When they reached her apartment, she considered opening a bottle of Firestone Chardonnay, but decided against it, not wanting to waste any more time than was necessary to achieve her objective.
“I believe I’ll have you right now, Anthony Carmeli.”
He looked uncertain, so she pressed her body close to his and slid her tongue into his mouth. Then she took his hand and led him to the bedroom. She made him undress first then slapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists and shackled him to the bed. Though surprised at first, his look turned to one of silent amusement, which was different than the others. Usually they got all excited, like salacious schoolboys, when she cuffed them to the bed. She quietly undressed as he lay there submissively, his penis growing large at the sight of her exquisite, perfectly lubricious body. She could tell he had no idea that she was totally in control, that any satisfaction he received was secondary to her own.
“You’re not going to hurt me are you?” he posed half-jokingly as she pulled off her lacy black panties and tossed them on the chair.
“Yes, I am going to hurt you,” she said, repeating Don Scarpello’s words from two decades earlier. “But you will like it.”
CHAPTER 16
LIKE MOST NOT-FOR-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS, the American Patriots headquarters in downtown Colorado Springs contained no electrified fences, guard dogs, motion detectors, or armed security personnel. What the conference room on the tenth floor did possess, however, were electronic surveillance counter devices common in South American drug cartels, well-funded terrorist organizations, and legitimate government spy shops around the world.
The steel walls were more than six inches thick, meticulously soundproofed, and contained copper and zinc coatings to guard against sophisticated directional microphones. As an added precautionary measure, hidden speakers were mounted in the walls and at the windows to produce background electronic chaff in the ten- to twenty-decibel range. This so-called “white noise” effectively filtered out the sound of voices and rendered even the most sophisticated eavesdropping gadgetry useless. The phone was equipped with a pre-programmed controller that automatically swept the line for wiretaps. Embedded in the ceiling was a similar device that scanned for eavesdropping devices in the room twice daily. And to top it all off, the room’s secure phone, supercomputer, and audiovisual feed for teleconferencing were equipped with next generation anti-tampering protections and high- and low-frequency modulators that electronically distorted voices, rendering them unrecognizable.
In the conference room on the tenth floor, staring straight into a teleconference camera carefully trained on him, the legendary Benjamin Bradford Locke made his concluding remarks. The high-definition screen on the wall projected not only his image but the images of nine other men, transmitted from nine different remote locations. The teleconference attendees on the other end had followed security protocols every bit as rigorous as those followed by the illustrious Locke himself. The cloak-and-dagger precautions were not simply to avoid the inconvenience of public scrutiny, for what these important men—and others around the country just like them—required was absolute secrecy. After all, they were a clandestine society.
They called themselves simply the Coalition.
Two minutes later a chorus of cheers echoed through the room and the teleconference was brought to an inspired, resounding conclusion. As his assistant turned off the video camera, Locke stepped to the window. From his vantage point on the tenth floor of American Patriots headquarters, he had a sweeping view of downtown Colorado Springs and the towering Rocky Mountains beyond. The brisk autumn wind howled and rattled the double-paned reflective window. With all the shaking and scratching, Locke couldn’t help but feel an undercurrent of tension and vulnerability at the hand of Mother Nature, despite the positive outcome of the teleconference.
He stood at the window in ponderous silence, quietly inhaling and exhaling. He looked like a larger-than-life statue. By any standard, the former Vietnam intelligence operative, descended from ancient Norsemen, was no ordinary man. His prominent cheekbones, jutting jaw, robust shoulders—all appeared to have been chiseled from Pikes Peak granite. The artificial light in the room brought out the deep stormy-gray of his eyes, which, when combined with his thick owlish brows, gave him a quiet, focused intensity. But his sublime gift was his titanic size: it gave him an aura of almost mythical power, as if he had been unleashed upon the world from the gates of Valhalla itself.
He sighed at the sight of the city he had come to love like a warm hearth in wintertime. After a moment, his thoughts turned to his speech. Thinking about his Christian comrades-in-arms, he felt a powerful sense of brotherhood. He had some issues with a couple of his colleagues—actually, one colleague in particular—but at this epic moment in history that was irrelevant. Today’s success had brought them together as one—as a unified team with a singular purpose—and that was what was most important.
But would it be enough? Could they actually pull off the greatest coup in the history of the nation? Was American hegemony truly a thing of the past or were the country’s brightest days ahead of her? Would the grand republic continue to be a second-rate power to the Chinese, or could the Coalition truly succeed in restoring her to her former glory in a single bold stroke? There were also still many loose ends. Would he and his sanctified brotherhood succeed in tying them all up to ensure that their ultimate goal would be met?
Turning away from the window, he looked questioningly at Gregory Powers. Perhaps his young assistant had some answers. In any case it was time for a postmortem of the teleconference.
“Your thoughts, Gregory, on Phase Two Main Strike?”
The young man cleared his throat nervously. “Are you worried about Ares, Mr. Chairman?”
“Should I be?”
“I don’t think so, sir. You heard Mr. Truscott. The virus will be released ‘in the wild’ and has been programmed for maximum dispersal. Team Bravo will infiltrate the subject’s apartment at 0800 and Ares will be released from his terminal.”
Locke steepled his long, bony fingers on the conference table. “That’s not what concerns me, Gregory. What I am concerned about is whether the virus will produce the desired result. As we all know, the key to the whole operation is not to implicate President Osborne in too heavy-handed a way. The goal is to establish a thread, a connection. If we can do that, then everything else will fall into place.”
“I think everything’s going to fall neatly into place, sir. Your plan is brilliant.”
“It is not my plan, Gregory. It is our plan for we all had a hand in its formulation and execution.”
“Of course, sir. My apologies.”
Locke rewarded his cyber-savvy strategic services director with a little nod of approval and paused a moment to examine him in the artificial light. The face before him was young, inexperienced, and anxious, yes, but also determined and focused—making Gregory Powers look mature beyond his years.
“What about the virus itself?” asked Locke, brushing away a fleck of dust from his well-tailored Brooks Brothers suit.
Again, Powers nervously cleared the phlegm from his throat. “Once the virus is released, it can’t be stopped by conventional antiviral protection software. Within minutes, it will have spread to hundreds of thousands of PCs via email. By the end of the day, we expect more than twenty million systems to be infected.”
“I just wish we were more certain the FBI won’t be able to track Ares back to us.”
“The virus will be transmitted from the subject’s own computer. His name will be cryptically embedded in the source code and his unique programming signature will be all over the virus. There will be no viable suspect except him.”
The lad knows his stuff; he is undoubtedly one of my best hires in recent years. But why is he so nervous? Is it me or does he have misgivings about the operation?
“How long, Gregory, will it take for the feds to track down the source of Ares?”
“Colonel Heston sa
id it would take three to four days.”
Locke looked at him intently. “I know what the colonel said. I’m more interested in what you think, Gregory.”
“Again my apologies, sir. I believe three days tops, which still means that by the time the feds track the source down, the subject will have been eliminated.”
The Apostle, thought Locke, picturing the iron-hard face of the Coalition’s top contract assassin. A short-range specialist who was always on call and able to take the field at a moment’s notice. Though no less vital to the ambitions of the Coalition, the Apostle was a different animal altogether than the internationally renowned yet mysterious long-range sniper they had hired to assassinate President-elect Kieger, the Spanish contractor Diego Gomez.
“Forgive me, Mr. Chairman, but I do have one question.”
“Yes, Gregory.”
“Well, sir…how do we know that she’ll do what we want?”
“Kieger’s replacement, the vice-president-elect?”
“Fowler’s now the president-elect, sir. She’s already been sworn in.”
“Yes, yes, hard to believe, isn’t it? And come January 20, she will be the leader of the free world and commander in chief. The first female president in the history of our great nation—this is truly a historic moment.”
“It most certainly is. But what I was driving at, sir, is what guarantee do we have that she’ll come through as expected?”
Locke could tell that his scrupulous understudy had given this some serious thought. “Come now, Gregory. We are not talking about some unknown quantity here. We personally groomed this woman during the primary. She is exactly what we want in every respect.”
“Yes, sir, but what about the money?”
“Consider it a twenty-million-dollar insurance policy going forward.”
“Forgive me, Mr. Chairman, but doesn’t that show a lack of faith? I mean, that’s thirty million dollars total including the ten we put in her coffers during the primary. It seems like a lot of money for someone who should be ‘in the bag’ so to speak.”
“It is a lot. But, in the end, it’s the only way to guarantee the senator’s—excuse me, the president-elect’s—commitment to our platform. Politicians, Gregory, have a nasty habit of getting amnesia when they take office. The only way to secure their loyalty is money—and lots of it. That Katherine Fowler is the ideal person for the job has never been in dispute. But that doesn’t mean she won’t need additional motivation—or a little reminding from time to time. Her stands on the issues were clear during the primary and the general election, but how will she fare once she takes office and the special interest groups sink their teeth into her? How about a few years from now when she starts thinking seriously about her place in history, her memoirs? We can’t afford to have our handpicked candidate go soft on us now can we? We need to give her another sizable contribution, one that will secure her loyalty for years to come.
“Trust me, Gregory. A contribution of thirty million dollars will buy us considerably more than mere access. And let’s not forget, we still have Mr. Frautschi.” He was referring to Peter Frautschi, Fowler’s campaign manager during the primary and her closest advisor. “He’ll keep us abreast of matters and control her for us if and when the time comes. Look at what he’s done for us already. Tomorrow we have a meeting scheduled with the president-elect. Think about it, Gregory. William Kieger—God bless his poor departed soul—hasn’t even been buried yet and already we have the ear of our next president.”
Powers slowly nodded. Another lesson learned, thought Locke.
“You truly are brilliant, sir. Everything’s proceeding according to plan.”
Locke rewarded him with another approving, paternal smile. The young man returned the smile through perfectly stacked teeth the color of ivory. Locke was amazed at how much he looked like a young Ralph Reed.
Suddenly, the large video-projection screen flickered to life and the images of four members of the Coalition’s Executive Committee reappeared in four separate computer windows.
Good heavens, what do they want now? wondered Locke.
CHAPTER 17
UP ON THE SCREEN, there was Senator Jackson Beauregard Dubois, R-Louisiana, white-haired, craggy-faced, stringy as an old-time sharecropper, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which made him one of the most powerful—and feared—men in Washington. There was Joseph Truscott, former CIA deputy director of operations and current consultant to a host of security firms, his face harshly angled, eyes hollow and opaque. Locke called him Skull Eyes —though he didn’t dare say the name to his face—and considered him the one Executive Committee member of the secret organization that was a potential threat to his authority. The two other faces up on the screen were Colonel Caleb S. Heston U.S.A. (Ret.), currently a highly paid consultant to a large defense contractor based in Colorado Springs; and media and tobacco magnate A.W. Windholz, president of United Broadcasting, which owned two-hundred radio stations, nine major newspapers, and three highly profitable cable channels and was the largest Christian radio broadcaster in the country.
Powers punched at the computer keyboard in front of him. The video camera in the room came to life and zoomed in on Locke, transmitting his commanding, leviathan image back to the four men at each of their remote locations.
“Was there something else, gentlemen?” inquired Locke mildly.
It was Senator Dubois that responded. “It’s about Gomez, Mr. Chairman.”
“Very well, proceed.”
“Well, Mr. Chairman, we all agree the asset has handled the Kieger business with the utmost skill. We wondered if perhaps we should consider bringing him on board full time.”
“Are you suggesting he join our little…organization?”
“I reckon so, Mr. Chairman.”
“If I may, Mr. Chairman,” said Colonel Heston.
“Proceed, Colonel.”
“Well, we’ve been assured the asset is one of the best assassins in the world. Based on today, I’ve seen nothing to dispute that. It might be in our best interest to take someone of his caliber into our fold, so to speak.”
“Some of our wet operatives are just plain sloppy, Mr. Chairman,” Dubois quickly added. “Not the Apostle, of course—he knows how to buck a bull off a bridge—but the others. They leave MOs behind so the police will recognize their personal signature. Frankly, I’m concerned about their professionalism—or lack thereof. Is it possible Mr. Gomez would be interested in working for us on a more full-time basis? Like our friend the Apostle?”
“Your thoughts, Mr. Truscott?” asked Locke, looking up at the stoic image of the former intelligence director, his main rival to the Coalition chairmanship. Skull Eyes would be the one to know. He had made the arrangements for the assassination, having done so through Gomez’s control agent, Charles Xavier, former ops director of the French intelligence service. Xavier, once a great foe of the ex-spook, was now an unlikely ally.
“I don’t think Gomez would be interested,” Truscott said after some deliberation. “This man is one of the world’s best assassins precisely because no one knows what he looks like. He only takes on enough work to meet his needs, and it is high-end work at that.”
It was true, Locke reflected, as he recalled the sparse details in the dossier put together by Skull Eyes. No one except Xavier knew who the protean Gomez was or what he looked like, and the control agent guarded the man’s identity zealously to protect his most valuable commodity. Gomez was in various law enforcement databases, but all the photos and artist’s sketches were of marginal quality and different from one another. He might as well have been a ghost. He supposedly only took on no more than one contract a year, and they were always big time marks for which he was amply compensated. He only worked in Europe, the U.S., Canada, and South America where he could blend in. He never came under the watchful eye of the Mossad or other Middle Eastern, Russian, or Asian intelligence services that might try and take him out. And he supposedly had no set M
O.
“Pros like Gomez,” Truscott said, “aren’t going to take on small-time wet work. There’s too much risk relative to the compensation. I recommend that we continue to call upon him for high-profile sanctions, but don’t extend an offer for him to join the organization. If we ever crossed him, he might come after us.”
Now there’s a terrifying prospect, thought Locke. After a minute’s more discussion, they agreed that Diego Gomez would be retained on the A-list of assets, but would not receive an offer to join the secret society. The Apostle would remain the sole assassin on the payroll who was an official member of the Coalition.
As they were about to wrap up the teleconference, the secure phone on the credenza rang.
Gregory Powers and the four powerful men up on the screen tensed.
“It’s all right,” Locke said, as he rose to answer it. “I think I know who it is.”
He picked up the phone and talked for several minutes, while Powers and the others looked on anxiously. When Locke was finished, he hung up and turned around slowly, his expression one of grave concern.
“We need to get Xavier on the line,” he said. “We’ve got a problem.”
MONDAY
CHAPTER 18
AFTER THE THIRD FORAY, Skyler was exhausted. She wanted to sleep and didn’t want Anthony Carmeli, supposed Hollywood producer, in her bed any longer. He had satisfied her immediate needs and there was no longer any use for him. She hated the way men sometimes liked to lie around afterwards, stroking her hair and talking in affectionate tones, presuming an intimacy that, for her, didn’t exist.
At 2:20 A.M., she booted him out, making it clear that this was a one night stand and she never wanted to see him again.
The Coalition: A Novel of Suspense Page 7