More Than Gold (Capitol Chronicles Book 3)
Page 23
Morgan had eaten half a bowl of cereal and drunk half a cup of coffee. The buffet bar was stocked with yogurt, oatmeal, healthy cereals if that was a person's preference. It also had bagels, sausage and eggs to order for the coaches only and an assortment of fruits, individual or mixed as a salad. Yesterday had scared more than the wits out of her and apparently her appetite went with it.
She'd been sitting on the balcony trying to read, angry with Jack for forcing her to stay behind. She hadn't gotten very far into the book. If someone had asked her the title she would be hard-pressed to remember anything about it. Even the color of the jacket escaped her. She'd heard nothing, not the creak of a step, the tread of a shoe or the movement of the air about her. She was completely focused on being outwitted and that had allowed Chung to walk right into the place where she hid. He could have killed her and no one would have known anything, but the moment he slipped his hand over her mouth and pulled her into a position where she couldn't move, she heard lack's voice in the room. He froze, holding her, listening intently to the few words Jack spoke to Allie before stepping onto the balcony. Then he nearly relaxed. Morgan felt the change in him, surprise, rigidity and total calm. It was as if he had really come for Jack and she was only the pawn he used to get to his real mark.
"Don't you think you should stay a little longer?" Jan's voice broke into her thought.
"We've already overstayed our welcome," Jack answered. "We got what we came for. After yesterday's incident it's best if we don't put you or your school in any other danger."
"Well, I'll have the kitchen make sure you have food to take with you." Jan got up and hugged Morgan. "I don't want you to go," she whispered. Then she released her and walked away. Morgan felt the emotion in her and matched it with something she wasn't used to feeling.
"I gotta go too, hon," Allie said. "Jan's got me teaching a class in the big floor gym. It's the furthest one from here. . .I'd better get going." Allie stood and went to Jack. He stood up. "Take care of her."
"I will."
Allie hugged him. "I'm holding you to that," Allie said in a voice meant only for Jack, but Morgan heard it. Turning back to her, the two women hugged her too. "I don't want you to go either."
"We'll be fine, Allie," she told her. "It's only ninety miles. Once we get there we'll have the full protection of the FBI."
Morgan smiled even though she felt like crying. It took a great effort to keep her voice from shaking. She had corrected her previous lie that they were going to Washington. The FBI was closer and it seemed to make Jan feel better to know they only had to go ninety miles to reach safety.
"And I'll never see you again."
"Of course you will. Where did you get an idea like that?"
Morgan glanced at Jack, then at Jim and Max. She wondered if one of them had said anything to her about what happened after Morgan got to the FBI. She hadn't. She didn't want to think about it herself. All three men shook their heads to her silent question.
"I'll call you when all of this is over."
"Promise me,'' Allie insisted. This morning she was wearing a white leotard with black stockings. She had a long jacket over it with the camp logo on the breast pocket. "Promise me!"
"I promise."
"You know Jan and I will always be there. We made a pact."
Tears gathered in her eyes then. "Yes, Allie, we made a pact. Just keep that cell phone number and soon I'll reach out and touch you."
She saw the serious look in Allie's eyes.
"I promise."
She hugged her again and stepped back. Going toward the screened door, Agents Burton and Tilden joined her, all of them leaving at the same time.
She sat back down. Jack played idly with the sugar packet.
"More coffee?" she asked. He shook his head.
"It's going to be hard on you all."
Morgan didn't want to talk about this. She wanted to run away. She wanted to go to the beam gym, the only other place she'd been allowed to go and only under the cover of darkness when the campers had retired to their cabins and all the counselors had accounted for their charges. She wanted the padded prison, for that prison gave her what she'd never had and always wanted. It gave her Jack, who was there to check on her. It gave her Allie and Jan, her friends, regardless of their background or circumstances. It gave her safety and hope.
She stopped at the thought of it. Hope. That was what she'd wanted, what she'd reached for all her life and only been allowed to glimpse for short periods of time. This was her haven, her safety net, her sanctuary, and she wanted to stay.
"We're going to have to leave soon." Jack spoke as if he could read her mind. He might be reading her face. She was used to controlling her features, but she hadn't tried a moment ago. Her thoughts were probably evident. And Jack was an expert in reading her wishes.
"What about the ring?" He hadn't told her much yesterday. The bank seemed unimportant after Chung had tried to kill them.
"It wasn't just the ring. It was the paper it was wrapped in and the other papers in the envelope."
"The printing was in Korean," Morgan remembered.
"There was writing on the back of the clipping."
"I never figured out what it meant."
"You could read it?" Jack's eyebrow went up.
She shook her head. "They never had a course in Korean anywhere near St. Charles. I would have enrolled. I took conversational Chinese, but it was only offered for one semester before the professor left to return to New York. The symbols, while similar, are not the same."
"I know. I read Korean."
"You do!"
"Yes, I do," Jack replied. "It's rusty but I can get by in a pinch."
Why should she be surprised? He flew helicopters, had a pulse gun, could move quieter than an air bubble, and understood terrorists. Why should reading an Oriental language be anything other than standard operating procedure?
"What did the paper say?"
"How much do you know about Korean politics?"
Morgan shrugged. "Not much. I know there is a North and South Korea. The north is communist and the south is democratic. The government structure of the south is much the same as ours. After the Korean War in the '50s they set up a republican form of government. I think the one they are operating under now is the Fifth Republic. I can't remember why they have numbers to their republics. I believe they change when the presidents had the constitution rewritten. They have a president as the leader and a prime minister who functions much like a vice president. There is one legislative body called the National Assembly.
"You know more than most history majors."
"What does this have to do with the ring and the papers?"
"The ring holds the crest of a very old Korean family. Dynasty generations. The stories surrounding it vary from k being lost many years ago to being safely stored in the presidential palace."
"Then it does belong to the president?"
"It's actually the property of his wife. The ring comes down through her family, not his."
Morgan picked up the sugar packet, twin to the one Jack toyed with. "How did it come to be in a prison?"
"I can only speculate. At the time you were in Korea, the president was Ji-Moon Chang. His son, Pak, is currently running for the office his father once held. His opposition naturally wants to find something that will discredit him. And you have it."
Morgan stopped fidgeting with the sugar packet and stared at Jack.
"The gist of the message on the paper names Pak Chang as having an affair with the daughter of his father's prime minister. It says he is the father of her illegitimate child. The scandal following the rumor drove the prime minister to commit suicide. In Korea, scandal causes a major loss of face. When it involves a high-ranking family it can bring shame to everyone associated with the family. In the United States an illegitimate child would cause only a few heads to turn."
Morgan felt as if a knife had been plunged into her heart. Her body went still
. Jack noticed. She'd nearly forgotten about Hart Lewiston and his declaration only a couple of days ago. She was the illegitimate daughter of a presidential candidate.
"I didn't mean—"
"It's all right." She waved his protests away. "I know what you meant. I understand the sociology and mores of foreign countries are different from the culture we live in. Here a child out of wedlock means little in the way of keeping a man from advancing in his career." She thought of Hart. His standings weren't as high as they had been a few days ago, but he would pull through. His kind always did. "In Korea it is a major dishonor. Since Pak Chang comes from a family that traces its roots back to the dynasties of Korean aristocracy, the dishonor would be major to that family and enough to dislodge him as a viable candidate. He'd be lucky if they didn't tar and feather him in a public square. And with that, he'd be getting off light. Only a few years ago, he'd have had to kill himself to restore honor to his family."
"The child isn't all of it," Jack continued. "The newspaper recounted the story of a man who came forward and stated he was the father of the child. He subsequently married the mother. This quieted the rumors about the relationship of Pak and Youn-Jung, the prime minister's daughter."
"This paper proves Pak Chang is the father?" she questioned.
"No, it proves the man who said he was the father, was not"
CHAPTER 13
Jan's hug made Morgan feel as if her friend held her in a hammerlock. She squeezed her so tightly Morgan felt as if her ribs would be bruised. "I'm scared, Morgan," she whispered.
Morgan took a deep breath. "The two agents will still be here. Jack promised me. You'll be perfectly safe."
"Morgan," she stretched her name out, squeezing her arms again. "I'm not scared for me. It's you."
"We're going ninety miles away, not to the moon. I'll call you when we get there."
"Morgan, Allie and I are serious." Jan lowered her voice. "That guy yesterday scared years off my life. And Jack and Max wouldn't be arguing if this wasn't something serious."
James Burton stood between Jack and Max Tilden several steps away. Morgan glanced at them. They were disagreeing over something. Morgan couldn't hear what they were saying. Their voices were too low for her to hear, but it looked as if Max and Jim were on one side of an issue and Jack stood alone on the other. Morgan took a step toward them when Allie ran up.
"Morgan, I was afraid I'd missed you. I just wanted to say good-bye again." She hugged her again and stepped back. "Don't forget to call us."
"I won't."
The three women approached the three men. "What's going on?" Morgan asked. They all stopped talking at once.
"We were discussing the route and had a difference of opinion," Jim Burton said.
"It appeared to be more than disagreement over a route," Jan said. "This is mountainous territory. We don't have a lot of routes. You either take the interstate or you use the back road, not roads. There is only one other way and I don't recommend it. It's ninety miles on I-79. Otherwise, you go up to Millstone and take old Route 33 to Route 19. All that does is make the trip longer."
Jack opened the door of the dark green Lexus sport utility vehicle that had been secured for their trip. Morgan didn't know how or where the vehicle came from. She also didn't know what happened to the one they had arrived in. Jack told her a vehicle would be secured and it stood in front of the camp office, physically present. He commanded and his wishes were made real. The vehicle had enough supplies for a week in a Colombian jungle, not on an interstate highway in the United States. There was a first-aid kit fit for a surgeon and a virtual arsenal of weapons Morgan refused to mention.
She turned to her friends, exchanging hugs one more time and again promising to call the moment they got to the FBI in Clarksburg. Climbing into the passenger seat, she pulled the arm rests down and Jack closed the door. Morgan wanted to open the window but the engine needed to be on for the controls to work. She smiled, watching Jack saying good-bye as her friends hugged him too. She could tell both Allie and Jan were whispering things in his ear. She assumed Jan was extracting promises from him to make sure Morgan called the moment they arrived and Allie was giving orders that he take care of her.
Jim and Max didn't look happy, but they didn't have the blank stares they usually assumed either. Jack shook hands with them before getting in beside her. Morgan waved as they drove away. She lowered me window and craned her neck, keeping them in view as long as possible.
Her heart was happy. For the first time in her life, she was leaving somewhere and not feeling as if she was escaping, running away and leaving behind people who wanted her gone. Jan and Allie clearly wanted her to stay. They were concerned about her. Friends, she thought. And a warm feeling washed over her.
***
Ninety miles, an hour and a half to freedom. Morgan thought of old movie titles. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Thirty-Six Hours of Hell, The Eighty-First Blow, Eight Million Ways to Die, Thousand Mile Escort and the song A Hundred Miles of Bad Road. She sat next to Jack. Their other SUV had been comfortable, but its replacement was sheer comfort.
Morgan wondered what Jan and Allie had said to Jack, but more she wanted to know why Max Tilden and James Burton had had an argument with him. Max and Jim had been exemplary in their protection. Maybe they were concerned about the two of them leaving. They could have waited for the FBI to come and get them, although she knew Jack would never have sat still for that. Maybe they thought there was more that could happen.
Morgan tried to hold onto the glow that had accompanied her exit, but eventually her mind went back to the story Jack was telling her before Jan had brought the basket of food from the cafeteria kitchen and interrupted them sitting at the coaches' table. She wanted to understand the rest of the story. Jack left Clay and drove along the Elk River. He entered the interstate at Exit 40, six miles south of Servia.
When they appeared to be heading north, she turned the radio off. Jack had tuned it to a country station. She knew he did it for her.
"Jack, you were telling me about Pak Chang before we left." Morgan shifted in her seat, bringing his profile into view. His face was almost patrician, a straight nose, his cheekbones angular and hard, his chin strong, and she could see the shadow of a dimple in his left cheek. She'd never noticed it before. It was so faint it looked as if he'd tried to rub it away, like a child, viewing the dimple as an imperfection, would try to get rid of it.
"You said the man who claimed to be the father of the prime minister's daughter's child could not have been telling the truth when he claimed he was." She waited for him to continue.
"His name was Robert Rhee, educated, but from a poor family. The paper states there are medical records proving the man had a very severe case of the measles at age thirteen. As a result he was left sterile and could not possibly have fathered a child."
"That takes us back to Pak."
"It does," Jack confirmed. "And Pak Chang is running for president of South Korea."
"The paper only says that Pak is the father. It's not a medical report. Not proof." Morgan had never seen a Korean medical report, but she was sure they didn't look anything like the newspaper and the writing on it.
"Proof isn't necessary in this instance. The scandal would be enough to kill his chances of winning. The opposition would demand the truth. Pak received the ring from his mother and it was inside a prison. I'm sure there is someone just waiting to authenticate that. I don’t know whose handwriting is on that paper, but it states the man who claimed to be the father of the child swears Pak gave the ring to his wife. Someone else knew that, someone at the prison. Rhee was in that prison too. He died there. It would be made public. There's probably more. This is only a piece, but it's not the crucial piece. Once they get it, however, Pak would have no choice but to pull out of the race. His family would be disgraced."
"What about the child and the mother? Where are they?"
"I don't know. But for their sakes I hope it's someplace sa
fe."
***
Morgan and Jack lapsed into silence. The countryside rolled by them in a blur of blue sky and green mountains. The road ahead was a bright black ribbon that disappeared around and through the majesty of the Appalachians. Morgan wished she could turn the clock back to twelve years ago. She wouldn't have let them take Hart Lewiston so fast, rush her into the other car and speed away so quickly that she forgot she'd stuffed the ring and papers in her pocket. When she changed clothes in the car to get back into her uniform she discovered the ring. She slipped it on her finger to give it a place to be and pushed the papers into her gym bag with her other clothes.
Her life wouldn't have been this different. She didn't know what it would have been, but she wouldn't be here now running for her life and putting Jack's in as much danger. He wouldn't be here either, she thought, and it saddened her. They wouldn't have been reunited. They would never have fought over his plan. He wouldn't be here to save her life and they never would have made love. A sudden piercing in her stomach went to her core and she nearly cried out. Jack glanced at her, but she waved him off with an, "I'm all right."
Morgan wondered what was in store for them. If she was watching those movies on television, it would be one adventure after another. The strong hero saves the fair maiden who is more of a hindrance than a help, but all ends well with a screen kiss, even if they are dirty and bleeding. The audience cheers and everyone goes home happy, having lived through the experience vicariously.
Morgan wondered if she would be as lucky as the screen characters. This was real life. She'd survived trauma that should have sent her over the edge, but Jack had been there. Jack was with her still and he'd saved her life just twenty-four hours ago. They only had one and a half hours to go. She prayed the trip would be uneventful.