Dead to the Last Drop (39 page)

“Where did you think you were going?” Quinn asked.

“Las Vegas. We were going to get married.”

Quinn shook his head. “You wouldn’t have made it out of DC. I doubt you would have made it out of Georgetown.”

“That’s what I told him,” Bernie said, clutching a cloth to his nose. Underneath it appeared he was
grinning
. “You’ve got to admire the boy’s spunk, though.”

Quinn groaned. “Stan’s
spunk
launched a million-dollar manhunt.”

“That’s right, and they
still
couldn’t find him,” Bernie said, sounding like a proud parent.

“We weren’t going to leave right away,” Stan countered. “We were going to wait it out in the Underground Railroad, then leave when the heat was off.”

Quinn rubbed his eyes. “Son, when you help the First Daughter of the United States evade her security detail, the longer she stays missing, the hotter ‘the heat’ gets.”

“I didn’t say he was a mastermind at subterfuge,” Bernie amended. “Only that he had spunk.”

“So what went wrong?” I asked.

“Me,” said Bernie. “I knew their plan, and I was trying to stop them. But upon reflection, I might have approached them differently. I rushed up to them in the dark park, and Stan mistook me for a mugger. Along with spunk, Stan has a great right hook. That was the
first
time I got a bloody nose in this misadventure.”

“Then it was
your
blood they found in the park,” I realized. “Along with Abby’s scarf and her hair.”

Bernie nodded. “I had to prove to Abby that I was her father, right there on the trail with my nose still leaking.”

“And he did,” Abby said. “He knew why I had the notes from ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ tattooed on my arm. He remembered he taught me ‘Chopsticks.’ He described things in my childhood bedroom, what our house looked like, until I had no doubts.”

“What happened next?” Quinn pressed.

“We agreed to go forward with part of Stan’s plan,” said Bernie. “I advised them to leave Abby’s bloodied scarf and Stan’s Hoover cane by the riverbank to throw off the dogs. Then we went into the river and climbed into the storm drain. Stan had a rope rigged already, and we helped Abby up into it. We followed the drain here, to your Underground Railroad station, and camped out the last thirty hours or so. I took the time to let Abby get to know me a little better, and all three of us have been talking about options.”

Quinn frowned. “Options?”

“It’s clear these two will never get away with elopement. Even if we did get them to Vegas, the second they file for the license, the authorities will snatch them. Stan will be charged with kidnapping, never mind the
circumstances. Sure, he’ll be cleared, but there’s no getting around the mess—”

“I can’t walk out of here without a plan,” Abby said, becoming emotional. “My mother will say my behavior was a ‘cry for help.’ I’ll be back on medications and under even stricter security, right up to the moment she pressures me into taking a zombie walk to the altar with Preston!”

Tears welled in her eyes, and Stan crossed the room to comfort her.

“Let’s all stay calm,” I urged. “Gathered in this room we’ve got an intelligence officer, a combat veteran, an NYPD detective, and a woman who survived sixty years of running a small business in New York City. I
think
we can come up with something!”

O
ne Hundred Seven

T
HIRTY minutes later, Luther and Quinn went through the mansion, pulling down blinds, closing curtains, and turning on every radio or television they could find to thwart potential listening devices. Then we moved Abby and Stan upstairs, into the comfort of the double parlor.

In the kitchen, Madame made a large pot of my freshly roasted Wake Up Washington blend to the raucous sounds of BIG 100.3—DC’s classic rock station. It wasn’t until she served the coffee that I noticed she was wearing earplugs.

Finally, Quinn, Bernie, and I took our coffee into the stately dining room for a serious discussion around the Walton family–sized table.

“You could talk to the First Lady,” I suggested to Bernie. “Try to reason with her.”

“That would accomplish nothing,” he assured me.

“What makes you so certain?”

“Let’s just say I know Beth Noland better than you do.”

“You and the future Mrs. Parker shared a relationship once,” I pointed out. “And you had a child together. Is there no hope?”

“Our history was a tad rocky, Clare, and today it’s ancient. She wouldn’t listen to me then, and she won’t now.”

“A comment like that makes me wonder how you two got together in the first place.”

“Do tell,” Madame said, removing her earplugs.

“I guess I should start at the beginning . . .”

In the next ten minutes, Bernie quietly revealed his true background,
some of which I’d learned already from Helen Trainer: He’d been born Andy Aamir Ferro here in the USA, right across the border in Virginia. His father was an American university professor; his mother a French national of Arabic descent; and he’d studied world music here in DC, as well as in France, Spain, and Morocco. His love of travel and adventure and facility for languages reminded me of Matteo Allegro.

Then he revealed something I hadn’t heard before . . .

“My uncle worked at the CIA. It was through him that I was recruited to act as an asset, and inform on terrorist activity abroad. Intel I supplied prevented the bombing of a Paris concert, and I realized that saving those people who didn’t even know they were in danger was as big a kick as the music . . . so I decided to become a CIA officer like my uncle. I returned to DC for training at the agency’s headquarters, and that’s when I met Abby’s mother.”

He paused to taste the coffee, and give Madame a thumbs-up.

“Beth Noland was already a seasoned CIA analyst at Langley, five years older than I was, and happy with her Washington career path. From the start, we were physically attracted to each other, and Abby happened. Beth had been told she couldn’t have children, so when she got pregnant she was overjoyed, despite the complications it brought to her life.”

“In matters of the heart, there are always complications,” Madame pointed out.

“Not like these. I was being trained for a special assignment, and it was too late to back out. I asked Beth to give me five years in the field, then I’d return to DC and we’d marry. She was very unhappy with my decision. She left the CIA and took a job on Capitol Hill. But she did allow me a relationship with my daughter when I visited Washington. Beth even brought Abby on a few extended trips overseas to see me, and at one point she did consider a move to Casablanca.”

“But she never did move, did she?” I said.

“No. Because of 9/11. After that, everything changed. The world, my outlook, and my relationship with Beth. She decided it would be too dangerous for her and little Abby to move. She tried to persuade me to come back, but my work was never more important, so I refused.”

Bernie sighed. “By 2002, Beth had begun her affair with Senator Parker. Because no one knew of me inside the Beltway, everyone began to assume Abby was Senator Parker’s love child.

“Then came the Casablanca bombings of 2003, the worst terror attack
in Morocco’s history. Two thousand suspected terrorists were arrested, convicted, and sent to the most brutal prisons you can imagine.”

Sweat appeared on Bernie’s brow. “I was one of them. My cover was so good I’d fooled the Moroccan authorities. My fellow inmates immediately began talking about a plan to escape. I believed they could do it, so I kept my cover and played my role to the hilt. I did terrible things, but I earned respect in that prison, and trust.”

Quinn rose from the table. When he returned, he had a shot glass and a decanter of very fine scotch.

He poured, and Bernie nodded his thanks.

“Moroccan authorities admitted nine terrorists tunneled out of that cesspool of a prison. In truth, there were more than twenty of us, and my fellow fugitives made me part of their new terrorist network. They trusted me completely now. It wasn’t until I got to Pakistan that I finally managed to hook up with the CIA again.”

Bernie drained his glass. “The gold I handed the agency after that, you wouldn’t believe. I was living in the heart of the beast. I helped stop bombings of hotels in North Africa, an embassy and nightclub in Europe, a girls’ school in the Middle East, an assassination of a world leader, and targeted attacks against our troops. I was also able to identify active terrorist cells for our military. Then a drone strike hit a meeting I was attending, and I was badly wounded, but officially I died in that attack, with everyone else—”

“You mean Aamir Tuli Abdal died.”

Bernie was astonished at my intelligence gathering. “Stan said you would figure out we were here, and you did. But I had no idea you were so adept at my game. You may have missed your calling, Clare Cosi.”

“Thanks, but after the last twenty-four hours, the only thing I’ve missed is the calm, cozy comfort of my coffeehouse.”

Quinn poured again. This time Bernie actually tasted the scotch, and approved.

“Anyway, Navy SEALs extracted me. I’ve been in Washington about two years, healing up, getting plastic surgery in the process. Now I’ve got this new identity and a lecturing job at CIA headquarters, training case officers. In the meantime, I learned Senator Parker became President Parker, and my wonderful daughter became America’s First Daughter.”

Bernie set his empty glass aside. “Being an intelligence officer, I couldn’t help using my skills to check up on Abby, and what I discovered, I didn’t
like: An attempted suicide. Confinement in a psychiatric hospital. I knew something had gone wrong in my daughter’s life, so I decided to lurk on the fringes—watch over her.”

He met my gaze. “I sent Abby an invitation to your Open Mike Night, making it appear as if the invitation came from your club. I was hoping she’d come, and she did. After that, it was easy for me to see her.”

Finally, I asked the question that had been bugging me for hours.

“How did you
know
Abby was going to elope?”

Quinn made a guess from his own work on Katerina’s case. “You cloned her phone, didn’t you?”

Bernie nodded sheepishly. “I’m not proud of it, but, yes, I did. This was long before she became a celebrity. The Secret Service kept its distance then to give her some semblance of freedom. I forged a faculty ID so I could move around. Abby was at the library one day with friends, and I was able to snatch the phone and return it.”

Bernie’s expression became more serious. “As I listened to Abby’s conversations and read her texts, I became even more concerned for her future. The situation she was in with Stan and Preston gave me the chance to take the measure of both young men.”

“And what did you conclude?” Madame asked.

“Preston talked down to Abby, treated her like a child. Called her ‘the total package.’ But it wasn’t a compliment. It was a definition. He knew Abby had the kind of connections that could help him get ahead. And that’s all he ever wanted to talk about—his political aspirations, his ‘networking,’ and what he needed from her.”

Bernie glanced at me. “Abby’s love of music so threatened Preston that he tried to make her believe you folks at the Village Blend were using her for her connections.”

“Blatant hypocrisy!” Madame cried.

“Yes, the Prestons of the world are good at charging rivals with exactly what they’re guilty of. And in her heart, Abby knew the boy was lying, that you had befriended her without ulterior motives.”

“What about Stan?” I asked. “What did you think of him?”

“Stanley McGuire never talked about Abby’s connections, only about how amazing my daughter is, how talented, and how much he cares for her. But I think it was Stan’s philosophy about jazz that really endeared him to Abby.”

I already knew what Bernie was going to say—

“Stan told Abby that she had to stop criticizing herself, and learn how to love every note she played.”

“That’s a beautiful metaphor, one that goes well beyond music,” Madame observed. “No wonder you chose Stanley.”

“My daughter chose Stanley,” Bernie clarified. “She chose him freely. And I wanted to protect her right to make that choice.”

“Everyone at this table wants to do that,” I said. “But how? We’re a bunch of fugitive plotters in hiding. How can we thwart the wishes of a President and his recalcitrant First Lady?”

“We could go to the press,” Madame suggested.

“No good,” said Bernie.

I quickly agreed. Too much of what we’d discussed, including the truth about Abby’s parentage and Bernie’s real identity, was top secret—

Wait a minute!
I thought.
Top secret. Just like that flash drive . . .

“Mike, where’s the clean laptop Danica brought you?”

“In the kitchen. Why?”

“Because Abby’s father needs to see this!” Without thinking, I pointed to my cleavage. And Bernie Moore nearly fell off his chair.

O
ne Hundred Eight

T
WENTY minutes later, Abby’s father was still sitting in front of Danica’s laptop, poring over the top secret e-mails about his own disappearance after the bombings in Morocco.

“Clare, when you handed me this flash drive, you said Helen Trainer kept printouts in a file that was stolen from her office?”

I nodded. “For some reason, she named the file
Bathsheba
.”

Bernie lifted an eyebrow. “Poetic, but true. Do you know the story?”

“I do,” said Luther Bell, who’d joined us at the dining room table. “King David had the hots for a soldier’s wife, so he sent her husband to the front lines to die, which left him free to dally with the missus.”

“That’s it, in a nutshell,” Bernie said, “but you left out a few important details. Like the part about King David doing more than dallying with Uriah’s wife. After her husband died in battle, David married Bathsheba and made her his queen.”

Bernie finally closed the laptop. “It’s the perfect parallel to my story, and even better, it’s a story millions of voters will understand, which is why I’m going to use this against the First Lady.”