by Jack Mars
“For many years, they’ve been the ultimate power couple—one of the world’s richest men and one of the world’s most beautiful women. A captain of industry turned philanthropist, and a supermodel turned Senator from California, then Vice President, then President of the United States.”
A photo of a young Pierre Michaud and Susan Hopkins hand-in-hand on a beach somewhere appeared on the screen, then faded into a newer one of the couple standing on a stage with their two young daughters, and waving to an audience.
Then the picture slowly faded to black.
“A series of photographs were leaked today that many people are going to find simply shocking. They appear to show Pierre Michaud lounging on a secluded pool deck with a much younger man. The two men are in various stages of undress, appear to caress each other at times, and to rub tanning oil or perhaps sunblock on each other’s bodies.”
The young woman stared at the TV screen. A feeling began to well up inside of her. She wanted to scream at it. She wanted it to make it stop. She wanted to break it with a rock before it could say another word.
It had been too much. These last months were just… too much to deal with. The President assassinated, the White House destroyed, all the dead people.
Now this.
The TV scrolled slowly, lovingly, through the photos of the two men. The President’s husband was clearly visible, thin with dark graying hair, and wearing French-style Speedo briefs. The younger man was blond, with a muscular body. His face was blurred to block his identity. Meanwhile, in the upper left-hand corner was a portrait of a smiling Pierre Michaud, so viewers could have no doubt that they had the right man.
“In this next group of photos, if there was any doubt left about the nature of the relationship, you will see the two men kissing passionately.”
The young woman turned away from the TV. She covered her ears with her hands to block out the eagerness of the newscaster’s voice. On the bench across from her, her youngest daughter suddenly smiled. Mommy was playing a game!
The girl covered her ears, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
8:21 a.m.
United States Naval Observatory – Washington, DC
“Oh no,” Susan said.
Kat Lopez nodded solemnly. “Yes. Susan, I’m so sorry. It just started to hit the TV stations about ten minutes ago, but it’s already everywhere. I thought you should know.”
“Okay, thank you. Please give me some time.”
“Okay, Susan.”
Susan watched Kat walk through the open door of the study. A Secret Service man loomed there, three feet inside the door. Susan looked at him.
“Alone, please. With the door shut.”
The officer nodded silently, went out, and pulled the door closed behind him. For a moment, she simply stood quietly in the center of the room. Her study. Her beautiful sanctuary. She stood just a few feet from the little sitting area with its deep high-backed chairs, its coffee table, and its circular rug with the Seal of the President. She remembered how when she was Vice President, she would sometimes sit in one of those chairs in the late afternoon and curl up with a good book. It was a nice memory. She couldn’t remember the last time she had even tried to read a book. There was no time. There was no space in her mind for it.
She looked around. The rug was the only thing inside this room that had changed since then. Maybe it was the rug’s fault. It had brought in all the toxic faults of the world. All the hate, all the envy, all the greed for power. The drumbeat for war. The death and destruction. Now it had brought an attack upon her family, the people she loved, the man she had loved almost her entire adult life.
The rug! The rug had invited these ills in here like a demon being invited into a victim’s soul. It would take an exorcism to get them out again.
It was too late, she realized. In the old days, when an image crisis arose, one of the first people President Thomas Hayes would call (long before he called Susan, if he ever did) was Brent Staples. Brent Staples would set his spin-meisters to work, changing the narrative, turning it back on whoever launched the attack. Brent Staples would not only save and protect us, he would smite our enemies.
But Brent Staples had done this to her. That’s what the meeting this morning had been about. Dutch Evans. Bill Ackland. Michael Parowski. No, forget about Michael. He was their tool, their puppet. They were installing him to replace her. The old guard of the party was yanking her off the stage.
She could see the whole thing now very clearly. An embarrassment like this would be hard to come back from. Along with the sinking poll numbers, the terrorist attacks, and the criticism about the delays in appointing her cabinet… She looked ineffectual, like someone in over her head.
Now her husband had been caught… doing what? Cheating on her, she supposed. With a man. She shook her head and almost laughed. How could she explain to people that those were their judgments, not hers? She didn’t care who Pierre slept with. She didn’t come from that world. Good Lord, she had been on her own at the age of fifteen, in the fashion industry in Paris, and in New York, and Milan.
A man, who was married to a woman, slept with another man? In the world of fashion designers and models, and the various celebrities who were never far away, that was a boring Wednesday afternoon.
She sighed. She might as well inspect the damage.
She picked up the remote and clicked on the TV mounted on the far wall. She flicked through to CNN. She did not turn up the sound. There was a photo, clearly of Pierre, on the pool deck at the Malibu house, with a young blond guy. The guy was probably early to mid-twenties. Strong-looking, muscular, self-assured. Not a skinny twink trying to present himself as under-aged. That was a small piece of good news.
She flipped over to Fox News. A red-faced male newscaster was jabbing his index finger at the camera, spouting some vitriol. Superimposed behind him was a photo of Pierre and the blond again, a different shot from the one from CNN. There must be a whole series of them. From the angle, she guessed the photos were taken from a helicopter, using a high-powered telephoto lens. Or maybe they used a drone. She supposed that was possible nowadays.
Behind her, the door to her private quarters opened. She turned, and Pierre walked in. He wore a blue dress shirt and slacks. His feet were bare on the polished wood of the study. His eyes were wide. His mouth was slack. He looked like a man in shock.
“Oh God, babe,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
Susan shook her head. “It’s okay. It was bound to happen sooner or later.”
“How bad is it?” he said.
“Hard to say right now. It looks pretty bad, but I don’t know. Who is he?”
Pierre’s dark face was flushed red.
“Pierre. It’s all going to come out. We need to know if he’s solid.”
Pierre shrugged. “It’s Brian. I’ve told you about him. He’s my personal trainer. I’ve had him with me, what, three years? He’s a good kid. Smart. Knows everything about fitness and eating right. About a year ago… I don’t know. One thing led to another. It was over before it started. I didn’t even know he was gay, to be honest with you. He still works for me to this day.”
“So this all happened a year ago?”
“Sure. A year ago, maybe more. You were Vice President. The world was a simpler place then. You were traveling all the time. I was busy. We had weekly check-ins over the phone. I had no reason to believe you were going to become President.”
“How old is he?” Susan said.
“I’m not sure. Maybe twenty-nine, maybe thirty-one. In there somewhere. He looks younger than he is. He’s a grown man, if that’s what you mean.”
Susan looked at Pierre. It seemed almost that she was looking through him, back in the past, to the early times she spent with him. She had already done Vogue, Cosmo, Mademoiselle, Victoria’s Secret, even the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. But she was starting to age out. She could feel it. The covers had stopped coming. She was twenty-four.
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Then she met Pierre. He was twenty-nine, and his start-up company’s initial public offering had just turned him into an instant billionaire. He had grown up in San Francisco, but his family was from France. He was beautiful, with a skinny body and big brown eyes. He looked like a deer in the headlights. His dark hair always flopped down in front of his face. He was hiding in there. It was unbearably cute.
She had made a lot of money in her career, several million dollars. Financially, she had been very, very comfortable. But suddenly money was no object at all. They traveled the world together. Paris, Madrid, Hong Kong, London… they always stayed in five-star hotels, and always in the most expensive suite. Astonishing views became the backdrop to her life, even more so than before. They married, and they had children, wonderful twin girls. Then the years began to pass, and slowly they grew apart.
Susan became bored. She looked for something to do. She got into politics. Eventually, she ran for United States Senator from California. After she won, she spent much of her time in Washington, sometimes with the girls, sometimes not. Pierre managed his businesses, and increasingly, his charitable efforts in the Third World. Sometimes they didn’t see each other for months.
About seven years ago, Pierre called her late one night and confessed something she supposed she already knew. He was gay, and he was in a relationship.
They stayed married anyway. It was mostly for the girls, but for other reasons as well. For one thing, they were best friends. For another, it was better for both of them if the world thought they were still a couple. They cut a media-friendly image together. And it was comfortable.
The truth was, Pierre was the deep relationship of her life. She loved him totally. What was wrong with that? He was her partner. And she was his. He was a wonderful father. He was caring. He was in touch with his emotions. He was probably the smartest man she had ever met. There was nothing about their relationship that concerned her.
His boyfriends came and went. He was discreet about it, and apparently they were too. She never even knew about them.
She sighed again.
This was one of those secrets the American people were never supposed to uncover. This wasn’t Europe, where people were more relaxed about sexuality, and about relationships. Americans, for all their many good points, just didn’t understand this sort of thing.
“Should you call this media guy, Brett… or Brent?”
Susan shook her head. “He did this. He and Mike Parowski and the party elders. They’re trying to take me out.”
“Oh, no.”
She looked into Pierre’s eyes now. All the way in there.
“Yeah. It’s true. They basically warned me this morning.”
Pierre just stared at her for a long moment.
“What do you want to do?”
She thought about it, but not for very long. She supposed she knew what she was planning from the first moment she heard of this.
“I want to fight,” she said. “You, me, and the girls. If you’re comfortable with that. Us against the world, if need be.”
Pierre smiled. “I have the best public relations people on Earth. Maybe even better than your man Brent.”
Susan almost smiled herself.
They might take her out, but they weren’t going to break her. She was going to go down swinging.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
10:17 a.m.
Over the Atlantic Ocean
Luke pulled down his window shade.
The Learjet went east, out over international waters, and then turned south. Eventually, just past Florida, it would turn west and head across the Gulf of Mexico to Guatemala, where it would stop and pick up fuel. It was a long, roundabout way to go, and it would add hours to an already long trip.
Luke looked at Trudy, who was still wearing the bizarre makeshift outfit that Swann had given her. Trudy had a tablet computer on her lap, and she was poring over data she had downloaded before they left Swann’s.
Behind her, Swann lay curled in ball across two seats. He was fast asleep. Somewhere behind Swann, Ed Newsam was probably doing the same thing. Luke was the only one who slept last night.
“Aren’t you tired?” Luke said.
She looked up from her tablet. “I’m exhausted.”
“Why don’t you sleep?”
She shook her head. “I can’t. I was so wired inside that prison for so long, I just can’t seem to let my guard down. I barely slept the whole time I was there. I’d doze off for twenty minutes, wake up with a start, then doze off again half an hour later. The past month has been a blur.”
“Well,” Luke said, “you’re out of the country. You’re a free woman.”
“Am I?”
He shrugged. “Sure seems like it.”
They had borrowed this plane, complete with two pilots and a snack bar, from an old acquaintance of his, a businessman who franchised sandwich shops, hundreds of them, but had run into trouble with the protection rackets. Luke had stopped into an Italian restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island, one day a few years ago, and cleared up the misunderstanding for him. He hadn’t had any trouble since, and was always eager to show his appreciation.
“We took off from an unregulated private airstrip. We didn’t file a flight plan with anyone. No one knows who is on this plane, and that includes the man who lent it to me. And beyond Guatemala, no one knows where we’re going, not even the pilots. I’d say you’re about as home free as any jailbird I’ve ever met.”
Trudy looked at Luke seriously. “Thank you for rescuing me, if that’s what you’re fishing for. I am very glad to be out of prison, even if it’s only temporary.”
“I’m not fishing for anything. Certainly not applause. And there’s no reason why this has to be temporary.”
“Luke, I’m a fugitive. I’m charged with conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States, and about three hundred counts of murder. I have no access to money. I have no identification I can use. At this point, every police organization in the world probably has my picture, including all the big ones. I’m not like you. I can’t survive in the wilderness somewhere until this all blows over. I’ve never been camping in my life. I like a big, soft, comfortable bed. I like fuzzy blankets. I like fancy restaurants. I’m not going to make it on the run. I will get cold, and hungry, and scared, and lonely.”
Luke imagined what he would do if he were in her shoes. Disappear into the Canadian Rockies for a couple of years, he supposed. Build a hut deep in the woods and live off fish and deer and wild berries. Or go to Nepal, buy some forged ID, and become a Himalayan mountain guide. Anything, really. He could do anything.
She was right. That wasn’t her. It was him.
“Okay,” he said.
“I know why you broke me out,” she said. “I know you want me to help you crack this case. That’s fine. It’s nice to be out of jail. It’s beautiful. I appreciate these moments more than I’ve ever appreciated anything before. And I enjoy doing the work. But I know that in the long run, this is a little fantasy escape. I’ve got some very hard days, and some very tough decisions, ahead of me.”
Luke thought of the conversation he’d had with Park Jae-kyu. This was the worst thing Park had ever known. That was bad. There could be some hard days ahead, but not for the reasons Trudy believed.
Luke gestured at the tablet. He might as well change the subject.
“What do you have there?”
She seemed happy enough to move on. She tapped the tablet. “I’m looking at the situation in North Korea.”
Luke smiled. “How’s it look?”
She didn’t smile. “Dire. I’m looking, in particular, at the effects of UN Security Council Resolution 2270. These are sanctions the Security Council put in place a few years ago, after a couple of the North’s nuclear test launches. There is a lot to these sanctions, but the worst of it is its effect on trade. The resolution bans the North from exporting minerals like gold, titanium, and vanadium, as well as coal
. These are resources North Korea actually has in abundance, and before the sanctions started, they made up more than half of their exports, with coal alone accounting for nearly forty percent.”
“What’s the fallout?” Luke said.
She glanced down at her screen. “Starvation. That tends to be what happens when half a country’s export revenue dries up overnight. The economy, such as it was, has collapsed. To their credit, they are trying to feed the children through school programs, but average adult calorie intake is estimated to have dropped by more than a third. Vitamin deficiencies are rampant. All of this was apparently intended to force them to the bargaining table, but it hasn’t worked. They’ve doubled down on weapons testing instead.”
“So they’re getting desperate.”
She nodded. “They’re teetering on the verge of a famine. They just had one fifteen years ago that killed over a million people. People remember it. Incidents of unrest are the highest they’ve been in over a decade, and recall that this is a totalitarian police state designed to quash unrest before it happens. Our spy satellites are picking up evidence of public protests. That’s unusual. Group gatherings not organized by the government are generally against the law, and are broken up almost instantly. If we’re seeing them, that’s really something. Things are so bad at the moment that the RAND Corporation now categorizes North Korea as a failing or eroding totalitarian system. That might seem like a good thing, but it isn’t. They’ve got nukes, making a collapse very, very dangerous.”
“And China?”
Trudy shook her head. “The Chinese are not helping them, beyond modest aid. The Chinese signed off on the Security Council resolution. What I am working on here is a theory that the Chinese are deliberately pushing the North Koreans into desperation. With no food and no international aid, the abundance of food and resources in the South has to look pretty appetizing to the North Koreans right about now.