The Echo of the Whip Read online

  Galia sketched a mirthless smile. “He’s had his moments, but he swings and misses more often than he hits home runs. T.W. Rangel was thought to be retired for some time now, but I’ve had word from someone who knows that he’s back in the game. He’s more politically dangerous than Whelan ever was but … well, you’re not interested in the political consequences here.”

  “Not at all,” Tall Wolf said.

  “What’s relevant to you is that Mira feels Whelan will do with Rangel just what he did with her.”

  “Drop in for an unexpected visit?”

  “Yes, and sooner rather than later.”

  “But Whelan didn’t steal the embryos himself; he hired out. Why would he approach Rangel directly?”

  Galia gave Tall Wolf a look, expecting him to see the reason quickly.

  He did. “Because it’s personal, and maybe he doesn’t see Rangel as a physical threat.”

  “Exactly. On the other hand, we’ve come to think that the threat against Mr. McGill’s life is likely represented by a former member of our military, Eugene Beck, who has special forces training. He’s seen as very dangerous.”

  Tall Wolf said, “Ms. Kersten told me she thinks Beck has a score to settle with Whelan, might possibly even do him in.”

  That was news to Galia and she didn’t like hearing it second hand.

  Nor did she want Whelan to die. She told Tall Wolf as much.

  “I trust you’ll do what you can to prevent that.”

  Tall Wolf said, “Only up to a point for someone like Whelan.”

  Still, he understood that, politically, it would be much better for Whelan to live and stand trial for the crimes he’d committed.

  He asked Galia, “So do we both think there’s going to be a party at Mr. Rangel’s house?”

  Galia nodded. “That’s the way I see things. Whelan’s almost certain to go there. Beck’s a good possibility, too.”

  “What I don’t understand,” Tall Wolf said, “is why Whelan would want Mr. McGill dead. The president’s husband has no real power in government. He doesn’t make policy. He doesn’t appoint anyone to an important job. He can’t veto legislation.”

  Galia smiled again, this time with feeling.

  “You’re absolutely right. At the beginning of President Grant’s first term, my biggest worry was that Mr. McGill would meddle, stick his nose where it didn’t belong and cause me endless headaches.”

  “Instead, he saved your life,” Tall Wolf said.

  “Yes, he did, and I’ve come to have feelings for him I’d never have thought possible. So you can imagine how much he must mean to the president. Losing him would effectively end Patricia Grant’s presidency. She might remain in office or she might resign. If she stayed, though, going through the motions would be the best she could do.”

  Having talked to the president less than an hour earlier and gotten some small measure of the woman, Tall Wolf had his doubts about that. He thought Patricia Grant might become an avenging angel if she lost a second husband to political violence. Of course, the White House chief of staff might have insights he lacked.

  Tall Wolf said, “In any case, it would set a terrible precedent, assassinating a presidential spouse in the hope of destroying an administration.”

  “Yes, it would. Without going into specifics, there’s good reason to believe Beck is capable of killing a so-called hard target.”

  Tall Wolf only nodded. He understood he’d just been told the man had killed other people.

  “Do you understand what I’d like you to accomplish, Mr. Co-director?”

  “Bring in the whole shebang of them, if I’ve got my Irish right.”

  “You do.”

  Tall Wolf got to his feet. “If you’ll give me Mr. Rangel’s address and your phone number, I’ll head right out.”

  “I can offer you armed back-up,” Galia said, clearly wanting him to take it.

  Tall Wolf shrugged. “Who ever heard of an Indian with a sidekick?”

  Galia frowned mightily.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll take Leo Levy as my driver. He carries a gun. If we need more help, I’ll call.”

  J. Edgar Hoover Building — Washington, DC

  FBI Deputy Director Byron DeWitt was working late when he got a call from the National Police of Uruguay in the person of Captain Antonio Calvo. The news Calvo had to share amounted to winning the exacta at the Kentucky Derby. Or so it seemed at first. Calvo told DeWitt that the National Police had arrested an American for entering Uruguay illegally, using a fake Canadian passport.

  That alone was enough to make DeWitt’s scalp tingle.

  Careful not to get ahead of himself, DeWitt replied, “And this person is someone who might be of interest to the FBI?”

  “Only if you and your people are still looking for one of your congressmen named Philip Brock. Your notice to Interpol says you are.”

  DeWitt wanted to shout in jubilation, but he thought it best to play things cool. “Yes, we are. Will you please detain him until we can arrange for extradition?”

  “We would be happy to do that,” Calvo said. “I feel you should know, however, that Señor Brock is already claiming status as a political refugee. He says he is … momentito.”

  DeWitt overheard Calvo confer with someone on his end.

  “Cómo se dicé …” How do you say …

  Calvo returned to the call. “Yes, Señor Brock says he is being framed in the matter of planning an assassination of your president.”

  “I’m sure he does,” DeWitt said. “He’ll have the opportunity to defend himself in court. Philip Brock has a lot of money; he’ll be able to afford the best defense lawyers.”

  “Yes, he has already told us you would say that. He says he is rich, but not so rich as your president, and your countrymen will demand that someone must pay for the crime no matter how much money he has.”

  DeWitt intuited what else Brock might have told the National Police. “Let me make a guess here, Captain. Mr. Brock has also suggested he should be able to put up an enormous sum of money as a bond to be allowed to remain free in your country.”

  “Exactamente. I have recommended that this not be allowed, but my word is not the final one, and if you are familiar with our courts and government in Uruguay, you know we are not swayed by money.”

  “Of course,” DeWitt said, “I’m sure you have great respect for the rule of law. If, however, anyone in your legal system were to be inclined to give Brock the benefit of the doubt, you should remember that he used a false passport to enter your country. A man of his resources might obtain another one to leave Uruguay. The FBI has already discovered he traveled from Costa Rica to Panama using a New Zealand passport.”

  There was another brief conversation on the Uruguayan end of the call.

  “We did not know this,” Calvo said, returning to DeWitt.

  “Here are a couple more things you should pass along to your superiors, Captain. The FBI also strongly suspects Mr. Brock murdered a United States senator and a diplomat from Jordan who was stationed here in Washington. Philip Brock is one seriously dangerous man.”

  The off-phone conversation in South America was longer this time and a loud female voice seemed to dominate it. DeWitt regretted that he’d never studied Spanish, but hearing a strong woman speak gave him an idea to keep in his hip pocket.

  When Calvo came back on the line, he said, “Please be assured I will pass this information along. What you say will be taken into serious consideration. I have something more to tell you: Señor Brock has told us of the whereabouts of another fugitive you are looking for.”

  It was all DeWitt could do not to let himself get a woody.

  “Tyler Busby?” he asked in a soft voice.

  “Sí.”

  “Busby is also in your country, Captain?”

  “As fate would have it, yes. Señor Brock thought he would give us Busby, hoping to distract us from himself is our guess. He approached an undercover officer, not k
nowing who she was. He asked her to take a message to the police for him.”

  DeWitt laughed audibly. Shit-birds of a feather flocked together, even when they had the whole world to use. The deputy director said, “You see what I mean about Brock being tricky, Captain?”

  The captain asked, off-phone, what tricky meant. The female on his end told him and then she came on the phone. “This is Lieutenant Silvina Reyes speaking.”

  The woman had a lot of American tonality in her English.

  “You’ve lived in the United States, Lieutenant?”

  “For many years, yes. My father was a diplomat at the United Nations. Mr. Brock approached me on a street in Punta del Este, a wealthy neighborhood here in Montevideo. I was posing as a nanny. He asked me to go to the police for him. We put a watch on him and arrested him as he was trying to board the ferry to Buenos Aires.”

  DeWitt said, “Sure. He scoots out of your country until the uproar over Busby’s arrest blows over and then he comes back when things are quiet. If anyone from your police talks to him then, he just says he was an upstanding guy doing what was right. If you didn’t know any better, he might get a commendation from your government, solidifying his place in your country.”

  Silvina said, “And if he feels uneasy when he comes back he just runs and hides somewhere else.”

  “Exactly. Please allow me to give you a bit of advice about Tyler Busby. His money makes Brock’s look like chump change. You know what I mean?”

  “I do.”

  “He also has powerful friends around the world, people in governments that have no love for the United States. If push came to shove, they might give Busby asylum. He wouldn’t like living in those places, but it would be better than a super-max prison here.”

  “Might these friends even fly him out of our little country clandestinely, if he was given the chance to remain free on bond?” Silvina asked.

  “I know it sounds melodramatic but, yes, something like that is a possibility,” DeWitt told her.

  “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Deputy Director. I will talk with my father. He will know much more than I do about how the upper reaches of my government might feel about all this, and about what foreign nations might do to assist Mr. Busby. I will get his opinions and forward them to the top of the National Police chain of command.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. Please include this in your report. The United States will be very grateful if Uruguay, lawfully, extradites both Busby and Brock to us.”

  “I will mention that, yes.”

  “You’ll have the time to do everything you need to do?”

  “We have learned there is an infant and a new mother in Mr. Busby’s house. We have decided to wait until morning to make the arrest.”

  DeWitt was surprised to learn that Busby had, what, acquired a family while he was on the run. Still, he didn’t know if that would be enough to … he had another idea. A risky one. He’d have to consult his own experts before moving on it. But now he was glad the Uruguayan police had given him a window of opportunity.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant, and please give my thanks to your Captain. I’m very happy to have heard from both of you.”

  “De nada,” Silvina Reyes said.

  Great Falls, Virginia

  “The bitch says she’s not going to testify,” House Whip Carter Coleman said.

  T. W. Rangel, ear pressed to the phone in his home in Great Falls, winced. Coleman had delivered his message at the top of his voice. Apparently, Speaker Peter Profitt, also looped into the conference call, shared in the discomfort, saying, “Moderate your tone, Carter. If you keep shouting, the NSA won’t need a wiretap to overhear us.”

  A moment of silence followed as all three men considered whether Profitt’s comment, intended as a joke, might have an element of truth to it.

  “You think they’d dare do that?” Coleman asked in little more than a whisper.

  “I’m wondering myself, now that I’ve brought it up,” Profitt said.

  Rangel weighed in with his best assessment. “It’s likely they’re still vacuuming up everybody’s calls. But they’d never use anything against either of you gentlemen.”

  “Why not?” Coleman asked.

  “Peter?” Rangel said, wanting to see if he had one apt student.

  Profitt proved equal to the challenge, “Because, Carter, if the NSA were to incriminate you and me, our esteemed colleagues in Congress would take umbrage. Whittle the NSA’s budget down to pennies on the dollar. They wouldn’t have the money to shop at Radio Shack.”

  “Didn’t that place go out of business?” Coleman asked.

  Both Profitt and Rangel sighed. The speaker said, “Yes, they did, but the point is we don’t have to worry about being bugged. Just try to keep your voice down.”

  At a much lower decibel level, but still suffused with emotion, the Whip said, “We’re screwed without that Renshaw bitch’s testimony. We have less than forty-eight hours until we put the president of the United States on trial and it looks like we’ll have to stand around with our dicks in our hands. I don’t know about you, Mr. Speaker, but that ain’t gonna play well in my district.”

  “The gentleman from Oklahoma has a point, T.W.,” Profitt said.

  Rangel reassured them. “You’re both worrying needlessly. Before Joan Renshaw ever emerged from her coma, your House of Representatives impeached the president. You did so the same way that you intended to try her, on a lava bed of emotional animus.”

  Neither politician attempted to rebut Rangel.

  “Having Ms. Renshaw wake up and claim she conspired with the president was manna from heaven, and having her recant is still a gift.”

  “How’s that, T.W.?” Profitt asked.

  He had his own guess but he wanted to hear from the man himself.

  Knowing just what the Speaker was thinking, Rangel obliged him. He had to show he was worth the not-so-small fortune he was being paid. “You call Ms. Renshaw as a witness. If she reverses herself again and testifies on your behalf, she’s your new best friend, an icon of courage and unbreakable character. If she denies she was working with the president and never told you otherwise, you play your investigator’s recording of her saying otherwise and ask one simple question: ‘Who got to you, Ms. Renshaw?’”

  Profitt knew the answer to that and didn’t mind supplying it. “Galia Mindel.”

  “Just so,” Rangel agreed. “Once that’s done, the trial becomes about the White House chief of staff as much as the president. Handled properly, we can neuter the president and destroy her number one political operative.”

  Coleman, playing catch-up, said, “Maybe we even find some criminal offense against ol’ Galia. Put the pressure on the president to disown her, maybe even have the attorney general prosecute.”

  Profitt added, “The icing on the cake would be to get that damn Jean Morrissey in on the dump-Galia game by starting a narrative that she has to do that or she’ll never have a chance of being elected president.”

  Rangel was pleased to see his students were exploring some of the more obvious ploys of the strategy. He was about to offer a more subtle variation when he was jarringly distracted by hearing his doorbell ring. He’d have to answer it himself; he’d given Roosevelt the night off. The cook and the maid had already gone home so they couldn’t help out either. He was alone in the house.

  “Excuse me for a minute, gentlemen,” he said. “Someone’s at my front door. I’ll take a look and be right back.”

  Rangel put the call on hold. He didn’t need to open his door to see who had come calling. A camera looked down at anyone who arrived at his threshold. Rangel pulled up the view on his laptop computer. At a glance, he had no idea of who the fellow was: A bald pate was the first thing he noticed. But then the visitor’s eyes, nose and jawline registered in his mind.

  The man then looked up, directly at the camera, and Rangel knew who he was.

  Edmond Whelan.

  Good God, had he found out who h
ad stolen his treatise?

  The question answered itself. Of course, he had.

  It would be a disaster if Profitt and Coleman learned what he’d done, so he told them he had to go and broke the connection with them.

  Then Rangel asked himself: “Where the hell did I put my gun?”

  The answer to that eluded him, and Whelan began banging on his door.

  The White House — Washington, DC

  The conspirators in Great Falls and on Capitol Hill didn’t need to worry about the NSA monitoring their call. The intelligence agency was more or less hewing to the recent Supreme Court ruling that it didn’t have the authority to conduct the universal collection of phone calls, emails, texts and malicious gossip over backyard fences. There were moments, of course, when a sense of urgency demanded reversion to the old methods, but in general the NSA spooks tried not to put themselves crosswise with the Supremes.

  As Rangel and company had accurately divined, Galia Mindel was their chief worry.

  She knew it, too. That was why when Rangel was away for a metrosexual spa day and his cook and maid were sent out on errands Roosevelt had allowed a technician to enter Rangel’s house and bug his phone system, his office and his bedroom — in case he talked in his sleep, not to record any amorous activity.

  Rangel didn’t fornicate at home. He went to a discreet establishment in the District for that. Galia was still looking for a way to, pardon the verb, penetrate that den of … well, she didn’t really care to know the fine details of what went on there. But she did want to know what people talked about under that roof.

  That, however, was a problem to solve for another day.

  It both gratified her and sent a small chill down her spine to become a co-equal target with the president for the other side. Well, they’d soon find out how dangerous she was if someone tried to put her in a corner. A recording of the Rangel-Profitt-Coleman conversation would make its way to Ellie Booker when the time was right.

  Maybe another copy would arrive on Vice President Morrissey’s desk. Wouldn’t she love it to hear that the boys on the right had a plan to intimidate her? Galia chuckled. She was sure Jean could kick the withered asses of all three of those bastards, even if they came at her in a bunch.