Swanson missed little. “I’ve got an extremely fast metabolism,” she said in response to his quizzical look.
“I’ll gain three pounds just looking at this,” murmured Butler as Swanson tucked in.
She washed down her first mouthful and picked up where she had left off. “So, what was the name of your firm?”
Butler took a mouthful just as she began to speak. He took his time masticating the melt-in-your-mouth pancake, not an easy task as he desperately tried to stall long enough to work out exactly what he was going to tell Agent Swanson.
“Well?” she prompted.
“I worked for…” the sight of the Chrysler pulling to a stop at the curb stopped him in his tracks. Swanson followed his gaze out of the diner’s window and calmly reached for her cell phone.
Butler’s reprieve had been short lived. They knew he was with a senior FBI Agent. Whoever was pulling the strings had obviously decided this was no longer an issue and Butler’s removal was worth that level of fallout. He knew Swanson was a dead woman, her intervention had sealed that. He thought he’d have time to work out a way to save her. The arrival of Chan and Smith so publicly was an extremely worrying turn of events. Such an overt display would suggest the timescales were even less than Butler had feared.
“Don’t!” warned Butler. Despite the early hour, the diner had a number of patrons taking advantage of their 24/7 operation.
“Don’t what?” replied Swanson angrily lifting the cell to her ear.
“Call for backup. They’ve already decided we’re collateral, no point adding others.”
Smith and Chan exited the Chrysler and took up station at the curbside. The Band-Aid on Smith’s nose proudly displayed Swanson’s earlier intervention.
“What in the fuck are you talking about?” Swanson was beginning to get seriously pissed off with his cryptic approach to whatever was going on. She began to move from the booth but was stopped by Butler, his hand snapping across and firmly pinning hers to the table.
“I said don’t!”
“Take your hand the fuck off mine,” she hissed angrily. Her body continued to move despite her hand being left behind, leaving her in the bizarre situation of leaning towards Butler while trying to get away from him. “I’m going to speak with those two assholes and find out what they want.”
“Fine,” Butler released his grip and let her walk two paces away before adding, “but they’re going to kill you.”
Swanson laughed but saw nothing in Butler’s face to suggest that he was being anything but sincere. She looked outside. Her smile dropped slightly and she noticed that her movement had resulted in a readying of Chan and Smith. Their jackets had been opened and their handguns visible. The FBI standard issue weapon was a Glock. Years earlier it had been possible to use a personal weapon but those times had long since gone. Every FBI Agent who wished to remain one carried a Glock. From what Swanson could make out at the distance between herself and Smith and Chan, neither carried a Glock. Not good.
Noticing her hesitation, Butler went on. “They won’t come in here, too many cameras. One above the till, one in the corner on the way through to the restroom and if I’m not mistaken, that smoke detector is a fish eye camera,” he said without looking at any of them. “It’s a twenty-four seven joint, lots of drunks and brawls. They’ll have a direct alarm to the police and the cameras will be linked to the web. They can’t simply steal the tapes. We’re safe for now.”
Swanson sat back down. She had a feeling Butler was finally revealing himself.
“Analyst?” she asked sarcastically.
Butler shrugged his shoulders. “I analyze situations,” he offered with a smile.
“For who?”
“For whom,” he corrected.
“Fuck, whatever!”
“Formerly the CIA.”
“So you were downsized?”
“Hmm, I think fired would be more appropriate.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” she said with some concern, wondering whether Chan and Smith really were the good guys.
Butler watched as she looked at Chan and Smith. “Trust me, I’m not your problem here.”
“Are they CIA?” she asked watching the two become twitchier. Her sitting back down had unnerved them.
“I’m not sure. Hired assassins, probably,” mused Butler, refusing to look at them.
“So they were going to kill you?”
“Right about the time you drove your car at them. Smith was about to pull the trigger when we had to brake.”
“Holy fuck!” she exclaimed a little too loudly and caused a number of patrons to turn and look at them.
Butler threw a look towards the other patrons that resulted in them all suddenly finding whatever food lay before them far more interesting than anything else.
“I do therefore owe you a very heartfelt thank you,” said Butler.
Swanson looked deep into the eyes of a man she had arrested the previous day, just spent the last hour with, and it seemed had just met in the last few seconds. The man before her bristled with confidence, sat straighter and sounded far more commanding than the man she had arrested.
“Who exactly the fuck are you?” she asked again.
“A great friend and a truly terrifying enemy,” he replied while watching another Chrysler pull to a stop.
“And how should I view you?” she asked, her hand moving towards her Glock. She was going to have to choose sides. She had noticed the other car draw to a stop and three men had exited. It was five against two and Butler was unarmed.
“If your hand moves any closer to your gun, I’ll be your killer but if you hand me the gun, I’m your only hope!”
“I thought you said they wouldn’t come in?” she asked, the tension was palpable.
“I was wrong!” he replied simply. “But if we don’t move now, a lot of innocent people are in danger!”
Swanson considered the threat and Butler’s concern for the other diners and made an instant decision that she’d have to live with for the rest of her life, however long that would be.
“Run!” he said.
“What the fuck do you mean run?”
“Back door, hit it and run for our lives.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” she said as they both stood up and Butler led the way towards the restrooms. They watched as the five men, as one, moved towards the diner’s entrance. Chan raised his hand to his mouth. He was communicating with someone, whoever was covering the back, Swanson thought.
Before she had a chance to tell Butler, he swept past her, hit the emergency bar on the fire escape with his back and turning through one hundred and eighty degrees, raised his hand, and in one swift and seamless move, removed Swanson’s Glock from her holster and shot the two men waiting for them in the alley to the rear. Swanson stood helpless; her backup weapon was in her Audi parked out front.
The noise of the Glock was followed quickly by the front door of the diner crashing open. All hell had broken loose. Swanson was not unaccustomed to firefights but was used to a significantly larger force than the opposition and usually benefitted from having her own weapon.
Butler grabbed her free hand and catapulted her through the door with him. The two ambushers were down. Butler handed Swanson her weapon while retrieving one from the ground as they sprinted down the alley. The first shots rang out just as they cleared the corner.
“Fuck!” screamed Swanson, her adrenaline pumping to levels she had never before thought possible.
Butler just kept running. He wasn’t kidding, she thought, his plan is exactly what he said, run.
“I’ll call for backup!”
Butler shook his head. “You don’t understand, we can’t trust anyone!”
“We can trust the FBI,” she replied indignantly.
“The same guys that handed me over to two killers!”
Swanson was about to reply but two bullets zipping past her head stopped any further discussion. Butler skidded to a stop, spun and dropped down to one knee, again all in one fluid motion. The shooting position allowed him to fire off four accurate shots that stopped the two pursuers in their tracks. They both slumped to the ground. From a distance, it was hard to tell how badly they were hurt but from the lack of screams, Swanson could only assume the hits were fatal.
“Who the fuck
are
you?” she asked in awe. He was fifty-four but ran faster and shot better than anyone she had ever trained with, and she had trained with some seriously tough guys.
“Let’s go, and will you please lose that cell phone - they’re tracking it!” he asked firmly but politely.
“Shit!” Swanson threw the phone towards the pursuers without a second thought. This shit was real.
After another ten minutes of running, Swanson was ready to drop. She could run a half marathon with ease but not at the pace at which Butler ran. He eased up, and she bent over, emptying the contents of her stomach onto the ground.
“Sorry about that,” said Butler, “but I wanted to be sure we’d lost them. I assume two followed on foot while the others retrieved a car. We probably lost them when we ditched your phone.”
Swanson looked up at him briefly. Her breath was slowly coming back and her stomach had relaxed.
“Now can you please tell me what the fuck is going on?” she struggled between breaths.
Butler looked around again. They were in the middle of a park under a bandstand; even from above they couldn’t be seen. They were as safe as they were going to be anywhere.
“You’ve heard of America’s Trust?”
“Of course, everyone has.”
“Two years ago, when I was working a case, I stumbled across something. Two months later, I was fired. I’ve been looking into it ever since. America’s Trust is a sham. America as we know it is on the brink of extinction.”
Three years earlier, 20 January 2013 - President Jack King Inauguration day
Oval Office – The White House
“Compound interest, that’s when interest accumulates year on year?” asked Jack, trying to sound interested.
“I suppose, basically, yes. Over a long period, this can prove very lucrative,” replied Mr. Walker with a glint in his eye.
Jack remained thoroughly underwhelmed, thinking that a meeting one hundred years in the making should surely be more interesting than a lesson in interest rates.
“Anyway, perhaps I should just get to the point. The current deficit stands at what, gentlemen?”
“Roughly sixteen trillion dollars,” replied Lee instantly, this was the number that kept them awake at night, the number they had vowed to do all in their power to reduce.
“That, gentlemen, is a massive mountain to climb, and your best hope over the next four years is what?”
“Best case, back to twelve,” replied Jack wistfully, knowing that pledge was going to come back to haunt them.
Mr. Walker withdrew an envelope from his briefcase; it had yellowed with age. He withdrew a letter and laid it before the president.
“This is a Trust document signed on the 1
st
March 1913. As you can see, the notepaper bears the initials J.P.M. I’m sure you are familiar with Mr. J.P. Morgan. Other names on this document include many of the richest industrialists and families that America, the world, has ever known - J.D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, John Ford, the Astors, the Vanderbilts.” He flicked the note aside. “I think you get the idea, the list does go on.”
Jack and Kenneth traded a look of interest, slightly more intrigued with whatever Warren Walker was there to tell them. Both nodded.
“They decided to set a trust fund up for the future. Mr. Morgan noticed a spendthrift attitude amongst successive governments that he believed would undermine America’s ability to build a strong and powerful nation. He asked a number of his wealthy friends and associates to contribute to a pot that would be held in trust for the future of the great country they were helping to build. Money that, long after they all had gone, could help build a nation they believed was the greatest the world would ever see.”
Jack began to edge forward again in his seat. This was beginning to sound very interesting.
“Mr. Morgan died less than a month later but secured the trust and its secrecy as a legacy for America’s future.
Kenneth jumped in before Jack. “How much?” he asked.
“Fifty million dollars,” announced Mr. Walker triumphantly.
“We just spent that. And there you go, we just spent that again!” replied Kenneth, explaining to Mr. Walker how derisory a number fifty million really was.
“Yes but that was fifty million in 1913,” he replied calmly. “We all know the task you face - an unparalleled deficit, an infrastructure that hasn’t been fit for purpose in seventy years. Power outages are commonplace, communication networks are third world, the transport system is crumbling around us…”
“In short, the country’s a mess,” concluded Jack, fully understanding the scale of the problem he faced; he didn’t need to hear it all again.