“I figured they’d catch up with you sooner or later. You did enough digging to wake them up. Someone was bound to tell them. How did it go?”
“Very seriously and not a lot of fun. They weren’t happy about our not calling them, but at least it’s their problem now, not ours.” She was glancing at her mail as she said it to him, and stopped talking as she read a letter for a second time and frowned. It had come in a plain white envelope, printed by a computer, and the person who had written the letter didn’t mince words.
“Stay away from Washington and stop digging or you’ll wind up dead.” The letter wasn’t signed, and there was no way to trace it. It had been mailed in New York. Alix handed it to Ben without comment, and she called Felix and asked him to come in. Ben handed the letter to him when he did, and Felix let out a sigh, and sat down across from her.
“I’ll call Pelham. He should know.” And then he had an idea. “I think we’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest here, and I’d like to give it some time to calm down. There’s a big story in Paris, it’s a puff piece. The French President has just been outed having a hot affair with a French stripper. She’s twenty-three years old, he has her set up in an apartment he bought for her, and they had a baby last year. His current girlfriend went berserk and made a public scene and attacked the girl. It’s all French histrionics and no one cares, but it’s making lots of noise and the girl is gorgeous. There’s a rumor he might even marry the stripper, although he’s never married anyone before. While the CIA shakes the trees, I don’t want you getting hit with any coconuts, and if we’re down to death threats now, let’s get you out of town. A week in Paris might do you good. How does that sound to you?” He assumed that the CIA would have checked out their information in a week, and maybe even be ready to move forward with an official investigation of Tony Clark.
“It sounds like a great idea.” She smiled, looking relieved. She’d had death threats before, they were always upsetting, even if the threats were never acted on. “I’d like security for my daughter at Duke while I’m gone. Right away, in fact.”
“And we’ll ask the FBI to cover you when you get back,” Felix said seriously.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like a few days off while I’m there, to see my mother in Provence.”
“Done,” Felix said solemnly, and looked at Ben. “You can be her security in the meantime. I’ll put you on a flight tomorrow, the stripper story is all yours,” he said, and Alix laughed.
“My mother will be pissed if I make the French President look bad. She loves him.”
“He makes himself look bad.” He had a weakness for very young women and sex scandals, which had tripped him up before. This wasn’t new. “Can you stay somewhere other than your apartment tonight? Let’s not tempt fate here. And I’ll let the CIA boys know you’re leaving town and where you’re going.”
“Thank you,” she said, Felix left to organize the assignment, as Alix looked at Ben bleakly. “Faye is going to be pissed when I tell her she’s going to need a bodyguard.” It had happened before, but she wouldn’t like it. “But at least I’ll get to see my mother. I haven’t been over to see her in eight months. Just don’t tell her about the death threat.”
“Why don’t you stay with me tonight?” he suggested, she thought about it for a minute and nodded reluctantly.
“I hate to put you out, and I have to go home and pack first. I can sleep on your couch,” she volunteered.
“You don’t have to. I have a guest room I never use. I use it as an office, but it has a bed in it.”
“Thank you,” she said, trying to figure out who had sent the death threat. It could have been anyone, but someone sounded seriously pissed. Maybe even Tony Clark, although that was hard to believe. He couldn’t have sunk to that. Maybe one of the lobbyists. “I’ll call Faye,” she said, and he went back to his office. He didn’t mind Alix staying with him, and he felt sorry the heat was on her now, and might be for a while. She was messing with some big players in the major leagues. And they had a lot at stake.
Alix left a message for Faye, who called her back ten minutes later and sounded busy.
“What? I’m on the way to class.”
“I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow on the French President’s stripper scandal. I’ll see Mamie while I’m there.” She tried to sound casual about it, and Faye was annoyed.
“Why didn’t you just send me a text?”
“Because there’s something else.” Alix sounded apologetic. “I’ve been working on a big political story, and I got a death threat this morning at the network. It’s probably nothing, and I’ll be in France for a week, but I requested security for you at school.” She waited for the explosion that came immediately.
“Oh, Mom, for God’s sake, I’ll look like an idiot with some goon following me around. How am I supposed to explain that?” It hadn’t happened in a while, not since she’d been at Duke.
“Tell them your mother is neurotic and checking on you, or he’s your boyfriend, or whatever you want, but I want you protected until things settle down. It’s probably just a crackpot, but why take a chance?”
“I hate you,” Faye said fervently but didn’t mean it. “That’s why I hate what you do. You’re risking your own life, and now mine. Why are you always in some kind of trouble?” Faye sounded exasperated and Alix’s nerves were raw. It hadn’t been an easy day so far, and she had a lot on her mind.
“Because this is what I do,” she snapped at her. “Just be nice about it and stop complaining. They’ll be sending you someone from the FBI,” Alix explained and Faye sounded shocked.
“The FBI? What are you doing, chasing spies or threatening the President?” No, the Vice President, Alix was tempted to say but didn’t.
“No, it’s one of those jurisdictional issues, where it’s either the FBI or the CIA or local police. And in this case, the FBI got involved since threats via the U.S. mail are a federal offense.” Faye knew that her mother’s life had been threatened over the years, but she never got used to it. “I’ll call you from Paris,” Alix promised.
“Okay, love you. Warn me before the goon shows up,” Faye blurted at her and they hung up.
Alix and Ben went to her apartment after work and she packed her bag for Paris, and then they went to Brooklyn. He made dinner for them, and Alix camped out in his spare bedroom. She felt stupid being there, and was sure she would have been safe in her own apartment, but she had promised to be careful and sensible. She fell asleep in Ben’s guest room almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. It had been a long day of the CIA, a death threat, and now she was going to Paris to interview a President and a stripper. Sometimes her life felt completely nuts. She wondered if her daughter was right and she should be doing something more ordinary, like covering local news, or dog stories, or celebrities in L.A. for Entertainment Tonight. There had to be an easier way to make a living than walking through minefields, or trying to prove illegal oil deals, or bringing down a Vice President. But how did you rewind the film and start over? And she had the distinct impression that with what lay ahead with Tony Clark, things were going to get worse before they got better. And now that the CIA had been informed, there was no turning back. She had started something major, and even Faye was being affected.
“The Goon” had arrived at Faye’s dorm at ten o’clock that night, and she had sent her mother a text when he did. He was posted outside her room. There would be three shifts a day to follow her everywhere. “He weighs 300 lbs and he’s 200 years old. Am I supposed to be protecting him? I hate you. F.” Alix laughed when she read it and showed it to Ben. At least she knew her daughter would be safe. And Alix had her very own Navy SEAL to protect her. Alix just hoped it would be over soon. Paris would be fun. And a few days with her mother in Provence would be the icing on the cake, or the cherry on top, as the French said.
Chapter 6
Olympia had just finished another chapter in her book, about the importance of reinstating old-fashioned valu
es, and she sat looking out at the moonlight. Sometimes she wondered if the book was really important. She had covered all of Bill’s major political policies in the first book, but she had wanted to share his more personal principles and values in the second. There was so much to say about him, although the media interest in him had begun to wane in recent years. He was old news now, and no longer current, except to her. She was having trouble finding a publisher for the second book, and was disappointed. She didn’t want anyone to forget him. He had loved the country and the American people so much, and had had so many hopes for what he would do to help them, all ended in an instant. And sometimes now she felt as though she was carrying the torch alone.
Even her children were opposed to her doing another book, and had lives and plans of their own now. And Tony, his lifelong friend, was Vice President and had his own view of the world, which was more practical than Bill’s, and his own goals and ambitions, which no longer included Bill.
Tony was a businessman above all, and Bill had been a visionary. His dreams for the country had been so vast, and he had wanted to implement them all. Olympia wanted to let people know now what they’d missed. She didn’t want her husband to be forgotten. She felt as though she had been spared to carry his message forward into the future, to remind lawmakers and politicians of the shining example he had been, and how they could emulate him. She was sure that Tony would do that if he became President, but in the meantime he had to follow the President he worked with, and bide his time until he won a presidential election himself. She had no regrets about refusing the opportunity to become First Lady at his side. She loved Tony best as a friend, and after all this time, she was still deeply in love with Bill, and writing about him and sharing his ideas kept him alive for her. She had no other life now except her memories of him, rare visits with her children, and dinner with Tony when he came to New York to see her. He said he was in love with her, and she believed him, but she was faithful to her husband, even beyond the grave. She was a beautiful woman, but her life had a grayness to it now, and an ongoing sadness she could not escape. And if she tried to, she felt as though she’d be abandoning Bill. Olympia had remained frozen in time, from the moment he died. It was as though she had died with him. And she felt guilty that she had escaped the unknown assassin’s bullets and he hadn’t. She had suffered from survivor guilt since it happened.
The phone on her desk rang just as she was putting the manuscript in a locked drawer. It was after midnight, which was when he usually called her. She knew it was Tony without looking at caller ID, and before she picked it up. His deep, mellifluous voice sounded in her ear like a familiar melody. It was comforting to hear him late at night, when her memories engulfed her.
“Am I disturbing you?” he always asked politely.
“Of course not. I love hearing from you. How was your day?”
“Busy. Long. Vice presidential. I had too many meetings or I would have called earlier.” He always relaxed when he talked to her. She was like coming home for him. And she felt the same way about him now. He was the place where she felt safe. She could tell him anything. “How’s the book coming?” He was kind to ask her.
“I don’t know. I’ve hit a dead spot, and sometimes I wonder if anyone still cares. The world has moved on,” she said wistfully. But she hadn’t, and was determined not to. If she moved on, it would mean that Bill was really dead, and never coming back. Writing about him kept him part of her daily life.
“Bill is going to be a hero in the public eye for a long, long time,” Tony reassured her. Bill had been an icon to those who knew him. Tony had been more of a man behind the scenes, and still was. He wanted more than that now. He was ready for it.
“I hope so,” she said about Bill. “How are the kids?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see them today. I didn’t have time,” he admitted. The older child, a little boy, was three years old. The younger, a girl, was eighteen months old and still a toddler. She had just learned to walk and had a head full of blond curls like his wife. She was a beautiful child.
“And how’s Megan?” Olympia inquired about his wife, and Tony sighed. He could be honest with Olympia. She was a breath of fresh air for him. He always said they were soul mates, although Olympia had refused to marry him.
“Megan is young. Sometimes I feel like I should have adopted her instead of marrying her. Twenty-two years makes a big difference. She thinks political life is fun as long as it doesn’t inconvenience her. I don’t know how she’s going to make it through a presidential campaign.”
He knew that Olympia would have done it flawlessly, but Megan had tennis, Pilates classes, her trainer, her horses, friends, assorted charities she cared about, and their babies. And now she was pregnant with another one. The thought of a third child exhausted him, and he had much to plan for his future. Olympia was the only one who knew for certain that he was planning to run for President. He wasn’t ready to announce it. Megan would love the idea of being First Lady, but seemed to have no idea that it would mean work for her too. “She wanted another baby. She had been hounding me about it. Two seemed like the right number to me. She doesn’t care, she’ll just hire more nannies, we already have three, one for each child and a relief. That doesn’t look good in the media,” he said, sounding concerned. He always thought of that, about everything he did or said.
“Two was the right number of kids for me too. Bill wanted four, which seemed like too many to me. I wanted to take care of them myself. I never had time to take care of anything but Bill and the kids for the first ten years.” It was precisely the image he would have preferred, although having small children and a beautiful wife in her twenties made him seem young, and he liked that too. It was all about public perception, and what the voters wanted to see in the White House. He would have liked the maturity, elegance, grace, political expertise, and brains of Olympia, but being married to a spectacular-looking young woman hadn’t done him any harm either. And she looked fabulous when they went out. In some ways, he thought of Megan and their children as an accessory to him. In his mind, that’s what political spouses were all about. And Olympia personified perfection to him.
“Any news from the kids?” he asked her.
“I’m going to call Darcy tonight. We haven’t spoken in two weeks. She’s having some sort of romance with a young doctor there. He’s French, with Doctors Without Borders. She sounds very taken with him, and Josh is still with the same girl on the farm where he works.”
“Oh God, a milkmaid,” Tony teased her and she laughed, but it was actually true. Her father owned one of the largest dairy farms in California, and she was doing an internship at the organic farm where they’d met.
“Every time you say that, I envision her in braids and a dirndl with wooden shoes. She’s actually very pretty. She looks like a model, and she has a master’s in agricultural sciences from Stanford. I met her on Skype and she seems very sweet. I just hope he doesn’t marry anyone too soon.” Her son Josh was only twenty-four years old, but mature for his age. Losing his father at eighteen had made him grow up quickly. She shared all her most private thoughts with Tony, about her children and everything else. She had no one else to talk to. She had shut herself away since Bill’s death, and lived in seclusion. Tony felt it was the right thing to do.
“Give them my love when you talk to them. I’m going to try and see you this week, Tuesday, if that works for you.” He tried to come up at least once every week, or more often when he could. It was the high point of her week, and gave her a chance to talk to him, tell him about the book, and hear about what he was doing, which was fascinating. But she had no regrets about having retired from the political scene. She had done all that with Bill.
“Tuesday is perfect for me,” she said gently. She had no other plans. She never did now, except working on the book.
“Have you heard from that reporter again? The Phillips woman?” He sounded stern when he asked her.
“No, why w
ould I?”
“I don’t know why she bothered you. I think it was all a pretext to ask about me.”
“She said she was a big fan of Bill’s, and she was encouraging about the new book,” Olympia said defensively.
“Well, don’t let her come back again. You don’t need reporters intruding on you.” She agreed with him there, but hadn’t found Alix’s visit an intrusion. She had liked her, and found her gentle and intelligent, and interested in what Olympia was doing. Tony was far more skeptical about her. “I’ll call you tomorrow, and see you on Tuesday,” he promised, and she hung up with a smile on her face. He was always a comfort to her, and in spite of his warnings, she wasn’t worried about Alix. She could handle her. She had asked about Tony’s association with the lobbies. Bill had, in fact, mentioned it to Olympia. But that was no one’s business now. No one needed to know that Bill felt that Tony was courting certain lobbies, and didn’t like it. She wouldn’t betray either of them by saying it now, what difference did it make? She knew that Tony was laying the groundwork for his presidential campaign, and whatever he had to do for that to ensure its success seemed fine to Olympia. She wanted to see him in the White House one day. It was his dream, just as it had been Bill’s. And she thought Tony would make a great President.
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