The Trojan Sea (26 page)

“Why’s that?” Stuart asked.

“It’s weak because of the evidence.”

“And because someone is out to get me.”

“We don’t have to suggest alternatives,” Broad said. “We work the facts. At the right time I’ll talk to the DA and show her where the case will fall apart. I’ll tell her you’re a nice guy and never even got a parking ticket. Also, you have an alibi.”

Stuart was confused. “Alibi?”

“Certainly. You drove the car some two hundred miles before turning it over to your wife. Further, you were with a witness the entire time, who will testify she never saw you work on the car. What reasonable man is going to drive a car with brakes that he’s sabotaged? That hole of reasonable doubt is so large I can drive a truck through it.” He studied Stuart’s face for a moment. “And there is always the option of a plea bargain.”

He doesn’t believe me,
Stuart realized. He was back in the road, run over by the street sweeper. Despair overwhelmed him and for a moment he was further back in time, trapped in
Temptress
’s cabin in the hurricane. Now, as then, something inside him snapped. His words were slow and deliberate. “No…fucking…way.”

Broad leaned back in his chair and nodded. “Good. I needed to know my marching orders. I’ll go straight for it and make it go away. But it will take some time.” He fingered the check. “Please give this to my secretary on your way out.”

“One more thing,” Stuart said. He quickly outlined the subpoena he had received and his problems with Jenny and her mother.

Broad’s advice came quick. “Don’t take a lawyer into a family court on the first appearance. Plead for time, tell them how happy and well adjusted your son is, that your ex may still be suffering post-traumatic shock from the accident. Tell them don’t listen to the lawyers, listen to Eric.”

It all made sense to Stuart. “Thanks,” he said.

Broad stood up and extended his hand. “You’re a good man,” he said. “It’s my pleasure.”

Stuart felt better as he left the lawyer’s offices. He decided it was time to quit feeling sorry for himself and get on with his life. He sat in Jenny’s car and called her on his cell phone. “Jenny, can we talk?” He listened for a moment. “Sure, I can be right there.” He wrote down the directions to her new home before breaking the connection. “Where in hell is Occoquan?” he wondered aloud. He started the car and drove south, heading for Fredericksburg on Interstate 95. Forty minutes later he turned into a neighborhood that shouted affluence, family, soccer moms, and good schools.
The perfect place to raise a kid,
he thought.
All thanks to Barbara Raye
.

He parked in the driveway behind a brand-new silver Lexus and got out. Hesitantly, he rang the door bell. There was no answer, so he rang again. Still no answer.
That’s Jenny. Make an appointment and then go someplace else.
He was about to leave when the door opened. Jenny was standing there barefoot, wearing a tight T-shirt and jeans. Her belt and the top button of her jeans were undone, revealing her flat tummy. “I was almost in the shower,” she said. She held the door open, and he walked inside.

“Nice,” he said. “Very nice. Barbara Raye?” She nodded, tears in her eyes. Her right hand came up and touched the fresh scars on her face from where she had gone through the windshield. “I can hardly see them,” he lied.

“My doctor says they’ll be almost invisible after a year.” He could hear the old insecurity in her words, now magnified a hundred times. For Jenny, her looks had been everything, and now, with her beautiful face scarred, there was nothing left for her to fall back on.

“He did a good job. You’ll be fine.” He gave her an encouraging smile. “This will all go away. But it will take time.”

“Who’ll ever look at me again?” she whispered.

They had been down this road before. He gave a little laugh. “Who won’t?”

“Will you?”

He searched for the right words to reassure her and restore her fragile sense of confidence. He had to do it, for Barbara Raye used Jenny’s insecurity as a way to control her. Without it Jenny would turn to her mother for support, and that meant trouble. “You’re as beautiful as always.”

She was in his arms, crying. “Oh, Mike! Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” he murmured in her ear. Her mouth was on his, her tongue exploring. He pulled free. “You don’t have to prove anything.” He had to explain. “Jenny, bad things happen to people all the time. It’s not their fault, but they have to cope. That’s what life is all about.” He was sounding like Jane, and he knew it.

“Oh, Mike, we’ve always been able to work things out.” She kissed him again, her right arm around his neck as her left hand rubbed his crotch. She broke the embrace and stepped back. She pushed her jeans down with both hands and stepped out of them.

“Jenny, you don’t have to prove anything,” he repeated. He turned toward the door, but she threw her arms around his neck, clinging to him.

“Please, Mike. Please. For what we meant to each other.” She pulled off her T-shirt and led him into the bedroom.

Washington, D.C.

The woman was politeness personified as she escorted L.J. and Marsten from the meeting with two Department of Justice lawyers. “Thank you for your time,” she said as she held the door to their waiting limousine. She closed the door and watched the limo pull into traffic before returning inside.

It was a short ride from the Department of Justice on Constitution Avenue to the Department of Energy on Independence, and the jaws of tension and anxiety still held Marsten tight. “Are we in trouble?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” L.J. replied, hiding her anger. “If we were, they’d have sent a formal letter notifying us that we were the target of an investigation. No, I think DOJ is on a fishing expedition.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I’m not. I’m guessing the FBI simply up-channeled their report, and it landed in the Environment and Natural Resources Division.”

“Lovely,” Marsten muttered. “With only five days before Christmas.”

“Our imperial masters must be obeyed.”

“Why are they looking at us now?” Marsten asked, fully aware that he would have a hard time explaining some of his activities.

“Probably because of what Steiner told them,” L.J. said. “But why did Steiner tell
our
government about Seismic Double Reflection and not his own? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Perhaps his own government knows him too well,” Marsten observed dryly.

L.J. thought for a moment. “It’s an attempt to discredit us. If I ever get my hands on that little…” Her voice trailed off as she enjoyed the image of all the women the French scientist had abused descending on him like a flock of vengeful banshees. The limousine pulled up in front of the entrance to the Department of Energy, and L.J. got out. “I’ll meet you back at the hotel,” she told him.

“Are you sure you want to do this alone?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t do it any other way.” She fought her way past a horde of government employees knocking off early on the last Friday before Christmas. She stopped at Security. “L.J. Ellis to see Ann Silton.”

The guard checked her ID and called for an escort. “Have you heard?” he asked. “The president appointed Miss Silton as the assistant secretary for Environment and Safety yesterday afternoon.”

“After only one month?” L.J. mused, surprised that the environmentalist had made such an impression in so short a time.

The guard said, “Here’s your escort.” L.J. turned to face Clarissa Jones, Silton’s young friend. “Clarissa!”

L.J. sang. “I didn’t know you were in Washington.”

“Ann needs all the support she can get,” Clarissa said coldly. She signed L.J. in and led her to an elevator, not saying a word. They rode in silence to the top floor, and Clarissa walked with quick strides into Ann’s new office.

“Very nice,” L.J. said, looking out the window. Ann Silton stood but did not come around her desk. L.J. studied her, surprised by the change in her demeanor. There was an aggressive confidence she had not seen before.
Maybe clothes do make the woman,
L.J. thought. Or had the sudden acquisition of power brought out a hidden side of Ann’s nature? She didn’t know.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” Ann said, sitting back down. “Since you were in the city, I wanted to take advantage of the moment. There are some things we need to discuss.” She motioned at Clarissa to leave.

“Please,” L.J. said. “I’d like for her to stay.” She sat down in a straight-backed chair next to Ann’s desk and felt herself slip forward. “Oh,” she said. It was an old trick, shortening the front legs of a chair to make a visitor very uncomfortable. She moved over to the couch and sat down beside Clarissa. “Really, was that necessary?” Ann only gave her a cold look in reply. “I’m puzzled,” L.J. said. “How did you parlay the appointment as the director of the Task Force on the Environment to an assistant secretary’s slot so quickly?”

“The position has been vacant for some time, and the two were a natural fit. I thought it was common knowledge.”

L.J. was very impressed and gave Ann high marks for political maneuvering.
I underestimated her.
She smiled at the woman, seeing her in a new light. “I missed that one.”

Ann hit the intercom on her desk. “Would you please come in? Miss Ellis is here.” The door to a side office opened, and John Frobisher walked in. “John is now heading up the Task Force on the Environment,” Ann explained.

“Just like old times.” L.J. said, still smiling. She hoped the reference to the convention in Dallas struck a nerve.

“What exactly is the slow roll?” Ann asked, all business.

Who told her that?
L.J. wondered. “A delaying tactic,” she answered. “It’s very useful when faced with rapid change that can hurt business.”

“And you thought you could do it to us?”

“As I recall, it was never discussed. But I was up-front from the very first. I’m in this business to make money.”

“And you’re causing incalculable damage to the environment.”

“Am I?”

“Yes, you are, and we’re going to stop you.”

“So,” L.J. replied, “you used me to get appointed as head of the president’s Task Force on the Environment, knowing that would give you the inside track for this position.”

“I used you no more than you intended to use me.” L.J. conceded the point. “What do you want to talk about?”

Ann said, “We’ve learned that in the last three weeks you’ve obtained lease options on every available deep-water drilling ship.”

Not quite,
L.J. thought,
but close enough.
“Why should that concern you?” she asked.

“Let me ask you this,” Ann replied. “Does it have anything to do with Dr. Steiner’s new discovery?”

L.J. was enjoying the moment. “Again, why does this concern you?”

Ann spoke in her best bureaucratic voice. “Because we’re going to stop all offshore drilling until the oil industry makes all such drilling ships, platforms, and rigs environmentally safe.”

L.J. arched an eyebrow. “Obviously you’re not familiar with modern drilling procedures. The oil companies are doing a good job as it is. Do you have any idea what that would do to the oil industry?”
Or to me financially?
she added mentally. Then it hit her. Hard. They
did
know. It was the last time she would ever underestimate Ann Silton.

“We don’t really care,” Ann said.

“May I ask how you intend to enforce such a ban, especially beyond the territorial limits of the United States?”

“We prohibit any U.S. company from engaging in offshore drilling,” Ann replied, still speaking in bureaucratese. “Further, anyone or any company doing business with a country or business doing such drilling will be barred from the U.S. market.”

L.J. worked hard not to laugh at the simplicity of their thinking. They didn’t have a clue how the oil business worked. Still, it was a complication she didn’t need. She tried to be reasonable. “Regardless of what you believe, the computer chip has not made oil just another commodity. Take oil out of the equation, and our economy and political system will crumble. Unlike the computer chip, oil generates real wealth, not speculation on the stock market.”

Ann snorted. “We’ve heard this all before.”

“I’ll be the first to admit,” L.J. said, “that oil is a two-headed monster, capable of both great good and great evil.”

“You’ve got that one absolutely right,” Ann said. “That’s why we’re going to control it, not you or any oil company.”

“I know some Eritrean rebels you need to talk to,” L.J. replied.

“What does that mean?” Ann snapped.

“There’s a whole Third World out there that fully intends to reap the benefits of an oil-driven economy.”

“Really, Ms. Ellis,” Ann said, her voice patronizing, “you must stop believing your own propaganda. Our brothers and sisters in the Third World know how to live in harmony with the environment. Their understanding and sophistication are much greater than ours in that regard.”

L.J. sighed and pulled off the gloves. “I’ve never heard such unadulterated bullshit in my entire life. But since that seems to be the commodity of the day here, let me pitch some of my own and we’ll see what sticks.” She looked around the room, fully aware that it was probably bugged.
Why is John being so quiet?
she wondered.
Time to test the waters to find out exactly where they are
. “First there’s the matter of the videotape of you and Clarissa.”

“We think you made that tape,” Ann said.L.J. waited to hear more. But Ann’s silence was proof that she had no intention of suggesting John may been involved in making the tape.
She still isn’t sure about him!
L.J. thought.
I can use that!
Again she had to suppress her elation. She fired her second salvo. “There’s the matter of your new wardrobe. You really didn’t think it cost so little, did you?”

“But I was led to believe—”

“You were led to believe nothing, Ann. That was a bad mistake on your part.” L.J. turned her sights on John to see if there were more cracks in their façade that she could exploit. But before she could launch another round about RayTex’s underwriting of Front Uni’s convention in Dallas, the intercom buzzed.

Ann picked it up, and her face went white. “Turn on the TV,” she gasped. “CNC.”

Clarissa rushed over to the big TV built into a bookcase. The face of Elizabeth Gordon, CNC-TV’s political correspondent, filled the screen. “I repeat,” she said, “a missile apparently shot down the president’s helicopter, but President Turner is unhurt.” The camera zoomed in on a crash wagon driving away from the scene. Then it panned to the burning wreckage of a helicopter as sirens and screams echoed in the background.

Suddenly the crash wagon slammed to a halt, and Madeline O’Keith Turner climbed out the back. Gordon and her cameraman ran toward her in time to hear the president shout, “Get out of my way!” as seven Secret Service agents surrounded her. “Back off! Give me room!”

“Madam President,” an agent shouted, “we’ve got to get you to—”

“I don’t give a damn what
you
have to do! There are injured people out there.” She pushed clear of the cordon and started pointing, issuing commands. For a moment there was utter chaos around her. Then there was order.

Liz Gordon faced the camera. “We have witnessed a miracle here. President Turner is totally unscathed.” The cameraman panned to the burning pillar of flame reaching into the sky. “All others on board perished in the crash.”
*

In Ann Silton’s office, silence bound the four people as they stared at the TV. Clarissa started to cry, and John sat down, his hands shaking. Ann rushed over and put her arm around Clarissa to comfort her. L.J. stood in the center of the room, her own arms crossed across her chest, her face a mask.

“Who could do such a thing?” Clarissa gasped.

A very good question,
L.J. thought.

Newport News

Shanker hunched over the computer in his den, picking at the keys, while Stuart sat on the couch and read. Shanker grunted in satisfaction at what he was finding. “Right on. That’ll fix the bitch.”

“Who’s the bitch?” Eric said from the doorway, fresh from school. He was still carrying his backpack.

“None of your business,” Stuart told him, “and you shouldn’t use that word. Any homework?”

“Naw. Today was the last day before Christmas vacation, and the teachers gave us a break.” The boy walked over to help his grandfather with the computer. He read the screen. “Boy, somebody really hates President Turner,” he said.

Stuart’s head came up. “What are you doing?” he asked his father.

“We’re getting organized to stop her dead in her tracks,” Shanker explained. “No way we’re going to let her outlaw semiautomatic weapons. The Gray Eagles are all against her, and we’re going to do something about it. That dumb-ass bill will never get through Congress. We’ll see to that. Besides, it’s plain unconstitutional.”

“My social studies teacher,” Eric said, “hates guns, and he’s really upset, too. He says he’s writing his congressman and wants him to vote against it, too.”

“Even a stopped clock is right once a day,” Shanker grumbled.

Stuart looked at his son while he tried to fold a chart. “Did your teacher say why he was against the bill?”

“Well,” Eric said, trying to appease his grandfather, “he says it’s all wrong because everyone who already owns a semiautomatic weapon gets to keep what they already got. He says that won’t solve anything, and the government ought to outlaw all guns.”

“Another friggin’ liberal,” Shanker grouched.

“Is that true, Dad?” Stuart asked. “You can keep your weapons?”

“Supposedly,” Shanker replied, his voice loud and angry.

“Sounds to me like she’s pissed off both sides of the argument,” Stuart said. “Who knows? She might be onto something.”

Shanker glared at his youngest son. “Lee Harvey Oswald, where are you now that we need you?”

“Who’s Lee Harvey Oswald?” Eric asked.

“Dad,” Stuart said, “that wasn’t called for, and you know it.”

The two men stared at each other for a moment. “This is my goddamn home!” Shanker shouted. “And I can say anything I want!” He stormed out of the room just as his wife rushed in.

“Turn on the TV,” Martha gasped. Eric grabbed the remote control and flicked it on. A picture of a burning helicopter filled the TV screen. Tears filled Martha’s eyes. “Oh, no,” she moaned. “How could anyone do such a terrible thing?”

“The reporter says she’s okay!” Eric shouted.

“Look at her,” Stuart said, wonder in his voice. “She’s taking charge.”

Shanker stood in the doorway, a grim look on his face. “What would you know about taking charge?”

“I can only guess, since I’ve never been in a situation like that,” Stuart replied. “And neither have you.”