“Julian Mellow, this is Fred Moran, my campaign manager, and this is…”
“Can we talk in private?”
Lightstone’s jaw quivered with indignation, for he correctly saw the waving off of introductions as a humiliation directed at him, not his staff. As Julian expected, the other men recognized the Mellow name, if not the Mellow face, and promptly stood up. Money talked, even in the last, frantic week of an apparently doomed national campaign. Especially then.
“We’ll issue a statement,” Moran said as he gathered his papers. “Sincere condolences to family, confidence that this had nothing to do with the vice president, importance of focusing on the issues affecting the American people.”
“I’ll get someone on that right away,” said another man whom Julian recognized as Michael Steers, the campaign’s communications director. Like Moran, he had the sallow, bug-eyed look of someone riding a sleepless wave of caffeine and adrenaline. All four men hurried from the room.
“A few things,” Julian said the instant he and Lightstone were alone. He was shocked by how gaunt the candidate looked. He’d lost a good ten pounds. Didn’t candidates usually gain weight? If the election were somehow postponed a month Lightstone might simply vanish altogether. “First, there are reports that money is running short in the campaign.”
“You can’t simply write us a check, Julian. There are limits, even for you.”
“Is it true or not?”
“We’ve blown through about a billion dollars in total, since the convention. Every penny we have left is earmarked for television ads.”
“Is there enough?”
“We thought so. But some of the states we’d assumed we’d lose—Indiana, for example, and Virginia—have tightened up. We’ve had to divert funds from battlegrounds and Virginia isn’t a cheap media market; it’s—”
“I’d like a list of states where you need more advertising,” he said, cutting off the next president.
“Do you really think you can buy this? Don’t you realize that if there’s a hint of scandal, you’ll blow what little momentum I have?”
“I’d like the list by this evening, categorized by media market.”
“If you think you can—”
“Second. Tonight you are speaking before the Veterans of Foreign Wars.”
“Otherwise known as my base.”
The door opened and Michael Steers stepped in. “Senator, there’s a crew from CNN in the lobby, looking for a live statement on the Carron suicide. If we hurry we’ll make the morning shows.”
“The senator will be available in five minutes,” Julian said before Lightstone had a chance to reply. Steers glanced uncertainly at Lightstone and retreated.
“I want you to call for the president to send a peacekeeping unit to Kamalia. Challenge him in front of an audience of aging hawks. Warn the country that there will be bloodshed, American blood, if we don’t take proactive measures.”
“We’re getting no traction on Kamalia. In fact, I look like a jackass every time I mention that godforsaken—”
“Third, I need to locate a person. Somewhere in this country, more than likely using a fake or stolen credit card. I need you to use your government connections to trace this person by whatever means necessary. I need this information immediately, tomorrow morning at the latest.” Julian found himself somewhat short of breath; giving orders was easy, but he was unused to asking favors, and the effort taxed him.
“Do you want me to call the CIA? The FBI?” Lightstone was being sarcastic.
“Whatever you need to do.”
“This is not Stalinist Russia.”
“But this is late October, and you can’t afford a negative surprise. Neither can your son.”
Lightstone’s face crimsoned and his jaw quivered again.
“Her name is Sarah Pearlman.” He held out a piece of paper to Lightstone. “Here’s everything I know about her. It is vital that she be found. Vital to the campaign,” he added when Lightstone seemed about to protest. “She could be your October Surprise, and not a pleasant one.”
After a long moment’s hesitation, Lightstone took the paper.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29
Chapter 59
Zach had slept during most of the overnight flight to Johannesburg and sleepwalked for two hours at that city’s airport before catching a connecting flight to Villeneuve. He’d dreamed of Sarah and their beach on Saint Sebastian, a place that had felt like a prison three days earlier and now seemed like paradise lost. He’d called her before he left JFK; she told him she rarely went outside her hotel, feeling vulnerable even on the crowded sidewalks of South Beach. He assured her that they’d soon be safe and hoped that it was so.
There were only a dozen or so passengers on the South African Airways flight to Kamalia, and he was fifth in line to face the single immigration clerk at Laurent Boymond Airport in Villeneuve, who sat rather imperiously on a high chair behind a scratched Plexiglas screen. Nevertheless, Zach waited almost a half hour, ample time to second-guess the trip to Kamalia. Phones could be monitored, he reminded himself. On both ends. Asking about Julian Mellow’s role in a planned insurrection on a tapped phone might endanger Sophie DuVal.
The terminal was a plain, nearly deserted building that looked like a converted hangar; one wall was lined with small, unmanned booths for various obscure airlines. The airport had a sleepy, vaguely dejected air to it, reminding him of restaurants in Manhattan just before they shut down, the scattered diners avoiding eye contact rather than acknowledge, through an embarrassed glance or awkward gesture, that they had made a mistake in coming there.
“Why are you visiting this country?” the clerk asked. He sounded more incredulous than suspicious.
“Business.”
“What business do you have in Kamalia?”
“I represent American mining companies,” was his prepared answer. “We are interested in Kamalia’s rich deposits of nickel and cobalt.”
The clerk leafed through his passport, which Zach had purchased, along with a burner phone, the day before from “Eden Services,” the outfit that had provided his Arthur Sandler identity, including credit card and license, almost a year ago. Now he was yet another person, Richard Legard, who had apparently either died recently or had his passport stolen—the Eden operative would say nothing about the document’s source, other than it might not be valid for more than a week or so. The photo looked like a slightly younger version of Zach, which is why the Eden guy chose it from an amazingly large cache of available passports. Don’t shave for a few days, he’d told Zach. Study this guy’s expression and match it, okay?
Zach held his breath and tried to look calm as the clerk consulted a stapled sheaf of papers that appeared to contain a list of names, several of them crossed out or highlighted in yellow. He gave Zach only a cursory glance. Finally, he stamped the passport, slid it back under the Plexiglas shield, and slowly, with obvious reluctance, turned to the next person in line.
As Zach headed for the exit, carrying a small gym bag containing a change of clothes, he took out the piece of paper on which he’d written Sophie DuVal’s address. Earlier that day—no, it was yesterday—he’d made a list of the top New York modeling agencies. The third one he’d called had been Sophie’s former representatives. He’d been connected to someone’s assistant, mentioned a large advertising agency, fed her a story about the client, a cosmetics firm, insisting that only Sophie DuVal would do, and was told that she was no longer available.
“But you must be forwarding her residual checks to some address,” he’d insisted.
“To Africa,” she’d replied. “How bizarre is that?”
A few minutes later, after quite a bit of persuasion, he had the address, which he gave to the driver of the lone taxi waiting outside the terminal. They drove on a long, straight highway into the city. Occasionally the taxi, a battered old Renault, would drift onto the rutted dirt shoulder, causing it to gyrate terrifyingly until the driver manage
d to regain the asphalt. The dry, scrubby landscape turned gradually more urban as they neared the city, the houses and stores, most of them one- or two-story stucco structures, growing closer and closer together. Finally, they turned off the highway into a crowded residential area. Though the houses lining the streets weren’t tall, and the day was sunny, an aura of gloomy twilight cloaked the neighborhood.
“Here,” the driver said, pulling up to one of the nicer houses in the neighborhood, a single-story cottage with a tiny but neatly tended garden in front. The stucco was painted a pale tangerine, in stark contrast to the neighboring homes, whose exteriors were a drab oatmeal. He handed the driver twenty dollars in American currency and got out. He knocked on the front door. After a few seconds it was opened.
There was no mistaking Sophie DuVal. He’d seen her face dozens of times on magazine covers and in celebrity profiles, and he’d seen her once or twice in person, but still he was shocked by her stark, sculptural beauty. She was almost as tall as he was, shoulders squared, neck thrust slightly forward, arms at her side and bowed slightly at the elbows, as if frozen between classical dance movements. And that face: it was beautiful but not trite, each feature slightly off—the eyes a bit too large, the nose too sharp, the forehead unexpectedly narrow. Somehow it all came together to form an unassailably stunning whole.
“You must be from Julian,” she said, glancing behind him in each direction. “Well, come in, then.” She took his arm and gently pulled him inside. The front door opened directly onto a small living room. The furniture was ramshackle, but she’d made it appealing: a silk scarf draped over the back of a sagging armchair, a profusion of bright pillows artfully arranged on the faded sofa, several small, threadbare rugs overlapped just so.
“I have nothing to do with Julian Mellow,” he told a half lie.
“But I met you, in New York. Matthew was honored at a dinner, for his work on behalf of Amnesty International, I think. Julian was there, and you were with him.”
She was correct. Julian avoided fundraising dinners—disdained them, in fact, as a waste of time and money. His time and money. But where Matthew was concerned all the rules changed, and that night he’d made half the Mellow Partners staff attend the dinner at the Waldorf. Sophie had been there, on the dais, between Matthew and his father. He’d almost forgotten that they’d been introduced, perhaps because she’d seemed as remote to him in person as she did glowering from the cover of Vogue or Elle.
“I worked for Julian, but I don’t anymore.”
“Then why are you here?” She folded her arms across her chest. Every gesture was an un-self-conscious pose.
“We need to talk, I—”
She raised a hand. “You look exhausted.”
“No, really, I’m—”
“I don’t want you collapsing in my living room. And you don’t want to experience the glories of the Kamalian healthcare system. Sit, and I’ll make coffee.”
She left him alone. He sat in the armchair and tried to compose his thoughts. She returned after a few minutes, carrying a tray.
“Matthew took his coffee black,” she said when he refused her offer of milk. “I always thought that was typical of him, strong and low maintenance.”
“I don’t know how strong I am, and my girlfriend would probably not describe me as low maintenance.”
“We see so few Americans these days, not like before. It’s nice to hear English, to speak it, in my own home. It’s very nice.” Her voice broke over the last few words.
“I can’t say I knew Matthew, but I met him a few times. He was…” He tried to summon a word that would express his admiration for Matthew Mellow without sounding trite or hollow.
“He was unexpected,” she said.
“Yes, exactly.”
“You knew his father, so you know how remarkable it was that Matthew turned out the way he did. Not that Julian is a bad man. But Matthew had a heart. A soul.”
Two things missing from the father—neither had to say it.
“Julian is helping you,” he said. She shrugged and sipped her coffee. “He’s providing money for weapons,” he said. Another shrug. “I was at the State Department,” he said. “They know that you’re the leader of a group that plans to overthrow the Boymond government. They know that you’ve acquired arms on the international market. Even I know that takes cash.”
“I don’t know whether to feel comforted or alarmed that the State Department knows what I’m doing. Or thinks it knows,” she added quickly.
“They also think you’re doomed to fail.”
“Then they definitely do not know everything.”
He leaned toward her. “Listen to me, Sophie. They have experts on this part of the world. People who devote their lives to it. I’m sure they have access to intelligence reports. They have contacts within the government. They know about you and your comrades. They know about the AK-47s. And they are convinced that you will fail.”
“Then I will have to prove them wrong.”
He detected no braggadocio, only profound confidence. Was it her personality, or did she know something that even the State Department didn’t?
“I think you’re being set up,” he said.
“The Boymond regime has killed thousands of innocent people, jailed many thousands more without charging them, let alone bringing them to trial. Under the banner of ‘native rights’ they’ve nationalized all of the country’s important industries, then eliminated jobs and slashed wages in order to collect more money for themselves. We were on the way to becoming a modern country, a beacon of hope for Africa. Matthew and I were privileged to witness this firsthand, to play a small role in helping it along. Now we are moving backward, slipping into the very same darkness we’d almost succeeded in leaving behind. If you could understand the passion that we feel, the need we have to make things right again, then I think you would not have come here to lecture me about risks and danger.”
“Unnecessary risks,” he said. “Unnecessary danger.”
She shook her head. “No such things. It is all necessary. Anyway, you haven’t told me why you are here. For all I know you are working for them.” She jerked her head toward the front door and the hostile world outside her charming cottage.
“Julian Mellow is plotting to…” He took a deep breath. It was always difficult to tell the story from the beginning. Even to his ears it sounded incredible. “…to manipulate the US presidential election.” He gave her a summary of what he knew.
She didn’t interrupt him. She didn’t laugh at him. She didn’t roll her eyes or shake her head. When he finished she considered him in silence for a few moments, then spoke in a measured, gentle tone. “I don’t see why any of what you’ve told me, whether it is all true or imagined, brings you here.”
He collected his thoughts before explaining. “You and your group are planning something in the next few days, correct?”
“You can’t expect me to tell—”
“No, I can’t expect you to tell me. You and your group are planning to move against the government between now and the American election. The Republican candidate, Harry Lightstone, has made human rights in Kamalia a theme of his campaign.”
“It has been very encouraging to us.”
“When your uprising fails, and there are bodies in the streets of Villeneuve, he’s going to look very smart, so smart he could win the White House. Julian Mellow is using Kamalia to win the White House.”
“Do you expect me to believe that Julian would betray his son’s lover, his son’s cause to…to what, to be in a position to manipulate the president of the United States?”
“It would be the ultimate acquisition for him, true power.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You’re being set up. You can’t win. The State Department knows it.”
“Maybe they don’t know everything, maybe we…”
She glanced away, as if afraid to reveal something in a glance.
“What is
it?” he asked.
“It isn’t always just about weapons or manpower, who has more. It is also about information and timing. It is true that we are outnumbered. But we will prevail. I know more about this country and this situation than you or your State Department.”
Her confidence was absolute, and something in her tone indicated that it was based as much on information and strategy as bullheadedness.
“There’s nothing I can say to persuade you to call off your plans?”
“I haven’t even confirmed that I have plans.”
“But you have confirmed that Julian Mellow is the source of your funds.”
“I do not recall saying that.”
“The US election is six days away. Can you at least confirm that you aren’t planning anything until after that?”
“No,” she said quietly, “I can’t do that.”
So the uprising would take place before the election, and would have an impact one way or another. A bloody conflict, no matter what the outcome, would vindicate Lightstone’s pointless speeches about the Kamalian situation. But would it be enough to swing the election? He found himself staring at her, trying to picture her beautiful form at the front of an angry mob, trying not to picture her gravely wounded.
“I wish there was something I could say that could persuade you to call off your plans.”
“Again, I have not mentioned plans. You have.”
“Julian Mellow threw me to the wolves to save himself from a financial scandal. I thought at the time that was as low as he could sink. In the past months he’s tried to kill me and the woman I love, and I’m fairly certain he’s arranged for the murder of several others, including a US senator. I don’t think he’d hesitate to sacrifice you, if he thought it would advance his interests.”
“You don’t know him as I do,” she said. “To me, he wasn’t the head of a thousand corporations. He was the father of a brilliant young man.”
“He is always Julian Mellow.”
She stood up and took the coffee mugs into the kitchen. He followed her. It was a cramped room with a tiny sink, two-burner stove, and waist-high refrigerator. A pretty teapot on the stove, a cheerful tea towel draped on the oven handle, a framed print of the Place des Vosges on the wall—these items claimed the space as hers.
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