Naked Ambition

by Rick Pullen

  70

  The driver pulled into the general aviation terminal at Reagan National Airport and was guided to a hangar where a private jet waited. She was the only passenger. The copilot and limo driver loaded Geneva’s luggage in the cargo hold and helped her up the stairs before pulling up the door. Then she sat for half an hour as the pilot explained he needed to complete some paperwork and get his clearances from the tower. Finally, the engines whined and the plane shimmied as they taxied toward the runway.

  “We are fourth in line for takeoff,” the captain said over the intercom.

  Geneva checked her watch and wondered about what she had done. Keith would be in the terminal by now. Just before she had left the condo, she had dialed his number to leave a message. She knew he was in the air at that time, and so she kept her message cryptic. She did not tell him she had transferred her funds out of the Cayman accounts just minutes before.

  Truthfully, she had thought about taking everything but his original $55,000 investment. Let him work his way up the ladder as she had. But then she thought better of it. If he had something, he would not be inclined to seek her out. He could afford to leave New York and lay low. And besides, how much did she really need at this point? So she left him his entire share, enough money to enable him to disappear forever. And she knew he couldn’t afford to make noise and come after her without admitting to authorities he was guilty of a major crime.

  It ached a bit to admit she’d misled and manipulated Keith to ensure his cooperation. It was a side of herself she hated, the very essence of the life she was fleeing. This one last deceit, she reasoned, was worth the price to assure her own future.

  It was over, she had told him in her message, and she’d apologized for doing it this way over the phone. He would have a great life, she’d promised, and then she had wished him luck with his writing and hung up. It was short, not sweet.

  She had always expected something to go wrong with their financial deal, but Keith had followed her instructions to the letter, and it had gone off flawlessly. It had been so insanely easy. And her involvement was all perfectly legal.

  Insider trading was still prevalent in Congress, and the Senate rules against it had been so watered down when no one was paying attention, that no elected official could effectively be prosecuted. So nothing she did as a wife of a US senator could be questioned.

  She had instructed Keith to open her brokerage account using both her name and Harv’s. Keith had never questioned why. So as far as the law was concerned, it was Harv’s money—Harv’s immune insider trading—even though he knew nothing about it and likely never would.

  And if there ever were any rumblings, Harv could easily quell a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. She knew the SEC, which was supposed to regulate Wall Street and discipline wrongdoers, was packed with Wall Street hacks and toadies. It had Wall Street’s back all the way. Typical Washington ethics, she thought.

  And as for Keith, he would keep quiet. Unlike her, Senate insider trading rules did not protect him. He could be prosecuted for receiving insider information and trading on it—to say nothing of the bogus accounts he had set up for himself.

  Imagine. A starving writer who thought he could live high without earning it—before he ever wrote a damn thing. No one got to her station in life by skipping years of humiliation—the bending and bowing to others’ unreasonable demands. The dues were expensive. Nearly everyone in Washington had to pay at one time or another. He was a writer. Even if he was from New York—especially if he was from New York—he should know better. Washington arrogance mixed with youthful exuberance, she thought. But she had given in and let him have his share. In the end, she reasoned, he really did earn it, and she would be forever grateful.

  Geneva leaned back in her soft leather seat and closed her eyes. The jet banked into a turn, and she felt the sun’s rays skate across her face. It reminded her of where she was going.

  She opened her eyes and looked around the small cabin. The female flight attendant sat in the front of the plane. Geneva slumped in her large swivel seat, stretched her legs, and kicked off her shoes. She looked up, realizing she could barely stand without hitting her head under the low cabin ceiling.

  “Would you mind turning around?” Geneva asked. “I’d like to change my clothes.”

  She pulled off her wool sweater and tight designer jeans and changed into a billowy white blouse and short, baggy navy-blue shorts. No underwear. She was finally comfortable.

  “Thank you,” she said to the attendant, who did not turn around, but waved her hand back at Geneva, signaling she heard her. “It’s okay. Really,” she told the attendant.

  The attendant finally turned to acknowledge her. “Drink, ma’am?” she asked.

  “Love one. Weed, please.” Jeremiah Weed, Geneva meant, the blended whiskey she had given Beck back on Grand Cayman that had helped him sleep that night. An air force colonel in the Pentagon’s contracts office had told her once how fighter pilots celebrated surviving yet another dangerous mission. Upon their return, they would toast one another with the Weed. She thought it was appropriate and had requested the jet service stock a bottle for her trip.

  She swirled it around in her mouth and swallowed, feeling the burn. The late morning sun now stood directly overhead as she peered

  through the porthole at the wispy clouds between her and the earth five miles below. She set her drink down, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes again.

  She thought about how she had intended on only befriending Beck and leaking him the story. Yet someone—she did not know who—had beaten her to it before they had even gotten to Grand Cayman. And now, as of this morning, she had severed her ties with the island, having moved her money to a bank in Great Abaco, in the Bahamas. There, it now awaited her and her private jet, which would land in another two hours.

  The smile did not leave her face. Almost everything had worked out as planned. The only thing she hadn’t counted on was falling for a newspaper reporter with a silly mustache who tended to talk to himself. He was now a casualty of her war—her biggest and her only regret. She thought about Beck for a long while. She missed him. It would have been nice, she thought, if he could have been part of her life.

  And what would she do with her life now? She hadn’t thought that through. She told herself she had plenty of time to figure it out.

  Then the Weed kicked in, and she fell asleep.

  Another mission accomplished.

  71

  Geneva stepped deliberately onto the rocking ferryboat in Great Abaco’s Marsh Harbour marina and into her new life. The private jet arrived right on time, and getting through customs at the tiny airport took about a minute. The ferry would take her to a private cay about a twenty-minute ride across the large natural harbor. The boat captain, dressed in shorts and a wrinkled light blue fishing shirt, hefted her two large bags aboard the water taxi. She managed the carry-on and her briefcase.

  She had rented a furnished villa with an option to buy, which faced the sunrise over the Caribbean. It was one she had admired when she and Harv stayed in a nearby cottage for two weeks seven years ago. It was five acres of privacy and three hundred feet of private beachfront on a private island. Finally, her piece of paradise. The $4 million asking price was now well within her means. She felt giddy, like a child, and almost laughed out loud for no other reason than sheer elation. She was free to do anything she wanted—absolutely anything, she reminded herself.

  The Bahamian government and people frowned upon nudity on their public beaches, but a private island, by definition, set its own rules. And the weather and people were both warm and inviting. Unlike Cayman, it had seasons. In the winters, the temperatures sometimes dropped into the sixties. Summers were in the eighties. There were blue skies and sunshine.

  She could go skinny-dipping any day she wanted, she told herself. And she could lie naked in the sun on the patio of her secluded estate, and no one would know she was there. No ca
rs honking on the streets below. No presidential helicopters hovering overhead. Only the sounds of waves lapping on the shore. She would finally have her privacy, her peace of mind.

  She looked out over the harbor. Abaco catered to hundreds of sailboats and private yachts that converged on the island each spring. Marsh Harbour became a beautiful enclave of money with ambition bobbing conspicuously at the end of an anchor line. The anxiety that created it all was temporarily left behind. That was something Geneva completely understood.

  She remembered Great Guana Cay, one of the small islands that enclosed the harbor. It was known for Nipper’s, a funky outdoor beach bar with music, a rickety dance floor, a small swimming pool, and ocean access far below via a sandals-only set of weathered and splinter-riven steps. She and Harv had spent several afternoons there enjoying the crowd, drinking exotic island concoctions, and dancing. She wasn’t sure if she would revisit it in her new life. She feared too many memories. It would be strange without Harv.

  Both to the north and south of Great Guana Cay were several private cays for residents only. Together, they enclosed the harbor, making it one of the safest havens for boaters in the Caribbean. Hundreds of boaters would take their dinghies to shore each day, party, and then return in the evening to their personal floating hotels to sleep it off. She looked forward to making new acquaintances—people who didn’t pay attention to her previous life.

  The breeze was brisk, and the temperature was warm on this January day. Geneva sat near the ferry’s open stern, watching the luminous salt spray hurled by the powerful prop. Backlit by the afternoon sun, the spray glistened as the boat bounced and sliced through the chop.

  A young blonde woman, maybe in her early thirties, and her two young, blond sons sat on a long bench across from her with their backs against the ferry’s starboard wall. The boys swung their feet back and forth in rhythm as the boat rocked—their legs too short to touch the floor. Geneva wondered if she could have been that young woman if she had taken another path. She would now have had a family, maybe two young boys of her own. She sighed quietly, feeling the pain of loss and the effect her brother’s death had had on her decision not to have children.

  Instead, she had chosen a lifestyle of status built around disingenuous relationships and predicated on patriotic fervor. In reality, her life had been a vicious merry-go-round of self-interest masquerading as the public good. And what did she have to show for so many years in Washington? A divorce from a man she no longer wanted to be with. She had never envisioned herself at this point in her life being alone.

  She wondered now if she had ever really loved him—or anyone else for that matter. Had she spent all of these years running away from her past? She felt a heavy emptiness. What had she done with her life?

  Sitting next to the young family were some native laborers in T-shirts and gray trousers, their dark skin and clothes caked in white dust— probably from a day of laying block, building someone’s beachfront mansion, she guessed. Geneva imagined them returning home to loving families on one of the cays. The laborers joked with the pilot, trading island gossip and news. This, no doubt, was their daily commute. There was no need for radio traffic reports every ten minutes to warn them of a horrific accident blocking the road ahead and suggest an alternative route. This wasn’t the daily migraine of darting between lanes, cutting off another angry driver doing the exact same thing, and calculating a new direction to get home in time for dinner and a stiff drink. There was no road rage here.

  The ferry slowed, and the wake and spray died down as they turned gently into a small cove. Private docks dipped their rickety legs in the water on both sides of the water taxi as it chugged slowly by. Finally, Geneva spied a larger concrete pier ahead where about a dozen people mingled, waiting to board or greet the young family, she guessed.

  Looking at the mother and her boys, the giddy feeling Geneva had been experiencing left her body completely. A cold melancholy fell over her. She had focused on getting here, not on what came next. She hadn’t even thought about dinner.

  The boat bumped against the dock, knocking her slightly off-balance. The crew threw their lines to waiting arms on the dock. The locals knew the drill and aided the crew in tying the boat securely to the pilings. Only then did the captain help the young family step onto the platform.

  The workmen looked at Geneva and nodded for her to go next. The captain tossed her bags up on the dock and helped her step from the rocking boat to the solid footing of the pier. She pulled her bags together around her.

  Damn, she thought, she had forgotten. She needed a taxi to help with her luggage. Was there even one on the island?

  “Madam, need some help?” came a familiar voice from behind.

  She whirled around, recognizing that resonant tone. Her heart leaped. Beck was standing on the pier, not twenty feet away, shirtless and wearing khaki cargo shorts.

  “How did you? What are you? Oh my god.” Geneva dropped her carry-on bags and ran to him. They embraced. She grabbed him tightly around the neck and pulled his face to hers. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed tightly, burying his face in her hair.

  “I can’t believe you found me.” She nuzzled her face in his chest, feeling his warmth and inhaling the aroma of his body.

  “You know me. I love the thrill of the chase,” he said. “I just can’t let a good story like this get away from me so easily.”

  She pulled his face to hers again and kissed him hard on the lips. She clung to him. She wanted to revel in this moment, this warm feeling. They kissed again. And again.

  Finally, she rested her hand against his chest and pushed back, looking deeply into his eyes. She hadn’t seen this one coming. Thank god everything did not go according to plan.

  “How did you find me?”

  “It was your ambition.”

  She froze.

  He knew. How did he know? She had worked so hard to keep her plan a secret from him. Only Keith was supposed to know about the money, and she had taken precautions to assure he would never talk.

  If Beck knew, who else knew? Where had she and Keith slipped up? Could this mean her plan to escape and live a quiet life in obscurity was in jeopardy?

  Her head swirled. She couldn’t think. She had no answer.

  Beck tilted his head and studied her. “You okay?”

  Geneva jumped—startled, realizing she was staring, her jaw agape. She must be a sight, she thought. She could feel her cheeks warming. Was she blushing? “Sorry . . . my ambition?” She stumbled over the words, struggling to regain control.

  “Come on, Jen. You know. Your naked ambition.”

  “Oh. Oh. You mean . . .” She looked down and gently closed her eyes. She buried her face in his chest again and beamed broadly. Her heart stopped frantically pumping, and her pulse geared down to island time again. He didn’t know. He didn’t know about the money.

  She remembered their conversation in Grand Cayman, telling him how much she loved this island. That explained how he had found her. Her secret was safe. He wasn’t here about the money. He was here for her.

  She pushed back and traced her index finger along at least two day’s worth of stubble on his chin, then touched his mustache. That silly mustache. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed it.

  Beck motioned at their surroundings. “This is quite a place. It’s a bit out of my price range though.”

  “Oh, it’s not that expensive. Looks can be deceiving.”

  “I’d say. I still don’t know how you do it. Escape Washington. Retire here. You’re amazing.”

  “A girl’s got to have a few secrets.”

  He smiled.

  She gazed into his eyes. “You know, I’m free now.”

  Beck laughed. “No, you’ve never been free. You’re one very expensive lady. You’ve cost me dearly, but you’re worth every penny.” “I mean I’m single again.” “I know,” he said softly. “That’s why I’m here.”

  Geneva pulled him closer to h
er and rested her hand against his chest, their eyes still locked. She ran her finger across his chest, drawing a small circle where she felt his heart beating. “I need to be wooed properly, of course.”

  “That would mean flowers.”

  “That’s a start.”

  “And I guess I need to dress the part. Do I need a tie to go with these shorts?”

  She looked at him standing there bare chested. “Not exactly.”

  “Well, at least a shirt.”

  “Nope.”

  “Then sandals. Should I wear sandals?” “That’s not what I had in mind.”

  “Then, lady, I’m afraid I’ve got absolutely nothing to wear.” “You know just the right thing to say to a girl to make her feel special.”

  72

  President Michael Harvey sat ill at ease behind the Resolute Desk, a nineteenth-century gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes. He shifted in his chair and glanced out of the large Palladian window at the dormant rose garden and White House grounds. The afternoon sun shone a spotlight on his new backyard on this cloudless January day. A marine in full-dress uniform stood erect on the portico outside in the bitter cold.

  President John F. Kennedy was the first to bring the ornate desk into the Oval Office. Harvey rubbed his hands over the surface as he sat and surveyed his new official digs. He was in the Oval Office alone for the first time. The nonstop inauguration festivities had given him no time to examine his new surroundings. His own art and personal photographs already hung on the freshly painted walls. His shoes settled into the deep plush pile of the newly laid pale blue carpeting emblazoned with the dark presidential seal that he had personally chosen.

  He felt giddy.

  A note lay on the desk from former President Bill Croom, welcoming him to the hardest job on the planet. A nice tradition, he thought. What a powerful statement to the world. After more than two hundred years, this experiment in democracy still worked. This peaceful transfer of power, he thought, was a shining example for all.