Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [27]
Both McKinsey and Naomi drew their firearms simultaneously.
“What the hell is going on?” Naomi said.
“It answers the question,” Jack said, already on the move, “why there were Metro detectives where there should have been no Metro detectives.”
SIX
“WELL?”
“Everything has gone according to plan.”
Henry Holt Carson nodded. His shoulders were hunched against the brittle wind. The sky looked like porcelain and it seemed to him as if the sun would never shine again. Like the residents of Seattle, he was getting used to the gloom.
“Paull is gone?” he asked.
President Crawford nodded. “And, as you predicted, he’s taken Jack McClure with him.”
“Good.”
Carson looked around him. This time of year the Rose Garden was a rectangle of mush and fertilizer, the sturdy rose stems prickly and dangerous as a porcupine’s back.
“I still don’t quite understand,” the president said.
Carson closed his eyes for a moment. A pulse beat in his forehead and he was certain a migraine was coming on. As was his wont, he fought against it. “They were too close to my brother.”
Crawford’s brow furrowed deeply and he snorted like a horse. “Do you think they suspect?”
“I don’t know.” Carson put a hand to his head. Yes, a migraine, definitely. “I hope to God they don’t.”
“But McClure—”
“My brother told me all about McClure’s monstrous brain.”
“Then you know it’s only a matter of time before he figures it out. That can only lead to more blood being spilled.”
“Yes,” Carson said through gritted teeth. He did not nod or move his head in any untoward way. “That’s why I want him gone. By the time he does figure it out, it’ll be too late. The only way to him that wouldn’t cause suspicion was through Dennis Paull.” He clamped down on the migraine but, as always, it was getting the better of him.
“Still, I worry.”
“The American people pay you to worry.”
Carson turned, fumbled in his trousers pocket, opened the silver-and-gold pill case, shook two pills into his mouth, and swallowed them with the little saliva he had left. The migraines seemed to suck him dry, until his tongue felt as if it were as big and unwieldy as a zeppelin.
The president eyed his Secret Service detail, circling the garden like a murder of crows. He took a hesitant step toward his friend. “Hank, I think you’d best sit down.”
Carson waved him off. “I’m fine.”
“Of course you are. But, you know, I find I’m a little peaked.” He sat on a stone bench. “Here, sit down beside me so we can continue our private talk uninterrupted. I haven’t much time before the budget meeting.”
Carson came and sat, holding his body as delicately as if it had turned to glass, which, in a way, it had.
Crawford looked away for a moment, out over the grounds to Washington itself. The White House was like a pearl sitting in the middle of an oyster, peacefully protected. However, today the president felt anything but peaceful.
“I knew this job was going to be difficult,” he said after a time, “and I prepared myself for it.” He stared down at his hands, folded priestlike in his lap. “But as for the complications…” He allowed his voice to drift off like mist off the Potomac.
“Life is complications, Arlen. The higher you climb the more they pile up, until you have one cluster-fuck after another.”
“Well, then, this must be the mother of all cluster-fucks.” Crawford took a breath. “Then again, maybe we’re not speaking of complications at all, maybe it’s compromises.”
Carson said nothing; he was too busy trying to keep his thoughts from being shredded by the cyclone of his migraine.
“Maybe it’s selling the house down the river without even a wave good-bye.”
Suddenly, the president’s words flooded into his brain, and he turned his head ever so gently. “For the love of God, do not tell me that you have cold feet, not at this late date. Fuck, Arlen, I moved heaven and earth with both the party caucuses and Eddy to get you the vice president’s position. We had a plan, from the very beginning we had a plan.”
“No, Hank, you had a plan.”
“Have it your way.” Carson