by Steve Berry
The minister spoke in an impromptu manner, talking of death and resurrection, then of Alex, whom he’d known personally. That was another thing Danny hated about funerals. Preachers who pretended. This one, though, spoke from the heart. He suddenly felt old, though he shouldn’t. He would soon be sixty-five, eligible for Social Security, which he would not accept, just as he’d refused the Secret Service protection offered to all ex-presidents. The last thing he wanted was more babysitters. The time had come to be free in every respect.
A small contingent of the Secret Service was here protecting the Speaker of the House. Vance stood outside the tent holding an umbrella, a dashing, handsome chunk of a man with a thick bush of black hair and eyes the color of pennies. Central casting could not have sent over a better physical specimen to be Speaker. Fifteen years separated them, which seemed more like fifteen hundred. Power both invigorated and eviscerated, especially the kind that came with two terms in the White House.
He caught Vance’s unemotional stare, one that carried the pallid look of a mannequin, surely designed to convey nothing. Then the current Speaker of the House acknowledged the former president of the United States with a slight nod of the head. He was impressed. That was more courtesy than he’d been offered over the entire last eight years. Graciousness, though, was easy to extend to someone who could no longer cause you any harm.
And that made him feel even older.
He ought to form a support group. Something like NOLIP. No Longer Important People. Folks who could help one another through the withdrawal from being addicted to power. Some people who left public office were glad to go. Others channeled their energies into philanthropic work. A few just capitalized and made money. Then there were players, like himself, who knew how to do little else. For him politician was not a dirty word. It simply meant “compromiser.” Which was exactly how things got done. The sine qua non of politics was not vision, but consensus. Nobody, not himself, not Lucius Vance, not Warner Fox—nobody got their way 100 percent of the time. The trick was to get as much as you could with each opportunity. If the deal you want isn’t possible, then make the best one you can. That had been his motto. And his legislative success as president, despite the best efforts of men like Lucius Vance, had been respectable.
The minister finished and the mourners with their blank expressions began to file past the casket, paying their respects with heads bowed, gentle touches, and sincere looks of sympathy. He watched as Vance took his turn, gently shaking Diane’s hand, then speaking with her for a few moments.
He waited, then joined the line.
A few old acquaintances said hello.
Blount County had been around since 1795, named for the local governor at the time—Maryville, the county seat, for the governor’s wife. Talk about vanity. The land had once been Cherokee-owned, then was stolen away by farmers who’d migrated west from Virginia and North Carolina. His ancestors had been a few of those energetic settlers. The landscape was green and lush, the forested hills like ocean waves flowing off into the distance. The Blue Ridge Mountains defined everything, and several national parks had ended logging long ago. There were two hundred churches countywide, which had to be a record of some sort. Its most famous resident was probably himself, though Alex Sherwood ran a close second. But here, among friends, he was not a president, nor an ex-president. No one called him by his given name—Robert Edward Daniels Jr. He was just Danny, the guy who once served on the Maryville city council.
And he liked that.
His turn came and he approached Diane. She wore a stylish black dress with a lace veil and clutched a wad of tissue in an ungloved hand. He stooped to her chair and she accepted his offer of condolence.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
He didn’t really care for Diane. Never had. She didn’t like him, either. He ought to clasp her hands or do something, but touchy-feely was not his thing. So he simply said, “I’m going to miss him.”
“Please,” she said. “Do come by the house.”
He hadn’t planned on going to any post-service gathering, hoping to avoid both her and the idle chitchat that came with an east Tennessee funeral. Not wanting to make a scene, though, he simply told her, “I’ll definitely make the effort.”
But he had no intention of it.
He fled the tent and walked back through the rain toward his car. This cemetery held a lot of memories. His uncles, grandparents, and parents were all here.
And one other grave.
His daughter.
She’d died in a fire decades ago. A part of both him and Pauline perished that night, too. She’d been their only child and there’d been no more after that. Not a day passed that he did not think of her. It had been years since he last visited the grave. And his refusal to deal with her tragic death had been a big part of his and Pauline’s demise.
He angled away from the crowd and threaded a path through the rows of monuments and markers, the wet cemetery quiet and shadowy. He found the southern face of the treed knoll and his daughter’s plot beneath the old oak. The turf was cut low and tight, in good repair. The stone lay flush with the earth, noting her full name, date of birth, date of death, and a simple statement. OUR BELOVED DAUGHTER. He stood, hands in his pockets, rain flattening his hair, and begged her one more time for forgiveness.
So much time had passed.
But the pain seemed as fresh as yesterday.
A familiar emptiness gnawed at his stomach. He closed his eyes and tried not to cry. His whole life had been spent projecting an image of toughness. Never had he let anything get to him.
Except this.
“I need to speak with you,” a female voice said.
He grabbed hold of himself, not realizing anyone was near. When he turned he saw a woman, maybe late fifties, early sixties, with thick, tangled hair and wide brown eyes.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“A friend of Alex’s.”
“There are a lot of those here today.”
“Mr. President—”
He held up a hand and cut her off. “My name is Danny.”
She threw him a weak smile. “All right. Danny. There’s something you need to know.”
He waited.
“Alex was murdered.”
Years of hand-to-hand politics had taught him the value of a poker face, especially when the person speaking was trying to get a reaction. So he kept his features frozen and allowed the rain to wash away the mistiness that had been forming in his eyes.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “Who are you?”
“I have to talk with you. Privately.”
Still no answer. So he asked, “Why do you believe Alex was murdered?”
“There’s no other explanation that makes sense.”
CHAPTER THREE
ARKANSAS
Cotton examined his prison. Different, he’d give it that. Some sort of old incinerator, built long ago of cast iron welded into a cylinder eight feet wide and stretching upward at least twenty feet. He’d studied every inch of the rusted interior and found no weak spots. At the bottom, where he now sat, the only escape came through a locked iron hatch that opened to the outside, but no amount of force he’d applied had caused it to budge. The stinking air hung clammy and close, filled with the fine soot of rusty corrosion. He’d woken inside, after being unconscious for probably a couple of hours. A knot the size of a half dollar had risen at his hairline.
Somebody had popped him hard.
The afternoon heat of a bright sun had turned the metallic confines into hell. Mosquitoes had found him through slits in the roof that re-formed into a latticework of shadows across the brown walls, and his body itched. He’d been sitting, thinking about how he’d abandoned his bookshop in Copenhagen once again. He seemed to spend more and more time away than there. Luckily, the people who worked for him could handle things.
At least this time there’d been buried treasure.
Neither the g
old coins, his backpack, phone, sunglasses, gun, nor any of his tools had been imprisoned with him. No surprise there. Whoever coldcocked him was probably enjoying those. Normally, enclosed spaces weren’t his favorite, but here the afternoon sky was visible overhead, his physical movements unrestricted, so it wasn’t entirely threatening. The great outdoors—albeit a bit confined.
His fingertips prickled with heat, and thirst had become a problem. A fly buzzed overhead, crossing through the slanted bars of sunlight and diving closer. It would not be long before this place became an unbearable oven—and he assumed that had been the whole idea. Just leave him out here. He could scream his lungs off and nobody would hear him, nothing but empty woods for miles in every direction. He drove that wonderful thought away with a flick of his hand at the fly that would not retreat. His temples throbbed and his head felt disoriented. He had a crick in his left shoulder and felt stiff all over.
Definitely getting a little old for all this.
A loud clang on the outside wall startled him. He’d grown accustomed to the silence. He waited for metal to grate metal and the lock for the hatch to be released.
But nothing.
Instead something hit the latticework above.
He stared up to see a thick rope find an opening between the slats and drop down toward him. Tied to its end was a rock, enough weight to allow gravity to feed out the slack.
It hit the floor a few feet away.
Bound between the rope and the rock was a handwritten note.
Miss me?
He shook his head and smiled, then freed the rock, yanking on the rope.
Tight.
Ready for action.
He knew what he had to do, so he braced his boots against the iron wall and leveraged his way up. His forearms and shoulders ached from the climb but he made it to the top, gripping one of the rusted iron girders, hoping it remained strong enough to support him. He swung his body upward and kicked the lattice away. He’d already noticed from below that the panels merely rested inside frames, most twisted with corrosion. The one he assaulted squeaked in protest but flew skyward.
He clambered up through the opening and gripped another of the old girders, his eyes tracing from one side to another, satisfied it, too, remained secure. A small superstructure extended skyward a few yards, part of a chimney that once funneled smoke. He leveraged himself to his feet and scrambled across the warm metal, balancing like an acrobat, finding the edge where the rope disappeared downward.
Cassiopeia Vitt stood in the thick brush below. Trees engulfed the incinerator on all sides.
“You couldn’t just open the door?” he asked her.
“It’s padlocked.”
“Why didn’t you pick it?”
He knew she always carried the proper tools.
“It’s a combination lock. So I had to go find some rope, and that wasn’t easy.”
“You could have called out and told me what you were doing.”
She smiled up at him. “And what fun would that have been?”
They’d split up this morning. She dropped him off in the national forest, then drove to visit with park rangers trying to obtain more information. Finding him would have been easy since he wore a Magellan Billet–issued watch that contained a GPS tracker, her smartphone capable of accessing the signal.
“I assume there’s a good story here?” she asked.
“It’s a laugh a minute.”
The drop was over twenty feet, so he reeled up the slack from inside the incinerator, discarded the rock, and tied the rope’s end to one of the girders. His vantage point was high enough that he was able to spot the same chalky ridge he’d located earlier at the GPS coordinates that had started his search.
He was not all that far off.
A shot echoed and a bullet pinged off the iron a few feet away.
He dropped to the girder, lying flat, using the old superstructure chimney for cover. Sweat ran down his brow and stung his eyes. He blinked the moisture away and, through the trees, spotted a gunman with a rifle fifty yards away, perched atop another ridge, large boulders providing cover. The shooter was shifting positions, perhaps looking for a clearer line of fire.
“Darling.”
He caught her condescending tone from below.
“Reel up the rope.”
He did as she said.
Tied to its end was a nine-millimeter pistol. Not one to question a gift, he freed the gun and leveled the weapon, waiting for the rifleman to appear from behind another outcropping
He squeezed twice.
Rounds skipped off the distant rocks like flung stones.
His assailant ducked away from the line of fire toward a scatter of boulders. Which allowed him to stuff the gun inside his belt, then toss the rope over the side and slip down to the ground, the incinerator and trees now providing protection.
“You look terrible,” she said as his feet hit the ground.
He was wet, unshaven, and odorous. Dirt and grime stained his clothes, especially his hands, red with rust. She actually looked great, though, moving with the ease and suppleness of someone quite comfortable in snug jeans. Her pitch-dark hair, normally cascading past her shoulders, sat coiled into a tight bun at the back of her neck. Her coffee-colored skin seemed accustomed to the heat, part of a Spanish ancestry, her sultry face full of beauty and candor, the type of woman who easily turned a glance into a stare. He calmed his breathing and tried to think beyond his adrenaline.
“Does that knot on your forehead hurt?” she asked.
He shook his head with a strained attempt at vigor. His mind was racing, ticking off possibilities. Number one on the list of things to do was finding out who attacked him, but common sense told him the answer to that inquiry lay on the ridge above.
“You move ahead and see if you can draw the shooter’s attention,” he said to her. “The brush is too thick for anyone to get a bead on you. Try and make enough noise to attract attention. I’m going to double around and get behind whoever it is.”
“I think the people at the Smithsonian are oblivious to what’s going on here.”
“That’s an understatement,” he said. “I almost brought Gary into this.”
His seventeen-year-old had begged to come, and he’d nearly given in, but the warning of trouble from Martin Thomas’ earlier visit had cautioned otherwise. And school, too. Gary lived with his mother in Atlanta and still had another two weeks before summer break.
His head remained woozy and each breath tore his throat like a mouthful of broken glass. “Do you have some water?”
She produced a plastic bottle from her backpack. He unscrewed the top and swilled the tepid liquid in his mouth, trying to ignore the tinny taste. Somebody had been watching him in the woods, somebody who knew exactly where to be and possessed skills enough to get close. Then that somebody, or somebodies, had carried him here and tossed him inside an iron can.
That was a lot of effort.
But for what?
Time to find out.
CHAPTER FOUR
Danny parked the car in the empty parking lot for the Missionary Baptist Church. The woman from the cemetery sat across from him in the front passenger seat. A little insane for an ex-president to be alone with a total stranger, but instinct told him that this lady was no threat. Rain continued to tap the roof, hood, and windshield. They’d ridden in silence from the funeral, slipping away unnoticed.
“You plan to ever tell me your name?” he asked her.
“Alex said that you and he were best friends. Is that true?”
“How long were you and he friends?”
He’d never suspected Alex Sherwood was an adulterer.
“We’ve known each other six years,” she said.
That shocked him even more. “How was it possible to keep that secret?”
“Because we truly were just friends. That’s all. Never once did he violate his marriage.”
“And what did his wife think of this friendsh
ip?”
“I have no idea. She came to Washington only a few times a year. Her husband seemed to be the last thing on her mind.”
He caught the contempt. But it wasn’t unusual for congressional spouses to stay at home. Most had either jobs or children to care for, and living in DC was not cheap. Contrary to public opinion, the vast majority of people in Congress were not rich and the salary they were paid barely compensated for the costs of serving.
“I live across the hall from Alex,” she said. “We were neighbors a long time. He was a darling man. I can see you don’t believe me, but sex was not part of what we meant to each other.”
He could understand his old friend’s self-control. He and Stephanie were at first enemies, then friends, now something more, and all without him violating his marriage, either.
“We enjoyed spending time together,” she said. “Having a meal, watching a movie, reading. He was talking about retiring from politics in two years.”
Another surprise. “Then what would happen?”
“He told me he was going to divorce his wife.”
“Because of you?”
“I don’t know. We rarely spoke of her. But during the past few weeks he’d begun to say more. And he wasn’t some miserable husband, complaining to another woman. He just seemed like an unhappy man who’d grown apart from his wife.”
“And your presence had zero to do with that?”
“His telling me his intentions to divorce came as a total shock. But I won’t say I didn’t like the prospect. He said he would do it when he was no longer a public person. I know what you’re thinking, that’s self-serving. But he thought it would be easier, on all concerned, if it happened that way.”
He could perfectly understand that philosophy, as it was exactly what he’d done. The only difference being that he and Pauline had mutually agreed to end their marriage.