The 4 Phase Man Part 9

"Five hundred says you blow it," Lane Kingston, former congressman and current director of the Peace corps, called out.

"If gambling weren't illegal in this state," Attorney General Jefferson DeWitt said, laughing, "I'd take you up on that."

Buckley simply smiled, pulled back the cue, and easily made the difficult bank shot. "That," he said with a self-satisfied grin, "is called grace under fire."

"That's called d.a.m.ned lucky," DeWitt said as he poured himself another drink.

"Lucky is graceful," Kingston said between bitefuls of his sandwich.

"More pearls of wisdom from the only M.A. ever to flunk philosophy."

"Pearls before swine," came out hoa.r.s.ely-half word, half sandwich.

For almost ten years these three men had casually insulted, prodded, hara.s.sed, or needled each other in their once-a-week "our nights." It was a ritual that none of the men would miss, although none deeply enjoyed either.

Brought together by politics and life, the men were considered by many to be the next generation of leaders in the Democratic Party.

Brought together by common appet.i.tes-for food, challenges (physical and intellectual), women, and ambition-the men considered themselves the cream of their generation, poised on the verge of a.s.suming their destinies.

Brought together by George Steingarth-the lame duck president's closest friend and personal adviser-the men were being considered.

And all of that combined with the free-flowing beer and liquor to be deeply intoxicating.

Actually they had a great deal in common.

Under fifty, athletic, intellectual, charismatic, all had been Rhodes or Westinghouse scholars, had attended college in the U.S. and abroad. They spoke several languages, were fanatical sports fans, and had an almost boyish admiration of women.

All women.

They were slightly more conservative on national security issues than the rest of the party, but quite liberal on social issues. All three were married to trophy wives, had trophy kids, trophy careers, and a natural sense of humor that carefully hid their goals.

Most important, they all knew they'd been chosen-by G.o.d or the party, it didn't much matter since none of them really believed in either-for great things.

So in the thralls of their burning desires-for power, pleasure, and destiny-they'd found each other. Once a week to have no secrets, no hidden agendas. To share, to help, to prop each other up.

One day, they all knew, one of them must step to the fore and take up the trappings of his personal destiny. But until that day, they would be there for each other.

Or so the other two would be led to believe.

"Rod," Kingston asked, "what d'you hear on PAN CON '03?"

"Dead in the water." Buckley grimaced as he made another shot. "Never get out of committee."

"Why?"

"Women's lobby."

DeWitt shook his head. "Person's lobby, please." Buckley laughed. "Well, certain persons have had it in their head that the grants are antiwomen in nature."

Kingston glanced at a New York Times. "Are they?"

"Probably."

"You going to fight it out?" DeWitt looked over his friend's shoulder at the front-page article.

Buckley shook his head. "Wrong fight, wrong time." "Even with this? DeWitt tossed the paper onto the pool table."

Buckley glanced at it, then made his shot, around the paper. "We've seen headlines like that before." He chuckled. "They're essentially meaningless. Like when the Post called you-what was it? The Beltway Bad Boy?"

DeWitt shrugged. "Only my very few enemies think me abrasive, really."

"Yeah," the senator agreed. "Your friends know it. And what about you, Laney? I seem to remember a Sun Times piece that used the phrase perniciously ambitious."

The man who enjoyed a 78 percent approval rating among college students (especially coeds) smiled. "Like that's a bad thing."

"Didn't CNN call you something like the senator from Fantasy Island?" The attorney general laughed while taking a closer look at the photograph that accompanied the headline.

"My point exactly." Buckley threw down his cue on the table, then picked up the paper. "The media in this country select hot b.u.t.ton phrases like"-he read the headline aloud-"Puzzling Disappearing Act Plagues Congress-woman, then forgets about it ten minutes later, when someone else gets caught with their pants down."

"I wouldn't mind seeing old Hard-a.s.s caught with her pants down sometime," Kingston whispered as they looked at the photograph.

"f.u.c.king Alvarez is such a pain in the a.s.s," Buckley said angrily, "I doubt I could get it up over the agendized b.i.t.c.h."

Kingston pointed at the paper-a photograph of Valerie at a White House function in a clinging evening gown. "f.u.c.king Alvarez is exactly what we're talking about. Think about it."

As he looked at the color photo-the one Alvarez always attacked the paper for using instead of her more conservative "official" portrait-the senator's hand slipped down to his crotch. "Point taken."

Both men looked at the attorney general.

"Being a gentleman and a lover/protector of the fairer s.e.x," DeWitt said, "I will, of course, withhold comment, beyond this."

He walked over, took the paper, seeming to consider the picture carefully. "Congresswoman Alvarez represents all that is best in America today, he said in his politician's voice." Successful legislator, mother, community activist. I applaud her accomplishments and eagerly look forward to working-closely-with her in the future.

"I can just imagine," Kingston said with a leer. "You got something going with her?"

"He wishes." Buckley shook his head at the shorter attorney general. "What makes you such a feminist all of a sudden?"

DeWitt raised his eyebrows. "Obviously, my lecherous friends, you haven't seen the latest polling data. Women between eighteen and forty-nine consider me 'boyishly engaging.' And I am nothing if not devoted to my supporters."

"Bulls.h.i.+t!" Kingston-notorious for his temper-shouted. "You telling me you wouldn't f.u.c.k Alvarez given half a chance?"

DeWitt smiled comfortably. "Of course I would." He stopped suddenly as there was a knock on the door, and his aide let himself in. "But I would do it politically correctly, he said easily, then turned to the younger man."

"Yes, Michael?"

Michael Culbertson, personal a.s.sistant to Attorney General DeWitt, knew full well what these evenings were about-alternately sharing the guarding of the door with the personal aides of the senator and the Peace Corps director. But he understood his role and where it could eventually leave him as well. So he suppressed any expression, beyond basic pleasantness, as he began.

"Mr. Attorney General, gentlemen, Mr. Steingarth has asked me to inform you that the fight is about to start. The fighters will be coming into the ring shortly."

"Yes!" Buckley called out. "I've been waiting all week to see this! That Mendoza's a mean motherf.u.c.ker."

DeWitt followed him toward the door. "But Hollander's got the speed, man. Boxer over slugger every time."

"Screw it," Kingston said brusquely. "Raw power over finesse any day."

And they were gone.

Michael spent the next ten minutes straightening up the room, putting away the bottles, making sure any notes, papers, crude sketches, were either burned in the elaborate brick fireplace or returned to briefcases. Finally he crawled beneath the pool table, retrieving a small ca.s.sette recorder.

Because Michael had ambitions of his own.

"Tonight is going to be different."

Valerie was shocked that the words were said out loud. For the last nine hours she'd been thinking the thought, enabling the thought, but had never even whispered the words. Fear of their real meaning had kept her silent. But sitting in her car in the isolated Long Island field had somehow brought the reality of it to her.

And they had found their voice.

For the fifth time since she'd parked, she checked the specially secured briefcase issued to senior members of the Select committee on Intelligence.

Strictly for transporting extremely sensitive or cla.s.sified doc.u.ments, it was lead-lined, contained a chemical incendiary device that would instantly reduce the contents to ash if the case was improperly opened. As well as a few other "nuances," the designers had called them. Things that would've made James Bond jealous. Things that had actually been inspired by those movies. Cartoon gimmicks that government and private sector engineers had brought about to terrifying realities.

They'd been all too willing to give it to her, along with the extraordinarily cla.s.sified papers it housed. She was the ranking minority member, chair of the subcommittee dealing with the Source 24601 defection, and an acknowledged expert on the subject. h.e.l.l, she'd even been a part of the team that had initially debriefed the former communist colonel when he'd defected.

Unquestioned credentials for any and all files in the case.

Despite that, Valerie had been as cautious in obtaining them as she'd ever been in her life.

She'd asked for seven files unrelated to those she'd been ordered to bring to the meeting; files on things from Chinese missile throw weights to the color combination on the shoulder flashes of the Moscow Militia. But the files they'd wanted-cla.s.sified FBI and CIA reports on Source 24601's recent a.s.sa.s.sination and his unfinished allegations about a penetration in the U.S. intelligence establishment-were there as well.

She certainly thought about not taking them, had no intention of ever turning them over to the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds that had destroyed her life. But prudence and routine demanded that she go through the motions. Who knew who else had been trapped (voluntarily or not) in the conspiracy? So she had established the record. All files properly signed out for in triplicate, with two witnesses each.

Then the short flight to New York.

She a.s.sumed she was under constant surveillance, although she'd never detected any. These weren't the kind that made themselves obvious. Mailing the letter had been the trickiest part of all; a feat only accomplished by driving in circles-to be sure she wasn't followed, as ordered-and a less-than-thirty-second stop at a Thirty-seventh Street mailbox, just before driving into the Queens Midtown Tunnel and her fate.

As she waited for the obscenity to finally play itself out, she went over that twenty-three-page letter, her middle finger raised at the world that had finally defeated her.

The first part had been a mere recounting of facts: dates, times, what names she knew, what locations. And, of course, his name. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d chief interrogator, the one she would get, if no others.

The next bit was more detailed: physical descriptions of the nameless ones, as-close-as-could-be-recalled accounts of each of the interrogation sessions, what they knew, what they wanted to know. Then there was a little conjecture, Valerie's sense of what it all meant. The last part, the shortest part, was her ... explanation was as good as any word for it.

I love my country and would never have voluntarily betrayed it. And I pray that this, my final testament, will in some way undo the damage I may have done. It doesn't lessen my guilt any, but you will-I hope-understand that what I did, I did as a mother. And my weakness was my love for my children.

I realize now that they were doomed from the start, that I was naive and visionary to think that this could end any other way than it has. My prayers, constant and unheard it seems, will continue to the end, that when they realize what has happened, they will be merciful and grant my son and daughter a quick, painless end.

Do not think too badly of me, as a member of the n.o.blest inst.i.tution in the world-our government-or as a mother, a job I did with love, if not well. My only solace is the certainty that I will be saving lives-perhaps a great many-when I take as many of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds out with me as possible.

When I join my children in whatever comes after this planet of pain and heartbreak.

Valerie Elena Maria Alvarez Valerie wiped a tear from her eye as the headlights of a panel van pulled to a stop twenty feet away. She kissed her favorite photograph of her and the kids-the one taken when they were all so young and unaware of the dark and gooey place that the world truly was-then placed it beneath a statue of Jesus on the seat beside her.

She opened the car door with strength and a will dedicated to one, deadly purpose. It invigorated her, filled her with fire and potency.

"Forgive me, Jesus," she mumbled before stepping steadfastly-and finally-forward.

In Brooklyn, Xenos was also thinking of finality and ending things.

He stood outside his sister's apartment looking up at the argument in the window two stories above, and realized that this all had to end. If he was ever to sleep soundly, peacefully again, if he was ever to heal and begin the process of recovery, it must start tonight.

He'd called his sister shortly after leaving the airport. The plan they'd arrived at was simple enough, and-in fact-the kind of thing he might have laid on had the event been an attempted a.s.sa.s.sination rather than reconciliation.

1. The subject will be lured to a location that is known to him as safe and hospitable. In a neighborhood he knows well and is completely comfortable in.

2. The subject will be engaged on a subject that is sure to anger him, cloud his judgment, give no real alternative but to leave the location at a known time, through a known route.

3. The killers will lie in wait in a position from which they can view the subject's arrival and the signal that indicates the subject is on the way out.

4. The killers will then place themselves in a position where the subject must move past them.

5. The kill.

The argument seemed to wane, move away from the window, and, for the barest moment, Xenos hoped that a confrontation on the street would be unnecessary. But his sister's reappearance at the window doomed that hope stillborn. As agreed, she shook her head and lowered the blind.

Quietly, with years of training and condition, Xenos moved through the shadows. The old man would turn left when leaving the apartment building. He'd head for the bus stop at Twenty-fifth or the subway at Grand. Either way, he had to pa.s.s by a five-foot s.p.a.ce between two buildings.

As though it had been prepared for him, Xenos slid noiselessly into it and began to wait. Five minutes, no longer, he told himself. Then they would be on.

Three minutes later the old man casually walked past the s.p.a.ce and Xenos silently stepped out behind.

Sensing more than hearing the intruder's approach, the old man stopped. "I have no money," he said with the slightest hint of an accent.

"It's me, Papa," Xenos said softly.

The old man stiffened. "No," but it was said as a prayer he hoped would go unanswered.

"It's Jerry, Papa. I want, I need to talk to you. To set things right."

For the longest time it seemed as if the old man was about to turn around. Almost as if his body tried turning-physically fighting the old man's will-but somehow couldn't overcome his iron resolve.

"My son is dead."

"I'm right here, Papa," Xenos begged. "Just turn around and look at me, please!"

The old man involuntarily shuddered. Then slowly he stiffened again. "My son was a murderer and a thief and a looter and a pillager."

"No, Papa." Tears rolled down the big man's cheeks.

"My son is dead. I have said Kaddish, I have helped prepare the way for his soul to G.o.d's side. I will not look upon or traffic with his doppelganger."