by Glenn Cooper
TEN
The Dassault Falcon’s co-pilot left the cockpit to find both his passengers sound asleep on their reclined seats. He made sure the girl was strapped in before approaching the woman and gently waking her.
‘Ma’am, we’re going to be landing in about twenty minutes. Just so you know.’
Mary Riordan only awoke when the jet landed with a bump in a heavy cross-wind. The woman had already done her hair and make-up and had the paperwork ready when the customs officer boarded the plane at the private aviation terminal.
The heat rushed in from the open door.
‘Welcome to the United States,’ she said. ‘Passports, please.’
The woman came forward and presented her own US passport. When it was stamped, she presented Mary’s passport and visa documents.
The spine of the Irish passport cracked when opened.
‘Looks brand new,’ the officer said. When she saw the recent issue date she said, ‘Is new.’
The name must have rung a bell because she said, ‘Are you the Mary Riordan? The pregnant girl?’
Mary stared back at her sullenly.
‘That’s her,’ the woman answered.
‘I thought she was missing.’
‘Hardly,’ the woman said. She’d been coached on how to handle this moment and she said confidently, ‘As you can see, she’s right here.’
The officer looked through her visa forms, the I-131, Application for Travel Document and the I-134, Affidavit of Support.
‘These humanitarian visas are hard to come by,’ the officer said, inviting some sort of reply.
‘Are they?’ the woman said. ‘I wasn’t involved in the visa process.’
That was a lie. She knew damned well how she got the humanitarian parole.
‘Mary, my name is Officer Burke,’ the woman said. ‘Is this your first visit to America?’
The girl nodded.
‘Is Boston your final destination?’
The woman gave the officer their itinerary.
Burke glanced at it and asked, ‘Is your ride here?’
From the open cockpit the pilot said, ‘That Cessna off our port wing.’
‘OK, Mary. How long have you known this woman, Mrs Torres?’
‘We’ve only just met.’
‘Did you go with her of your own free will?’
‘Sorry, what?’
‘Did you want to go with her?’
‘Hell no. They made me go, didn’t they?’
‘Who made you go?’
‘My parents did.’
The woman had another document in her folder.
‘Officer, this is a signed and notarized consent form from Mary’s parents, authorizing this trip and the custodianship of my employer.’
The officer inspected the paper, scooped up all the travel documents, and looked through the windows at the smaller jet on a nearby stand.
‘I know your plane is waiting but I want to check with my superior before clearing you. Stay on board.’
The woman sat back down, wondering whether to make an emergency call. She decided to be steady and hold off. Mary was playing with her new phone again. She’d downloaded games during the flight. To keep them cool, the pilots re-closed the door and kept the AC cranking.
Twenty minutes passed, then thirty before there was a knock on the door. The co-pilot let the customs officer back on board. She looked perturbed. Burke had argued her position against granting entry – she’d been unconvinced about parental consent for the minor – but she’d been overruled following a series of calls up the management chain of the Department of Homeland Security.
‘Miss Riordan, welcome to the United States. Enjoy your stay.’
When Burke returned to the office in the private aviation terminal her supervisor said, ‘I just got a call from someone very high up at DHS in Washington. It was for you and me personally. We’ve been told to keep our mouths shut about this entry.’
‘Who am I going to tell, Frank?’
‘I don’t know – the whole fucking world?’
She laughed at that. ‘I like this job. It’s perfect for someone with a shit memory. I don’t even remember who we just let in.’
Where are The Three Marys?
Cal read the headline in the Boston Globe and said to himself, ‘That’s what I’d like to know.’
Joe Murphy knocked on the door and saw the paper on Cal’s desk.
‘Did you read it yet?’ Murphy asked.
‘Not yet. I just got in.’
‘You’re in there. Featured rather prominently.’
Cal let out a curse and grabbed the first section.
He cursed a few more times.
Looking up he said, ‘How’d this get out?’
‘Don’t have a clue but they missed my name so all’s well with the world. It appears you’ve got a few voicemails.’
The voicemail counter on Cal’s office phone was flashing 99, its maximum display.
‘I am so screwed,’ Cal said.
‘That was fast,’ Cal told the reporter who entered his office.
It was early afternoon. Cal hadn’t left his campus office all day because of the media staking out all ways in and out of Divinity Hall. The department secretary had gone out to a food truck to get him lunch.
Earlier in the day, Cardinal Da Silva had taken Cal’s call straight away.
‘I can only imagine that the leak about your journeys came from someone on the ground in Manila or Lima,’ Da Silva had said. ‘I certainly can’t rule out a source from one of the dioceses. But what’s done is done. We have to find a good way to handle it.’
‘I’ve gotten hundreds of media requests from all over the place. I’m always happy to help, Your Eminence, but I’ve got work to do.’
‘Then do as I do during media feeding frenzies. Feed only a single shark.’
That shark was a New York Times reporter who laid his phone on the table to record the session and said, ‘I hopped on the Delta shuttle. Door to door – four hours. So, this is still an exclusive, right?’
‘Right.’
‘And it’s still on the record, right?’
‘Right again.’
‘The Globe’s going to be pissed.’
‘Not as pissed as the Harvard Crimson. The editor of the college paper managed to sneak into the building with her student ID. She begged me for an interview. I don’t have the time to do more than one.’
The Times reporter, a diminutive man, smiled. ‘So, you went with the big dog on the porch.’
Cal smiled back. ‘Something like that.’
‘OK, let’s start. Do you know where the girls are?’
Randall Anning was not accustomed to waiting. Not for tables in restaurants. Not for his private jet to get airborne. Not for his security detail to get his car ready. Billionaires were like that, especially those with egos his size. But he was in the one place where he had to cool his heels. So he waited, his hands resting on the ultra-smooth, summer-weight cloth of his sixty-thousand-dollar Kiton K-50 suit.
He had watched the secretary typing at her desk and answering the frequent phone calls, deflecting all but one caller, the one who seemed to be the cause of the delay.
‘Are you sure I can’t get you a coffee or some other beverage?’ she called over to Anning.
He waved her off with as much cheer as he could muster.
He was not strikingly tall, or broad or handsome, but there was something about the forthright way the seventy-year-old carried himself, his determined jaw, his sunken eyes, and his torpedo-shaped shaved head that turned heads and commanded respect.
The assistant’s phone rang again and this time she rose and told him, ‘The President will see you now.’
Anning couldn’t recall how many times he had been inside the Oval Office but each time sent his heart racing a little. The last thing he ever wanted to do was run for office but there wasn’t a President he’d met over the last thirty years whom he thought was doing
as good a job as he could. And those thoughts were in abundance with respect to the current holder of the office, Llewellyn Griffith, the former governor of Florida, whom Anning considered a useful horse’s ass.
‘Randy,’ the President boomed, rising up from his desk and flying across the room to shake his hand. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. Secretary of Defense was on the line. Shit storm brewing. There’s always something to turn your hair white, not that that would be one of your problems.’
Anning wasn’t sensitive about his hair follicles but it was just like Griffith to try to assert some kind of alpha-male dominance over a real alpha male.
‘Mr President. Good to see you,’ Anning said, his prairie accent drawing out each syllable. ‘I wasn’t waiting long at all.’
They sat on opposing couches, separated by the eagle of the presidential seal emblazoned on the carpet.
‘You know you can still call me Lew – when we’re alone that is,’ Griffith said, grinning. ‘How the hell have you been? When was the last time we saw each other? Palm Beach, was it?’
‘The fundraiser for the RNC at The Breakers,’ Anning said.
‘That’s right. My wife got – how do you say it in French? – drunk, and Betsy had to steady her ass out of the ballroom.’
‘Drunk’s a little harsh, Lew. Tipsy, I’d say, but my wife has had a lot of practice steadying the likes of me. She’s strong as an ox. Got those big-boned, peasant-stock, Scandinavian genes.’
The first lady had, in fact gotten roaring drunk and way too loud on endless glasses of wine, and Betsy Anning, a Viking of a woman, had indeed muscled her back to the presidential suite. She hadn’t been prompted to intervene by the President or by her husband; she just did it. The Annings took charge of things.
‘So, you called this meeting, Lew. How can I be of service?’
Griffith unbuttoned his jacket to give himself more breathing room. He was a bruiser of a man, six foot five, with the body of a college athlete gone to seed, a country-club body that looked just fine in a good suit but bulbous in just about anything else. As a candidate, his principal physical attribute had been his hair, luxuriously abundant for a man of his age, naturally the color of a brilliant, uncirculated silver dollar, perennially coiffed in something of a bouffant.
‘Randy, you know I ran hard on the issue of the decline of our moral standards.’
‘No sir, you won on the issue.’
‘Ha, yes. Yes, I did. And as a fellow Catholic, you know the significance of my win. I’m only the second member of our tribe since Kennedy to win the presidency. I’m proud I’m a Catholic but I’m also a proud conservative. I know what’s good for this country and what’s bad but I can’t change things all by myself. Sure, I’ve got the bully pulpit and I can work around the edges with executive orders but I need Congress to get real shit done! But it’s like rowing in molasses when I keep getting hit by this kind of crap. He’s got a damn-loud megaphone too.’
The latest issue of Time magazine was on the table. Griffith gave it a four-fingered push toward his guest.
Anning didn’t have to pick it up. He knew what was inside. An open letter to Griffith from Pope Celestine harshly rebuking him for his stances on immigration, Muslims, racial profiling, crime, health care, ethno-nationalism – pretty much his whole legislative and cultural agenda.
‘I read it. I’m not surprised it’s gotten under your skin. I’m sure that was its intention.’
‘Did you catch what that son-of-a-bitch said in the last paragraph – along the lines of the Holy See cannot sit idly by as the leader of the free world works to subvert the compassionate teachings of Jesus Christ? Then he says something like we must speak out and more. What’s the more? Is he threatening to excommunicate me?’
‘Hell, he’s not going to do that, Lew. He’s just grandstanding.’
‘Well, he’s publicly embarrassing me and giving ammunition to my political opponents. Did you see how George Pole handled himself the other day? He’s my goddamn hero for what he did – I called him and told him that. I wish I could do something like that but I can’t very well sit here in the White House and change my religion. What am I going to do, become a goddamn Baptist?’ Pausing for a moment to muse, he continued, ‘The evangelicals might actually go for that! Anyway, I want to know what you can do to help me through this mess.’
Anning scratched at a peeling patch of sunburned skin on his scalp. ‘You know I’m not the right guy to be an intermediary with the Vatican any more, Lew. I could do it and did do it with the last pope, but I’m persona non grata with Celestine’s crowd of Commies. I let them have it after they auctioned off half of the Vatican Museum and I haven’t given the Church a nickel since then. Why should I? So they can funnel my cash into buying plane-loads of condoms for Africa or propping up leftists in South America? And yes, George is my hero too. I’m honored to call him a friend and a fellow Texan. He did something principled. I’d say he follows in your footsteps in that regard.’
‘Thanks, but I didn’t ask you in to feed me compliments. I need help in countering the Vatican bullshit. You’ve got the money and connections within important Catholic circles to muster support for me. I want you to come up with a plan to hole their ship under the water line. Maybe dig up dirt on influential cardinals surrounding Celestine. Maybe even on him. It’s time to take the gloves off.’
Anning showed a row of gleaming teeth. ‘What makes you think I haven’t been working on something already?’
The President leaned forward, his flabby middle spilling over his beltline. ‘Tell me more.’
‘Lew, believe me, you don’t want to know.’
‘This wouldn’t have something to do with the humanitarian visas for the knocked-up girls that Senator Price from the great state of Texas got me to grant? Were you the invisible hand behind that?’
‘Like I said, you don’t want to know. But stay tuned, Mr President. Stay tuned.’
ELEVEN
It was Sue Gibney who had insisted that the three of them should share a room. She’d been given the assignment as den mother, with a room near theirs, and a remit by Mrs Torres to do whatever it took to make and keep them happy. When each one arrived, Mrs Torres had handed the girl over to Sue with minimal ceremony, then promptly retreated to her own quarters to recover from the ordeal.
The original plan was for them to have private rooms, three identical ones to avoid jealousy. Each had the same bedspread, the same pictures on the walls, the same dolls and toys, the same PlayStation games.
But Sue was the one who had to stay awake, particularly during their first nights, to deal with the crying and hysterics, and she had persuaded Mrs Torres to put all the beds into the same room so the girls could keep each other company.
The two women had little in common. Torres was considerably older, in her late fifties. She was regimented and proudly officious, ruling the roost with a steely attention to detail and protocol. Her features were as dark as a moonless night and she would never emerge from her suite of rooms before completing an elaborate cosmetics ritual. Bright-red lipstick was always the cherry on her sundae. She had been a naturalized American citizen for decades but her Mexican accent was still so potent that Sue had to concentrate if she spoke too quickly. Sue was fair with hair the color of milk chocolate usually tied in a retro pony-tail, and bright, lavender eyes. She eschewed make-up which made her mornings breezy affairs. And she was very much on the free-spirit side of the personality spectrum. Torres was Sue’s boss. She had screened her, interviewed and hired her and had demanded a level of formality in their interactions. Their conversation about the girls’ rooms had gone like this:
‘Sue, we’re in a thirty-room mansion and you want them to stay in one bedroom?’
‘For these girls, each bedroom is like the size of their houses. None of them has ever slept on her own. They all share. On top of the shock from the sudden dislocation from their families, they’ve got to adjust to loneliness at night.’
&nb
sp; ‘The sooner they adjust to their new lives, the better.’
‘They’re hysterical. They’re young. They’re pregnant. Do you want to be the one responsible for a miscarriage?’
And Sue had gotten her way.
The strategy was successful because the nights became quieter. Yes, there were still tears, but they came from whimpering, not wailing, and Sue got some sleep.
There were other early challenges for Sue and Torres to handle. For the Marias, there were basic hygiene issues. Maria Mollo didn’t know how to use a flush toilet and neither girl had ever used a shower. The difference between the hot and cold sink taps had to be demonstrated. New personal care products had to be demoed. Mary Riordan was more worldly, insisting on using the lipstick and make-up she had brought from home and soon the other girls were curious and wanted to try them too. The Irish girl’s new iPhone caused early problems. Each Maria wanted her own little machine on which to play games so Torres had to send one of the staff to town to buy a couple more. And Mary became angry because Sue wouldn’t let her have the house Wi-Fi password or allow her to sign up for a cellular plan. Watching news coverage of their disappearances was forbidden. The TV in their lounge near the bedroom was restricted to videos only.
The language barriers facing the two Marias were anticipated. A local Filipino woman, a seamstress, was pressed into service after she signed an aggressive nondisclosure agreement. Torres and various maids had the Spanish covered. An English-as-second-language teacher was hired as a live-in tutor to the Marias six days a week. The cook was commissioned to do meal plans to match the girls’ individual tastes and to combat homesickness.