CRISP FLIGHT ATTENDANTS welcomed Gerald Buchanan aboard the American Airlines passenger jet at Miami International and escorted him to a first-class seat aboard Flight 107 to Puerto Rico. After the dankness of Washington, he had been pleasantly blinded by the brilliant sun and the blue Florida skies. Get used to it. There were a lot of islands in the Caribbean and he planned to settle on one. He already had a new identity and a list of officials to bribe to avoid arrest and extradition. Marge and the kids would come down in a few months, and they would reestablish a home on a beach somewhere.
He was leaving behind his dream of being the behind-the-scenes king of New America, but felt excitement at moving toward a new dream, one of a long and comfortable life with plenty of money and a big sailboat on the Italian Riviera. He thanked the attendant, gave her a drink request, settled into the soft blue aisle seat, and buckled in. Another attendant was there immediately with an Absolut on ice with a twist of lime.
He looked over at the passenger in the next seat. His luck was already changing for the better, for next to him was an attractive woman in jeans and a loose T-shirt that showed a band of skin around her waist. Dark brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she had kicked off her tennis sneakers to curl up in the spacious seat, working on a laptop computer balanced on the tray table. Graphs and charts and multipage reports danced on the screen as she clicked through whatever her project was. She was drinking a glass of white wine.
“Hi there,” he said, taking a sip of his drink. Delicious. “May I ask what you’re working on? It seems complicated.”
“Oh, just some stuff about fish,” she responded with a shy look. Not much makeup, and big wire-rimmed glasses. Intelligent blue eyes looked at him curiously. “Do I know you from somewhere? I mean, aren’t you somebody famous on TV?”
Buchanan wanted to tell her everything, to impress her with his name and his title and his extraordinary reach and power. But that was all gone. According to his new passport, he was somebody else, moving toward a tomorrow to find new challenges to test his intellect. “No. Sorry.” He extended his hand. “My name is Bob Walsh. I do oil exploration. And who are you?”
“Irish Campbell. Nice to meet you.” She sipped her wine and pointed to the computer screen. “I’m a marine biologist up at Woods Hole in Massachusetts, and I’ve got to get out to the islands to tag some fish we believe are about ready to come off the endangered species list.”
He noticed the huge wristwatch, a diver’s chronograph with all sorts of dials. “Do you actually go swimming to find them?”
“All the time,” she said and brought out a little tube of lotion, rubbing a dab on her cheeks. “That salt water and hot sun does a job on a girl’s skin.”
The doors closed, the pilot made his announcements, and she put away her laptop and removed the earplugs to the iPod that hung around her neck and dangled between her full breasts. The diving would explain the tightness of her body. He had no trouble imagining her in a clinging wetsuit with a scuba tank. Flight AA 107 was in the clouds a few minutes later. The seatmates chatted through the first drink, and Buchanan ordered another round.
“Are you going to hunt for oil down here?” asked Trish Campbell.
“No. Just burning off some accumulated holiday time, then I’m off to some other dismal place in the oil patch, possibly up in the North Sea to freeze my ass off,” he said. “My family can’t be with me for a while. Could I persuade you to have dinner with me tonight?”
She let the question hang as she studied his face, then she gave a warm smile and said, “Maybe.”
Buchanan was regaining his confidence, which had been sorely tried by the setbacks of recent days. That damned Sniper! I hope Gordon takes care of him in a most horrible way. Of course Trish Campbell would dine with him. By the end of the evening, she would do anything he wanted. They always did.
The announcement came over the loudspeaker that it was permissible to use electronic equipment again, and Trish dug out her laptop and plugged in the iPod. A few clicks of the keyboard and she had MTV rocking, but only she could hear it. On the screen, a sexy girl was humping a boy wearing an oversize basketball jersey and a baseball cap turned to the side.
“What kind of fish are you going to tag?” he asked.
She glanced over and turned down the volume. “What?”
“Sorry. I asked about your job. What kind of fish will you be tagging?”
“Wrong question to ask a marine biologist,” Trish laughed. She clicked off MTV and called up a program of big fish swimming slowly to and fro. “Sharks,” she replied. “I’m into sharks. I don’t want to bore you, but would you like to see something really hot?”
“Sure. I’m really interested.” It was always a good play to pretend to be fascinated by a woman’s work.
Trish slid the laptop onto his tray table and leaned across to insert the iPod buttons in his ears. He felt the weight of her breast against his forearm, and the clean smell of her perfume. He would gladly put up with MTV and fish for a roll in the hay with her.
“This is really good. You ready? Can you hear it okay?” When he nodded, she said, “Okay, watch and listen very closely,” punched in a five-digit sequence, and clicked ENTER.
The fish dissolved slowly into a slide show. Buchanan was stunned as the pictures flipped past. The first was a full view of himself in the front yard of his home. Then came that picture of Marge that they always kept on the baby grand, and a photo of her playing with their dog, Rio. An action photo of fourteen-year-old Lester playing soccer. One of Missy studying in the library at Princeton, followed by a semi-nude picture of Missy on a bed, smiling sleepily at the camera. Photos of his cousin Florence and her kids, his brother and his family, and his bedridden mother in the assisted living facility.
The last picture was a live camera shot. Gordon Gates sitting at his desk, looking directly at Buchanan.
“Hello, Gerald,” he said. “Going somewhere? Don’t say anything out loud, just type your replies and look into the little camera button on the side of the computer screen. We will make this quick.”
“Gordon? What is this!” he said aloud, but was pinched painfully under the arm by Trish, who pointed at the keyboard. “Type!” she said, and he did. WHAT IS THIS?
“That was a little photo album that we gathered of your entire family.” Gates’s voice in his ear was cold. “Did you like the one of Missy on the bed? Looks like your little princess just got laid, but never mind that for now. The young woman seated next to you and the big guy across the aisle, who happens to be the air marshal for this flight, are a Shark Team, ole buddy. They are there to make sure you do what you are told.”
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?
“You bugged out on me, Gerald. Abandoned me to my fate, so to speak. That kind of made me angry, so you have to make things right between us.”
I AM NOT GOING TO TELL ANYONE.
“That’s for damned sure. By now, Trish should have a typed letter resting on her briefcase. It is a full confession that you were responsible for the entire Middleton kidnapping affair because you wanted to start a war as cover for a political coup in Washington. You realize now that you were wrong, that lives were wasted, that you misused your position and the power of the White House and besmirched the reputation of the United States. Noble shit like that. It’s a good letter: says a lot in two pages. Your new Constitution will also be in the envelope. Sign it.”
WE WERE IN THIS TOGETHER.
“After you sign, Trish will give you two little white pills. You will go into the bathroom at the front of the plane and swallow them. Within twenty seconds you will simply go to sleep, feeling no pain, and be dead.”
HELL NO FUCK YOU GORDON.
“One second, Gerald, while I rearrange the screen.” There was a scramble of the signal and a smaller picture popped into the lower right-hand corner. “There’s dear old Mommy, Gerald, sleeping in that fancy old folks’ home in Palm Beach. You just visited her about four hours ago, remember? Anyway, I have a nurse standing there taking this picture. You don’t sign the paper, Mumsy is going to be put down like a dog with a needle filled with a medicine that will make her last moments hell. She will feel like she is on fire on the inside, and it will take her five long minutes to die. Next on the list will be your little soccer star, Lester, who will fall from a window in a tall building. How could you name a kid Lester, anyway? One by one, until they are all gone. Then the Sharks will kill you anyway.”
DON’T PLEASE DON’T DO THIS.
“Sign the fucking letter. Take the fucking pills. Trish will let me know when it’s over. You have three minutes before the nurse gives your mother the injection. Terrible way for the old woman to go. Goodbye, Gerald. Do the right thing.”
NONONONONONONONONO.
The screen returned to the fish show and Trish pulled away the laptop and jerked the iPod buds from his ears. She slapped a letter on the plastic tray and put a pen on top of it. She made a show of clicking a button on her big diver’s watch. “Two minutes and fifty-nine seconds… two minutes and fifty-eight seconds.”
Gerald Buchanan felt a tear come to his eye as he scanned the letter. He would go down in history not as the savior of his country, but as its biggest traitor since Benedict Arnold. No! It was too much of a sacrifice! His reputation through the ages!
“Two minutes and thirty seconds,” Trish said, now with a mocking smile on her face. She held up a small plastic bag containing two white pills.
He closed his eyes and put his head against the backrest for a moment, folding his fingers together tightly to keep from taking up the pen. Everybody has to die sometime, including every member of my family. They are only mortal, after all. Death comes to us all eventually. He could run to the flight attendant, but the passenger they believed to be the air marshal was actually one of the Sharks! He leafed through the alternatives. They couldn’t kill him in the open cabin if he stood up and made a scene! Sure they could. They were professional killers. He was already a dead man. It was only a matter of choosing how he would go.
“Two minutes, darling,” Trish whispered in his ear, and her breath was hot. “I’m afraid you won’t be around for dinner tonight.”
Buchanan looked at her. “Bitch,” he said.
“Big Lenny over there and I will do Missy this weekend,” she replied with a cold smile. “But your little whore will give us a good time first. An all-nighter. You only have one minute, fifty seconds. Your mutt gets poisoned tomorrow morning. Marge will be raped and then die when the house burns down around her. Cousin Flo and her family are going to have a tragic automobile accident… one forty-five.”
Buchanan scrawled his name just to stop her awful recitation. Trish snatched the letter away and placed the two pills on the tray. He picked them up without a further word and made his way to the clean bathroom, filled a cup of water, and quickly swallowed the pills before the man in the mirror lost his nerve. Gates had lied. It was not painless. Buchanan went into spasms and convulsions and screamed in agony as fire coursed through his veins and he thrashed about the small toilet enclosure. When the alarmed attendants forced the door open, they found the bulky body of Gerald Buchanan curled into the fetal position. A soapy foam oozed from his mouth.
Trish looked across the aisle at her partner. “Fifteen seconds to spare,” she said. She sent the confirmation signal to Gates.