Ames smiled. He had never been accused of hiding his light under a bushel.
He stirred the sauce, lowered the heat on the Thermador gas stove’s front burner, and added a few sprinkles of fresh thyme and sage. It would need to reduce for another hour before it was ready to poach the fish. He still had time.
For the dinner with Corinna Skye, he had decided on a Blackwood Canyon Dry Riesling, a 1988. For the appetizers, he had selected a 1989 Cabernet Sauvignon Estate Reserve that should be sufficiently aged by now. A Late Harvest Penumbra Vin Santo would go well with dessert.
When he had bought these, they had been relatively cheap — forty bucks for the dessert wine, a hundred and fifty or two hundred for the others. Now they cost twice that — if you could get them. Moore had sold futures in his wines for a long time, and they didn’t have firm delivery dates — it might be a year, it might be ten years before he thought the wine was ready to bottle and ship, and if you didn’t like it, you could go somewhere else.
Ames smiled again. A man who could make wines like that was to be admired. And humored. And Ames would be very glad to take Michael Moore’s wines on whatever terms they were offered.
He leaned down to check the fire under the pot. That was still the best way, looking at the flame, not the control knob. Satisfied that the sauce wouldn’t burn, he went to mix the salad. He would break the lettuce and endive and other greens now to chill, though of course he wouldn’t dress the salad until it was time to serve it. He had somehow run low on olive oil. He had only one bottle of the Raggia di San Vito left, the best extra-virgin oil available outside Italy — it cost more than a fair bottle of French champagne — and he made a note to have Bryce order more for him.
So much to do, and it all had to be finished at the same moment.
As he pulled the dandelion greens from the humidity-controlled storage bin, Ames glanced at his watch. Junior was taking care of some minor business with a certain Midwestern junior senator this evening, and should be calling to report on the matter shortly.
CyberNation had tried a frontal assault on the world, attacking the net and web to attract customers. It hadn’t worked. They had also tried bribery and legislation, of course, as well as advertising, but in Ames’s opinion they hadn’t gone far enough in those directions.
Which was where he came in. His job was to work the law. Part of that included buying the lawmakers, or scaring them, and if bribery wouldn’t do that, sometimes a fat lawsuit would. Whatever it took. He could get the laws they wanted passed. Get the official recognition they craved.
Personally, he thought the idea was silly. A virtual country? Nonsense. He liked the physical world, with its poached salmon and its dry Rieslings and its many other virtues just fine, thank you. But if that’s what they wanted, and if it was even remotely possible, Mitchell Ames would give it to them. He had taken it on. He would get it done.
He looked at the marble counter with the built-in cutting board. Where had he put the centrifuge? Ah, there it was, behind the food processor.
Junior had the number for one of the dozen throwaway phones Bryce had bought for cash at an electronics store in Baltimore yesterday. Once a week or so, Bryce would travel to a city out of state and pick up a case of cheap, disposable digital cellulars. Whichever ones weren’t used by the end of the week were crushed and trashed, and never anywhere near Ames’s residences.
Every clandestine call Ames made or received was on a two-hour throwaway. Since there was no way to trace them to him, there was no real need to worry about encryption. To be safe, though — and Ames was always very, very careful — they talked in a sort of code, even on these throwaways. Junior would call and say something like, “Your order is ready,” or “We’ve had to back order that item,” and that would be enough.
If they needed a longer conversation, or something that couldn’t be said in code, they would do it face-to-face. Ames had more than one safe location, each with enough antibugging electronics going so that if Junior had suddenly taken it upon himself to use a hidden wire, Ames would know it before the first word was spoken.
He’d met Junior at a shooting range and had carefully checked him out and cultivated him before… activating him. He was a rough tool, but he was greedy enough to be useful. If he stepped out of line, Ames would simply erase him and find another cat’s paw.
And even if Junior ever decided to try to blackmail Ames — or, more likely, if he got caught and tried to use Ames to cut a deal — he had nothing solid to give up. Like the leader of a good pickpocket team, Ames never held a stolen wallet any longer than it took to transfer it to a confederate. All his dealings with the man were in cash, and nobody save Bryce, who would spend ten years in jail before he said a word against Ames, knowing he’d retire rich when he got out, ever saw Junior and Ames together.
So Ames was as safe as he could make himself. Which was good, because Junior was important to his plan. Not irreplaceable, but very important.
Ames had never seen anybody as good with a handgun in a hurry, snub-nosed revolvers at that, and he’d been a shooter himself for most of his forty-six years. A man who could shoot, and who would shoot who you wanted him to, was an extremely valuable tool. You just had to be careful that you didn’t cut yourself using him.
He washed the greens, put them into the electric centrifuge, and hit the button to spin the water away. The machine’s whirr rose in volume, and the scent of the slightly bruised greens wafted to his nostrils. Ah.
Well. Enough about Junior. Corinna Skye was a much more pleasant subject upon which to dwell. After their drink to discuss her further lobbying efforts on behalf of CyberNation, he knew he had to spend some time and energy on her.
He smiled at the double entendre and went to collect the fresh baby carrots. No matter what season of the year it was in New York, it was always harvest somewhere in the world…
Junior was at a drugstore not far from the U of M Baltimore campus, just off I-95, and just a little bit nervous.
He smiled at that, laughing at himself. Big Bad Boudreaux.
He shook his head. A little nervous? The sweat was practically coming off him in buckets, and he kept wiping his hands on his jeans. It would be really stupid to die just because he was so scared he couldn’t get a grip on his piece.
The cop didn’t have to worry about that. He wouldn’t even know he was in trouble until it was too late to get sweaty.
There came the car now, a single police officer in it just like the last two nights. The drugstore’s parking lot was dark, a timer had shut the outside lights off at ten P.M. The inside lights were all dialed way down low, too. Thanks to conservation efforts, cities were a whole lot darker than they used to be. Tonight, though, Junior was glad for that.
The squad car went through the lot of the all-night restaurant across the street. The place looked just like a Denny’s, but its sign said Pablo’s instead, no doubt catering to the ex-Cubanos who had recently moved into the neighborhood. Junior didn’t have anything against those people. Back when he was a teenager, he’d bought his booze at a place called Cuban Liquors, down in Louisiana, and they’d always treated him okay.
The cop looped out of the parking lot and came across the street. There was a pay phone on the front of the drugstore, one of those little half-booths attached to the side of the building, but there was no light to speak of. Junior had busted that out earlier. Still, there was enough glow from the store to see somebody was standing there, even if you couldn’t tell much about who it was.