“Is he in custody?” she asked him, guessing how shocked Tony must have been when they arrested him.
“No, he’s not,” Pelham admitted to her in an exhausted voice. He’d been up all night for several days. “He had an early warning system better than ours. When we got to his home, he was gone.” It took a minute for what he said to sink in.
“You mean out?” she asked in a choked voice. She sounded breathless.
“No, I mean gone. There are federal agents looking for him in all the locations he could be. We think he flew to Canada on a private plane last night. An informant has told us that two of his longtime Saudi friends were waiting for him in Montreal, we believe that he’s with them with a new identity. There was a leak somewhere,” he said bleakly. “He managed to slip out of his home and shake his Secret Service detail, who assumed he’d gone to bed. He must have gotten out through a window or disguised somehow. We missed him, and he won’t be back. By sometime today, he’ll be in Saudi Arabia, either Jedda or Riyadh. He’s gone, Mrs. Foster, for good.” And he wouldn’t stand trial. Pelham had just told the President the same thing, and in the next hour, it would be on every network and all over the Internet. “I’m sorry. We want him brought to justice as badly as you do. It’s been a massive and intense operation, but he skipped. He’s a clever, very dangerous man. Even more so than we thought, and his ties in the Arab world are very strong. They’ll protect him. We won’t be hearing from him again, and I doubt you will. If you do, let us know.”
They had pieced it all together in the past several hours and he didn’t tell her that the President was livid. What Tony Clark had done was outrageous, but no more so than the rest, and his eleventh-hour escape was a national disgrace. John Pelham wasn’t sure he’d have a job after this, but more than anything, it infuriated him to have a criminal like Clark outsmart them and go free. He had been too well prepared, and knew his life depended on it. Clark’s exit plan had been flawless.
Olympia sat staring out the window after the call, thinking of Tony and how much she hated him. The only comfort she had had in the past few days was knowing that he would pay for his crimes and go to prison. It wasn’t enough, but it was something. And now he was free. And she had to tell her children. She picked up her phone and called Darcy on Skype in Zimbabwe, before she could hear it on the news.
She looked happy to see her mother on the screen when she answered, and devastated after her mother told her. Olympia spent half an hour on the phone with her and sounded strong, and then she got off the call and called Josh. He cried like a baby. They had loved Tony all their lives. So had Olympia and Bill. They all had. And Tony had loved no one except himself. And now he was gone. After the children, Olympia called Charles in Chicago and told him the whole story. He was silent as he listened and then cried along with her.
—
The plane lifted off from Dulles International Airport just after 10 P.M., with one passenger with a British passport, and it landed in Montreal at 1 A.M. A 747 owned by the Saudi royal family was waiting to leave Montreal shortly after. The flight plan had been filed. Members of the family and their employees were on board and continued to arrive for the next hour. The passports had been checked and stamped, and there were a variety of nationals in the entourage. French, British, German, Filipino, Italian. There were no Americans. Their visas were all in order. Their flight plan was approved, and the plane lifted off at 2:10 A.M., with Riyadh as their destination. They had diplomatic immunity but hadn’t exercised it, and it hadn’t been necessary, there had been nothing out of the ordinary about the departure, the crew, or the passengers on board.
But on closer scrutiny at the request of the CIA in the early hours of the morning, they discovered there was a German national aboard who matched Tony Clark’s description, but not the name. And there was one additional Saudi passport, for a male subject, which no one could explain. All they could figure out was that it was Tony and he was traveling with three passports, and none of them issued by the United States or in his own name. It was impossible to determine from the ground which was his, or all, or any. Tony Clark as a U.S. citizen had dissolved and vanished into thin air, and had become German or Saudi, and no one in Riyadh was going to check or question the royal family and who they had with them, if he was even on board. He could have been hiding out anywhere, even in the States, but an escape with the Saudis was the most likely scenario, and he could go anywhere from there, as long as he didn’t enter a country that had an extradition agreement and would return him to the States to face criminal charges, and there were many countries, even in Europe, that wouldn’t. He had made it impossible to bring him to justice, even find him, or identify him. He had created a dilemma for the President, and every federal law enforcement agency that existed. His exit plan had been brilliant.
Alix got the call shortly after seven A.M., and Pelham told her what had happened. He had just spoken to Olympia right before her. Alix leapt out of bed as soon as he ended the call, and pounded on Ben’s door.
“Don’t shoot me!” she said through the door, afraid to walk in on him naked coming out of the shower, and he yanked the door open when he heard her.
“What’s wrong?”
“Tony Clark skipped town last night. Actually, he fled the country. They think he’s on his way to Saudi Arabia, via Canada, with a new identity. They’re going to announce it in an hour, with the indictment. The President called a press conference. I’ve got to get to the office.”
“Shit, are you serious?”
“Totally.” She ran back to her room and pulled on jeans and ballet flats, and put on a red jacket in case she was on camera, which she assumed she would be, and explained to Faye what had happened. She grabbed her purse, didn’t bother to comb her hair or put on makeup, and called an Uber taxi from her cellphone, and she was out the door three minutes later as Ben and Faye stared at each other. Alix had no bodyguard with her, but the threats had stopped as suddenly as they started.
Ben flipped to the news on the TV, but there was no mention of it yet. The President was speaking at 8 A.M., and Alix had less than an hour to get to the studio and be ready to comment on the broadcast in hair and makeup. Felix was already at work when she got there and gobbling antacids. She had called him on the way in from Brooklyn.
“Holy shit, what happened?” he asked as he followed her into hair and makeup and she filled him in. “And they’re going to tell the American public that? It’s going to be the biggest scandal in the history of U.S. politics, the President is going to look like an idiot, and so will the CIA and every other federal agency. There will be so much egg on everyone’s face, it’ll look like Easter.”
“No,” she said sensibly. “The President will look like a hero, because they’ve been tracking him. And if he’s smart he will appoint someone who’ll step up to the plate fast and clean this up with him.”
“And who would that be?”
“That I don’t know. But Tony Clark is one smart sonofabitch to have gotten himself out of this one,” Alix said tersely.
“Yeah? Into what? Life on a camel for the rest of his life? Have you been to Saudi Arabia? A hundred and forty degrees in the summer, no White House dinners, and he won’t be going to the White House as President in this lifetime. How smart was that? And he murdered Bill Foster and paid for the hit with offshore money. If you ask me, he’s insane.” But not too crazy to get himself out of it. It was incredible. Her hair was picture perfect by then and her makeup flawless, and she had just enough time to get to her desk and write on her iPad what she wanted to say. Felix was having her do the intro before the press conference and the editorial after, since she knew more about it than anyone else at the network, and she knew what not to say too, and how not to piss off the CIA forever by making them look incompetent for losing him. She felt sorry for John Pelham, who had done a remarkable job pursuing all the leads and tying them together, but Tony Clark was smarter. And there was no way to tell who had warned Tony
Clark of what was coming. Maybe even someone in the CIA. It was unlikely they’d ever find out.
The assistant producer came to get Alix for the countdown. She looked serious and calm when she came on the air, and dignified but pretty in her plain red jacket and somber face. She said that there had been a national crisis in recent days, involving the Vice President. She gave a brief, shocking summary of all that he was accused of, and then they switched to the President at the White House, looking solemn. They had cleaned it up as best they could, but the story wasn’t pretty. A Vice President who had allegedly engaged in every imaginable form of illegal activity, including murder for hire, and had been indicted by a grand jury, had fled the country before he could be arrested. It was a national shame. The entire nation was shocked into silence as they watched over breakfast. The President’s final part of his message stunned Alix. The Vice President had left a letter at his home, resigning the vice presidency. The letter had been found and delivered to the President moments before the broadcast. Alix was amazed. Tony Clark had thought of everything to the last detail.
After the press conference, the shot went back to Alix, who analyzed the situation as rationally as one could and explained the workings of a grand jury and how they functioned. And what would have to happen to appoint a new Vice President. Everyone was guessing who the President would choose to replace Clark as Vice President. It was all anyone was talking about on the air on every channel, as Ben and Faye watched Alix on the screen from his living room in Brooklyn.
“Your mom is brilliant,” he muttered as they listened to her editorial afterward, and Olympia and Jennifer were watching Alix at Olympia’s home too.
“I feel like I’m dreaming,” Jennifer said, but it was more like a nightmare, and Olympia thought of Megan, who was left with two babies and another one on the way, by a man who had disgraced her and would go down in history as one of the worst criminals of our time. Her father’s money couldn’t change that. It might have helped Clark win the presidency, but it couldn’t change the fact that he was being charged with twenty-two federal crimes, including murder. There was a shot of Megan later on, hiding behind dark glasses, boarding a private plane to go to her parents’ home in California with her children and a nanny, and the Secret Service with her. She had been tainted by association and there was little pity for her on the news. She had instantly become a spoiled rich girl who was married to a criminal. The rest was irrelevant. But sympathy was running high for the Fosters again, and the news that the Vice President had been instrumental in Bill’s death touched everyone’s heart. Along with everything else, he was a father, a husband, and a good man. Armies of press were camped outside Olympia’s house and jammed her street, but they had been unable to reach her for comment. And compassionate New Yorkers had begun leaving flowers at her door. Local police were trying to control the crowds and traffic on her street, but no one had seen her. She was deep inside her home, mourning her husband’s senseless death again, and obliged to live with the fact that her husband’s best friend had paid to have him murdered, and had successfully escaped.
There was pandemonium at the network for the rest of the day, and a list of possible vice presidential nominees was being discussed on air and in the press. The next day the President appointed the Speaker of the House as the new Vice President, which was the wisest and most conservative choice to present to a shocked nation, and one that would ensure immediate confirmation by Congress. There were comments from the media around the world, and heads of state, about what had happened. Saudi leaders had denied any responsibility for the disgraced Vice President and his escape, and weren’t pleased about it either. They wanted no part of the American scandal or the crimes of Tony Clark.
—
Olympia was reading The New York Times the day after when her cellphone rang with a number she didn’t recognize. She picked it up absentmindedly and was shocked to hear his voice. It was Tony. She sat frozen in silence.
“I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye,” was the first thing Tony said to her. She was too startled to speak, she just listened. “I want you to know that the one thing that was true in all of it is that I loved you. I always did, from the first minute I saw you. Bill didn’t deserve you. I needed you more.” It was always about Tony and no one else.
“You killed my husband,” she accused him openly now.
“He was always a marked man,” Tony justified it. “You can’t live by those rigid rules in today’s world. It doesn’t work that way. Someone was bound to kill him. I had no choice. And he would have destroyed everything I spent years building. That wasn’t right, Olympia, we were friends. When he disavowed me, he would have had to explain why, and it would have been all over for me. He knew that and didn’t care. What kind of friend is that?” He sounded like a madman with his twisted values.
“So that made it all right to hire a hit man to kill him? He was loyal to his country and wouldn’t cover for you. It’s over for you now anyway. Look what you did, and to Megan, and your children. They’ll never know you,” although she thought they’d be better off without him.
“They’ll be fine,” he said, dismissing them. “You’re the only one I’ll miss. Maybe you’ll come to see me one day,” he said, sounding wistful for a moment, with no sense of reality about how she felt about him, and what he had done to them. He was deranged, with a totally distorted view of what he’d done and the gravity of it. His narcissism blinded him to all else.
“What are you going to do? Hide forever?” Her voice was shaking and cold.
“Well, I’m certainly not coming back to go to prison. It’s a different life here. It suits me.” He would be a fugitive on the run forever, and live in hiding, and he knew it, but he didn’t seem to care.
“You weren’t in on it, Olympia, were you? It would kill me if you were. It was that bitch of a reporter who started all this. She’s lucky nothing happened to her. But I don’t care now.” Olympia noticed that he didn’t wait for her to answer about her own involvement, and she didn’t answer his question. He had no right to know. “I’m going to miss you terribly.” He sounded sad as he said it.
“I’ll never forgive you for what you did to Bill,” she said clearly. “I loved you as a friend, and so did he. You betrayed us. You robbed my children of their father. You killed the man I loved. You’ve got a lot to live with and a long time to think about it,” but it didn’t seem to matter to him. There was nothing and no one he cared about, not even his own children. “Don’t call me again. You’re dead to me. You should have died instead of him.”
“You should have married me when I asked you to. It would all be different now, and you’d be happy instead of alone.”
“I’d rather be alone forever than with you,” she said and meant it.
“Take care of yourself, Olympia, I’ll be thinking of you. I love you.” He had no sense of how wrong it was to say that to her. And then the line went dead and she sat staring at her phone, wondering where he was. Somewhere in Saudi Arabia probably. Or in hell, where he belonged.
—
Olympia called John Pelham about the call from Tony afterward, and then she called her children again. They sounded better, as it began to sink in. Olympia kept reminding them that they had never really known Tony, and who he truly was. None of them did. Bill had seen him for what he was years before, but he was the only one who had, and it had cost him his life. She knew Josh and Darcy were going to be all right now. They were young and strong and healthy, leading good lives with good people around them. Losing their father had been a terrible blow, for all of them, but he had given them a shining example to follow and be proud of, and the memories they had of him would last forever, longer than the memories of the man who had killed him. The friend Tony had appeared to be to all of them had never existed. Tony Clark had been nothing more than an illusion, a mask with nothing behind it, and a heartless killer.
Chapter 15
The country had begun to calm down and r
eturn to some kind of normalcy by the time Ben and Alix took Faye back to Duke. Their bodyguards were gone, and life was back to their regular routine, although they had continued to stay at Ben’s until Faye left. It was easier not to move back home yet. Faye was understandably silent on the flight down. She wore her headphones and listened to music on her iPod with her eyes closed, as Alix glanced at Ben over her head from time to time. They could too easily visualize the images going through Faye’s mind of the day she had left when she was shot, and her friends were killed.
When Faye saw the campus, the memories of the shooting were overwhelming. There was a field of flowers at the main entrance when they drove up to it. Twenty-two wreaths were replaced every few days by local florists, to pay tribute to the final number of victims.
The atmosphere was subdued as they drove past the flowers to her dorm, and Faye squeezed her mother’s hand. Alix put an arm around her waist as they got out of the car in front of the familiar building. She was going to be alone in her room for a while. She wouldn’t be assigned a new roommate until the fall semester, out of respect for the one who had died. Her parents had removed their daughter’s belongings while the university was still closed. When she walked into the room, Faye’s heart ached knowing she would never see her again, and they’d had such good times and were so well suited to each other. She was from Atlanta, and Faye had gone home with her several times for the weekend. She’d had a beautiful letter from her parents, and called them once from New York. Faye’s roommate was their only child and it was a tragedy for them, just like all the others.
Dangerous Games Page 20
