by Stephen Frey
“A thousand dollars?You must be joking. That stone is three carats.”
“Yes. Three carats ofsheet .”
Conner walked out of the jewelry store, diamond ring rewrapped inside the tissue and the tissue restowed in his shirt pocket. Art Meeks, the man who had appeared out of nowhere on Lexington Avenue yesterday, mentioned that Liz Shaw’s fiancé had cut short a business trip to get back to the States. Confirming the existence of an engagement Conner had started to doubt. But the ring was paste. Worth just a thousand bucks. Why would a star investment banker at Morgan Sayers give Liz a three-carat diamond worth a thousand dollars? And how could that investigative firm Gavin used have missed the fact that she was engaged?
As Conner headed west on Forty-seventh, he caught a glimpse of a familiar head of blond hair shimmering in the afternoon sunlight. The woman was on the sidewalk across the street, moving quickly in the opposite direction.
He took off, slicing between two taxis and past a delivery truck to get to the other side of the street, craning his neck as he ran. He raced down the crowded sidewalk, dodging pedestrians. Almost bowling over a man in a suit, but catching him, steadying him, and then racing ahead again.
She was almost to Sixth Avenue, but he could still see her. Barely. Long blond hair not covered by a baseball cap this time. She was crossing the wide avenue in the middle of a group of people. It had to be the same woman.
Conner made it to the corner just as the light changed. Just as the blonde made it to the other side and red turned to green. But he sprinted across the intersection anyway. Cars skidded around him, but he made it safely to the other side. Only a few more feet.
As he came up behind the woman, she stopped and turned to face him.
“Hello, Conner,” she said calmly.
It was Amy Richards. The woman who had stopped him outside the deli on Second Avenue two nights ago.
“Why are you in such a hurry?” she asked, smiling.
“I thought you were . . .” Conner’s voice trailed off.
“Thought I was . . . someone else?”
Conner took a couple of deep breaths. “No, no.”
Amy’s expression hardened. “You couldn’t have thought I was Mandy Stone.”
“What?”
“We don’t even have the same color hair.”
“Mandy Stone? Why would I think you were Mandy Stone?”
Amy shook her head. “I’m sorry about the other night, Conner,” she murmured. “I was such a bitch.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I had a bad day, but that’s no excuse. I hope you can forgive me. But I wouldn’t blame you if you never called me.”
“I told you I would.”
Amy leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “I’d really like that.” She glanced at her watch and sighed. “I wish I could stick around, but I’m late to meet a friend. Bye.”
Conner watched Amy walk away, still breathing hard. Then his cell phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket, checking the number on the LCD. “Hello, Gavin.”
“Hello, pal.”
“What’s up?”
“Great news.”
“Really? What?”
“The presentation we made to Pharmaco this morning must have gone over pretty well. The CEO just called to let me know that Phenix Capital has a new client. Congratulations, pal. You’re gonna be rich.”
9
During the last twenty-four hours, Washington, D.C., had enjoyed clear skies and unseasonably dry air. Heat and humidity were more typical for the nation’s capital in late August, but a cold front that had blown through the East yesterday had been replaced by an autumnlike high.
Lucas didn’t notice the weather as he walked down Wisconsin Avenue toward the center of Georgetown. He was thinking about how it would have been nice to spend tomorrow—Saturday—camped on the grass in the shadow of the Washington Monument, studying the copy of John Watson’sSecrets of Modern Chess Strategy his uncle had sent him last Christmas. Or poring through baseball statistics inUSA Today as the pennant races heated up. But there wasn’t time. He had to push forward with his research on the jewels.
In all, there were forty-three potential smoking guns. Five individuals who had held from five to fifteen corporate board positions before becoming high-ranking officials in the administration. Just one rung below the president on a very important ladder. Five people who could destroy the president as he pressed his agenda of boardroom and Wall Street reforms during the last ninety days of what had turned into a dogfight of a campaign against a pit bull challenger. It was three months to the election and the president trailed the pit bull by five points in the polls. Two weeks ago it had been four.
The president had decided that his new agenda, aimed at slamming the rich and helping everyone else, would resonate with the masses during the stretch run to November. Grabbing headlines and airtime when he needed them. At the same time interrupting the momentum his opponent had gained over the summer by constantly banging a drum of criticism about the president’s historically close ties to big business and Wall Street. If he played his cards right, the president believed, he could drown out his opponent’s message with the headlines and the airtime and seize a healthy enough slug of the undecided vote to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
But pushing the reform agenda was a double-edged sword. The jewels—the vice president and the secretaries of treasury, state, defense, and energy—were all former corporate and investment banking senior executives. All men the president had known for years. Men the masses suspected had probably profited in some way at the expense of shareholders during their high-level corporate careers. But if someone couldprove that any of the jewels had engaged in the same kind of appalling corporate governance behavior that had come to light at Enron, WorldCom, or Tyco, it would destroy the president’s bid for a second term. At the very least making him seem blatantly hypocritical. At worst, guilty, too.
According to Franklin Bennett, party leaders were panic-stricken. Afraid that after the president announced his agenda the other side would unearth something terrible about one of the jewels.
Thatcouldn’t happen. Which was why Lucas had this assignment.
He hesitated in front of the gold-domed Riggs Bank building at the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street, doing his best to blend in with the crowd waiting for the light. Blending in would be vitally important for the next three months. Not once during his twelve years in the nation’s capital had his name ever appeared in theWashington Post . If he could say that at Thanksgiving dinner back in Illinois, the operation would have been a success.
Crossing M Street, Lucas spotted Harry Kaplan, a speechwriter who worked in the West Wing and reported directly to the deputy chief of staff, Roscoe Burns. Kaplan stood beside a mailbox, looking lost and disheveled, as usual. His wavy gray hair a rat’s nest. His bulky black spectacles sitting crookedly on his nose as he squinted at a piece of paper.
Their friendship had hatched more out of necessity than anything. Neither of them really liked anyone else in the West Wing. But they’d found that they had a mutual interest in chess, and that bond had cemented their relationship. Kaplan hadn’t turned out to be much of a challenge for Lucas on the chessboard, but he provided an opportunity to test new strategies without being a pushover. Still, the record between them was thirty-six wins and seven losses in favor of Lucas, documented in fastidious detail in Lucas’s marble notebook. It would have been forty-three to nothing if Lucas hadn’t let Kaplan win those seven games—he didn’t want Kaplan getting so discouraged, he refused to play. And the beauty of it was that Kaplan didn’t even know what was going on.
For a moment Lucas thought about turning around. Being so close to the apartment, he didn’t want to see anyone he knew. Then Kaplan spotted him.
“Hello,” Kaplan called, his expression brightening as he limped past the mailbox and Lucas stepped up onto the curb. Kaplan had been the victim of a nasty automobile accident a few years
ago. A head-on collision with a pickup truck that shattered his right leg. After three operations, there was still a pin in it. “How are you, Mr. Avery?”
“Fine, Harry. And you?”
“All right. Still working on that same speech.”
“You mean the new one you can’t tell me about?”
“Yep.” Kaplan pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose again. “Hey, I didn’t see you today. Where were you?”
“Around.”
“How about some chess tomorrow?” Kaplan suggested. “I’ve been working on this new opening against the computer.”
An opening I probably mastered years ago, Lucas thought to himself. “Love to, but I’ve got friends coming in from out of town. Got to do the tourist thing.”
Kaplan nodded compassionately. “I hear you. At least the weather’s supposed to be nice.”
“Right.”
“Maybe next week then.”
“Yeah . . . maybe.”
“Hey, do you know where this place is?” Kaplan asked, holding up a crumpled piece of paper. “J. Paul’s. I’m supposed to meet some people from Senator Lord’s office there.”
Lucas grabbed Kaplan’s shoulder and spun him around. “It’s up that way not too far,” he said, pointing.
“You wanna come?”
“Thanks, but Ireally have to get going.”
“Why?” Kaplan asked. “What’s up?”
He had to be so careful about everything for the next ninety days, Lucas suddenly realized. Even the tone of his voice. “I need to get ready for my friends. They’re flying in tonight.”
“What are you doing in Georgetown? I thought you lived over by the Capitol.”
“Ah, picking up a present for one of them. It was her birthday last month, and I didn’t send her anything.” Lucas nodded up the street. “You better get going, Harry. You’re late.” Safe bet to say that—Kaplan was always late.
Kaplan glanced at his watch. “Oh, God, you’re right. See you.”
Lucas watched Kaplan limp away. Harry was a tremendous speechwriter, but ordinary in every other way. And extremely gullible.
When Kaplan was gone, Lucas continued on M past Nathan’s restaurant and down the hill toward the Potomac River. Until he reached a plain-looking, four-story redbrick building on the left. The building’s basement apartment would serve as the operation’s headquarters for the next three months. It was close to the West Wing, but not within its walls. Which was vitally important. If word of the operation ever leaked out, the West Wing would be able to distance itself from him.
Lucas was under no illusions. If that happened, there would be no prospect of a further political career. Perhaps ofany career. Bennett had warned him that this thing was risky. If Lucas discovered something nasty about one of the jewels, said nothing, and the fact that he had covered it up was revealed later, he might become the central figure in the biggest political scandal since Watergate. But he’d made his choice. This was his chance to be somebody.
The apartment was comfortably furnished and equipped with a secure phone, a wide-screen television, and a personal computer linked to the Internet by a T-1 line. It had no windows. By design, the only access was a lone door constructed of reinforced steel and equipped with two code locks. Not only would the apartment serve as the operation’s headquarters until November, but it would also be his home. He wasn’t to go back to his apartment until this was over.
Lucas removed his coat and tie and slung them over a chair in the living room. Then moved quickly to the bedroom and retrieved a computer disk from a wall safe; he’d been instructed not to store anything on the computer’s hard drive. When he returned to the living room, he sat down at the desk beside the television and flipped on the computer. No more suits and ties for a while, he thought, glancing over at his jacket lying on the chair. Just jeans and casual shirts. He wouldn’t see the inside of the White House again until after the election.
If he needed to communicate with the West Wing, he was to leave a playing card—an eight or ten of diamonds on even-numbered days, a three or five of spades on odd ones—inside a blank envelope in a mail box at an Office Express location on the eastern edge of Georgetown. Someone at home also had a key to that Office Express mailbox, and would check it once a day late in the afternoon. The following morning someone would meet him on the Washington Mall, near the Vietnam Memorial. He was to leave a card in the box only if a meeting wasabsolutely necessary.
While the computer warmed up, Lucas moved to his jacket. From an inside pocket he removed the photograph of Brenda that had been taped to his desk drawer at the West Wing. He gazed at her face for a few moments, then turned the photograph over and scanned the faded blue, looping script on the back. “I’m so glad we found each other, Lucas,” the inscription read. “This is real.”
Two weeks after giving him the photograph, she’d dropped him cold. Never bothering to give him an explanation. They’d never made love, because she told him she wanted to save herself for marriage. And he hadn’t pushed because he respected her. He’d found out several years later that a few days after leaving him, she’d spent the night with a Northwestern University football player.
Lucas placed the photograph in one of the desk drawers—careful to put it back inside its cellophane bag, then inside a manila folder—then sat down and began tapping on the computer keyboard. Bringing up a file from the disk. The disk contained reams of information on the jewels. Information he’d compiled over the last week in anticipation of today’s “going live” order.
The first file was a biography of Bill Parker, vice president of the United States. Head of a huge private foundation prior to the election, Parker was a former chairman and CEO of one of the country’s largest car companies, as well as an ex-director of IBM and five other publicly held companies. Parker and the president had met thirty years ago playing golf at Pine Valley, an exclusive country club in southern New Jersey where business was never supposed to be discussed. In truth, more deals had probably been struck in Pine Valley’s clubhouse than in any Wall Street conference room. Both the president and vice president were hard-core golfers despite their twenty-something handicaps, and they still played together as much as possible. These days at the Congressional Club west of Washington.
The next file covered Alan Bryson, secretary of treasury. A former managing partner of the investment bank Morgan Sayers, he had served on the board of IBM with Vice President Parker and the current secretary of state, Sheldon Gray. Bryson had also served on the boards of six other publicly traded companies. He had prepped with the president and the current secretary of energy, Milton Brand, at Exeter, and they had all stayed close through the years. When the president won the election, his first call had been to Alan Bryson.
Lucas smirked as he scanned the third biography, a profile of Sheldon Gray, secretary of state. A tough talker, his penchant for intimidation rivaled Franklin Bennett’s. In fact, Bennett and Sheldon Gray were close friends. Though it was kept very quiet, the Bennetts and the Grays frequently jetted to the Grays’ compound on Bermuda for long weekends. Gray had been CEO of one of the country’s largest data processing companies, Enterprise Information Systems, and a member of seven other corporate boards, including Microsoft and Morgan Sayers, Alan Bryson’s investment bank.
Fourth was Walter Deagan, secretary of defense. Prior to his appointment by the president, he had run one of the nation’s largest defense contractors. He’d also been a member of fourteen other boards in the decade before coming to the Pentagon, including Bill Parker’s automobile manufacturer and Sheldon Gray’s Enterprise Information Systems. Deagan had been on enough boards to make a good living on that income alone. And to be harshly criticized by shareholder rights groups who believed he couldn’t possibly add value to one particular company when he was associated with so many. Walter Deagan and Franklin Bennett had also known each other for years. Ever since basic training at Parris Island.
The fifth and final
jewel was Milton Brand, secretary of energy. Prior to the election, Brand had been CEO of a California utility with interests in electric power generation and distribution, natural gas pipelines, and commodities trading in one of the company’s unregulated subsidiaries. In addition to running the utility, he had served on four other public company boards. Of all the jewels, Brand was the only one who had encountered significant legal troubles during his business career. The commodities unit of the utility had been accused of questionable trading activities. And there was circumstantial evidence that Brand had known about and encouraged the shady practices. But nothing had ever been proved and his old friend, the president of the United States, had called him to Washington to help stabilize an aging national power grid. He and Walter Deagan had known each other since childhood, growing up on the same street in Santa Monica.
Lucas rested his chin on his hand and reviewed each of the biographies once more. Bill Parker, Alan Bryson, Sheldon Gray, Walter Deagan, Milton Brand. “The Beltway Boys,” as they’d been labeled early on by the Washington press corps. The incest running through the five files was amazing—and fascinating. They’d known each other, and the president, for years. They’d been powerful forces in corporate America and on Wall Street. Then, four years ago, after conquering the business world, they’d ridden into town like a gang from the Old West to see what they could rustle up in the political arena.
The president-elect had been roundly criticized on Sunday morning talk shows and by members of the other party after appointing the jewels. Reporters had painstakingly documented the incest. There had been loud predictions of insider deals and pork barrel parties for an expanding circle of Beltway Boy cronies. But, so far, nothing had been proved. The economy was staggering and unemployment had reached 6.5 percent, leaving the president vulnerable as the election approached. But nothing untoward had come to the surface.
In all, the jewels had held forty-three board seats before coming to Washington. Forty-three potential smoking guns the president, the party, Franklin Bennett, and Lucas needed to be worried about as November approached.
