Two Peasants and a President (18 page)

Virgil paused, not speaking.  He cast his eyes to the side slightly, not wanting to look at anything while he weighed what Molly had just said.

“Surely not,” he
finally
said
,
mostly to himself with more question than conviction.  “They would
never
do that; the risk would be too great.”  Then he thought back to what had happened off the Philippine coast.  The leak that he had received stated with assurance that a Chinese submarine had sunk the Filipino navy ship without provocation, a move that was unprecedented. 

“
Are you planning on telling me what’s going on any time soon?” Molly asked.

Virgil looked back over at her, still reeling at the thought. 

“I don’t know, Molly, but I think that the impossible might have just become possible.”

“Can we just dispense with the riddles?” she said.

“This is so far into the realm of conjecture that I’m reluctant to ev
en put words to it,” he replied, “b
ut I think at this point we have to at least a
c
knowledge the possibility that they were trying to discredit me with a mu
r
dered woman in my house, one who some might portray as a call girl.”

Molly reacted to having been labeled a ‘call girl’ by someone for whom she was starting to have feelings.  Anger and hurt welled up inside even though she knew she had planned to betray him.  Then suddenl
y the reality of what had happened
and fear pushed aside her hurt. 

“So it wasn’t you,” she said.  “It was me, after all.” 

Seeing that she had begun to tremble, he took her hands in his.

“Look, Molly, they already shot their wad.  Killing you now wouldn’t buy them anymore negative press regarding me than they already have.  There are going to be some nasty innuendos in the bottom-feeding press, but what else is new.  By murdering an innocent housekeeper, they’ll generate more sympathy than vitriol.  And there’s no way this is going to slow the ground swell of negative opinion toward China.  I believe the Chinese have just made a serious mistake, one for which I intend to repay them han
d
somely.”

30

“What the hell is going on, Stuart?” the president said, after being connected via secure line with
Boston
.  “You said you were going to shoot some video, not Baines housekeeper!”

“That wasn’t us, Mr. President,” he replied. 

“What d
o you
mean it wasn’t you?”

“I mean it wasn’t us.  We had absolutely nothing to do with what happened at Baines’ house.”

“Then who the hell did?” said the president, wondering how things had gotten so dangerously out of control.

“At this point, I have no idea.”

“Look, Stuart, this thing is off the tracks.  If we don’t dial it back, it’s liable to blow up in our faces.  Did your people manage to get any video at all?”

“I’m meeting with
Lanny
this evening.  I’ll know more then, Mr. President.”

“Bring me some good news for a change, Stuart,” said the president, “and find out what the hell happened at Baines house.”

After dropping the phone into its cradle, he picked up the remote and punched in his favorite network.
  They were in the middle of a
segment on events at Baines house.

“Apparently the assailants stumbled upon the senator’s housekeeper and his latest mistress,”  the announcer intoned smugly.  “The mistress was somehow able to fight them off;
the housekeeper wasn’t
.”  A clip of the coroner
’s
assistants carrying the black body bag out of the front door fo
l
lowed.  “The senator could not be reached for comment.  We will continue to follow this story and update you as soon as possible.”

“In a related story,” he continued, “China has reacted angrily to charges by Senator Baines that one of her submarines, without provocation, sank a Filipino warship.  China maintains that her surface warship only fired warning shots and has demanded the censure of the senator in the US Senate, stating that his actions constitute aggression against the People’s Republic.  Furthermore, the People’s Liberation Army claims that their ships have been subjected to attacks by unspecified foreign naval forces.”

“And in a statement that is rocking western capitols, the Chinese Fo
r
eign Ministry just moments ago announced that henceforth any ship that e
n
ters Chinese waters without express permission may be subject to attack.”

The network, as had been their custom, failed to mention that China has claimed virtually the entire South China Sea as its waters.  To do so would not only bolster the Republican senator’s outrage over their sinking of a fo
r
eign vessel more than 700 miles from China’s shore, but would seriously undermine the impression that the administration wished to convey that they are dealing firmly with China.  Such highly selective reporting of the ‘news’ might seem to at least in part explain this particular network’s abysmally low ratings, which now were hovering only slightly above those of the funeral channel. 

He picked up the phone and told his secretary to locate his national security council and bring them to the White House as quickly as possible by divergent
means.  In this way the media would be
less likely to be alerted to the gravity of the situation by a sudden parade of official cars arriving under the White House portico. 

31

Wheeled suitcases wobbling crazily behind them, Brett and Maggie tried to cover as much concourse as they could without standing out unne
c
essarily.  Brett was already sweating profusely, having ridden across a sweltering Hong Kong in a cab whose air conditioning was barely functio
n
ing.  They had briefly flirted with the idea of asking the hotel concierge to check for the first available flight out, but that would be like leaving muddy footprints. 

So instead they had waited and checked the big board in the terminal.  It informed them that a flight to
Vancouver was their best bet. 
Getting through the line in front of the ticket counter seemed like it took a month, all the while knowing that they could end up finding that the flight was fully booked.  They glanced furtively around them, fully expecting to see the p
o
lice closing in. 

When they finally reached the ticket agent, they waited in terrified suspense while she checked for available seating.  Looking up at them, she said:

“Didn’t enjoy your stay in Hong Kong?”

“There’
s been a death in the family,”
they blurted out simultaneously. Knowing they’d handled that clumsily, they again waited as she peered into her square crystal ball. 

“I have two seats in the front cabin,” she said finally, meaning first class.  After putting almost a year of college on their credit card, they headed for their next ordeal, security, clutching their tickets.  Ten minutes later, they ran breathlessly into the boarding area, feeling for the first time that they might actually make it.  The flight had just started boarding first class and they queued up, still glancing nervously around them. 

Finally they were sitting in seats on the plane that would return them to safety.  But they still had to wait while more than two hundred and fifty other sweaty bodies, some with the girth of small water buffalo, struggled to squeeze through the narrow aisles.  Several times Brett had to duck to keep from being brained by a wheel-away. 

After what seemed like hours, the first class cabin door slowly swung shut and the safety procedure pantomime began.  Brett and Maggie looked at each other with a sigh that seemed to drain all the air from their bodies. 
Everyone was now seated, strapped in and awaiting the push back from the gate. 

Suddenly, like a funeral dirge
, a new announcement tolled:  “Ladies and gentlemen, there will be a short delay.”  This was followed by an une
x
plained wait that dragged on and on.  Maggie had started to tremble.  F
i
nally, the cabin door was slowly, excruciatingly reopened and several police officers walked in, followed by an airline agent who turned and pointed straight at Brett and Maggie. 

The
officer in charge motioned for them to rise.  As they did, two other officers placed their hands menacingly on the butts of their pistols.  Maggie had never dreamed what it was like to be on the ten most wanted list, but as the eyes of almost three hundred people stared, tears started to flow.  Brett’s eyes darted between the officers, as if timing moves that would take them out, but even a Navy Seal has to understand when it is time to fold. 

Brett was ordered to hold his hands aloft, then very cautiously han
d
cuffed, his captors clearly aware of his capabilities.  Then it was Maggie’s turn, but a single female was entrusted that task, the others keeping an eye on Brett.  At the end of the jet way, airport carts were waiting, this time with military police standing beside them.  Revolving lights perched atop poles broadcast to all that two criminals were being taught what it means to break the law in China. 

Although Brett and Maggie could not know it, the electronic tentacles that had searched them out so efficiently had not been as successful with Jim and Sally Petersen.  Though Petersen was also Holly’s maiden name, that connection had not
yet
been made.  Meanwhile, their flight to Mexico City was at this moment hurtling down the runway. 

32

When Clifford Storm’s Apache gunship had been hit and forced to crash land in Iraq 1, Virgil Baines had turned his bird around and laid down covering fire until US forces could rescue the downed pilots.  At that early point in the war, the Iraqis still had a huge anti-aircraft umbrella and Baines had nearly been shot down himself.  From that day on, they had been close friends. 

After his discharge from the military, Storm gravitated toward private investigation.  Having been a radio and techno buff since he was a young boy, he found the electronic surveillance aspect of the business not only e
n
joyable but usually a piece of cake.  He had even developed a few refin
e
ments of his own.  

So the lunch assignment had been an easy go.  With Molly having little choice but to wear the wire, and sitting at a table next to the restaurant window with
Rawles
, filming and recording them had been first year private eye stuff.

Boston
was another story.  To begin with, he was far out of his comfort zone.  He didn’t know the city, didn’t know who did
c
oun
ter
surveillance there and had zero allies or friends.  What he did have was a strong aversion to anyone who wanted to harm Virgil Baines.

Working with
Rawles
had turned into an exercise in disgust. 
Rawles
was a real piece of work; a sleazier, more self-serving scumbag would be hard to find, even in Washington.  Just being close to the man made Storm wish he’d brought a can of disinfectant.   But at least
Rawles
was a captive a
u
dience; he knew the only possibility he had of avoiding federal gun and racketeering charges was to play along. 

He did have one thing, however, that would be useful in pulling this thing off: complete and total amorality.  Conning his boss presented no more of an ethical dilemma than conning anyone else.  That’s what he did, that and look out for himself.

Rawles
said that he always met Brewer in his office on
Harbor
Drive.  The other constant was that Brewer invariably hung his jacket in the outer office where his secretary was.  That would become the lynchpin of the o
p
eration.  Brewer was to meet with
Rawles
in the early evening before Brewer’s meeting with Stuart
Shumer
, one of the president’s most trusted aides.
 

He would be carrying a tiny device.  A miracle of miniaturization, being
smaller than a nickel and a bit thicker
, it sends a signal that can be picked up as far as a quarter mile away.  The signal could then either be amplified and transmitted on with a repeater, a slightly larger and more powerful device, or intercepted by someone nearby with a receiver/recorder in his pocket.  Assuming
Rawles
was able get the device into Brewer’s pocket, Storm would be sitting in a bar almost directly below
Shumer’s
north side office when the meeting with Brewer took place.  With the receiver/recorder hidden under his jacket, it should be able to pick up every word.