America Rising (22 page)

The patrolman notices something else too. He kneels over the men, notes the earpieces and wireless mikes clipped to their shirt cuffs, their empty shoulder holsters. He rolls one of the men over and sees a lapel pin, a five-pointed star embossed with the words “Five Star Security.” He also sees the plain white business card sticking out of the man’s breast pocket. He pulls it out, reads the single word printed in big black letters. Something cold and heavy forms in the pit of his stomach. He leans into his collar mike and says tersely, “We have a problem.”

I
t was a good idea at the time.

At least that’s what I told myself in the four days between when I invited AnnaLynn to the Keys and her call to me from the top of Card Sound Bridge. I’d begun having second thoughts almost from the moment she accepted, and spent the interim chowing down on a tasteless stew of regret, recriminations, self-doubt and, of course, guilt. Carolyn hadn’t been dead a year and here I was, already intrigued by another woman.

With that infallible sixth sense that almost all women have, AnnaLynn seemed to know all this from the moment I met her in front of Peter’s Islamorada house, a sleek glass-and-steel box on the ocean side of the island, shrouded in oaks and pines and palms on a quiet street known to locals as the “Old Road.”

Our greeting was cordial but reserved, a quick handshake, an introduction to the two men and three women with her. She intrigued me all the more now. AnnaLynn Conté wasn’t what most men would call beautiful. Her legs were too short, her skin too pale. Her breasts were tiny. Her dark brown hair was cut for convenience rather than style. But she had real presence and seemed to glow with an inner goodness.

It wasn’t until the house tour was over and we were all standing around on Peter’s private white sand beach that I really noticed her eyes. They were an arresting, luminous shade of green. They reminded me of the famous Keys “green flash,” a rare optical phenomenon that paints a blazing emerald spot above the sun right before it dives below the horizon. Right then I knew I was a goner. Not that day. But one day.

I covered my discomfit with chatter, edging towards the house to make a quicker getaway. Then I remembered something.

“Did you tell them about Peter’s conditions?” I asked AnnaLynn.

She smiled and shook her head. “I was afraid to. Maybe you should.”

“Two things Peter wanted me to ask you to do.” I said, nodding towards the 28-foot Regal powerboat suspended over the water on davits a few yards away. “Take that baby out and run it around for awhile. Peter doesn’t like it to hang there unused all summer. And over there in the garage is a ‘52 Jag XK120. Fully restored. Gorgeous, if I do say so myself. Take that out once in awhile too. Go to the store or something, take a trip to Key West. Peter didn’t think you’d mind.”

The tall, skinny, long-haired guy named Ian flashed a wide grin. “I think we can help you out there, mate,” he said.

I grinned back. “I thought you might,” I said. “And now I’m going to let you guys unpack, get settled, chill. I hope to see you around but if not, I’ll throw a small party before you go. We’ll eat some fish, drink some wine, tell some lies. I’ll introduce you to some of the folks who live down here; you might be surprised at their resumes.”

And with that I was back in the Miata, heading for home, my stew of the last few days actually tasting a little better.

* * *

Joe Josephson opened his eyes slowly and painfully, as if his eyelids were hung with heavy weights. The remnants of the drug still in his system left him groggy, his memory hazy, his brain fogged. Nothing made any sense—where he was, how he’d gotten there. He closed his eyes and lay still, afraid to move, as if the slightest shifting would disturb his fragile re-entry into consciousness.

Gradually it all came back to him, first in quick, intense flashes, like every third frame of a movie bursting on-screen, then at a steadier tempo, the movie filling out, until the realization hit him like a gut-punch, terror prickling his skin as if he’d been dunked in an ice bath.

He’d been speaking to his wealthy patrons and their hangers-on in San Francisco. He was sitting down to dinner. There was a bomb scare. His bodyguards scooped him up and bulled him through the crush of panicked diners. He remembered being amused at how their air of smug superiority vanished as they scrambled to flee the hotel ballroom like a pack of frightened animals. He remembered his own sense of relief at seeing his two SUVs parked at the hotel curb as he was hustled out of the hotel and safely deposited behind their armored and bullet-proof panels. But what happened after that? He couldn’t remember.

But he did know the end result, though. He’d been taken, kidnapped. Captured by someone or someones with the skills to snatch a former Vice President of the United States from the ballroom of a major hotel in a major American city and get away clean. He was alone, isolated. Totally in someone else’s power. A sense of helplessness consumed him like a fever but he swallowed it and summoned up the anger that burned constantly within him, an eternal flame that had always singed whoever got in its path.

Joe Josephson was a tough old bird and he wasn’t afraid to die. He’d been through several health crises in his seven decades on this earth—heart attacks, prostate cancer, three operations on his back—and he’d faced his possible demise with the same sneer that was his trademark. But he did have one fear: he was deathly afraid of being kidnapped. In those same seven decades he’d made more than his share of enemies, and he knew they would show him no more mercy than he’d showed them. Less, even.

He swallowed that fear too, almost gagging on the effort, and sat up in bed to take in his surroundings. He was in a room about the size of his wife’s walk-in closet at their palatial home in an exclusive suburb of Phoenix. Actually, it was more like a room within a room, a large plywood box, a do-it-yourself jail cell. There was just enough light emanating from one of four bulbs recessed in the ceiling for him to see its crude construction—unpainted, unfinished, the only concession to comfort a patch of cheap industrial carpet on the floor. He swung his feet off the bed and stood the three other lights in the ceiling clicked on. Motion-sensitive. He assumed he was being filmed and recorded at all times. He ignored the realization and focused on the room’s details.

His bed was a raised plywood slab held up by thick four-by-fours. At its foot was a one-person table and chair, both similarly constructed and secured to the floor by heavy bolts. Across from him was a chemical toilet and small wash basin. On the wall opposite him was a low door; anyone entering or exiting would have to duck to keep from banging their head. At the bottom of the door was a small pass-through. There was no handle, no lock on the inside, no way to get out.

“Welcome, Joe. Glad to see you’re up and about.” The voice was a man’s, calm and well-modulated. Infuriating in its contemptuous familiarity.

The anger Joe Josephson had been nursing exploded.

“Goddam you bastards, whoever in the hell you are! Do you have any idea of who I am? I am the Vice President of the United States of America, and I will have your fucking heads on a platter! When I get through with you there won’t be an inch of skin on your worthless bodies! I’ll have you taken apart piece by piece, and your wives and children and dogs and cats and. . .”

Suddenly, Joe Josephson gasped and clutched at his chest, as if his fury had shorted out his own nervous system. He inhaled air in giant gulps—his face burning, foam on his lips, spittle flecking his chin, murder in his eyes.

“Joe, Joe, Joe.” The voice was soft, soothing, a parent calming an upset child. “Settle down now. This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Fuck you.”

“Indeed.”

“What the fuck do you want?” The snarl was back.

“We just want to talk, that’s all.”

“And who the hell is ‘we’?”

“‘We’ are the people who have taken you, Joe. That’s really all you need to know. We have no desire to hurt you, and if you cooperate your stay here will be brief and not all that unpleasant, and you’ll be released to go back to your usual raping and pillaging and selling your fellow Americans down the river.”

“Fuck you. Talk about what?”

The man behind the voice sighed. The child was still throwing a tantrum.

“About you, Joe. Your triumphs, your glories. Your illustrious career. Not the business stuff. It’s pretty well established that you’re a greedy, amoral piece of shit. We’re more interested in what is laughably called your ‘public service,’ though that’s basically serving the public up on a silver platter for the benefit of those assholes you were speaking to in San Francisco.

“What we want—no, what you’re going to tell us—is how things work in Joe Josephson’s world. The real world. What really happened on 9-11? Why did you sucker us into two useless wars? What kind of network did you set up to spy on Americans? What did you get for allowing Wall Street to gut our economy like a fish and then walk away with billions? What deals did you make with your buddies in the ‘oil bidness’ when you invited all those CEOs to the White House to set the country’s energy policy? And what about the deals with the insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry, the banks and coal companies and your other buddies in the ‘defense’ business. . . Well, that’s just a start. I’m sure there’s plenty more.

“We want your files on those people too. A man in your position—especially you, Joe—has every speck of dirt on every person you’ve ever looked crosswise at. You’ve got it recorded, hidden, ready to use when and if you need it. We want all that. Then we’re going to take it, and all the video of our little talks, and post it on the web, send transcripts and video to every major news organization in the world, shout it from the rooftops if we have to, so everyone can see the reality of the system you’ve helped create, the system that works so well for you and so poorly for everyone else. That’s what we want, Joe.”

Incredulity fought with fury on Joe Josephson’s face.

“You’re fucking maniacs! You’re out of your goddam minds.”

The voice seemed amused. “Perhaps. But we did get you here.”

“I wouldn’t tell you shit. And if I did, what do you think they’d do to me?”

“Probably the same thing we’ll do to you if you don’t. Well, we won’t actually
kill
you. We’ll simply leave you here to die—a long, slow, painful death. You see, Joe, at the end of the day we’re both a lot alike. We don’t care about what’s fair, what’s legal or moral or ethical. We care about
winning.
That’s the way people like you and the scum you work for have played the game for millennia, why you always win and the people you play against always lose. But we’re not losing this time, Joe. You are. And the sooner you come to grips with that, the sooner we can all go about our business. Are we clear?”

Joe Josephson stoked his fury to white-hot intensity. He bared his teeth like a wild animal. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck all you miserable little shits.”

The voice was amused again, but this time there was something underneath it that made even Joe Josephson flinch a little.

“Somehow I thought you’d say that. No problem. We’ll talk again later.”

“In your dreams, asshole.”

“In those too, Joe.”

* * *

President Nancy Elias had just finished expelling a mouthful of platitudes toward the prime minister of India when an aide interrupted their dinner in the White House’s ornate State Dining Room, leaned over the president and whispered urgently in her ear.

The prime minister and others at the table noticed nothing out of the ordinary; only the faint tightening of Nancy Elias’s lips betrayed the gravity of what she’d just been told. It took all the discipline she’d acquired in a lifetime of hiding her true feelings in pursuit of power to continue with the platitudes, to make casual conversation while counting the minutes until she could excuse herself without raising eyebrows.

The moment arrived just after dessert. As the prime minister and the rest of the guests were shuffling off to the East Room for a piano recital, she plead a slight indisposition and a minor crisis and hurried up to her study off the Oval Office. Ray Carmody was already there, worry pinching his features.

Freed from the bonds that had restrained her at dinner, Nancy Elias burst into the study and slapped her hand on the small, plain desk that had been a childhood gift from her father. It sounded like a gunshot.

“Goddam it, Ray!” she snapped, hovering over her chief of staff like an angry bird of prey. “How could this have happened?!”

Ray Carmody looked hurt, defeated. “I don’t know, Madam President,” he said helplessly. “We didn’t know. We didn’t expect. . .” He shook his head as his words trailed off.

Nancy Elias had never seen her longtime friend and confidant so beaten down. She bit hard on her anger, sat and gave herself a moment, then said quietly, “I’m sorry, Ray. That was uncalled-for. Tell me how it happened.”

The apology didn’t help. Ray Carmody looked even more worried. “Joe was giving a speech to a bunch of fat cats at a hotel in San Francisco. Apparently there was a bomb scare—a couple of small explosions—and in the rush to get out of the room the vice president’s bodyguards, all three of them, were knocked out and their places taken by the kidnappers. They must have already been in the room, waiting for the right moment. How they got in. . . We don’t know that either.”