by Stuart Woods
“Please.”
“If you could telephone the United States attorney general, explain that Mrs. Keeler has been pardoned and is no longer a fugitive in the U.S. and that her extradition warrant should be canceled, then she could resume her normal life immediately.”
“Consider it done, Raoul.” The deputy stopped at his open limousine door and offered his hand. “It is always good to see you, Raoul, and, of course, always a pleasure to do business with you. Go with God.”
Estevez shook his hand and got into his own limousine, where his associate waited.
“How did it go?” she asked, placing a hand on his thigh.
“Perfectly and profitably,” Estevez replied, adjusting his position so that her hand could better reach its target.
58
Barbara put down the telephone at the pool of her cottage at a private club in Nassau.
Charles sat beside her on the double chaise. “You’re smiling. Good news?”
“Very good news,” she replied. “For us both.”
“Ellie, I don’t think I can receive good news properly until I understand why you are unconcerned with my employment status. I do need the job, you know, and I can’t relax here while worrying about it.”
“Would you like a promotion at your firm?” she asked.
“I’m already the top-producing sales manager for the firm,” he replied. “Anything else would be a demotion.”
“How do you get along with your general manager?” she asked.
“He’s an ass, but there’s nothing he can do to me, except for cause, and I’ve never given him cause, until I walked out of that showroom yesterday.”
“Would you like his job?”
Charles thought about that. “Only if I could continue to render service to my clients, and only if I could have the pleasure of personally firing my general manager and throwing him out of his office.”
“Then do so,” Ellie said. “Yesterday, I bought the firm.”
Charles turned and stared at her. “My God, are you that rich?”
“I am,” Barbara said. “Charles, I know this will seem sudden, but I think it would be very much to our mutual advantage if we married.”
Charles fell back onto the lounge. “You are breathtaking, Ellie.”
“If you accept my proposal I will make you a gift of the dealership and provide working capital for it. In return, you would sign a prenuptial agreement limiting your settlement, in the event of a divorce, to the firm and any money I have invested in it.”
“That is a very generous proposition, Ellie,” Charles said. “And I think we could make each other very happy.”
“Then why don’t we start the honeymoon right now, my dear,” Barbara said, snuggling up to him.
ED EAGLE TOOK the phone call from his friend in the State Department. “How are you, Bill?”
“I’m okay, Ed, but I have some rather startling news for you.”
“Go ahead and startle.”
“I’ve had an e-mail from the attorney general’s office. The general received a phone call today from a highly placed officer of the Mexican Ministry of Justice.”
“They’ve extradited Barbara?”
“No, the president of Mexico has pardoned her.”
Eagle was dumbstruck.
“Ed? Are you still there?”
“Just barely, Bill,” Eagle replied. “Have you any idea how this happened?”
“I don’t have any details, only deductions. Have you seen the piece in The Wall Street Journal?”
“Yes, I have.”
“You must know, Ed, that when the sort of money she has inherited comes into play, things can happen in a hurry, especially in Mexico.”
“Are you telling me that Barbara bribed the president of Mexico?”
“Of course not. That isn’t how it works.”
“How does it work?”
“My best guess is Barbara got herself a lawyer who knows people down there, and he passed a large sum of money to someone in the Ministry, who then took care of things and distributed the funds accordingly, probably in cash. That’s only a guess, mind you, but I’ve heard of other cases where this sort of thing happened.”
“I could sue her for injury resulting from her attempt on my life, I guess,” Eagle said.
“Come on, Ed. What would you say to a client who walked into your office and wanted to sue a billionaire?”
“All right, all right.”
“Ed, I’m awfully sorry about this. I did what I could.”
“Bill, you did more than I could ever have expected. Thank you.” Eagle hung up and sagged in his chair.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Barbara called a number at the Nassau Airport and chartered a twin-engine airplane for the day. She instructed the company to file a flight plan to Georgetown, Cayman Islands, and to file a return flight plan for later in the day.
BARBARA TOOK A CAB from the Georgetown airport to a large bank on a principal street and walked in. She approached a man at a desk in the lobby.
“Good day, madam. May I help you?” he asked.
“Yes. I’d like to open an account.”
“Please be seated,” he said, holding a chair for her. “What kind of account would you like to open?”
“A very private account,” she replied. “One with a number, not a name.”
“Of course, madam.” He looked at his computer, selected a new account number and printed a document. “Please sign here,” he said, indicating a line at the bottom.
“I don’t wish to sign anything,” Barbara said. She took the twenty-million-dollar cashier’s check from her purse and handed it to him.
“Of course, madam,” the man said. “There is no necessity for a signature. Would you like a card that can draw on the account from anywhere in the world?”
“What a nice idea,” Barbara said.
He typed a few more keystrokes on his computer. “The card will be ready momentarily,” he said. “Would you like us to invest the funds for you, or would you prefer an interest-bearing account? Currently the rate is three percent.”
“The latter, please.”
He printed another document. “This will tell you how to view your account and statements online. Nothing will be mailed, since we don’t have your name or address.”
Barbara received the credit card and her deposit receipt, put them in her purse, shook the man’s hand and left the bank. She got into her idling taxi, went to the airport and was flown back to Nassau. Upon entering the country she used the false passport she had had made in California.
“What did you do with yourself today?” Charles asked.
“I built an escape hatch from my life,” she replied.
He looked at her oddly but did not question her further.
The following day they were married. Then the Gulfstream flew them back to San Jose.
59
Tip Hanks stood in front of the cameras and received his silver cup and a dummy check for nine hundred eighty-nine thousand dollars. The amount would automatically be wired to his account.
During the past few days he had set a course record and won the tournament by four strokes. He gave an interview to a television journalist, then returned to the clubhouse, showered and changed, and gave another, longer interview to a woman from The Golf Channel.
That night he had a steak dinner, watched TV, then turned in early. He slept late the following morning, and it was noon before he got to the airport. He drove up to his Santa Fe home at four thirty that afternoon, noticing that Dolly’s car was not parked out front. She must be running an errand, he thought.
He walked into his home, unpacked his clothes, put the dirty things into a laundry hamper, then walked to his study next door. The room seemed oddly messy. He looked into Dolly’s office and found drawers pulled out and papers scattered around the room. His first thought was a burglary, and he went back into his study to phone the police, but he found a pink message slip stuck to the phone.
<
br /> Bye-bye, sweetie. It’s been fun.
He was still puzzling over that when the phone rang, and he picked it up. “Hello?”
“Tip, it’s George Herron.” Herron was his accountant.
“Hello, George. Did you see I won the tournament yesterday?”
“Yes, I did, and congratulations. I’m afraid I have some troubling news, though.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I looked through your accounts online today for some tax information, and I saw that your prize money had been wired into your account this morning.”
“That is as it should be, George.”
“The problem was that it was wired out of your account only a few minutes later to an account in Singapore, as were another seven hundred thousand dollars from a bond fund in your brokerage account. Do you have a bank account in Singapore, Tip? Because if you do we haven’t been reporting that to the IRS, as the law requires.”
“No, George, I don’t have an account in Singapore, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Who else is a signatory on your accounts?”
“Well, my assistant, Dolly …” Tip stopped and looked at the pink message slip. “Oh, shit,” he said.
CUPIE ANSWERED THE TELEPHONE.
“Cupie, it’s Dave Santiago.”
“Hey, Dave. How are you?”
“Not so good.”
“Did you pick up Barbara?”
“No, I didn’t. The D.A. wouldn’t sign the warrant. Not enough evidence and too much money.”
Cupie’s face dropped. “I saw the newspaper piece. He was scared off by the money?”
“Of course, he was,” Santiago replied. “Think about it. If you were the D.A. would you issue a warrant on a woman with that much money, without a murder weapon or physical evidence? You’d be looking at another O.J. trial against the best lawyers in the country. It would cost the county millions.”
“I see your point,” Cupie said. “Thanks for trying, Dave.”
He hung up and turned to Vittorio.
“No warrant, huh?” Vittorio asked.
“No warrant.”
“I guess you’ll be going back to L.A., huh, Cupie?”
“I guess,” Cupie replied woodenly.
“It doesn’t have to be over,” Vittorio said. “She’ll do something outrageous again, and maybe we’ll be in on the takedown.”
“Yeah,” Cupie said, brightening. “She’ll do that, and we’ll do that.”
60
Todd Bacon landed at the Manassas, Virginia, airport on Sunday night and left the keys to the Bonanza at the FBO desk for pickup by the Agency the following day. He checked into a nearby hotel for the night. Then, the following morning, he was at the Langley headquarters by eight thirty. He killed a little time in the lobby, then checked in with security and took the elevator up to the executive floor.
HOLLY WALKED into Lance Cabot’s office.
“What do you hear from our man in Santa Fe?” Lance asked.
“He’s our man in Sedona now,” Holly replied. “I had an e-mail from him.”
“Why Sedona?”
“He didn’t say. I suppose he had some trail to follow.”
There was a knock on the open door, and both Holly and Lance looked that way. Todd Bacon stood in the doorway.
“Good morning,” he said. “I’m reporting as ordered.”
Lance stared at him, uncomprehending. “Reporting for what?”
“As ordered,” Todd said. “For reassignment.” He took a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket and approached Lance’s desk.
Holly took the paper from him and read it, then handed it to Lance. “Something you want to tell me, Lance?”
Lance read the e-mail, and his face fell.
“That’s the e-mail you sent me,” Todd said.
“Oh, my God,” Holly said.
“I thought you were in Sedona,” Lance said.
“Well, I was going there, but then I got your message. It was in my Agency mailbox.”
Lance had turned quite red. “Have you got any vacation time coming?” he asked.
“Yes. I’ve got two weeks,” Todd replied.
“Take it,” Lance replied. “Go. Report for reassignment when you get back.”
Todd looked at Holly questioningly.
Holly made a shooing motion with her hands.
“Can I keep the Bonanza for my time off?”
“Yes,” Holly said.
Todd watched as Lance fed the e-mail into his deskside shredder, then he got the hell out of there.
“Well?” Lance said to Holly. “What are you looking at?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Holly said, rising.
“None of this ever happened,” Lance said.
“Of course not,” Holly replied.
She went back to her office and started looking for something to take Lance’s mind off Teddy Fay.
ED EAGLE GOT DOWN a suitcase from the top shelf of his dressing room and started packing.
Susannah entered the room and watched for a moment. “Going somewhere?” she asked.
“I’ve got some business to take care of,” Eagle said.
“Where?”
“It’s better if you don’t know.”
“I want to come with you,” she said.
“I’m sorry, no.”
“Ed, if you’re going to do this you’ll have a better chance of bringing it off if there are two of us.”
Eagle closed his suitcase and stared at her. “Listen to yourself. Where do you think I’m going?”
“San Francisco,” she replied.
“Why San Francisco?”
“Because that’s where Barbara is.”
“Do you think I’m going to Barbara?”
“I think you’re going for Barbara.”
Eagle thought about that for a moment. “No. You have to stay here.”
“What makes you think you can tell me what to do?” she asked, her hands on her hips.
“I don’t know,” Eagle said. “I never tried before.”
She walked over and put her arms around his waist and her head on his shoulder. “And don’t you ever try again,” she said.
Eagle sighed and kissed the top of her head. “All right,” he said. “Pack a bag.”
She ran to her dressing room.
Eagle went back into his dressing room and opened his safe. There was an old .45 in there, one he hadn’t fired for years, one somebody had given to him, one that couldn’t be traced back to his ownership. He checked the magazine, pocketed another, then put the weapon into a holster and threaded it onto his belt.
When he came back into the bedroom he saw Susannah about to close her suitcase. Her little Smith & Wesson Ladysmith was lying on top of her clothes. “You ready?” he asked.
“More than ready,” she said, zipping the bag shut.
Eagle called the airport and asked that his airplane be pulled from its hangar and refueled, then he and his wife got into his car and headed out.
TEDDY CRADLED LAUREN in his arms. They had just made love, and this was the time he liked most.
“Teddy,” Lauren said, “do we live in Santa Fe now? Is this our home?”
“It is,” Teddy replied. “Until it isn’t.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I am happy to hear from readers, but you should know that if you write to me in care of my publisher, three to six months will pass before I receive your letter, and when it finally arrives it will be one among many, and I will not be able to reply.
However, if you have access to the Internet, you may visit my website at www.stuartwoods.com, where there is a button for sending me e-mail. So far, I have been able to reply to all my e-mail, and I will continue to try to do so.
If you send me an e-mail and do not receive a reply, it is probably because you are among an alarming number of people who have entered their e-mail address incorrectly in their mail software. I have many of my replies returned a
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Remember: e-mail, reply; snail mail, no reply.
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Please do not send me your ideas for a book, as I have a policy of writing only what I myself invent. If you send me story ideas, I will immediately delete them without reading them. If you have a good idea for a book, write it yourself, but I will not be able to advise you on how to get it published. Buy a copy of Writer’s Market at any bookstore; that will tell you how.
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A list of my published works appears in the front of this book and on my website. All the novels are still in print in paperback and can be found at or ordered from any bookstore. If you wish to obtain hardcover copies of earlier novels or of the two nonfiction books, a good used-book store or one of the online bookstores can help you find them. Otherwise, you will have to go to a great many garage sales.