Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [133]
Struggling out from under him, she smashed her fist into his right eye. The blow drove the left side of his head into the ground and his eyes rolled up in their sockets. She grabbed her service revolver out of his hand and aimed it at him as she staggered to her feet.
“Get up,” she ordered. “Get up now!”
Instead, he lunged at her. She pulled the trigger.
* * *
IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING his speech to the NAACP at the Kennedy Center, President Crawford headed for the men’s room. This had already been vetted by a member of his Secret Service detail, and was staked out, ensuring no one could enter while the POTUS was doing whatever it was he needed to do in there.
Everyone, that is, except Henry Holt Carson. The president was not happy when Carson strode into the men’s room.
Crawford gave him a jaundiced look. “A Secret Service agent. Hank, for the love of God!”
“Calm down, sir.”
The president stared at him in the mirror that ran along the wall above the sinks. “I will not fucking calm down. Where in all our planning did we ever contemplate murdering a Secret Service agent?”
It was a rhetorical question. Carson was quite certain it required no answer, so he kept his mouth shut.
“And Naomi Wilde, of all people. Damn it, Hank, she was one of our best and brightest. I read the reports of how she handled the crisis in Moscow, how she took charge of your sister-in-law. I’ve spoken with her several times—I knew her.”
Time for rebuttal, Carson thought. “You and I both know it never would have come up, let alone been on the table. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Wilde had gotten too close. If McKinsey hadn’t acted, she would have blown us out of the water—”
“Murder of a federal agent. That’s a capital offense.”
“—and then where would we be?”
Crawford ran his hand distractedly through his hair. He seemed incapable of looking directly at Carson, but continued to engage his image in the mirror.
“This has gotten out of hand, Hank.”
“As far as anyone is concerned, Naomi Wilde is missing. We’ve neutralized her boss, there is no body. Calm down. We’re almost there.”
“The hell we are!” The president stopped, suddenly aware that he had raised his voice. “This has got to stop, right here, right now.”
“You know that’s impossible. We’ve come too far; we’ve crossed the line of no return.”
“I’m telling you, Hank—”
“Cheer up, Arlen, the Middle Bay audit is almost complete. When it is, we’ll have what we want.”
For the moment, the president’s eyes had turned inward, and when he spoke it was as if he was addressing himself. “There’s a line you promise yourself you’ll never cross, because once you do, all is lost.”
For the first time, Carson spoke sharply. “It pains me to have to remind you that we’re both implicated in the Middle Bay merger. If we don’t complete what we started—if we fail—well, it will be a pretty bleak future for both of us.”
Crawford’s eyes refocused. Leaning forward, he put his hands on either side of the sink. The skin on his face was pale and slack. Suddenly he looked ten years older. “God in heaven, what this job takes out of you.”
“There are a lot of people who wonder why anyone would want the burden.”
“Well, right now, Hank, I’m beginning to think they’re right.” The president sighed. “Okay, so what do we do now?”
“Clean up the mess McKinsey made.”
“Don’t speak that name to me ever again!”
Carson nodded. “As you wish, of course.”
“When you lie down with fuckers, you’re sure to get fucked,” Crawford said bleakly.
Carson offered a thin smile. “Leave it to me.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You don’t want to know, sir.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Carson crossed behind the POTUS to the line of urinals, unzipped, and began to pee. “I’m going to cauterize the wound.”
Crawford opened his mouth, possibly to ask what that specifically meant, then changed his mind. Instead, he turned