Makley forced back a smile. He'd done it again. He'd talked his way out of immediate peril. He had won a temporary reprieve, or as a minimum, bought himself a little extra time. Time to regroup and devise a plan to keep him from becoming the inevitable fall guy. Something Rudd would eventually need.
"Francesca," Wiley said, "go with Mr. Makley. Get a full briefing and meet me back in Fairfax." The old man turned his attention to him. "And you…" He paused, an attempt to intimidate him no doubt. "Your number one priority is correcting that matter we discussed. Is that understood?"
With some planning, maybe he can turn this around. Maybe he can even make Elmore Wiley the fall guy. After all, he just gave the old man full disclosure.
Makley nodded and followed Francesca out of the Oval Office.
* * *
"Well, what do you think?" Rudd asked.
"I think Evan Makley tried to do a good thing in the beginning. Not necessarily the right thing, but perhaps, with honorable intentions. I think he genuinely believed he was trying to protect you, keep you out of trouble. He let greed take over and now is trying to capitalize on something that might or might not be true."
"What do you think I should do with him?" asked Rudd. "I can't leave him on as Chief of Staff. He's untrustworthy."
"Take him out of the circle, especially about the book." Wiley pulled out his phone. "I need to talk to Jake. Let him know what's going on."
"Not until you tell me what Evan said to you in private."
"Rebecca." Wiley walked over to the President and kissed her forehead. "I meant what I said. This one, you can't know anything about. Not right now anyway."
30
Francesca Catanzaro followed Evan Makley down the White House corridors to a corner office. The Chief of Staff's office was better furnished, in many ways than the President's. Her furnishings were traditional whereas Makley's were more modern with state of the art equipment. He had a large conference table where the staff gathered for meetings. Francesca figured he justified the extra expense since his position oversaw the actions of the White House staff, managed the President's schedule, and had the power to decide who was allowed to meet with the President.
On his mahogany desk next to a desktop American flag was a picture of two teenage girls, both blonde, both wearing dresses and smiling for the camera. She picked it up. "Your daughters?" She asked.
"Yeah," he paused, "back then I only got to see them one Saturday a month, one week during the summer, and rotated holidays every other year. Divorce sucks. Even with the President's hectic schedule, when I was married I saw them almost every night."
"How old are they?"
"This one was twelve when this picture was taken." He pointed to the smaller girl then moved his finger to the other. "And this one fourteen. She just got her driver's license."
"They're very pretty. I know you're proud."
"I am. And they were just getting interesting when…" His voice trailed off.
In a way, she felt sorry for the man. He seemed to show genuine remorse for losing custody in the divorce that she, along with the rest of the country, witnessed on the six o'clock news. But he had a darker side that made her despise him. He was betraying the President and the country. And worst of all, he had ordered her partner killed.
She and Jake had been partners for almost a year and were such a good union that somehow, instinctively, they knew what the other was thinking. One of the many things Wiley excelled at was pairing his emissaries. They were an effective team, probably the best Commonwealth Consultants and the Greenbrier Fellowship had ever had. She trusted Jake with her life and knew he reciprocated.
Elmore Wiley had recruited her as an emissary for the Greenbrier Fellowship nearly two years ago while she was an operative for Italy's External Intelligence and Security Agency. Apparently impressed by her reputation for successful missions, he tendered the job offer one week after their first encounter.
Her training was intensive—six months tradecraft followed by six months field training. Even though her first assignment was a failure, the old man's persistent efforts molded her into an emissary with exceptional talent and skill.
In the beginning, she was reluctant about being partnered with Jake. Her first impression was that he was impulsive and audacious. Soon, she realized Wiley knew what he was doing.
She put the picture back on Makley's desk. "Let's get down to business, Mr. Makley. Show me what you have."
She spent the next thirty minutes scouring through the data Makley had given her. She read the lengthy email three times looking for any indication of where the email originated. "You know, this could be a hoax." She had moved a chair next to his while he walked her through the collected data.
"I don't think so," he reasoned. "It's written with a very clear message. Whoever wrote this knows something we don't."
"I disagree. The only thing I can ascertain from the writing is that whoever sent it is not young…or at least is trying hard not to sound that way."
"Now you see why I felt I needed to call Abigail Love. I needed a tight-lipped investigation. I couldn't let the President find out. Therefore, I couldn't call the Secret Service or FBI. I had to handle this myself…in case it had validity."
Francesca stood. "No. Abigail Love is an assassin. You should have gotten the authorities involved. If this is true, then there is nothing you or anybody else can do to protect the President."
Makley stood next to her. "I won't let anything happen to President Rudd. It's my job to protect her and this country."
Francesca balled up her fist and punched Makley in the face splitting his lip open. The Chief of Staff fell back into his chair and covered his bloody lip with his hand. The look in his eyes showed a combination of confusion and anger, but she didn't care. She grabbed the arms of the chair and leaned close to his face. "You ordered Abigail Love to kill my partner. You better hope like Hell she receives your retraction because if anything happens to him, I'll personally see to it you never make it to the inside of a jail cell."
She stood back, letting her words sink in.
Makley pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the blood from his lip.
"You said you'd do anything to protect the President, well, I'll do anything to protect my partner. And if that means killing a treasonous bastard like you, then so be it." She pointed to a chair against a far wall. "Get up and sit over there while I let an expert track down this email."
While he sat, Francesca logged into the Commonwealth Consultants secure portal, entered her 24-digit password, and waited. Her cell phone rang. "Voice activation authorization India, Tango, Alpha, Lima, Yankee, Five, Echo, Whiskey." She selected her own code for voice recognition. Letters spelling her home country—Italy, she was the fifth emissary, and her employer's initials, Elmore Wiley. She thought it was a clever selection. I-T-A-L-Y-5-E-W. She waited until a familiar voice picked up. "Hi, George."
She explained the situation to Fontaine and then an authorization box appeared on Makley's computer screen. She clicked on the box and sat back. She watched the cursor move as Fontaine took control of Makley's computer.
"What's going on?" Makley leaned forward, obviously trying to get a look at the monitor. "What is he doing to my computer?"
"I don't know. Way over my head." She looked at Makley. The man was the highest ranking employee in the White House yet he looked like a schoolboy who had been put in time-out.
Twenty minutes later the monitor flickered and her cell phone rang. She answered the call, "Go."
"Give Mr. Mackley his computer back," Fontaine said, "I've got all I need. He can't do anything without us knowing about it, and the same goes for Abigail Love. I found her tracer and located her server. It was embedded in the code she had him install. It sends all his received emails to her server. From there they run a—"
"George."
"What?" Fontaine said.
"I don't care. All that I.T. stuff, I don't need to know how it works
. I don't want to know how it works. Just find who sent the email and let me know. Okay?"
"Heard anything from Jake?" Fontaine asked.
"Nothing since Wiley split us up."
"He's not in any kind of danger, is he?"
She glared at Makley and spoke loud enough for him to hear. "He better not be in any danger or President Rudd will be looking for a new Chief of Staff."
* * *
Abigail Love had been following the man since she saw him at the Pizza Place near the marina. He was driving a white Tahoe. After he left the diner, he met an elderly woman at the Butler Museum. Love strategically parked where she would be able to see him come out without being noticed.
She figured if she followed the man, whom she now knew was named Jake Pendleton, he would lead her to the woman. The woman would lead her to the book.
After Pendleton had been in the museum almost an hour, she received a puzzling message from Evan Makley.
Cancel Kill On Jake Pendleton
In her past experiences with Evan Makley she learned he was not a man who often had a change of heart. Usually when he made a decision—good or bad—he stuck to it. Maybe something had happened. Something she should know about. If that was the case, then he should have sent a 9-1-1 through the lovesdesperatedesire.com website. She tried to log on with her cell phone. Nothing. Her server was down.
Her Gmail account was Makley's backup. She told him never to send an email from the account, only edit the one in the DRAFTS folder. She gave him the username and password along with detailed instructions for its use in the event normal channels of communication were unavailable or imperiled. She logged into the Gmail account and located the message.
We have been compromised and you have been identified. Your server has been shut down and your assets confiscated. DO NOT RETURN TO D.C.
Damn you, Makley. Her first reaction was to abort the mission. She hated failure. She mulled over her options and came to the conclusion that obtaining the book and keeping it for herself was her best plan. If anyone got in her way after she had acquired the book, she would kill them. And that included the handsome Jake Pendleton.
Makley's use of the word 'We' infuriated her. He was the one that compromised her. The son of a bitch was stupid and had become a liability. One she needed to deal with. Nothing would give her more pleasure, she mused, than to show up at his apartment under the pretense of her first visit, something the horny bastard would no doubt relish, put him in a sexually compromising position, and then kill him.
Not a quick, painless death, but a slow and agonizing one. She envisioned cuffing him to the bedposts again, gagging him, and then taking her razor sharp knife to his genitals. After he had suffered enough, she would put a round in his head with her Smith & Wesson.
One round.
Right between the eyes.
As much as she'd like to handle this one herself, she was 400 miles away and there was no time to waste. She opened her phone and searched through her contacts until she located the number for her best escort. She placed the call.
As soon as she hung up, Pendleton and the old woman came out of the museum. The woman locked the door to the museum and Pendleton walked her to her car, shook her hand, and waited until she drove off. Then he climbed inside the Tahoe and drove off.
Love pulled out, keeping a safe distance. There was still a lot of traffic on these backcountry roads at night, which worked to her advantage. She stayed back letting the occasional car or truck pull between them. She checked her GPS, which showed she had followed him all the way around to the other side of the lake from the town of Butler.
She saw the Tahoe's left blinker flash and the SUV turned off the main road at a mailbox. She slowed but kept driving noting that he pulled into a cabin with a short driveway. She saw lights reflecting across the water behind the house. She logged the location on her GPS, turned around a half a mile down the road at the next driveway, and drove back toward town.
She didn't understand why the Charleston Police Department had released Pendleton so quickly, she assumed it must be his connection to President Rebecca Rudd. One thing seemed clear to her, he was reckless.
She smiled.
And reckless people have accidents.
Scott Katzer followed the same black car he'd followed for the past eight hours. He noticed the man from Charleston at the Pizza Place and again at the museum. He was pushing seventy years old and growing tired of this game of cat and mouse. He was following the woman who was following the man who was trying to find Ashley Regan. That's all he knew about either one of them. But the woman seemed to have an inside source for her information. There was no other explanation for it. She pulled away from the police station in Charleston, jumped on Interstate 26, and drove to Butler, Tennessee.
With both the man and the woman in Butler, he had to presume that Regan and the book were nearby. Acquiring the book was all he cared about. He'd never seen it, only heard a narrative description from his mother. She had recounted its contents to him several times over the years, always expressing her concern that if the book ever became public, the aftermath of what was written in the book would be devastating to their family. The gain from the fortunes, if there were any, would be no consolation compared to the blow the Katzer name would receive.
She referred to it as a journal. A leather bound book filled with blank pages that was given to his real father on his birthday by the fuehrer.
A gift from Adolf Hitler.
The father he never knew.
Wolfgang Fleischer.
Katzer learned volumes when he researched Wolfgang Fleischer on the Internet. His father had been commandant of Dachau prison and crematorium in Germany during the Third Reich. It seemed an odd coincidence that he too, like his father, was charged with the disposal of dead bodies. Katzer's was a more civilized and accepted practice.
During the fall of the Third Reich, his father fled south into Austria where he was captured. He was tried as a war criminal in a fast-tracked post war justice system—tried, convicted, and executed. By then, Fleischer's lover, Heidi Scheller, was already impregnated with twins.
According to his mother, she and Wolfgang had been secret lovers for three years while he was commandant. The long-term affair started when Fleischer stayed at Schneefernerhaus Hotel for the first time. He was walking across the grounds when he slipped on a patch of ice and twisted his ankle. Heidi, a resort nurse, attended to his injury. The passionate feeling of attraction started during his treatment. While wrapping his ankle, Wolfgang grabbed his mother's arm and pulled her toward him. The kiss ignited their lust for each other. Their affair was a secret he took to the grave.
After the journal was lost, Heidi Scheller moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where she met and married Matthew Katzer, the man Scott thought was his father until he was fifty years old.
Katzer had learned to be a patient man and he knew if he waited in the shadows, the journal would reappear. And when it did, he would reclaim his family's property. As much as he initially abhorred his mother's brutality, he knew he would eventually have blood on his hands too in order to protect the family.
31
Jake picked up the tails right away.
As soon as he left the Butler Museum, he noticed both vehicles were parked in a way deliberately chosen not to draw suspicion. Which was exactly why he noticed them. At The Farm he was trained to observe his surroundings in survival situations, assess what he saw for threats, and determine his best course of action. A process drilled into him until it became second nature.
It was the same black BMW 750 Li with Virginia plates and the same white van that were parked across the street from Ashley Regan's house in Charleston.
After he thanked the museum director for opening up after hours, something else prearranged by Fontaine, he pulled out of the parking lot and verified the front license plate on the BMW was from the State of Virginia. What were the odds that identical models—both with Virginia plates—wo
uld be in Butler, Tennessee the same day he saw one staking out Regan's house in Charleston? He knew it was a stake out in Charleston when he noticed the silhouette of a woman through the tinted windows holding a camera with a long-range lens.
After the Charleston police arrested him and hauled him in for questioning, he'd noticed both the BMW and the van when he got out of the police car at headquarters. He didn't think anything more about it until now, when he noticed both vehicles outside the museum in Butler, Tennessee.
He ran the math in his head and knew both vehicles could have driven the distance from Charleston to Butler with little time to spare. The question looming in his mind was whether or not they were working together. It didn't appear that way, but after the events of the day, anything was possible. He knew there was only one person in the BMW, but couldn't tell how many were in the van. One thing was certain, he was outnumbered.
The fact that both vehicles were in Charleston, South Carolina this morning and have shown up 300 miles away in Butler meant one thing.
There was a leak.
Someone on the inside had informed them where he was going. Doubtful the leak came from within Commonwealth, Elmore Wiley's vetting procedures were unsurpassed by anyone. The more likely probability was the leak came from the White House, which pointed to only one person—Evan Makley.
Jake drove a steady speed toward the cabin he'd rented, always keeping track in his rear view mirror of the two vehicles following him. Cars pulled between them periodically, but eventually it was just the three vehicles on the lonely stretch of road.
Jake hit the familiar speed dial on his cell phone. "George, I need you to run a plate." He gave Fontaine the license plate number he'd captured in Charleston when the taxi pulled away from the police station. "Couldn't verify the numbers now, but I could tell it was a Virginia plate."
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