Capitol Conspiracy (14 page)

17

225 B
LEEKER
S
TREET
W
ESTBURY
, M
ARYLAND

“H
ave you been a bad girl?”

“I’ve been a bad girl. I’ve been a very, very bad girl.”

“Have you been naughty?”

“Very naughty.”

“What happens to naughty girls?”

“They should be…punished.”

“I agree. Pull down your knickers.”

Underneath her clothing, Belinda DeMouy was wearing a pink bustier with a garter strap linking it to matching pink fishnet hose. Her pumps were pink and silver with little fluff balls over the toe.

She slithered over the side of the bed, rubbing up against the covers like a kitten. “You won’t hurt me very bad, will you?”

“I’m sorry, but you’ve been naughty, and naughty girls must be seriously punished.”

“Are you going to take your great big hand and spank me?”

“No. I think this calls for something that will make more of an impression.” Jason Simic reached under the bed and withdrew a long mahogany paddle with a small hole drilled through the center.

Belinda shuddered when she saw the menacing implement. “Oh, God,” she murmured. “Oh, Goddddddd…”

“Pull down your panties, dear.”

Belinda complied.

He pulled her across his lap. “I just hope you remember this the next time you think about being bad.” He swung the paddle five times in rapid succession.

She screamed with an ecstasy born of some potent combination of pain and pleasure. He spanked her again and again and she gasped and screamed. Soon he established a rhythm, pounding at her with an increasingly accelerated pace, as if Ravel’s
Bolero
were playing somewhere in his mind.

“Oh,” she screamed out. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” But she did not ask him to stop.

When her bottom was properly pinked, Jason pulled her upright. “Now go stand in the corner. With your panties dangling around your ankles.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you’re going to be a naughty girl, then I’ll have to punish you like a naughty girl.”

Her breasts heaved. Her lips parted.

“Now get in that corner before I start paddling you again!”

She obeyed.

He left her there for a good ten minutes, her panties around her ankles, her flaming buttocks lit like a Christmas ornament. Finally, he led her back to the bed, laid her down, and snapped the cuffs around her wrists.

“Oh my God, they’re so tight,” she said breathlessly. “So tight.”

“It’s going to hurt,” he informed her. “But a naughty girl has no right to complain.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to spank you some more, then I’m going to take you, very fast and very hard.”

“Oh, Goddddd…”

“I’m going to use you for my own personal pleasure.”

“Oh, use me. Use me!”

“You won’t get any pleasure out of this, and frankly I don’t care. A naughty girl doesn’t get to choose what she wants.”

“Yes…yes…”

“You’re a naughty girl, and I’m going to punish you with my brush hog.”

“Oh, Goddddd…”

“But first I want that ass of yours nice and hot.”

“Oh, yes. God, yes.”

He spanked her until he could see bruised blood vessels appear on her buttocks; then he flipped her around and went about his business. He pounded away at her, judging his rhythm by the frequency of her cries of tortured delight.

“I’ve been bad,” she cried out, rocking her hips back and forth, gasping with passion. “Punish me, master. Punish me!”

Despite what he said about her not getting any pleasure out it, she climaxed before he did.

Half an hour later, Jason and Belinda lay in a heap on the brass bed, their feet intertwined, her face glowing. He was reading some work materials; she was gazing at him with watery eyes.

“God, you really get into the subjugation/domination stuff, don’t you?” she asked.

Jason did not look up from the papers he was reading. “Uhh, I’m pretty sure that was you.”

She shoved his shoulder. “Don’t give me that. You loved it.”

“I love making use of your body.”

“You sweet-talker.”

“But the corporal punishment fetish is all yours.”

She curled up closer and purred. “You’re indulging your naughty girl?”

“I’m doing what needs to be done so I can screw her brains out. Several times a night.”

“You’re so romantic.”

What would her mother think about this? Belinda wondered. Her mother had always taught her to be proper. To behave with decorum. This was about as far from proper as it was possible to get. Bad enough to be having an affair. But she was having an extremely kinky affair, and with her husband’s chief of staff, no less.

And loving every minute of it.

Could she help herself? It’s not as if she had ever been in love with the great and distinguished Senator Jeffrey DeMouy. She married him because everyone thought she should. Seemed like a good idea at the time. But it wasn’t. It was an empty marriage. Not that it was loveless, exactly. She knew he loved her, in his own dry perfunctory missionary-position way. But where was the passion? He was so much older than she; he was well into his forties when they married. He didn’t have the stamina for much. If it weren’t for those magic little blue pills, they might not have had a sex life at all.

It would be better if he were around more. If he were one of those doting spouses who was always buying her flowers or giving her presents or other tokens of his affection. She could live with knowing he’d lost interest in sex, but she couldn’t live with knowing he’d lost interest in her. She was a tool to him and she always had been, the hostess with the mostest, never anything more. She increased his electability, increased his visibility, made him more socially desirable. She wasn’t a wife; she was an asset. At least—as long as she remained proper.

The hell with Mother. Who cared what she might or might not think? Belinda had been proper all her life. She was ready for something different. She wanted to be loved passionately, to be taken forcibly in parking garages and chained down with handcuffs and taken from behind. She had never once had an orgasm with Jeffrey. Never once. At some point, Belinda had decided she just wasn’t a very sexual person, that whatever gene it was that caused people to be swept away in paroxysms of passion wasn’t included in her DNA strand.

Then she met Jason.

The whole thing had started at an office Christmas party, trite but true. They’d both had too much eggnog, and since Jeffrey was planning to stay at the office all night, the dutiful chief of staff offered to walk her to her car and somehow he went from opening her car door to squeezing her right breast, and the next thing she knew they were humping like rabbits in the backseat of the Jaguar. She had an orgasm that night, the first time in her life. It was so explosive, so unaccustomed, at first she thought she’d had some sort of stroke. Jason laughed at her, and then, just to prove what had really happened—he made it happen again. Two O’s in half an hour, in the backseat of a small foreign car. She was hooked. It wasn’t at all proper. But she liked it.

Tonight, when he took her forcefully after making her stand in the corner, she had her forty-second orgasm. Yes, she counted. And it was quite possibly the best one yet. She didn’t care about social functions or politics or visiting the White House. She just wanted to have sex with Jason, over and over again. She wanted this to go on forever.

“It could, you know.”

She looked up at his handsome face. “Excuse me?”

“Go on forever.”

Had she actually said that out loud? “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure you do.” Jason put down his papers. “We have a terrific sex life. And I like to think we love each other, but as long as the sex is so hot, who really cares? The problem is”—he glanced at his watch—“in about fifteen minutes, I’m going to have to leave. And tonight, your husband is going to lie down right where I am now. And he’ll be naked and hairy and even if he can’t actually have intercourse, he’ll fumble and grope and paw you until you want to vomit.”

Belinda shuddered. “Don’t. You know I cringe every time that man touches me. Every time I even think about him touching me.”

“You could divorce him.”

“And live how?”

“Family money?”

“You know there isn’t any.”

“Property settlement?”

“All the loot is in trusts. Plus, I signed a prenup. I won’t get a penny.”

“Well, if it’s not too radical a notion…you could work.”

“No, thank you. Tried it once. Didn’t care for it.”

Jason reached across and cradled her in his arms. “Well, then. That makes it more complicated.”

“Try impossible.”

“Oh, nothing is impossible. If you’re sufficiently creative. And…adventurous.”

She arched an eyebrow. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

He smiled. “See all these papers in my lap?”

“I do. And just for the record, I don’t think bringing your work to my bed is sexy. Especially when you work for my husband. And we’re fornicating in his bed.”

Jason ignored her. “All these papers relate to the various contingency plans being tossed around in the event of further attacks like the one in Oklahoma City or the one on Senator Hammond. Everyone expects another attack—it’s a question of
when,
not
if.
That’s why we’re still at DEFCON-Three.”

“It’s so sexy when you talk politics.”

“Make fun if you want. But I think this presents us with a perfect opportunity.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Then let me spell it out for you.” He reached over and slid his finger under the cup of her bustier, pulling it away from her breast. “Someone already killed the Senate minority leader. Would it really be unusual if the majority leader got offed, too?”

Belinda stared at him. “I’m—not sure what you’re saying.”

“Oh, I think you are. Doesn’t matter how it happens. Anyone important dies in the next few weeks, people are going to assume it was terrorists.” He leaned over and began slowly stroking her nipple with his tongue. She closed her eyes and moaned.

“You can’t divorce him, darling, and sadly, he’s in excellent health.”

“Yes. Ohhhh, yesssss…”

He reached inside her panties and went to work. “So what do you say? Let’s kill the son of a bitch.”

18

C
OLGATE
A
PARTMENT
C
OMPLEX
A
PARTMENT
12-B
G
EORGETOWN

B
en stumbled home as tired as he ever remembered being in his entire life. Since five a.m., he’d been with the president’s advisors, preplanning every aspect of the press conference. They considered the proper tone to strike, the common themes, what Ben and DeMouy would say so they didn’t contradict each other. For that matter, they considered tie colors, makeup, and who would walk forward in which order. The president’s media experts left nothing to chance. And in the end, the entire conference had taken less than twenty minutes.

But it was viewed, he had been informed afterward, by more than twenty million Americans, despite the fact that it aired in the middle of the morning. Millions more would see excerpts on the evening news or the 24/7 cable news outlets and the Internet. Ben wondered which excerpts would prove most popular. He hoped it wasn’t his lame invocation of “the American way.” He always claimed he wasn’t really a politician—where had that come from? Some vestigial memory of the Nixon administration? Or maybe
The Adventures of Superman
with George Reeves? He had no idea. Somehow, when the klieg lights went on and the reporters started slinging questions at you, your mind traveled to a different dimension, one where everything you had planned to say was forgotten and weird stuff like “the American way” came out of nowhere.

And to think that, once upon a time, he had thought speaking in a courtroom was difficult.

At any rate, he had survived that round of questioning. Would he survive the next? The one that was bound to begin the moment he opened the door?

Christina was already home—he saw her coat on the hook. Fine. Gird the loins, take a deep breath, and try not to pass out. Christina made that woman from
The New York Times
look like a lightweight.

He heard water running. Apparently Christina was in the bathroom, probably showering. He took a few tentative steps forward.

“Christina?”

All at once, the water stopped.

“Christina? It’s Ben.”

“I should hope so,” said the voice, reverberating with a bathroom echo. “If it were anyone else, I’d be dialing 911.”

“Christina, I think we should talk. I did something—”

All at once, the bathroom door opened. Christina stood there, a towel wrapped just under her arms, her hair still wet. She looked lovely.

“Christina,” he said, licking his lips, “I did something today. I wanted to tell you about it. I—”

“Don’t bother. I saw you on television.”

“Oh.” Well, that simplified matters. Maybe. “I just wanted to explain—”

“Don’t bother.”

“But I wanted to tell—”

“Frankly, Ben, at the moment, I don’t care to hear anything you have to say.”

“But I wanted to explain—”

“Then you should’ve done it before you told the rest of the Western world on national television!” And with that, the door slammed between them.

Ben dropped his briefcase, his shoulders sagging. He had thought a moment ago that he felt more tired than he could ever possibly feel. He had been wrong.

They had never even taken a honeymoon. But now he had a distinct feeling that the honeymoon was over.

19

D
EPARTMENT OF
H
OMELAND
S
ECURITY
N
EBRASKA
A
VENUE
N
AVAL
C
OMPLEX
W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.

A
gent Max Zimmer stared at the framed photograph in the hallway, hoping he might draw some strength from it before he proceeded with the extremely unpleasant task that lay before him. The photo was of Leslie Coffelt, the only member of the Secret Service (at the time, it was called the White House Police Force) to die while protecting the president. In 1950, President Truman was living in Blair House, because the White House was being renovated. Two Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire on the temporary residence. Even though he had taken three shots to his chest, Coffelt returned fire, killing one of the assassins and wounding the other. As a result, they did not penetrate the perimeter and the president was saved, but Coffelt subsequently died of his wounds. He was, some believed, the greatest hero in the history of the Service.

And who am I,
Zimmer wondered,
compared to a man like Coffelt? I’m the screwup who let the first lady be killed.

He would never be a hero. The name Zimmer would never be remembered in that way, and his photo was not likely to ever be hanging on this wall. Not after the way he’d bungled that job.

But at least he’d gotten himself out of that darkened office. He knew there was only one way he could in any tiny measure make up for what had happened. And that was to get to the bottom of the matter. To understand what had really happened, and why.

And then do something about it.

This would probably cost him his job, he realized, and maybe more than that. But it was something he had to do.

He turned the doorknob and entered Gatwick’s office.

He had expected to find the senior agent poring over reports, trying to uncover the magical lead that might finally give them some confirmation about whether Saifullah was behind the April 19 attack—or if not, who was. That’s what virtually every other available agent in the department was doing. Instead, he was sitting at what appeared to Zimmer to be a miraculously neat desk polishing his weapon—what the other agents commonly referred to as “masturbating.” Zimmer was familiar with the common association made by Freudian analysts about a man’s gun, but he thought that was carrying it a bit too far.

Gatwick looked up at Zimmer, nodded, then returned to his work. “Good to see you up and about, buddy. Guess Dr. Dobson does better work than I realized.”

“It wasn’t the shrink who got me out of my funk,” Zimmer said defensively, although privately, he knew those sessions had helped. She told him he needed to confront his guilt, rather than wallow in it. She had been right.

“What was it then?”

“My own self,” he said, considering for a moment how exactly to put it. “My personal need to see a job to its completion.”

Gatwick continued polishing. “I assume that means you’re going to join the task force trying to track down the perpetrators. We need all the help we can get.”

“That—isn’t exactly what I meant,” Zimmer explained slowly, “when I said I needed to see this job to its completion.”

Gatwick finished polishing and carefully slapped the ammunition magazine back into the handle of the gun. “What did you mean?”

Zimmer licked his lips, trying to remain steady. “I’ve been reviewing the videotape of the attack. Media stuff.”

“Yeah. The team downstairs has confiscated and reviewed every piece of tape known to exist.”

“But they aren’t looking at the same parts I reviewed,” Zimmer said. “I was looking at some outtake shots, stuff that never aired.” He took a deep breath. “I was looking at footage taken before the shooting began.”

The creases at the corners of Gatwick’s eyes evinced his puzzlement. “And you find that useful in some way?”

“I find it interesting. Specifically, the arrangement of the chairs.”

Gatwick laid down his gun. “Zimmer, you’re talking in circles, and frankly it’s making my head hurt. What is it you’re trying to say?”

“What I’m trying to understand,” he said carefully, “is why a chair had been placed on the left side of the stage for the first lady…before you announced your decision to move her there.”

“I’m not following.”

“I’ve reviewed a lot of tape, Tom. I saw the way the stage was originally arranged—with the first lady’s chair on the right where it usually is for Domino Bravo. Then I saw you step to the stage and move it.” Zimmer rested one hand on the desk. “You knew you were going to move her, Tom. Long before you did it. Or at least, long before you announced it. You had already decided to deviate from Domino Bravo.”

Gatwick appeared nonplussed. “Yeah, you’re right. I saw the moment I took the stage that the arrangement wasn’t the most advantageous, so I adjusted it to make it better. That’s my job.”

“Not exactly. We didn’t know yet that Marshall was out of the picture. So why would you override his authority? Unless you…knew something.”

Gatwick leaned forward slowly in his chair. “What exactly are you suggesting, Max?”

“I’m attempting to gather information. I’m not suggesting anything.”

“Are you sure? Because it really sounds a hell of a lot like you’re suggesting that I somehow knew that Marshall had been kidnapped and tortured at a time when I couldn’t possibly know it.” He paused, staring at Zimmer with steely eyes. “Unless I was in on it.”

Zimmer stared right back at him, not saying a word.

“And coming at a time when we’re all wondering if the assassin had inside assistance,” Gatwick continued, “this is a particularly disturbing accusation.”

“I haven’t made an accusation.”

“Then what the hell would you call it?” Gatwick’s teeth clenched tightly together. “Do you know how many years I’ve been with the Service? Do you know what I’ve sacrificed? My whole life, practically. My family. My ex-wife.”

“Is that why you lost your wife? Or was it something else?”

Gatwick’s eyes widened like fiery coins. “You filthy little—I will not be tried and hanged based on locker room rumors.”

“I haven’t done anything like that,” Zimmer said, although he knew that wasn’t entirely true. “I’m just trying to understand why you took authority that was not, at that time, yours to command. Why you violated protocol and moved the first lady.”

“I was trying to protect her!”

“Domino Bravo would’ve protected her. Your changes killed her.”

“Are you sure that’s what it was, Max?” Gatwick said, rising slowly to his feet. “Or was it maybe your own incompetence?”

“You son of a—”

“All I know is you were supposed to protect her while the rest of us covered the president. And you let her get killed.”

“Let her!”
Zimmer felt his fists clenching so tightly, his knuckles turned white. “I did my best.”

“You should’ve taken the bullet.”

“I tried. I didn’t know where the shots were coming from.”

“Everyone else did. There probably was only one shooter. Were you confused because you panicked? Or because you are just fundamentally incompetent?”

Zimmer tried his best to swallow the bile and rage rising in his throat. He knew what Gatwick was doing. Trying to deflect Zimmer’s inquiries by creating phantom issues of his own. He had done everything he could to save Emily Blake. But he still felt guilty about what had happened to her and Gatwick knew it. He was exploiting the younger agent’s guilt to the best of his very great ability.

“I’m a good agent,” Zimmer said as calmly as he could manage. “You know that. I’ve been decorated twice. That’s why I’m on the presidential detail.”

“Your medals didn’t help the first lady.”

“Neither did you moving her into the sniper’s direct line of fire.”

“What the hell do you want from me?” Gatwick shouted. Whatever cool he had been maintaining was gone now. “The sniper was after the president. The first lady was collateral damage.”

“That’s what we’ve all assumed. But we don’t really know, do we?”

“Even if she were a target, we had no way of knowing the move would put her in the sniper’s path.”

“Well, certainly
I
had no idea.”

“You bastard,” Gatwick spat out.

“You’re getting very excited for a man who has nothing to hide. All I’ve done is state facts. If Emily Blake had not been moved, she would still be alive today.”

“Do you think I wanted her to die?” Gatwick screamed, totally out of control. “I’ve known her since I was in college.
I loved her!
” His face froze the instant the words escaped. He moved his lips again, but nothing emerged. Some words could never be retracted, no matter how much you tried to explain.

Zimmer couldn’t help but notice that Gatwick was still holding his gun. Standard protocol was to unload while cleaning, but he’d seen Gatwick load it. Gatwick held the gun limply, but that could change in less than a half second.

“So it’s true,” Zimmer said quietly.

“Don’t—don’t misunderstand me,” Gatwick said, stumbling to assemble an explanation. “I’m not saying that anything…inappropriate occurred. I’m just saying I loved her. Hell, the whole country loved her.”

“Tom…”

“And don’t go spreading what I said all around the office. You know what will happen if that hits the rumor mill. Everyone will be talking.”

“They already are. Tom—I think we need to have a talk with Director Lehman.”

“I’m telling you, there was no unprofessional contact between the first lady and me.”

“Then you have nothing to fear from talking to Director Lehman.”

“I do if you try to twist this into something it isn’t.”

“Tom, you have to come clean about this. If there’s any chance—”

“If I were having an affair with Emily,” Gatwick shouted, “do you think I would want her to die?”

Zimmer paused.

“I mean, does that make any sense?” Gatwick crumbled back into his seat. “When you hold someone so…dear. So special. Do you think I would want her to come to harm? Do you think I would want her to be killed by a sniper’s bullet?” His head fell onto the desk. “I was trying to protect her. And I failed.” He drew in his breath. “It wasn’t you that failed, Max. It was me. You think I don’t know that?” His voice became barely more than a whisper. “It was me.”

Zimmer let himself out of the office quietly, unsure what to do. Should he report this to Director Lehman? Was there anything to report? Even if an affair did occur, it proved nothing. The fact that Gatwick moved the first lady proved nothing.

There had never been a turncoat, never a traitor, never once in the history of the Secret Service.

Was it possible he had just left the office of the first?

Zimmer stopped for a cup of coffee on his way back to his office, hoping a caffeine jolt would clear his head. One thing was certain: before he said anything to anyone, he needed more information. So he would find it.