Power Play (An FBI Thriller) (3 page)

England

Two weeks ago

N
atalie was driving a steady fifty miles per hour in a light rain on the M2, heading south from London toward Canterbury, handling her sporty dark green Jaguar with a good deal of skill since she’d taken defensive driving lessons, thanks to Brundage’s endless nagging. She loved the Jag, even driving on the wrong side of the road, and called her Nancy.

The rain picked up, nothing new in that, and the traffic remained on the heavy side, nothing new in that, either, but smooth and steady on the major thoroughfares. After living in London for more than a year, an umbrella—brolly—was as much a staple of her wardrobe as her shoes or her purse. She’d had nearly an hour and a half to think about what she was going to say to George’s mother. Vivian had liked her, at least before George’s death, had told her in her rasping smoker’s voice that she was a modern young woman with spunk and spit. Since Vivian was older than dirt, she naturally saw even a menopausal woman as young.

Natalie turned off the M2 onto A2 before Dunkirk, then some minutes later she turned left onto the narrow two-lane country
road. Another ten minutes and she’d reach the small town of Blean, not ten miles from Canterbury, and George’s country home.

Her windshield wipers moved rhythmically, a steady metronome, the sound oddly comforting, and the Good Lord knew comfort was in short supply these days. There was no traffic on this pretty stretch, lots of tree-covered hills and patchwork fields and valleys, and some scary windy roads, several sharp curves above deep gullies, and few guardrails. She was only a few miles from Whitstable when she became aware of the big black sedan behind her, closing fast. Okay, so the idiot wanted to pass, on this road, in this weather, at this particular spot. It didn’t make much sense to her, but she slowed and pulled over since she was near the deep curve that gave onto a thirty-foot drop. There wasn’t a guardrail here, so she had to pay attention.

But the sedan didn’t pull out to pass, it pulled closer until it was maybe six feet from the Jag’s rear bumper. She couldn’t see the driver, the windows were dark-tinted, but she knew to her gut that someone in this car wanted to hurt her, maybe even send her over the cliff edge, down, down, to the bottom of the deep gully.

The big Mercedes slammed into her and she was thrown hard against her seat belt. Her Jaguar shuddered with the force of the hit, the wheel jerking her onto the gravel on the shoulder, the wheels spinning out, so close to the edge. The air bag deployed, blinding her, but she knew exactly where she was, and saw the cliff edge looming, saw herself going over, striking the huge boulders on the way down, tumbling over and over until she hit the bottom of that rock-strewn gully. She didn’t want to die, didn’t want her life to end like this, at the hands of someone who hated her, someone she didn’t know. She fought to straighten the wheel as the air bag collapsed and she could see again. She managed to ease the
wheels off the deadly gravel and back onto the road. She saw the Mercedes coming up alongside her, waited, waited, then an instant before he struck her, she stomped hard on the accelerator. Her Jag shot forward, swerving to hug the centerline. She saw the Mercedes in her rearview mirror, accelerating to catch her. She waited, waited until he was ready to come alongside, then jerked her wheel inward, sending her vehicle straight toward the stretch of hillside. The Mercedes hit her rear bumper and went airborne, nearly flying off the cliff, but the driver somehow managed to pull the car back into the road.

He was better than she was. No choice now, she floored it. The Jaguar gave her its all, but still he came on, faster now, more determined, and she could smell the exhaust from the big engine. She saw her life, fleeting moments that held only deadening fear, and she knew she was going to die, braced herself for it, and whispered,
Perry, I’m so sorry.

Davis’s town house
Washington, D.C.

Tuesday morning

W
hen Davis’s cell sang out the awesome beginning of “Psycho Killer” at seven a.m., he was wet to his skivvies, sailing an America’s Cup catamaran, its huge sail spearing up into the blue sky, flapping loud overhead. They were heeling so far to port he feared they were going to capsize. Odd thing was, a huge custom yellow Harley was lashed to the low side of the boat, adding five hundred and something pounds. He jerked awake, let the Talking Heads clear out his mind. When he answered, his voice rough and deep from sleep, he supposed he really wasn’t surprised to hear Natalie Black’s voice. “Special Agent Sullivan. I know it’s Tuesday morning and your alarm will go off in precisely fifteen minutes, right?”

He stared at his cell. “No. Seven-thirty.”

“A lovely morning hour. It’s time to rise and shine and sally forth into this very fine day, but dress warmly or you’ll chilblain your toes. I let you sleep in since you enjoyed such a lovely fun-filled Monday night with a very pretty blonde, oddly enough, of
Latin origin. You might want to call your boss, tell him you’ll be late again. I’ll expect you at my house for breakfast in an hour.” And she rang off.

He called Savich, who was eating Cheerios, and heard Sean in the background saying he wanted to play tight end for the Patriots like the Gronk, maybe in a couple years when he got big enough. Davis told him about Ms. Black’s call. All Savich said was “I hope there’s not another Jitterbug waiting for you, Davis.”

Thirty minutes later, as Davis drove his Jeep toward Chevy Chase, he wondered if Ms. Black Leather Biker Babe would be eating grapefruit with them. And how had Mrs. Black known about Elena from Treasury?

Natalie Black’s house
Chevy Chase, Maryland

Tuesday morning

D
avis pulled his Jeep close to the discreetly inset intercom next to the huge wrought-iron gate on Ridgewood Road, saw the guardhouse was empty, and pushed the button. He looked up, smiled into the camera, and tried to look as nonthreatening as a sheepdog.

A man’s deep voice came through the intercom, “Yeah, I see it’s you, Mr. Hotshot. Mrs. Black told me to let you in.” He finished off with a snort. Davis didn’t think they were going to be best buds, sharing a beer at the Feathers.

Davis pulled in front of the beautiful old house, which had probably been built around the beginning of the twentieth century. It had a full three stories with a deep wraparound porch, at least a half-dozen chimneys, and big windows everywhere. It was painted a soft light blue with chocolate trim, though he thought it could use a bit of a touch-up. He stepped out of his Jeep to see a young guy in a green feed cap riding on a mower in clean straight lines over the large front lawn. He breathed in a hint of early spring
jasmine, his mom’s favorite, triggering a memory of being a teenager and wanting to go back to sleep. It wasn’t breath-seeing cold, but close enough. He zipped up his leather jacket.

The front door opened and there stood the big man again, Hooley, who’d come busting out of the house yesterday morning, eager and ready to jerk out his tonsils until Natalie had called him off.

Davis eyed Hooley now, his beefy arms crossed over his beefy chest, a black turtleneck stretched around his thick neck, looking like he could punch out Muhammad Ali in his heyday, and wondered if Hooley’s IQ was a match for his muscles. He walked past the bodyguard, knowing the middle of his back was being tracked. It didn’t occur to him that Hooley was thinking Davis looked like a pussy with a smart mouth, and not even contemplating the size of his brain until he said, “You shouldn’t be here, yahoo,” and he cracked his knuckles for emphasis. “We don’t need you hanging around bragging about how cool you are.”

Davis turned, gave Hooley an appalled look. “What? You’re saying you don’t think I’m cool, Beef?”

“My name’s Hooley, jerk-off. My granny looks cooler than you racing in her wheelchair.”

Not bad.
“You should visit the Bonhomie Club
sometime, meet Fuzz and Marvin. They’ll tell you what a cool guy I am.” He grinned.

After a moment, Hooley grinned back. It looked painful. “I’ve heard about the backroom poker games there. Follow me. Mrs. Black likes to have breakfast in the sunroom.”

Davis followed Hooley through a maze of hallways, all wide and high-ceilinged, with original art on the walls, ancient Persian carpets on the polished wood floors. They walked through the kitchen, a modern marvel beneath carved crown moldings from
ten decades ago, into the sunroom, obviously added on, a small screened-in room with space heaters going full blast, looking out over a big backyard, beautifully kept, the big stone fence covered with ivy, thick trees behind it.

“Agent Sullivan. Welcome to my home.” Natalie Black rose, shook his hand, gave him a big smile, waved around the room. “I like it out here even when it’s cold outside. You can be toasty with the space heaters and you feel like you’re cocooned in nature’s bosom. My husband always—well, never mind that.”

“I should have recognized you yesterday, Mrs. Black,” he said.

“Actually, I’m glad you didn’t right away, Agent Sullivan. Apparently, we both know about each other now, since I checked you out as well.”

She was wearing jeans, sneakers, a loose burgundy Redskins sweatshirt, her red hair in a ponytail. If she was wearing makeup, he couldn’t see it. She did indeed look like the biker babe’s mom. Because he was a cop, he saw the strain in her eyes, eyes the same light green color as her kid’s.

He shook her hand, waited for her to sit, then sat down himself. He drank orange juice, then his coffee, rich and thick. He could feel it hitting his bloodstream, had to be the finest feeling there was.

“Hooley, all’s good here. Go to the kitchen and have some breakfast.”

He said toward Hooley’s retreating back, “If Hooley’s a bodyguard, then why wasn’t he picking up the dry cleaning yesterday morning? Or at least with you? I mean, the shopping center is a good five miles from here. Why were you alone?”

“My Beemer’s new. I wanted to drive her myself. Do you like the coffee? It’s a special blend.”

“Sure, I was thinking it may be even better than Starbucks.” He looked at her closely for a moment. She looked tired, nearly at the end of her tether. He said, “In cosmic terms, Mrs. Black, our acquaintance is what you’d call brief, so I strongly doubt you’d invite me for breakfast to discuss the upcoming midterm elections. I know you’ve got big problems, so that probably means you invited the cop. What’s going on that you’d need a cop in addition to a bodyguard? As to that, why do you have a bodyguard?”

She was silent for a moment, handed him a covered basket. “Have a croissant. I made them.” They were big, hot and flaky, and his mouth watered, they smelled so good. “Try one with the turkey bacon,” and she pointed to another covered dish.

She was dithering, which meant she wasn’t sure yet about him and she wanted to feel him out. Well, okay, not a problem, since he was starving, and so he gave all his attention to making a bacon croissant sandwich and stayed silent, waiting to see where she’d head.

“I understand you met my daughter yesterday evening.”

He took a big bite of his croissant and fell in love. Both with the croissant and the cook. “Yep, got home and there she was on her Harley, very nearly on my nicely kept front yard.”

“Do you know who she is?”

“After I Googled her, sure. Since I’ve been a Redskins fan from the womb on, I realized I’d read some of her bylines and some of her blogs. Actually, I remember thinking Perry Black was a guy until they started running her photo next to her byline in the
Post
. I was amazed, I mean, a woman who’s a real expert on pro football? Then yesterday, of course, I found out she’s related to you.

“I thought your name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t put it together until one of the agents told me yesterday when I got to the Hoover Building. And then, of course, I found out all about you
and your current difficulties.” She looked so normal, he thought, and nice and pleasant, and yet—“Here you are, the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, one of the plummiest Foreign Service assignments in the universe, right?”

“Well, except for the Vulcan ambassadorship, I’m told, which isn’t in the cards, since I can’t pronounce the Vulcan capital.” She grinned at him, chewed on her croissant. He saw blackberry jam ooze over her lip.

He said, “I read your family in Boston is very well connected, big politicos for decades now, with their fingers in lots of local and national elections. Did their big contributions help secure that ambassadorship for you?”

She didn’t throw her fork at him. No, she laughed. “Not a bad assumption, but off the mark in my case. There’s quite a bit more.”

“You slept with the president.”

She laughed again. “Can’t say I did. Nope. He’s happily married, though it took him a while to take the plunge. Imagine his daughter is only twelve years old and Perry’s twenty-eight. You’re forgetting who my husband was, Agent Sullivan.”

A smile bloomed, Davis couldn’t help it. “Dr. Brundage Black, the longtime orthopedic surgeon for the Washington Redskins, and one of the first physicians to be directly on a pro football team’s payroll. He died of a heart attack when he was only fifty. I was very sorry to hear it.” He found he leaned toward her, at the loss and pain in her eyes.

After a moment, he said, “So tell me, Mrs. Black—”

“Call me Natalie, please.”

He nodded. “Natalie, what did your husband have to do with your appointment as the ambassador to the United Kingdom?”

“You want to go back into the mists of time?”

“Sure. I’ll eat another croissant.”

She handed him the covered bread basket. “Four of us—President Gilbert; Arliss Abbott—he appointed her as his secretary of state; my husband; and I all met at Yale in our sophomore year. Thornton Gilbert—Thorn—and I were both in Berkeley College. My husband, Brundage, and Arliss Abbott in Calhoun and Branford. At any rate, the four of us were tight friends from our sophomore year on, all of us full-charge types, but we laughed about it, and somehow it worked. Brundage and I married soon after we graduated, and so did Arliss, a whirlwind romance with a mining engineer, and had her son not long after that. The president went on to law school at Harvard. He met and married his wife, Joy, some fifteen years ago. We all stayed in touch over the years, even though our paths diverged.”

“So your appointment as ambassador to the United Kingdom was for auld lang syne?”

“Perhaps, in part, but I’ve made my career in the diplomatic corps for five years now. I had two other postings before this one.”

“But you have a law degree; you had a successful practice here in Washington. Why did you decide to join the Foreign Service?”

She smiled. “Thorn, President Gilbert, told me I was the natural-born diplomat in the group, that I could talk a sheik into giving up his harem and that I was wasted hammering out endless business contracts. He said it was invaluable to him to have people around him he could trust implicitly, and he trusted me. Arliss Abbott, his newly appointed secretary of state, another one of the four of us, agreed, and so I did.

“It was Brundage who first suggested I should think about becoming a diplomat. He said to forget the harems, I could talk him out of his last bite of butter-pecan ice cream. Unfortunately, he
never saw it happen. He died at the beginning of President Gilbert’s first term. I remember he loved dancing at the inauguration ball. He was very pleased for Thornton and for the country.”

She fell silent and Davis didn’t say anything, let her gather herself. He finished off his second croissant, drank more of his coffee, sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. He said finally, “Okay, I’d like to get back to today, if you don’t mind. Are you ready to tell me why you wanted to see me?”

She sipped her coffee, frowned.

“Okay, perhaps you’ll let me get us started. According to what I’ve read, you’re back in the States officially on health leave, but really because of a scandal the British press created and is hounding you with. I saw they’ve labeled you a black widow ‘before the fact,’ a clever little aside they found amusing; in short, they were making your life a misery. And now there’s talk here as well, since you came home. Is that fair?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I assume you expect the press here will be going after you and that’s why you have a bodyguard, to keep them away? You don’t have any DSS agents with you?”

“No. The Diplomatic Security Service is not normally assigned to protect me when I’m home, and I haven’t made a request for them.” She said nothing more.

Davis eyed her, continued. “I read the scandal in England involved the suicide of an Englishman you were engaged to marry.”

She nodded.

“The English press claimed you drove him to suicide because you broke it off with him abruptly, and that’s why they came up with the black widow moniker. His family was less than supportive, and some of the public seems to think you should be exiled to the
Hebrides to live in a Viking hut. Not exactly a comfortable position for an ambassador to an important ally, I gathered. Did I hit the high points, Madame Ambassador?”

She studied him silently for a moment, then said, “I don’t believe George McCallum, my fiancé, did commit suicide, Agent Sullivan.”