Jack, thoughtful, said, "Sears is Wolters's top lieutenant. Shows you how much store the Senator sets on this Chavez thing."
Pete grinned, said, "Maybe it won't look so sweet to him now that the bodies are piling up."
"Might make Sears more cooperative."
"Uh-uh. Susan wouldn't like it."
"What's her problem, anyway, Pete?"
"She thinks we're picking on her because of her tie-up with LAGO. She's right, of course."
"Garros might be inclined to meet us halfway," Jack said, "considering that we know about his hookups with the Golden Pole dancers, Vikki and Dorinda. He doesn't need that kind of heat while he's romancing Susan Keehan. That gives us some leverage."
Pete shook his head. "She's so stuck on that guy, she'll just figure we're making things up to smear him. On the other hand, Caracas might not like it that he's risking a multimillion-dollar romance by two-timing the heiress. Or is that three-timing? In any case, he's got the boys back home to worry about."
Jack said, "Plus whoever it is that tried to whack Paz."
"Yeah, there's that, too."
* * *
The Mega Mart building looked like a starship poised for takeoff on the launching pad. It had been built and was owned by the powerful Keehan clan. A decade earlier, they'd gambled big on the future of New Orleans, and it had paid off.
Even now, in the post-Katrina climate, it continued to thrive and its prospects remained bright. Much of the skyscraper's space was occupied by Keehan business interests, not only the family's primary and openly acknowledged financial vehicles, but also a number of subsidiaries, satellite and shell corporations linked to it by a complex and tenuous web of cutouts and holding companies.
Office space in the Mart was eagerly sought after by companies independent of any association with Keehan interests, attracted by the site's first-rate accommodations and the charismatic allure of the dynasty's name.
The Keehans were one of the richest families in the United States. Back in the nineteenth century, the fledgling dynasts had been a clan of Philadelphia lawyers and bankers who'd gotten into the oil business on the heels of the state's rich Spindletop strike. Pennsylvania's oil deposits were soon exhausted, but not before the family had diversified its holdings into coal, steel, railroads, and real estate, taking their place among the great robber barons of the Gilded Age.
In this, they were no different from many other hardheaded, hardfrsted plutocrats of the era. The Keehan genius lay in an early and intensive concentration in the field of politics.
Most of their fellow titans of industry shunned direct involvement in partisan politics, disdaining the whole grubby business of electioneering, preferring to take the easier course of buying politicians rather than filling the offices themselves.
The Keehans knew better, realizing early on that elective office was where the real money and power lay.
Politicos controlled the building of schools, hospitals, government buildings, roads, canals, and all the vast, ever-growing infrastructure of the public sector.
They decided where the projects were sited, who would get the contracts to build them, and which banks and brokerage houses would oversee the issuing of bonds and stock offerings necessary to finance them.
Here was where the real money was made for oneself and one's friends; here lay the power and influence to make sure that nobody else could take away those gains.
Paid publicists ballyhooed the notion of a Keehan tradition of public service, playing it up big. After a while, even the Keehans had come to believe it themselves.
Pennsylvania was the fountainhead of the family's financial and political power and continued to remain its stronghold and home base. The state had elected one Keehan governor and sent several more to Congress.
The family had long since branched out, going nationwide, establishing tentacles north, south, east, and west. Its business and politics went hand in hand. Getting Keehans and their allies elected built an ever-expanding continuum of power.
Behind it all lay the motive force of the family fortune, source of all good things.
In the time-honored mode of the super-rich, they'd established a number of philanthropic endowments, funds, and foundations. It was another way to augment the family's access and influence throughout the national economy — and it was all tax-free, too.
The foundations fed into the political zone, which fed into the financial zone, which fed back into the philanthropic and political zones. A colossal daisy chain to promote all things Keehan.
In recent political history, Keehans had filled such cabinet posts as secretary of state and attorney general, as well as being appointed ambassadors and Federal court judges. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, the current generation of Keehans held office throughout the land on the city, county, state, and national levels.
No Keehan had yet been elected president, though several had tried and failed — an ever-rankling sore spot to the family pride. They were still in there pitching.
Patriarch of the clan was Burl Keehan of the Pennsylvania Keehans, the original root and branch of the dynasty. He was the family's preeminent politician, the born backslapper and dealmaker, Mr. Personality. As Senator Keehan, he was a long-serving senior legislator with a safe seat in Congress and a high-ranking member of several all-important committees, including Intelligence and Appropriations.
His brother, Wilmont, was the family's top financial man and wealth generator, Mr. Money Bags. Wilmont was the father of Susan Keehan.
* * *
Life is good, Raoul Garros said to himself. He was on top of the world, in more ways than one.
He was in a room on a floor near the top of the Mega Mart building, up so high that he could look down on the tops of the other skyscrapers in the midtown business district. The room was the inner sanctum of a suite of rooms belonging to Susan Keehan, director of the New Orleans branch of the Keehan Humanistics Fund and mistress of the building and all it contained.
She belonged to him. She was his lover, his fiancee, and she stood naked in his embrace, pressing against him. The room they now shared, this eagle's nest, was also their love nest.
The combination of the time, the place, and the woman was intoxicating. Cooler heads than Raoul's might well have overheated amid such surroundings. They reeked of wealth and power, blazoning the pride and prestige of their possessor.
This upper floor of the building was the headquarters for the Keehan Humanistics Fund, the controlling corporate entity of the entire structure and much more besides. A suite of rooms had been set aside for Susan's personal use, luxury, and comfort. The suite contained her office, as well as an adjacent room that served as her living quarters and inner sanctum. It was strictly for her personal convenience and comfort while she was at her place of business. Her main residence in the city was a mansion in the Faubourg Marigny, a neighborhood as old, storied, and rich as the Garden District.
Here, in the Mega Mart monolith, these rich and secluded surroundings were her private world, her retreat. Inner sanctum. In here, Susan Keehan was as naked as she was ever going to be. And not just physically. Though there was that, too. Right now.
Raoul Garros was thirty-five, handsome, athletic, of good family, a playboy and a power player in the hierarchy of LAGO, Venezuela's state-owned oil outlet in New Orleans.
He was clean-shaven, with clean-lined, chiseled features, his dark, thick hair worn brushed straight back from the forehead. He was a handsome man and he knew it, worked it, traded on it.
Susan was in his arms right now. They'd spent much of the morning closeted away in her private retreat making love. After, they'd showered. Raoul had dressed and was in his shirt and slacks; Susan was still naked. She pressed against him.
She was tall, almost as tall as he, and he was over six feet. Her face was turned up and he kissed her on the mouth. Openmouthed. Her mouth was wet and warm; her breath was sweet.
She was tanned, her long, stra
ight, dark blond hair glinting with metallic gold highlights. Long-limbed, high-breasted, with a pertly rounded rump and long legs. Her eyes were gray, her brows were thick and arched, her nose straight and thin, her mouth sensitive, if inclined to pouting.
She smelled good and tasted sweet when he kissed her. She was in her mid-thirties, a few years older than Raoul, a fact she preferred to ignore. She was twice-married, twice-divorced, and childless.
"Third time's the charm" — she'd accepted Raoul's proposal of marriage; if he hadn't asked her, she'd have asked him, of that he was sure. Their relationship was strongly physical; the sex was good. Better for her than for him, but then for Raoul there was an element of work involved.
She was in love with Raoul, of that he had no doubts. She showed all the signs. And he knew them. He had been with many women, no small number of whom had been international celebrities in their own right, stellar on a level equal to that of Wilmont Keehan's daughter, and some more beautiful and passionate, too.
And yet — more than an heiress, she was the living link to a powerhouse political dynasty, the Keehan clan, with all their global reach, their clout, their money.
* * *
Susan kissed with her eyes closed. Raoul's were open, and he glanced around, enjoying the view and the luxuriousness of his surroundings.
The room and everything about it was first-class. A high-priced professional designer had put it together, according to Susan's instructions. She was not without taste; her eye, instincts, and aesthetics were good, though inclined toward the safe choice, the conventional choice.
One wall was solid plate glass, opening on the heights, offering a spectacular view of the sky-high vista. Even here in the midtown business district, known for its tall buildings, none of the other structures came up to the heights of the Mega Mart; Raoul was able to look down even on the tallest.
A pleasing prospect: up here, his companions were eagles and airplanes. Neither of which was in evidence today, not with the storm coming.
Today's view was constrained, claustrophobic in comparison to the vaunting sky-high vistas of a clear day. The sky was blanketed by low-hanging cloud cover. If it got any lower, it would engulf the office floor and cut off the view below.
Solid cloud cover in shades of gray: charcoal for the interior masses of the cloud cover, slate for the outlines of stacked masses, silvery ash-gray showing at the few, infrequent rents in the cloud ceiling.
The clouds were in motion, the vanguard of Hurricane Everette.
It was a dark day; even with the window blinds and curtains drawn, the room was thick with shadow. The gloom was broken by artfully spaced overhead lighting; dimmers that kept the lights down low, warm, intimate.
Dark, rich, wood-paneled walls were hung with framed paintings. A key element of the decor was a long, well-padded couch, upholstered in black leather. It could fold out into a bed, but it was large enough even when unfolded to accommodate a carnal coupling and had; several, in fact, and recently, for that's where he had been with Susan for the past few hours.
The room featured a private bar, complete with a mini-refrigerator and a stainless steel sink. Mounted on one wall was an oversized plasma TV screen, now dark. An oversized alcove held an intimate dining nook for two, complete with table and two chairs.
Off to one side, an open door accessed a bathroom that would not have been out of place in the suite of a luxury hotel. Inside it, the light was on, bright light that slanted out the doorway and into the office. It had recently been quitted by Raoul and Susan, who'd showered after a strenuous bout of midmorning lovemaking.
He was now mostly dressed; she was naked, save for a towel. They made a handsome couple, a power couple; they exuded wealth, attractiveness, glamour.
Taking it all in, the whole luxurious milieu, Raoul could not help but congratulate himself, thinking, Truly, someday this will all be mine.
And soon.
The family Garros was a pillar of Venezuela's old-line, traditional oligarchy, that narrow apex of the social pyramid that controlled the vast majority of the country's wealth.
Raoul's breeding and background were impeccable. His mother was half French, and his Christian name had been rendered according to the French spelling Raoul, rather than the more Hispanicized Raul. The family had considerable holdings in shipbuilding, telecommunications, and real estate.
He was handsome, educated, athletic, and wealthy. The world should have been his oyster. All would have been well, but for the advent — or rather, onslaught — of Hugo Chavez.
This was a bad time in Venezuela for the clique of ruling families, for the oligarchy was all-powerful no more. Chavez had the power. He had the Army on his side and the impoverished masses. Once having been elected president, he would retain the office for life. He would no more be voted out than he would willingly relinquish power. His was the power supreme.
To be rich was no longer enough in Venezuela. Now, to be rich was to be vulnerable. Vulnerable to the prosecutions and nationalizations of the state, decreed by the President in his role as supreme representative of the people.
Many if not most of the oligarchs were too hidebound and fossilized to adapt to the new order of "twenty-first-century socialism," the regime's supreme buzzword and sacred cow. Not so the family Garros. They saw things clearly enough, without illusion.
Chavez was going nowhere, except to stay in place at the top of the heap for the foreseeable future. There was no telling what idea he might cook up next, he and his cadre of like-minded sycophants, ideologues, and newly empowered bandits.
Key sectors of the Venezuelan economy had been nationalized early. Companies foreign and domestic had been bulldozed by the strongman, including big global megaconglomerates that were forced to bow down and submit.
The family Garros had unreservedly put all its resources at the President's disposal. It was the only way to deal with such a man: total surrender. Let him have what he wants. It was less trouble for him to replace the existing infrastructure with his own people than it was for him to leave the system in place under the nominal control of the Garroses to serve him.
"We have lost much, my son. We will lose more. But, with the help of Providence, perhaps we will not lose all."
Such were the words of Raoul's father, during a final meeting before the younger Garros was due to depart for New Orleans to serve as a high-ranking executive in the overseas branch of LAGO.
Raoul had said, "I'll do my part, Father. I won't let the family down." And so he had done his part, in his fashion.
Some men are fighters; he was a lover. It was his vocation and his avocation.
Hence, Susan Keehan. Because Raoul was on a mission for Caracas. A mission to marry into one of America's richest and most powerful families. A mission now on the verge of accomplishment.
Soon he would be wed to the daughter of doting father Wilmont Keehan, multimillionaire dynast and brother of Senator Burl Keehan.
Topping it all off, the woman was good-looking, too. That didn't hurt, although he would have gone ahead and romanced her no matter what her looks. That was the plan, cooked up by the master plotters back in Caracas. It was a plan with which Raoul thoroughly agreed.
* * *
The springboard for the scheme was the alliance between Senator Keehan and President Chavez.
With great fanfare, Chavez had announced he was making available a free supply of oil, earmarked to serve as heating fuel in the winter months for poor people in impoverished urban neighborhoods in the United States.
The Venezuelan end of the project would be handled by LAGO; expediting and assisting the operation at the U.S. end of the pipeline was the Keehan clan.
Chavez was the strongman of a socialist regime, belligerent and anti-American.
The current Administration in Washington was a frequent target of the dictator's strident, abusive tirades. Senator Keehan was a leader of the opposition party. Free heating fuel would be a powerful vote getter, for himself an
d his party.
But the matter had to be handled carefully. Chavez — splendid fellow that he was, a "diamond in the rough" according to the thinking of the Keehan policy advisors and their media echo chamber — was still a volatile and unpredictable character who might yet go off the reservation. Way off.
The Senator needed deniability, a middleman to handle the organizational chores while insulating him from too-direct involvement in case the deal soured. A perfect solution existed, in the form of one of the numerous funds, endowments, and foundations established by Keehan capital.
The vehicle in this case was the Keehan Humanistics Fund, KHF, whose charter was sufficiently airy and elastic to serve as the operating entity. KHF was a do-good operation, perfectly suited to handle the chores of getting all that free Venezuelan crude refined into home heating oil and distributed to the target neighborhoods/communities up north.
The Fund was designated as the entity to partner with LAGO in the free fuel oil operation that a public relations firm had tagged with the innocuous-sounding label, the Hearthstone Initiative. Its slogan, "Warm Homes, Warm Hearts."
New Orleans was where the project was centered. The city, a prime receiving point for maritime oil imports, was where Venezuelan tankers would offload their oil. This complemented Keehan family business interests. The family-owned Mega Mart would be used to support the Initiative.
Susan Keehan would head the KHF part of the venture. Her business skills were good, she had a head for figures and details, and she possessed in full the characteristic Keehan drive and ambition.
On the other hand, nobody could know it all and do it all, not even a Keehan. For that, the family relied on its executive leadership cadre, a pool of expert lawyers, brokers, analysts, engineers, and the like — specialists to safeguard the family role and make sure that the oil Initiative did no harm to short-, medium-, or long-term dynastic interests.
In New Orleans, a number of such advisors were assigned to Susan's staff, the two most prominent (and capable) being operating manager Hal Dendron and executive assistant Alma Butterworth. Also on tap was Mylon Sears, number two in the EXECPROTEK private security firm, now officially in charge of Mega Mart security and unofficially protecting family interests while reporting directly to Senator Keehan.
24 Declassified: 07 - Storm Force Page 15