The Protégé

by Stephen Frey

  “He was my best friend,” Gillette said quietly. “I’ll never have another friend like Quentin Stiles.”

  When he was finished, Gillette moved down the steps from the dais and knelt before Stiles’s grandmother. Her face was soaked with tears, and he took her hand gently. “You going to be okay?”

  “I’m a tough old bird,” she whispered. “I’ll be all right.”

  After he’d kissed her on the forehead, Gillette headed down the center aisle toward the back of the church, glancing at Wright as he passed. Wright’s eyes were down, glued to the floor. So were Peggy’s.

  Outside the church, Gillette leaned back against a tree and closed his eyes, wondering if the time had come to get out. He was thirty-seven, and he’d never be able to spend all the money he’d made. Why keep working? Why deal with it anymore?

  “You ready?”

  Gillette opened his eyes. Derrick Walker stood in front of him.

  “We got to get you down to Chatham, Christian. The meeting doesn’t start until six o’clock, but I spoke to Percy Lundergard and he wants you there by four. Says he’s got a lot of things he needs to cover with you before you go on.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Over Walker’s shoulder, Gillette saw Wright and Peggy walking toward their car. “Give me a second,” he said, brushing past Walker. “David,” he called.

  Wright kept moving.

  “David!”

  The second time Gillette called, Wright stopped on the sidewalk and turned.

  “I need to talk to you,” Gillette said loudly as he neared them.

  Wright gestured for Peggy to go ahead without him. “What is it?” he asked when she was gone.

  The younger man seemed to be hanging his head, Gillette noticed. He seemed tired, almost beaten. “What’s wrong?”

  Wright shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “You sure?”

  Wright shook his head. “I . . . I haven’t been . . . I’m just . . .” He groaned. “I’ve just been working hard on this Hush-Hush thing. I want to get it done fast, that’s all. I don’t want someone else coming in and stealing it.”

  “That’s all? You don’t have anything else you want to tell me?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I went to Richmond.”

  Wright swallowed hard. “Yeah, so?”

  “I drove. After I got out of the city, I went down the Jersey Turnpike.”

  “Makes sense. That would be the fastest way to get to Richmond if you were driving. But why are you telling me?”

  Gillette hesitated, letting the pressure build. “Were you on the Jersey Turnpike this week?”

  Wright shifted on his feet, then shoved his hands in his pockets. “Why would you think I was?”

  “I saw a—”

  “Look, I gotta go, Chris,” Wright said suddenly, turning and trotting toward Peggy, who was standing by their car.

  GILLETTE SWUNG the dark green Oldsmobile into a spot of the Chatham High School student parking lot and climbed out. Percy Lundergard had suggested that Gillette not come in a limousine, that he dress casually, and that his security detail be as invisible as possible. So he’d driven himself to the meeting in Lundergard’s own sedan, worn a golf shirt and slacks, and been accompanied by only one QS agent, who was also casually dressed. As he made his way across the parking lot with the rest of the crowd, he thought how nice it was to blend in for once.

  There was already a line forming at the front door, and as Gillette reached the back of it, he noticed a figure standing alone on the grass by the side of the building. When he took a second look, the figure seemed familiar. He stared hard for a moment. David Wright.

  They locked eyes for a few moments and acknowledged each other with a subtle nod, then Wright motioned for Gillette to break away.

  Gillette gave the QS agent standing beside him a tap on the shoulder. “See that guy over there?” he said, pointing at Wright.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to talk to him. You’re coming with me.”

  “Okay.”

  “What are you doing here, David?” Gillette asked as he neared him, aware that the people in line were watching. He and Wright clearly weren’t locals. In a town as small as Chatham, everyone knew everyone. “I thought you and Peggy were going out of the city for the weekend, out to Long Island or something.”

  “We were,” Wright mumbled, glancing at the QS agent. “Hey, can we have a little space?”

  Gillette waved the agent off. “What’s going on, David?”

  Wright took a deep breath. “This is tough.”

  “Tough?”

  “Look, let’s not beat around the bush. You know I was on the turnpike the other day. I don’t know how you know, but you know.”

  “Were you following me?” Gillette asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Try me.”

  Wright put a hand to his face and rubbed his eyes. “I’ve been keeping tabs on you for the Carbone family.”

  Wright’s image blurred in front of Gillette, and his throat went dry. The man he’d tabbed as his protégé, a man he’d trusted completely, was a traitor. It was almost unfathomable. “Is this about Las Vegas?” he asked, his voice hushed.

  “I, I think so,” Wright said hesitantly.

  “Why would they care where I was so much?” Gillette asked, knowing it couldn’t be just about the NFL franchise and the casino. Looking around warily, suddenly wondering if this was a setup. Wondering if Wright had really driven all the way down here to come clean.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We’re paying that guy Carmine Torino his fee, which I’m sure the Carbones are getting most of.” Might as well try to dig as much information out of Wright as possible, Gillete thought. “I assume that’s what they wanted. I can’t understand why they’d need to know where I was all the time. There’s got to be something more.”

  “Like I said,” Wright answered shakily, “I don’t know. I asked that question a lot, but I never got an answer.”

  “Why did you do it, David?”

  “I’ve got a problem,” Wright mumbled. “Something they’re using against me. You know I didn’t want to.”

  “What is it, what do they have on you?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “David, you—”

  “I really can’t tell you, Chris. You’ve been a great friend to me, and I couldn’t look myself in the mirror anymore. I thought I could screw anyone to get ahead, to save myself, but I guess I can’t after all. I suppose that’s one thing I can take away from this whole mess.” He kicked at a tuft of grass. “But I can’t tell you what they have on me, I just can’t. You’ll probably hear about it on the news at some point, but I don’t want to tell you now.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with Everest, though,” Wright said quickly. “I want you to know that.”

  “Is it something I might be able to help you with?”

  “No.”

  Gillette glanced over his shoulder at the line. It was getting long. “Look, I gotta go.” He put his hand on Wright’s shoulder. “Thanks for coming down here. We’ll need to talk again on Monday. In depth.”

  “If I’m still around,” Wright muttered.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Look, there’s more.”

  Gillette turned back. “More?”

  “When we were in Vegas, I met with Joe Celino.”

  “What?”

  “ ‘Met’ isn’t really the right word,” Wright corrected himself. “I was basically hauled in front of him. He told me I was a dead man if I didn’t do exactly what he wanted. He showed me a picture of this poor fucker they tortured to death to scare the shit out of me. Which it did. So I’m probably pretty much screwed at this point. I’m sure they’ll find out I came to you, so when I don’t show up Monday, you’ll know why. But here’s the point: Celino told
me some things you oughta know.”

  “Like what?”

  “First, he claimed he was working with Allison Wallace somehow.”

  Gillette suddenly felt as though someone had hit him in the gut with a sledgehammer. “Jesus Christ.” Veramax, Dr. Davis, and Beezer Johnson raced through his mind.

  “I don’t know how, and I don’t know on what,” Wright continued. “But he told me she’d be running Everest at some point soon, so I ought to suck up to her. That if I cooperated with him, there’d be a place for me when she was in charge.”

  Probably why she was calling investors and inferring that she’d be running the show soon, Gillette thought. Setting the stage. So Faraday was right. Maybe Nigel was the guy to run Everest after all. His instincts seemed to be dead-on. “What else did Celino tell you?” Gillette asked angrily.

  “He told me his people had gotten that mate on the yacht to kill Quentin Stiles.”

  “Are you serious?” Gillette asked incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  Gillette’s mind was spinning. The Carbones had gotten Stiles. It kept echoing in his head. But somehow Norman Boyd had known in Minneapolis, without ever laying eyes on Stiles in Washington, that Derrick Walker was a different head of security. Somehow Boyd had known that something had happened to Stiles. The connection suddenly made sense. The Carbones were rarely ever in the news, but they were the most successful and feared crime family in the country. And Norman Boyd would need assassins, people who were good at killing. As Ted Casey had said in the Georgetown parking garage the other night. Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that the Carbones made so much money and Boyd had a reputation for being able to intimidate anyone he wanted to. Maybe there was a hideous partnership. One in which Celino’s people tortured and killed for Boyd. And, in return, got cover from the government on their criminal activities, maybe even had things pushed their way every once in a while. That would also explain why the Carbones would kill Tom McGuire. Boyd couldn’t have somebody out there trying to kill Gillette—not when Boyd was relying on him.

  Then it hit Gillette. Boyd wouldn’t need him if he had Allison in his pocket.

  “Why would they want Stiles dead?” Gillette asked, barely able to hear his voice over the pounding of his heart.

  “Celino said Stiles was getting too close on something. He didn’t tell me what, though.”

  Maybe that was what Stiles had been talking about on the boat last weekend. Maybe he was getting close to linking Celino with a government agency. A connection that Celino and the Agency would certainly do almost anything to avoid having exposed. Something like that, were it revealed and proven true, would end any advantage the Carbones had over the rest of the country’s Mob families. In fact, it would probably end the Carbones as a family. There would be endless congressional investigations and scrutiny that would make it almost impossible for the Carbones to continue to operate. And there’d be no telling what it would do to the United States intelligence agencies.

  “Did you follow me all the way to Richmond the other day?” Gillette demanded.

  Wright nodded. “In a damn cab.”

  “Do you know who I met with?”

  “A neurosurgeon named Scott Davis.”

  Gillette banged his fist against the building. “Did you tell the Carbones that?”

  “Yeah.” Wright’s voice was barely audible.

  Gillette yanked his cell phone from his pocket to call Cathy Dylan. He had to get in touch with Davis immediately, to warn him. “Did you tell them about Tom McGuire, too? About McGuire coming after me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Christian,” Percy Lundergard called, trotting across the grass toward Gillette, “you’ve got to get inside. It’s almost time.”

  Gillette held up a hand, waiting for Cathy to answer, but she didn’t pick up. “Damn it.” He pointed at Wright as he cut the connection. “Get out of here, David. Call your wife immediately and tell her to get somewhere safe right away.”

  “Christian, come on,” Lundergard urged, looking at Wright strangely.

  “Percy, I’ve got an emergency. I’m not going to be able to—”

  “No way,” Lundergard snapped. “I’ve moved heaven and earth to put two thousand people in that auditorium tonight,” he said, pointing at the building, “and to get the NBC affiliate to televise this thing. You’re not backing out on me, Christian, not for any reason.”

  “CELINO’S PEOPLE got it out of Mary Lee,” Ganze reported.

  Boyd was standing behind his desk, squeezing the back of the chair so hard that his knuckles were white. “What, damn it? What did they get?”

  “That she gave Gillette a flash drive with everything on it. All the work the team had generated up to the point they took off from Boston the other day. Matt gave it to her right before he got on the plane you sent into Lake Michigan. Apparently, he smuggled it out of the research lab the night before.”

  “Well, doesn’t that make my fucking day,” Boyd hissed. “Christian Gillette knows more about nanotechnology than we do at this point.”

  “What do you mean?” Ganze asked.

  Boyd nodded at the secure telephone on his desk. “I just spoke to our lead person in Minneapolis. She says there’s something missing from the research material, a vital piece of the code they can’t find and can’t re-create without Matt Lee. He must have figured out he wasn’t getting off that plane.” Boyd pounded the desk. “Get Celino’s people after Gillette, immediately. I want that flash drive, and I want it yesterday. I don’t care what they have to do to get it.”

  IT WAS GILLETTE’S turn to speak in front of the packed auditorium. Becky Rouse had made her case, telling the crowd that allowing a Discount America store into town would destroy the successful tourist trade she had developed over the past several years. Citing facts and figures that demonstrated how so many more outsiders were spending money on the waterfront. That tourists would no longer think of Chatham as quaint if it was at the center of a superstore war. That the mammoth retail outlet would suck dollars away from the waterfront, too, and attract a group of people from other towns Chatham didn’t want. She was given a strong round of applause as she sat down.

  Gillette took the microphone and smiled calmly at several people in the huge crowd before speaking, trying to focus. So many things were racing through his mind. “Good evening, I’m Christian Gillette,” he began, wondering if someone in the audience was here to kill him. “I’m the chairman of Discount America, and I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. I realize that it’s Saturday evening, so I won’t keep you long. I want you to be able to get home to your families and your televisions and your parties, I really do. I just want to take a few minutes of your time and present you with a few basic facts as you decide whether or not you want our store in your town. We hope you do. We think it’ll be a great partnership.

  “First, the store will be built out on Route 212, at least five miles west of the waterfront. Almost a hundred percent of the tourist traffic comes from the east, they’ll never see this store. Second, the store will be huge. You’ll be able to buy almost anything you want, from fresh vegetables to computers. You won’t have to go to Delaware to buy basic stuff anymore. Third, thanks to our ability to buy in bulk, our prices are tremendously low.” Gillette motioned to the crowd. “Can someone please tell me what a four-bar pack of Ivory soap costs at Fletcher’s market on the Chatham waterfront?”

  A young woman raised her hand.

  “Yes?”

  “Five dollars and a quarter,” the woman said, her voice cracking with nerves.

  “Five dollars and twenty-five cents,” Gillette said loudly. He shook his head. “You know what it’ll cost at the new DA store? Two fifty at most.”

  A rumble ran through the crowd.

  “Believe me,” he said, acknowledging the positive response, “you want us here. It’ll be a great store and a fantastic shopping experience. It’ll create jobs and tax revenue. It’ll be—
”

  “How much money will you make from the store?” Becky interrupted.

  Gillete turned. Becky was out of her chair, arms folded firmly over her chest. Obviously, she’d felt the tide turning in his favor and was going to do anything she could to stop the momentum.

  “Come on, Mr. Gillette, tell us all what you’re going to make off this store.”

  “I don’t have the exact figures yet, but it’s—”

  “At least a hundred million!” she shouted.

  A murmur rolled through the auditorium.

  Gillette smiled calmly and put up his arms. “It’s nowhere near a hundred million.” He glanced at Percy Lundergard, who had his hands over his eyes.

  Becky pointed at a man in the second row. “You all know who Fred Jacobs is. The best accountant in the county. Fred looked at this for me. What do you think Mr. Gillette will make on the store, Fred?”

  Jacobs stood up. He was a scholarly-looking man with wire-rimmed glasses and a crop of white hair. “I think Becky’s pretty close. About a hundred million a year.”

  “Believe me,” Gillette said loudly, “that’s way off.”

  “Then how much is it?” an elderly woman in the middle of the crowd shouted in a high-pitched voice.

  “I’m not sure right now.”

  The crowd groaned.

  Gillette saw Lundergard running his finger across his neck.

  “Mr. Gillette won’t even help us with a few things we need around here,” Becky spoke up. “His investors just gave him fifteen billion dollars and—”

  “Actually, it’s twenty,” Jacobs corrected from his seat. “I checked the Everest Capital Web site right before I came over. Some rich family from Chicago just gave Mr. Gillette another five billion.”

  “Twenty billion dollars!” Becky shouted, whipping the crowd into a frenzy. “Can you imagine having that much money at your fingertips? I can’t. I asked Mr. Gillette to help us build a new elementary school, and you know what he said? He said he’d build half of it. Half a school. Can you imagine that? Now, Mr. Gillette, which half were you thinking about? The top half or the bottom half?”