by Allan Topol
Praise for The Washington Lawyer
“The Washington Lawyer is a thrilling tale of intrigue and revenge at the highest levels in the American government—told from an insider’s point of view. The action is nonstop, from the gripping prologue to the satisfying end. Not to be missed!”
—Joan Johnston
New York Times best-selling author of Sinful
“Archeologist professor Allison Boyd doesn’t believe her beautiful twin sister, congressional aid Vanessa Boyd, drowned in the Caribbean while away for the weekend alone. Vanessa was many things but ‘alone’ was never one of them. Convinced Vanessa was murdered, Allison heads to Washington to uncover the truth. As she finds herself caught up in a tangled web of power players, she begins to realize how far some people will go to keep a secret. No matter the cost.
Fast paced and action-packed, Topol expertly weaves together power, murder, and intrigue to paint a chilling picture of the sinister underbelly of Washington politics. A thrill ride that doesn’t let up.”
—Beth McMullen
Author of Original Sin and Spy Mom
“Rich with international intrigue, The Washington Lawyer bristles with insider details, heart-stopping action, and memorable characters. This is Washington politics at its most revealing, told by a top attorney who knows where the truth—and the bodies—are buried.”
—Gayle Lynds
New York Times best-selling author of The Assassins
“Morals, ethics, values, and integrity often go out the window when temptations come your way. What happens when two men let their greed and desire for wealth and power overtake their moral compasses, and find that one simple indiscretion leading to one wrong choice can bring down your entire world? …
Once again author Allan Topol delivers a plot and storyline that will keep readers in suspense from start to finish … When the truth is revealed whose damage control wins out? Find out when you read this five-star novel.”
—Fran Lewis
Author, creator and editor of MJ magazine, and host on Red River Radio Show and World of Ink Network
Also by Allan Topol
FICTION
The Fourth of July War
A Woman of Valor
Spy Dance
Dark Ambition
Conspiracy
Enemy of My Enemy
The China Gambit
The Spanish Revenge
The Russian Endgame
The Argentine Triangle
NON-FICTION
Superfund Law and Procedure (coauthor)
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations within cities, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events and locales or persons described, either living or deceased, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Allan Topol
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
This edition is published by SelectBooks, Inc.
For information address SelectBooks, Inc., New York, New York.
First Edition
ISBN 978-1-59079-266-7
ISBN: 9781590792964
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Topol, Allan.
The Washington lawyer / Allan Topol. – First Edition.
p. cm.
Summary: “In the high-stakes world of Washington politics, hotshot lawyer Andrew Martin is put to the test. When longtime friend Senator Wesley Jasper calls, with explosive news–a sex tryst at Martin’s beach house in Anguilla has gone horribly awry–Martin must decide how far he’ll go to secure his nomination for chief justice”– Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-59079-266-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Adultery–Fiction. 2. Scandals–Fiction.
3. Washington (D.C.)–Fiction. 4. Political fiction.
I. Title.
PS3570.O64W37 2015
813’.54–dc23
2014030930
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to my wife, Barbara, my partner in this literary venture
Acknowledgments
I have enormous gratitude for my publisher, Kenzi Sugihara, who founded SelectBooks. Kenzi read The Washington Lawyer in a weekend, and his enthusiasm for the novel gave me a huge boost. This is our third novel together and it has been a pleasure working with Kenzi.
All of the people at SelectBooks have been wonderful: Nancy Sugihara and Molly Stern in the editing of my manuscript, and Kenichi Sugihara as the Marketing Director.
My agent, Pam Ahearn, added critical advice on key story elements as well as editorial insights. Again, it has been terrific working with Pam.
A special thanks to my wife Barbara, who added valuable insights and suggestions on draft after draft. She particularly helped me shape the characters as what was known in our house as “the sisters book” gradually became The Washington Lawyer.
Anguilla
Sunday, November 10
Life could never be better than this, Senator Wesley Jasper thought. He closed his eyes and leaned back in the chaise on the sand at Shoal’s Bay. It was eleven in the evening, and above the deserted Caribbean beach a full moon, in a cloudless star-laden sky, peered down on the island of Anguilla. What a way to spend the long Veteran’s Day weekend. He was sated from the food, wine, and most of all the mind-blowing sex with Vanessa Boyd. But then tomorrow … Oh well, all good things have to end.
“Hey, I’m not losing you, am I?” Vanessa said.
“Just relaxing,” he replied, opening his eyes, “after that wonderful dinner.”
“Don’t forget what happened before dinner.”
“Are you kidding. I could never forget that. I still have the taste of you in my mouth.”
“Wes, you’re an amazing lover.”
“You mean for a guy my age?”
“Nonsense. You’ve ruined all of the thirty-something-year-olds for me. After this weekend, why would I want one of them? They don’t know what it takes to satisfy a woman the way you do.”
Jasper wanted to believe that the gorgeous blonde—definitely natural—former runway model meant it, but deep down he knew she was flattering him. Still, he enjoyed hearing her say it. He felt younger with her. Maybe next week he’d color the gray starting to form at the temples of his coal-black hair.
He watched her reach into her purse on the small table that held a bottle of red wine and two glasses.
She pulled out a half full pack of cigarettes and fished around inside, cursing, “Dammit. I brought four for the weekend. There’s got to be one more joint in here somewhere. I did such a good job concealing them to avoid a customs search that I can’t find the sucker.”
He cringed at her words. In his position, the last thing he needed was to be busted for drugs; and Anguilla had a zero tolerance policy.
“Aha, success,” she said pulling out the joint carefully.
She crossed over to his chair. He moved his bare feet to give her room to sit between his legs, facing him. The only sound came from the gently lapping Caribbean against the beach. As she leaned over to light the joint and her long hair cascaded over her face, he saw the tops of her breasts and the protruding nipples beneath the thin yellow sundress with spaghetti straps. He felt himself becoming aroused again. God, he hadn’t been like this in twenty years.
She took a deep drag on the joint, closed her eyes, and blew out the smoke. Then she held it
out to him.
“Sorry, I don’t do that.”
“Creep.”
With one hand she held the joint. With the other, she stroked the white cotton slacks covering his crotch. When she finally finished the cigarette, she lifted a wine glass and took a long sip.
“Great wine,” she said. “I intend to learn something about wine. That’s one of my projects for this fall. That and making a decision about graduate school or law school for next year.”
“Your hand feels so good. You’ve got a fabulous touch. To think you used that same hand to blast tennis balls at me this afternoon.”
“Very funny. Most of the time I was trying to get my racket on the ball and hang in there. You were doing all the blasting.”
“Well, I’ve been playing longer. A lot longer, I’m afraid.” He recalled being on the Yale tennis team. Despite their twenty-year age difference, he was in better physical shape from regular exercise. Unlike most men in their mid-fifties, Jasper didn’t have a protruding gut.
She moved her hand up to his face and caressed his cheek, then down to his left arm and to his hand. She fiddled with the gold band on his third finger. “Where does your wife think you are this weekend?”
He pulled back and sat up. For three days he had banished Linda from his mind. Now reality returned with acute clarity. He had a wife who was in Denver visiting her mother. He had a son, and a daughter in college almost Vanessa’s age. Ah well, they wouldn’t know. They wouldn’t be hurt.
“Argentina on business. Ever been there?” he asked, eager to change the subject.
“No, but I’d love to go. Will you take me someday?”
“Sure.”
“When will you leave your wife and marry me?”
She said it in a matter of fact tone. No intro or lead-in, as if she were calmly placing a live grenade on the chair. But her words hit him like a ton of bricks. He viewed Vanessa as a sexual play toy. Regardless of how good the sex was with Vanessa, he couldn’t possibly leave Linda for her. Wesley Jasper loved his position in the Senate as the powerful chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He was facing a tough reelection battle. Trading Linda for a committee staffer would finish his political career. Besides, he had his family, children whom he loved.
He carefully weighed his response. He had to play this carefully. By going public, Vanessa could make trouble for him. He’d seen it happen to other colleagues. He had to put this genie back into the bottle until after the election. He’d worry about it then.
When he didn’t respond, she added, “In May when we were in Paris, you said that you would marry me, but you wouldn’t say when.”
“That’s right. I will leave Linda, and we will get married. It’s just that the timing’s not good right now with my reelection coming up next year.”
Her face hardened. “I’ll wait another year. That’s all.”
Her words conveyed a veiled threat.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been lied to by other men about marriage. This time I have an insurance policy to make sure you keep your word.”
“An insurance policy?” He was stunned.
“When we were in Tokyo in July and sharing a suite in the Okura, I was in the bedroom when you held your top-secret late night meeting. You know what I mean?”
His heart began pounding. “You were asleep in the bedroom. I was reading in the living room. There was no meeting.”
“Don’t lie to me.” She sounded indignant. “I hate it when men do that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Before the trip, I overheard you scheduling the meeting. So, I planted a recording device in the living room. I now have a CD with the recording of your meeting. I listened to it again a few days ago. I have no doubt that if I delivered it to the Washington Post you’d lose a lot more than your political career. You’d go to jail for a very long time.”
Jasper was furious. He couldn’t believe she’d done this. What an ungrateful little bitch! After all he’d done for her. He’d taken her to Paris and Tokyo. And the gifts he’d given her—a Chopard watch and a Bulgari bracelet. My God! Now this!
“So when are we getting married?” she asked again.
His heart was pounding. Keep control, he cautioned himself. He had to find a way to placate her.
“Right after the election, I’ll divorce Linda. I promise. We’ll be married before Christmas. We’ll come back here for a honeymoon or anywhere you’d like. In thirteen months you’ll be Mrs. Wesley Jasper.” He said it with conviction. Another false promise from a politician accustomed to making them.
She stared at him for a long moment, then added. “I can wait a year. But just so you know, and don’t forget, I have that recording.”
“I would do it even if you didn’t have it.”
She leaned over and kissed him. “I’ll be a good wife for you.”
“I’m sure of that.”
She stood up. “We’ll have great sex all the time. Now that we’ve settled that, I’m going for a swim.”
She sashayed toward the water, her feet bare. About ten yards away, she unzipped her sundress and let it fall to the sand. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. As she bent over to pick up the dress, she paused for a minute, her legs spread, letting him admire her from the rear, the way he had most enjoyed sex with her this weekend. Certain he was watching, she laughed easily, picked up the dress and threw it back over her head. It landed on his face. The scent of her still fresh.
He tossed it onto the sand. This wasn’t working out the way he had expected. He thought about that movie with Glenn Close—the one where she killed the bunny.
He watched her walk into the water. When it was up to her waist, she dove in and swam out in smooth strokes. He followed her blonde head, getting smaller and smaller under the moonlight. Then he stood up and walked along the beach. He saw his whole life crumbling and disintegrating. From the bluff above the beach, close to the villa they had been using for the weekend, he heard a noise. He pivoted and saw a small native boy, maybe ten or twelve, tossing a ball to a dog.
He shouted at the boy. “Get away.” The boy and the dog disappeared.
After another minute, Jasper pulled off his clothes, racing toward the water. He dove in and swam out to Vanessa.
Israel
At five on Monday morning, the sun was already beating down on the dig. Allison Boyd, dressed in khaki slacks and a pale blue polo shirt, with her brown hair up in a ponytail, stood with her hands on her hips watching backhoes excavate the stubborn, rocky soil. Three Israelis worked nearby with picks and shovels. Allison was extremely pleased.
The thirty-four-year-old archeology professor from Brown University had, with incredible persistence, overcome so many obstacles to get to this point. First, there were all those much older stuffed-shirt male professors, her peers in the United States, England, and Israel, who had dismissed the idea of discovering a town from King Solomon’s time in this location. But Allison’s development of a groundbreaking new dating technology that could establish relics were from Solomon’s time, not the Omride Dynasty, caught the attention of British philanthropist Moses Halpern. He traveled to Providence to tell Allison that he believed in her work and admired her persistence, and he was willing to fund her search for the town. She believed this would be a major breakthrough.
The site work had begun three months ago, and then was shut down for two weeks because an official in the Religious Ministry claimed they were digging on holy ground. Allison and her Israeli partner, Zahava, went over that official’s head and got the order reversed thanks to the intervention of a former general, now an archeologist, who told them, “I admire the commitment to the project the two of you have.”
That work stoppage order was now a distant memory. They had moved lots of earth. Allison was hopeful they would find something. If they didn’t … well, she hated to think about that possibility—the money and time wasted—the damage to her reputation
and that of Zahava, whom she had dragged into this.
She and Zahava were chugging bottles of water and watching the backhoes when Zahava asked Allison, “How’d you happen to become an archeologist?”
“When I was a little girl my father told me I had too much curiosity. I always wanted to know what was happening. No, it was more than wanting to know. I had to know. If a family member was ill, I leaned on other relatives to tell me what was wrong and if they would recover. I’d press my parents about our family history and their backgrounds. Digging up facts excited me. In school I thought about being a journalist—an investigative reporter—because they dig up stories. But writing wasn’t my strong suit. The summer I was ten years old we took a trip to New Mexico, visiting the remains of indigenous communities. The guide told us how the people lived in caves on the sides of hills and how their society functioned. But what I saw in those caves spoke to me louder than the guide. I became hooked. I loved it,” she bubbled. “I still do. What about you?”
Before Zahava had a chance to answer, Allison’s assistant Jonathan raced up the rocky mound toward them. “Look at this,” he said bursting with excitement.
He was holding a black metal object. Allison placed it on a table and examined it under a microscope. The sun was reflecting off the metal. It might be a piece of a spear or other weapon from King Solomon’s time, she thought.
Although so many had argued against her, telling her she was stubborn and pigheaded, she was convinced they were in the right place. Now she had a substantial object. But she cautioned herself not to get too carried away. They would need a lot more study of this metal and much more digging before any definitive conclusions could be reached.
Zahava was looking over her shoulder. “What do you think?” Zahava asked.
“It’s too soon to draw a conclusion,” she responded.
Zahava turned to Jonathan. “Tell them to shut down the backhoes and use only shovels for now.” Jonathan raced off.
