There were no hurrahs this time for the returning conqueror as Nick made his way through the Academy. It was downright awkward. People kept saying, "Oh — Nick. " and kept right on going. Only Gomez O'Neal, whom he met by the coffee machine, greeted him with sympathy. "You okay, Nick?"
"Fine, fine," grinding away on his back molars.
Gomez put his hand on his shoulder. "You hang in there."
Coffee in hand, Nick made his way past a gauntlet of averted glances toward BR's office.
"Oh — Nick…" BR's secretary said. "He's busy. He's in with Jeannette."
Nick thought there might be one superfluous word in that sentence. He barged right in, rather hoping he'd catch them in flagrante, whacking each other with riding crops, but they were only going over papers.
"Morning," Nick said.
BR and Jeannette stared in surprise. "Are you all right?" BR asked.
"Fine, fine. There's something about staying up all night protesting your innocence to FBI agents that I find invigorating."
"Would you excuse us?" BR said to Jeannette.
"No, please," Nick said. "I certainly don't have anything to hide from Jeannette."
BR leaned back in his big black leather chair. "How do you think we ought to proceed?"
"In terms of what?"
"In terms of your situation."
"Oh that. Well, as you say, Steve Carlinsky's the best there is. I'm sure he'll figure out something. That's why you're paying him $450 an hour."
"I meant more in terms of the immediate situation. I don't need to tell you what kind of press we're getting. I have a responsibility to think of the organization. Jeannette thought a leave of absence might make sense."
"I have no objections if Jeannette wants to take a leave of absence."
"Uh, I think we're talking about you taking a leave of absence."
"Much too much to do. Finisterre, Mr. Jolly Roger's Neighborhood, Project Hollywood. Gotta keep up the Big Mo." Nick smiled. "Neo-Puritans never sleep."
"I'm not sure that's advisable, at this point. You've sort of become. "
"A liability?"
"An issue, certainly." BR held up the morning papers. "Your Ms. Holloway seems to be in hot pursuit of her first Pulitzer. She does have good sources."
"Not as good as the FBI's. Now they have sources."
"We're getting a hell of a lot of calls about this. Very, very angry calls."
"Yes, I can imagine what they must think." "Jeannette's office has fielded one hundred seventy-eight calls this morning."
"Jeannette's office?"
"We obviously can't refer calls about you to your office."
"No, no. Naturally. Well, Jeannette can certainly handle it. In fact, I appreciate Jeannette's abilities more and more each day. But I'm not sure that a leave of absence is a good idea."
"And why is that?"
"Because," Nick grinned, "it would send the signal that you all think I'm guilty. Which of course is not the case. Bight?" BR and Jeannette stared.
"I mean, the notion that I would cover myself with nicotine patches to the point of giving myself several heart attacks, and throw up a hundred times, and then leave the empty boxes all over the cabin for the FBI to find, once they were tipped off. And call the cabin from my office phone on the morning I abduct myself. And leave the number of the cabin right out in the open in my apartment. I mean, who would believe that a smart guy like me would be so FUCKING STUPID?!" Jeannette started.
"Sorry," Nick said. "Don't know what got into me. Anyway, I know my colleagues, my trench mates, my brothers- and sisters-in-arms, could never believe that I'd be capable of such ineptitude. So," he said brightly, "let's fight this all the way to the Supreme Court."
BR said, "Do we have a defense strategy'?"
"You bet. We're going to find the people who made me into the asshole."
"Do you have any idea who those might be?"
"Well," Nick said pensively, "they would have to be people who really despise me. But in my case that comes to about four-fifths of the U.S. population. Two hundred million. Sort of a big suspect pool, isn't it? You know, they'll probably be thrilled to see me get sent off to play love slave to the Aryan Brotherhood for ten to fifteen."
"I'm not sure it's going to come to that," BR said. "We ought to be able to get you into some minimum-security place."
"Oh," Nick said, "I wouldn't count on it. Carlinsky says he's never seen prosecutors so pissed off. Evil yuppie scum devises cheap stunt to promote himself and cancer. He says they're out for blood." Nick grinned. "Mine."
"Well," BR said, leaning forward in a way suggesting that he was tired of badinage about Nick having to spend his next decade behind bars being gang-banged by people with swastika tattoos. "Carlinsky is the best, and we are behind you. But I think under the circumstances a leave of absence does make sense."
"Why don't we just run that by the Captain."
"I wouldn't trouble the Captain with this right now. This has all come as a terrible shock to him. He's not doing very well."
"He's not?" Nick said.
"No," BR said, with the faintest trace of a smile. "I'm afraid he isn't."
* * *
As soon as the door to BR's office closed behind him, Nick clashed to his office, only to find yellow crime scene tape on his door and several FBI technicians in jumpsuits with fbi crime search team in big, intimidating letters on the back. They were wearing latex gloves, and from the looks of it, ransacking every square inch of his office in the process, making it look like Nick's old room at college. God knows what they thought they were going to find in there, Nick thought— presumably a file in his computer labeled "self-kidnap plan. Things to bring to the cabin: 10 boxes NicArrest patches, rope, handcuffs…"
"Is this necessary?" he said to one of the FBI technicians, who pointedly ignored him.
He took Gazelle aside. "Get me on the next flight to Winston-Salem."
"They said you weren't supposed to leave the metro area. Conditions of your bail." "Gazelle."
"Is this going to make me an accessory?"
"All right, all right. Just look up the flights. Can your conscience handle that? I'll get the ticket myself."
He took the elevator down to I Street. A cab was parked, the driver, a Middle Eastern man with a close-cropped black beard, eating a knish from a sidewalk vendor. Nick waved him over and got in the back.
"National Airport. And hurry." It was unnecessary to say that to any foreign-born D.C. cab driver, since they only drive at two speeds, dangerously fast and really dangerously fast. Off they sped.
Nick looked out the rear window and saw a tan sedan with two athletic-looking types with sunglasses. Feds. The headline flashed before him.
Naylor Is Back in Custody After Violating Bail Terms
According to the license posted on the dash, the driver's name was Akmal Ibrahim.
"Mr. Ibrahim," Nick said, "are you in some sort of trouble with the FBI?"
"Why you say this?"
"Because you're being followed. That tan sedan. Those are FBI agents. I saw them watching you when you were parked."
Akmal looked nervously in the rear-view. "I have no problems with FBI."
"They seem to have some problem with you."
"Ever since World Trade Center bombing, FBI thinks all Muslim people are bad. Is not true. I have family in Reston."
"I know," Nick said. "It's awful the way they persecute people for their religious beliefs. I wonder what they want with you."
"I have nothing to worry."
"Why don't you take a sudden turn without a signal. See if they follow."
Akmal made a sharp turn onto Virginia Avenue at the last minute. The sedan swerved to follow, nearly colliding with a State Department staff car.
Akmal said worriedly, "They follow!"
"Yeah. You know, I saw them put something in your trunk while you were eating." "What?!"
"It might have just been a listening device, but it might have been something else, like explosives. So they can arrest you for a bomber. I'm a reporter at the Sun. We've heard they're planning a big roundup of Muslims. They need hostages to trade with Saddam Hussein in case we go to war with him."
"But I have green card!"
"Well, good luck."
"FBI is arresting many wrong people. In New York they arrest people for the bombing, they are not the ones who do the bombing. The bombing is done by Israeli secret police, to make bad feelings about Muslim people in America."
"I know. It's awful. I'm writing a big article about it. But once they stop you and find whatever it is they put in your trunk, that's it, Akmal. That's how they got Sheik Omar, you know. And he's not getting out of prison until the twenty-second century."
"Sheik Omar is very holy man."
"Maybe they'll put you in the same prison. You and he could become friends."
Nick wondered, as he was forced back into his seat by the g-forces as Akmal hit the accelerator, if he had done a wise thing. There was a lot of honking and screeching of tires. When he opened his eyes and looked back, the tan sedan was fifty yards behind. Even highly trained government drivers are no match for the ordinary Middle Easterner.
By the time they'd reached the Arlington end of Memorial Bridge, Akmal had gained more yardage. Then, without any warning, he did a breathtakingly precise bootleg turn into the oncoming traffic, setting off an angry chorus of horns and anti-locking brakes. Nick was slammed into the side of the car.
"We lose them!" Akmal shouted triumphantly.
Nick peered cautiously through the rear window and saw the FBI sedan trying to catch up by speeding around the rotary in front of the cemetery. But by now Akmal had a couple of hundred yards on them. After another stunningly illegal turn, south onto Rock Creek, onto Independence, he did another 180-degree boodeg. Then it was back onto Rock Creek, right on Virginia, left onto Route 66, off at the Iwo Jima Memorial, left onto Route 50, and onto the George Washington Parkway south. Nick tipped Akmal fifty bucks and agreed with him that God was indeed great, then caught the flight to Charlotte, where he connected into Winston-Salem, arriving at the Bowman-Gray Medical Center after the Cardiac Care Unit visiting hours, making it necessary to adopt a rather broad southern accent as he told the head nurse that he was Doak Boykin III, uhgently come to see his deah old grandpappy.
"You're his grandson?" she inquired, a little suspiciously.
"Yay-ess," Nick said, sounding like Butterfly McQueen.
She peered at him. "You look familiar."
Doubtless, Nick's face had been prominently splashed across the front page of the Tar-Intelligencer.
"They say ah look jus like him. May I please see him? Ah been so wurried."
"Well," she said, "all right. But only ten minutes. He's very tired." "Is he gone to be all rayht?"
"Oh, he just likes to make us all worried. He'll be all right. If he behaves"
The Cardiac Care Unit was top of the line, paid for with tobacco money, just another example of how tobacco and progress go hand in hand. The Captain was hooked up to a number of machines. In the semidarkness, their screens cast a cool glow of light onto the Captain's face, which seemed to Nick very pale and drawn. He stood next to the bed. "Captain?"
The old man's eyes opened, blinked a few times. "I told you," he said, "that I will not have any more pig parts put in me. I want human parts, damnit."
"Captain. It's me, Nick."
The Captain looked up.
"Why son. Sit down, have some oxygen."
"I came to explain to you. About the arrest."
"Yes," the Captain said, coughing. "It could use some explaining. BR called me in the middle of the night to say you were in custody."
"Thank you for the bail money."
"I don't suppose it'll bankrupt us. That Jewish lawyer fellow we hired you probably will, though. Four hundred and fifty dollars an hour. "
"This is going to sound a little strange," Nick said, "but here's what I think has happened."
Nick drew a breath and laid it out: BR wanted to fire Nick and replace him with his squeeze, Jeannette, but his appearance on the Oprah show had made him the Captain's gold-haired boy, and that had made BR jealous. The threatening caller on the Larry King show had probably given BR the brainstorm to kill two birds with one stone: remove Nick and drum up some sympathy for tobacco by creating a martyr. BR, who'd come up from the mafia-murky world of vending machines, would have had the connections to hire people to do it. But, to judge from the 'Executed for Crimes Against Humanity' sign, the kidnappers had screwed up by dropping him off on the Mall, still alive. So BR and Jeannette contrived to pm the kidnapping on Nick by having Jeannette seduce him and get his fingerprints all over the boxes of "condoms" and plant them in the cabin on the Virginia lake, along with a few other compromising clues. Nick would go to jail, disgraced, and BR's suspicion would turn out to have been correct, so he'd look like a hero. Of course, the real loser in all this was tobacco.
Nick finished. The Captain looked at him with lowered eyebrows, took a long breath, and said, "You sound like one of those people who thinks there were five gunmen on the Grassy Knoll in Dallas that day."
"I know," Nick said. "It'll probably sound that way in court, too."
"On the other hand," the Captain said, pulling himself up in bed, "preposterous though it sounds, elements of it have a certain," he sighed, "ring to them that make my liver twitchy." He frowned. "BR's been telling me since the week after the kidnapping that he thought you were involved."
"Oh?" Nick said.
"And I have it from my own man in there that he and that blond gal Jurnelle—" "Jeannette."
"— have been making whoopee on company time. So that fits in with this conspiracy theory of yours. I know BR for a jugular fellow. You know, he wanted us to go public that your friend Lorne Lutch had taken the money from us."
"Why?"
"So he'd look like a whore and there'd be no Rancho Canceroso foundation. He never wanted us to pay him off. One conversation we had, he said, 'There are better ways to deal with people like that.' I wondered what he meant. You know, when I hired him away from Allied Vending, we were up to our armpits in liability suits, and I told him I'd pay him a bonus for every one that didn't make it to trial. And three of the big ones didn't make it to trial, on account of, you remember, they died from smoking in bed. BR made me pay him the bonuses even though those were accidents. Said a deal's a deal. Cost me plenty, too, though a hell of a lot less than it would have if we'd lost in court."
"Captain," Nick said, "I think there something's very wrong here."
"You don't think that he. no. Now, I don't doubt he mighta been a little jealous of my affection for you. And while it's true people in the vending machine business rub elbows with some rough individuals, I shouldn't think. Good Lord, is this possible?" His head sank into his pillow. He put his hand over his eyes. "I'll need to have my man make inquiries."
"Your man? Who's that?"
"Best keep his identity private, for the time being."
The Captain opened his eyes again and removed his hand. "Now Nick, if these grotesqueries that you have revealed to me do turn out to be true, I don't suppose I need to elaborate for you what this is going to mean for our industry."
"Well, no, but. "
"Of course, that's not the prime consideration here. Assuming that you've been grievously wronged, we'll have to make amends to you. But let me cook you up some hypothetical soup. Suppose — just suppose — assuming we establish that what you're saying is true, which I don't doubt it is, that I fire BR's sorry ass — and that chippy of his, Jumelle — quietly, but with such extreme prejudice that he'll be lucky to get a job selling lottery tickets in Guam. And you were to plead guilty to these charges."
"Guilty?"
"Bear with me. Guilty with an explanation. That is, guilty to the sin of being young and impetuous, just like a lot of other people who've worked in Washington. Hell, you already got a reputation for impetuosity on account of telling everyone the President choked. For $450 an hour Carlinsky can damn well get you reduced time at some country club prison where they riot on account of the coq an vin was overcooked and the wine wasn't properly chilled."
"Uh—"
"Now here's the really good part. We open up a quiet little bank account in the Cayman Islands for you, say. five million dollars. What the hell, ten. Now even counting inflation and taxes, ten million dollars is still a lot of money, son. You wouldn't have to work for the rest of your life. You like to fish, don't you? Well, you could buy yourself a nice island somewhere and fish and be fed mangos by dusky women who don't wear clothes. That sounds pretty good to me. Tell you what, if you want to go on working for us, I'll put you in charge of the Hong Kong office. You'll be head of all American tobacco business in the Far East. Hell, that's where the future is, anyway. So many Asians, so little time. "
Nick thought. "I like the part about firing BR and Jeannette. I don't know about the rest of it."
"Well, let's take it step by step. We'll start with BR, then see how you feel about taking early retirement."
"You're in no shape to make the right decision. You're all wrapped around the axle. You look like you haven't slept in a week. Dark circles under your eyes. Fine tobacco spokesman you are," he murmured.
"All right," Nick said, "step by step."
"Knew you were a sensible fellow. Knew it the first day I met you at the Club. Do you remember? How I would love to wrap my lips around one of their mint juleps right now."
The head nurse was approaching with a stem look on her face. "I'll talk to you later," Nick said. "Get some rest."
"If I oink next time you see me, you'll know I been screwed again."
Nick turned to go. The Captain said after him, "Don't forget, tobacco takes care of its own."