Jim McGill 04 The Last Ballot Cast, Part 1

by Joseph Flynn

  Hugh had been given permission to enter the suite.

  Making liberal use of the hotel’s wine cellar hadn’t been discussed.

  From the look on Uncle’s face as he entered his digs, Hugh may have overstepped. He wasn’t sure if it was the champagne or his casual feet-on-the-furniture use of someone else’s sofa. He thought the latter shouldn’t have been too great a breach of manners. He had taken his shoes off.

  “Sit up,” Sir Edbert demanded.

  Hugh sketched a mock salute and obeyed.

  Both stockinged feet on the floor, he asked, “Have you had a pleasant day, Uncle?”

  The expression on Sir Edbert’s face said his mood might have been helped by whipping a servant. Lacking that opportunity, abusing an insolent nephew would have to do. He asked, “What have you accomplished with Ms. Booker?”

  Topping off his glass, Hugh said, “I’ve learned she hopes she has seen the last of us, she will not be bought and, sorry to say, she will likely bring a great deal of aggravation and conceivably even suffering upon you.”

  Sir Edbert sat opposite Hugh and gave him a look so evil the devil might have envied it.

  He hissed, “Do you think some jumped up clerk is a threat to me?”

  “Alone, never. In the right context, with a smart lawyer at her side and the federal government in her corner … Well, Uncle, the good lady in the White House deals in trillion-dollar budgets and shoots Hellfire missiles at chaps who annoy her. Private capital has yet to scale those heights.”

  “You’re saying Ellie Booker is about to form an alliance with Patricia Grant and the two of them will target me for destruction?”

  Having said those words aloud sent a tremor through Sir Edbert.

  Hugh’s manners could be those of a bushie but he was nobody’s fool.

  He might do well to hear his nephew out.

  “Tell me what you think,” he ordered Hugh.

  “I think you’ve spent your waking hours today plotting with your lawyers. You’ve either heard or expect to hear momentarily that the Department of Justice will investigate WorldWide News for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. So you were plotting your defenses and if I haven’t misjudged you, you’re looking at which members of Congress you might blackmail into —”

  “How might I blackmail anyone?” Sir Edbert blustered.

  Hugh said, “Let me count the ways. Hacked cellphones. Surreptitious photos taken of politicians and comely aides on foreign junkets. Personal testimony of sex workers, especially if they’re chaps who like things from the angle of entry I prefer. Shall I go on?”

  Hugh took the grinding of Sir Edbert’s teeth as a no.

  “Now, to resume,” he said. “You hoped to have enough dirt on someone in government who would have the weight to stop an investigation of WWN in its tracks. But from your vile mood it’s apparent you don’t. I’m afraid, Uncle, matters will turn darker still.”

  “Thanks to that strumpet who once worked for me?” Sir Edbert asked.

  Hugh said, “She’s not really a bad sort. In temperament and ruthlessness, she reminds me of the two of us. She’s also the first woman who genuinely piqued my interest in a way I never anticipated.”

  “I’ll alert your father,” Sir Edbert said with a sour grin.

  Hugh’s father had put him on the street for being gay; Sir Edbert had taken him in.

  “No need,” Hugh told him. “I’m sure it was a one-time thing, and Ms. Booker would prefer to see me drown like a rat.”

  Hugh thought Uncle saw a certain appeal in that idea also.

  He resumed, “What both of us missed is that Ellie has abandonment issues and leaving her at Salvation’s Path when the fun began was the worst thing we might have done to her.”

  Sir Edbert made a dismissive gesture with a mottled hand.

  “In any case,” Hugh said, “Ellie was served with a subpoena on the street in Manhattan. I saw it. I also followed the process server and for only one hundred dollars he told me who required Ms. Booker’s presence: Benton Williams.”

  “Burke Godfrey’s attorney,” Sir Edbert said.

  “The very same. Having that information, I set a private investigator to following Williams. My initial surmise was that Williams intended to sue Ellie and, more importantly, you for that bash on the head she gave Godfrey.”

  Sir Edbert shuddered when he heard that. An assault on any man at the top of his pyramid was a blow to the whole ruling class. Let things go too far and Bolsheviks might roam the land again.

  “Then, of course, the gloom darkened when the good reverend died,” Hugh said.

  A spark of fear lit Sir Edbert’s sunken eyes.

  “Burke Godfrey is dead?”

  Hugh nodded, thinking Uncle must’ve been burrowed deep in his scheming to have missed that bulletin. “He has expired.”

  “Might it be vengeance on Patti Grant’s part?”

  “It was a massive stroke. Trying to play it any other way would be suicide for us.”

  His fun spoiled, Sir Edbert grumped, “Go on.”

  “Benton Williams, my investigator tells me, went to the Department of Justice building today. I don’t know whom he saw but a chap of his stature was bound to talk with someone high up the ladder. Can you guess what he might have had on his mind?”

  With a grim nod Sir Edbert said, “He wants to make sure the government doesn’t strip my carcass bare. At worst, he wants to make sure he has left a bone or two to gnaw.”

  Hugh was glad to see the old man hadn’t lost all his faculties.

  “Williams will pair up with a prosecutor and leverage testimony from Ellie for both criminal and civil proceedings. She’ll get off with a slap on the wrist. WWN will take the body blow.”

  Uncle looked more desperate than Hugh had ever seen him.

  “Do you think they truly mean to lock me away?” he asked his nephew.

  “What could send a more powerful message?” Hugh replied.

  “And what would your advice be?”

  “The first bit is self-serving. Don’t think you can sacrifice me and put your troubles behind you. I’d be a mere appetizer, and your foes are looking to feast.”

  Left unsaid, if Uncle were to ignore his warning that he wouldn’t be made the fall guy, Hugh’s earnest intent was to do the old bugger in. He’d thought long and hard on the matter.

  “Beyond that?” Sir Edbert inquired.

  “Moderate your editorial position.”

  As if he hadn’t heard right, Uncle said, “I beg your pardon.”

  “There’s a presidential election in the offing. Your natural instinct would be to destroy Patti Grant in print and on television. To attempt that now would be to tie a noose for the hangman. Still, you can’t simply do a turnabout and be a shill for the president. That would be seen as tantamount to bribery. The last thing you’d need. So what you and WWN have to do, Uncle, is play things straight. Be responsible journalists. Play things so straight you set a code of conduct for all others to follow.”

  Sir Edbert Bickford couldn’t have been more aghast if Hugh had told him he must pose bare chested on page three of all his newspapers.

  Then the weight of reality overcame his combative nature and his face sagged.

  “You’re right. I hate you for it, but you’re right. When do we begin?”

  Hugh poured a flute of champagne for Uncle.

  “First thing in the morning. Maybe after a few hours sleep you’ll hate me a bit less.”

  The two men clinked glasses and drank.

  One of the world’s great champagnes pleased neither of them.

  George Town — Grand Cayman Island

  Welborn Yates had tried to persuade his new wife, Kira, to come with him to the Caribbean as a postscript to their truncated honeymoon, but she conveyed her regrets to him. Told him she had an obligation that would keep her in Washington.

  “That obligation being?” he asked as he packed his bag in the bedroom of their new house on Q Stre
et.

  Kira said, “I can’t tell you, not yet.”

  Welborn pressed the back of a hand to his forehead.

  “The secrecy and evasion start so soon. The little white lies will come next.”

  Having bared his anguish to her, he counted out the pairs of underwear he’d need.

  Kira told him, “I promise to tell you only the most horrid lies.”

  “Quality does matter.”

  “So does family.”

  He stopped his packing and looked at her. “I’ll make a series of statements. You paw the floor once for yes, twice for no.”

  “How about instead of pawing I pinch you in tender places?”

  “Within limits, that could be fun. Your concern is one Mather Wyman.”

  Kira stepped in close, put her arms around him and pinched his backside, once.

  “He likes an oval office better than a rectangular one.”

  She pinched the inside of his right thigh, affirmatively.

  “He might be considering how he could move up in the world.”

  She pinched the inside of his left thigh, a bit higher.

  “Should he seek to make that move, you intend to help him.”

  Welborn anticipated where Kira might strike next and headed her off.

  “If the time ever comes for a vasectomy, I’ll see someone with a medical license.”

  He kissed Kira. “I’ll also miss you terribly if you no longer work down the hall.”

  “Will you miss me while you’re off in Paradise by yourself?”

  “Paradise for one is a bit of a contradiction, wouldn’t you say? But we’re back where we started. I’d like you to come with me but you have your secret obligation.”

  “I could pinch you some more.”

  “Or you could give me a more traditional send off.”

  They had combined the two, and now Welborn in a marigold polo shirt, khaki shorts and stylish but functional running shoes sat in the shade of a Cinzano umbrella in Pennyman’s Café on Shedden Road, just up the block from the Marlborough Bank. He was careful to introduce himself at both establishments as a good natured fellow and a man of means. He’d deposited two hundred thousand dollars in the bank — half of what he’d taken from them — and had bought the house an eye-opener at the café. Fortunately, the hour had been early and his bonhomie had extended to only half-a-dozen souls. Even so, the gesture had been appreciated. As was the generous tip. He was welcome to linger, reading his newspapers.

  The consensus of the Air Force team that was covering Welborn’s tab was Linley Boland would show up within a matter of days. He wouldn’t send a surrogate because it wouldn’t look right for a bank customer whose account had been siphoned to have anyone else do his complaining for him. Once Welborn had spotted Boland, he was to maintain visual contact and call the U.S. embassy in Kingston, Jamaica, which had consular authority for the Cayman Islands. The ambassador there would prevail upon the officials in George Town to have its cops make the arrest. Boland would be held until he could be extradited, indicted, tried, convicted and locked up for the rest of his miserable life.

  On paper, the plan was simple and straightforward.

  In the tropics, though, events followed their own rhythm and logic.

  This fact became apparent to Welborn the first morning he sat down at Pennyman’s Café.

  He wondered how much time he might spend sitting there. How long the memory of his last night with Kira would hold the same joy it did now. Whether he might end up alone and forgotten in the tropics like some minor character in a Graham Greene novel.

  Charlottesville, Virginia

  Damon Todd wanted to know, “Is there any way the two of you could infiltrate Camp David?”

  He was guessing that was where McGill would retreat if things got too hot for him.

  “No,” Crosby said.

  “Not a chance,” Anderson confirmed.

  “Wouldn’t even be able to get close,” Crosby added.

  “What do you mean? Why couldn’t you get close?” Todd asked.

  The two rogue ops grinned at each other. They’d spent the whole day sneaking around in the woods. Shadowing recreational hikers as if they were enemy military. Getting close enough to count freckles on bare shoulders or slit a throat, without anyone being the wiser. But they hadn’t done any harm. Well, they had messed with a couple of guys’ heads. After coming close enough to yank them off their feet, they’d faded back and hit them with thrown pebbles.

  Both those dudes knew they’d been deliberately struck, but when they turned around hadn’t been able to spot anyone. They’d both cursed, angry at the abuse. But both of them had strong enough survival instincts to realize the threat was still there and they’d di-di-ed.

  Crosby and Anderson were laughing and patting each other on the back by the time they got back to the cabin. They were feeling as strong, swift and silent as when they were in their prime. Ready to take on the world, kick its ass and drink all night long.

  They knew they owed it all to Todd. Whatever the hell he’d done to them, God, it was like getting a head-to-toe hard-on. The feeling was better than any drug they’d ever had, and they’d had everything from grain alcohol to zacatecas purple.

  That and blind devotion to him were what Todd wanted them to feel.

  So —

  Crosby saw where Todd was going and said, “Camp David is protected by Marines and Secret Service agents, and those are just the guys you see. There are others you don’t see.”

  “Guys who are just as good in the woods as we are, only there are a lot more of them than there are of us,” Anderson told Todd.

  Crosby continued the tutorial. “You walk past the White House, you see the fence all the way around the place. You see the uniformed guys guarding the grounds. You look up you might see the guys on the roof, but they’re pretty good about keeping their sniper rifles out of public view.”

  “But they’ve got their long iron handy, you can believe that,” Anderson said.

  Crosby nodded. “What’s a lot more subtle is the guys on other rooftops, outside the White House grounds, looking in at it. Them and the plainclothes people, men and women, mingling with the tourists and the office workers.”

  “They watch for people with compact automatic weapons under their suit coats or windbreakers. That or suspicious packages that might be left in a litter basket and be detonated by a cell phone,” Anderson said.

  “That or an amped-up SUV filled with a thousand pounds of explosives that’s ready to make a suicide run at the fence. Or an ultralight aircraft that might try to get over the fence,” Crosby elaborated.

  Anderson nodded. “There was even talk of bad guys trying to work up their own flying drones, making the whole aircraft a flying bomb, and that was before we got sent to our room at the Funny Farm. Who knows what the assholes might be working on now?”

  The recitation left Todd agog, and more than a little indignant. The idea that these terrorist assholes would even think of … Then he realized he might be considered a terrorist, a guy with a major grievance against the CIA and the president’s husband.

  That was true, but his complaints were personal not ideological.

  From a defender’s point of view, though, he could see that the distinction wouldn’t matter.

  “You get the idea?” Crosby asked. “Any place that really matters to the government is going to have layer upon layer of defense, most of it in places you’ll never see.”

  “And if you go looking for their defenses, they’ll see you first,” Anderson said.

  “So what would you advise?” Todd asked. “To get to someone you want dead.”

  “Patience,” Crosby said.

  “Or you draw them out of their safe place to where their protection can’t be as comprehensive,” Anderson said.

  “A combination of the two works best. You want this McGill guy? Wait until he goes stir crazy and thinks the threat is no longer real,” Crosby instructed.

&
nbsp; Anderson agreed. “Then take out someone who means a lot to him and is more accessible. That gets him super-pissed off and he’s not functioning at top form. His security people will be scrambling to keep up with him as he goes charging around. Makes the whole job a lot easier.”

  “You know anyone who fits that bill for your target?” Crosby asked.

  Todd thought about it. When he’d gone to confront McGill the first time at his business office, he’d taken the building’s owner, Dikki Missirian captive. He hadn’t used him as a hostage, but had learned from him that McGill had a business partner, a woman. Entering McGill’s offices, he’d seen a photo on a wall, McGill and the woman, both wearing the uniforms of the Chicago Police Department. The desk in the outer office had a woman’s name on it.

  Had to be the same person.

  In a moment of epiphany, Todd made a connection. He’d seen the woman in person. She’d been the one he’d seen running on the Mall, the Amazon who had reminded him of the woman in the old Apple computer TV commercial, the one who flung her hammer and smashed Big Brother.

  She was McGill’s colleague, a friend of many years. Someone near and dear.

  Crosby and Anderson saw the smile appear on Todd’s face.

  “He’s got someone,” Anderson said.

  “Somebody good,” Crosby said.

  Todd nodded. “Her name is Margaret Sweeney.”

  The White House — Helipad

  “Good to see you again, boss,” Leo Levy said as McGill exited Marine One-A, the call sign for the aircraft when he was aboard but the president wasn’t.

  Elspeth Kendry waited with Leo, not speaking.

  “Good to see you, too, Leo. Special Agent Kendry.”

  “Sir,” Elspeth responded crisply.

  “Doing your best Celsus Crogher imitation, Special Agent?”

  Elspeth stifled a smile. “Sir, I’m here at the president’s direction.”

  McGill turned his gaze on Leo.

  “I’m just tryin’ to earn my pay, boss. I’m real tired of watchin’ daytime TV.”

  “You have my Chevy ready to go?”