The Washington Lawyer (3 page)

Not wanting to interrupt Francis, he quietly left, walking rapidly toward the study. “Hello,” he said.

Expecting it to be Arthur, he was startled to hear another man shouting, shrill and hysterical. “She drowned. Goddamn it. She's dead.”

He recognized Wes Jasper's voice. But his brain was fuzzy with alcohol, his feelings caught up in the euphoria of the evening. Jasper … where was he? Why would he be calling?

“Andrew, it's Wes. You've got to help me.”

Slowly, it came to him. Thursday Jasper had called and asked to use Andrew's house in Anguilla for the weekend. “Just a short getaway, he had explained.” Andrew assumed Wes and Linda would be flying down. So he'd said, “Sure.” Now Jasper must be calling him on a cell phone with a Washington area code. What was Wes telling him now? Linda had drowned. “What happened?”

“Andrew, weren't you listening. She's dead. She drowned. And I'm fucked! Don't you understand? Don't you get it? Totally fucked.”

Martin felt in a fog. If Linda drowned, why was Jasper fucked? “Now calm down, Wes. Go back to the beginning. Tell me what happened to Linda.”

“It's not Linda!” Jasper was shouting. He sounded delirious. “Linda's in Denver visiting her mother. The woman's name is Vanessa.”

“Who's Vanessa?”

“She came down here with me.”

“Why'd she do that?”

“For Christ's sake, Andrew. Why do you think? Focus.”

“Where is she now?”

“On the bed, in the master bedroom of
your
house. I carried her up from the beach.”

What in tarnation is this? “You're sure she's dead?”

“How stupid do you think I am?”

Martin took some deep breaths.

“You have to help me,” Jasper pleaded. “You're my best friend. You have to help me.”

While Martin tried to think of what to say, Jasper kept ranting. “I'm screwed. If this comes out, my reelection is in the toilet. My marriage will be history. My kids will never talk to me. I might as well go out and drown myself.”

“Stop.” Martin commanded.

“Then
you
tell me what to do?”

“Call the Anguilla police. Tell them what happened. I assume it was an accident.”

“Of course it was an accident. She was swimming and went out too far. Stupid, crazy bitch. I almost drowned trying to save her.”

“Tell the police all that.”

“You don't get it, do you? I can't go to the police. I'm a senator. It'll all be on TV. I'll be ruined. You know that's what'll happen.”

Jasper, he was sure, had been drinking. “You have to do it, Wes. It's the only way.”

But then as the mess sunk in, Martin began to see ramifications. Disclosure in the media, he realized, could have a devastating effect on his becoming chief justice. He could imagine the Post's headline: “S
UPREME
C
OURT
N
OMINEE RUNS
C
ARIBBEAN
L
OVE
N
EST FOR
I
NFLUENTIAL
S
ENATORS
.”

No, there still was only one right way to handle this. “You must go to the police.”

“That is not an option.
You
have to find a way of making this go away. You're my friend. You can't let me be destroyed for one little indiscretion. You know I'm right. Friends help each other when one gets into trouble.”

Martin didn't know what to do. If stone sober, he thought, finding a way around this would be almost impossible. But with his mind clouded with alcohol, he felt as if he'd been submerged into a tank.

“Please help me.” Jasper raved on. “We've been friends forever. Don't let me go down.”

Hearing the sounds from the dining room, he wanted to tell Jasper he'd call him back. But he couldn't do that. Wes had been his friend for decades, and Wes sounded too miserable. But should Martin be responsible for Jasper's life going up in smoke? It was his own damn fault.

“You've got to do something.”

The only right thing was for Jasper to call the police and report the drowning. But that would ruin Jasper's life and most likely derail Martin's Supreme Court nomination.

Martin stopped dithering and decided. “I'll help you. I'll take care of it.”

“Oh my God, I'll be grateful forever.”

“Does anyone else know what happened?”

“Not a soul.”

“Stay where you are. I'll call Gorton. He'll tell you what to do.”

“Thank you so much.”

Martin had to get back to the dinner, he realized. But first, he had to call Gorton, a mover and shaker on the island whom Martin had befriended over the years.

He called Gorton at home, waking him. “I need your help,” Martin told the groggy-sounding Gorton. “The man using my house is a good friend. The woman he's with drowned tonight. And she's not his wife.”

“Oh my.”

“Yeah. Right now they're both in the house. This could be bad for him. And very bad for me.”

It was a blessing, Martin thought, that his closeness with Gorton enabled him to make this call.

“What do you want me to do?”

As if preparing to leap off a high diving board, Martin took a deep breath. “Move the woman's body to another location. Make certain no one will be able to tie my friend or me to her death.”

There was no response.

“If this worries you and makes you too uncomfortable, you shouldn't do it. Please tell me.”

Finally, Gorton said, “I'll do it.”

“I'll be seriously grateful. My friend's waiting for you at the house with the body.”

Saying those last words made Martin cringe. Feeling lousy, he put away the phone, returned to the group and slipped into his chair, all shook up. Francis was staring at him.

Sally sitting next to the him, said, “No rest for the weary. The price of fame.”

Thank God Philip, on Sally's other side, asked her, “Do you have children?”

She launched into a tale of her children and grandchildren. Martin tuned them out. On the table he noticed a glass of sauterne as well as the dessert. He had no appetite for the cold soufflé, and as he picked up the wine glass, his hand was trembling. Perspiration dotted his forehead. His striped shirt felt soaked under the arms. Why in hell did Wes use his house with another woman? Jasper certainly led Martin to believe he was going with Linda. Wes, he recalled, slept around at Yale. But that was thirty-five years ago. He put down the sauterne and drank ice water to steady himself.

At that moment, it was as if a cloud covering Martin's eyes suddenly lifted. He could see clearly and understood what he had just done—committed the greatest blunder of his life!

He had an acute sense of right and wrong. The rationalization he had been feeding himself about his friendship with Jasper and helping a friend disintegrated. That couldn't possibly justify what he had done. It was wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

As for the impact on his nomination to be chief justice, if he hadn't agreed to help Jasper and instead had called the Anguilla police, the consequences for Martin might not be so bad. He had let a longtime friend use his house. Unknown to Martin, he took a woman there who accidentally drowned. Martin couldn't be blamed for that, particularly if he had called the Anguilla police. Sure, Jasper would be hurt, but Wes had played a high-risk game, taking this Vanessa to Anguilla. In life there are no free fucks.

But if the story of what Martin had done, arranging for the movement of Vanessa's body, came out in the press, then Martin's chief justice nomination would sink faster than a heavy rock in a pond of water.

I made the wrong decision
.

In his anguish, his legs shaking, Martin thought about trying to undo it. He could race into the study and call Gorton back to tell him not to do a thing. Then he'd call Jasper and tell him he changed his mind. Martin's cell phone would show the number Jasper had used to call him. He'd give Wes the choice of calling the Anguilla police or doing it himself. Yes, that's what he should do.

But he couldn't get himself to move to undo what he had done. It's too late, he told himself. Everything is already in motion.
I'll have to live with the consequences
.

An hour later, their guests had gone. Francis came up to him with a huge smile. “Everybody was so complimentary. They all had a great time. Drew called it an evening he'd never forget.”

“The food was incredible. Especially the lamb.”

“You don't think I overcooked it?”

“Nope. Perfect. And they loved hearing you talk about performing at Aspen.”

Isabella and Juan, he noticed, were picking up dishes and straightening furniture.

Francis kicked off her shoes. “Who called?”

Martin couldn't bring himself to tell Francis about Jasper's call. He was so ashamed of what he had done that he couldn't possibly let anyone know about it. Not even Francis.

Their marriage was based on the mutual respect and admiration they had for each other. What he had done was so stupid that he was afraid she'd think far less of him. He couldn't bear that. Not right now.

Looking away, he said, “A client from the Midwest. His son shot and killed someone. He wanted to know what to do.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Go to the police. I put him in touch with a local lawyer.”

He hated himself for lying to Francis, which he had never done before. But he had to. He felt like a boat pulled away from its mooring in a storm.

* * *

Though it was almost two in the morning, Xiang Shen was fully awake in his Connecticut Avenue apartment watching
Seven Days in May
, one of the endless in a stream of American movies that the insomniac, with the title of Assistant Economic Attaché at the Chinese Embassy, watched most nights.

Xiang particularly liked political thrillers, although he would watch just about any drama or action film. Hitchcock and James Bond were among his favorites. He couldn't explain his obsession with American movies. Perhaps it was the forbidden fruit. Most of them would be blocked from showing in China. Or, more importantly, they portrayed the sense of freedom that Xiang longed for. And they also helped him pass the long and lonely night hours.

Five years ago, Xiang was assigned to the Chinese Embassy in Washington by Liu Guan, who was Deputy Director of the MSS, the Ministry of State Security, China's premier intelligence agency. As part of his briefing, Liu told the thirty-year-old Xiang, “Your assignment in the United States is highly sensitive. You are prohibited from dating American or foreign women. You can only date women working at our embassy who have a security clearance equal to yours. The honey pot is the oldest trick in the book. I won't risk you falling into it.”

At the time, Xiang thought that Liu's edict was absurd. He was merely passing on to Beijing information about United States military plans and capabilities which appeared in the print or electronic media in the United States. There was nothing confidential about his work. He didn't have access to secret information. What could he possibly pass along to a woman in bed?

Still, he had learned from instructors in training that disobeying any order of Liu meant certain and severe punishment. The deputy director was known for brutality in dealing with enemies of the state, a category he defined to include those who didn't follow his orders.

When Xiang had arrived in Washington, a healthy thirty-year-old with strong sexual desires, he systematically went through the available pool of eligible embassy female employees in six months. Only four he decided were worth dating. Two he slept with, both unsatisfactory experiences. So he decided to wait for sex until he returned to China on periodic visits.

In Washington he spent time in the gym where he could press 250 pounds, and he ran four or five mornings a week. His six-foot frame had filled out. Xiang could have been on the cover of a men's fitness magazine.

After two years, Liu gave Xiang his title of Assistant Economic Attaché and assigned him to cover the American Congress, obtaining information from any source, not merely the media, about actions in Congress that could affect China, either militarily or economically. As part of his work, Xiang attended a myriad of diplomatic receptions and cocktail parties where women often flirted with him. Occasionally Xiang was on the verge of asking one of them to come home with him. Before he uttered the words, Liu's stern face and harsh voice appeared in his mind. He deflected their advances and went home where he took a cold shower and watched American movies. All the while cursing Liu. He wasn't having any fun, his job was boring, and he didn't believe anything he did was helping China, which was why he had originally joined the MSS.

All of that changed five months ago when Liu was appointed director of the MSS and summoned Xiang to Beijing where he informed him about Operation Trojan Horse. “You and our ambassador in Washington will be the only two in the United States who will know about Operation Trojan Horse. But you will have the critical role in this operation. Extreme secrecy is essential. Trojan Horse is the most important intelligence operation in our country at this time.”

Xiang had replied, “I'm honored to be a part of it.”

“If you do a good job in this assignment,” Liu had told Xiang, “the possibilities for you in Beijing are unlimited.”

Liu had also snarled, “I am concerned that you may be too young and immature for this assignment. But no one else has your knowledge of the United States and the nuances of American life. So I am forced to take a chance on you.”

“I appreciate your confidence.”

“I don't have confidence. And I will tell you that if you fuck it up, I will personally direct the torture until you beg to die.”

Xiang was so terrified that he could barely walk out of Liu's office.