by Stephen Frey
They all nodded somberly.
Padilla turned and looked out to sea, at the breakers rolling up onto the beach. The white foam roiling the waves was visible in the moonlight. He’d never been more scared in his life.
DORSEY WAS MEETING WITH the two older men again. Like before, he was meeting with them in their mansion on the Maryland Eastern Shore. Like before, he’d been forced to drive himself over here, concocting another story for Bixby—who he could tell was suspicious at this point. But the two older men had warned him against relaying to anyone what was going on. Dorsey half-suspected that Bixby had followed him—or had him followed—tonight. He appreciated Bixby very much, but the man was a paranoid son of a bitch. Of course, now that Dorsey thought about it, maybe that was one reason he was so good at being chief of staff. Because he was paranoid.
“We thought you were close to Victoria Graham,” the man who’d interviewed the naval officer last time said in a challenging tone. They were all sitting in the mansion’s tastefully decorated living room in the dim light cast by a single banker’s lamp sitting on an antique table in a far corner.
“I am close to her,” Dorsey shot back defensively, noticing for the first time that the house had a musty smell to it. As if it wasn’t used much.
“Then why in God’s name isn’t she telling you who she has keeping an eye on Gillette?” the other one barked. “That’s what you asked her to do, didn’t you? What we told you to tell her to do.”
“Yes,” Dorsey said quietly. “You did. I understand why you’re—”
“And she did tell you she’s got someone close to him, right?”
“She did,” he confirmed. “Someone very close to him.”
“But she won’t tell you who it is.”
Dorsey rubbed his forehead. He was starting to feel one of those migraines he’d been getting more and more often. He’d asked Victoria three times to tell him who the person was, and each time she’d given him a different excuse. “Look, she told me the second Gillette moves, she’ll call me. Like she’s already done. She’s been right so far, hasn’t she? About him going to Washington, then to Baltimore. That all checked out, didn’t it?”
“We want the name,” one of the men said fiercely, chin out.
“All right, all right,” Dorsey answered quickly. “I’ll get it out of her, I promise.” But he wasn’t so sure he’d be able to. For some reason, Victoria was holding out. No amount of coaxing seemed to be working.
“Well, you better do it fast.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
The man who’d interviewed the officer jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward the back of the house, toward the room with the one-way glass. “We spoke to our guy here an hour ago. It’s happening. The thing’s going down in the next forty-eight hours.”
Dorsey shook his head and held up his hands. “Why are you two so worried about having someone close to Gillette if you’ve got that guy in your hip pocket? Telling you everything that’s going on? I don’t understand.”
“We can’t be sure he’s giving us the right information.”
“Hasn’t he been right so far?”
“So far,” the second man agreed, “but now we’re getting down to the end. He might be a plant, or the higher-ups might be using him to throw us off track. We haven’t been able to triangulate.”
“Frankly we’re very worried about that,” the other man added. “About not being able to get an independent confirm. You never know, you just never know. When we were in charge of missions like this, at this point in the operation we had everybody watching everybody else. A guy like the one we’re working with wouldn’t have been able to pick his nose without somebody seeing it and reporting back. Unless, of course, we were using him to plant disinformation.” He let out a heavy breath. “We can’t figure it out.”
Dorsey nodded again, more to himself than the other two this time. He knew this was how spooks got near the end of a mission. They worried about disinformation and plants and what was real and what wasn’t—and for good reason. Dorsey’s years on the Armed Services Committee had taught him that. At this level you couldn’t take anything for granted. When you did, that’s when you got burned. Even when it was something that seemed innocuous.
“You’ve got to find out who it is.”
“I hear you. I hear you.” Dorsey eased back into his chair and scratched his head. “This is just Gillette meeting with the one man, correct? The doctor? Padilla?”
“Yes.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Dorsey knew the men hated Gillette for screwing up the nanotech plan a couple of their buddies were going to get rich from. And for the death of Sam Hewitt—an establishment legend who they’d been close to and who had helped them with more than a few of their missions through U.S. Oil, the huge company he ran. But it seemed as if they’d have plenty of chances for revenge later, plenty of time to take Gillette down after the Cuba thing was done. “I mean, I know you hate Gillette,” Dorsey spoke up. “But are you worried you won’t have another chance to kill him or something?”
The man who’d been sitting with Dorsey watching the interview with the officer last time folded his arms over his chest and smiled cynically as if the senator were crazy. “Kill him? Why would we want to kill him?”
Dorsey swallowed hard, suddenly feeling as if he were groping in the dark. “I just thought because of—”
“We need him alive, for the love of Pete. At least for now.”
“That’s the whole problem,” the other one chimed in. “We’re worried that someone might get him before he gets to Cuba. That somebody else might kill him. Christ, if that happens, we’re all screwed.” He jabbed a bony finger at Dorsey. “If that happens, you can forget about being president because then we won’t have anything to hang Jesse Wood with. We need the coup to happen, we need the SEALs and the Rangers to go in there and assassinate these people on the list, and we need video of it. Then we’ll have Wood right where we want him. The coup doesn’t go down, we’ve got nothing.” The man paused. “But rest assured, Gillette won’t be coming back from Cuba.” He exchanged a knowing glance with the other man. “In all the confusion, somehow he’ll be lost.”
“You mean—”
“I mean the Rangers will take care of Gillette, too. Christ, do I have to spell out everything for you?”
Gillette had to realize how dangerous the mission was going to be, but he couldn’t have any idea that the real danger came from inside his own government, not the Cubans. “Who are you worried about?” Dorsey asked. “Who’s the ‘someone else’ going after Gillette?”
The two older men glanced at each other again.
“We don’t know,” one of them admitted. “It’s just white noise coming through the speakers at this point. You never know about these things, but our source is credible. That’s the problem, that’s why we’re worried. It’s someone we’ve gotten good information from before, on other matters. A person we used when we ran the Company.”
“We’ve got to protect Gillette,” the other one said strongly, “at least for the next two days. At all costs. But it’s going to be damn hard to protect him if we don’t know where he is.”
“You know he’s going to Miami,” Dorsey pointed out. “Granted, Miami’s a big city, but if you know that’s where he’s going, that makes your job a little easier, doesn’t it?”
“Sure. If we could really count on him going to Miami.”
“I thought it was all set.” It was Dorsey’s turn to point back toward the room with the one-way glass. “I heard that naval officer say it myself.”
“Actually, he said he was—”
“Just find out what’s going on with Victoria Graham,” the other man interrupted. He hesitated for a few moments. “Have you ever heard of a woman named Allison Wallace?”
Dorsey nodded. “Of course. She works at Everest with Gillette. She’s from one of the wealthiest families in the Midwest. Victoria talks about her a lot. Likes
her. Says she’s very capable.”
“Any chance she could be involved in this thing? Could she be the one Victoria Graham is using?”
CHRISTIAN AND BETH were back at the Italian restaurant in Manhattan, halfway through their entrées. Beth had come up this afternoon from Washington on the spur of the moment. A call at three this afternoon to him at his office out of the blue to tell him she had to see him, that she was going crazy thinking about him. He’d tried to tell her he had an important dinner with the CEO of one of Everest’s biggest portfolio companies, but she’d told him she was already on the train before he could explain.
Instead of saying he was sorry and there was nothing he could do, he’d canceled dinner with the CEO. Putting it off for a week even though the guy had come all the way in from St. Louis just for the dinner and was sitting in the lobby of the St. Regis cooling his heels. Christian had arranged for the guy to fly back to St. Louis immediately—apologizing profusely—by giving him a lift out of New York on the Everest G4, which was hangared at La Guardia.
He’d actually met Beth at Penn Station—they’d agreed on the phone that, as usual, she’d catch a cab and come straight to the restaurant. But he’d surprised her instead, picking her up and twirling her around when she ran to him as he stood beneath the schedule board in the middle of the station. And he hadn’t felt the least bit self-conscious about it—even with three of Quentin’s men watching. Now that everything was going into motion, Quentin was stepping up the bodyguard count. This morning Christian had picked up a coded e-mail from JRCook that the final order covering the first meeting would come soon.
“This veal tastes so good,” Beth said, sliding her hand to Christian’s. “I love this place. It’s like our place.” She looked around at the decorations, mementos from the town in Italy where the owner had been born. “We should come here all the time.”
He realized she was staring longingly into his eyes and he glanced away. His intention tonight had been to explain to her all about Nikki, about how Beth reminded him of his dead sister, and how he wanted to keep seeing her and helping her. But that it wasn’t going to be a romantic thing for him. Which would be hard to do now. He groaned softly to himself. He wished all this romance stuff came to him as naturally as the deal business did.
Beth leaned close to him and ran her hand up his arm. “Chris, I want to make love to you tonight.”
PADILLA HAD GONE to his car after the meeting of the Secret Six had broken up, gotten in, and driven three miles. When he was certain none of the other five would see him, he’d turned around and headed back to the beach.
“How did it go?” General Delgado asked.
“Fine.”
“Everyone at the meeting?”
“Yes.”
“The attorney?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Good.” Delgado took a satisfied puff off his cigar and smiled.
As if he’d been here before, Padilla thought to himself. Not the physical place but the psychological place. As if he understood Padilla’s conflicted state of mind exactly because he’d experienced it many times. “Why are you smiling?” Padilla asked, irritated that Delgado could be so cool at a time like this.
“It will be all right, Doctor,” the general said soothingly, “it will be all right.”
Padilla swallowed hard. Delgado understood exactly the terror he was feeling. “How do you know, General? How do you know it will be all right?”
Delgado removed the cigar from his mouth and handed it to Padilla. “You’re a religious man, aren’t you, Doctor? You have faith, don’t you?”
Padilla took a long drag off the cigar, noticing that this was a different brand of Dominican than the one the general usually lit up. He held the smoke in for a few seconds, then let it out with a long, smooth exhale. Only one puff, but he was already starting to feel the effects, already starting to feel light-headed. Perhaps that was why the general was smoking this brand. It was stronger. Perhaps, despite the man-of-steel exterior, the general was feeling his own anxieties. “I am, but how would you—”
“An educated guess, Doctor. Don’t overthink things at this point, my friend.”
Padilla handed the cigar back to the general. “What does being religious have to do with anything?”
“With religion, you must put your faith in God. Whichever god you pray to. With the Incursion, you must put your faith in me.”
Delgado was amazing. It almost made Padilla cry to be in the presence of such greatness. As a doctor he could save lives, but Delgado had the power to reshape them. Delgado was about to change the course of Cuba’s history on the strength of his own personality, on his own inner strength, making many lives so much better. If the Incursion was successful, Delgado would be a god in Cuba.
Of course, if it failed, he’d be nothing but a footnote, another execution, the subject of another website put together by someone in Miami.
The things that made Delgado amazing were his willingness to take the ultimate risk—and his supreme self-confidence. That he believed so strongly in himself he was willing to bet his life on being able to influence forty thousand men. If he was wrong and couldn’t, unlike the Secret Six he’d have no chance to escape. He’d be taken into custody immediately.
“Did you find out anything about the attorney?” Padilla asked.
“I did.” Delgado reached into his pocket. “And tomorrow the name of your secret group will be wrong because there will be only five of you.”
Padilla nodded dejectedly. It was almost as if the attorney had known he was a dead man. Padilla could see it in his eyes tonight.
The general took one of Padilla’s soft, small hands in his large, leathery one. “Here.” He pressed the cow’s ID tag into the doctor’s palm. The cow Padilla had hit that night in front of Gustavo Cruz’s ranch. “Give this to Christian Gillette when you meet with him. If Mr. Gillette gives it back to me when I meet him here, I will know we have support from the United States.” The general smiled. “Enjoy yourself in Naples. You’re doing a great thing.”
Padilla glanced down at the small piece of metal with the number etched into it, then up into Delgado’s eyes as he thought about what he’d just heard. “Naples?”
ALLISON STOOD across Columbus Avenue from the restaurant, staring through the glass at Christian and the young woman. It was exactly as Sherry Demille had said—she hadn’t been lying. The girl Christian was seeing was young and so beautiful.
Allison tried to swallow, but it was hard. The lump in her throat seemed to be the size of an orange. She’d followed Christian this afternoon when he’d left the office. Followed him to Penn Station, then followed them here and watched them eat dinner. It was all exactly as Sherry had said. It made her want to cry.
AS HE DROVE, Alanzo Gomez hummed along with the music drifting from the tape deck. He’d bought the deck in Paris in an odds-and-ends shop on rue de Morgan, when he was there last negotiating the huge loan from China. Brought it back with him—along with several tapes of classical music—hidden in one of his bags. Simply flashed his Central Bank identification card to the people at customs, and he was whisked through with no problems, quickly recognized as a senior member of the Party.
A loyal member, he thought to himself proudly as he drove along listening to Aida. First thing tomorrow he would approach his superior—the president of the Central Bank—and lay out for him what was going on with the Secret Six. And thereby cement his position as the next president of the bank. Cuba would stay safe. He would be a national hero, the other five would be executed.
Gomez slowed down as he came around a turn and saw the roadblock in his high beams—two FAR jeeps facing each other perpendicular to oncoming traffic and four soldiers, three of whom were armed with rifles. The fourth held up both his white-gloved hands and walked a few steps ahead. Gomez’s eyes narrowed as he dimmed his lights and came to a stop. These kinds of things weren’t unusual—but they weren’t common, either. It was probably just where
he was coming from that was making him nervous, he thought to himself as he rolled down the window of the Studebaker.
“Good evening, sir,” the lieutenant said politely but firmly. “I need to see your identification.”
“Of course.” Gomez pulled out his wallet. He’d been thinking of showing the man his Central Bank ID, showing how senior he was, then thought better of it. No need to show the officer any more than he’d asked for. That might cause suspicion. “Here you are.”
The officer took the faded, folded piece of paper. “Thank you. I’ll be back. Please turn off the car.”
Gomez winced. This didn’t feel right. He watched the officer warily as the man strode stiffly back to one of the jeeps and climbed inside. “Damn it.” He peered at the jeep. The problem was, if he spilled his guts during a military interrogation, it would look as if he were trying to protect himself. It would look much more suspicious than if he walked calmly and confidently into the office of the president of the Central Bank of Cuba and laid out in a coherent fashion exactly what was going on and who was involved. He felt the sweat beginning to seep from his palms. “Shit.”
But just as the nerves were starting to get to him, the officer hopped out of the jeep and headed toward him in the same slow, stiff stride, smiling as he handed the identification back and waved to the driver on the right to back the jeep up.
“Thank you, Señor Gomez. Have a good night.”
Gomez restarted the car. “Thank you, Officer. And thank you for your service to Cuba.”