Daniel Gadanz had been true to his word. The twenty million dollars he’d promised as a down payment had already arrived in Sterling’s UBS account in Basel, Switzerland — Sterling had checked on his cell phone immediately after wheels-down at Dulles a few hours ago. And he’d already moved the money from UBS to an even lower-profile account he maintained in Antigua, in the financial world’s ultimate black hole.
So he had the down payment, and there was so much more to come.
And he had a high-priced call girl back at the Four Seasons in Georgetown, sleeping naked between the Egyptian cotton sheets of the comfortable king-sized bed.
Sterling took another lick off the chocolate cone as he watched the rotors atop Marine One continue to rotate. Yes, life was very good. And it was only going to get better.
Now if he could just figure out who Gadanz’s source was on Red Cell Seven. That would make everything perfect.
Sterling began walking along again. He would definitely take responsibility for killing Bill Jensen and the president. Jack Jensen, too, he’d decided.
He hated the Wall Street bastards with a passion.
The little girl lay on a single bed made up with all-white linens. She had delicate facial features with large brown eyes, and she was very pretty — except that her black skin was scorched with awful, blood-splotched sores.
As the camera moved in closer, tiny drops of blood began oozing from the outer corners of both the little girl’s eyes. It looked as if she were literally crying blood. Maybe she was, Sterling thought to himself, as the camera panned back again and two doctors dressed in light blue containment suits moved to either side of the bed.
They bravely took her fingers in their gloved hands as she stared up at them with a near-lifeless gaze. She was probably so far gone at this point she no longer felt the terrible pain of the virus that was consuming her from the inside out, turning her flesh into an awful gray mass of waste.
Sterling stopped the video. It was the third time he’d watched it, and it had the same chilling effect each time. He shook his head, impressed. Daniel Gadanz could be very creative when he wanted to be.
He put the laptop down on the hotel room bed and shook the prostitute’s leg hard. She was young, beautiful, and passionate, but she slept too much. Yes, he was about to earn three hundred million dollars. Still, he was paying her a lot of money, and she damn well needed to earn it.
“Wake up,” he ordered harshly. “It’s time to fuck.”
She lifted her head up slowly off the pillow and yawned. “Again? Already?”
Sterling’s eyes narrowed as a thin smile edged across his face. He was going to enjoy killing this one, much more than he had Sophia. This one deserved it.
CHAPTER 21
Baxter and Dorn were shooting pool in the Holly Cabin at Camp David, the secluded presidential retreat that lay sixty miles north-northwest of Washington, DC, near Maryland’s border with Pennsylvania. They’d flown up here earlier this evening on Marine One to escape the District’s burst of sizzling late-September heat, probably the last one of the year, and to squeeze in a little fly-fishing, which they both enjoyed.
Camp David was set deep in the forests of the gentle, easternmost waves of the Appalachian Mountains. The temperature was ten degrees cooler here than on the streets of DC, and there were several blue-ribbon trout streams nearby. They were each going to wet a line in the morning before heading back to DC tomorrow night. They already had a bet on which one would catch the biggest fish.
“Nice shot, Mr. President.”
Baxter constantly marveled at how many things Dorn did well. On a personal level it was frustrating, he had to admit. In all the many eight-ball games they’d played on this table, he’d only beaten Dorn a handful of times. But, he steadfastly believed, it was good for the country to have a man in charge who was competent at so many things — even trivial things like shooting pool.
Sinking billiard balls with such skill was trivial compared to running the world, but he seemed to do everything well. Baxter had no doubt that Dorn would catch the biggest brown tomorrow morning, even without help from the Secret Service.
Still, Baxter intended to stay within eyesight of the president at all times on the stream tomorrow morning — just to make sure the competition went fairly.
“Rack ’em again, Stewart,” Dorn ordered as he dropped the eight ball into a corner pocket. “And concentrate this time, will you? Winning this easily gets boring. At least give me a game. I’ll have to call one of my Service guys in here pretty soon to play, and you know I don’t want to do that. They’re no fun. I can’t cut up with them like I can with you. But I’ve got to have some competition.”
It had been less than twenty-four hours since that aide had hurried into the Oval Office to deliver the unsettling news about his illegitimate daughter, Shannon. But Dorn had already compartmentalized the kidnapping — just as all the great ones could partition disturbing events into the far corners of their minds when they needed to.
Well, maybe it was time to remind him of what had happened, Baxter figured as he snatched the rack from its resting place beneath one end of the table. He had been trying to win that game, just as he tried to win all the games. He was pretty sure Dorn had been kidding just then about getting one of the Secret Service people in here to play. But it had sounded a little serious — and very arrogant.
“Sir, I—”
“What are we doing about Shannon?” the president interrupted.
Baxter heard the shot of emotion Dorn had injected so forcefully into his voice. So the disturbing news of last night wasn’t completely compartmentalized.
“I already have people checking into it. The same people who got that original of the Order from Carlson’s townhouse. They’re thorough. And very discreet.”
“Shannon is my only child.” Dorn bowed his head and tapped the butt end of the pool cue on the floor several times. “As far as I know, anyway,” he admitted ruefully before taking a deep breath. “Damn, Stewart. I’ve never even met her, but I love her very much. Her mother said she’s exactly like me in a lot of ways.”
Baxter had never seen or heard such a sincere display of familial emotion from his president. He’d never heard it for the First Lady, which was probably understandable, since they’d been married for quite some time and spent only the required amount of time together. But he’d never heard it for Dorn’s parents, either, both of whom were still alive in Vermont.
“It’ll be all right, sir.” He’d gone from being angry at Dorn to feeling a sense of sympathy for the man that quickly. Dorn was every bit as good as Ronald Reagan had been at skillfully touching and manipulating his electorate’s deepest emotions — and that included his chief of staff.
“The First Lady and I were never able to have children. She…” Dorn had to pause to gather himself for a few seconds. “Well, she could never conceive. There was an accident when she was young.”
“The person who called my aide last night claimed that you’ve tried to contact Shannon over the years. Is that right?” Baxter asked after a few moments.
Dorn nodded.
“Who did you say you were?”
“I said I was a close friend of her mother’s. Shannon spoke to me the first time I called. It was the night of her sixteenth birthday, and we spoke only for a few moments. She was going out.” Dorn hesitated. “She never talked to me again after that. I would leave messages, but she never returned them.”
Shannon was a smart young woman, Baxter realized. She’d figured out the real story right away, that he wasn’t just a friend. “Did she know who you were? You weren’t president then, but did you leave your real name?”