Warriors in Paradise (32 page)

He accepted the offer.

The following Monday, he went to the State Department and presented his letter of resignation. He was offered a promotion and a higher salary, which he graciously declined. After working the traditional one-month resignation period, he left without regrets.

He was appointed general manager of the Mount Vernon Hotel. However, his key responsibility was to organize the secret meetings of the group, especially the annual meeting where crucial issues were discussed and key policy decisions taken.

After six months of working in his new job, he was informed that he had to look the part of a solid family man.

He needed a wife.

He took this as a work-related problem and, with cold-blooded efficiency, he went out searching for the right candidate.

He found her in Boston, the daughter of a good Protestant American family who had fallen on hard times. She had studied at acceptable middle class private schools and had a bachelor of arts degree from Wellesley College.

She was right for him.

She was not pretty, but she had a fine aristocratic bloodline. She was distinguished looking and properly educated. Four months after their initial contact, they were married at Boston Cathedral. The wedding made it to the socialite pages. Members of the most respectable families on the East Coast attended the wedding. None of his relatives who were involved in his father’s ouster were invited.

The marriage was one of convenience, not of love. However, for the sake of appearances, they had to have children. His first offspring was a fine, healthy girl. Four years later, he had a boy, who, as he grew up, realized that he was homosexual.

His daughter was another matter altogether. She was strong willed, athletic, and fine looking. She was more like the kind of son he would have wanted to have. He could talk to her, reason with her, and plan with her. His conversations with her were rational. However, his communications with his son were always difficult and emotional.

His problem, which he kept to himself, was that he had a weak spot for his son. He loved him to distraction, in an unexplainable manner. His son represented everything he detested in American society: gay, sickly, into drugs and tattoos. However, he could not help it. He would give in to his son every time, all of the time. He could not confront him or force him to change his lifestyle. He actually pampered his son. He was not proud of his son; in fact, he felt a little ashamed of him, but he couldn’t help loving him dearly.

***

During the first annual meeting of the Corporation for which he was responsible, two of the senior members of the Corporation ended up in a dangerous situation with some call girls. They had drunk to excess and assaulted the prostitutes, killing one and severely injuring the other. Rupert made the problem disappear.

The next year, a similar situation occurred with one of the hotel’s cleaning maids. He took care of the problem in a discreet and efficient manner.

He quickly became known as an effective problem solver. If any of the senior members needed a problem to go away, they would call Rupert. He always delivered.

After these two incidents, he knew he had to devise a less risky solution to the needs of his associates. He understood that the founding fathers of the Corporation were not like other men. They needed means of relaxation and distraction on the same order of magnitude as the great responsibilities they carried on their shoulders.

He knew that normal moral, ethical, and legal standards did not apply to these true Americans.

At his third annual meeting, he sent a personal dinner invitation to those members who had been in trouble in the past. During the private dinner, he explained to them that he had formed the DC Companionship Forum. The name was meant as a joke, but it took hold. He told them that he had a surprise for them after the dinner.

Two beautiful eighteen-year-old girls were auctioned. He explained that nobody would be looking for these girls, so they could express their sexual fantasies without fear of exposure. They would be bidding against one another. The purpose was not to raise money, but to allow them a momentary escape from the demands of their work and responsibilities as American leaders. The money paid for the girls would then be used to cover the costs of the future procurement of untraceable girls. The first two girls were Swedish au pairs who had been kidnapped in New York.

The auction was an immediate success.

He did not have any moral qualms or guilty feelings about the girls. He considered them merely a means to an end—the natural cost of achieving a higher purpose and acceptable collateral damage for the good of the greatest nation on Earth.

The next year, he auctioned three foreign girls he had managed to secure through his contacts in California. The auction was a major success. Additional members of the Corporation had been discreetly informed, and every year, there were more auction participants.

Rupert needed to devise a formal mechanism.

At his fourth annual meeting, he brought up the subject of the auctions. He told the members that the Companionship Forum needed a reliable mechanism to ensure continuity with security and discretion.

He unveiled his plan. The man responsible for Latin American operations would be charged with finding the right kind of girls for the auctions through his Latin American contacts. He proposed that they should start with five girls, none of whom would be American. In addition, for security reasons, none of the girls would be nationals of the country where they were abducted.

Years later, as the membership to the DC Forum expanded to include some European and Asian countries, the number of girls to be auctioned was raised to ten, with the man in charge of European operations responsible for getting three girls and his Asian counterpart for two.

The DC Companionship Forum had been working fine for several years—until now.

***

Rupert Pattinson was proud to be part of the Corporation. Even though he was not privy to the group’s deliberations and policy decisions, he knew that he made the proceedings possible through his efficient organization. He also knew that the United States would be a very different country if it had not been for the sacrifices and difficult choices that this group of true American patriots had been making year after year for more than forty years.

He was a very wealthy man. After each successful annual meeting, he was given a success fee in the form of shares in the Mount Vernon Hotel.

He was now the largest shareholder, controlling 30 percent of the hotel’s stock. One day he would have more than 50 percent of the shares.

Rupert had felt himself untouchable. However, recent events proved that his was a false sense of security.

The hotel was guarded 24-7. All the guards were ex-military or ex-policemen. None of the guards were African American, Hispanic, or Jewish. All of them were white American. Not all were Protestants; some were Catholics of Polish and Irish descent.

The breech of hotel security in which a complete stranger had gotten close enough to him to deliver an envelope was unacceptable. He could have been shot, or a bomb could have been placed in the hotel, murdering some of the most influential people in the world.

Of course, the guard and the dining room director were to blame. The guard should have never let the intruder enter, and the director should never have hired an unverified worker. The guard was now in a hospital in Intensive Care for the severe beating that he had suffered at the hands of the perpetrator, and the director was now at home without a job.

Nevertheless, not all of the blame could be placed on them. A significant part was his, and his alone. He knew that no place is 100 percent secure 100 percent of the time. The only way to minimize the possibility of a breach of the hotel’s security system was to constantly be aware of potential threats and put in place measures to prevent them. He had gotten careless and less vigilant after more than thirty years of managing the hotel without having to deal with a credible threat.

He had been blindsided.

How should he deal with the problem? It was obviously not going to go away on its own.

He could not go to anybody else with the issue. People came to him for solutions to their difficulties. He did not go to others for resolutions to his problems.

He had three alternatives.

The first alternative was to inform the Corporation’s top echelon and let them decide the best course of action. He didn’t like this option because he knew that the kidnappers would never give in. They would sacrifice his son without a second’s hesitation. It would also reflect badly on him that something like this could have happened on his watch. All of his decisions from now on would be severely scrutinized. He could also be dismissed and disposed of. He could not accept that.

The second alternative was to go after the kidnappers. The risk of this option was that eventually, there would be a leak along the chain of command, and senior Corporation members would be informed. And even if he could contain the information leakage, it would be impossible to find his son’s kidnappers in time. The hotel staff who had seen the waiter and the other two men who had aided him had no clues or solid information that would help him find the perpetrators in time.

The third alternative was to give in, to trade the girls for his son and keep it quiet. He could try to get some replacement girls from one of the tourist areas near Washington, or simply deliver five girls and blame the shortage on tropical storm Manuel and Alexander Coombs, which was true. The complete Latin American cell had to be reconstituted. It was the arrogance and stupidity of Coombs that had placed him and the Corporation in this mess. He could also try to negotiate with his son’s kidnappers and give back only the Canadian or only the Russian girls but not the five of them. He could also go looking for the kidnappers after he had recovered Terry, take the girls back, and dispose of them.

Common sense told him that the last alternative was probably the best of the three. He didn’t like it, but it was the one he disliked the least. It was the safest and most expedient option. It was not the best one for the Corporation, but it was the least-worst choice for him.

He was not going to be blindsided again.

He would solve this; after all, he was the fixer!

Chapter 11: The Exchange

The second and third calls

T
he questions echoing in my mind were, Is our plan going to work? Will we end the day back together? I didn’t know for sure, but I was going to try to make it happen!

An hour and a half after the first call, Jonathan called Pattinson. As soon as he answered, Jonathan said, “Are we going with the trade or not?”

Rupert responded, “Yes, yes, but I can only give you the Canadians or the Russians. I cannot give you both.”

“Rupert, Rupert, you are a dumb, stupid motherfucker. We are done talking.” Jonathan hung up.

It was 11:40 a.m.

“What happened?” asked Miranda, with a frown creasing her forehead.

“Just a negotiating tactic,” replied Jonathan. “Pattinson is trying to bargain with me, offering the Russians or the Canadians, but not both. I hung up to give him something to think about. I will let him stew for five minutes and call him back. I am sure he will then be more agreeable to exchange his son for the five girls.”

Miranda said, “For everybody’s sake, I hope you’re right.”

Jonathan responded, “Oh, ye of little faith.”

Charlie said, “Mother, even if he doesn’t change his mind, we will still do the trade for Juliette and Camille. But don’t worry. I agree with my uncle. Pattinson will come to his senses. He is probably planning that once he has Terry, he will capture us and take the girls back.”

Jonathan called Rupert again. This time, Pattinson agreed to the full exchange. “Glad you came to your senses,” said Jonathan. “I propose to meet at four thirty p.m. at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria.”

Pattinson responded, “That is not a good place. Today is Saturday, and there are bound to be too many people. Let’s do the trade in a more secluded location.”

“That’s the point precisely. We want to do the trade where there are a lot of people. More security that way for you and us—unless, of course, you are trying to betray us. Don’t you agree?

“Anyway, this is nonnegotiable and not open for debate. We will see you there at four thirty p.m., or forget ever seeing your son.” Jonathan ended the conversation by hanging up.

Preparing for the exchange

I said, “I am sure that as we speak, Pattinson is planning to take his son, capture us, and keep the girls. Given everything we have heard and seen of him, he is very much akin to Alexander Coombs. The only difference is that he is a little higher up on the totem pole than Coombs was. So we need to plan each of our moves carefully.”

Santi said, “I fully agree with Caleb. Pattinson exudes superiority and self-importance. We are just a minor glitch for his operation. His overconfidence can be his undoing, as it was for Coombs.”

Jonathan said, “We need a ten- or twelve-passenger van and disguises for the girls.