Deceived (26 page)

Senator
Whitford spotted the limo and strode resolutely to its side
.

J.T. Frasier's
driver stood by the passenger door. He acknowledged the senator with a quick
nod of the head as he held open the limo's backdoor. Senator Whitford climbed
into the bench seat across from Frasier.

Frasier
appeared shaken
—
his shoulders drooped, his eyes darted. The only
greeting he offered was an unpleasant glare, even after the driver pushed the
door shut from the outside locking the two in privacy.

Senator
Whitford tipped his head. "J.T."

Frasier gritted
his teeth and started in immediately. "Dammit, this can't be happening. You've
got to shut him up."

Senator
Whitford shook his head. "It's too late for that now. Too many people know
Ford's story, too many have copies of the disk. Once they audit your inventory
records
…
There's no way to shut this thing up, not anymore."

Frasier twisted
his wedding ring nervously around his finger
.

"We've got
a real problem, J.T.," the senator said.

"You think
I'm some sort of dumb-ass?" Frasier spit. "You don't have to tell
me
there's a goddamn problem." He pounded his fist on his thigh. "We've
got to stop him."

"Li tried
and failed. Blame him, not me. What would you have me do at this point? Walk
into the police station and drag him out? With reporters all the hell over the
place? With the Justice department and the FBI involved. I repeat, we've lost
the opportunity to control the situation. We have to prepare for the
worst."

Frasier
half-covered his mouth, eyes dilated. "They won't believe him."

"They
won't have to believe him
—
they'll have facts. Ford has the disk, the financial
records. Li's reportedly skipped the country, but that's where the good news
ends."

Frasier fell
back into his seat, his fear now palpable. "You've got to do
something."

Extreme
pressure, high stakes, and Frasier looked ready to fold
—
not what Whitford
had hoped. He said calmly, "I've been in town for all of two hours, in
that time I've talked to the Attorney General, the head of the FBI, and the
D.C. police commissioner, and now I'm here talking to you. I'm doing what I
can, but frankly at this point that's not much more than monitoring the
situation."

Senator
Whitford paused, his hands folded in front of him. "Remember, J.T.,
you
made the deal with the devil. I want you to consider something, J.T. I regret
this, I really do, but I think if we were to offer you up to investigators we
could
—
"

"
Offer
me up?
Did you say
offer me up
?
Fuck that. You hear me,
fuck
that.
This isn't coming out. None of it. You
understand
? You had
better stand by me."

Senator
Whitford's voice turned stern. "I will stand by you, to the extent I'm
able. The more
…
embarrassing
…
aspects of your transgressions, those
never need see the light of day. And I give you my word, I'll do everything in
my power to help you. But you
are
going to have to take a fall if we are
to salvage the situation
…
do you understand? There
will be
indictments. You made your own bed, J.T. We kept you out of it for a long time,
but now you've got to go quietly. Accept that."

"Indictments.
God dammit, you promised me. You
promised me
. And now you talk to me
about goddamn indictments?"

Senator
Whitford's eyes grew hard. "I want to make this clear: you've got one last
card to play. It may not be a winner, but if you follow our story, our script,
you just might cut your losses considerably."

Frasier's face
reddened. " No one's going to throw me to the wolves. You make this go
away, or I tell everything I know.
Everything!
"

"That
can't happen," the senator said forcefully. "You know that."

"Well it's
gonna
happen. I'm not some sort of goddamn scapegoat."

"Calm
down, J.T. Telling everything is
not
an option."

"
Then
fucking fix things
. Do you read me?"

Whitford looked
at Frasier, then, finally, nodded once.

"Good."
Frasier smiled for the first time. "My Gulfstream's at Dulles. I'm going
there now. In a few hours I should be back in Raleigh. If I'm going to have to
face questions, I'll do it from there, where I've got some influence. Not that
I expect I'll have to use it, because by the time I touch down you'll have
figured out a plan to extricate me from any involvement, right?"

Senator
Whitford said nothing, and Frasier pointed a finger at his chest. "Dammit,
I don't care how you have to do it, but I don't want my name dragged through
the mud. You just make sure I never have to show up on the stand
…
that I
never have to testify
…
because you know what happens if I do. Have I made
myself clear?"

Again Senator
Whitford nodded. "Very clear," he said.

Slumped forward
on a teak bench, head balanced in one hand, John Li stared vacantly at the
cabin cruiser's wake, a straight line stretching as far as he could see and
beyond. His eyes periodically sank, then snapped open, his mind dulled by the
constant drone of the boat's diesel engine, his body's reserves sapped by a
long and active night.

He checked his
watch. Twelve-thirty p.m. The sun glared. Another hot day in a series of hot
days. Even the wind blew hot. Li rose reluctantly and stretched, his back and
knees protesting the effort. Sweat glued the polo shirt he wore to his chest
and back.

A search of the
drawers and cabinets of the boat's small cabin produced a tube of sunscreen. Returning
to the deck, he squeezed a generous puddle on his palm. Sleep, in a soft bed
with clean sheets, dominated Li's thoughts as he rubbed the lotion over the
exposed pale skin of his scalp, face, and arms.

Yes, Pu-Yi had
failed him badly. Yes, his operations in America were for all extents and
purposes over
—
a great loss
—
but Li chose to focus on the positive.
He had escaped arrest, if only by a few hours, and between his accounts in Singapore
and Switzerland had over twenty million dollars tucked away, more than enough
to live comfortably. And he still had allies in high places. After all, hadn't
General Soong come to his aid? Arranged for him to be ferried off the coast and
picked up by a Chinese freighter?

Li reached for
the pair of binoculars that rested on the bench, raised them to his eyes and
scanned the horizon. Empty. A seamless transition from blue water to blue sky. He
checked his watch again. 12:36 p.m. It wouldn't be long now
.

He heard the
engine of the boat rev down and realized it had been slipped into neutral. The
boat slowly coasted to a stop. Li glanced to the two men, both Chinese, who
stood squarely at the helm on the upper deck, hard eyed and unconcerned by the
sun. General Soong's men.

"Why are
we stopping?" Li yelled.

One of the men,
muscular, wearing no shirt, scanned the horizon, his hand shielding his eyes. "There,"
he said in coarse Cantonese, pointing off the stern. "The freighter."
He nodded to the other man on the upper deck, who cut the engines. They both
descended a short ladder to the rear deck.

Li scanned the
horizon in turn, his hand shielding his eyes. "I don't see anything."

The man moved
behind Li, pointed over Li's shoulder. "There."

Li strained his
eyes. "I can't see any
—
" he started.

The blackjack
was already out of the muscular man's pocket and cupped in his hand. He struck
from behind, swiftly and with an efficiency of motion. One short, vicious
swing.

Li's mind exploded in light. A flash, an instant of comprehension that
things had gone terribly wrong, then blackness.

The two men
worked quickly, without speaking. A canvas tarp secured with ropes covered a
corner of the deck. One of the men untied the ropes, the other folded back the
tarp revealing a fifty-five gallon metal drum lying on its side, three life
preservers wedged underneath to keep it from rolling. Together they righted the
drum. Quarter-sized holes, two dozen or so, were cut in its top. Its other end
was similarly perforated
—
cut with a blow torch shortly before they left
dock.

They lifted Li
and dropped him in. Ignobly, head first.

The men made a
last check of the horizon. Still clear, the only movement a half dozen seagulls
riding lazy two foot swells off the stern, hoping for fish scraps.

The muscular
man tilted the drum, enough so each man could get a hand under it. Together
they lifted, resting much of the drum's weight against the boat's side. A
concerted push and it went over into the water
—
landed with a splat that
sent the seagulls into the air
.

The drum
floated high for a long moment, until one side dipped as water gushed through
the holes in its end. The drum upended, then filled quickly. Steadily,
smoothly, in less than ten seconds, the ocean took it.

A stream of
bubbles rising from the deep blue marked its decent, soon those too
disappeared.

One hour back
to dock. As his partner started the boat toward shore, the muscular man entered
the boat's cabin and exited with a warm Coke, wishing it were tea instead.

The man didn't
hate this part of the job, didn't love it either. It just was. The way a farmer
felt, he supposed, about slaughtering his livestock: an essential chore best
tackled dispassionately. Not evil, not wrong, just necessary.

He had only
known Li a couple of hours. His initial reaction was of a shrewd, intelligent
man. But then, that was the problem, wasn't it? Li knew too much. A potential
embarrassment neither General Soong nor China could afford, or so he had been
told
.

The man twisted
off the bottle cap and arched it over the side. A sea gull swooped,
investigating.

Five thousand
feet of water this far out. Tremendous pressure at the ocean floor, almost a
mile down. The man remembered stories told him as a boy, one in particular, of
a deep sea diver whose safety line tore. The diver fell into an undersea rift
and had to be buried in his dive helmet, the water pressure having caused his
body to implode. Quite probably a childhood myth, but the man wondered,
nonetheless, what the weight of a mile's worth of water would do to Li's body
.

He turned his
eyes, and mind, from the water. He drained the Coke, then stretched out on a
bench. Sleep came easily.

Captain Jeffrey
Harkins stripped off his headset and threw it angrily at the cockpit controls. The
old man would be pissed. Normally easy enough to get along with
—
almost
pleasant
—
when Frasier got a bug up his ass he could be a pain, and today
he had a
huge
bug up his ass. He just couldn't get back to Raleigh fast
enough. And who would be blamed for the delay? Jeffrey fucking Harkins, that's
who
.

A commercial
pilot wouldn't have to put up with this shit
—
they had the union behind
them if anyone tried to get in their face. He had the credentials to work
anywhere; why he ever thought flying a corporate jet would be hot shit he'd
never understand
.

Harkins
swallowed his pride. For now at least Frasier still signed the paychecks. Time
to kiss some butt. He found Frasier working diligently on a drink in one of the
six goat-leather seats mounted in the passenger compartment. Startled, Frasier
looked up as Harkins approached.

"We ready
to take off?" Frasier asked anxiously.

"Not
quite, sir," Harkins responded, bending over Frasier's seat. He hated
calling Frasier sir. On the commercial airlines, the pilots were the ones
called sir, the way it should be. "I just got a call from the tower. We're
being asked to hold."

Frasier turned
white. "Why?"

"Tower got
a call from Bethesda. Seems some kid spilled his motorcycle early this morning.
The doctors salvaged his liver; they need it shipped to Benson ASAP. Someone's
on the critical list down there
…
needs a transplant."

Frasier at
first seemed relieved, then annoyed. "What does that have to do with
us?"

"Benson's
less than forty miles from Raleigh, sir. The tower checked all commercial and
private flights
…
we'd get it down there quickest."

"They want
us to take the kid's liver?"

"Yes,
sir."

"Dammit."
Frasier hit the flight tray with his fist, splashing some of his drink on his
pants. He looked up at Harkins, incensed. "No. Absolutely not. We don't
have time for that."

Jesus Christ,
Harkins thought, a life was at stake. He had never considered himself a great
humanitarian but he wouldn't think twice about bending his schedule a bit for
something like this. "Yes, sir, I told them that."

"Then what
the hell are we doing here? The law doesn't require us to wait, does it?"
Frasier asked.

"No
sir." Harkins shook his head. "Problem is the tower. They determine
our flight priority, and if we refuse this request, I think they'd
…
excuse
me, sir
…
fuck us. I wouldn't plan on getting our flight clearance anytime
soon."

"Hell."
Frasier took a number of deep breaths, then asked impatiently, "When is it
coming?"

"The
liver? Tower said it shouldn't be any more than ten minutes."

"Does that
mean we lose our takeoff priority?"

"No, sir. That's
the good part. If it gets here on time, we'll probably be ahead of the game. Tower
will assign us call-name 'lifeguard.' That means once the package is on board
we have priority all the way
—
takeoff to landing clearance in Raleigh."

Frasier turned
his head to the window then back to Harkins. He wet his lips. "Okay. We
wait the ten minutes. But if it's not here by then I don't care what the tower
says. You call them and tell them that. You tell them we have an emergency of
our own to deal with."

"Yes,
sir."

Harkins started
back for the cock pit, mimicking Frasier to himself:
You call them and tell
them that. You tell them we have an emergency of our own to deal with.
The
hell with that. The tower wouldn't give him the time of day with that type of
whining. No, he'd have to wait it out and hope the goddamn thing got here on
time
.

Maybe
passengers were the problem
—
they gave you nothing but shit. Flying for
Federal Express, UPS, maybe that was where it was at. Damn right. Maybe the time
had come to send around his résumé. The market was tight right now, but he
understood you had a pretty good chance if you were willing to take a foreign
assignment. Fed Ex flew out of the Philippines; that wouldn't suck
—
the
girls there were supposed to be something.

Harkins
monitored his watch. At ten minutes on the dot he spotted a black car
approaching across the tarmac. He jumped out of the hatch and waited. The car
came to a stop and a man exited carrying a small cooler sealed with a few wraps
of duct tape. An Igloo brand cooler, Harkins noticed. Seemed as strange as shit
to be carrying around a human liver in something usually reserved for beer
.

The man from
the car handed Harkins the cooler. All right, Harkins thought, breaking a
smile: his name would be washed from the shit list and someone in Benson would
get a brand spanking new liver. Not a bad day, all and all. And with priority
clearance, they'd probably even end up shaving time from the flight
—
that
should make the old man's pecker stand up.

After
exchanging a few words, Harkins jumped back into the jet, broke the good news
to Frasier, and started down the preflight check list.