The Echo of the Whip (3 page)

The house Edmond Whelan was calling home for the moment had nine bedrooms, eleven bathrooms, a wine cellar, sculptured gardens, a waterfall, stunning ocean views and, best of all, an encircling stone wall artfully hidden behind a stand of local trees and other greenery. The place was a fortress with the creature comforts of a palace.

Normally, the security staff and the household help brought the population of the property to double digits. Whelan had given everyone who’d otherwise have catered to his needs an indefinite paid furlough. Not that any of the money for the service people or the house itself would come out of his pocket. That wasn’t the way Whelan worked.

He flew first class, but always for free and under the radar.

Under a string of pseudonyms, too.

There would be no official record of his presence in California. He was simply a guest of the house’s owner. A friend welcomed to partake of the fresh ocean air and unwind from the pressures of his job as a senior staffer in the House of Representatives. Nothing wrong with that. As a working stiff, not an elected office holder, Whelan could plead that he was in no position to return the favor to his host. It wasn’t like he could direct, say, a Department of Defense contract that could pay for a subdivision of homes such as the one in which he’d found shelter, to a preferred CEO’s company.

Oh, no, he couldn’t do that.

But he could push his nominal boss, the House whip, to do it. With a list of explicit reasons why a specific contractor should be chosen. Should anyone ask. Which rarely happened.

Such an inquiry should be even less likely now that Jordan Gilford, that whistle-blowing bastard, had been taken care of. Shot dead on the National Mall. Whelan liked that. Should have a nice chilling effect on any other do-gooder who might be tempted to step forward.

It was somewhat worrisome that the shooter, Jerry Nerón, had been caught. The man clearly hadn’t lived up to his reputation. Still, Nerón didn’t know who had hired him.

Other potential problems included the greedy fools of The Tabulation Team, the gang of Armed Services committee members in the House and Senate who’d taken to the wholesale looting of the defense budget. Wesley Tilden, GOP House member from South Carolina, had the good grace to get gunned down on his front lawn by an unknown party. That was a help. But Tanner Rutledge, a True South member from Texas, was in FBI custody and supposedly singing to beat the band. That could produce some very unfortunate results.

But not fatal for either Whelan or the House leadership. He’d reined in their more impetuous notions, made sure they personally steered clear of legal jeopardy. Kept them on the right side of the House rules, too. Pointed out repeatedly that playing it straight still left plenty of room to cull fat, easy retirements for themselves. All the golf, gin and Cialis they could ever want.

The irony of Ed cautioning his nominal superiors to mind their ways was he had finally stepped across the line. Hired a thief, through a cutout, to steal his ex-wife, Mira’s, frozen embryos. He felt sure he’d get away with it, but he couldn’t deny it had been an act of desperation, and he hated the idea that he’d been forced to put himself in
any
potential jeopardy.

There were people in Washington who knew his real power and they’d like nothing better than to gut him and watch buzzards eat his entrails.

Galia Mindel would be right up front, rubbing her hands in glee.

As with so many men in Washington, sex had put Whelan in peril. Specifically, developing an irresistible letch for Mira Kersten. She was a stunner, yeah, but so were a lot of women in DC. The chump who had said politics is show business for ugly people hadn’t included the supporting cast in his evaluation.

Legislative and executive branch staff, lobbyists and even a good number of the academics who came and went in Washington could match head-shots with any other industry in the country, including show biz. By and large, they were smarter than other pretty faces, too. At the top of the pyramid, of course, was Patti Grant. She’d made it in both modeling and acting, and had left those
glamour
jobs to become the most powerful person in the world.

Whelan, with his Boston Yankee father and his sugar magnolia mother, had always thought he looked like what Andy Griffith’s kid on his TV show should have been. A mop-top of chestnut brown hair over a cherubic face. That and the wised-up eyes of some smart guy out of a George V. Higgins novel. Like he was going to take over Mayberry after “Paw” retired, run it his way.

Only Whelan had set his sights higher than a hick town in North Carolina.

Ambition as well as sex had drawn him to Mira Kersten. Sure, he wanted to jump her from the start, but more than that he wanted to lead her over to his side of the political divide. Not make her see the light of good governance. He was too cynical for that. He wanted her to do things his way just to please him.

What he hadn’t realized until later was she’d been playing her own game. She was interested in the sex, too, but what really made things special for her was when one of the candidates she and Galia Mindel backed beat one of his people. That was when she couldn’t get enough of him. Rub it in. In the most personal way possible.

They’d lasted ten years together, before things got old for both of them.

Long enough to put a dozen embryos on ice.

Only there were
nineteen
of them in the shipment he’d received. Mira must’ve kept stocking up over the years. All of the frozen embryos were coded. No names, no conception dates. Not even a “best by” time stamp. Whelan would have preferred spoiling some other guy’s specimen, but he couldn’t take the time to decipher the code.

He picked one at random, let it thaw. Photographed the spoiled results with a throw-away phone and routed the image around the world on the Internet to Mira. With the photo he sent the message:
An embryo is a terrible thing to waste. Give me what I want. Fast.

He knew she’d verify what it was the photo showed.

He truly hoped someone else was the dad, if that was possible to tell.

If it turned out to be his would-be kid, she might not give a damn.

Not just anyone could park on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the building housing FBI headquarters. Even slowing down in a suspicious manner, not keeping up with the flow of traffic, would bring a swift and unforgiving response. The Bureau had realized immediately after 9/11 that its headquarters would make a propaganda-rich target for terrorists. The gotcha value of setting off a car-bomb there, killing staffers and damaging the structure would be enormous.

Many countermeasures had been taken.

McGill, though, had called ahead, mentioned that he’d have Deputy Director DeWitt with him and would, please, like to use the VIP drop-off for just a minute or two. The combined weight of the president’s husband and one of the Bureau’s own top people cleared the way — once their bona fides had been verified.

“I’m sorry, Mr. McGill,” DeWitt said. “I really don’t have the time to help you. I shouldn’t even have been at the Verizon Center, but the vice president insisted that I speak with her there.”

“And you just happened to have your skates with you?”

McGill had seen the two of them gliding along hand-in-hand. Thought it was sweet. He’d heard through both the Secret Service and the White House staff grapevines that Jean Morrissey and Byron DeWitt were getting to be an item.

“The vice president suggested I might enjoy skating with her for a few minutes.”

McGill had also heard the vice president was going to run for the presidency.

Made him wonder if DeWitt knew what might lie ahead for him.

As if reading his mind, the deputy director asked McGill, “Would you mind if I asked you a question, Mr. McGill?”

Guessing what that question might be, McGill said, “It’s tough enough right from the start and it only gets harder. I think Mexico might have things right, limiting their presidents to one six-year term.”

DeWitt nodded. “That was only part of what I’ve been wondering. Do you think it would be possible to be married to the president and not live in Washington?”

McGill chuckled. “The president once asked me if I’d like to continue to live in Illinois and have a commuter marriage. I told her I’d prefer to keep my sweetheart close.”

“So you opened your business here in Washington.”

“Yeah.”

“But there must be many times when the press of the president’s schedule keeps the two of you apart.”

McGill sighed. “That’s another thing that gets really old. We’re both looking forward to life after the White House. We’ll probably keep the loyal family retainers with us, though.”

He nodded toward Leo and Deke seated in the front seat of his armored Chevy sedan.

Deke cleared his throat.

“Oh, that’s right,” McGill said. “Special Agent Ky is in line to take over the Washington office of my little shop.”

“And you’ve got one in Paris now, too, right?”

McGill smiled. “Yeah, I came to Washington thinking I’d be Philip Marlowe and I’m turning into Allan Pinkerton. If you’re considering a return home, what do you have in mind for your next job?”

“I thought I’d teach at UCSB, but maybe I could just do guest lectures, hold seminars when the president is out of the country or otherwise occupied.”

“A part-time commuter marriage? Patti and I never thought of that. Might work.”

“I just had another idea, though,” DeWitt said.

“What’s that?”

“Have you ever thought of opening a third office? The case you told me about is in California. Why not set up a shop out there? Seems like there could be a lot of business.”

McGill looked at DeWitt. “Would you be interested?”

“I think I might. Working for you, lecturing at the university, getting back to DC as needed: that’d seem like part-time work compared to my current grind. I bet I could even find the time to go surfing.”

McGill laughed. “Okay, I’ll think about it. Meanwhile, I still need a fed to keep me company out west. Aside from Special Agent Ky, whose focus has to remain on keeping my precious hide from getting perforated.”

“You want someone who’s smart, tactful, able to interact with local law enforcement and not raise their hackles, should you cross their path. That’s what you told me, right?”

“Right,” McGill said. “How about your colleague, Special Agent Benjamin?”

“She’s on an overseas assignment. What about your unofficial protégé, Captain Yates?”

“Welborn and Kira are out of the country, too. Introducing their twins to the English royal family, I think.”

DeWitt laughed. “Bully for them.”

“Hell, Mr. Deputy Director, can you recommend anyone?”

DeWitt gave it a moment’s thought. Then he grinned and nodded.

“Who?” McGill asked.

“Someone I believe you’ve met. He’s the Co-director of the BIA’s Office of Justice Services, and he’d fit your requirements perfectly. His name is —”

John Tall Wolf,” McGill said. “I remember meeting him.”

United States Representative Philip Brock (D-PA, 9th District) woke from a long, deep slumber and needed a moment to reorient himself, remember just where he was. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and as his hands grazed his face he felt his emerging beard. That brought his circumstances back to him in a rush.

He’d been forced to retreat to his refuge on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. The panicky feeling that all of his schemes were about to collapse had made flight imperative. The FBI might finally connect him to the death of Senator Howard Hurlbert, the founder of the True South party. Dr. Hasna Kalil most likely considered him suspect number one in the murder of her brother, Dr. Bahir Ben Kalil. Last but far from least, Tyler Busby was still at large and might implicate Brock in the assassination plot to kill President Patricia Grant at Inspiration Hall.

When Brock had returned to Costa Rica, he’d learned that a traveling priest had visited his property, accompanied by a lieutenant of the
Fuerza Pública
— the National Police. The padre had heard the confessions of everyone who worked on Brock’s estate and then had provided all the food and drink for a grand fiesta. He’d even provided new clothes for the little ones.

“You all had a good time?” Brock asked his majordomo.

“Sí, muy bueno.”

“Did this wonderful priest spread his blessings on any other nearby properties?”

“No sé.”
The man didn’t know.

Brock quickly found out. His property was the only one the priest had visited. Several of his servants had photos of themselves with the man, and they knew his name. It was a famous one, Inigo de Loyola. Ignatius Loyola in English.

Aside from belonging to one of the Catholic church’s better known saints, the name also identified a Central American priest who had moonlighted as a guerrilla fighter. After things had gotten too hot for him in his native territory, Loyola had decamped for
El Norte
and was thought to be working among the poor in a major American city, possibly New York or Washington.

So sayeth Wikipedia.

Brock felt sure the online font of knowledge had most of its facts right this time. His money said the priest was living and spreading his gospel of economic redistribution in Washington. Meaning he’d come to Costa Rica to do whose dirty work? Looking at the worst case scenario, Brock settled on James J. McGill.

That SOB would certainly want to know who had tried to kill his wife.

With a pang of regret, Brock knew he’d have to leave Costa Rica. He wouldn’t even be able to sell his beautiful 500 acres of land on the Pacific Coast. If he tried that, his pursuers — and he was sure they would be many — would only have to follow the money to find him. So his first hideaway was a write-off.

He was grateful that he had money to spare and a second place to hide. He drove to Panama City, using a counterfeit New Zealand passport, and flew to La Paz, Bolivia. The charm of one of South America’s two landlocked countries was that its government despised the United States. The socialist leadership there would never extradite him.

The drawback: Bolivia was not a hub of high Western culture and gracious living. Brock quickly concluded he did not want to spend his remaining years there. He came to that realization in the time it took for his new beard to thicken. He streaked both his hair and the beard with gray dye. He bought a Land Rover and drove south, leaving behind another property.

He was taking a bath in the real estate market.

The distance between La Paz and Buenos Aires via the
Ruta Transchaco
was 2,081miles or 3,350 kilometers. This time Brock traveled on a Maltese passport. It was a grinding drive, but any pursuer would have to wonder where he might have left the road; maybe he’d had a light plane or helicopter waiting for him.

In Buenos Aires, he broke out his last passport, this one Canadian. The logic behind it was any U.S. citizen with a brain should be able to fool a South American into thinking he was from Vancouver. That and Canadians had far fewer natural enemies than Americans.

Operating from Buenos Aires, using his Canadian identity and a local real estate agent, Brock bought a modest — 10-room — but comfortable home across the Rio de la Plata in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Uruguay was ranked first in Latin America in democracy, peace, press freedom, proportional size of the middle class, prosperity, lack of corruption and quality of life. It ranked third in South America for innovation, infrastructure and income growth. Overlooked by Brock, it also ranked third in the
world
for percentage of the population using the Internet.

Besides all that it had a mild climate and great beaches.

All in all, there wasn’t much for an anarchist to rail against, but Brock thought maybe he should put that part of his life behind him. About the only complaint he had was the driving distance from Buenos Aires to Montivideo: 594 miles. Ten-and-a- half hours. If you took the ferry crossing the mouth of the river, though, you cut travel time to a mere two hours and twelve minutes, and you cruised in relative comfort. Providing the seas were calm.

They were and, except for an excursion to the bar for a soft drink and a potty visit, Brock spent the sea cruise in his Land Rover with a view of the water. His decision to be reclusive proved lucky. As the ferry came abeam of a super-yacht making little or no headway, Brock saw a figure that looked familiar on the yacht’s helicopter pad.

He got his binoculars out of the glove box just in time to make a positive identification. The hair color was different and the man was wearing sunglasses, but Brock had no doubt of whom and what he was observing.

Tyler Busby was helping an ill-looking, very pregnant Asian woman into the aircraft. A moment later, it lifted off with Busby and the woman aboard and banked in the direction of Buenos Aires. What a gift, Brock thought.

Busby was the FBI’s most-wanted man. Handing him to the feds might count for … something, should Brock feel an unexpected urge to surrender. He used his phone to photograph the yacht, capturing its name.
Wastrel.
That made him laugh.

Even when Busby was in hiding, he couldn’t help but announce himself.

But should Brock make contact with, say, the U.S. embassy in Montevideo immediately? Help in the capture of Busby before he could hope to get away. How could Brock do that, though, without taking the risk of exposing himself? On the other hand, if he waited to make sure he was safe, who knew where else Busby might run off to and hide.

In the end, Brock decided self-preservation had to come first.

He drove off the ferry and to his new home, met the real estate agent, shook his hand and took the keys.

As things worked out, Brock needn’t have worried about Busby eluding him. They were to become neighbors. A fact he’d learn before Busby did.