First Daughter - Eric van Lustbader [66]
She gave him a curt nod as she walked aft, away from the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. They were on his 185-foot yacht, big enough to contain an aft upper deck that served as a pad on which the small private helicopter that had brought Nina sat, its rotors quivering and flexing in the wind gusts. The pilot inside the cockpit was ready to lift off at a moment's notice.
Paull watched Nina out of the corner of his eye as she lit a clove cigarette, her back to him, cell phone to her left ear. He worried about her. He worried whether he could trust her. But then, Dennis Paull worried about every person he spoke to or came in contact with during his grueling twenty-hour days. He was playing a dangerous game, and no one knew it better than he did. Over the years, how many people had he or his people uncovered who were playing their own dangerous games? Of course, he was at the eye of the storm, the calm center from which, like an Olympian god, he could look in all directions at once. But he didn't fool himself; he didn't allow his exalted position at the right hand of the president to dull his caution or dim his vigilance.
He'd been living on a knife-edge for almost two years now, the midpoint of the president's second term in office. His stomach always hurt; his nerves vibrated so badly that he couldn't recall the last time he had slept soundly. Instead, he'd taught himself the art of catnapping—five minutes here, fifteen there—during the day. In the dead of night, as one of his days bled into the next, he sipped strong black coffee and carried out the spinning of his web. For good or ill, he was in too deep now to have second thoughts, for if he were to succeed, he needed to commit to his plan absolutely. Any waver of intent would be lethal.
He put on the smile he used for intimates—if one could use that word for those in his inner circle, because Secretary Paull had no true intimates. This the job had taught him a long, painful time ago.
His thoughts threaded away on the spume purling from the sleek bow of his yacht as Nina walked back to where he stood just forward of the cabin. It was a blustery day, spitting intermittently. Not a fit day for a boat ride, which was why Paull was here on the water instead of in an office that might very well be bugged or an open space where whatever he said was at the mercy of a parabolic microphone on the top of some innocuous-looking van. His yacht was swept three times a day for bugs, and that included the entire hull. Plus there were sophisticated jamming devices fore and aft installed by a friend of his at DARPA, the Department of Defense's advanced weapons program.
To the uninitiated, Paull mused, these precautions might seem the product of paranoia, but as William S. Burroughs aptly said, Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.
"That was McClure," Nina said, folding away her phone. "He wants me to meet him at the headquarters of the First American Secular Revivalists."
Paull didn't like the sound of that. "What's he doing there? FASR is supposed to be Hugh Garner's responsibility."
"Garner's got it in for McClure."
They were into the wind, no one who wasn't in spitting distance could hear them, not even the crew, who Paull had made certain were all inside. "What the hell is McClure up to?"
"I don't know," Nina confessed, "but it seems clear he doesn't believe E-Two is behind the kidnapping."
"Then who the hell is?"
"I don't know, sir, but I have a feeling McClure is closer to finding out than we are."
The secretary looked thoughtful. "From now on, I want you to stick close to him."
Nina took a drag on her clove cigarette. "How close?"
The secretary's eyes bored into hers. "Do whatever it takes to keep him close. We're rapidly running out of time and space to maneuver."
Nina's gaze was cool and steady. "How does it feel, I wonder, to pimp someone else out?"
He waved a hand dismissively. "You'd better get over there pronto."
Nina turned, headed aft.
"And Nina," he called after her.
She turned back, pulled her