“All’s well that ends well, as they say,” Annapolis said.
“That’s what I just said,” Dr. Casey said.
“So tell me, Colonel,” Annapolis said. “What brings you to Las Vegas? How may we be of assistance to the Merry Outlaws?”
“Well, we are having a small problem with the Commander in Chief,” Castillo said.
“Tell us about it.”
Castillo did.
“Interesting,” Annapolis said. “Why don’t you start by telling us the major problem vis-à-vis the Somalia pirates?”
“Insurance companies,” Castillo said.
“Insurance companies?” Annapolis parroted incredulously. “I happen to own a couple of them, and I find that hard to understand.”
“I just spent a couple days floating down the Rhine talking to a group of journalists very familiar with the situation. That’s what they told me.”
“No offense, Colonel,” Annapolis said, “but two things occur to me. One, we all know how far we can trust journalists, and two, why should they confide in you?”
“My Carlito owns the newspaper chain they work for,” Sweaty said, “and then I dropped into the conversation that I was formerly associated with the SVR.”
“I’m sure they were telling us the truth,” Castillo said.
“Under those circumstances, I’m sure they were,” Annapolis said. “So, what exactly did they have to say?”
“The way I understand the situation,” Castillo replied, “is that the shipowners take out insurance on their vessels operating in those waters, on the ships themselves, and the cargoes.”
“As well they should,” Annapolis said, more than a little piously. “Insurance is the sturdy fence protecting industry from the hazards of a very dangerous world.”
“I don’t know what a supertanker loaded to the gills with crude oil is worth, but a bundle, since oil has been averaging about one hundred dollars a barrel. And then there’s the replacement cost of the ship itself, another—”
“I saw some figures,” Annapolis said. “For the sake of this discussion, why not work with fifty million?”
“The figure I got was close to one hundred million,” Charley said. “Maybe you’re thinking of what insurance companies are willing to pay out on a hundred mil policy.”
“Far be it from me to argue,” Annapolis said, ignoring the shot. “Work with one hundred million dollars.”
“So,” Castillo then said, “the shipowners take out insurance for the ship and her cargo. They don’t really care what the insurance costs, because they just add that cost to what they charge for moving the oil.”
“Standard business practice,” Annapolis said.
“So it adds about a nickel to a gallon of gas at the pump,” Charley said. “So what?”
“So what indeed. The owners are protected. The oil flows. Or is transported. In any event, the gasoline is there at the pump when you fill up.”
“And then the Somali pirates seize the tanker. My sources told me, incidentally, that the typical pirate is illiterate and eighteen years old.
“Then, I was told, the insurance companies send an adjuster to Somalia, where he establishes contact with these eighteen-year-old illiterate pirates and negotiates with them. For example, the pirates start out asking for five million dollars for the tanker. The adjuster tries — and usually succeeds — in negotiating them down to two million. Or even less, if he throws in a Mercedes convertible and a Sony DVD player and a dozen triple-X adult DVDs starring the Red Ravisher.”
“Watch it, my darling,” the Widow Alekseeva hissed warningly.
“That’s what adjusters are paid to do, Colonel,” Annapolis said.
“And the insurance company, with a smile, hands over a briefcase full of money — cashier’s checks have yet to become known in Somalia — to the pirates, and a smaller check to the ship’s owner for the additional expenses incurred while the ship has been in the hands of the pirates. Say for half a million.”
“That’s the proud tradition of the insurance industry,” Annapolis said, “handing the check over with a smile.”
“I understand,” Castillo said, “that they are smiling from ear to ear and meaning it when they finally write the check.”
“Well, I’m not sure how much they mean it,” Annapolis said. “I mean, the smile is sort of public relations.”
“Here, it’s a smile of intense personal pleasure,” Castillo said.
“What’s your point, Charley?” Radio & TV Stations asked.
“Take a wild guess, Chopper Jockey, what the premium is to insure a one-hundred-million-dollar supertanker loaded with two million barrels of oil at a hundred dollars a barrel.”
“I can’t do numbers that big in my head,” Radio & TV Stations admitted.
“Based on my experience in the insurance industry, I would estimate twenty-five million,” Annapolis said pontifically.
“Well, you’re the expert, you should know. So twenty-five million it is. Now, take two million, plus the price of a Mercedes convertible, a dozen dirty movies, and a Sony DVD player from that twenty-five million and what would you say is left?”
“Oh, those goddamn Swedes,” Annapolis said after a moment, his voice heavy with admiration. “They’re worse than even the goddamn Dutchmen and the goddamn Swiss! Why didn’t I think of this?”
“What have the goddamn Swedes, Dutchmen, and Swiss got to do with anything?” Hotelier asked.
“Ninety-point-seven percent of maritime insurance like this is underwritten by those clever sonsofbitches,” Annapolis said.
“And everybody is happy,” Castillo said. “The pirates, they have their ransom and the Mercedes and the dirty movies; the shipowners, who have their tanker back; and, of course, the smiling maritime insurance companies of whatever nationality who have a profit of, say, twenty-two million.”
“Pure genius!” Annapolis said. “My hat’s off to them.”
“Is there no way to stop the piracy, Charley?” Radio & TV Stations asked.
“President Clendennen could send Delta Force teams into Somalia with orders to shoot every illiterate eighteen-year-old,” Castillo said. “That’d stop it.”
“Do you think he’d do that, Colonel?” Annapolis said, worry evident in his tone.
“I think he might order it,” Castillo said. “But I don’t think Delta Force would go. I don’t know anyone in Delta who likes shooting illiterate eighteen-year-olds. Unless they shoot first.”
“If he did and they did,” Radio & TV Stations said, “he’d have a hell of a public relations problem with his legacy.”
“With his what?” the Widow Alekseeva inquired.
“Let’s move to the airfield, Drug Cartel International,” Annapolis said. “How about that, Charley? How difficult would that be to seize?”
“Not hard at all,” Castillo said. “The only problem would be keeping all the Delta Force guys who wanted to go off the C-130.”
“Delta Force would want to go, is that what you’re saying?” Radio & TV Stations asked.
“That’s what I’m saying. They’re still smarting after the drug cartel guys whacked Danny Salazar. They’d all love to go to Mexico and whack as many drug guys as they could find.”
“You mean as vigilantes?” Radio & TV Stations asked.
“No. If Clendennen sends them down there, the people they would whack would be whacked as they carry out their official duties. They would have a license to whack, in other words.” He paused, chuckled, and added, “I think most of them would even wear the kilts of Clan Clendennen if that’s what they had to do.”
“And Clendennen doesn’t know this? Or at least suspect it?” Radio & TV Stations asked.
“I don’t think he would care if he did.”
“That’s surprising. I would have thought — he’s big in the ego department — that he’d really be concerned with his legacy.”
“There’s that word again,” the Widow Alekseeva said. “What are you
talking about?”
“You used the word, Chopper Jockey, you explain it to the lady,” Charley said, chuckling.
“The way that works, Mrs. Alekseeva—”
“My Carlito likes you,” she interrupted. “You may call me Sweaty.”
“The way that works, Sweaty,” Radio & TV Stations said, “is that the minute someone gets elected President — and I mean someone of whatever political party and sexual preference — he starts thinking of how he’ll be remembered twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now. He starts thinking of his legacy.”
“I don’t think I understand,” Sweaty admitted.
“Let me have another shot at it. I guess it started with Roosevelt, Franklin D. What they do is have a presidential library. Roosevelt’s was built in Hyde Park, New York, where he’s buried. Ronald Reagan’s is in California. So is the Richard Nixon library. And they’re buried at their libraries.”
“They’re buried in their libraries?” the Widow Alekseeva asked incredulously.
“Usually, my darling, in sort of a garden just outside their libraries,” Charley qualified.
“Even Jimmy Carter has a presidential library,” Radio & TV Stations said. “With, I suppose, a lot of empty shelves.”
Charley and Hotelier chuckled.
“That’s unkind,” Annapolis said.
“You’re only saying that because you both went to that school for sailors,” Castillo said. “You’ll have to admit that Carter’s library has to have a lot of empty shelves.”
“The Harry S Truman Library is in Missouri,” Radio & TV Stations said. “One of the better libraries, really.”
“They all have libraries?” the Widow Alekseeva asked. “What’s that about?”
“Their legacies, Sweaty,” Radio & TV Stations explained. “They appoint some guy to run their libraries, and he spends his time filling them with books and newspaper stories and other material proving their guy was the best President since George Washington.”
“And collecting and then burning books and newspaper stories and other material proving their guy was the worst President since Millard G. Fillmore,” Charley contributed.
This time all of them chuckled.
“Either that,” Annapolis chimed in, “or they send the non-flattering stuff to the Library of Congress.”
“Where it will be misfiled,” Radio & TV Stations said.
“And absolutely will never again be read by anyone,” Charley concluded for him.
All the men were now chuckling, visibly pleased with their own humor.
“Before you all grow hysterical and incoherent,” the Widow Alekseeva said, “tell me where President Clendennen has his legacy library.”
“He doesn’t have one yet,” Charley said. “But he’ll get around to preserving his legacy, Sweaty, sooner or later. His ego — and Belinda-Sue’s ego — will demand it.”
“Not later, my darling,” the Widow Alekseeva said. “Sooner. Now.”
“Excuse me?”
“Now. Right now,” she said.
“I don’t understand,” Charley confessed.
“I’m not surprised. Tell me, my darling, what do you think just might take President Clendennen’s mind off putting your beloved Delta Force into Clan Clendennen kilts?”
There was silence.
All the men shrugged.
“I will be damned,” Radio & TV Stations said finally.
“She’s a genius!” Hotelier said.
“Supervising the design and construction of the Clendennen presidential library,” Aloysius Casey said.
“The Joshua Ezekiel and Belinda-Sue Clendennen Presidential Library and Last Resting Place,” Annapolis corrected him.
“Sweaty, I love you,” Charley said.
“I figure we start off with initial anonymous contributions of ten million dollars,” Casey said.
“Where are you going to get ten million dollars?” Annapolis said.
“Well, I’ll throw in a million,” Casey said. “It’s worth that much to me to keep Delta Force from having to wear skirts. The rest we get a million a pop from other public-minded citizens like an insurance tycoon I know.”
“I’m in,” Radio & TV Stations said.
“Me, too,” Hotelier said.
“The other people in Las Vegas will, I’m sure, be willing to contribute to such a noble cause,” Annapolis said. “But I have to ask, isn’t the President going to be suspicious that this suddenly popped up? You said he was paranoid, that he even suspected Secretary Cohen wasn’t really playing golf when she went to the Greenbrier.”
Castillo took out his CaseyBerry and punched the ON button. When the green LEDs glowed, he punched the loudspeaker and one of the autodial buttons.
“Charley, thank God!” Secretary Cohen’s voice bounced back from space.
“Good morning, Madam Secretary.”
“I’ve been trying to get you for hours!”
“Sorry. My CaseyBerry was turned off. I just turned it on a moment ago.”
“Why did you turn it off?”
“Truth to tell, I didn’t. I guess one of the jailers turned it off when they took my personal property from me.”
“Jailers? What jailers?”
“The ones at the Clark County Detention Center.”
“Clark County, Nevada?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So you are in Las Vegas with Roscoe J. Danton?”
“Who told you I was?”
“What were you doing in the Las Vegas jail?”
“It was a misunderstanding. We were released two hours ago.” He paused and then asked, “Who told you I was out here?”
“President Clendennen told me. The First Lady told the President and he told me.”
“How did she find out?”
“Does it matter?”
“I’m a little curious, that’s all.”
“The First Lady was watching television with the First Mother-in-Law, watching Hockey Puck with Matthew Christian, and there was Roscoe in a brawl with a porn queen.”
“Actually, it wasn’t a porn queen in that brawl. It was my fiancée, Mrs. Alekseeva, not Red Ravisher.”
“And it wasn’t a brawl,” the Widow Alekseeva objected. “My Carlito and the others were defending my honor.”
“Excuse me?”
“What would you do, Madam Secretary,” the Widow Alekseeva demanded, “if some pimply-faced French pervert pointed his television camera at you and demanded that you show him your… you-know-whats? Wouldn’t you expect Mr. Cohen to defend your honor?”
The secretary of State considered the question for a long moment, and then, in the finest traditions of diplomacy, decided a reply could be put off until there was more time for consideration of the question and all its ramifications.
“Let me put a question to you,” she said instead. “The last time I spoke with the President, just a few moments ago, in a conference call in which DCI Lammelle, Generals Naylor and McNab, and DNI Ellsworth participated, the President had some interesting things to say. I recorded the conversation. Listen to it, please, Charley, and then tell me what you think I should do.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
President Clendennen’s voice came over the loudspeaker:
“I told you all last night, after Belinda-Sue told me she and the First Mother-in-Law saw Roscoe J. Danton on Hockey Puck cavorting with a porn queen in Las Vegas, and I’m telling you for the last time now. Danton is supposed to be with Castillo and Castillo is supposed to be in Hungary getting ready to go to Somalia. I want to know where they are and what they’re doing and I want to know now. Unless I get a satisfactory answer within the hour, I shall have to presume what I have suspected all along, that there is a coup to drive me from office under way, and I will take appropriate action. By that I mean I will have you all arrested pending trial for high treason.”
Castillo didn’t say anything.
“Well, Charley?” Secretary Cohen asked finally.
“He does sound a little annoyed, doesn’t he? Not to mention paranoid?”
“He’s not kidding, Charley,” Cohen said. “There are four Secret Service agents in my outer office waiting for the order to arrest me.”
“Don’t worry, Charley,” another female voice bounced back from space. “Nobody’s going to arrest the secretary on my watch.”
“Hey, Brünnhilde,” Castillo replied. “How goes it? We could have used you here last night.”
“Why am I not surprised that you two are pals?” Secretary Cohen mused aloud.
“You didn’t need me,” Charlene Stevens replied. “Whoever that redhead was, she knows what she’s doing. I don’t think I could have thrown that clown so far myself.”
“She’s my fiancée, Charlene. Her name is Sweaty.”
“Actually, since I met my Carlito I’ve gotten a little out of shape,” the Widow Alekseeva said. “In my prime, I could have thrown that French pervert a lot farther.”
“Frank said you were a real looker,” Charlene said. “But he says that about everything in a skirt. I can’t wait to meet you.”
“You’ll have to come to our wedding,” Sweaty said.
“When and where?”
“There are four Secret Service agents in my outer office,” Secretary Cohen repeated. “What do I do about them?”
“Unless you’ve got a better idea, Charley,” Charlene said, “what I’m going to do is pepper-spray them, then drag them into the ladies’ room, strip them down to their undershorts, and then handcuff them to that automatic flush sensor thing on the toilets. That should hold them until Frank can get You Know Who into a straitjacket and over to the Washington Psychiatric Institute.”
“Oh, my God!” Secretary Cohen moaned.
“That’d work, Charlene,” Charley said, “but before you do that, let’s see if the Joshua Ezekiel and Belinda-Sue Clendennen Presidential Library and Last Resting Place doesn’t take the Commander in Chief’s mind off throwing the secretary of State into the slam.”
“What?” Charlene asked, obviously confused.
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