Absolute Power (24 page)

*   *   *

B
URTON SCANNED THE CROWD
, C
OLLIN BESIDE HIM
. A
LAN
Richmond made his way to the informal podium set up on the steps of the Middleton Courthouse, a broad block of mortar-smeared brick, stark white dentil moldings, weather-beaten cement steps and the ubiquitous American flag alongside its Virginia counterpart swooping and swirling in the morning breeze. Precisely at nine-thirty-five the President began to speak. Behind him stood the craggy and expressionless Walter Sullivan with the ponderous Herbert Sanderson Lord beside him.

Collin moved a little closer to the crowd of reporters at the bottom of the courthouse steps as they strained and positioned like opposing teams of basketball players waiting for the foul shot to swish or bang off the rim. He had left the Chief of Staff’s home at three in the morning. What a night it had been. What a week it had been. As ruthless and unfeeling as Gloria Russell seemed in public life, Collin had seen another side of the woman, a side that he was strongly attracted to. It still seemed like a careless daydream. He had slept with the President’s Chief of Staff. That simply did not happen. But it had happened to Agent Tim Collin. They had planned to see each other tonight as well. They had to be careful, but they were both cautious by nature. Where it would lead, Collin did not know.

Born and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, Collin had a good set of Midwestern values to fall back upon. You dated, fell in love, married and had four or five kids, strictly in that order. He didn’t see that happening here. All he knew was he wanted to be with her again. He glanced across and eyed her where she stood behind and to the left of the President. Sunglasses on, wind lifting her hair slightly, she seemed in complete control of everything around her.

Burton had his eyes on the crowd, then glanced at his partner in time to see the latter’s gaze riveted for an instant on the Chief of Staff. Burton frowned. Collin was a good agent who did his job well, maybe to the point of overzealousness. Not the first agent to suffer from that, and not necessarily a bad trait in their line of work. But you kept your eyes on the crowd, everything out there. What the hell was going on? Burton made a sideways glance at Russell, but she stared straight ahead, seemingly oblivious to the men assigned to protect her. Burton looked at Collin once more. The kid now scanned the crowd, changing his pace every now and then, left to right, right to left, sometimes up, occasionally he would stare straight ahead, no trace of a pattern a potential assailant could count on. But Burton could not forget the look he had given the Chief of Staff. Behind the sunglasses Burton had seen something he did not like.

Alan Richmond finished his speech by staring stonily out at the cloudless sky as the wind whipped through his perfectly styled hair. He seemed to be looking to God for help, but in actuality he was trying to remember if he was meeting the Japanese ambassador at two or three that afternoon. But his faraway, almost visionary look would carry well on the evening news.

On cue he snapped back to attention and turned to Walter Sullivan and gave the bereaved husband a hug befitting someone of his stature.

“God, I am so sorry, Walter. My deepest, deepest condolences. If there is anything, anything that I can do. You know that.”

Sullivan held on to the hand that was offered to him, and his legs began to shake until two of his entourage invisibly supported him with a quick thrust of sinewy arms.

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

“Alan, please, Walter. Friend to friend now.”

“Thank you, Alan, you have no idea how much I appreciate your taking the time to do this. Christy would have been so moved by your words today.”

Only Gloria Russell, who was watching the pair closely, noticed the slight twinge of a smirk at the corner of her boss’s cheek. Then, in an instant it was gone.

“I know there are really no words I can say to do justice to what you’re feeling, Walter. It seems more and more that things in this world happen for no purpose. Except for her sudden illness, this never would’ve happened. I can’t explain why things like this occur, no one can. But I want you to know that I am here for you, when you need me. Anytime, anyplace. We’ve been through so much together. And you’ve certainly helped me through some pretty rough times.”

“Your friendship has always been important to me, Alan. I won’t forget this.”

Richmond slid an arm around the old man’s shoulders. In the background microphones dangled on long poles. Like giant rods and reels, they surrounded the pair despite the collective efforts of the men’s respective entourages.

“Walter, I’m going to get involved in this. I know some people will say it’s not my job and in my position I can’t become personally involved with anything. But goddammit, Walter, you’re my friend and I’m not going to just let this slide away. The people responsible for this are going to pay.”

The two men embraced once more as the photographers popped away. The twenty-foot antennas sprouting from the fleet of news trucks dutifully broadcast this tender moment to the world. Another example of President Alan Richmond being more than just a President. It made the White House PR staff giddy thinking about the initial preelection polls.

*   *   *

T
HE TELEVISION CHANNEL-HOPPED FROM
MTV
TO
G
RAND
O
LE
Opry to cartoons, to QVC to CNN to Pro Wrestling and then back to CNN. The man sat up in bed and put out his cigarette, laid the remote down. The President was giving a press conference. He looked stern and appropriately appalled at the abominable murder of Christine Sullivan, wife of billionaire Walter Sullivan, one of the President’s closest friends, and its symbolism of the growing lawlessness in this country. Whether the President would have made the same pitch if the victim had been a poor black, Hispanic or Asian found with his throat cut in an alley in Southeast D.C. was never addressed. The President spoke in firm, crisp tones with the perfect trace of anger, of toughness. The violence must stop. The people must feel safe in their homes, or at their estates in this particular case. It was an impressive scene. A thoughtful and caring President.

The reporters were eating it up, asking all the right questions.

The television showed Chief of Staff Gloria Russell, dressed in black, nodding approvingly when the President hit key points in his views on crime and punishment. The police fraternity and AARP vote was locked up for the next election. Forty million votes, well worth the morning drive out.

She would not have been so happy if she knew who was watching them right this minute. Whose eyes bored into every inch of flesh on both her and the President’s faces, as the memories of that night, never far from the surface, welled up like an oil fire spewing heat and potential destruction in all directions.

The flight to Barbados had been uneventful. The Airbus was a vast ship whose massive engines had effortlessly ripped the plane from the ground in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and in a few minutes they had hit their cruising altitude of 36,000 feet. The plane was packed, San Juan acting as a feeder for tourists bound for the clusters of islands that made up the Caribbean vacation strip. Passengers from Oregon and New York and all points in between looked at the wall of black clouds as the plane banked left and moved away from the remnants of an early-season tropical storm that had never hit hurricane status.

A metal stairway met them as they departed the aircraft. A car, tiny by American standards, shepherded five of them on the wrong side of the road as they left the airport and headed into Bridgetown, the capital of the former British colony, which had retained strong traces of its long colonialism in its speech, dress and mannerisms. In melodious tones the driver informed them of the many wonders of the tiny island, pointing out the pirate ship tour as the skull and crossbones ship pounded through still rough seas. On its deck, pale but reddening tourists were plied with rum punch in such levels that they would all be very drunk and/or very sick by the time they returned to the dock later that afternoon.

In the back seat two couples from Des Moines made excited plans in chirrupy patters of conversation. The older man who sat in the front seat staring out the windshield had his thoughts mired two thousand miles north. Once or twice he checked where they were headed, instinctively craving the lay of the land. The major landmarks were relatively few; the island was barely twenty-one miles long and fourteen miles across at its widest point. The near constant eighty-five-degree heat was ameliorated by the continual breeze, its sound eventually disappearing into one’s subconscious but always nearby like a faded but still potent dream.

The hotel was an American standard Hilton built on a man-made beach that jutted out on one end of the island. Its staff was well-trained, courteous and more than willing to leave you alone if that was desired. While most of the guests gave themselves wholeheartedly to the pampering efforts, one patron shunned contact, leaving his room only to wander to isolated areas of the white beach or the mountainous Atlantic Ocean side of the island. The rest of the time was spent in his room, lights set low, TV on, room service trays littering the carpet and wicker furnishings.

On the first day there Luther had grabbed a cab from in front of the hotel and taken a ride north, almost to the edge of the ocean, where atop one of the island’s numerous hills stood the Sullivan estate. Luther’s selection of Barbados had not been arbitrary.

“You know Mr. Sullivan? He’s not here. Went back to America.” The cabbie’s lyrical tones had brought Luther out of his trance. The massive iron gates at the bottom of the grassy hill hid a long, winding drive up to the mansion, which, with its salmon-colored stucco walls and eighteen-foot-high white marble columns, looked strangely appropriate in the lush greenery, like an enormous pink rose jutting out from the bushes.

“I’ve been to his place,” Luther answered. “In the States.”

The cabbie looked at him with new respect.

“Is anyone home? Any of the staff maybe?”

The man shook his head. “All gone. Dis morning.”

Luther sat back in his seat. The reason was obvious. They had found the mistress of the house.

Luther spent the next several days on the broad white beaches watching cruise ships unload their population into the duty-free shops that littered the downtown area. Dread-locked residents of the island made their rounds with their battered briefcases housing watches, perfumes and other counterfeit paraphernalia.

For five American dollars, you could watch an islander cut up an aloe leaf and pour its rich liquid into a small glass bottle for use when the sun started to nip at tender white skin that had lain dormant and unblemished behind suits and blouses. Your own handwoven corn rows cost you forty dollars and took about an hour, and there were many women with flabby arms and thick, crumpled feet who patiently lay in the sand while this operation was performed upon them.

The island’s beauty should have served to free Luther, to some degree, from his melancholy. And, finally, the warming sun, gentle breezes and low-key approach to life of the island populace had eroded his nervous agitation to where he occasionally smiled at a passerby, spoke monosyllables to the bartender and sipped his mixed drinks far into the night while lying on the beach, the surf pounding into the darkness and gently lifting him away from his nightmare. He planned to move on in a few days. Where to, he wasn’t quite sure.

And then the channel hopping stopped at the CNN broadcast and Luther, like a battered fish on an unbreakable line, was sent reeling toward what he had spent several thousand dollars and traveled several thousand miles trying to escape.

*   *   *

R
USSELL STUMBLED OUT OF BED AND WALKED OVER TO THE
bureau, fumbled for a pack of cigarettes.

“They’ll cut ten years off your life.” Collin rolled over and watched her naked machinations with amusement.

“This job’s already done that.” She lit up, inhaled deeply for several seconds, put the smoke out and climbed back in bed, snuggling butt-first to Collin, smiling contentedly as she was wrapped up in his long, muscular arms.

“The press conference went well, don’t you think?” She could feel him thinking it through. He was fairly transparent. Without the sunglasses they all were, she felt.

“As long as they don’t find out what really happened.”

She turned to face him, traced her finger along his neck, making a V against his smooth chest. Richmond’s chest had been hairy, some of the tufts turning gray, curling at the edges. Collin’s was like a baby’s bottom, but she could feel the hard muscle beneath the skin. He could break her neck with no more than a passing motion. She wondered, briefly, how that would feel.

“You know we have a problem.”

Collin almost laughed out loud. “Yeah, we’ve got some guy out there with the President’s and a dead woman’s prints and blood on a knife. That qualifies as a big problem I’d say.”

“Why do you think he hasn’t come forward?”

Collin shrugged. If he were the guy he would’ve disappeared. Taken the stash and gone. Millions of dollars. As loyal as Collin was, what he could do with that kind of money. He would disappear too. For a while. He looked at her. With that kind of money would she condescend to go with him? Then he turned his thoughts back to the discussion at hand. Maybe the guy was a member of the President’s political party, maybe he had voted for him. In any event why bring yourself that kind of trouble.

“Probably scared to,” he finally replied.

“There are ways of doing it anonymously.”

“Maybe the guy’s not that sophisticated. Or maybe there’s no profit in that. Or maybe he doesn’t give a shit. Take your pick. If he was going to come forward, he probably would have. If he does, we’ll sure know soon enough.”

She sat up in bed.

“Tim, I’m really worried about this.” The edge in her voice made him sit up too. “I made the decision to keep that letter opener as is. If the President were to find out . . .” She looked at him. He read the message in her eyes and stroked her hair and then cupped her cheek with his hand.