Dutch and Gina: The Power of Love (31 page)

“Yes, darling, it’s you,” he said.
 

Gina looked back at the photographs.
 
“How can this be?” she asked, a frown enveloping her face.
 
“I never did this.”

Allison stopped walking.
 
“Were you or were you not in his hotel room at any time while you were in Montreal?”

“Yes, I was in his room.”

“But why?” Allison asked with a little bewilderment of her own.
 
“Why would you, a married woman, be in that playboy’s hotel room, Gina?”

“Not because of what you mean,” Gina shot back.
 
“I was there to meet with Governor Feingold.”

This gave Allison some hope.
 
“So Feingold was there, too?”

“No, no,” Gina said regrettably.
 
“He couldn’t make it.”

“Dutch scared him off,” Crader offered, in Gina’s defense.

Allison frowned.
 
“What?”

“It’s a long story,” Crader said.
 
“Look, we’re focusing on the wrong thing.
 
Dutch says those photos are definitely Gina’s body, which means they are Gina.
 
The question is what do we do about it?
 
How can we control this damage?”

“We can’t,” Dutch said, and everybody looked at him.
 
“But I can.”
 

“You?” Crader asked.
 
“Sir, I wouldn’t advise you---”

“I want Shelly Pratt in my office now.”

Crader frowned.
 
“Shelly?
 
What does the Vice President have to do with this?”

“Get him in my office, Cray.”

Crader nodded.
 
“Yes, sir,” he said, and left.
 

“And Allison,” Dutch said.

“Yes, sir?” she asked, expecting an equally odd assignment as Crader’s.

“If you ever speak to my wife in the tone you just spoke to her in, you will be fired.”
 
He looked her dead in the eye. “Am I making myself clear?”

Allison swallowed hard.
 
Dutch Harber had a reputation for on-the-spot firing.
 
She’d seen it herself numerous times.
 
“Yes, sir,” she said.
 
She turned to Gina.
 
“I apologize, Mrs. Harber,” she added.

Gina tried to smile.
 
“It’s okay, Ally.
 
It’s shocking for all of us.”

Allison wanted to amen that, but was too terrified of the president.
 
“Is there anything else, sir?”

“No,” Dutch said.

“What do I tell the press, sir?”

Dutch frowned.
 
“You don’t tell those
got
damn vultures a
got
damn thing, what do you think?”

“Dutch!” Gina said, surprised by his harshness.

Dutch ran the back of his hand across his eyes.
 
“Nothing,” he said with less animation.
 
“You tell them nothing.”

“Yes, sir,” Allison said nervously, and then hurriedly left the room.

Dutch stood up, and began to pace around the room himself.
 

“What are we going to do?” Gina asked him, a plea now in her voice.
 
“This didn’t happen, Dutch. I never had sex with that man.”

“I know that.”

Gina turned toward him.
 
“You know?”

“Of course I know!
 
Why would you lower your standards to muck around with that idiot?”

“That’s your only reason?
 
Because he’s not you?”

Dutch looked at her.
 
“Because you know what that would do to me.
 
You’d never do that to me.”

Gina relaxed a little.
 
But just a little.
 
“That’s me in those photos.
 
That’s me making love to him.”

Dutch stopped walking, his heart still beating irregularly.
 
“What happened when you went to his room?”

“Nothing happened.”

“You had a drink?”

“Yes.
 
And we talked a little about Feingold and his love of money or something and then he . . . he must have gotten a call from Feingold because he was talking to him on his cell phone.”

“What do you mean he must have gotten a phone call?
 
You don’t remember him getting that call?”

Gina thought about it.
 
“Not really, no.
 
But I remembered he was talking to him and then he told me that he wasn’t coming.
 
He said that you had told Feingold he couldn’t meet with me.”

“And then what?”

“And then we went downstairs, to the dinner.
 
After I spoke, I got on the plane, and flew on to Japan.”

Dutch nodded.

“What are we going to do, Dutch?”

“You aren’t going to do anything,” he said, “but go back to your sewing circle ladies.”

“At a time like this?”

“Yes.”
 
Then Dutch went to her, stood her up by her arms.
 
“I don’t want you to worry about this.
 
I’ll handle it.
 
You’ve got to trust me on this, Gina.”

Gina shook her head.
 
Her face was a mask of worry.
 
“Why do they keep coming up with this stuff?
 
What have I done to them?”

“It’s not about you, sweetheart.
 
It’s about what they can do to get to me.
 
And not even to me, but to the power of the office I hold.
 
That’s all this is about.
 
You understand?
 
Don’t personalize this nonsense.
 
Don’t you dare.”

Gina nodded, allowed him to pull her into his arms, although she felt everything but reassured.

Shelton Pratt leaned down from his 6 feet frame and crossed his legs.
 
Dutch sat behind his desk in the Oval Office and stared at his vice president.
 
Gina and Primrose Grier were also there, with the women standing on either side of Dutch.
 
Crader, however, who was seated on the front edge of the desk, handled the initial questioning.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been invited to the Oval, Dutch,” Shelly said smilingly to the president.

“Yes, it has been a while,” Crader responded.
 
“I wonder why?”

Shelly balked.
 
He and Crader McKenzie never got along, even when Crader was a loudmouth in the Senate.
 
And the level of disrespect he always displayed irked Shelly no end.
 
He ignored him.
 
“How’s everything going, Dutch?
 
Gina?”

“That’s what we want to know about you, Shell,” Crader answered for the president again, refusing to be ignored.
 
“We want to know how everything’s going with you.
 
We want to know what you’ve been up to lately.”

“Me? I haven’t been up to anything.
 
Doing my job, that’s what I’ve been up to.”

 
“Oh, I’ll bet.”

Shelly shot an angry glare at the president’s chief of staff.
 
He never understood why Dutch allowed him such liberties.
 
“I beg your pardon?” he said to Crader in his best voice of censure.

“You
beg
my pardon?
 
Now that’s a good one.
 
Learned that, did you, at that country day school you attended all those years ago?”

“I beg your pardon?” Shelly said again, this time with umbrage in his voice.
 

“Cut the crap, Shelly,” Dutch finally said, and Shelly looked at the president.

“The crap? What crap?”

“What was the meeting about?” Dutch asked him.

And for the first time, Shelly hesitated.
 
“What meeting exactly are you referencing?”

 
“The meeting you and Jed Brightman attended at Robert Rand’s estate.”

Shelly’s heart began to palpitate.
 
“There must be some mistake,” he began.

“What was it about, Shelly, and I’m not asking you again?”

Shelly attempted to smile.
 
But it was a nervous smirk at best.
 
“It wasn’t about anything.
 
I mean, I meant to say what meeting are you talking about?
 
Maybe we aren’t talking about the same thing.”

Crader laughed.
 
“You are the worst liar ever,” he said.

“What is this about?” Shelly asked, looking from the president to the attorney general, a woman he always felt was on his side.

“We know for a fact that you and the Speaker of the House of Representatives attended a meeting at the estate of industrialist Robert Rand.
 
We know that the meeting lasted roughly fifty-three minutes.
 
We know that no-one else attended, just you, Mr. Rand, and the Speaker.”

“And we now want to know what that meeting was about,” Crader added.
 
“What was that get-together about between two men who happen to be in the direct line of succession to the presidency, and the one man who has the financial wherewithal to get that succession party started.”

Shelly again hesitated.
 
Then attempted a different tactic.
 
“You had me followed, Dutch?
 
Me, the Vice President of the United States?
 
You had some two-bit P.I. following me?”

Dutch, however, stared at that vice president of his so icily that even Gina could feel the chill.
 
Dutch was done.
 
He wasn’t hearing it, he was done.
 
Shelly, Gina knew, might as well come clean now.

Shelly apparent knew it too.
 
Because he leaned forward, his face now reeking of regret.
 
“It was all just talk,” he began.
 
“You know how Jed can get, we were meeting just to talk about it.”

“Talk about what?” Crader asked.

Crader’s presence, his very voice, grated on Shelly’s nerves.
 
But he soldiered on.
 
“We talked about some plan Jed and Robert had hatched to get rid of you,” he said to Dutch.

“What was the plan?” Dutch asked in his best voice of cool.

“Robert said he knew this doctor in Hong Kong who perfected one of those date rape drugs that could knock somebody out for something like fifteen minutes and erase all memory of the event itself.”

“A date rape drug?” Gina asked, alarmed.

“When you say the event,” Dutch said to Shelly, “you mean the rape itself?”

Shelly reluctantly nodded.
 
“That’s right.
 
And you take some photos, wipe her clean, put her back where she was.
 
In and out easily, if you get my meaning.”