The Protégé

by Stephen Frey

  “What is it?” Gillette asked, taking it from her shaking hands.

  “A flash drive. Matt kept calling it the silver bullet.”

  “Flash drive?”

  “A portable disk drive.”

  “What did he mean by ‘silver bullet’?”

  She shook her head and started sobbing quietly again. “I should have known something was wrong.”

  “Why?”

  “He brought this home the night before he called to tell me he was going away. He suspected something.”

  “What’s on it?” Gillette asked. “Did he tell you?”

  “Everything the team had done up until the day he called to tell me he had to go away. He said they didn’t have far to go on the project. That anyone who knew what they were doing and had this could finish it.”

  Gillette swallowed hard as he slipped the flash drive into his shirt pocket. “Mary,” he said firmly, “you can’t tell anyone I was here.”

  As Gillette walked down the path toward the Escalade, he thought about Boyd and remembered something from the other day in Minneapolis. When Boyd had seen Derrick Walker in the Beezer facility, he’d asked about the security guy Gillette had brought to Washington last week—meaning Stiles. It had seemed like nothing more than an innocent question at the time. Problem was, Boyd had never seen Stiles in Washington. Boyd had stayed in his office the entire time, and Stiles had never gone in—Ganze hadn’t let him. Only Ganze had seen Stiles. So how the hell could Boyd know Walker was a different guy?

  DR. SCOTT DAVIS sat strapped to the chair, a hood over his head. The ropes binding his wrists and ankles to the chair were extremely tight, cutting into his skin, and he moaned as the tension became excruciating.

  “I want to know what you told Christian Gillette,” said the man standing behind him. He was holding a knife to Davis’s throat. “I want to know everything you and he talked about.”

  19

  NIKKI LAY ON her back in the hospital bed, her eyes mere slits. Gillette watched her for a few moments from the doorway. Every breath seemed like a struggle, and she was painfully frail. He’d talked to one of the nurses and learned that Nikki’s lung cancer was advancing rapidly. That she probably didn’t have more than a few months. He shook his head. If they’d just caught it earlier . . . But it was too late now. He pressed his hand against the flash drive in his shirt pocket, wondering if it might hold the key to her cure.

  He hadn’t seen her in sixteen years. They’d been so close growing up—even though she was Lana’s child—but she’d let him down when he needed her most.

  “Nikki.”

  She turned her head slowly toward him, a wan smile forming on her lips, her eyes glassy but joyful. “Chris,” she murmured.

  He took her hand. It was cold. She tried to squeeze his hand back when he took hers, but it was a feeble attempt. He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. It was cold, too.

  “How did you find out?” she asked.

  “Lana showed up in New York last week out of the blue. She told me you were sick.”

  Nikki groaned, then coughed several times. “My husband screwed it all up. He said we had coverage, but he was lying. He’s gone now. I don’t know where. . . .”

  “Christ, Nikki, how could you be with someone like that?”

  “I didn’t have you around to guide me.”

  “You didn’t want me around. How many times did I call?”

  “I’m not blaming you, I’m blaming myself. I’ve always let Lana control me.”

  Gillette brushed away a tear rolling down her cheek.

  She tried to squeeze his hand again. “I wish I could go back and change everything, I really do. I’d give anything.”

  “Why didn’t you call me when you got sick?” he asked.

  She shrugged weakly. “How could I? I wasn’t there when you needed me.”

  “So what? This is your life we’re talking about. No second chances.”

  “Yeah,” she said softly, “I know.”

  He cursed under his breath. An awful thing to say. “All right,” he said in a determined voice, looking around at the other three patients. “The first thing we’re going to do is get you a private room.”

  Two hours later, Nikki was in a private room with a beautiful view of dusk settling over downtown Los Angeles. The aroma of fresh-cut flowers filled the room, and a stack of her favorite magazines and books sat on the nightstand.

  “Thanks, Christian,” she said, her voice stronger. “This is nice. I feel better.”

  She looked better, too, he was glad to see. “Well, you should get some rest.”

  “How long will you be in Los Angeles?”

  “I’m going back to New York in the morning.” He was having dinner with Marilyn tonight, then seeing Lana after that. Stiles’s memorial service started at ten Saturday morning, and he wasn’t going to chance missing it.

  “Will you come and see me again before you leave,” she pleaded, “even if it’s just for a few minutes?”

  “Of course.” He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead, then turned to go. But he stopped at the doorway. “I need to ask you a question,” he said, moving slowly back to where she lay. “Was I the only one Dad had outside his marriage to Lana?”

  Nikki took a shallow breath. “No. There were others. Daddy had a problem.”

  “How many others?” He had to see if he got the same answer from Nikki that he had gotten from Lana.

  “Three, all from different women.”

  Confirmed. “God.”

  “Daddy started making a lot of money, and I guess he couldn’t control himself. I guess he felt like it was his right. Plus, he and Mom . . . well, they had issues.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “She was a bitch to him, Christian. She was never satisfied with anything.”

  “Do you know who the women were?” Gillette asked.

  Nikki shook her head. “I think they were all from the Los Angeles area, but I don’t know their names.” She hesitated. “Mom does.”

  Lana had lied. So predictable. “Do you think she ever cheated on him?”

  “I thought so, once.”

  “Why?”

  “A man came to the house a couple of times in the months before Dad’s plane crash, but then he stopped.” Nikki smiled. “I took pictures of him sitting out on the patio with her from one of the upstairs windows one time. I was going to confront her, you know? But then Dad died . . . and that was that.” She frowned. “Not that I probably ever would have been brave enough to actually do that.” She looked up at him. “Do you think you’ll ever get married, Christian?”

  He thought about the question for a few moments, then gave her the best smile he could manage. “I don’t know. But if I ever do, you better be there. You hear me?”

  Her eyes filled with tears instantly, and she nodded.

  GILLETTE HAD enjoyed dinner with Marilyn even more than he’d anticipated. She was pretty and dripping with diamonds. She’d gotten ten million dollars after Clayton died—as had the other three women he’d fathered children with. Gillette had been uncomfortable when he’d seen all the jewelry, but she’d assured him she’d invested most of the money wisely and didn’t have any financial worries. She hadn’t asked him for money, as he’d anticipated she would. Why wouldn’t he expect that? Everyone else did. It was starting to seem like that was all family was about.

  “It was wonderful to see you,” Marilyn gushed as they finished coffee. “And to find out how successful you are.”

  “Thanks.” Gillette had studied her all through dinner, looking for the physical similarities. He couldn’t decide if he’d found any.

  “We have to stay close,” she urged. “Please call me when you have time. I know you’re so busy. I don’t want to bother you.”

  “I’ll call,” he assured her, folding his napkin and putting it on the table. “Did you love my father?” he asked.

  “So much, Christian. He was such a charis
matic man.” She smiled. “Like you.”

  Gillette smiled back. “I always remember those cigars he smoked. The Cubans. I loved the way they smelled, you know?”

  Marilyn pondered his comment. Finally she sighed. “I miss that, too.”

  “YOU LIED TO ME in New York.” Gillette and Lana were sitting on the patio of her Bel Air mansion.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  It was late, but in the glow of the outside lights Gillette could see that the mansion and its grounds had been neglected. There were dead trees and bushes in the large backyard, the paint on the shutters was peeling badly, and many of the stones on the patio were cracked and chipped. “You told me you didn’t know the names of the women Dad had children with outside your marriage. Nikki says you do, and I believe her.”

  Lana stuck her chin out fiercely. “She’s wrong.”

  “I need to know, Lana.”

  “Well, I can’t help you.”

  “Then I can’t help you.”

  Lana folded her hands tightly in her lap. “How would you help me?” she asked.

  “The only way you care about. Money.”

  “I’m not as evil as you think I am.”

  “I’m not here to debate that,” Gillette replied. “I have my opinion, you have yours. Let’s leave it at that.”

  Lana bit her lower lip for a moment. “How much would you be willing to help me?”

  “I’ll lend you ten million dollars as long as you pledge this house to me as collateral.”

  “Do you have your father’s curse? Does it always have to be about business?”

  “That’s what it is with you, Lana. Business. Always was, always will be.”

  “You aren’t mine,” she snapped.

  “Wasn’t my choice.”

  They were silent for a few minutes.

  “Are you going to give me the names?” Gillette finally asked.

  “I don’t know yet.” Lana picked up her wineglass and took a large gulp. “I could get in so much trouble if I do.”

  “Why?”

  “There might still be people around who would make me pay.”

  Gillette’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”

  “Important people.”

  “Who?”

  “People who hated your father.”

  “Why did they hate him?”

  “He had information that could have destroyed them.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “I don’t know, they wouldn’t tell me. Neither would he.”

  Gillette’s brain began to pound. “Were they the ones who killed him?”

  “The crash was an accident.”

  “Lana!”

  “I gave them the names of the women, that’s all I did.”

  “What did you get in return?” Gillette demanded. “I know you too well, Lana,” he said when she didn’t answer right away. “You don’t give away anything for free.”

  “They said they were going to use the names of the women against your father. Publicize Clayton’s infidelity in an awful way, so I’d be able to divorce him and get everything. Which sounded pretty damn good to me at that point, Christian,” she said, her voice trembling. “He’d just started seeing someone else, a girl who was nineteen, for Christ’s sake.” She put her hands to her face. “You can’t imagine what it’s like to know that every time your husband walks out the door, you won’t see him again until he’s made love to another woman. I’d had enough. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

  For a moment, Gillette tried to understand what she’d endured, tried to feel sympathy for her. But it wouldn’t come. He simply couldn’t get past what she’d done to him. “Just give me the names.”

  “DO WE HAVE good news yet?” Boyd asked irritably.

  Ganze shook his head. “No. I just came in to tell you that Gillette’s been visiting his stepmother at the Bel Air house for the last thirty minutes.”

  Boyd’s eyes rose from his desk. “Oh, my God.”

  GILLETTE SAT behind the desk in his father’s old study, taking in the sights and smells. It had been a long time, but he was sure he could still smell the sweet aroma of the pipe.

  He’d tried to work with the computer there to copy what was on the flash drive Mary Lee had given him, but the hard drive was too old and the memory insufficient to handle the transfer. He reached for the phone and dialed Nikki’s direct line at the hospital.

  “Hello.”

  Her voice was groggy, and he felt bad for calling so late. But he had to talk to her. “Nikki, it’s Christian.”

  “Oh, hi.”

  “I’m sorry to wake you up.”

  “It’s all right, what’s the matter?”

  “When I was there with you earlier, you told me you took pictures of a man who visited Lana at the house before Dad’s plane crash. He was out on the patio with her.”

  “Yes. Actually I took a whole bunch of them, maybe ten.”

  “Do you still have them?”

  She was quiet for a few moments. “I didn’t take them with me when I moved out of the house. Which was like ten or eleven years ago. If they’re still around, they’re in a box in the bottom left-hand drawer of my desk. But Mom probably threw it out.”

  DAVIS LAY ON the cot, his wrists and ankles chained tightly to the frame. His captors had tortured him three separate times, hadn’t given him any food or water, and had pulled one of his teeth with a pair of needle-nose pliers. But they hadn’t broken him yet. Not because he had any allegiance to Christian Gillette; no, they hadn’t broken him because the very fact that he’d been kidnapped and tortured proved to him that someone was close to a major breakthrough on nanotechnology—someone who shouldn’t have it.

  And for Gillette to stay in front of that person, he needed the biggest head start Davis could give him.

  GILLETTE OPENED the drawer of Nikki’s old desk and reached down for the small box. His fingers shook as he opened it. The pictures were there, as Nikki had promised, ten of them. Clear shots of Lana and the man Nikki had mentioned sitting on the patio outside the house.

  Gillette exhaled heavily. Unbelievable.

  There was no need for Lana to give him his mother’s real name now. He just wanted to know that Marilyn McRae wasn’t his real mother. Her slipup at dinner about the cigars—his father never smoked cigars—was almost enough. But the pictures gave him the answers he’d been looking for—and a lot more than that.

  DAVIS HAD always had an irrational fear of water, which he assumed stemmed from a childhood incident where he’d almost drowned. He never swam and never took a bath, always showered because he hated the feeling of having any part of his body submerged in water. Now they had him kneeling in front of a tub of water, his hands tied tightly behind his back. Somehow they had figured out his Room 101—the thing he feared most in life.

  As they forced his head into the water, he screamed as he’d never screamed in his life, trying desperately to get his head back up. Just as he thought he would pass out, they jerked him out of the tub.

  They didn’t even have to ask. He began to babble on his own, telling them every detail of the conversations he’d had with Christian Gillette.

  “NORMAN!” Ganze yelled, bursting into Boyd’s office. “They got Davis to break. A little water and he crumbled like a stale cookie.”

  “Excellent. Did he tell them anything important?”

  “He told them that he had sent Gillette to Matt Lee’s wife.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Boyd roared, shooting out of his chair. “Weren’t you just there?”

  “Yes. Apparently, Gillette was there on Wednesday, the day after we were.”

  “You searched the place, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t find anything?”

  “No.”

  “Could she have told him anything important?”

  “I don’t know. These people aren’t supposed to talk to anyone about the project, even to their spouses. B
ut you know they do.”

  “Did you question her?” Boyd asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, get back on the phone with Celino’s people right now. Get them up to Boston immediately. Take any means necessary to find out what she told Gillette. Hell, have them do the same thing to Lee’s wife that they just did to Davis.”

  “You mean—”

  “Yes, damn it, I mean torture, then disposal. By now she must know something’s happened to her husband anyway. We don’t want her running around trying to get the newspapers interested in her story. Get her off the fucking face of the earth.”

  DAVID WRIGHT gazed out over the East River and Queens from the terrace of his Upper East Side apartment. It was four in the morning, but he couldn’t sleep. He leaned forward in his chair and put his face in his hands. He couldn’t go on like this, being a coward. It was killing him. Ratting on Gillette like some little pussy because he was so afraid Joe Celino would send the pictures to the cops or take him out. Or worst of all, do something to Peggy. That’s what really kept him up, the thought of that. He shook his head. He wasn’t a coward. Never had been. He’d always faced things head-on.

  “David?”

  Wright whipped around in the chair, toward Peggy. “Hey, Peg.”

  “It’s four in the morning,” she said, coming to him and putting a hand on his shoulder. Her face was creased with concern. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he lied, “I was just thinking about this deal I’m working on.”

  She sat on his lap and put her arms around him, sighed, then smiled at him sweetly. “I guess now’s as good a time as any to tell you,” she said, patting her belly.

  “Tell me what?”

  But before she could answer, he realized. Suddenly he had a whole new reason to get things straight.

  20

  LESS THAN A YEAR BEFORE, Gillette had delivered Bill Donovan’s eulogy to a packed church in midtown Manhattan. This time it was Harlem, but the church was just as crowded.