization. Allied with no country, not interested particularly in personal gain, Reed crafted every assignment into a work of art.

  Now the name Hercules was on Reed’s radar compliments of Pendleton.

  Reed filed what was left of his nails as he walked through his house to his communications lab. The lab, located on the upper tier of this white-stone home, contained five separate satellite hookups with voice-activated controls.

  “Connect to Logan.”

  The instant Reed spoke a screen lit up and the words, Stand by, flashed red. Then a visual of a man standing, looking out a window toward what appeared to be a mountain range, emerged onto the screen.

  “Enjoying the morning, Logan?”

  “Yes, immensely, I presume you’re interested in the diagnostics. That’s why you’re calling. Isn’t it?”

  Logan appeared relaxed. Reed wasn’t the relaxed type.

  When planning a professional assassination attempt, the first pieces of the puzzle were logistically sound locations, places where the target of the hit spent most of his or her time. Reed needed those puzzle pieces to prepare a plan for Pendleton.

  “What do you have for me, Mr. Logan?”

  “The top five locations where both President Monroe and his wife are most likely to be together are: the presidential bedroom, Air Force One, Marine One, the President’s helicopter, and the Stagecoach, the President’s limousine. The two spent a good deal of time together in those locations or vehicles during our sample time trial.”

  Logan walked to a serving table and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “Why not at his family ranch?” Reed asked.

  “Too large an area and too wide a margin for error. Plus, Monroe rarely visits the ranch.” Logan took a sip of his coffee, and Reed said his goodbye.

  Not a player in the larger scheme of things, Logan flew immediately off Reed’s radar. He called his strategists. These were three specialists. Assassins in their own right, each was available to the highest bidder. More than that, they were confidants who knew and respected Reed’s work.

  “Contact Lytle, Morgan, and Van Meer.”

  Reed pressed a button on his hand-held controls and divided the screen in thirds.

  “Raining in Donegal, Lytle?” Reed asked.

  “Aye and raining in Germany as well. Stromiehre’s stock dropped because of the hiccup in the States. We need to know who precisely is behind this Hercules organization.”

  “Probably Monroe, he’s one of the topics of this meeting.”

  Morgan came onboard from New Plymouth, New Zealand. He’d been awakened in the middle of the night.

  “Bloody poor timing,” he grouched.

  Van Meer, Pendleton’s best friend, hooked in from his home in Delft, where he lived when he wasn’t on an assignment. Van Meer and Reed had worked together for years. Reed trusted him more than most, indeed if anyone could really be trusted when it came to espionage.

  “If I’m correct,” Reed said, “Van Meer has a list of MI6 moles inside the U.S. Secret Service and the CIA. Before we can strike Monroe internally, we have to infiltrate Monroe’s security team. Before we can succeed in a terrorist attack externally, we have to find out how the president’s security team and Hercules operate.”

  The sandy-haired Van Meer could be seen pounding away on his computer. Then he turned to the satellite screen and addressed Reed. “We have several men assigned to important political figures. Several have done some courier work for us. But five particularly are good at information access, targeting, and destruction if you understand my drift.”

  Reed pondered a moment. “What’s the likelihood of placing someone on this new Emerald hotel’s kitchen or cleaning staff? More powerful politicians gather there than in the Congress.”

  “Unskilled workers don’t have access to important people. For efficiency, we need to get a political tagalong inside, someone accompanying a high rank government official. The less important the person is the less attention he’ll get from the eyes of Herculean moles. Hercules will have agents there with all the fat politicians around.” Van Meer seemed to scan the faces of his partners. His boyish features an
d steel blue eyes were now clear via satellite.

  “Van Meer is right. A quiet observer might spot a likely Herculean simply by watching and listening.” Reed furrowed his eyebrows. “Once a target is spotted, we cut him or her off from the others and extract the information we need.”

  He rubbed his pants with a lint brush and looked up at his screens. “Lytle, get someone inside the Emerald.”

  “Roger that,” Lytle answered.

  Reed stretched, then continued removing lint. “Now let’s get back to Monroe. Within the year, we need to assassinate him and move Vice President Edmunds into power. I’ve decided. We’ll shoot down Marine One.”

  “Interesting choice,” Van Meer muttered.

  “The craft lacks speed. There are multiple sites where a sharpshooter can obtain an accurate fix on the helicopter along its path to Andrews Air Force Base.”

  “We shoot down the helicopter with a surface to air missile?” Morgan sounded skeptical. “The time to implement would be eighteen months.”

  “No, within the year.”

  In the back of Reed’s mind, another plan was forming in case the helicopter attempt failed. Placing an agent inside the White House close to the Presidential bedroom intrigued him. An embedded agent could strike late at night. But it would take longer to put an agent in place than to shoot down the helicopter. He’d move on Plan B himself, while the others worked on Plan A.

  “I’ll need your blueprint on destroying the helicopter,” Reed said. “When Arthur Pendleton demands a plan, he wants an immaculately precise one. I’m to speak with him in three weeks, and I want a foolproof map laid out.”

  #

  “Yes, Mr. Browne, I’m expecting Ambassador Zelinoff. The Republic of Georgia is always welcome.” Peacock batted her eyelashes as three tall, rugged but stately men approached her. “And who are these handsome men with you, Ambassador?”

  “My translator and my bodyguard, beautiful one.” Zelinoff took her hand and planted a juicy kiss on her that made her want to wipe her mouth on her sleeve. She resisted the urge.