An uncomfortable silence hung in the air a moment. They had reached the real purpose of the meeting. Everything was coming unglued so fast: first, Mia’s terrifying hint to Jack about that incriminating picture with Earl Belzer; then that horrible bitch getting their precious polymer stopped in its tracks; now the disastrous news that the report that had drawn them to the polymer in the first place was a hangman’s noose.
The jackhammers just kept striking. What was next?
It was all happening so fast. They needed to get in front of this thing, get control. This was no time to lash out blindly; neither could they afford to sit tight and do nothing.
“I called Phil last night,” Bellweather said softly. “We played with the possibilities until four this morning. Somebody’s taking us on a ride.”
“Where’s Arvan?” Walters asked. He’d given some thought to this as well, and had formed his own suspicions about who might be behind this catastrophe.
“Nobody knows. The Pentagon tried for hours to locate him. He’s disappeared, been gone for months. He took our money and fled to Central America.” When nobody responded to that revelation, he suggested, “He might’ve done this alone, or at the least he was Wiley’s accomplice.”
“Wiley’s not our boy,” Walters countered, hefting a paperweight in his hand and looking quite sure of himself.
“I suppose you have a reason for that blind opinion.”
“Sure, plenty of them. Because Wiley owns a quarter of the polymer. Because he thinks he’ll make billions on this deal. So why feed us a poisoned chalice? Why flush a fortune down the toilet? Doesn’t make sense. Also, he’s still in plain sight, right where we can reach out and touch him.”
“Maybe he’s not as smart as we thought,” O’Neal offered.
“Or he’s smarter than we thought,” Bellweather snarled, still under the influence of his long, rambling discussion with Jackson the night before. The lawyer never liked Wiley; he certainly never trusted him. Perhaps it was an emotional bias, but he was strongly inclined to believe Wiley was the driving force behind this fiasco. Bellweather badly wished Jackson were here in the room with them now, applying his aloof logic to the situation.
Unfortunately, at a well-attended press conference the night before, the crooked senator Jackson was representing had made a crass stab at pinning the rap on his dead wife. The attempt bombed badly. The senator’s teenage children became incensed at all the mean things he said about their mom and hastily rushed out to the parking lot where they convened a fascinating press conference of their own.
The kids confessed they were lurking in a dark corner of the basement, pushing a little coke up their noses, when Dad came bounding down the stairs happily hauling a big sack. Peeking around a bunch of old boxes, they watched their old man pack the dough in the freezer. Took him twenty minutes to cram it all in.
Jackson was with the senator now, at the federal court where he was being arraigned. Jackson had shifted his strategy; now the senator was being framed by his own kids, a bunch of selfish, rotten, ungrateful thugs who got the money pushing drugs to rich classmates at their elite private school. The senator was probably a lost cause, but Phil Jackson never left a client in a lurch, especially when it was such a public spectacle and Jackson could preen and glower in front of the cameras. It was good for business.
“Let’s bring Wiley down for a talk,” Bellweather suggested. “Send up the jet. We’ll get this straightened out this afternoon.”
“Good idea,” O’Neal said, having nothing better to offer. “He has no idea you’re behind Wallerman. It’ll be a big, nasty surprise,” he said, only wishing he could be there for the show.
“Any chance you can locate Perry Arvan?” Walters asked, directing a look at O’Neal. He still had his doubts about Wiley. Perhaps it was stupid pride, but he just couldn’t believe Jack had outsmarted him.
“I doubt it. I got no people in the Caribbean. I could hire some locals, but nobody I trust. Besides he could be hiding on a boat in the middle of a grove on some out-of-the-way island. Or he might be on the other side of the world. We got only what his kid said. The kid might be wrong, or he might be covering for his old man. Let the Pentagon look for him. They have a much higher chance.”
Walters nodded. Made sense.
For now they would concentrate on the bird in hand, Jack Wiley.
24
It turned out Jack had left his car in D.C. after his last visit. Some sort of vacuum lock developed in his brakes, he left the car at a repair shop, and took the train and taxi home. The car now sat in the CG parking lot, fit and ready to roll, but clearly some other means of transportation needed to be devised.
So Bill Feist was sent up with the smaller jet to fetch Jack. No need to pretend to be pleasant this time, and it was a point of pride with Feist to suck up only when he had to. From the opening moment, he was cold and distant. Jack came along willingly. He kept to himself. He folded his long frame in the seat and read a trashy paperback novel on the way down.
Feist sipped gin by himself and stared out the window at the ground whizzing by below.
An hour later, they landed at Reagan National and glided up to the private terminal. Thirty minutes after that, following a fast sprint in a corporate limo through D.C. traffic, they were standing outside the CG conference room.
Jackson had finally torn himself away from the senator’s road show and the warm glare of the rolling cameras. After arranging bail, stealing a quick shower, then spending five minutes alone with Lew Wallerman, he quickly decided he liked what Lew had to show him. In the right hands-his hands-it would be devastating. He grabbed the evidence and brusquely ordered Wallerman to wait in a side room until called.
Jack came into the room and fell into the same chair he had occupied all those months before, when he and Walters had scrawled their names on that now regrettable contract.
As before, the steering committee was arraigned on the opposite side, but this time deep frowns replaced the greedy smiles. No refreshments on the side table. No warm greetings. Nobody jumped up to pump his hand and tell him how swell it was for him to be there.
Now Jack was the enemy.
A tape recorder was gently whirring somewhere in the background, feeding the whole session to the secret room in the basement. The tape would be carefully doctored afterward. Certain parts would be omitted, but they were confident they would coerce or dupe Jack into making a few incriminating admissions. A few was all they needed.
“We have some questions,” Jackson opened with a severe glare. “Have you heard the news about the polymer?”
“What news?” Jack asked. He looked around the table, genuinely curious.
“Our contract’s been suspended. The report you gave us was a phony, an interim report that was overcome by events and supposed to be shelved. The precious polymer you led us to has a short half-life. That’s a big problem for us.” Jackson bent forward. “So the first question is, where did you get that report, Jack?”
They watched his face to see how this horrible update registered. Jack pulled on an earlobe and stared at the table. “This is news to me.”
“Is it?
“Yes, and I’m sorry. Can we fix it?”
“We’re not here to answer your questions. Where did you get that report?”
Jack took his eyes off the table. “I’m getting tired of that question, Phil. It’s still none of your damned business.”
“It’s very much our damned business. We’re confronting the possibility of a major fraud investigation as a result of that report. You’re implicated as well, Wiley. Now, where did you get it?”
“You have your facts wrong, Phil.”
“Do I?”
“It wasn’t me who used that report to persuade the Pentagon to buy the polymer. I questioned Mitch and Dan about shortcutting the Pentagon testing requirements. I was sure it was a bad idea. Both assured me it was no problem.”