Nick shrugged. “It takes money to make money.”
“I don’t like lawyers who think they’re above the law.”
Nick brightened, and I could see he’d feared he’d have to card-count. My heart was getting a hefty workout today. Add new principle: Don’t make Nick gamble.
I explained to him about EG’s skipping school and added, “What we really need is tuition at some fancy school, not dubious lawyers.” I’d been stewing over this all evening, but I didn’t know how to go about finding a school that would take her.
“That’s been taken care of,” the intercom announced.
Nick sat up straight, and I glared at the intrusion on our private conversation. The spook had no right listening in on us. I had half a mind to go upstairs and hunt him down and rip off his head, but he spoke again before I could put my rage into action.
“There is a private school at the next Metro stop from here. A friend of mine is on the board. I’ve arranged for Elizabeth to be enrolled on a scholarship basis. She will need to report tomorrow to present her credentials.”
A big gaping hole opened in my midsection. I didn’t want this stranger dealing with my family. That’s my job.
But he’d found a school now instead of later. EG would be on top of the world.
“We don’t take hand-outs,” I informed him. I wanted to ask where the hell we were supposed to live if EG went to school here and he threw us out, but I was holding my breath.
“And I’m not giving any,” the voice replied. “If she can do the work, she has the slot. Send your brother to St. Kitts while you finish your work here. You don’t have to do everything yourself.” The intercom light snapped off.
I didn’t have to do everything myself? Now there’s a concept. I stared at Nick, who stared back. I’d always done everything myself. There’d never been anyone else to do it.
Until the spook had taken us in. I rejected that notion instantly.
“I can truss up Brashton as well as any unsavory detective agency can,” Nick announced. “I even know how to sail his yacht. Just let me know when he arrives on the island.”
And I could see his determination. Here was something he really wanted to do, and I’d have to let him do it. Which meant...
I’d have to let Graham send EG to school. It could be weeks before Brashton decided it was safe to reach St. Kitts.
Did this mean we could stay until I found Pao? If everyone else got what they wanted, couldn’t I have my wish, too?
Chapter Eleven
Ana discovers the Oracle’s secrets and heads for political trouble.
I liked being alone, I told myself as I returned to the computer after Nick left. I would hate traveling to St. Kitts. The thought of trussing up Brashton and hauling him back here might give me a vicarious thrill, but logically, the hassle wasn’t my thing. Nick was as capable of handling—or mishandling—the capture as I was. Besides, he could sail and I couldn’t.
I hated the idea of Nick becoming involved in something that sounded vaguely nefarious, even if it was necessary, but he was a grownup. The money and the choice was his.
Instead, I concentrated on resenting the spook’s interference in our affairs. EG was too young to make her own decisions. That was my domain. What if I didn’t want EG going to a private school? What right did Graham have to talk to people about us? To make arrangements without asking permission?
We didn’t have to send her.
She wouldn’t stay in the public school.
Conceding defeat ungraciously, I switched to the news site for the latest on Senator Tex—his lawyers had scheduled a bond hearing for him in the morning. Jolly good for him. Maybe once he was out I should just go over there and ask him if he was a murderer because he had a daughter who wanted to know.
As I glared restlessly at the computer screen, wondering how to investigate murder, an e-mail with an attachment from an unknown sender popped up in my mailbox. I abhor spam, but I can’t delete all unknown senders since I can’t possibly memorize the continually changing addresses of all my correspondents.
I ran it through my aggressive virus check then downloaded it.
The file opened in Adobe Acrobat, and an analysis of Edu-Pub’s financial statement appeared before my wondering eyes.
~
After a frustrating evening reading unfathomable accounting gobbledy-gook, I got up Tuesday morning wondering if our clothes would be on the street the minute we left the house. The fear of homelessness had haunted me all my life. I had to confront Graham in his lair sometime soon. Like today.
Graham had full access to the accounting analysis I’d studied last night. If he had any comment on it, I hadn’t heard. My correspondent’s accountant had commented that Edu-Pub seemed to carry an inordinate amount of cash in an industry that relied heavily on accounts receivable and inventory, but that didn’t prove they were funneling illegal cash.
Just because Pao’s website address was in the same zone as Edu-Pub didn’t mean he deposited his donations in any account but his own. I’d already sent a check to the website but it hadn’t cleared yet. One must presume innocence until proven guilty.
I had to talk to Graham.
Even contemplating bearding the lion in his den didn’t induce the same anxiety as telling EG she could go to private school, or worrying about Nick departing for St. Kitts to capture a crook. Maybe Magda was right. Maybe it was better to keep them all at home where they couldn’t get into trouble.
Not that this philosophy worked, mind you. We were all fine upstanding examples of how we could get into trouble anywhere we went. And “home” to Magda was anywhere she or her friends happened to be.
Frighteningly enough, I was beginning to grasp my mother’s twisted logic. The kids were safe with people who understood them—their family.
By the time I vacillated between dress and jeans, neither of them precisely the elegant ensemble I imagined private school mothers wore, and descended to the dining room, Nick had already informed EG of her new position. EG didn’t do excited well, but she did suspicion excellently.
“Why is he doing this?” she demanded when I entered.
The candelabra had reappeared on the table, but our host didn’t deign to reply. Maybe he slept in the mornings after battling the Forces of Evil all night.
I poured fresh-squeezed orange juice from the pitcher on the buffet. Apparently we were back in Mallard’s good graces. “If you don’t know, how would I?” I countered.
That momentarily shut her up, and I contemplated letting silence reign. If I didn’t offer anything, she couldn’t argue, right?
“I don’t have to wear a uniform, do I?”
Okay, so she didn’t know the answer to everything. Makes one wonder how she knew the answer to things we hadn’t asked, but I wasn’t ready to blow my mind pondering the mysteries of the universe. “We won’t know until we go over there.”
A neat file of school applications and scholarship recommendations waited by my plate. How the devil did the spook do that? He’d had less than twenty-four hours to produce material that would take weeks of normal filing and approving. Perhaps he was even better at forgery than we were. I prayed the school believed them, if so. I’d hate to get EG’s hopes up only to have her ridiculed and bounced out. Nick and I had developed armored shields taking chances that way, but considering our eccentric lifestyles as the result, it would be nice if EG didn’t have to.
“I’ll take her over, if you like,” Nick offered, eyeing my denim jumper with distaste. “But if I’m not going to St. Kitts yet, I need to go job hunting, and you’ll have to pick her up. I’ve talked to a few people, and there should be plenty of openings around Dupont Circle. Not lucrative, but sales positions never are.”
I’d like to see what kind of frou-frou establishment we were sending EG to, but I felt guilty about neglecting my assignment after Graham’s gracious gesture—or controlling presumption, depending on how I looked at it. If Nick was willing, we
might as well work this parenting thing together, at least until Tex was proven innocent. Or otherwise.
“All right, if you’ll see EG settled into school, I’ll check what came in overnight.”
I hesitated, waiting for the candelabra to object. I wasn’t certain whether to be relieved or disappointed when it remained silent. It was oddly comforting to have an omnipotent figure watching over us. Not to mention unsettling.
~
I was torn in so many ways that it was difficult for me to focus. I had to find Brashton and our money. My week to find Pao ended tonight. I ought to be looking for a place to rent. And then there was Senator Tex rotting in jail, where I’d personally like to leave him if it hadn’t been for EG and my nagging conscience. I really ought to be investigating Blackwell Johnson now that he’d floated onto my radar screen, but there’s only so much a girl can do.
I picked up my e-mail and let my various problems knot my stomach until I could figure out which to work on first.
The correspondent who had given us the Nassar alias for Pao claimed Pao had used the name Nassar while traveling in Jakarta. The picture on the passport she had copied looked identical to the one Graham had given me when I first started on this hunt. Sal was a friend of mine from the government school I’d attended the year we stayed in Jordan. She moved in diplomatic circles these days and was stationed in Jakarta. I trusted her sources.
I located the GSA files Graham had apparently lifted to find Nassar’s name and photo ID. There was no mention of his leaving the GSA, as I’d been told, but the file could be old.
I assumed Pao had somehow obtained Nassar’s passport and pasted his photo into it. The details of height and eye coloring and so forth were close enough to pass. So, did Pao obtain the passport fraudulently from Nassar, and that was the reason Nassar had been fired? And where did Hagan fit into the scenario? I’d already checked, and knew Hagan’s wasn’t a highly secure government position. Could Pao access government records, or could Hagan be his inside accomplice?
And could Pao be using Nassar’s identity to establish the financial funnel to Jakarta that I couldn’t seem to find?
Before digging deeper into this possibility, I scanned down the list of messages until I hit an encrypted subject header. Shit.
I recognized the sender. We virtual assistants work in an invisible world behind public events and had to be careful of our identities or any information we divulged. If we were to rely on each other for research, we needed some confidence that our sources were genuine. I’d attended a conference or two, met a few people I trusted, and we occasionally shared tidbits about the people for whom we worked.
Shana worked in a federal government office in Atlanta, and I had used my international connections to do her a few favors over the past year. After moving to D.C. , I’d sent her a carefully worded message telling her with whom I was working, and asking her to do a little poking around.
Apparently whatever she’d discovered required the use of the encryption software we’d both been experimenting with. I don’t think she was sending me Leno jokes.
I knew Graham had access to this mailbox. He was probably staring at his screen, waiting impatiently for me to decode the message. Whether he knew it was about him might be questionable since even I didn’t know it for certain. But I wasn’t about to take a chance.
I transferred the message into my thumb drive and tucked it into my pocket. I left the Whiz searching and downloading some sites recommended by another e-mail and slipped out the front door. Even Mallard didn’t know I was gone.
My thumb drive, or portable drive, whatever you want to call it, is a heavy-duty five gig and carried my essential software. I could plug it into any machine with a USB port and an operating system newer than ’95, and be up and running. I hurried as fast as my sandals would carry me to the Kinko’s down the street.
I waited impatiently for an acne-pocked nerd downloading porno to vacate the public computer. He hunched over the keyboard as I tapped my shoe and watched over his shoulder. When he turned around to scowl at me, he got a panicky expression on his face and hurriedly departed. As already established, I’m not large enough to scare a rabbit. I was wearing my usual braids and a generic jumper. I didn’t think I looked fierce, but maybe militant enough to cause alarm in a sex fiend.
I sat down, plugged the thumb drive into the port, opened my encryption software, entered the e-mail with our code, and read Shana’s note.
Amadeus Graham, age 35, law degree, Harvard University; PhD in political science, Princeton; associate chair in Fletcher School of Diplomacy, Tufts University; political advisor for Department of Defense; married; widowed on 9/11; dismissed from post for health reasons in 2002 after public disagreement with vice president and Secretary of Defense. No current info in our files. This the guy?
I was still reeling over age 35. He did all that and became such a recluse at thirty-five that people thought he was dead? This did not compute. Nothing about Amadeus Graham computed. He should have been in every search engine around the world with those kinds of credentials. I was right. He’d erased himself. Or someone had done it for him.
Widowed on 9/11. Wounded, too, maybe? Was that the health reason that had made him an invalid? If so, the guy had suffered more trauma in his lifetime than I had. He was a regular Icarus, soaring to the sun in his chariot of gold and getting his wings singed so badly he’d crashed to the ground, never to rise again.
I was almost feeling sorry for the bastard, except he had my grandfather’s house and I didn’t. Where did Senator Tex factor in? Had he complained to the Secretary of Defense about some transgression resulting in the public firing? I knew enough about politics to know there was always a private story behind the public one.
And what about Mindy Carstairs? There wasn’t much of an age difference between Mindy and Graham. They both had worked in government. Mindy’s mother had known of Graham, even if she thought he was dead. This was getting way too complicated.
While I was there, I scanned the other e-mails I’d copied into the drive. Working with Graham looking over my shoulder all the time was a trifle unnerving. I wanted to enjoy my momentary freedom. I was thinking of stopping at Starbucks—until I opened a file containing the list of investors in Edu-Pub. It was a privately held company registered in Delaware, so it had taken some major networking for one of my friends to track down a list of owners.
EG’s father was on the board of directors.
My mouth went dry as I stared at the computer screen. I could feel people hovering, waiting for me to end my time online, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the monitor. That old black paranoia welled.
Was Graham hunting down Pao to get at EG’s father? If so, would he go so far as to frame Tex for murder?
Or should it be the other way around? Maybe Tex really was guilty of murder or was involved in Pao’s money-laundering and deserved to be in jail and Graham was proving it.
I had some difficulty picturing conservative Tex as a supporter of radical Islamic groups in Indonesia, but his relationship to Edu-Pub wasn’t promising. Edu-Pub’s amazing cash flow could very well be my key to Pao’s ability to live in D.C. without any seeming source of income.
I hastily printed out the list, shut down my program, retrieved my thumb drive, and strode out onto the blistering sidewalks of a D.C. August morning. Would it be possible to talk with the senator about Pao? It didn’t seem very likely if he was still behind bars. I had never tried to talk my way into a prison and hadn’t the slightest idea how to go about it, even if I knew where they locked up senators.
Did I want to let Tex know I was on his trail if there was any possibility that he really was the bad guy? I didn’t perceive anyone associating with Pao as a saint. Radical Islamic fundraisers might not come under the heading of bad guys in my lexicon, but money-laundering did, if that’s how Pao was hiding his donations.
Not that I thought Graham was any saint either. I was beginning to wonder if
he wasn’t even more paranoid than I was. But unlike EG’s father, Graham had made it a point to find EG a good school. That put him in my corner. For now.
I had less than twenty-four hours to find Pao or confront Graham and tell him I needed more time. I wanted to be in a position to go to Graham, say here’s Pao’s address, and ask for another assignment so we could stay in the house.
I scanned the list of Edu-Pub owners looking for other names that might ring a bell and found several interesting facts. First, a Bob Hagan was on the list—coincidence?
I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the second name I recognized was Reginald Brashton Junior. What were the chances that Reggie III—he who now sailed to St. Kitts on our stolen money—had inherited his father’s shares of Edu-Pub?
Third was interesting in what wasn’t there. I didn’t find my grandfather’s name. Had Johnson lied about our inheriting the stock? Or had Reggie done some fancy transferring of his shares? To what purpose?
The fourth and final fact was the most shocking: Senator Paul Rose, the current administration’s favorite for his party’s nomination for president owned a large percentage. Even living behind the blinders of my basement world, I recognized his name.
Wow. Gripping the paper so hard it wrinkled, I stared blankly up the street lined with imposing edifices containing embassies and religious foundations and other power centers. How did I proceed? Brashton Two was dead. The Third was in the Carribean. And it might be easier to reach Tex in jail than a candidate for president. How likely was a man of the stature of Paul Rose to even know who Pao was?
What the heck was Graham chasing? He’d said an international cartel bent on taking over the world. I hadn’t believed him, but it was starting to sound as if the picture could be a lot bigger than I’d thought. Why did it all keep coming back to textbooks and how could I find out?
The old lizard brain kicked in—fundraisers know fundraisers. Rose would have a huge fundraising campaign headquarters in D.C. If Senator Rose was on the board of Edu-Pub, what were the chances the firm was one of Rose’s contributors? Pretty damned good if my understanding of politics had any foundation at all, and I was schooled at the knees of the best.
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