The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer [125]
“And all these letters below it: PRL . . . FB . . . PUB . . .”
“PRL is Boyle’s personal history, which I’ll wager refers to all the crap with his father. FB is his financial background; thanks again, Dad. And PUB . . .” Dreidel paused a moment, reading from his sheet as Rogo followed on his own copy. “PUB is the public perception issues if Boyle’s background gets out, which in this case, it already was.”
“What about PI?” Rogo asked.
“Whattya mean?”
“PI,” Rogo repeated, turning his sheet toward Dreidel. “Isn’t your last one PI?”
Dreidel looked at his own sheet, which ended with PUB, then turned toward Rogo’s, squinting to read the letters with the handwritten message next to them:
PI—note May 27
Dreidel’s face went white.
“What?” Rogo asked. “What’s it mean?”
“What’s the date on yours say?”
Reading from the top corner of the sheet, Rogo could barely get the words out. “June 16th,” he said. “Right before the shooting.”
“Mine’s January 6th—days before we moved into the White House.”
“I don’t understand, though. What’s PI?”
“Paternity issues,” Dreidel said. “According to this, just before he was shot, Boyle had a kid no one knew about.”
75
What’d you do?” The Roman asked, his voice squawking through the scrambled satellite phone.
“It’s fine. Problem solved,” O’Shea replied, keeping the phone close and staring out the small oval window of the chartered seaplane.
“What does that mean? Let me speak to Micah!”
“Yeah, well . . . that’s a little harder than it used to be,” O’Shea said as the plane dropped down, approaching the aquamarine waves of Lake Worth. From the current height—barely a few hundred feet above the water—the backyards of the Palm Beach mansions whizzed by in a blur.
“O’Shea, don’t tell me— What’d you do to him?”
“Don’t lecture me, okay? I didn’t have a choice.”
“You killed him?”
O’Shea stared out the window as the plane sank down to just a few feet above the waves. “Be smart. He’s covert in Directorate of Operations. He shouldn’t be working on U.S. soil. And for some reason, he’s caught standing on the track at the speedway? Once Wes IDed him, they would’ve brought him right in.”
“That doesn’t mean he’d talk!”
“You think so? You think if they offered him a deal and said they’d go easy on him, every one of Micah’s fingers wouldn’t’ve pointed our way?”
“He’s still CIA!” The Roman shouted through the phone. “You have any idea what kinda fire that starts? You just lit the damn volcano!”
“You think I enjoyed it? I’ve known Micah since War College. He was at my niece’s communion.”
“Well, I guess there goes his invite for her sweet sixteen!”
With a final jolt, the plane dropped down for its landing. The instant the floats hit the water, the plane bounced and wobbled, slowing down until it was cruising with the current.
“Enough,” O’Shea warned as the floating plane chugged toward the floating dock of the Rybovich Spencer boatyard. “It was hard enough as it is.”
“Really? Then maybe you should’ve thought twice before you decided to put a bullet in him! You know how hard it’s gonna be to find another person inside the Agency?”
“You’re lecturing me about forethought? Have you forgotten why we’re even stamping around in all this manure? It’s the same jackass thing you did with our so-called six-million-dollar payment for Blackbird. You rush in, stick your finger in all the electrical sockets, then get mad at me when I have to deal with the cleanup.”
“Don’t even— Blackbird was a mutual decision!” The Roman exploded. “We voted on that!”
“No, you voted. You’re the one who put the number that high. Then when they decided they weren’t paying it, you came crying that we needed an assist from the inside.”
“Okay, so now you didn’t want that six mil?”
“What I didn’t want was to have to ask for that kinda cash twice. We spent nearly a decade building up your damn Roman identity—all those tips we snatched and passed your way so it looked like you had some big, great informant out there—hell, they still think The Roman’s a real person who feeds the government info—all for the goal of going in