Bianca really was unsettled about the St. Barts trip. The last place she wanted to go was the damned Caribbean!
But they’d been talking about “needing a break” ever since the convention, so it was impossible for her to lobby everyone against taking it. Bill wanted to go. The kids wanted to go. Phil wanted to go. Everybody wanted to go—except her. But—all in all—it would be good for the girls. Spend a little quality time with them.
Ah, the girls. Bill’s pride and joy.
“Would you like something to drink?” an Air Force steward interrupted her train of thought. She desperately wanted a glass of cold vodka; she didn’t care what kind.
“Uh, maybe some white wine.”
“I have a Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio or a Sauvignon Blanc. They’re all from Sterling.”
“Pinot Grigio,” she nodded. She hated Sterling. But what the hell?
The steward disappeared. She turned to gaze out at the white clouds slipping past below the plane, the azure Caribbean stretching out as far as the eye could see.
The girls—Bill’s pride and joy, Jennifer and Allison.
She’d never wanted to have kids, but he always wanted them. She knew how important it was to have kids for any couple with high political aspirations.
Even Hillary Clinton broke down and had Chelsea. One kid.
The steward was back.
“Here you are, Mrs. Dumaine.”
“Thank you.”
And that frozen automaton Laura Bush lucked out: had twins. Like Laura Bush, Bianca had gotten lucky, too, and come out with twins. She’d vowed never put herself through that agony again. Childbirth had to be the most difficult thing in the world for a woman, though some women actually seemed to enjoy the pain. Not Bianca Dumaine.
She’d checked with the chief steward about putting through a call to Dr. Chambers to check on her mother, and the steward had made just the trace of a smile, as if to say, Another new crop of green big shots we have to train.
He’d assured her that she could call anywhere in the world from her stateroom over the most secure telecommunications system in the world.
“This plane is different from any other plane in the world, Mrs. Dumaine,” he’d said. The plane she was on, he told her a little smugly, “was even Air Force One three or four times.”
She finished off the Pinot Grigio and pushed the call button, bringing the Air Force steward back.
“That was so refreshing, I think I’ll have another one.”
“My pleasure, Mrs. Dumaine,” said the cheery young steward. “Oh, but I made a mistake. The Pinot Grigio is by Sterling. The Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay are by Mondavi.” He had a ready white smile, couldn’t have been older than twenty-three or –four, and she’d bet good money he was a champ in the sack. Weren’t they all at that age?
“Then I’ll have the Sauvignon Blanc by Mondavi.”
He nodded and left.
As a political wife, she’d been fortunate enough to have servants around constantly, so she seldom actually performed the duties of a mother anymore. There was always someone else to cook for them. There was always someone else to clean up after them, take the girls to the movies, to ballet class, to school. Drivers, nannies, maids. The most she saw of them was after school and before bedtime. They seldom ever ate at the same table at the same time. Not with the schedule of a United States Senator.
And now Vice President-elect.
The fine looking young steward was back with another glass of wine, the Sauvignon Blanc.
“The Mondavi is called Fumé Blanc on the label, but it’s really a Sauvignon Blanc.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” she said.
This time, she noticed, he’d filled it all the way to the top, not three-quarters like the one before.
He touched his cap.
“Call me anytime,” he smiled back, and left her alone with her thoughts.
So handsome. But she had Phil. And there didn’t seem to be any reason to change that “arrangement” now or in the future. Phil made her happy. Fulfilled sexually. A little paunchy, but then she was no spring chicken either. And Phil was aggressive in bed, not as mild as Bill.
For a minute, she allowed herself to think about Bill and Tim, and to let her imagination run wild thinking about them in bed. She wondered which one...
Well, in all honesty, she’d rather not think about that. She’d rather think about what little plan devious Phil had up his sleeve to get Tim out of their lives—forever—before all hell broke loose and a scandal broke out that would ruin them all, relegating to meaninglessness all the years of plastic smiles, rubber chicken dinners, fundraising banquets and cocktail parties, blood, sweat and tears they’d been through to get to the point that a handsome young steward was offering her a chilled glass of Pinot Grigio.
She could get used to living like this, traveling on a lavishly decked out private Government jet, waited on hand-and-foot, even if the Pinot Grigio was by Sterling.
She touched the call button. The handsome steward magically appeared.
“Yes, ma’am?” he smiled.
She liked his smile.
“You know, I think I’ll have a vodka on the rocks.”
What’s he going to say to me, No?
“Any particular kind?”
“Ketel One.”
“Lime?”
“No fruit.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He left.
After the Inaugural, they’d be moving into the Vice President’s official residence, No. 1 Observatory Circle in the secure compound of the Naval Observatory. That would be nice.
It wasn’t the White House.
Well, not yet it wasn’t.
* * *
CHAPTER 52
The secluded, easily protected private compound south of Shell Beach the Dumaines moved into the Sunday before Thanksgiving was called the Villa Mauresque, named by a long-ago French owner after Somerset Maugham’s famous villa in Cap Ferrat in the south of France. It had high walls on three sides, a formidable gate, and gave onto a white sandy beach that looked out over a sparkling Caribbean Sea.
The main house was designed in the style of an Italian villa, with ornate architectural flourishes.
Jennifer and Allison, however, couldn’t have cared less about any of these details—all they wanted to do was go swimming! The Dumaines hadn’t been in the house an hour before the girls were clamoring to go into the pool first, and then the ocean. The pool was directly in front of the house on the other side of a piazza. Then there was a gracious lawn that sloped down to the sea. This beach was patrolled by Secret Service agents supplemented by members of the local Gendarmerie.
Bill was busy on the phone with Washington—something to do with the Transition.
Bill sent Tim to get the girls ready for the water. Tim told Jennifer and Allison he’d take them in if they hurried and changed into their swimsuits. In just minutes they came running down the stairs from their rooms, trailed by the exhausted nanny.
Dumaine was on the phone with Jack Houston St. Clair, who’d been appointed by the President as deputy head of the Transition. He was looking through a large set of windows in a spacious room overlooking the pool and sea.
“That’s right, Jack,” he was saying. “We just got in. I feel kinda guilty that we’re down here and you’re up there doing the heavy lifting in freezing Washington.”
“Not a problem. After the campaign, you guys deserve a rest.”
“What about your dad? He went through the same thing we did.”
“We took a day and went back to Miami to relax, but he was anxious to get back up here and get to work.”
“Well, as much as I like it down here in St. Barts, I’m anxious to get back, too.”
Dumaine saw Tim go into one of the cabanas by the pool to change, coming out in yellow boxer style swim trucks that showed off his magnificent body. He shook his head. God, I’m lucky to have that guy. Dumaine also noticed Agent Rodriguez mean
dering around the far end of the pool area, keeping an eye on things.
Tim came around to the house side of the pool and when the girls came screaming down the stairs in their new swimsuits, he scooped them up into his arms and as he did so, caught Bill’s eye through the windows looking at them. Tim winked and took the girls into the shallow end of the pool, holding one girl in each arm, balancing them on his hips like two little shrieking piglets.
“Mommy! Mommy!” Dumaine heard the girls cry out, and then noticed Bianca and Phil walking toward the pool.
“There are a few matters to go over,” St. Clair was saying on the phone, “so I may send a courier down with all this stuff tomorrow.” Another plane was coming down the next day bringing a few more staffers, so this would be a “working vacation,” as they called it.
Dumaine saw Bianca nod to Phil in agreement, and she turned to come back into the house. She must be going up to change into her bathing suit to join the girls in the water, thought Bill. He’d have to do the same, he realized.
“All right, Jack,” he wrapped it up, “we’ll be talking soon.”
In a few minutes, Bianca came out dressed in her conservative Navy blue one-piece suit, realizing how dreadfully white her skin looked. She treaded hesitantly into the water using the shallow end steps and then dove in head first. When she came up, she paddled toward the girls and Tim, who turned them over to her.
Tim made his way up the steps and out of the water where he grabbed a towel from a servant and wiped himself dry. By this time Phil was settled into a chair and getting a drink—looked like a Piña colada–from a servant lowering a tray, and Bill came out of the house to greet the girls in the pool, squealing with joy and splashing away merrily.
“Where’s my suit?” he asked Tim.
Tim nodded toward the cabana.
“I put it in there.”
Dumaine went toward the cabana and Bianca noticed Tim wander casually over in that direction.
Bill went into the cabana and after a short pause, Bianca heard him call out.
“Hey, Tim, look here a sec, will you?”
Tim ducked into the cabana and closed the door behind him.
Bianca glanced at Phil, who from the far side of the pool, saw what she saw. Both Bianca and Phil kept track of the time the door was closed, and it was about two minutes, enough for some hugs and kisses, but not much more.
They weren’t the only ones keeping track of the time, however. Agent Rodriguez watched discreetly from a distance, halfway between the pool area and the sandy beach area. One good thing about being a Secret Service agent, he thought, was that nobody really minded you being there. Once they got used to the fact that they had no choice in the matter anyway. And the Dumaines were used to the drill.
The door to the cabana opened and both men—big smiles on their faces—emerged. Bill was wearing a blue bathing suit, boxer style like Tim’s. Bianca felt pretty sure that Tim had bought it for him, because she certainly hadn’t.
In a moment, though, Bill jumped into the pool, followed by Tim and everybody played tag with the twins, yelping with happiness as they splashed about in the pool.
Agent Rodriguez made a mental note of the time and circumstances, so he could report to Jack Houston St. Clair when he had the chance. He was afraid to use cell phones, even encrypted ones, or email or texts. Nothing was safe these days from prying eyes and ears.
Back in the pool, Bianca enjoyed the refreshingly cool water rushing over her body as she splashed around with the girls. She was slowly coming to accept the fact that she had to cool her jets in this island paradise, like it or not, even if she’d rather be in the thick of things in Washington. Why fight it? So she was thinking ahead to tonight, when they went to bed. The villa only had so many rooms, and Phil had handled the task of assigning the rooms. She and Bill had separate rooms at the far end of a long second-floor gallery. Tim had been put in a room next door to Bill and Phil had placed himself in a room on the third floor just above Bianca’s, and next to a narrow stairway that led down to the gallery. So she expected she’d see Phil tonight.
It was Sunday. They would enjoy Thanksgiving here in St. Barts, leave on Saturday and be well rid of this “paradise” and back to the real world.
Bianca couldn’t wait.
* * *
CHAPTER 53
Monday and Tuesday, Shahzad and his team reviewed their detailed plans for the assault on the Villa Mauresque.
The operatives he’d sent down first had made a point of watching and tracking every vehicle that went into the villa compound. From this exercise, they learned which vendors supplied the villa: there was a butcher, there was a baker, there was a delivery from a wine and liquor store, there was a man in a truck with vegetables, plus several others.
The operatives took Shahzad around to all the vendors’ shops. He went in, bought something, looking like a normal tourist from Denmark or Iceland with his white blond hair and ruddy complexion, hardly the picture one associated with Iranian terrorists.
The butcher worked with two assistants and had a wife.
The wine and liquor supplier was a husband and wife team.
The vegetables merchant had a family with six kids.
The baker had kids also, three of them, two boys and a little girl, aged six to ten.
After giving the situation careful consideration, it seemed to Shahzad that the only credible way into the compound was in the truck of one of the vendors. With the frigate Ventôse and the gunboat Fougueuse on day-and-night patrol offshore and the perimeters of the villa compound guarded by Secret Service personnel and elements of the French Gendarmerie beefed up with a force sent over from Fort de France, the only other way in was through the front gate.
Shahzad looked most carefully at the perimeter walls. They ran up to eight feet on two sides, nine feet on the rear side flanking the gates. They weren’t so heavily guarded that he didn’t think his team could scale the walls, take out the security personnel on one side, and invade the compound quite silently.
The other way in was by truck or van.
It was just a matter of hiding his first team in the back of the baker’s truck, surprising the guards at the gate and taking them out with weapons firing with silencers. Then the back-up team would pour in through the gate. There would be a firefight, but if luck was on their side, they’d get the job done.
He’d observed that the first set of guards at the villa gates were locals who knew the merchants by sight, so merely hijacking the merchant’s truck and using it to get close to the villa would not work. They would have to position themselves in the rear of the truck and let the driver do the talking. When the guards made their way to the rear of the delivery truck to search, Shahzad’s commandos would get the jump on them with complete surprise.
For the first time in his life, Shahzad hesitated. He couldn’t make the call whether to go with an over-the-wall approach, or through the front gates. Or both.
But he knew he had to make a decision in the next twenty-four hours. One minute he leaned toward the wall; the next, toward the front gates. Then he began vetting his team about the different options.
“But which vendor do we choose?” asked Gilani.
“The baker,” said Shahzad definitely.
“Why?” asked Malek.
Shahzad grunted with a laugh.
“We can’t be sure how often vegetables or meat are delivered, but we can be sure the bread will be delivered daily because these people are French. Day-old bread is a profound offense to the French,” said Shahzad.
It was now Tuesday night. He had to act by Friday, which meant he had to make a decision by tonight.
So he had to approach the baker, secure his kids and wife as hostages and use their safety to get the baker to agree to Shahzad’s plan, even though Shahzad knew he’d kill the baker whatever happened.
No witnesses.
Tehran could then claim there was no connection between the attack on Vice President-ele
ct Dumaine in St. Barts and the Islamic Republic of Iran half a world away.
The Supreme Leader would be pleased.
* * *
CHAPTER 54
Back in Washington that Wednesday morning, President St. Clair was looking out the window at the frost-covered South Lawn of the White House from the private dining room of the second floor Residence while Lonnie laid out a croissant and a cup of coffee for him.
“Cold out there this morning, Lonnie.”
“Yes, sir, it is cold,” Lonnie chuckled. “For this time of year, very cold indeed.”
“A nasty Thanksgiving,” the President muttered, a small shivering sensation tingling down his spine.
“Yes, sir. You stayin’ here for turkey or headin’ south?”
“We’ll be here. Me, Jack and Francesca.”
“That’ll be nice, sir.”
“You pull duty on Thanksgiving, Lonnie?”
“My family, we do it around lunchtime, so I’ll split a shift. Eat with my family, then come in around five to serve yours.”
“That’s good it works out like that. I want you to be with your family on Thanksgiving.”
The Running Mate (A Jack Houston St. Clair Thriller) Page 19
