Jim McGill 04 The Last Ballot Cast, Part 1

by Joseph Flynn

  His mind returned to flying Sir Hollis Rudd’s Gulfstream G550. Damn, but that had been fun. True, the civil aviation aircraft was a Clydesdale compared to a racehorse like the F-22, but just to take the controls from the pilot’s seat again had been a thrill. Sir Hollis had been clear and concise in briefing him, and for that matter the plane’s computer could have flown the aircraft to New York, but it hadn’t. Welborn had, and he brought the bird in for a perfect landing.

  The best moment, though, had been when Kira poked her head into the cockpit.

  “Why, flyboy,” she said, “you actually know how to fly.”

  Sir Hollis had laughed and promised them all the champagne they could drink once they were ensconced at the Waldorf, and he’d made good on his word.

  “My, my,” a female voice said, “someone’s thinking happy thoughts.”

  Welborn blinked and saw not Kira but Elspeth Kendry.

  “May I come in?” she asked. “I promise I won’t pry.”

  “And I promise not to let any secrets slip,” Welborn said.

  He gestured Elspeth to a visitor’s chair.

  She told him, “I’ve been at loose ends lately, you may have heard.”

  “I have. I’m the same way.”

  “I’ve been trying to make myself useful, and it occurred to me there’s this fellow Linley Boland still running around loose when he’d look so much better in a cage.”

  Welborn leaned forward, put his palms on his desk.

  “You’ve found him?”

  “No, but I’ve come up with some interesting information. I thought I’d get your take on it.”

  “Tell me,” Welborn said.

  “Well, not that I have any experience catching car thieves, but I thought maybe one thing they might have in common with, say, bomb-makers, which I do know a thing or two about, is they might have their own signatures.”

  “Some technique or target they prefer?”

  “Right. So we know he went after your Porsche because you caught him trying to steal it. And I told you on your wedding day that on Monday, August fifteenth, in the Fels Point neighborhood of Baltimore, Boland grabbed a Bentley and left a dead body behind. And, of course, he left a hair behind in Leo Levy’s garage when he tried to steal the Chevy assigned to Mr. McGill.”

  “I do remember all that,” Welborn said, “and your new information is?”

  “Well, I thought after his failed attempt at Leo’s garage, Boland might have tried to grab one of his usual targets, a high-end foreign car, to console himself and prove that he hadn’t lost his game entirely. Since he was already here in town, I checked auto thefts for D.C. on Thursday, August eighteen.”

  “You found one?” Welborn asked. “One of Boland’s signature cars was stolen.”

  Elspeth held up a hand, tucking her thumb to palm. “I found four: a Porsche, a Mercedes, an Audi and a Tesla — an American car but still an exotic. What’s really interesting is that same day somebody also stole a car-carrying truck.”

  Welborn shook his head. “The guy was doing some serious compensation.”

  “Yes, he was. Now, what else might we surmise from this situation?”

  Welborn knew what Elspeth had in mind. “He stole the truck because he didn’t intend to sell the cars here in town. But just maybe he knew where he could offload them in, say, Baltimore. Where he stole the Bentley and tried to take my car.”

  “Go to the head of the class.”

  “Do I get a gold star?”

  “That or I could give you the names of the Baltimore detectives I talked to, the ones who think they might know the wholesaler up there who bought Boland’s hot rides.”

  “Is that guy in custody?”

  “Has been several times. Always calls for his lawyer and dummies up.”

  “So … I’m supposed to do what?”

  “You’re in the Air Force, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell him he gives you Boland or you’ll call in an airstrike.”

  For something like that, Welborn thought, he’d better put on his uniform.

  Whitehaven Street, NW — Washington, D.C.

  The first Monday in October was not far off and the Chief Justice of the United States, Alberto Calendri, invited his most trusted colleague on the Supreme Court, Associate Justice Titus Hawkins, to dinner.

  Mr. Chief Justice Calendri was married but had lost the company of his wife, Maria, to early onset Alzheimer’s disease. He devotedly visited her care facility twice a week; not once since she’d been there had she recognized him. Before he would leave her side, though, he knelt next to her bed and said The Lord’s Prayer. The first time he’d done that, Maria spoke the first words he’d heard from her in over a year. She prayed along with him, not missing a syllable.

  His heart had soared, thinking he was the witness to a miracle, but his wife hadn’t been restored to him. As soon as they’d both said amen, she’d lapsed back into the netherworld of her mind. The only time she ever spoke again was when they prayed together, and of late her voice rose barely above a whisper.

  It gave Calendri some comfort that if Maria could remember nothing else, she still knew the Lord. He never told anyone else about this, but having seen a living example that his faith was more than mere superstition affected the way he voted on issues that came before the court and softened the tone of the opinions he wrote.

  He now found room for a greater measure of compassion in his interpretations of the law. A man long considered a bedrock conservative had aroused the suspicion of some commentators that he was becoming a moderate, and who knew if the change might stop there.

  Mr. Justice Hawkins, a taciturn bachelor, was often derided as Calendri’s second vote. His confirmation hearings had been a spectacle of partisan politics. The Democrats had insisted they were only questioning Hawkins’ professional qualifications to sit on the high court; the Republicans countered that the opposition was questioning the nominee’s character. Hawkins, himself, had played the race card, asking the Senate Judiciary Committee members if they would have subjected a white judge to such an inquisition as he had been made to suffer.

  In the end, Hawkins had been confirmed, a vote many Democrats came to rue. Hawkins, though he had never asked a question from the bench during his tenure on the Supreme Court, voted with Calendri ninety-five percent of the time. On the rare occasions when he’d strayed, the conservative wing of the court still won, having managed to snag a vote from the other side.

  Hawkins’ few harmless dissenting votes only made it look, more than ever, that he did what Calendri told him to do. Hawkins was easily the angriest man ever to sit on the Court. He was even becoming disgruntled with his mentor; seeing Calendri’s leftward drift had inclined Hawkins’ thinking, if not yet his vote, to tack farther to the right.

  Looking at the court session ahead, Hawkins foresaw several cases on which he and Calendri would cast opposing votes. He intended to make his position clear that night, after dinner.

  The two justices dined without company, as was their custom.

  Calendri’s cook had served the blood rare prime rib that both justices loved so well. Hawkins ate with gusto. He noticed with growing irritation, though, that Calendri was picking at his food, ignoring the meat and nibbling at the potatoes and leeks.

  Damn, Hawkins thought, was the man becoming a vegan?

  Couldn’t he even eat like a Republican these days?

  “Something wrong with your food, Alberto?” Hawkins asked.

  “I don’t have much of an appetite lately. I invited you here with the intent of enjoying a good meal, a cigar and an after-dinner drink, but …” He shrugged.

  “You don’t want to discuss the upcoming docket?”

  Calendri showed his associate the saddest smile he’d ever seen from the man.

  “No, Titus, quite the opposite.”

  “The opposite being?”

  “My imminent retirement. I thought you should be the first to know. I just do
n’t have the heart for the job anymore.”

  Well, Hawkins thought, resignation would certainly keep Alberto Calendri from becoming another Earl Warren. That should have made him happy, but the thought of losing his only friend on the court left him feeling a bit lost. It wasn’t subservience that led Hawkins to follow Calendri, it was a deep trust in his intellect and a complete faith in his character.

  The times he’d disagreed with the chief justice, until recently, were honest differences of opinion. “Is it Maria?” he asked.

  “Mostly. She’s a little less with me every time I see her. I try to tell myself that means she’s a little closer to God, but that comfort, of late, has proven to be inadequate.”

  “I’m sorry, Alberto.”

  Hawkins had never been comfortable around women; never saw a reason one of them would want him for company. He’d always tried to find comfort elsewhere. Not any illegal vice or even one that might be frowned on. No, his indulgence was the country’s most socially acceptable addiction: food. He loved good food. It warmed him both physically and emotionally.

  He speared the last piece of prime rib on his plate.

  Tried to swallow it before it had been properly masticated.

  Got it caught in his throat.

  The chief justice saw the look of discomfort on his friend’s face as the obstruction occurred, and how vexation became alarm as the blockage refused to be dislodged. There was always that moment of social awkwardness on such occasions. The observer’s first impulse was to hope the moment passed without embarrassment on anyone’s part.

  When Titus Hawkins’ eyes bulged, the moment for polite hesitation was over.

  The associate justice opened his mouth, inserted an index finger and tried to pry loose the chunk of meat that was killing him, and Alberto Calendri knocked over his chair getting to his feet. He hurried around the table and hauled Hawkins to his feet. They were both solid-bodied men, to put it politely, standing less than six feet tall.

  Al Calendri had been on the wrestling team at Colgate, but that had been a long time ago. Nonetheless, he still knew how to grapple with someone. He stepped behind Hawkins, forced his friend’s arms into the air and locked his hands just above his friend’s umbilicus. He pulled with all his might, hoping to execute the Heimlich maneuver and clear Hawkins’ airway.

  He succeeded but not without causing a lethal complication: a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. A large volume of blood spilled into Hawkins’ abdominal cavity. If the chief justice had kept up with medical literature with the same dedication that he read the law, he would have known the Heimlich maneuver had been largely discredited. The recommended response to help a choking victim was to give five strong blows to the back in the area between the shoulder blades, taking care not to injure the spine in the process.

  The gap in Alberto Calendri’s lifesaving education would never be explained to him. He was surprised that in his effort to save Hawkins he had managed to lift his friend into the air. He’d never have thought he still had the strength to do that, and then he had no strength at all. The sudden pain in his chest made him think he’d been impaled.

  Both men were unconscious before they hit the floor and dead shortly thereafter.

  The combined weight of the two justices totaled almost five hundred pounds, but Calendri’s house was extremely sturdy in its construction. Their fall hadn’t even rattled the silverware on the dinner table. By the time Hawkins’ driver found them, the highest court in the land had two unexpected vacancies.

  Charlottesville, Virginia

  Damon Todd and his two fellow fugitives were getting to know each other. They came to a unanimous agreement that they’d been screwed by the CIA. None of them had ever been legally arrested, tried or convicted of any crime. Too bad those little niceties didn’t matter a good goddamn in their cases.

  “Working for a fucking spook shop is worse than being in the military.” Anderson said. “You put on a uniform, they take away maybe half the rights you had as a civilian. You start doing covert ops for the Company, man, they own you from the asshole out.”

  Crosby said, “True, but we knew that going in. It’s just that we were so jazzed about the idea of becoming badasses who didn’t answer to anyone and got to kill other badasses without going to jail for it that, hell, we’d make the same deal all over again.”

  “Would you?” Todd asked.

  “Damn right,” Anderson said. “Only this time we’d be more careful.”

  “Leave no fingerprints on the unauthorized kills we made,” Crosby said.

  “Yeah, we called some of our own shots, but we didn’t take down anyone who wasn’t going to be targeted eventually.” Anderson shook his head at the injustice of it all.

  Todd said, “If you’re right about that, you gave your superiors all the reason they needed to fear you. In a hierarchy, the structure maintains its integrity only if each member keeps to his own place. By showing those above you that you could do their jobs as well as your own, you might as well have pointed a gun to their heads.”

  Anderson laughed. “Now, there’s an idea. Too bad we didn’t have anyone like you to point out the big picture to us.”

  Crosby didn’t crack any jokes. He turned contemplative.

  “Just how much do you think you know about us, Doc? The kind of work we did and how we felt about it.”

  “I don’t know about you; I only know about me.”

  Anderson smirked. “Like he’d have any idea what it means to kill someone.”

  Crosby reminded his friend, “He killed Stanwick.”

  “Oh, yeah. Must be getting forgetful,” Anderson said.

  Crosby studied Todd. “There are others, Doc. Stanwick isn’t the only guy whose ticket you’ve punched.”

  Both former spooks looked at Todd. Waiting to see if he’d tell them.

  Todd thought about it. He’d never thought confession was good for the soul … but knowing he was still a potential target for his companions, it might make them feel more of a bond if they knew he was more like them than not.

  On the other hand, he didn’t have to let them know everything.

  If they did come for him, he’d need as much surprise as he could muster.

  He said to Crosby, “You’re right.”

  “Someone you knew or someone you didn’t?” Crosby asked.

  Anderson wanted to know, “Were you playing offense or defense?”

  Todd said, “Maybe later. If we get to know each other better.”

  The two rogue operatives nodded. They could buy that.

  But Anderson asked one more question. “How’d you feel afterward?”

  Todd thought about the man who had tried to rob him at gunpoint.

  The man he’d strangled and watched die.

  “Like there was something wrong with me,” Todd said, “and that wasn’t such a bad thing.”

  At the time, he’d glamorized it more than that, but Crosby and Anderson didn’t have to know.

  “Sonofabitch, he does know,” Anderson said.

  A feeling of kinship among them started to grow.

  They set about planning how to get to James J. McGill.

  Camp David, Catoctin Mountains, Maryland

  With Nick and two paramedics pacing behind them, McGill and Patti set off on their morning three-mile walk around the grounds of the presidential retreat. After a week of taking things easy, they upped the tempo to moderately brisk. Actually, Patti was the one who determined their speed. The White House physician had told her as long as she could speak comfortably to her husband and did not experience any chest pain she would not be going too fast.

  McGill kept a close eye on Patti, making sure her face didn’t become flushed or her breathing labored. He consciously stayed a half-step ahead of her; if she suddenly pitched forward, she’d be easier to catch. If she fell backward, he’d have to be really quick.

  Kenny had been moved to a bedroom in Aspen lodge, down the hall from his father and stepmothe
r’s suite. He had his own contingent of medical professionals nearby, but he’d been delighted to get out of the hospital, and the fresh country air seemed to be aiding his recovery. He’d told McGill that morning that he was looking forward to the day he could join him and Patti on their walks.

  Meanwhile, he was happy to Skype with Liesl Eberhardt and other friends in Evanston.

  Back in D.C., Abbie was attending classes at Georgetown with a reinforced cordon of Secret Service protection. Deke Ky headed the protection detail. McGill, despite lingering hard feelings, felt good about that.

  Caitie was in Evanston, with Carolyn and Lars, and back in school. Caitie’s security had been supplemented, too, and extended to McGill’s ex-wife and her husband. Carolyn said it wasn’t too oppressive. She admitted that Lars preferred having professionals keep them safe rather than have her continue to carry a gun.

  McGill felt the same way.

  Chana Lochlan had been warned and she and her husband, Graham Keough, had left Washington for parts unknown, accompanied by their own private security people.

  It was a beautiful morning. The people closest to McGill’s heart were all as safe as could be. The love of his life had just linked an arm with his and given him a peck on the cheek. He should have been a happy man, but he was restless.

  Patti had been right. He wanted to find Damon Todd and neutralize any threat he might represent: because he could. But he couldn’t right now. He had to be smart. Considerate. Not rock the boat.

  Sweetie would be flying in that evening with Daryl Cheveyo and someone from the FBI. It would be good to at least get a start on throwing a net over Todd. Until they arrived, he’d spend time with his wife and his son — and work on staying fit with some of the Marines who guarded Camp David.

  Patti gave a little tug on his arm. McGill jerked in reaction.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “You want to head back?”

  “I’m fine,” Patti said. “I’d just like to know if you’re up for a little conversation.”

  “I was woolgathering, huh?”

  “Three bags full.”