The Echo of the Whip (28 page)

Upon arriving home, McGill had asked Patti if they could skip any talk of business, hers or his, until the morning.

“Gladly,” the president said. “Until the sun rises, I’m just some dame you picked up and took to a fancy hotel guarded by Marines and guys with machine guns.”

“So you’re saying the neighborhood’s not so good?”

“It’s rotten with politicians, but we won’t talk about them either.”

They didn’t. Beyond endearments and occasional banter about their kids, they didn’t talk at all. Other forms of communication more than sufficed. When the new day did break, however, it was time to get back to the real world.

Patti told McGill just how much money she had to her name.

“Yikes,” he said.

Then McGill told Patti of his opportunity to be on a TV show.

“Double yikes,” she said.

“Yeah, but who knows if the writing will be any good?” he said.

“You’re smart to wait and see about that. Most actors will take almost any role because they need to work. You, lucky man that you are, have a rich wife.”

“And two pensions and a small business above an accounting firm.”

Patti took McGill’s hand. “I’ve heard rumors that your business might be growing, beyond the European office in Paris. Is that true?”

“I’m considering opening another office in L.A.” McGill looked thoughtful for a moment. “If I do that, I don’t see how I could neglect to do the same back home in Chicago.”

“Sounds like you might be very busy.”

“Could be,” he said, “but if you like, you could buy a small tropical island for just the two of us, and I could spend my days collecting sea shells and rubbing sun screen all over you.”

Patti said, “That does sound appealing, but I have this new venture capital firm to get off the ground.”

“That’s right, you do, and I think it’s a terrific idea. I know, maybe your appointments secretary could get together with my appointments secretary and work out a schedule of when we might see each other.”

“How romantic. The idea almost makes me swoon.”

McGill laughed, got out of bed and extended a hand to Patti.

“As long as we’re both here right now, we might as well shower together. I’ll wash your back, you wash mine. No need for scheduling at all.”

She took his hand, stood and wrapped her arms around his waist.

“Promise me, Jim, we’ll never bring our appointments secretaries into the shower with us.”

“Certainly not,” McGill said. “Water conservation goes only so far.”

After the president had gone down to the Oval Office, McGill made a quick trip to his White House Hideaway. He looked around at the huge leather sofa, the fireplace and the artwork on the walls he’d bought with Patti. He murmured to himself, “Damn, this is the one room in the place I’m going to miss.”

Oh, well, he thought, with Patti’s money, he could ask for a copy of the Hideaway as a birthday gift. He plopped down on the sofa and called Los Angeles. It was just after six a.m. on the Left Coast. He hoped the person on the other end wasn’t still in bed or in—

“Goddamnit, I told you not to call!”

A bad mood.

“You did?” McGill asked. “I don’t remember that.”

“Terry?”

“Jim McGill. Sorry about the early hour.”

“
James J.
McGill?”

“Yes, but don’t let that spare me any righteous anger.”

Lieutenant Emily Proctor of the LAPD laughed. “Oh, sure, and while I’m at it, let me give the president an earful, too.”

McGill said, “Please don’t do that. She has too many troubles as it is.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard. Probably shouldn’t have said that. Hey, tell her I’m rooting for her.”

“I will. Every bit of good will helps shore up her morale.”

“So what can I do for you, sir?”

“I had to leave town in a hurry and —”

“You’re not in L.A.?”

“I’m back in Washington, but I thought your detectives, Zapata and MacDuff should know that Mira Kersten got her embryos back. At least, I assume she did.”

“How’d that happen?”

He told her about the guy who stole them dropping in uninvited at Mira Kersten’s house.

“So your partner, Ms. Sweeney, had a gun on a home invader and Ms. Kersten said to let him go.”

“In a nutshell, yes. I can send you a computer-generated likeness of him, if you like.”

“I would, yeah. I get the feeling that Ms. Kersten has a secret or two to hide.”

“You’re probably too young, but John Lennon had something to say about that.”

Emily chuckled and said, “I know what you mean. My dad used that line on me when I was growing up. ‘Everybody’s got something to hide except me and my monkey.’”

“Was your father a cop, too?” McGill asked.

“Worse, a lawyer and city councilman.”

“So you know politics isn’t a pretty business, to put it mildly. This whole situation, stealing the embryos, was mostly political, I think, with a little crime thrown in for spice. Though I’m sure Ms. Crozier could have done without getting tased.”

“Yeah. Let’s not forget that. I still want to catch this guy.”

“I’d like to get my hands on him, too. Anyway, I just wanted to give your department a heads-up. Zapata and MacDuff might do a last interview with Ms. Kersten, but I don’t know if they’ll want to go much farther than that.”

“They’ll go as far as I tell them to,” Lieutenant Proctor said.

“Sure. Anyway, I hope my information helps the LAPD.”

“Your assistance is much appreciated, sir.”

McGill said goodbye, having the feeling that if he did open a shop in Los Angeles it would be a good thing to have Emily Proctor as a friend. He had a feeling the young woman was going places. High places.

He called Sweetie and asked her to forward a copy of the thief’s likeness to L.A.

McGill was just finishing breakfast in the Residence dining room when his phone rang. The ID screen told him Ellie Booker was calling. She was the only member of the media his phone didn’t automatically divert to voice mail.

He answered by saying, “I hope there’s some small chance you have good news, Ellie.”

“What I have is
important
news. I’m going to interview Chief Justice Craig MacLaren in fifteen minutes. You and the president will want to be watching.”

McGill’s mind took a beat to think about that. He wondered for a moment if he’d missed a day somewhere and had woken up on Sunday not Saturday. No, he hadn’t slept that long; it was Saturday. Normally, that was the quietest day of the week. The political news and analysis yakfests weren’t due for another 24 hours.

Meaning that something big, a story that wouldn’t wait, was about to break.

“What’s happening, Ellie?” McGill asked.

“I can’t say a word before we go on. Just be sure you and the president are watching.”

“On WWN?

“No, PBS. We’ll also be streaming on WETA’s website.”

The Washington affiliate of the Public Broadcasting System.

“Come on, Ellie, give me a hint.”

“Can’t. Gotta go. Watch.”

With that, she was gone.

McGill picked up a house phone and called the Oval Office. He got the president’s personal secretary, Edwina Byington. He said, “Edwina, unless the president is busy acting as commander in chief to stave off an invasion of the United States, I’ll need to see her in the Oval Office in the next ten minutes. Better get Chief of Staff Mindel in on this, too, if she’s in the building.”

Unflappable as always, Edwina replied, “Yes, sir. Will you need coffee, tea and a bite to eat as well?”

Senate Majority Leader Oren Worth, Republican of Utah, opened the door of his suburban Washington home and admitted Associate Supreme Court Justice Daniel Crockett. Worth’s house was one of the few in the immediate surroundings that did not have household staff. Not because Worth lacked the wherewithal — his fortune was measured in the billions — but owing to his sense of self-reliance and efficiency.

Worth believed you did for yourself whenever possible. The shortest distance between two points was never a line that ran through any sort of unnecessary staffing. Much less a bureaucracy. Many of the people in the GOP and in True South regarded him as something of an eccentric. More than a few on the ideological right doubted his commitment to several of their most cherished causes.

Neither of those concerns had slowed his nearly instantaneous rise in his party’s hierarchy. Worth was by far the richest man in Congress. Educated as an engineer at the Colorado School of Mines, he’d made his first bundle in the decidedly unglamorous but essential field of copper mining. He’d also gone on to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. The joke, though, was that somewhere along the line Worth must have studied at the King Midas School of Alchemy because everything he touched turned to gold.

Worth also scared the hell out of a lot of people in Washington. They feared that he might be the harbinger of a new breed in national politics: the hands-on billionaire. Someone who was not content to throw his money at professional candidates and have them do his bidding. But someone who had the smarts, drive and most of all money to get in the game himself and exert direct control. Caesars in the making.

“Good morning, Mr. Justice Crockett,” he said, extending a hand in welcome to his guest. “We’ll be meeting in my home office, if that’s all right with you.”

Crockett shook hands and smiled. “That’s just fine, Mr. Majority Leader.”

Worth led Crockett into a room with a gleaming oval cherrywood table at which sat Speaker of the House Peter Profitt and House Whip Carter Coleman. Both men stood and shook Crockett’s hand. He and Worth sat opposite the two leaders of the House. The seat at the head of the table remained empty.

Worth’s explanation for that was it would be for the next Republican or True South president. The implication was clear. He, more likely than anyone else, would fill it eventually. The host offered a choice of drinks to his guests: spring water or
sparkling
spring water.

Lemon slices were available for those preferring a bit of zest.

Crockett accepted his libation with good grace, and then he got right into his reason for asking to speak with the others. “In a few minutes, Chief Justice MacLaren is going to speak to Ellie Booker on PBS and its website. He called me and the other justices this morning to inform us of what he’s going to say. When I asked if I might share the news with interested parties, such as yourselves, he said to feel free.”

Worth nodded, wearing a thin smile. “Such a small lead time won’t give us any chance to issue a pre-emptive response. So he’s not losing a bit of advantage. Assuming, Mr. Justice, that you’ve heard the news only recently and brought it to us as quickly as you could.”

Crockett nodded. “I did take the time to shower, shave and relieve myself.”

The others gave polite chuckles and Worth said, “Well, I don’t think we can fault you there.”

“All right then, here’s what the Chief is going to say,” Crockett told them.

As he laid out MacLaren’s plan, watching the apprehension grow in the faces of Profitt and Coleman but not Worth, he thought of his own reasons for bringing the news to these men in person. The first, of course, was that he wanted Craig MacLaren’s job should fate or personal choice remove him from his preeminent seat on the court: Crockett wanted to be chief justice.

He also wanted to help shape the court when other associate justices retired or passed on. He wanted to be the one the next president turned to first when seeking advice on nominees. If he could swing both ends of his calculations, he might wind up being the most powerful and important man in Washington for a very long time.

He’d briefly thought of running for president himself, but he came to realize he’d never pass muster with the True South voters. Despite his Tennessee roots, he’d likely be called a SINO, Southerner in Name Only. Besides that, handicapping the opposition, he didn’t think he’d be able to beat Oren Worth.

The man’s personal fortune, used as a source of campaign funds, would be an insurmountable advantage for Worth. Beyond that, Crockett thought that Worth wanted the job more than he did. In Worth’s mind, his senate seat and majority leader position were just stepping stones to the Oval Office. Truth be told, Crockett preferred the Supreme Court. The appointment was for life, eliminating the need to ever grub for votes again, and nobody in either the executive or legislative branches could reverse a high court decision.

They could only propose and pass laws that
conformed
to the justices’ decisions.

There was a real sense of personal satisfaction in that.

Of course, even a chief justice could be impeached, but the chances of that were …

Well, let the leaders of Congress in the room see just how hard it was going to be for them to impeach a president they all despised.

Hearing the last of what Crockett had to tell them, Worth clicked on the television in the room to hear it again from the chief justice himself.

Eugene Beck switched hotels after talking with Mira Kersten. He didn’t necessarily think anyone was closing in on him. It was simply good tradecraft. A moving target was harder to hit than a stationary one. Harder to spot in the first place. He took a room at the Marriott near Bob Hope Airport in the San Fernando Valley after contriving a different appearance than the one he’d showed to Ms. Kersten.

He had no trouble believing her assertion that Edmond Whelan was the man who hired him to steal the embryos. Hell, Whelan’s name was in the clinic’s records. Just a little bit of plowing through public records revealed the man was Mira Kersten’s
ex
-husband. Bad blood between former spouses was as common as butter on popcorn.

Whelan wanting to retrieve his genetic building blocks was also easy to understand.

Beck confirmed what Mira Kersten had told him about Whelan’s occupation. He found a biographical profile in the
New York Times.
The guy was chief of staff to House Whip Carter Coleman. More than that, Whelan was identified as a former protégé of Thomas Winston Rangel, a deep thinker, at a policy palace called The Maris Institute.

The picture of Whelan accompanying the
Times
story made him look a bit like a grown-up version of Opie Taylor from
The Andy Griffith Show.
Mostly it was the eyes that were different. They were a lot more wised up. Beck didn’t have any doubt this prick could want someone dead, if it would serve his purpose.

Using a data base in the international security firm that had been his nominal employer when he went globetrotting to kill America’s enemies, Beck found Whelan’s unlisted home address and phone number. He also located Whelan’s work schedule in Representative Coleman’s office. That information was supposed to be off-limits to private-sector firms and individuals, but the Chinese and the Russians weren’t the only people who hacked the U.S. government.

What ticked Beck off was discovering that Whelan was out of the office.

A note on the guy’s calendar said he was taking
personal time.

Wasn’t that too damn precious for words?

Your taxpayer dollars at rest. Shit.

Beck was sitting in front of his laptop trying to figure out how to find the bastard when a Google Alert popped up on the screen. Subject: James J. McGill. The president’s husband remained a subject of interest for Beck. He really didn’t have any intention of killing the man; he just couldn’t stop thinking about him.

The guy was something of a modern marvel, if you looked at his years in Washington. He’d kicked a senator’s ass on a basketball court. Basically told a Congressional committee to go fuck itself and got away with it. Pounded a half-ass militia leader into pudding in front of his troops just outside the U.S. Capitol.

The man was all sorts of a badass, and lucky enough to marry the president, too.

Getting the upper hand on someone like him, one on one, might be a real challenge. The kind of thing to engage the imagination of someone with Beck’s training and temperament. Would he be able to humble McGill man to man?

Beck’s first thought was, of course, he could.

McGill had to be ten years older than him, at least. Must be pushing fifty if not older. No matter how hard you trained or what natural ability you started with, time slowed everyone down. Hell, Beck thought he had to be fractionally slower than he was a few years ago. Going up against McGill would be a good test to see just how much he’d lost.

The question was, how could he set things up so the man’s Secret Service agents didn’t just gun him down before McGill had to handle his own self-preservation.

The Google Alert told him that McGill would be accompanying the president when she appeared for her trial in the Senate on Monday. That being the case, Beck figured McGill must have left L.A. and be on his way back to Washington, if he wasn’t there already. Beck thought that was cool, a man standing by his woman that way.

He’d bet McGill would be staring daggers at those prick senators looking to do Patricia Grant in politically.
You mess with my wife, you’re going to be some sorry SOBs.
He could see McGill’s eyes telling them that without ever saying a word.

The irony here was the more Beck felt admiration for McGill, the more he wanted to test himself against him. He also thought a political animal like Whelan would have to hustle his ass back to DC to see the possible fall of a president. That being the case, the two guys he wanted to meet being in the capital, there was only one thing left for him to do.

He booked himself a nonstop flight from Bob Hope to New York City on Jet Blue. There were no direct flights from Burbank to Washington. But DC was just a hop from the Big Apple.