Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [7]
“I think that’s the best idea. There’s a private jet with diplomatic privileges waiting for you at Sheremetyevo, but you can wait until tomorrow morning, if you wish.” Carson squeezed Jack’s shoulder. “I appreciate this.”
“Part of my job description.” Jack frowned. “Edward, do you suspect something?”
Carson shook his head. “Call it caution or paranoia, the choice is yours. In any event, as Dennis Paull has detailed in his most recent security briefing, my enemies from the previous administration are still powerful, and all of them have very long memories, especially when it comes to revenge. They fought like wild dogs against my nomination and, when I won it, they tried everything they could think of to undermine my candidacy. That they’ve made conciliatory statements in the press doesn’t fool me for a minute. They’re after my blood, and it seems damn lucky for them that Berns is dead, because they know better than anyone that without him I’m going to have the devil’s own time with the Democratic-led Congress.”
Jack did not say that killing Carson’s right-hand man was an extreme way of crippling him, because he’d had firsthand experience with people within the previous administration. He knew what they were capable of and that their thinking did not exclude murder. They’d arranged for Alli to be kidnapped, had almost succeeded in an attack on Carson at the inauguration, and while the perpetrators were either dead or behind bars, the people who had calculatedly planned the attack remained safe to this day behind veils of plausible deniability that even Carson with all his might and power couldn’t penetrate.
The president’s grip on Jack’s shoulder tightened. “Jack, I won’t bullshit you, this could be a wild-goose chase, but if it’s not, if Berns was killed or if he was involved in something that could turn into a scandal, you’re the only one I can trust, you’re my friend and you’re apolitical. I want you on this until you can tell me whether I’m right or wrong.” His eyes grew dark, indicating that he was deeply troubled. “And one other thing. No one is to know what you’re up to, not even Dick.”
“You don’t trust Bridges?”
“I trust you, Jack,” Carson said. “That’s the beginning and the end of it.”
TWO
SLEEP WAS impossible after that disturbing conversation. Jack put on earbuds and fired up Emma’s iPod, which he took with him wherever he went, and putting it on random play, listened to “I Call My Baby Pussycat” by Funkadelic and “Like Eating Glass” by Bloc Party, before he felt suddenly claustrophobic alone in his suite with his daughter’s music and a half-dozen electronic listening devices, so he put the iPod aside and took the elevator down to the immense gilt-and-marble lobby with its overstuffed velvet furniture, musty samovars, and gimlet-eyed staff. He shivered slightly as he strode through the space, his steps echoing hollowly.
The bar was to the right, the room only slightly less imposing than the lobby itself. At least the lights were lower, the half-moon banquettes giving the illusion of intimacy. To his left was a curved bar of polished metal, macabrely lit from underneath, in front of which were twelve modernist stools. Not too long ago this bar and others like it all over Moscow were filled with free-spending oligarchs, businessmen who had made hundreds of millions of dollars buying up the huge corporations privatized during glasnost. Snapping up the companies for cents on the dollar, they’d been made rich beyond their wildest dreams virtually overnight. Yukin had ended all that when he’d decided to take back the corporations. Now the oligarchs were in a panic, scrambling to find the money to pay for the debts they had amassed while leveraging their nonexistent businesses when their short-lived power was at its zenith. Now the bar and others like it all over the city were as empty as a subway car at three in the morning.
Jack went past the bar itself and saw a Secret Service agent nursing a club soda. He turned his eye from an empty banquette at the rear at which he was planning to sit