“Who planned the shipment?” the first voice asked. They needed a scapegoat. Head shakes all around.
“Did the American have anything to do with it?” This from the third speaker.
“Not that I know of,” Geraldine answered. “But one hand never knows what the other is doing here.” She thought for a few moments. “I’ll wake him.” She walked quickly off the floor and returned to her office where she placed a call to Le Coq d’Or and ordered Naina and Liya to come immediately to the penthouse suite. The manager said they were with clients and it would take an hour. “I want them here in thirty minutes,” she said, banging down the phone. Then she called Vashin’s doctor and told him to come over. Finally, she called Tom Johnson, just in case.
The girls arrived last and Geraldine gave them all final instructions. Then she went to the rest room off her office and undressed. She combed out her hair, slipped on a silk dressing gown, and stepped into high-heeled slippers. She took one last look in the mirror and walked to Vashin’s bedroom. Tom Johnson was with the guard on duty and gave Geraldine a nod as she went in. A blue light glowed from one corner casting a soft light over the room as she approached the huge bed. She nudged the girl sleeping beside Vashin and motioned her to leave. Then she dropped her robe and sat on the side of the bed. She reached over and stroked Vashin’s penis until it was hard. He groaned in his sleep. Slowly, he came awake.
“Mikhail,” she whispered.
“Yes.” He was awake. She continued to stroke him.
“There’s bad news.” She felt him grow even more rigid. “There’s been an aircraft accident.”
“Is it the money?”
“I’m afraid so.” She bent over and took him in her mouth.
“What happened?” His voice was amazingly calm and she wished she could see his face.
She raised her head. “There was a fire on the ground.” His hand grabbed her hair and jammed her back onto him. She used her teeth and tongue until he came.
“Are you sure it was an accident?”
“We’re not positive. The details are still coming in.”
He pushed her away. “Get Yaponets.”
Vashin was dressed and drinking tea when the senior godfather of the vor arrived. “Did they tell you?” Vashin asked. Yaponets nodded. He was still groggy from lack of sleep. “What do you think?” Vashin demanded.
“There are no accidents.”
“Who is responsible?”
“My guess? Since it happened in Poland, the SPS. My sources say they are led by the devil himself.”
Vashin grunted. “They are only an arm. Who made the decision?”
“There’s only one head.”
“I want it cut off.”
Yaponets considered his answer. “I made many contacts in prison.”
“Do it quickly.”
“It will be difficult. I’ll do what I can.” Yaponets stood and paced the room. “You have a leak.”
“That’s why we are speaking alone.” He waited. “Now we need a diversion.”
“One of your spells?”
“Give me a few minutes then call them in. This will be a bad one. Make sure there are no sedatives.”
“Seventeen days and counting,” Patrick Shaw said, claiming the undivided attention of the six people who made up Maddy Turner’s reelection committee. They were gathered in her private study off the Oval Office. “After the president declares, the bastards will be in high gear and going for the jugular. Count on ’em hitting us with legal action to tie us up in knots in the courts and wasting money hiring lawyers.”
The hungry look on his face reminded them of a great white shark contemplating its next meal. “Lawyers and the courts are the weapons of choice these days. It’s the new checks and balances for the politically incontinent. Well,” he drawled, “I don’t mind playing that game one little bit. So we’re gonna set them up.”
Turner shook her head stopping him in full flow. “We’re not going to run that type of campaign,” she said, her words quiet but firm.
Shaw dropped his Southern accent. “Madame President, think of a vaccination against a disease. If the disease stays away, no harm is done. But if the disease hits, our defenses are ready. The ball’s in their court and they can do whatever they want with it. But if they take the bait, we’ll play them like hooked flounders. They’ll come down with the worst case of political herpes on record.”
“Political herpes?”
Shaw gave a wicked laugh. “Yep. You get it from screwing around where you shouldn’t and then when you think you’re over it, it comes back.”
Turner laughed. “You’re mixing your metaphors.” Her voice turned hard as granite. “I repeat, we will not play those kinds of games.”
The meeting was over and the committee left murmuring about their latest instructions. Shaw held back for a moment. “Madame President, are we set in concrete on this one?”
“We are, Patrick.” He shook his head as he left. Mazie came in. Since no sitting president is seldom alone with one staff member, Richard Parrish sat in a far corner. “I wanted to speak to you in private,” Turner said. Mazie arched an eyebrow but said nothing. “What’s the story behind the item in the PDB about the Poles capturing a major shipment of drug money last night?”
“It’s a success story, Madame President. We provided the Poles the intelligence they needed and they acted on it.”
“Who acted on it?”
“An internal security organization called Special Public Services. You might call it the focus group for our security-aid package.”
Turner drummed her fingers on her desk. “Richard.”
Parrish cleared his throat. “Senator Leland called about it this morning.” Because Leland was the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, he was the only senator who saw the “President’s Daily Brief.” “He’s concerned that we’re supporting a fascist organization in Poland.”
“The SPS a fascist organization?” Mazie said. “He needs another visit to the Betty Ford Clinic.”
“We are going to have to respond,” Parrish said.
Mazie thought for a moment. “I’ll brief him this afternoon. The national security advisor going to his office should stroke his ego.”
“One thing puzzles me,” Parrish said. “Why is he involved?”
“I’m more worried about Vashin,” Mazie said. “We hurt him and he’ll react.”
“What will he do?” Turner asked.
“I don’t honestly know, Madame President.”
“At least we’ve got honesty on our side.”
SEVENTEEN
Noreen Coker’s dark brown eyes followed Air Force One as the beautiful blue-and-white Boeing 747 taxied in. “What does it cost to fly that thing?” she asked the Air Force colonel standing next to her.
“The last I heard, ma’am, it was over $50,000 an hour.” The colonel escorted her to the waiting helicopter that would fly the president to the outdoor rally in San Luis Obispo. A Marine escorted her up the air stairs and into the passenger compartment.
“Those seats are for the president,” the Marine said, pointing to two airline-type seats facing each other and flanking the window on the left side of the aircraft.
Noreen laughed at the thought of Maddy Turner needing two seats. “But she’s such a little thing.”
The Marine didn’t see the humor. “The rear-facing seat is for whoever the president wishes to talk to.”
“I see,” Noreen said. She settled into the seat on the opposite side of the aisle and waited for Turner to arrive. She pulled out her speech introducing the president. Key phrases leaped off the page and she committed them to memory:…my best friend…the little girl from San Luis Obispo who had a dream…a woman whose vision reaches across generations and into the future…possesses a rare courage and integrity. Noreen leaned back and smiled at what was coming. Madeline O’Keith Turner would end her speech by announcing herself as a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Maddy was going to run in her own right.