Nobody understood. I didn’t want to hear words, see compassionate looks, or feel the touch of a hand on my shoulder. What I really wanted—in fact, the only thing I wanted—was my daughter back. How pathetic I felt when that thought, so simple and so obvious, flooded my mind and my heart. Had I failed at being a father? Missed my chance to redeem myself? Waited for too long?
Like a ghost in my own house, I left Debby, Mohe, and Vicky talking in the living room and dragged myself off toward my bedroom. I felt their stares on my back, but at that point I had no strength to care. The reality had sunk in. For so long Stella had been the imaginary anchor in my life. Now, I felt that anchor pulling me down to the depths of a very deep, very cold ocean.
I was dying to hold Stella in my arms again.
27
EVERGREEN, COLORADO
Charles Dulles stayed up the whole night. For some time after Stella jumped off the cliff, he tried to locate her with his security agents, but the flashlights didn’t provide enough visibility from the clifftop. So he sent men down on ropes. Now, after hours on impatient waiting, he saw two agents approaching the door to his office, looking like they’d just returned from battle.
Stella was not with them.
The men looked somber and full of dread; whatever news they brought, it was bad. They’d failed to keep hold of their boss’s asset. The last thing Charles wanted in the middle of this crisis was to lose Stella, because she was the solution to what was about to happen to The Nature Dweller.
The agents stopped by his desk, heads bowed, their clothes soaking wet and still covered in snow.
“I don’t like the look of you two,” Charles said.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the senior agent said. “We couldn’t find her.”
“Excuse me? Are you suggesting that she survived the fall and ran away?”
The agents exchanged a look. “Mr. Dulles, the snow is pretty thick down there. We found the spot where she probably landed. There’s a good chance she might have survived.”
“So why aren’t you tracking her?”
“It’s snowing again. We couldn’t find any indication of what direction she went.”
The veins on Charles’s forehead begun to pulsate and his cheek muscles tensed up. “Is that it?” he asked his men in a menacing voice.
“I suggest a helicopter search as soon as it’s daylight. There’s not much we can do right now.”
“Get outta here. Both of you.”
Charles got up from his chair and walked to the liquor cabinet. As he fixed himself a glass of scotch and then drained it, he blamed just about everyone for Stella’s escape.
He blamed his security team for their failure to control a single, unarmed woman; he would be changing that team first thing in the morning.
He blamed Anthony Morris, the president he himself manufactured with his own talents—Stella was his daughter, so he surely deserved some blame.
And he blamed the architect of this place, who assured him that no one would be able to get onto the property via the cliff, which was the justification for leaving that part without a fence, all in the name of good architectural design. What the genius couldn’t have predicted was that instead of getting onto the property, someone like Stella might have decided to use that spot to get out. An in-the-moment vanity decision with unforeseeable consequences.
Charles refilled his glass and returned to his desk. He took a long swig of his drink and closed his eyes for a bit. Then he turned his attention to an envelope that had been resting on his desk for an entire week. It seemed as good a distraction as any from the situation with Stella.
On the front of the envelope was a single name: “VIKTORIA.” He slit it open and took out a stack of papers, about twenty pages. He read the title: “MY MEMOIRS, BY ANTHONY MORRIS.” At first, Charles sneered, but then he frowned at the idea. Anthony’s memoirs could be very damaging. Still, it was very unlikely that he would try to hurt Charles or anyone else of significance, Charles thought. Anthony had a daughter to think of—though Stella had to be alive for that to be any guarantee for Charles.
He made a mental note to thank Vicky in the morning—she was a good friend—and began to read.
This is my story as I now remember it. Not about an individual who once had the honor of being the president of the United States of America. For that reason, I’ll have no regard for the symbolism of my position, or the legacy of my work. This is not about the politician or the public figure who has been living the quiet life for years. This is about the man.
The man, Charles knew too well, wasn’t worth it. Just another politician driven by his ego. Who, he wondered, would be interested in whatever a failed former president had to say? But the fact that Anthony was promising to have no regard for the symbolism of his position was a sort of yellow light. What was that supposed to mean anyway? Charles read on with growing curiosity.
I’ll begin by telling you about a man called Marshall Higgins… You need to know about Marshall to understand what role he played in making me who I am.
Who the hell is Marshall Higgins? Charles asked himself. He read on, and discovered that this Marshall was a slave overseer. These memoirs were beginning to look odd.
As he kept turning the pages of the manuscript, the narrative only got more bizarre. Alberto Lisboa? A slave owner in Brazil? The memoirs, if one could really call them that, were clearly set in a different time period. One that Anthony couldn’t possibly belong to.
When he reached the part where Anthony identified himself as Isaac, a nineteenth-century slave, Charles put down the manuscript, inhaled deeply, and burst out laughing.
“What a moron,” he said. “He’s lost it completely.”
With a smile on his face, Charles put the manuscript back in the envelope and buried it in the bottom drawer of his desk.
28
EVERGREEN, COLORADO
The cliff that Stella jumped off wasn’t exactly vertical. It was a slope, about twenty feet high, and three feet of snow had accumulated at the bottom when she took her desperate leap. When she hit the ground, the impact was tolerable. The snow was in perfect condition to cushion her fall. Of course, Stella was far from sure that would be the case when she went for it. And she couldn’t have anticipated the thin branch of a tree scratching her face like a whip and opening a nasty cut on her forehead.
Stella looked up the cliff face. The contours of the edge were illuminated dimly by a light back in the garden of the house. She was sure that no one would be able to see her down here without a powerful flashlight. In any case, she decided she’d better get moving. She was relieved to find she could move her legs and arms fine; only her head hurt. For the time being, she pushed aside that pain and sort of swam her way out of the snow.
Shortly, she reached rocks. She climbed up onto them and headed toward a tree just as she heard voices above and dogs barking. Looking up, she saw silhouettes at the cliff edge. She evaluated the wooded terrain ahead of her: dark and menacing, but it looked perfectly possible to go forward. And what choice did she have?
Stella took a deep breath and moved on. She had some advantage over Charles’s men: the dense trees for cover, and the blackness. And she was a few minutes ahead of them, in case they chose to come after her immediately, which was a real possibility.
Her first steps in the dark were slow and careful. After a little while, though, her eyes adjusted to the lack of light and she was able to speed up. A few more minutes walking over that rough terrain and it felt less threatening. She upped her pace, disturbed only by the sounds of her own footsteps and heavy breathing.
Forty minutes later, she reached a road. She saw the lights of the city of Denver and a road sign: Interstate 70. Though her boots weren’t made for a run on the asphalt, Stella was in good shape. She would deal with her feet later. Now, all she wanted was to be as far away as possible from Evergreen and Charles Dulles.
It was still dark when Stella hobbled into a grocery store on W Thirty-
Eighth Avenue. It was early morning, and there were very few people on the streets. Nevertheless, she didn’t want to stop a car and make a scene. She wanted to go straight to the police, but she was starving and dirty. She bought an orange juice and a sandwich.
The cashier stared at the wound on Stella’s forehead. “That’s a nasty cut you’ve got there, lady.”
Stella smiled, not willing to say much. As she pulled out her wallet, her eyes landed on a newspaper on the counter. There, on the front page, was a huge photo of Anthony Morris and a smaller one of her, beneath a screaming headline: STELLA MORRIS MISSING. Instinctively, Stella put back the credit card that was already in her hand and handed over cash.
“Thanks,” Stella said and left.
Outside, she leaned against the wall of the grocery store and devoured her sandwich. While she fueled herself with the much-needed calories, she also poisoned her mind with doubts, the principal one being: What if her father was somehow involved with her kidnapping?
Her lawyer mind clicked into action as she considered all the dirt from Anthony’s past she knew about, and what more may exist. His relationship to Charles Dulles, and how close—willingly or not—they still remained. The potential embarrassment she faced if The Nature Dweller’s frauds were exposed and the name Anthony Morris were connected, even remotely. The fact that Charles Dulles went as far as kidnapping her and was perhaps pursuing her right now.
All of that made Stella very wary.
The truth was, as Stella considered her next move, a cloud of speculation was making it hard to trust anyone. Police included.
Minutes passed. The sandwich was no more. And Stella decided: the police were no longer a priority. Until she could find out whether her father was involved in her capture, she would keep out of everyone’s reach.
She would wait. She would be watching from outside the storm.
29
EVERGREEN, COLORADO
At Charles’s request, ten Department of Homeland Security SUVs arrived at his property in Evergreen that morning.
Jonathan McDowell—a former Navy SEAL and retired admiral who was now secretary of the DHS, and thereby responsible for some 230,000 staff, including those of the Secret Service—just happened to be a good friend of Charles’s (and, for a time, Anthony’s).
Charles welcomed Jonathan at the door, and they retired straight to the office to talk behind closed doors. Jonathan lit up a cigar as soon as he sat down across from the former senator. He took a drag, blew the smoke out harshly, and stared at Charles.
“What the hell’s going on, Charles?”
“I already told you what happened.”
“You brought the daughter of a former president to your house. What did you do, drug her?”
“Barely.”
“That was bold and stupid, you know that, don’t you? And then she vanishes.” The secretary shook his head.
“John, we’ve got to find her. Can you do that for me?”
“It’s been challenging. There’s no sign of Stella—or her body, for that matter. Her face is all over the news, and we have our best people looking for her right now. But what in the world were you thinking when you brought her here?”
“Not much. The thing is, she’s abandoning ship at a terrible moment. It could hurt some organizations I work with, and piss off a lot of people.”
“What ship? She’s never been on our ship.”
Charles sighed. “As I explained to you, when Loretta Johnson wins her case against us, there’ll be water all over this ship. I was trying to convince Stella to stay with The Nature Dweller and defend us.”
“What’s the timeline?”
“A week from now.”
“Would that hurt me?” Jonathan asked, his stare piercing.
“It might. Not just you, but me. And our former chief.”
“That’s just great.”
“What’s your bet—is Stella alive?”
“We don’t know.”
“She’s got to be dead. Otherwise, she’d have gone to the police.”
“That’s what I hope. But if she isn’t, and she makes it to the police and tells them about you bringing her here by force, I won’t be able to help you. I want you to know that. This is beyond damage control.”
“I understand.”
“Who else knows she’s been in the house?”
“The security agents.”
“I’ll take care of them. They’re good guys.”
“They’re your guys, anyway. Oh. And my housekeeper.”
“Who, Madeleine? Is she still around?”
Charles nodded. He didn’t like the way Jonathan’s lip was curling.
“She could be a problem. Where is she now?”
“Probably in the kitchen.”
“She’ll require special attention, Charles. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry too.”
“Another thing. You’d better handle this lawsuit situation. You’re right about one thing. You will piss off a lot of people, Charles. And I’m one of them.”
“I’m trying, damn it!”
Jonathan smoked his cigar twice as fast as usual. Charles could sense the secretary’s anxiety, which was far from reassuring.
Jonathan stood up. “I have to go now. I have a country to protect.”
“Sure,” said Charles, and his old friend strode out of the room, leaving Charles in a fog of smoke.
There was a knock on the door and an agent opened it.
“Sir?”
“What is it?”
“There’s information about Samuel Flynn.”
That was one name capable of raising Charles Dulles’s eyebrows.
“What about him?”
“He’s out.”
“What do you mean, he’s out?” Charles leaned forward on his chair.
“Out of prison. Your lawyer called the house phone. You’re not picking up your cell phone, so…”
Charles waved the agent out of the room and rang his lawyer. Samuel Flynn had left USP Allenwood, he learned, and was now suing the state for wrongful prosecution. He’d returned to his five-story loft-style Tribeca town house, from which he ran his financial advisory firm surrounded by three other lawyers and a few bodyguards.
For the second time that day, Charles uttered the word “moron,” this time preceded by an expletive.
Samuel had worked for a major Wall Street investment bank when Charles first approached him. He made a name for himself running a shell company scheme on the side for “special” clients, to hide their assets from prying eyes. Samuel was the public face of each company, to protect client identities. He would take a client’s money and put it in one place. Then the money was registered by an anonymous company in a second place, in the Caribbean. In turn, it was passed to a trust in a third place. The trustees lived somewhere else, a fourth place. The scheme wasn’t new, or completely safe, but it worked.
Charles had approached Samuel with a new client. One so special that Samuel would be required to work exclusively for him.
“It’s got to be a Rockefeller, or else I don’t see why I should break with my loyal clients,” Samuel said.
“This client will bring you $700 million in assets,” Charles told him. He knew full well this was ten times more than Samuel managed from all of his thirty clients combined. And he’d only have one client to deal with.
“Who’s the client?” Samuel wanted to know.
“Noctis America.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Very few people know that Noctis exists. It’s part of a USAP. A black budget project. Only authorized people know about it. I’m a member of the appropriate committees of Congress, so I’m one of the authorized people.”
Charles went on to explain that Noctis had developed a new identification system that would make passwords a thing of the past. It was already in use and it was going to be huge.
What he didn’t explain was that this USAP had no real accountability, which
meant that for every dollar spent legitimately, many more were misused. That was why Samuel’s services were needed. The money he would manage for Noctis was for the few individuals who were in control of the agency. Part of it came to Charles to fund his buying political influence and ensuring that this particular project would never run out of money.
It wasn’t long before Samuel said, “Senator, sounds exciting. I’m in.”
Before they shook on it, Charles warned him: “As I said, this will make you rich. But you can’t fuck up with these guys. Deep State shit, if you know what I mean.”
Now, they may well be in that shit.
On Charles’s instruction, Noctis donated to The Nature Dweller. If there were an investigation into donations, it would lead to a front company in the Bahamas whose public face was Samuel Flynn. Explaining to the authorities the origin of that money would be a complicated and delicate thing. It would be Charles’s responsibility; but that didn’t change the fact that Samuel would become a liability to Noctis in such a scenario.
Charles cast his mind back to that first meeting with Samuel.
“What’s Noctis mean, anyway?” Samuel wanted to know. “Sounds Latin to me.”
“You’re right,” Charles said. “It means ‘of night.’ That pretty much sums up their philosophy.”
“I get it. Discretion is a major thing.”
“No. Discretion is a fait accompli,” Charles told him. “There’s no question about it. The name’s about their ways, how they engage the enemies of the state, how they protect America. They use technology not available anywhere else. The night is dark. You don’t see them coming. You don’t even know who’s taking you out.”
30
ARCATA, CALIFORNIA
Close to midnight, Stella handed a taxi driver the last of her cash and stepped out of the vehicle onto Foster Avenue, Arcata. It had taken a day and a half to get here via the Greyhound, and she’d slept most of the time. Still, she felt weary to her bones as she walked up to the house her former employee rented and knocked on the door.
Leave Her Out Page 11
