Читать книгу Demeter’s Dream - Tony Thistlewood - Страница 12

Mary Themison could see that her husband was deeply troubled. He had recently been to confession, and it was a long time since he had done that. She took hold of his hand and squeezed it gently.

‘Even if Posey does know about your…’ she paused, not sure how to continue, ‘…your little indiscretion with Eve Até, it was a long time ago and there is nothing he can do because I know all about it…and so does God,’ she added eventually.

‘That’s true,’ Adam said and patted her hand. ‘And you are the only one that matters to me. Even so, he could force my resignation.’

‘Sometimes I wonder if that would be such a bad thing. Why you ever wanted to go into politics in the first place is beyond me. Isn’t ambition a sin?’ Mary said with feeling.

‘I don’t think so; not if the ambition is to help good defeat evil. Apart from that, I suppose it was the usual reason: I want to make a difference to our country, and you can only do that from the top.’

‘And that’s what this Operation Olympus is all about? Making a difference?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, big time.’

‘Do you think that it will happen without Paul Dias?’ Mary asked.

‘It has to, although it will be a lot, lot harder. Paul is a good man; relatively young, intelligent, tough and with the kind of moral backbone that has been sadly lacking in modern leaders of this great country of ours. He’ll make a fine president one day...if he pulls through.’

‘Yeah, and Ann will make a fantastic first lady, too. Talking of which, have you set eyes on the present incumbent recently?’ Mary asked with a wicked twinkle in her eye.

Adam Themison knew his wife well. Although there was not a malicious bone in her body, she could not hide her distaste for the president’s wife, at least when they were alone. It was even a greater effort when they were in public.

‘She is occasionally dried out and wheeled out, when it can’t be avoided,’ he said. ‘Fortunately, Posey has a very attractive VP to stand in for his wife, when needed. And that, incidentally, has happened all too frequently recently. Tongues are beginning to wag.’

‘Oh, Posey’s safe enough. Peta Hopeit is after his job, not his wife’s,’ Mary said.

‘Not even as a stepping stone?’ he suggested.

‘You really are a naive old sweetie,’ she said, laughing.

‘You will have to explain that.’

‘Oh God! Peta plays for the other side…’

‘You mean…you mean she is a lesbian?’ he asked incredulously.

‘Oh, well done, Einstein. That’s exactly what I mean.’

‘But she has got a twenty-odd-year-old son…’

‘Yeah, and what a problem he has turned out to be. Lack of a father’s influence, some like to think,’ she said.

‘I thought the boy was at Harvard?’

‘Allegedly – on and off. And no one knows who his father is. That must leave a scar?’

‘How do you know all this? You always avoid Peta Hopeit. Why do you do that, by the way?’

‘Oh, come on, sweetheart! Peta is absolutely gorgeous. I fade into the wallpaper next to her. A gal has her pride, you know.’

‘My darling, you glow from the inside far more than the Peta Hopeits of this world could ever do. But how do you know all this anyway? Or are you just surmising?’ he asked.

‘Oh, no, it’s all from my very informed sources,’ she replied firmly.

‘Am I allowed to know the identity of your informed sources?’

‘Sure, they are the ladies of the CWGC…’

‘Oh, how I hate acronyms, and I can’t remember that one. What does it stand for?’

‘The Cabinet Wives’ Good-works Committee, more accurately known as the Cabinet Wives’ Gossip Club. It’s really a lunch club, but you wouldn’t believe what we learn…’

‘This is beginning to sound dangerous. How do you know you are not being recorded?’

‘Because Ari Kratos always has the restaurant swept for electronic bugs, or whatever, before we get there, and we always have a private room. Didn’t he tell you? Apparently, it’s a long-standing tradition since well before you became AG,’ Mary said.

‘There are a few women in Cabinet, are their husbands invited to your lunches?’

‘You must be joking. We are not that liberated. Anyway, they would stifle our non-business conversations, which is most of them.’

‘When did you last meet?’

‘Yesterday, and it was a particularly interesting lunch, as it happens, mainly because of the Paul Dias situation. I was sitting next to whispering June Nyckson…’

‘Whispering?’

‘Yeah, June is rather shy and never talks to the table, like most of us. If she has anything to say, she holds a napkin to her mouth and whispers to the person sitting next to her.’

‘I see,’ Adam said, slightly amused by the goings on at the wives' club. ‘And what did she whisper to you yesterday?’

‘She asked me if I had heard about Operation Olympus and wondered if it was connected to Paul Dias’s accident.’

‘She did what!’ Adam yelled, jumping up and spilling the coffee he was holding.

‘It’s all right, darling. I said I knew nothing about it, which I don’t really.’

‘No, neither should she. Did anyone else hear her?’

‘I don’t think so. Why are you so upset about it?’

‘Because we think that it wasn’t an accident that nearly killed Paul. Someone must have leaked the purpose of the Cabinet meeting and wanted to prevent him from making his presentation.’

‘Wow! It must be important,’

‘It certainly is. In fact, it's so important that only a few of us know about it.’

‘And those few obviously include Secretary of State Chuck Nyckson…’

‘No! That is very much the point; they don’t…’

‘Then how did whispering June know?’

‘Exactly! Did you see her talking to anyone else? Do you kind-a-mingle before taking your seats at the table?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yeah, we have a cocktail – or two in her case. Now let me see…Yep, now you mention it, I saw her talking to the Ploutonos woman…’

‘Would I be right is assuming that you don’t get on with Ina Ploutonos?’ he asked.

‘Damned right. It’s incredible that she can walk at all with the weight of all the jewels she always wears. I mean, to flaunt wealth like that…’

‘Thank you, that is most helpful,’ Adam said.

‘Is it?’

‘Oh, yes – I assume Ann Dias wasn’t there?’

‘No, she spends all day at the hospital, poor woman…’ she began but stopped when she heard a car crunching up the drive.

‘Ah! That reminds me. Ann did say that she couldn’t understand why Paul chose to walk from his office to the White House. He hadn’t told her that he was going to do that. And the driver who picked him up from their house was his usual driver. She knew that because Paul had left the laser pointer he was going to use in his presentation, and she raced after him and remembers speaking to Albert, Paul’s regular driver.’

**

In 1880, the English Queen Victoria had two desks made of oak timber from the British Arctic exploration ship HMSResolute that had been stuck in arctic ice until it was eventually recovered by American seamen. The Queen kept one desk for herself and gave the other to President Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th President of the United States of America.

President Posey placed his elbows on the famous Resolute desk in the Oval Office, clutched his hands together and rested his chin on his fists, while he contemplated the two people standing in front of him.

‘I’m afraid it hasn’t helped us at all, Mr. President,’ Ari Kratos, the Director of the FBI, drawled in his Midwestern accent. ‘When we got the white van out of the river, the Tesla was inside it all right, but it was empty…’

‘Empty? What had you expected?’ Posey asked.

‘Perhaps the bodies of the missing security guards, sir.’

‘Then where the hell are they?’

‘We literally haven’t a clue yet, sir. And as for the perpetrators, there are a bunch of small airfields not far from Fort Washington but none of them had any unusual activity within forty-eight hours of the attack on Secretary Dias. Our guess…’

‘Your guess?’

‘Yes, Mr. President, I mean "guess". Our guess is that the perpetrators headed straight for Dulles International and are now long gone. We’re checking, but we don’t know what the perpetrators look like other than that two of them are big and of Mediterranean appearance – or at least one of them is from a description provided by the EnAg staff. If the perps have any sense, they wouldn’t be traveling together now.’

‘That’s right, sir,’ Adam Themison agreed. ‘These people are well organized and ruthless. Paul Dias upset their plans by deciding to walk to the White House. Why he did that we may never know unless he remembers when he comes out of his coma.’

‘What is the basis for your “guess”?’ Posey suddenly asked Kratos.

Themison was surprised by Posey’s surly attitude towards the director of the FBI. It seemed to the AG that the president was so suspicious of Kratos that he, Posey, thought that the FBI man was making everything up, even though his knowledge was little enough. Themison had known Posey a long time and knew that he wasn’t the sort of man to shoot the messenger.

‘It’s based on what the old lady in the Diner, Emerald Elpis, mother of one of the victims, told us. For some reason, they didn’t think it was necessary to kill her,’ Kratos replied rather callously.

‘Okay, thank you, Mr. Director. Don’t stop looking,’ Posey said gruffly.

Ari Kratos took the hint and left the attorney general alone with the president.

The way Posey had addressed Ari Kratos further disturbed Themison who thought it was not only unfair but also uncharacteristic of the president.

‘Take a seat, Adam,’ Posey said, when they were alone. ‘I think our priority now should be to find out who leaked details of Operation Olympus before the Cabinet meeting, and I don’t think that Kratos is the man to do that.’

‘Assuming there was a leak…’

‘Of course, there was!’ Posey snapped. ‘Why attack Paul Dias if not to stop him making his presentation?’

‘Mr. President, I don’t think that Operation Olympus is as closely guarded a secret as we would like to think,’ Adam Themison said, and then told the president what he had heard about the Cabinet Wives’ Good-works Committee.

‘Oh, my God, those bloody women!’ Posey yelled, irreverently thumping the famous desk with his fist. ‘Well, that clearly points the finger at Haden Ploutonos, doesn’t it?’

‘Yeah, maybe, but what do we do? Confront him face-to-face?’ Adam Themison suggested.

‘Hell, no! We’ve no evidence. He would just laugh at us. I think we have to be far subtler than that.’

‘If Paul Dias pulls through and makes his presentation, this problem goes away, of course.’

‘Maybe…Adam, we must double the guards at the hospital. And use Secret Service guys, not FBI.’

‘You don’t trust Kratos?’ Adam queried.

‘Haven’t you noticed his Mediterranean appearance?’

‘Mr. President, that description probably fits fifty percent of the population of this country.’

‘No, Adam, it does not. You are confusing European appearance with Mediterranean, although it is part of Europe. Recently, we have been getting twelve times more people emigrating to this country from the UK than from Greece, for example. Even the numbers from Australia are three times that from Greece.’

‘Interesting, sir, but I don’t see the relevance.’

‘Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes…’

‘I’m afraid my Latin is a little rusty, sir,’ Adam Themison said, annoyed at what he recognized was a deliberate ploy to put him off guard.

‘It’s from Virgil’s Aeneid: I fear the Greeks, even when they bear gifts. You see, Adam, although he was born in this country, Haden Ploutonos has Greek ancestry…’

‘Yeah, I realize that, sir, but…’

‘…and the Secret Service told me that Ari Kratos was at Princeton with a close relative of Ploutonos. Strange Kratos didn’t mention that, don’t you think? I gave him every opportunity,’ Posey snapped, not taking kindly to being interrupted. ‘Look, Adam,’ he continued more affably, ‘I’m just saying that we should not overlook the fact that the Greeks are a very close-knit little community within our walls. Perhaps we have a Trojan horse in our midst?’

‘But why would Haden Ploutonos be so violently opposed to Operation Olympus…it can’t be that he doesn’t like the name,’ Adam Themison said, trying to lighten the mood. Posey didn’t bite.

‘Greece is currently in an economically disastrous position, as you know. Even so, the country does have some enormously wealthy individuals, particularly in the shipping industry. And most of them just happen to be related to our Haden Ploutonos. According to my sources, he and they have plans to take over Greece, lock-stock-and-barrel. And our friend Ploutonos is worried that Operation Olympus is the US Government’s grand plan to save Greece, become a hero in Europe, and thereby, unwittingly, spoil his evil intentions.’

‘But Operation Olympus has absolutely nothing to do with Greece’s economic problems!’ Adam exclaimed.

‘We know it hasn’t, but Ploutonos assumes that it has.’

‘How do you know all this, Mr. President?’

Posey smiled, tapped the side of his nose with his index finger but said nothing.

**

The official residence of the Vice President of the United States of America is an attractive Queen Anne style house built on ten acres of US Naval Observatory land at One Observatory Circle. Renowned as one of the quietest and most secure backwaters of Washington, DC, it had quickly become Vice President Peta Hopeit’s favorite place.

She sat on a padded wicker chair at the front of the house, overlooking the formal gardens. In one hand she held a glass of Californian sparkling wine, while the other pressed an unofficial, prepay cell phone to her ear. Wearing dark glasses, black slacks, and a figure-hugging white silk blouse, Peta looked more like a film star resting between takes than the number two politician in the country.

‘What do you mean, you have absolutely no idea where he is?’ she snarled into the cell phone. ‘Don’t you dare play games with me. And don’t think for one minute that you can ignore me because I’ve slept with you. You still are, and always will be, expendable. I suggest you remember that if you want any sort of career.’