by Dale Wiley
He had not done this out of some altruistic vein. He merely wanted to control every aspect of this operation and couldn’t imagine a Bond villain not setting the attacks himself.
When they finally figured out where the server was hidden, and, after the first technician died from tripping a booby trap he set, they were able to see what else he planned. Facebook and Twitter were spared much damage, and this puzzled many people. But he needed those networks to quickly spread the messages. The computer techs figured out that the code that would have infested them and sent them into decline if not outright death was two days away, the final act of the maddest man there had ever been. The code was exquisite, and more than one of the people who knew what they were looking at secretly saluted this man. That was something you couldn’t say out loud, but it was surely there.
The government was preparing its case against Britt, scheduled to start just five days short of a year after the attack, when one of the planning guards forgot to check a rarely-used vestibule on the prison’s main floor on Britt’s path to the courthouse. One of the prisoners housed on the same lock-down as Britt, who actually was friendly with him, jumped out with a pristinely made shiv and slashed Britt’s throat. He also did a pretty mean job opening up his right wrist. The man, Victor Stillings, dropped the knife immediately and surrendered. He had already memorized the codes and all the directions to the bank accounts Britt told him held millions for him and his family.
Britt smiled as he bled to death on the prison floor. He made the only escape he could, the only one left.
LONDON, ENGLAND
Naseem’s picture still appeared on the occasional television show, but Grant made good on his promise to make things as easy as he possibly could. The story got much more play in the States, and, after Grant arranged, with some help from above, a flight to Bermuda and then a boat to England, things cooled off.
Naseem grew a beard, stayed out of the sun, and looked less and less like the angry man that stared out of his last passport picture, the one the press loved to show.
He paid for his crimes every day in the never-ending sense of dread he felt when anything out of the ordinary happened. This would be his own private, minimum-security prison for years to come. He knew it wasn’t enough for many people, and, in fact, he questioned whether it was enough penance for him, but he wasn’t looking to heap anything else on himself, at least right now. He would blend in and eventually slip into a more Mediterranean country, where he hoped to disappear into normalcy.
Grant sent him some money. It helped. Grant knew he could have been killed, and Naseem spared him. He wasn’t going to write him a love song, but he wasn’t going to forget him either. That to him was the greatest trait of Americans: remembering the good much longer than the bad.
He questioned everything now: Allah, America, England, life. But at least he was alive to ask those questions.
LOS ANGELES
“Terrorista” by Pal Joey, with a rare co-writer credit to his friend Raylon, turned out to be the biggest hit of the year. It was a dope track and was remixed by everyone. Pal Joey appeared simultaneously on the covers of Rolling Stone, Vibe and Time, a feat no one else could claim. His back catalogue was selling and being licensed at a pace that made Jay-Z envious.
Some rappers and others in the community thought he should have pulled the trigger and called him out for it, considering how many of Joey’s own people were killed, but they were most likely just jealous of the success. Raylon told him to quit listening. He knew he did the right thing.
He met and had taken pictures with Grant and Caitlin a couple of times, but there were no reunions planned. If he hadn’t found the phone, none of this would have happened. He knew he was the true hero. He was the only rapper who showed up high to the White House and could add a Presidential Medal to his bling. And he didn’t care who bitched about it.
JEKYLL ISLAND, GA
In the latter parts of the 19th century and the first decade or two of the 1900s, most of the world’s elite wintered on Jekyll Island—the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Morgans, Pulitzers, and others. This was where the Federal Reserve was designed in 1913.
The millionaires built what they called cottages but were really mini-mansions. They were positioned close to each other and close to the beautiful club that was built to house all of those egos.
The church there was no less special, built in the same style, and featured stained glass windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany himself. The piece, one of only five in the world, featured an angel looking down on the scene below. It was the true work of a master, seeming more like a translucent painting than a piece of glass. It seemed to Grant like the perfect place to have a wedding.
He and Caitlin stood in front of that angel as they said their vows. Only their families, his slightly bigger than hers, were allowed to come. They kept it an absolute secret, and, judging from the lack of photographers outside, they succeeded in giving the paparazzi the slip.
They came outside as husband and wife, completing a circle begun years earlier. Caitlin seemed satisfied and calm. He felt happy and fulfilled.
He hoped they could make it through the next couple of days unnoticed. They brought beach disguises. After years of the Playboy Mansion and late nights in the club, he knew he left that behind. Nothing compared with this woman, and he would risk anything to keep that true. All he needed was an evening with dragonflies and a night on the beach. Anything else was a bonus.
Acknowledgements
I am forever indebted to my great friend Liz Giordano, who pushed me to seek an audience for Sabotage. She has been an editor, a cheerleader, and a willing helper in advocating for this book.
As of this date, several of my friends have read Sabotage: Bill McCullah, Lisa Haglund, Amy Lamphere, Susan Kelly, Amber Hruska, Cecelia Havens, Beth Rich, Jess Meadows, and Julie Gibson. Their suggestions were pivotal to seeing my way to the final manuscript. Thank you to all of you!
And finally, to my agent, Italia Gandolfo, for making this process so smooth and fun. You are the best!
About the Author
Dale Wiley has had a character named after him on CSI, owned a record label, been interviewed by Bob Edwards on NPR’s Morning Edition and made motorcycles for Merle Haggard and John Paul DeJoria. He has three awesome kids and spends his days working as a lawyer fighting the big banks. Dale is the author of the bestselling novel, The Intern.
Check Dale’s site at http://www.dalewiley.com/ for updates and details.
Preview The Intern—a political action thriller by Dale Wiley.
It's 1995, and life is great for Washington, DC intern Trent Norris. But life can change in a moment--and does when Trent becomes the prime suspect in two murders and a slew of other crimes. Overnight, he becomes the most wanted man in America. Trent has to find a way—any way—out. He holes up at The Watergate on a senator's dime and enlists a call girl as his unwitting ally. But with the media eating Trent alive, he doesn't have long before they catch him. From the tony clubs of Georgetown to murders on Capitol Hill, The Intern has all the twists and turns of a classic DC thriller, with an added comedic flair.
Prologue
“Are you going to kill me?”
Worry lines deepened into furrows as he stared at the short, silver barrel pointed at his forehead. When I didn’t respond, he struggled to break free from the handcuffs chaining him to the bed.
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, and he froze. His eyes darted around the room, and his mouth opened.
Waving the gun, I regained his attention. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”
He blanched until the color of his face matched the white hair on his head, and beads of sweat popped out on his brow.
To be perfectly honest, he could have yelled his head off and no one would have come. Fancy hotels, with rooms the size of a bus depot, thick yellow drapes and deep pile carpet designed to suck every sound out of the air, along with the constant air conditioning hum, ensured cri
es of passion or lover’s quarrels went unheard.
And since he thought I was a killer, he wasn’t going to scream. He didn’t have to know there were no bullets in the gun. After all my misadventures, I didn’t carry a loaded gun when killing wasn’t on the menu.
I didn’t like pointing a gun at anyone, even an empty one. It didn’t make me feel strong. It didn’t give me a rush of power. It almost reinforced the futility of my position. But I wanted the illusion of power. He needed to be still and listen to me.
Because I needed his help.
I let him squirm for a moment, the trembling of his lips getting lost in the scruff of his beard, before I shook my head.
He breathed long and slow, easing down from panic into fear. After checking the wrist shackled behind him by the tight-clamped cuffs, he looked at me, eyes wide, trying for sympathy, and asked, “Then, why am I here? What do you want?”
Relief shuddered through me. The question I had been waiting for.
“That’s simple,” I said. I set the gun on the dresser and leaned against it. My eyes bore into his. “I want to tell you my story.”
Chapter
One
Almost everything in Washington was big and gray and ugly. I’m talking about the buildings, but a good number of the residents would also fall into the same category. The architects made everything look Roman and Greek, which might be all right if you were in Rome or Athens, but in DC the main part of the city looked like a bunch of poorly decorated wedding cakes.
The tourists, the players, and the street people, all converged uneasily every morning as I walked from my apartment on Capitol Hill to the Eastern Market Metro station. We all descended together beneath the Washington cement, waited impatiently for the next train, grabbed smooth steel bars, and held on as we rocketed in plastic cars through the belly of the town toward our jobs—to turn the wheels of bureaucracy in the most powerful city in the world. Some of the people clutched their seats and stared angrily, but most looked more like robots, reading the morning paper as they rumbled and shook toward another in a long line of work days. They were important people, the kind mothers and uncles in Poughkeepsie and Omaha and Boca Raton bragged on like crazy.
And I wasn’t one of them. Well, not exactly. I worked for the government, but I had no desire to climb the DC ladder. To the contrary, I had already begun to plot my escape. To get away from the traffic, the lines, and the endless stream of silly, boring people: Capitol Hill pages slouching in ill-fitting department store suits; straw-haired society types covered in beige blouses and adorned with pearls; scowling, powerful white men who scared me for no good reason. I paid ungodly money for my half of an apartment, smaller than some closets, and thanks to my location in one of the city’s “developing” neighborhoods, my car got broken into almost daily. I was tired of all that. I was tired of parking tickets. I was tired of humidity. I was tired of DC.
I worked for the NEA. No, not the education one—the artsy, standard-bearer of the Apocalypse, dirty-minded, potty-mouthed, slightly fruity one. A lightning rod to the closed-minded and a place for lovers of the perverse, the National Endowment for the Arts was different than most work places in DC—or so I thought.
I had worked at the Endowment for almost two months, and I wouldn’t have been so excited to take the internship had I known how depressingly normal it was to work there. Despite all the rhetoric and name-calling, there were no Roman baths, no noon-time orgies, not even a poorly covered nipple.
But there were some advantages. The dress code wasn’t as stringent as on Capitol Hill, so I got to wear jeans. Most of the people I encountered were smart, cool, funny, interesting, and enjoyed what they were doing. Maybe it wasn’t quite like other places in Washington, but it was a lot more like them than most people thought.
When I walked through the door, I expected everyone to be in grant panel mode. Hundreds of grant applications, which had been handled with such care by those who had written them, would be scrutinized by a dozen or so arts professionals. Panel mode meant a great deal of running around and shouting, but there were clusters of people talking quietly, which was somehow unsettling.
The head mofo in charge in our office, Joe, calmly talked to Kurt, the office manager. Joe, with his beard, barrel chest, and brassy baritone voice, reminded me of a young, svelte, Jewish Santa Claus. Kurt was young, blond, extremely handsome, and extremely gay, the kind of guy women spend their whole lives wanting to convert. He was always full of expensive coffee and owned a taste in clothes I envied greatly.
“Just the man we’re looking for,” said Kurt, motioning me to follow him and Joe.
We walked around the maze of dividers, the tiny cubbyholes of bureaucracy, toward Joe’s office, past a stack of used copy paper which was supposed to be recycled weeks ago. Joe had the only divider with a door, a sign of his status, and it was my favorite office, with lots of great posters and buttons and pictures of him when he was working in the theater. He sat down and shook his head, and I wondered what I could’ve possibly done.
“This thing is becoming such a headache.” He spat the word “thing” out.
When Kurt both nodded and shook his head, almost at the same time, I was willing to bet Joe was talking about all the furor surrounding Regionarts.
“The Chairman told me before she left for the art mecca known as Las Vegas we are still supporting the program.” The sarcasm dripped off Joe’s tongue. “I don’t think anyone believes it.”
The Chairman reminded me of a mother-in-law in a TV sitcom: she was over fifty, wore long dresses she thought were hip, and had pretty brown hair, but if she were carrying a large purse, I would’ve been very afraid of her. The reason for Vegas? She had vowed to visit arts institutions in all fifty states during her reign—nice work if you can get it.
“We’re supposed to have a teleconference next week, and we need you to gather all of the information on the project up to this point, make some sort of outline, send it to everyone involved, and set up the conference call.”
To be put in charge of hand-holding and conference calling actually sounded halfway interesting; it was better than stacking and filing, anyway. Regionarts was a good program that gave gobs of money to regional groups who divided it among lesser-known artists. Some of the artists did really bizarre things with their money—like decorating a gallery space with used condoms—and “bizarre” was not our Chairman’s favorite word.
“Want me to start now?”
Joe shook his head. “Nah. Go in and listen to some of the panel. You know most of the stuff, so it won’t take too long.”
I nodded and headed out of Joe’s office and down the hall toward the panel room.
The actual granting took place in the panel, where someone’s year of hard work was determined in a matter of minutes. Creative arts types mixed with those who handled the business side of things for the panel makeup. I had worked a couple of panels earlier, easy work from an intern’s point of view—I sat and listened—but it was still rather nerve-wracking because people’s livelihoods depended on what we were doing.
Walking into the room, I knew immediately who the artists were—the steel-sculpted black man with the blond dreadlocks, the Indian woman wearing a large scarf and larger glasses, poring over her grants book, and the robust black man in native African dress with a fatherly expression. The tables were arranged in a rectangle with everyone facing the middle. I took a seat on a corner, next to the tape recorder absorbing all of the madness, and smiled at the woman sitting next to me.
Pretty, conservatively dressed in a tweed blazer and a pair of jeans, she could have been twenty-five or forty. I couldn’t make up my mind whether she would be overly serious or not.
Glancing down at the table, I caught a glimpse of the nameplate I’d made the day before. “Hi, Ann.”
“Hi,” she said, “You’re …?”
“Trent, I work here.” I never told anyone my intern status unless I had to. “How was your trip?”
Her lip curled. “Crowded. I hate flying NationAir because it’s so cheap,” she said. “But I love the hotel.”
I had booked the flight but had nothing to do with the hotel. She didn’t need to know either thing.
From reading the panelist biographies sitting in front of everyone, I learned she hailed from Nebraska. So I started a conversation about the Midwest, which eventually worked around to Midwestern punk bands like The Replacements and Husker Du, and I had a friend for the panel. Nothing is more important in Washington than having someone you can write notes to.
As the panel was called to order, I grabbed the pad of paper in front of me and uncapped the ballpoint pen—I had set the paper and pens out when setting up the room. I scribbled the first note and slid the page toward Ann.
Who is your favorite Charlie’s Angel?
Her eyes met mine and she smirked. She replied and slid the page back.
Kate Jackson. Duh.
While Nancy Cho, the young Asian panel chair, went through the panel ground rules, Ann went straight for the juicy meat.
Any truth to the rumors about the torrid affair over in Education?
I struggled to keep a laugh from breaking out. It wasn’t the free-wheeling Arts department providing the best gossip of the moment, but the snobby, reserved, and conservative Education department. I scribbled a response with glee.
