He reached out and held his partner’s hand, tight. “Now we can go out and arrest that son of a bitch Wilson Blount.”
Sunday afternoon, after an Army transport had taken them to Nashville International Airport, Reeder and Rogers rented a Chevy Tahoe from National. They were about to call on a United States Senator in Franklin, Tennessee, twenty minutes south of Nashville—one of the safest and least-taxed cities in America.
This enclave of top CEOs of multinational corporations, with scores of golf courses and dozens of museums in a historic Civil War city, included the Brandon Park Downs gated community, just outside the center of town. Here Senator Wilson Blount lived on a beautiful lakefront estate in a magnificent country manor house in the antebellum manner.
With Rogers at the wheel, they pulled through a high front gate in a stone wall onto a cement drive that wound through an expansive, perfectly maintained, tree-flung front lawn. No other FBI or police accompanied them—no major security force would be awaiting them, according to Miggie, so no SWAT would be necessary. Still, they had little doubt that Blount would know they, or at least someone, would be coming today, so caution was the watchword.
The antebellum mansion had been the Blount family home since the early 1800s, very Tara-like with its stately white columns and neoclassical style. As they’d driven up, however, Reeder noted at the rear a massive array of antennas and satellite dishes—the old homestead was twenty-first-century–connected.
They left the Tahoe near the front and went up four steps to a white door where Reeder used a traditional brass knocker, Rogers at his side. Both wore dark suits cut to conceal their shoulder-holstered weapons.
Almost immediately a rather distinguished-looking, fifty-ish African American butler, in traditional livery, responded. His hair was peppery and his features were as blank as Reeder at his most guarded.
“Joe Reeder to see the Senator,” Reeder said.
Rogers held up her FBI ID and said, “Special Agent Patti Rogers here to see Senator Blount.”
The butler nodded with formal disdain. He seemed to taste the words and didn’t enjoy the flavor as he said, “You are expected, sir. Madam.”
Reeder and Rogers shared a glance. What century was this again?
They were led into the grand foyer—marble floor, marble stairway, pocket doors at right and left, with more down a corridor beside the stairs, a two-story ceiling wearing a crystal chandelier like one ostentatious earring.
The butler knocked at the pocket doors to the left. “Your guests have arrived, Senator.”
“Thank you, Mathers,” a muffled voice drawled, smooth as honey. “Show them in, please.”
The butler slid open a door, gestured with an upturned palm, bowing slightly, a human lawn jockey. Reeder and Rogers went in and the butler stepped in after them.
They were in a library as high-ceilinged as the foyer, and library was the appropriate term, because three of the walls were filled with volumes whose mostly leather bindings gave the room a scent of age and scholarship, several sliding ladders allowing access to upper shelves. The wall to the right had a connecting door and an array of framed, vintage oil paintings of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and a few others that Reeder didn’t recognize, though he felt sure they were Civil War–era figures. Sprinkled among the Confederates were portraits of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and John Adams. Somehow he was not surprised by Lincoln’s absence.
The room included an ancient massive desk inserted into the left-side wall of shelves, and some tables with antique lamps, but center stage was an Oriental rug where two overstuffed brown-leather sofas faced each other across a glass-topped coffee table. Senator Blount was sitting on the sofa at right. He stood and smiled in welcome, gesturing to the seating opposite.
The Senator wore a gray suit with a white shirt and a black string tie. He looked immaculate, every hair of his silver-blond mane in place, his eyes blue and rather twinkling behind his wire-frame bifocals. Only his creped neck gave away his age.
“Please join me, Mr. Reeder, Agent Rogers. I expected someone, of course, but I rather hoped it might be you.”
Something about the way Blount handled words reminded Reeder of a cat lapping up cream.
“Mathers, would you kindly fetch us a mint julep?” As Reeder and Rogers took their places, Blount settled back on his sofa and added, “I hope you will forgive your host for so predictable and even stereotypical a drink of choice. But my man Mathers makes a wicked julep. Would you please join me?”
“No thank you,” Reeder said.
Rogers shook her head.
“Sure?”
They nodded.
“Pity,” Blount said, with your favorite uncle’s smile, then leaned back, tenting his fingers at his chest. “You don’t know what you’re missin’.”
Reeder said, “Your hospitality embarrasses us, Senator. You see, we’re here to arrest you.”
Blount smiled as if that were a mildly amusing joke. “Is that right? And what charge would that be?”
“Well, for now, conspiracy to commit murder.”
The smile twitched. “Did I help murder anyone in particular?”
Rogers said, “The initial charge will be for the murders of Jerome Bohannon and Trevor Ivanek, both FBI agents. Law enforcement rather frowns upon the killing of their own.”
“Don’t believe either name is familiar to me.”
She said, “That doesn’t exactly make it better.”
Reeder said, “To that list will be added the names of Amanda Yellich, Leonard Chamberlain, Anthony J. Wooten, oh, and uh . . . four CIA agents killed in Azbekistan, Jake McMann, William Meeks, Vitor Gorianov, and Elizabeth Gillis.”
“That’s quite an impressive list, Mr. Reeder.”
The butler arrived with the mint julep on a tray, transferred it to a coaster on the glass-topped coffee table, nodded to his employer, and left, shutting them back in. Reeder noted that the glass case contained what were most likely first editions of The Red Badge of Courage, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Gone with the Wind.
“Well, Senator,” Reeder said, “conspiracy to commit murder is probably the best you can hope for. You’ll more likely be facing treason charges, and the President considers you an enemy combatant, like that rogue’s gallery on the wall over there.”
Blount’s smile disappeared. His face was a cold clay bust that hadn’t hardened yet, but was on its way.
He said, “You would consider the likes of those great men to be ‘rogues,’ I take it. Do you include Washington, Jefferson, and the other foundin’ fathers in that way?”
“What do you think?”
“Well, I don’t really know. They believed in liberty. They believed men should be free to pursue happiness. And that men are created equal, although people like you get that wrong.”
“We do?”
Blount sat forward; the eyes were not twinkling now. “Men are created with equal rights, but they are anythin’ but equal. Their intelligence varies, their gender, their races, their station. A country so widely varied needs a firm hand, it requires leadership. We have a weak, pampered populace that doesn’t even bother to vote, most of ’em. We can’t afford to wait for the rabble to wake up, or—if a miracle happened and they did rouse from their collective stupor—trust that they’d do the right thing.”
Rogers asked, “What do you consider the right thing?”
His hands were on his knees. “Well, for one, to reinstate the ideals that made this country great—rebuild our military, stand up to our enemies, protect this nation from within and without. And, meanin’ no offense, it takes more fuckin’ finesse than the kind of civil service mentality the two of you represent.”
Reeder said, “You mean the kind of finesse that sends four brave Americans to die on foreign soil?”
The Senator leaned back and shook his head sadly. “A pawn can never understand a king . . . but I’ll try to make you understand, son, because I know at heart you’r
e a patriot, too. That malleable Senkstone stuff that you and Agent Rogers got messed up with last year? I guess you know that the stabalizin’ element in that compound is called portillium. Well, cornerin’ the market on that vital mineral would give the United States an upper hand in defending freedom. Pity about those four CIA folks. But we needed a reason to go in and stop those Russians—who, frankly, we encouraged a mite—so we could seize and control the portillium supply.”
Reeder was sitting forward. “‘Cornering the market’ . . . so one of your companies or cronies could makes millions off portillium? Or is it billions?”
Blount waved that off. “Well, of course such a thing necessitates private-sector control. Can’t leave somethin’ that important to the government!”
Rogers, aghast, said, “And you’d risk a nuclear war with the Russians over mineral rights?”
His smile got so wide, it seemed to have too many teeth in it. “Little lady, the Russians understand that nukes fly in both directions. We’d just have ourselves a little shootin’ war, and then negotiate a truce, once we had that portillium source secured, that is.”
“And that would be more easily managed,” Reeder said, “with President Nicholas Blount, I guess?”
Even more teeth. “Might at that.”
Reeder sat back. “Unfortunately for you, Senator, your son does not share your enthusiasm. In fact, he helped us on the path that led us here.”
Blount’s chin went up, as if promoting a poke. “If you think you can convince me that my own boy would betray me, you are—”
“He didn’t betray you. Not exactly. He feared what you and your Alliance might have in mind for him, even though he didn’t want to testify against you . . . too bad, considering what he’s privy to would make his testimony valuable. Of course, after Camp David, and the exposure of all the treason and murder that led up to it? Perhaps he’ll have a change of mind, patriot that he is. Because he’s a good man, Senator. You raised a decent son. Much better than you deserve.”
Blount said nothing. He was staring between Reeder and Rogers at nothing. Lazily he reached for the mint julep and took a sip, and another. Then he returned the drink to its coaster and reached into his suit coat pocket, for a smoke Reeder assumed, but instead produced a small steel object that resembled a thumb drive. His hand made a small movement.
His eyes closed.
He slumped back.
“Senator,” Reeder said, getting up fast.
Blount was still staring, but now it was at the ceiling.
Rogers went around, put fingers to the man’s throat. “I don’t get a pulse.”
Reeder nodded to the mint julep. “Son of a bitch. Hemlock!”
An explosion rocked the rear of the house—the antenna array, Reeder guessed. He glanced at the thumb drive–like object in Blount’s limp fingers: a switch with a red button.
“We have to get out of here,” he told her, “now.”
They moved.
Another explosion rocked the rear of the house. The place had been wired in sections, it seemed, perhaps to allow exit from the front.
He hoped.
At least the pocket doors weren’t locked. They were able to get out of the library and into the foyer in seconds, then out the front door. They were to the car and inside, motor going, when another section of the place went up, and Rogers hit the gas and, by the time the rest of the house exploded, the two were far enough away for the rain of dust and debris to be something you could drive through and out of, though burning rubble bounced off the vehicle like heavy hail.
The Tahoe was outside the front gate before she braked and they hopped out and looked at what remained of the historic home, which now was nothing but a scorched shell and sizzling timber and crackling flames and billows of dark smoke. The only recognizable remnant was a marble staircase that was not worth walking up.
Reeder slipped an arm around Rogers’ shoulder as they watched, their ears ringing, their eyes burning, and soon sirens cried out distantly and built into screams.
Rogers said, “Afraid they won’t find much left of Senator Wilson Blount.”
Reeder coughed up some dust and said, “Just matching dental work, maybe even DNA, but he was a sly old bastard. I’d rather have a corpse.”
“He’s dead enough for me,” she said.
“I do know one thing,” Reeder said.
“Oh?”
“I’m glad we weren’t in the mood for mint juleps.”
THANKS IN ORDER
This novel is the third of a trilogy based around the three branches of government: Supreme Justice (Judicial), Fate of the Union (Legislative), and Executive Order (Executive).
The following were of help: The Definitive Book of Body Language (2006), Allan and Barbara Pease; Images of America: Arlington National Cemetery (2006), George W. Dodge; and Reading People: How to Understand People and Predict Their Behavior—Anytime, Anyplace (1998), Jo-Ellan Dimitrius and Mark Mazzarella.
Thanks to Eleanor Cawood Jones and Aimee and Eric Hix for Washington, DC, research. And to Chris Kauffman (ret.), Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office, and Paul Van Steenhuyse for their expertise with weapons and computers, respectively.
Thank you also to agent Dominick Abel; and everyone at Thomas & Mercer, especially editor Jacque Ben-Zekry.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
MAX ALLAN COLLINS received the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 2017, considered the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing. He has earned an unprecedented twenty-three Private Eye Writers of America “Shamus” nominations, winning twice for best novel and once for best short story. In 2007 he received the Eye, the PWA life achievement award, and in 2012 his Nathan Heller saga was honored with the PWA “Hammer” award for its major contribution to the private eye genre.
His graphic novel Road to Perdition (1998), illustrated by Richard Piers Rayner, became the Academy Award–winning Tom Hanks film, and his innovative “Quarry” novels are the basis of a current Cinemax TV series. He has completed a number of “Mike Hammer” novels begun by the late Mickey Spillane, most recently A Will to Kill, and his full-cast Hammer audio novel, The Little Death (with Stacy Keach), won a 2011 Audie.
Collins has written and directed four feature films, including the Lifetime movie Mommy (1996), as well as two documentaries, including Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane (1998), which appears on the Criterion Collection’s Kiss Me Deadly. His many comics credits include the syndicated strip Dick Tracy, Batman, and Ms. Tree and Wild Dog, co-created with artist Terry Beatty. His movie novels include Saving Private Ryan, Air Force One, and American Gangster (IAMTW Best Novel “Scribe” Award, 2008).
Collins lives in Muscatine, Iowa, with his wife, writer Barbara Collins; as “Barbara Allan,” they have collaborated on thirteen novels, notably the successful “Trash ’n’ Treasures” mysteries, including Antiques Flee Market (2008) winner of the Romantic Times Best Humorous Mystery Novel award in 2009. Their son Nathan is a Japanese-to-English translator, working on video games, manga, and novels.
MATTHEW V. CLEMENS is a longtime co-conspirator with Max Allan Collins, the pair having collaborated on over twenty novels, fifteen short stories, several comic books, four graphic novels, a computer game, and a dozen mystery jigsaw puzzles, for such famous TV properties as CSI, Bones, Dark Angel, NCIS, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Criminal Minds. Matt also worked with Max on the bestselling “Reeder and Rogers” debut thriller, Supreme Justice, published by Thomas & Mercer in 2014, and its 2015 sequel, Fate of the Union. He has published a number of solo short stories and worked on numerous book projects with other authors, both nonfiction and fiction, collaborating with Karl Largent on several of the late author’s bestselling techno-thrillers.
Matt lives in Davenport, Iowa, with his wife, Pam, a retired teacher.
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