Beneath the boat, the water was smoky black. The beam of the flashlight followed the contour of the underside as he finned his way along the hull. He came to a good spot and treaded water as he pressed the plastic explosive against the rotting wood. The boat was at least twenty years old, and plenty in need of repair, a fact chief among the reasons why he’d selected it in the first place. The boards were rotted and flaking, eaten away by more than two decades in saltwater. All of this would make his task much easier to accomplish.
He attached the device to the hull of the boat. St. John held the flashlight against one cheek as he set the timer. With his free hand he tapped a setting into the touch pad. 30:00. Then, with a final keystroke, the device was activated.
29:59…29:53…29:37…
Satisfied, he ascended to the surface and hauled himself up the rope ladder. He stood on deck in his wet suit, catching his breath, a puddle spreading out around his feet. The night was breezy and cool. He strapped his pack over his shoulders, and eased into the raft, which he’d trailed behind the boat these past days. It started without a hitch.
The charge went off, blowing fire out both sides of the hull. St. John watched from a quarter mile away. The salt-soaked wood caught fire and burned quickly. As the hull filled with water, first the forward deck slowly submerged, raising the prop high over the surface of the water. Then the vessel sunk rapidly, taking on water with greater speed by the minute. In twenty minutes, all that was left was a foam of white bubbles, then nothing at all.
St. John turned away and motored at a steady clip in the opposite direction. The raft slapped against the choppy water, surging forward against a stout headwind. By his map and his compass and the last reading he’d taken from the radar on the boat, he estimated he was four hours from shore. Along four hours.
He’d be there by midnight.
10
ACTUALLY, IT WAS A FEW MINUTES BEFORE MIDNIGHT.ST.JOHNunfastened the clamps that secured the ten-horse motor to the raft and let it drop into the black water. He fitted the oars into the oarlocks and manually powered the inflatable craft the final two hundred yards to shore.
The island of Nantucket was draped in gloom. Drizzle and a low fog blew in off the sea. It was a rough night to be outdoors, particularly on the water, without refuge. St. John was wearing a military-surplus slicker from his pack. It did reasonably well at keeping out the wet but had little or no success against the cold. The slicker fluttered as a gust howled across the bow of the dinghy. He made smooth, strong strokes with the oars, surging forward in the choppy water.
He brushed back the hood, glanced up at the drizzle and the cloud cover and frowned. The question was how long the sour weather might cling to the island. The weather was one of the few things he couldn’t control or at least manipulate. If it stuck around, his flight, scheduled to lift off late tomorrow afternoon, might not be allowed to leave the ground. Periodically, lightning would flash in the distance, flickering behind massive columns of cloud, but his instincts told him it wouldn’t be a long-term hindrance. It was crucial that he be on that plane, and nasty weather was the primary threat to keeping him grounded.
He beached the rubber dinghy among the rocks where the island sloped gradually into the sea, and eased over the side, knee-deep in the shallows. Though the moon remained well hidden, he had no trouble seeing well enough to drag the raft up on the beach. He yanked a diver’s knife with a serrated blade from his ankle sheath, and plunged it into the rubbery meat of the bow. Air wheezed out through the gash, and the raft rapidly deflated. He heaved it into the trees, concealing it with whatever was available nearby. Next, he slipped out of the wet suit, tied it into a bundle, and tucked it out of sight.
He shouldered his pack and checked the batteries in his rubber-armored flashlight. He came to a paved road and followed it. This was his second trip to Nantucket. A month earlier he’d come to scout the area.
As he walked, an occasional car whizzed past on the narrow strip of two-lane asphalt. At the crest of a hill, he could see lights from town. His reservations had been made on his prior visit, paid in full in advance. The bed-and-breakfast was quiet when he hurried up the walk and stepped inside. Most of the lights were out, but St. John had made arrangements to accommodate a late arrival.
When he got to his room he locked the door and collapsed onto the bed. Every muscle in his body ached. Nothing would have pleased him more than to sleep for thirteen hours. But he’d be lucky to snag six. There was still a schedule to keep. And he was ready to get on to the next step. A better life awaited him once he was off this island. A fresh beginning.
He’d sleep hard, clean up, and try to feel human again. There was no TV in the room. That was just as well. He stretched out on his back on the bed and stared at the cracks in the ceiling until his eyes grew heavy. By the time he fell asleep, it was 1:20A.M.
There was hardly any traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue when the small caravan of four black Lincoln Town Cars motored through a few hours before dawn and turned into the entrance to the White House.
They idled at the security checkpoint while word of their arrival went to the Oval Office, where the president had adjourned one meeting only moments before in anticipation of the one to come.
In the second Lincoln, Anthony Philbrick rode in silence, as he had for most of the trip up from Florida. What was happening around him, even in his wildest dreams would have seemed perfectly absurd. Less than twelve hours ago he’d sat in the sand with his grandchildren, pink from the sun. Now here he was, a few feet and a few minutes away from being tagged as second-in-command.
They drove down a ramp and into a heavily fortified passage that turned hard left, iron barriers slamming shut behind them. Armed soldiers saluted from their posts, automatic weapons on straps over their shoulders. Sodium-arch lamps lit the subterranean world of cement. They stopped, and a well-armed sergeant, who saluted as he stepped aside, opened his door.
Philbrick was nearly eighty, and he considered himself relatively fit for his age, but suddenly he felt overcome by the gravity of the moment. He did not smile as he was escorted through a maze of corridors and high-security clearance zones.
Now they stepped into an elevator. The doors slid shut without so much as a sigh, and he could feel the slightest hint of movement as the box headed up the shaft.
The speaker was certainly no stranger to the White House. He’d been a guest on countless occasions, but this level of welcome was, to say the least, new to him. He’d always come by the normal channels, above ground, with far less urgency. The realization suddenly struck him that he’d entered an entirely new stratosphere of existence. His days from here on in would be spent with little sleep, being shepherded to the far ends of the globe to act as mouthpiece for the president wherever he himself could not be. This, of course, was the unspoken dream of every speaker. But as reality slammed him in the face, all those years of longing seemed illusory and misguided. He took a deep breath as the elevator settled to a halt. The doors parted.
A hand came up to meet Philbrick’s.
“Ah, Tony!” Russ Vetris led him through another stretch of corridors. “The president is anxious to get the ball rolling. He’s been expecting you. There’s no time to waste,” the chief of staff said.
“I understand,” Philbrick said, nodding, his long legs matching Vetris’s spastic pace stride for stride. He had a billion questions but held his tongue. He’d be told what they wanted him to know. Ettinger was dead. How? When? These things would be answered in time. And no sooner. What he did know was that within the hour he’d be sworn in as vice president of the United States of America.
Vetris passed his ID card over a digital scanner. Three seconds elapsed before a door receded and they were through and beyond. The chief of staff briefed him with the basics. It had happened at Ettinger’s vacation home in Maine. Details, even now, were sketchy. He’d been declared dead almost immediately. Miriam? The kids? All fine, all safe.
Another door, t
hen they were inside the Oval Office.
Yates stood at his desk in shirtsleeves. The tie was loose around the collar. He looked beat. He smiled at Philbrick and took the speaker’s hand in both of his.
“Tony.”
“Mr. President.”
There were others in the room. Philbrick turned and saw all familiar faces. Among them, the chief justice, who would perform the brief ceremony that would officially change the nameplate on the VP’s desk. They all shook hands. Said their grim hellos. And business got under way.
11
SHORTLY AFTER DAWN,ST.JOHN WAS AWAKE AND OUT OFbed. His beard was beginning to chafe, and he couldn’t wait to have it off his face. He leaned over the pedestal sink in the small bathroom and went about the annoying process of snipping at it first with a pair of travel-kit scissors.
Next, he lathered up his face. A cheap Gillette razor made quick work of cleaning off the remaining stubble. St. John showered and dressed. He had a satisfying breakfast downstairs—infinitely superior to the wet oats he’d conjured up aboard the fishing vessel—and then excused himself when a conversation-hungry guest latched on to him.
The clean-shaven face and full stomach replenished his strength as well as his morale. His was a nasty industry, and many who made their living at it were soulless creatures. To survive, you had to respect assassination as a business. Whether you killed for a living or traded bonds, you had to conduct yourself with dignity and professionalism. To do otherwise was to risk slipping into a sort of lifestyle that quickly narrowed the psychological gap that divides human and beast. If he did manage to pull out now, he might still have a life ahead of him. There was plenty left to salvage.
Just the thought of the promise of things to come put a snap in his stride and brightened every sight and every sound. All he had to do was get on that plane today. Just get on that plane and get off this island. There was money awaiting him. More money than a reasonable adult could ever spend. And he already had a load of money. He’d been wealthy for years, though not a penny of it could be traced back to him, directly or indirectly. He had millions scattered in banks all over the world. He could have given up the business five or six years ago, and lived in luxury.
And why hadn’t he? That was the question he’d pondered increasingly in recent years. Why not buy a goat farm in the Netherlands and slip into peaceful anonymity? But a satisfactory answer evaded him. Recent months had changed everything, though. The past six months had seen a…palpableshift inside him. A new man was growing inside his old skin. And what he’d finally discovered was that the answer to his question was simple: he had never had anything worth giving himself wholly to, as he had his work. Money meant little. Money represented the power to choose. He’d simply never felt drawn to anything other than to the art of hunting people. Until now.
During his previous visit to the island, St. John had rented a postal box. As per his usual routine, he had telephoned a number and given the box address. The box would be used only once. The number he’d dialed was to a suite of offices in New Zealand, which encrypted the call and rerouted it to a second suite of offices in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the call was further encrypted and redirected to a mainframe computer in Gdansk, Poland.
All of his business, for the better part of the past decade, was routed through the office in Poland. It was a system he trusted and one that had served him remarkably well, considering the very nature of his trade. But the next forty-eight hours would put an end to it, for good. In two days he would have his money and his new life, and he would sever his ties to the office in Poland.
Midmorning, a taxi delivered St. John outside the post office. Dressed in chinos, leather boating shoes, and a sports coat, he removed the single item from the box and promptly returned to the taxi. The item was a pink envelope, the size of a small thank-you card. He tucked the envelope in an inside jacket pocket and gave the driver new directions. Save for a few specifics, which of course changed with each job, he didn’t need to open the envelope to know its contents. It had to do with his payment of $5.9 million.
The taxi stopped at a red light, and St. John made a concerted effort to breathe in the moment. Here he was, stepping out of old shoes and into new ones. How many people had an opportunity like this? He had pulled the trigger for the last time, taken his last life for profit. No longer would he be the angel of death. So many of his thirty-two years had been spent squinting through a scope, concentration creeping icily through his veins. Those were the moments he’d lived for. Nothing had compared. The addiction to taking aim at a mark and easing down on the trigger had been complete and absolute. He was the hunter. Could he live without it? Yes. Without question.
He had discovered a force much more addictive than the kill: love.
12
NELSONETTINGER LEARNED OF HIS BROTHER’S DEATH AS HEstood staring at the half-eaten carcass of a bison calf. Wolves had gotten to the young bison, separating it from the herd. This was southern Montana, where the yearly snowfall made the daily search for food a vicious contest of kill-or-be-killed. The pack was dining on the dead youngster when Nelson came over the ridge in his Dodge extended-cab 4x4.
He had taken his Wetherby rifle from the window rack and fired a pair of rounds at the sky. A half dozen of the predators had spooked, pounding off through the tree line. A stubborn male stood his ground, dipping his snout into the open chasm of the bison’s rib cage. Ettinger dropped the animal with a single round.
The cell phone in his truck rang. He tromped through the snow and grabbed the phone through the open window of the driver’s-side door, answering the call as he made his way back to the corpses of the bison and the wolf. The voice of a young man asked if he were Nelson Ettinger. “You got it,” he answered, kicking at the wolf’s hindquarters.
“Thank you, please hold,” the voice told him.
Nelson looked up, scanning the tree line slowly for any sign of the rest of the pack. He’d have liked to kill them all. Nothing against the animals themselves, but they were systematically wiping out his stock of bison. He had accumulated nearly two hundred head, in addition to his cattle, and had no intention of letting those four-legged savages pick his herd off one by one.
There was a series of digital tones over the phone line, and then a familiar voice said, “Nelson?”
“In the flesh.”
“Nelson, this is Miriam.” Miriam Ettinger’s voice sounded tired and spent.
Nelson was surprised to hear from her. His brother had never been big on maintaining contact, but Miriam hadnever phoned him herself. Not that they didn’t get along. It was a simple matter of a clash of cultures. Nelson preferred wide-open spaces and fresh air, without cars, and as few people as possible. Miriamneeded people, masses of people, and the only mountains she felt comfortable among were man-made structures of iron and glass and cement.
“Well, I’ll be,” he said, grinning.
“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
Staring down at the carnage, he said, “No, ma’am, not a thing.”
“Good. Good.”
“How’s my little brother?”
“Nelson, that’s why I’m calling. Something terrible has happened.” Her throat tightened. She had made a concerted effort to stay strong. It was hard to tell if he could sense her struggle to control the rush of emotions. If he did, he didn’t let on.
“Oh?”
“Nelson…James is dead.”
He glanced up from the blood and gore, his gaze tracking up across the snowy landscape. This was his land, all fifty thousand acres. Miles and miles of it, as far as the eye could see in any direction. It was bordered on three sides by national forest. It was populated with his livestock. He had twenty-five full-time hands who worked to keep the ranch immaculate and profitable. He’d paid a pittance for it. It was now worth millions. His pride in his land was immeasurable. Thirty years earlier this massive piece of real estate was nothing but wilderness. Careful planning and a delicate touch had mainta
ined its natural beauty. All that stood before him now was a result of the grand vision and boundless energy he’d had as a much younger man. Now he was seventy, with neither the energy nor the willpower for such a brutal undertaking. Any fool could see that there was much to take great pride in. But suddenly it was all forgotten.
“Come again?” he said, furrowing his brow, nudging his hat with a knuckle. Perhaps he hadn’t heard quite right.
“James was shot. He’s…he’s dead, Nelson. James is dead.”
“You’re telling me Jimmy’sdead?”
“Yes, Nelson. Two days ago.”
“Twodays?”
“Yes, I…I’m sorry, Nelson. I wanted to call you straightaway, but the president has asked that I keep this as quiet as possible until the FBI can get their bearings and are able to get their investigation moving in the right direction. Believe me, you’re one of the first to know. I…I just…” She trailed off, shakier than ever.
There was a glare off the snow from the sun. Nelson Ettinger used his arm as a visor. He stared off into the distance, groping for words, his thoughts in a jumble. His baby brother was gone, dead. When was the last time he’d seen Jimmy? Two years? Three? What did it matter, they’d chosen different paths their entire lives. He was Jimmy’s senior by fifteen years. What had they had in common, besides a mother and a father and a last name? In the end, they were just different people, living in separate worlds. But none of that mattered—brothers were brothers. Period.
“I don’t know what to say, Miriam,” he said. An honest declaration.
“So far, this hasn’t leaked to the media. We’ve been lucky for that. We are hoping…” Miriam paused, her throat tightening again. She was still trying to be a good politician’s wife. She went on, tremulously, “They keep telling me that every person who knows about this is an additional security risk.”
The Greater Good Page 5