The three hundred thousand dollars to set up the Concerned Citizens had been money well spent. It was starting to create an air of inevitability around his candidacy.
It was perfect. Just absolutely perfect. It was working out even better than he’d hoped.
The photo on the more tabloid-y political blogs had raised a firestorm. The blogosphere was going wild, inflamed postings raging in a viral whirlwind. The timeline was even tighter than he had anticipated.
Things were moving fast and he calculated that the full-blown scandal—spread out on the front pages of the press from coast to coast—could break in less than twenty-four hours.
The first photograph, the face artfully pixelated, was moving its way fast up the food chain, in an explosive upward spiral. Already he could read in the latest postings from the three most respected political bloggers a breaking news alert, announcing the upcoming resignation of Senator Neff. One of the bloggers used to work for
Time
and the other for The
Washington Post
, and they still had low friends in high places. Once the blogosphere was talking openly about it, the ball would be passed to the online magazines, then the print magazines and newspapers.
That’s when the second and third photos would go out. And the only pixelated thing on the photos would be the tranny’s woodie, though anyone over twelve would understand what it was. Old Neff’s face with its unmistakable shock of thick white hair and spa ruddiness was instantly recognizable.
Those photos wouldn’t make it to the mainstream press, but verbal descriptions of them would. And there would be at least ten million hits on the photos.
Allow a day for another media feeding frenzy and the videos would be released. The howls for Neff’s resignation would become deafening.
And there Bowen was, an independent who could lean either way, with fabulous Washington connections and a reputation for philanthropy. Ready and willing to be drafted.
He could feel the power of it tingling through his body from fingertips to toes. It was always this way, always had been, since he was a boy. He’d felt fate tugging him in its wake. He’d planned things out, he’d
seen
the way things had to go and by God, they did. Every single damned time.
He never told anyone—certainly not his whey-faced idiot wife who was a mistake he was going to have to correct very soon. But he knew—
knew
—that he was destined for greatness. He’d known all his life. He’d had a sense of destiny since he’d been a boy and nothing in his life had ever contradicted that.
It was as if he could see more, see better than others. Perceive the movements of destiny and move in the direction of history rather than crosscurrent to it, as so many did. Destiny was like a raging river that trammeled most people, dragging them under. But not him. He rode the crest, always had, always would.
He could see his destiny, feel it, taste it, even smell it. It smelled of lemon polish and expensive cologne and brand-new cashmere and crisp hundred-dollar bills.
It wasn’t just the money, though, it was the power. Power should be in the hands of men like him. Men who bestrode the world, men who understood its ways, men who saw the future and made it happen.
First the Senate, sponsoring a few big bills, known for being a man who got along but also known as a man who could make things happen. He was an expert on foreign affairs. He had the CIA and NSA and the top elements of Homeland Security behind him. He had a shitload of money behind him, a pipeline of money pumping from Africa straight to him.
He’d make a perfect vice presidential candidate for 2016. And while he was vice president, well . . . accidents could happen.
Because the world was a terrible, treacherous place. No one knew that better than him. No one knew what hidden dangers there were. No one knew better than him how utterly ignorant and clueless the current class of leaders was. Three times in the past year, disaster had been averted thanks only to some behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the CIA. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had nearly created an international incident last year, endangering American interests abroad, and he’d done so out of sheer, bone-deep ignorance.
The chairman had deserved the heart attack he’d been given and America had dodged a bullet.
It was time for the pros to take charge and he was ready and able. There were a lot of men in the top echelons of spookdom who knew what he knew—America was teetering on the edge of the abyss. One tiny push and she’d go over. America needed him and by God, he was ready.
The second half of the campaign was in the wings, waiting. And here money really smoothed the way. Bloggers earned very little and were very susceptible to . . . let’s call them inducements. Those who wouldn’t accept payment outright were more than happy to accept advertising money or perks that wouldn’t go on the books. Club memberships, plane tickets, skyboxes. A lot of bloggers were for sale, and cheaply, too.
The drums would start beating very soon. Today, in fact. A couple of political commentators would all make the point that there was a stalwart, patriotic and scandal-free American waiting in the wings, ready to take over from randy, depraved Neff.
That, too, would go viral fast. In a week, it would be an unstoppable tide, the skids greased with money. The bloggers and then the journalists would find a lot of consent in the upper echelons of power. The “unnamed sources”—basically, a handful of men—would echo the drumbeat, because they knew that he was one of them.
Neff had been an asshole. A mildly useful idiot. He, on the other hand, was one of them and he’d be quietly welcomed into their ranks.
And he’d have huge support from them in his presidential run.
He hummed happily as he cruised the internet, watching the blogs popping up, Senator Neff’s face appearing in a little thumbnail photo at the top. The thumbnail was a studio portrait, Senator Neff beaming like the idiot he was.
Soon everyone would be baying for his blood. Assassination by blog.
The world changed, and he changed with it. He was riding the crest of the wave, moving as one with the tide of history. Nothing could stop him now.
That was fine. Dan was the muscle here and he was good with it. No one was going to touch Claire while she did her thing. Or even afterward.
She was scrolling through websites and files at an astonishing pace. If it had been any other woman, he’d have said she wasn’t reading, only skimming. But he was sure she was reading and absorbing. DIA analysts had to absorb tons of intel.
Claire sat back. “Okay, this is what our boy’s been doing this past year. He quit the CIA, which surprised me because the one thing I know about Bowen—besides the fact that he’s a jerk—is that he’s also ambitious as hell. But I’ve got about ten interviews with him to the effect that he felt the bombing was a ‘wake-up call’ for the West to do better and so he quit to dedicate himself to improving conditions in Africa.”
“Which is total bullshit,” Dan said.
“Of course.” Claire raised her eyebrows. “However, the fact of the matter is that he quit a very promising career that might have led him all the way to the top echelons of the CIA to become the manager of the New Day Foundation. That’s historic fact.”
“Are they secretly funneling in drugs? Arms?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? That would make some sort of sense here.” Claire drummed her fingers on the table next to the mouse. “But, alas, apparently not. The Foundation looks utterly legit. Last year it delivered something like a hundred million dollars of medicine into Makongo and throughout sub-Saharan Africa. That’s a lot of money. Bowen would doubtless want to put his hands on some of it, but how?”
“Maybe the Foundation should be audited? Figure out if some of that money is making its way into Bowen’s pants pocket?”
“It
was
audited.” Claire brought up a spreadsheet that hurt Dan’s head just to look at it. “By one of the top six auditing companies in the world. All aboveboard. No one seems to be siphoning off funds. And so Bowen sprouts a halo.”
“That doesn’t sound like him.”
“No, it doesn’t.” She curved her fingers over the keyboard again. “So, Bowen—what else have you been up to, eh?” News aggregate sites flew by. “Well . . . there’s sort of a pattern here. He’s set up shop in Virginia and it looks like he’s joined a bunch of power clubs and is edging his way toward politics. Maybe ‘sidling’ would be a better term. But he’s definitely got ambitions there and—whoa.”
Dan had been carefully checking the street outside but turned his head at her tone. “What?”
“Wow. It looks like a real shitstorm is about ready to hit the honorable senator from Virginia.”
“That idiot Neff?”
She peered at the screen. “Yes. Jeffrey Neff. Senior senator from Old Dominion, been senator since Reconstruction. At first it was a corruption scandal. But now it looks like a big sex scandal is hitting. The blogosphere is going wild.”
Dan was apolitical. Fuck ’em all, was his opinion. He shrugged. “So?”
“Well . . . I don’t know. It’s just sort of interesting, what he’s done. Bowen set up headquarters in Richmond, he’s made a name for himself in philanthropy, he’s sort of dipping his toe into politics and then—pow! It looks like maybe a senate seat is coming up for grabs and he just might be interested. There’s this organization called Concerned Citizens for Democracy and they’re putting forward Bowen’s name. I’m not too sure how that fits in with Makongo, though.” She quivered with frustration in her seat and if Dan weren’t worried about security, he’d have jumped her bones right there.
Jesus, what man could resist her? She was in profile and with her pale skin and long, slender neck she looked like something that belonged on a cameo. But then she turned her head and flashed those silvery blue eyes at him, that stunning beauty almost drowned in the fierce intelligence and—right now—fierce frustration on her face and she nearly brought him to his knees.
She was everything he could ever want in a woman, and much, much more than he ever thought he could have. She had a beauty that was off the charts, was amazingly intelligent, took no nonsense but wasn’t hard or calculating. A woman in a million, classy and gorgeous and smart as a whip.
His woman.
Not bad for a jarhead who’d started out life with absolutely nothing and a whole world just standing back, tapping its feet, waiting for him to fall on his face. God knows his father had. His father, high, drunk or sober, had told him over and over again what a fuckup he was and that he would never amount to anything.
Son of a bitch had been wrong. Dan had done very well in the Marines, was doing really well as the head of his own company and now, by God, he had the most desirable woman in the world, right here, not a few feet from him.
It just didn’t get any better.
He’d had to work his butt off in the Marines and in his company, but Claire? She’d been a gift from the gods. Everyone said you had to “work” at relationships and for all he knew, that was true. What the fuck did he know? He hadn’t grown up seeing any relationships that weren’t crazy dysfunctional and he hadn’t had any of his own.
But being with Claire . . . man, it was as easy as drinking water. Whatever she wanted, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to get it for her, or do his damnedest trying. All that romantic shit he’d never been good at? With her, it just came naturally. He wanted to take her arm when they were out walking. Particularly when she’d been a little unsteady on her feet. Not just to help her, but to touch her, because touching her was like plugging into something magnificent, something he didn’t even know existed up until now.
This past year he’d fed his obsession with the little sensory input he’d had at the embassy. The feel of her long French braid running through his hands like silk, the smell of her, fresh and clean even in the sweat-soaked Post One, where he’d smelled like a goat, the taste of her mouth, minty and enticing, a little honey trap.
It had been intel to plug into his Claire jones but it hadn’t been much to go on. Man, now he had the whole deal.
Now he knew how delicate she felt in his arms lying down, chest to breasts, sex to sex. The taste of that soft spot of skin behind her ear. The way she jumped when he nipped along her jaw.
And oh, God, how her nipples tasted, like salty cherries, and how she clenched tightly around him as she came . . .
He rested his forehead against the window frame and breathed out slowly.
Keep your head in the game,
he told himself sternly. A woodie in the middle of the day, in an African city where enemies could be around the next corner, while Claire was as focused as a laser beam on her computer screen and the things it was telling her—well, it was a bad idea.
But fuck, there it was. And a huge distraction.
This had never happened to him before, ever. Dan had decided at seventeen that he was heading for either an early grave or ten to twenty hard time, and so he’d thrown himself at the Corps. The Corps had taken over. If he thought he’d been tough before, he didn’t have a clue as to what toughness was.
The Corps had taken him apart and put him back together again, cell by cell, muscle by muscle, sinew by sinew. Even his thoughts had changed.
Dan had learned how to single-mindedly focus on a mission with almost frightening ferocity, until it became second nature. Focusing had never been a problem since his seventeenth year, when he’d decided to save his own life.
Focus was a problem now and it scared the shit out of him.
They didn’t know who was after them—after
Claire.
It could be one man, it could be two, it could be a dozen. He or they had enormous resources and, worst case scenario, they weren’t going to quit, ever.
All those shitheads had to do was be lucky once and Claire’s life would be snuffed out like a candle. Gone in a flash. Man, he’d seen plenty of young lives snuffed out. One fucking bullet. That’s all it took. He knew what her head would look like with a bullet through it. How long it would take her to die, gut-shot. Maybe they had orders to kidnap her, torture her for whatever it was they thought was in that beautiful head of hers.
Dan had seen men who’d been tortured for what was in their heads. Oh, yeah. They went crazy long before their bodies died.
He clutched the wooden frame of the window so hard it was a miracle he didn’t dig holes into it.
The only thing that stood between those nightmare scenarios of a dead or dying or tortured Claire was him. He’d saved her twice because he was good with weapons, could combat drive and had been trained to think like a soldier, tactically.
She was smart as a whip, no question. Way smarter than he was. But he’d felt every inch of her body and she was no warrior, had no way to defend herself. She was small and soft and tender and oh, Christ, just the idea of someone hurting her . . .
He swallowed hard against the ball of bile that was rising in his throat.
This wasn’t doing her any good. It did do him some good, though, since his hard-on went down. Nothing like picturing the woman you wanted to have sex with dead or dying to get it down and keep it down.
“Ah!”
Dan turned his head at the soft exclamation, glad to get away from the images of a dead or hurt Claire in his head.
“What?”
“One of the big recipients of New Day Foundation’s donations is the Hôpital Générale de la Charité.”
Dan came away from the window to look over her shoulder. She was checking the website of a hospital. He couldn’t make out much because it was in French. “So?”
Claire clicked and pulled up another page, of names this time. She pointed at a name halfway down, with an office phone number. Dr. Aba Diur.
Dan frowned. “Marie’s sister?”
Claire was punching out a long number on her satphone. “Oh yeah. She’s an oncologist and as luck would have it, she’s also second in command at the hospital. If anyone knows anything about what’s going on, it’s her. She’s mad at me for getting Marie killed, but she’ll talk to me.” Her mouth firmed. “She has to.
Allo?
Aba? Claire, Claire Day
ici.
”
The rest of the conversation was in French. Dan couldn’t follow the words but he could follow the gist. This Aba didn’t want to talk to Claire, that was clear, but whatever Claire was saying was convincing her.
Atta girl.
Claire closed the connection, punched her fist in the air with a sharply hissed
Yes!
and grabbed her bag. “Let’s go, Dan.”
Okay. He’d follow her into hell itself, let alone to some hospital. He checked his weapon for perhaps the hundredth time, made sure he had spare mags with him and with a last, longing look at the rifle he had to leave behind, he followed Claire out the door.