by Allan Topol
“Oh and one other thing. If you don’t find the CD but you find what looks like a bank vault key, then take it and give it to me. She may have locked the CD in a bank vault.”
“Will do.”
“If you find the CD or the bank vault key, call me on the cell and say ‘positive,’ If you don’t say, ‘negative.’”
They split. Xiang raced home, changed into a suit and tie, and put on a large, brimmed hat to conceal his face. He grabbed some tools and loaded them into a briefcase.
At 6:30, he left his car on New Hampshire Avenue and walked two blocks to Vanessa’s apartment building, a modern tan brick ten story. Vanessa had an apartment on the penthouse floor, number 10K, Jasper had told him.
The sidewalk was deserted except for a young man walking a dog while looking at his iPhone. He didn’t seem to notice Xiang.
As he approached the building, Xiang wondered if there was a guard on the desk in the lobby. If so, this could be dicey.
He opened the front door and looked around. There was a guard. A large black man, but his shaved head was down on the desk, asleep. As he passed the desk, Xiang noticed that the guard’s face covered a civil engineering text book. Must be a student from Africa, he decided.
Xiang walked softly to the elevator. The guard never even looked up. Xiang took it to the tenth floor.
The corridor was deserted. En route to Vanessa’s door at the end of the hall, Xiang heard a television playing through a closed door. In front of 10K, he glanced around, saw no one, slipped on a pair of latex gloves to avoid leaving prints, and went to work on the lock. The door clicked open in thirty seconds. His instructors had trained him well. Still no one in the corridor. He went inside and softly closed the door behind him.
The apartment was large. He entered the living room which was furnished expensively with ultra-modern pieces. White and glass predominated. The carpet and sofa were white. The coffee table was glass. The furnishings looked relatively new. He searched the living room first, then the dining room and kitchen on the left. No sign of the CD or a bank vault key.
Xiang was preparing to go to the other rooms when a copy of Vogue Magazine from fourteen years ago on the coffee table caught his eye. On the cover was a picture of a strikingly beautiful blonde. The caption read: VANESSA BOYD. AMERICA’S NEW SUPER MODEL.
Xiang sat down and read the profile. It contained a family photo of Vanessa, her twin sister Allison, and her mother, Claire, taken at a Paris show. Allison was an attractive brunette but nothing like the beautiful blonde bombshell Vanessa.
Xiang went to the other side of the apartment. He saw a study and two bedrooms. The larger was Vanessa’s; the other one must have been a guest room.
He began in the study, sitting down at Vanessa’s desk and opening the center drawer. Inside, he saw a bulky diary. Not wanting to waste time reading it, he placed it in his briefcase. He found a date book calendar. It had several entries including one for last Friday. “Anguilla with W.J.” He tucked that in his briefcase as well. No sign of a CD or bank vault key.
Based upon what Jasper said, he ignored Vanessa’s laptop.
He checked the side drawers. No CD. In one of them, he saw a stack of Verizon phone bills bound by a rubber band. Those might show calls with Jasper, he decided. So he took those as well. He leafed through Vanessa’s bank statements. No point taking those.
He checked all the other drawers in the room. No CD. No key. He looked under the oriental carpet on the wooden floor. Nothing.
Next, he searched the small bedroom and didn’t find a thing of interest.
He went into Vanessa’s bedroom and looked in the large walk-in closet. He was amazed. He had never seen so many clothes, shoes, and handbags in his life. He looked everywhere in the closet, opening each bag and reaching inside, even opening zipper compartments. No CD. No bank vault key.
In the large bedroom, he saw on the bureau several pictures of Vanessa with a woman he now recognized from the Vogue article as Allison. One was taken on a boardwalk along a beach, possibly Rehoboth. He was struck by the fact that Vanessa, not all dressed up for a shoot but casual in shorts and tank top, looked pretty, but not drop-dead gorgeous as she did in Vogue.
He was also struck by how similar the twins looked when both were in shorts and tank tops.
Xiang began opening drawers in Vanessa’s bedroom. He couldn’t believe what he saw in the underwear drawer. Must have been two dozen silk bra and matching panty sets in different colors. All neatly arranged. He looked underneath for a CD or key and came up empty. He tried to restore them to the original arrangement.
As he did, his hand stopped on a pale yellow set. Yellow was his favorite color. He carefully removed the silk panties and held them up to his face, trying to draw in her scent.
It infuriated him that Jasper, that disgusting old fool, had been having sex with Vanessa. She should have had a younger man, someone like Xiang. He closed his eyes and imagined what it would be like to make love with Vanessa. He felt his cock stiffening. Later, he told himself as he slipped the panties into his briefcase.
He checked the two bathrooms. Nothing. Satisfied it wasn’t in the apartment, Xiang pulled the hat down close to his eyes, took off the latex gloves, and left the apartment. Fortunately, no one was in the corridor.
He stepped out of the elevator and looked anxiously at the reception desk. It was deserted. Perhaps the African student had gone to the bathroom. He crossed to the front door and exited the building.
On the street, he walked at a normal pace toward his car. No one called to him. He was confident he hadn’t been seen.
Back in his apartment, he placed the encrypted phone on the desk and waited for Jasper to call with the results of his search of Vanessa’s office. With time to kill, he undressed and stretched out naked on his bed with the briefcase next to him. Merely pulling out Vanessa’s yellow panties and fingering them gave him an erection. He wrapped them around his hard cock, closed his eyes, and imagined it was Vanessa’s moist pussy. He touched himself lightly. That’s all it took. His semen wet the panties. He closed his eyes and relaxed.
Thirty minutes later, Jasper called on the dedicated cell. “Negative,” the senator said tersely.
That was bad news. Xiang desperately wanted that CD.
What to do now? Call Liu and fly to Beijing? Or continue searching for the CD here, hoping to avoid a disaster?
He paced on the living room carpet, trying to decide. Both held risks. If he told Liu now, Liu might blame him for not having better control of Jasper. But how could he have blocked this from happening? The fault was Liu’s. The spymaster had made an amateur’s mistake by not making certain his July conversation with Jasper wasn’t being overheard or recorded. Liu would never accept responsibility. He’d find a way to blame Xiang.
But staying in Washington and not telling Liu was risky as well. To be sure, the CD might be buried somewhere and never surface. But if he didn’t find the CD and it ended up in the media, Liu would severely punish him for keeping the information to himself. And at this point he had no way of finding the CD. Liu might have some ideas.
Neither was a good choice.
He was leaning toward calling Liu and flying to Beijing. At least that way he wouldn’t be hanging out alone.
Then one of the cell phones on his desk rang. The secure phone Liu had given him.
Xiang raced over and grabbed it.
“I want you to fly to Beijing immediately,” Liu said.
“Yes sir. I’ll get the first plane.”
Xiang was terrified. Had Liu found out about the CD? Had it already surfaced? Is that why he was calling?
After showering and hiding the yellow panties, he got back into his car and headed to Dulles Airport. While driving, he used his cell to book the first flight to Beijing.
He hoped he’d be returning to Washington.
* * *
At seven thirty in the morning, barefoot, Martin walked down the four cold flagstone stairs in f
ront of his house. In the heavy fog, he could barely see the street.
After stopping to retie his robe, he picked up the morning Washington Post and New York Times. He was tempted to tear into them on the spot to see if they had any stories about the chief justice appointment. No, don’t go crazy, he cautioned himself. A few minutes won’t matter. Francis wasn’t up yet. He’d sit down with coffee and do this calmly.
First, the Times said nothing about the Supreme Court. He turned to the Post. On the upper right-hand corner was a picture of Chief Justice West and an article quoting unnamed medical sources as stating that West’s prostate cancer had metastasized and he would be stepping down as soon as Braddock selected a replacement. The article went on to name Corbett, Butler, and Martin as the three candidates on the president’s short list.
Profiles of the three were on A-10. Martin flipped to that page.
“Oh … Oh,” he said when he saw that his profile was written by Rick Potts, the Post’s legal affairs correspondent.
Martin knew that Potts disliked him because he refused to talk to Potts about legal matters he was handling. Martin strongly believed that when lawyers spoke to the press, it wasn’t good for the lawyer and it wasn’t good for his client. As a result, he never discussed his cases with any reporters. Potts took umbrage at that. And they argued about it from time to time, including once on an ABA panel.
As Martin read his profile, he realized that Potts was now getting even with Martin. The reporter depicted Martin as a greedy lawyer who charged clients excessive rates. He was, “The quintessential Washington insider and a wheeler-dealer … Lyndon Johnson appointed someone like that in Abe Fortas, and we all saw how it ended.”
Martin was enraged, but he knew he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. He just hoped Larkin and Braddock wouldn’t pay much attention to Potts’s profile.
Martin sipped some coffee and turned to the sports section. Nothing good there. Lots of agonizing about why the Washington lost to Dallas.
He flipped through Metro. On the obit page, a good-looking woman with long blonde hair caught his eye. “Vanessa Boyd, Senate Committee Staffer.” His heart began pounding. Studying the picture, now he remembered Jasper introducing her in the committee’s offices. A knockout. Jesus, she was the woman Jasper took to Anguilla.
His hand unsteady, he placed his cup down and began reading:
Vanessa Boyd, Senate Committee Staffer
by Harriet Olsen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Vanessa Boyd, a staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee died Sunday while vacationing on the island of Anguilla. The cause of her death is not known. She was thirty-five.
Born in Oxford, Ohio, Miss Boyd was an internationally acclaimed fashion model. After retiring from modeling, she attended New York University and received a bachelor’s degree in political science, graduating cum laude in 2003. That same year she came to Washington, working initially as a receptionist for Senator Linkletter from Ohio. Three years later, she began as a research analyst on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where she has worked since.
She is survived by her mother and father, Claire and George Boyd, of Oxford, Ohio, and a twin sister, Allison, a professor at Brown University.
Vanessa’s obit worried Martin. He had hoped her death would pass without notice. He thought some more about what had happened Sunday night. Suppose someone who knew she was going to Anguilla with Jasper, maybe a fellow staffer, saw the obit. Would the staffer raise questions about how Vanessa died?
He started cursing himself. Moron. Imbecile. Stupid idiot. Sure, he had a lot to drink, but that didn’t justify what he did. Was there some way he could undo it? Turn it around? Couldn’t Jasper still tell the police in Anguilla what happened? He could concede that a mistake had been made. No harm done. It was an accidental drowning.
Yeah, but awkward, he realized. Still, far better for him and Jasper than if the facts got discovered by someone else and they were charged with a cover-up. But Wes could be a brick wall. Advising him in his two senatorial campaigns, Martin had nearly come to blows with Jasper. Once, he’d wanted to take a two by four and whack him.
He ran through the day’s schedule in his mind. On Tuesday evenings Francis had her chamber music group at the home of the first violinist with the National Symphony and she ate with them. So, of course, she’d be there. Tuesday evenings were sacrosanct, he thought with resignation. It didn’t matter what else came up. Even when Fred Glass had arranged an important client dinner with spouses, he had uselessly pleaded with her, “Can’t you make an exception just this one time?” She not only refused, but they ended up in a shouting match, he recalled. “I must have my own life, Andrew. I’m not just your little helper,” she claimed.
So Tuesday evenings he made plans for himself. During baseball season, he loved going out to watch the Nationals. He always bought the cheapest ticket and sat in the outfield bleachers with a beer and a hotdog, a carryover from his boyhood when all he could afford was a bleacher seat for the Pirates. If his father wasn’t working, they’d go together. If not, he’d hitch a ride into Pittsburgh and go himself.
Francis laughed at him for not sitting in the expensive box seats the firm bought for client entertaining. But she didn’t understand. It was a way of remembering his childhood. And sitting out there with a beer, even on a hot, muggy Washington evening, he tuned out his weighty legal problems.
No baseball in November, though. This evening he had planned to go to the Caps game against the Bruins. But the hell with that. He’d invite Jasper over for dinner. It wouldn’t be easy, but one on one he’d persuade the senator to tell the Anguilla police.
He yanked out his cell phone. “Listen, Wes, you and I have to talk. How about my house for dinner this evening? Francis will be out.”
“Not tonight, Andrew, I have something on.”
“This is important, dammit.”
“What are you talking about?” The man’s voice had a snarly edge.
Damn you, don’t turn hostile on me, Martin thought. You dragged me into this. “I don’t think I should spell it out on the phone. This cannot wait. Issues we hoped were resolved may not be concluded.”
“What in hell happened?”
“Take a look at the obit page in this morning’s Post. And please come at seven thirty.”
Francis walked in and poured a cup. “Anything about the Supreme Court in the papers?”
“You don’t want to read the Post.”
“Darling, give it to me straight.”
He showed her the Rick Potts’s profile.
“That stinks.”
“I should have found a way to placate that asshole years ago.”
“I doubt if it will carry much sway.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Maybe I’ll go back to bed.”
“Wait. There’s more. The Post ran an obit on the woman Wes was with in Anguilla.”
She closed her eyes and scrunched her face. “That won’t go away. Will it?”
“I invited him here to dinner this evening. We can still straighten it out. If he gets obstinate, I’ll put arsenic in his food.”
“Better yet, cut off a certain part of his anatomy.”
They both laughed.
“This isn’t funny,” he said. “Why are we laughing?”
“Because if we don’t, we’ll be crying.”
Oxford, Ohio
Allison was driving a rental car along Route 27 from Cincinnati to Oxford over flat land past farms that looked desolate after the harvest. She took her eyes off the road for an instant to glance at the finger she’d pricked when she and Vanessa had sworn a blood oath to stick together. The grim, gloomy, gray morning matched her mood.
Approaching the city, centered around the university, the terrain became hilly. As she passed a sign, “WELCOME TO OXFORD,” she recalled things she and Vanessa did together for the first fourteen years of their lives. Making out with boys near the res
ervoir. Buying beers at Craig’s Market after Vanessa told him, “Dad sent us,” and drinking them behind the high school building. Hiding in the trees of the park to smoke Pall Malls and recite Ingrid Bergman’s lines from Casablanca. Vanessa peeling off her clothes and swimming nude at night in Hueston Woods Lake with Allison as the lookout.
Midway across the Atlantic she’d begun to wonder if Mother—and that’s what she insisted the girls call her, not mom—was responsible for Vanessa’s death. Vanessa had always been gorgeous, but a perfectly normal girl. They were twins in spirit and personality.
Then at the age of fourteen all that ended. Allison remembered the two of them staying up all night, the night before Vanessa was leaving for New York to accept the position with the Premier Modeling Agency that Mother had worked so hard to get for her. This was the culmination of eight years of effort by Mother—enrolling Vanessa in every beauty contest, having her try out for TV spots, and paying for her lessons in learning how to walk and pose like a model. All the while Mother ignored Allison, the A+ student and athlete, while George, their father, stayed out of Mother’s way in this and everything else.
Though the idea was Mother’s, Vanessa was excited about going to New York. She was also nervous and scared. But Allison was worried. From stories and memoirs she’d read of washed-up former models, she knew what awaited Vanessa. Mother was robbing Vanessa of her youth, pushing her into a world of hell.
And what was it all for? Allison now asked herself, rain spattering the car. All because Mother had once been a runner up to Miss Ohio, and she was sick of her dreary life and job in the university’s development department.
Allison turned left from Route 27 onto High Street, passing on both sides box-like red brick university buildings scattered across well-tended areas of grass. Then she passed the president’s beautiful white wooden house and the hockey arena, finally entering the commercial heart of the city with banks, movie theaters, bookstores, and restaurants.
Stopping for a red light, she noticed the yellow brick building that had once been her Dad’s store, its brown sign with white letters, “BOYD’S HARDWARE AND VARIETY. IF YOU NEED IT, WE HAVE IT,” faded so badly as to be barely legible. When she and Vanessa were growing up, business had been good, but then Home Depot opened up outside of town, and Allison recalled Dad saying, “They’re killing us on price,” as his customers drifted away. Then she remembered coming back here to visit Dad after his first stroke when Mother had shuttered the store. Now workmen were tearing down the boards, and a sign in front proclaiming “OPENING JANUARY 1 UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.” Perhaps Mother had found a buyer.
