by Ridge King
NO
RULES
A gut-gripping political thriller
A St. Clair Thriller - Book 4
Ridge King
Elsinore Press
Miami Beach
© Copyright 2021
Ridge King
Series Reading Order
https://www.ridgeking.com/
FREE STORY
“Storm Over Bimini”
This free short story is available only from Ridge personally. Send him an email and he’ll send it to you right away. It involves the backstory of Jack’s dad Sam when he was younger and was embroiled in a torrid love affair with Bedelia Vaughan, wife of his business partner, Toth Vaughan, and the ramifications when Toth discovers their secret on a fishing trip to Bimini.
[email protected]
NO RULES
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
APPLES AND ORANGES
Chapter 2
RIPPED OFF
Chapter 3
DO NOTHING?
Chapter 4
THE MONEY TRAIL
Chapter 5
ALLIGATOR ALLEY
Chapter 6
THE TRANSITION
Chapter 7
THE GRAND SCHEME
Chapter 8
ROLLING DICE
Chapter 9
CAMP DAVID
Chapter 10
PERRYMAN’S PLAN
Chapter 11
THE CALL
Chapter 12
CONFLICTED
Chapter 1
APPLES AND ORANGES
Matt and Sue Hawkins overslept the next morning and had to rush to the airport to catch her flight back to Wyoming. They just had time for a cup of coffee before she boarded.
“I wish we’d had time for sex before we left the hotel.”
“I know,” he said, offering up a weak smile. That had been the last thing on his mind.
“There was no time with the party and everything last night.”
“I know.”
“But it was exciting. That big house, Horizon. All the glamorous people. Imagine living like that Patricia Vaughan.”
If only she knew, he thought with a rueful smile.
“You look worried, Matt,” she said.
He looked up at her. He couldn’t exactly tell her he was blackmailed last night at the party, much less why he was blackmailed. All he wanted right now was for her to get on that plane and get the hell out of Washington so he could focus on what he had to do.
“Oh, just sad to see you go, I guess,” he said. He looked at her objectively. “Do you think you’ll like it in Washington?”
“I think so. You’re here. I’d like it anywhere you were, Matt, you know that.” He smiled, not wanting to talk anymore. Her flight was announced.
“Let’s go, honey, that’s the second time they’ve called it.” They rose and went towards security.
“I’ll miss you,” she said.
“I have to leave you here,” Matt said.
She hugged him and then kissed him on the mouth.
“When will you call me?”
“Tonight. Run along now, and take care of your mother.”
She left him and he waved to her as she went down the concourse to her gate.
“Just two more weeks,” she yelled back to him, waving and smiling.
He waved back until he lost sight of her. Then he walked away in a sullen mood. He passed an information booth that had a banner over it: VISIT FLORIDA. He wandered over and looked at some of the brochures, thinking of the upcoming trip to Miami on the Republican candidate’s private plane. Was it unethical to accept a trip on the private plane of the Presidential candidate you weren’t voting for?
He wasn’t sure. He reminded himself to ask Bill Crampton.
* * *
Phil Slanetti actually paced in his office. He was furious with Hawkins’s impertinence, and yet he was trying to maintain a detached attitude in the whole matter. He knew he wasn’t trying to be President. He was helping Sam Houston St. Clair. If he won or lost it was all the same to Slanetti personally. He only had to fulfill his obligation to President Norwalk. After that, Slanetti was through. His intercom buzzed. He touched it.
“Yes,” he snapped.
“Speaker Perryman is on line three.”
“Right,” he said, his tone changing. He lifted his receiver. “This is Phil Slanetti.”
“The Keystone fits the arch.”
He replaced the phone. Neil Scott was safe and would vote for St. Clair. Things were getting too hectic even for him to follow, he thought. Last night when he and Perryman had met in the disused telephone room at Patricia Vaughan’s Thanksgiving party at Horizon to talk about Stathis’s discovery, Scott hadn’t even been mentioned.
And now with Eric Stathis, the President’s chief of staff, knowing about the Keystone File, Slanetti wasn’t sure precisely where he stood. He had an early scheduled appointment with President Norwalk. He knew he’d have to tell the President. Norwalk and Stathis had always been close friends, but Slanetti couldn’t decide if Stathis would tell Norwalk what he knew. He doubted it. He didn’t think Stathis would leak it to the press, either. He wouldn’t have bothered to inform Senator Thurston directly and so secretly if that had been his plan. Stathis was (luckily for the Republican effort) letting Thurston decide how to use the incendiary information that the Keystone File had become.
Well, at least, Neil Scott was safe, thought Slanetti. But Illinois, Oklahoma, Wyoming—there were still problems—and the Republicans were still a good several laps from touching home base in the Keystone affair.
He was glad he’d spoken to Jack Houston St. Clair about putting pressure on Matt Hawkins. As one of Hawkins’s only friends in Washington, Jack was in a perfect position to use his influence to bring Hawkins’s vote into Jack’s father’s column, even if Hawkins had sworn to vote for Thurston.
His intercom buzzed again.
“Yes?”
“The President wants you immediately, sir.”
“Thank you,” he said, blinking his eyes.
He swallowed hard. He half expected Norwalk to call the whole thing off when he told him. He knew Stathis had a strong moral influence over Norwalk. Only one way to find out what he’ll do, he thought as he picked up a folder and headed out to the corridor that led to the Oval Office.
* * *
At the same time the President’s secretary called Slanetti to the Oval Office, Derek Gilbertson and his new “partner,” Vlad Kucherov, had just sent down the first team of divers to begin what they anticipated would be a day-long process of bringing the $20 million in drug money up from the narco-submersible Mirta that had sunk a few weeks earlier off Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, 70 miles due west of Key West.
After following Flores and Duarte out the day before and finding out where the sub had gone down, Kucherov had shot them both, returning to port to put together the boats and equipment necessary to bring up the cash this morning.
“I’ve got guys with a couple of vans we’ll use to get the money back to Miami,” said Kucherov in a low voice, taking Derek by the arm and drawing him away from the crew. “We’ll pay these guys and get the hell out of here.”
“Listen, Vlad,” said Derek. “This is my score. That money down there’s mine, not yours. Just because Howard Rothberg told you about it and you muscled your way into the picture doesn’t mean you’re in charge, you hear me?”
“I hear you, Derek, I hear you,” Kucherov smiled. He had a single crooked tooth in his lower jaw that Derek somehow found annoying, threatening.
Derek didn’t think he was getting very far in an effort to intimidate the burly and yet suave Russian mobster. He knew there was much more to the backstory of this guy
who had swept into town with a Frenchman named Napoleon LaPierre from Marseille to open the Kremlin Club, the biggest and hottest nightclub on South Beach, or rather, to muscle their way into the club owned by Jonah Lomax.
“We still haven’t figured out how much you’re getting for providing me with this unasked for assistance,” Derek forged on.
Kucherov looked at the brown-eyes, the color of a light molasses, that went so well with Derek’s almost girlishly wavy blond hair. While he wasn’t in one of his $4,000 suits right now, he still looked exactly like the Ivy League lawyer he was, thought Kucherov. The crooked Ivy League lawyer that he was, Kucherov corrected himself in his mind. He would have to treat Derek well—he was a conduit to greater fortunes than even Kucherov had dreamt awaited him when he came to America to partner up with the slimy Frenchman.
“We’ll work it out, Derek. I’m sure you’ll be more than fair with me. I still have to help you out with that business you said you had for Omer Flores.”
“The business I had before you shot him in the head yesterday? That business?”
“Well—yes, that business,” Kucherov shrugged, his arms spread wide helplessly. “Once he led us to the sub, we really didn’t need him anymore.”
“No. I needed, him, not you.”
“Now you need me more,” was all Kucherov had to say.
“Señor,” one of the crew called out. Derek and Kucherov moved to the side of the boat and peered over as four divers broke the surface. Two of them were Kucherov’s men, Dmitri and Gregor.
No one liked the look on their faces when they ripped off their masks.
“Dmitri,” said Kucherov, clearly in a panic. “What?”
Dmitri and Gregor shook their heads.
“It’s gone!”
A beat as this sank it.
“Gone?” said Derek.
“It can’t be gone,” said Kucherov.
Derek and Kucherov looked at each other. They both thought the same thing at the same time: that the other one couldn’t possibly have taken the money for the simple reason that they had spent the entire afternoon together yesterday, as well as the evening, staying up till midnight while they planned today’s excursion. During the preparations, they’d looked a dozen times at the pictures of the bundled cash the diver took the day before.
“Get up here!” Kucherov yelled. “You scuba, Derek?”
“Sure I do.”
“You and me. We see for ourselves.”
“You got it.”
They both stripped down and in minutes were over the side, following Dmitri and Gregor down a mere 35 feet to the shallow bottom where they immediately saw the stricken sub, resting upright, its main hatch wide open.
Both men caught their breath as they saw the odd loose bits of cash floating up through the hatch where the notes were picked up by the current and swiftly whisked away toward the Gulf Stream not too far away.
Dmitri went in first followed by Kucherov and Derek. Gregor waited above. It was very narrow in the sub and not a lot of room to maneuver when you were saddled with full scuba gear.
Inside, Dmitri flashed his light toward the rear of the sub and Derek and Kucherov moved back together, side by side. They clearly saw where the bundles had been. Whoever had stolen the money had punctured a few of the bundles and left them there, not deeming it worth the time to scoop up the loose bills that now floated through the cabin like pale ghosts of real money.
But it was real money. Derek grabbed a half-filled bundle, cinched together the parts where the wrapper had been split and handed it back to Kucherov, who gave it to Dmitri to hand up to Gregor. Derek found a couple of burlap sacks on a shelf and used them to stuff the remaining open bundles into, quickly securing what he could.
They made their way out and returned to the surface.
Once safely back on board their fishing vessel, Derek ordered the captain to return to Key West. The second ship brought along to help with the bundles followed them.
Kucherov stood in his Speedo with his hands on his hips looking at the horizon. Derek looked at Kucherov’s pasty white skin and paunchy stomach and love handles with distaste. I’ll never look like that, he thought. But he didn’t really care what Kucherov looked like.
“What are you thinking, Vlad?”
Kucherov nodded in the direction of a large motor yacht heading north, about four miles away.
“The other boats.”
He nodded toward the south, where a sailboat elegantly rode the swells, dipping gently into the troughs before rising again.
“What about them?”
“There were boats yesterday.”
“Yes, I saw. So what?”
“One of them had to be watching us.”
“You serious?”
“We left, they came in, took the money, left before the sun went down.”
“How could they get the exact position?” Derek wondered.
“I don’t know. You have any other explanation?”
“No,” said Derek.
“No one knew where the sub was except Flores and Duarte. No one.”
“Someone knew.”
“No,” Kucherov shook his head. “Only Flores and Duarte.”
“Well, it would be nice if we could ask them,” said Derek with a bitter edge to his voice. “But then, you had to be a hog and a showoff by shooting them both in the head, didn’t you, big guy?”
Kucherov’s first impulse was to reach out and slap Derek as he turned and moved away aft, but he nibbled his lower lip in deep concentration as he restrained himself.
Because Derek was right.
He had, as the Americans say, fucked up royally.
* * *
When Slanetti went into the Oval Office, Secretary of State Thomas Uptigrow was just leaving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff after briefing the President on the military standoff between the Russians and the Chinese in the Xinjiang desert. Eric Stathis was there, of course, as he was for most of the meetings Norwalk took.
“Ah, there you are, Phil,” said Norwalk. “You have the information on the foreign aid bill I wanted to see?”
“Right here, Mr. President,” said Slanetti, holding up a file folder.
“Shall I sit in, Mr. President?” asked Stathis.
“No, Eric. I’ll talk to Phil alone. He’ll report back to you later.”
Stathis nodded, gave Slanetti a short, hard look, and left the room. An aide closed the door behind him.
Norwalk motioned to a chair and Slanetti sat down.
“I have some bad news for you, Mr. President.”
Norwalk eyed him carefully before smiling a devious little smile.
“Enough to make me drink this early in the morning, Phil? Maybe I should have a glass of wine.”
“You might want the bottle,” said Slanetti, before telling him everything he knew about what had happened the previous night at Horizon.
“Oh,” said Norwalk softly, rubbing his chin and swiveling his chair around to look out of the windows behind his desk.
“That’s right. He took Thurston and Perryman into the library and told them he’d found a couple of files while snooping around my office when I was in a meeting with you.”
“How much does Eric know? How much could he know?” asked Norwalk, suddenly getting up and walking around the desk, putting his hands in his pockets. As a sign of respect, Slanetti rose from his chair.
“Not much, apparently. I know from what he told them which files he saw, and I was only with you for a few minutes that day, so he couldn’t know much.”
“This is bad.”
“If he hadn’t run into Perryman, we’d never have known.”
Norwalk rubbed his forehead.
“What can Thurston do?”
“I’m not sure, but I think we might stop him. You’ll remember I told you I expanded the files somewhat. I have something on Thurston, but how potent it will prove remains to be seen.”
“We’ll use it if we have to. Do wh
at you think’s best,” said Norwalk.
He wondered to himself as he walked over to the two couches facing each other by the fireplace and sat on one of them. On the coffee table between the couches was a bowl of fresh fruit. He reached out and picked up an orange.
“You know, I’ve been here for eight years and always wondered what happens to this fruit. Every day I come to work and that damned bowl of fruit is there. It never gets old, no one ever takes a piece of it, not a banana, not an orange, not an apple.”
Slanetti smiled.
“I guess they just replace it,” he said.
Norwalk pulled out a Swiss Army knife from his pocket, put down the orange and picked up an apple. He rubbed the apple on his sleeve and sliced a wedge out of it and put it in his mouth.
“Nice and crisp, just the way I like ’em,” he said.
Slanetti just stared at the man as he ate two more slender wedges. He looked up at Slanetti and on an impulse picked up an orange and tossed it to him.
“Take that with you, Phil. Oranges are good for you.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.”
“I guess the best thing to do is just keep on with it. If Eric didn’t mention this thing to me this morning, he won’t mention it at all, not while we’re in office.”
“That’s the way I read it, sir.”
“All right. I want a report from you on a daily basis from this point on, OK?”
“Yes, sir.”
As Norwalk sat there slowly slicing his apple up and eating it, he wondered just how extensive were the files in Keystone. He brooded about Stathis, his closest friend. He was deeply sorry he’d found out about the Keystone File. His relationship with Stathis went back many years and meant much to Norwalk. He imagined that Eric would keep quiet on the subject, knowing that he didn’t want him to know about it originally. He figured Eric would remain docile until Norwalk left office. But Norwalk knew his friend’s high moral opinion of himself. And he knew that whatever became of either of them after the new President was installed, he’d never be as close to Eric again, that Eric would avoid him as much as humanly possible when Norwalk went into retirement, that Keystone would plague them both and haunt their later years and the final fruits that might’ve come from their continuing relationship. He sighed slightly and decided it was something he’d have to live with, for the good work he and Slanetti were undertaking, for the good of the country, even with Eric silently knowing. He’d lost a good friend because of his efforts to see Sam Houston St. Clair replace him.