Cross pushed the Joplan file over to him. The FBI summary inside told what they had learned about Joplan’s bank accounts, spending habits, social contacts, family relationships, cars, clothes and house mortgage. Phone taps and the trash recovered from Joplan’s garbage cans revealed almost nothing. Cross said the FBI didn’t expect to find much more, even with the warrant. Joplan had covered his tracks.
Warfield scanned the file. “It’s obvious why they can’t hold him with what they have here.”
“And the clock’s ticking.”
“What have you told Fullwood and Quinn?”
“Nothing. If you take the job, I’ll get them in here for a little kickoff meeting. I’ll bring in Stern, too.” Otto Stern was the national security advisor.
“Where is Joplan being held?”
“The Bureau has him across the river in Virginia. Alexandria Detention Center.”
Warfield thought about it for a moment, then said, “Here’s what's holding me back, Mr. President. I would have to run the show — Joplan all to myself. No interference from CIA or FBI, any other agencies. You're not going to want to grant me that.”
Cross stood and Warfield followed. Cross’s hands capped Warfield’s shoulders as the president seemed to weigh the moment with due gravity. “I’ll give you Joplan exclusively, Cam. But with that comes all of the responsibility that a president can transfer to you. A lot of our intel brains think something big is in the works now. You’re the one man I trust with this job and it’s not just national security. The very essence of American culture is at stake. You have seven days to find out who Joplan’s contact is. That will lead you to the nukes that walked out of Kremlyov, which if not stopped … well, only God can help us.”
PART ONE
Karly Amarson
CHAPTER 1
Karly Amarson winced at the tremor in her fingers as she punched the Washington Post telephone number into the phone next to her bed. When the line began to ring she replaced the receiver in its cradle and laid out the jewelry she’d chosen to complement the dress she was going to wear before jumping into the shower. Thoughts of the evening, now just an hour away, raised goose bumps on her soft skin even as the steaming water drenched her body. Never in the eight years she’d entertained Atlantic City’s high-end clientele had there been so much to gain as tonight. Or so much to lose. A smile crossed her lips as something reminded her of the times as a little girl when she lured Tommy Scott who lived next door into some scheme she’d dreamed up that never turned out well for him.
Karly stepped out of the shower, pulled a body towel around her shoulders and bent closer to the mirror, focusing on the micro wrinkles around her eyes as she’d done with increasing frequency over the past few months. What do you want, confirmation you’re getting old? That you’re doing the right thing? She traced one of the threadlike lines with a fingernail until the water drops winding their way down her neck turned her attention to her body. Not so bad, she told herself, her breasts were still high, her buttocks firm, stomach hard and flat, and the attention shown her by her regulars had never waned. But twenty-nine in her line of work approached retirement age. The quality of life curve for high-end ladies of the evening nosedived after thirty. Maintaining her assets in spin classes, in the pool, on the strength machines…that all took more and more time, and inevitably at some point would quit producing the results she required. Surgery was the usual fix after botox, laser, Sculptra, and the like no longer did the trick, but even that was simply delaying the inevitable. Go in for a remake every couple of years? Pass! She’d invested some of her money but not nearly enough to provide the lifestyle she had become accustomed to — and intended to enjoy for the rest of her life.
Frank Gallardi had offered her a job, any job she wanted, there in his Golden Touch Casino & Hotel if she decided to get out of the business, but Atlantic City no longer excited her as it once did. No. It was time to advance to a better life. For the last year, she had dreamed of a new place away from the hotel. Away from casinos, away from Atlantic City. Maybe New York. She loved the city the times she’d been there with Jag, and if her plan she called the 401-Karly went well tonight, her dream could come true.
Karly had done okay in Atlantic City but it had not always been like that. Looking back at the beginning of her career now, she could only smile at her naivety at that time. That was, what, ten years ago? She’d dropped out of the Monahan Finishing College in Des Moines and headed straight to New Orleans. Her street-smarts were nil and the education she received there were painfully expensive. Karly landed a job her first day in the Crescent City and she grimaced now as she remembered the serpentine copper-top bar on which she danced and taunted Bourbon Street revelers with her charms. Dominick, who owned the place — the Cajun Palace, it was called, a misnomer if there ever was one—had followed through on his promise to give Karly’s poster top billing on the Bourbon Street marquee and the money was good, but soon Dominick was renting her out. She resisted at first but the other young dancers seemed okay with their lives and encouraged her. It’s only while you’re getting started, they’d said.
Dominick had served himself as well to her wares when he felt like it and the greasy bastard’s scent still haunted Karly’s olfactory memory. Like those professional fragrance experts she’d read about who could identify a perfume he or she had last sniffed twenty years earlier. And then there was Richard, her next encounter, who put her in the hospital twice. She shivered now as she recalled how close she’d walked to the edge, how desperately homicidal she was after that, how she’d acted on her impulse. Except for the murder detective who hated slimebags like Richard she’d be in prison now, she knew, instead of a luxurious hotel suite where she’d worked out an arrangement with Frank Gallardi, a man who represented the other end of the decency spectrum.
As Karly started her makeup now she thought of a couple of girls who’d made it big in Atlantic City, but most of them stayed with a pimp until they were too old and wound up with second-rate clients for awhile, then dancing for garter cash in one of the strip dives a block off the Boardwalk. Half of them ended up dying of violence or AIDS before they hit forty. It was an unthinkable end, but what was the next act if they had lived?
Karly knew she still had what it takes. She’d learned she could make one of the politicians from Washington want her more than he wanted his political campaign fund. And she had lost count of the men who would pay her to undress and simply lie there while he looked at her. Somehow that, of all things, made her uncomfortable. They would talk about her milk-white skin and golden strands of hair and perfect legs and green eyes and never lay a hand on her. Some sobbed. She wasn’t about to believe all the things men said to her, but she knew she was different.
Her favorite clients were the power brokers from the nation’s capitol who came to Atlantic City on weekends. Seeing them on TV, she’d laugh at the swaggering speeches they made about drugs or honor or children, and then she’d get one of them in her bed and let her blond mane fall over his face and whisper to him. “What’ll it be, now, cowboy? Those family values you talk about, or Karly’s values?” After she had satiated them they would go back to Washington to run the government. The world, to hear them tell it.
She had experimented with some of them with a well-timed whisper. “When can you come back? I don’t wanna spend any more time than I have to with someone else,” she would say half-jokingly. “If I do, it’ll just be to pay the rent until you return.” Some actually fell for it: “How much d’you need to get by on until I can get back a couple of weeks from now?” and they’d add a few more crumpled bills to the wad in her hand. Never examine it in their presence, Karly had learned. But she’d count it the instant they were out the door and seldom was she disappointed as she showered and powdered and made herself ready for her next rendezvous.