Zero Game - Brad Meltzer [66]
We both stare at each other, but Viv quickly looks away. We may be stuck together, but she’s not forgiving me that quickly. More important, I don’t think she wants to know the answer. Too bad for her, that only makes one of us.
I pull the rolled-up pages from Matthew’s briefing book out of my pocket. I can still hear the mayor’s voice in my head. Wendell was already getting to work, but there wasn’t a piece of mining equipment in sight. “So what’re they doing down there?”
“You mean other than mining?”
I shake my head. “The way the mayor said it . . . I don’t think they’re mining.”
“Then what else do you need a gold mine for?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
She knows what I’m thinking. “Why don’t you just call the mayor back and—”
“And what? Ask him to take a little snoop around and then put his life in danger? Besides, even if he did, would you trust the answer?”
Viv again goes silent. “So what do we do?” she finally asks.
All this time, I’ve been looking for a lead. I reread the name of the town from the sheet of paper in my hands. Leed. Leed, indeed. The only place that has the answer.
Checking the exhibit hall one last time, I take off for the escalator. “Let’s go,” I call out to Viv.
She’s right behind me. She may be mad, but she understands the danger of being by herself. The fear alone sends her from anger back to acceptance, reluctant though it may be. As she falls in next to me, she takes one last look at Oscar the Grouch. “You really think it’s smart to go all the way to South Dakota?”
“You think it’s any safer here?”
She doesn’t answer.
Sure, it’s a gamble—but not nearly as risky as a company betting on a gold mine that has no gold in it, then keeping all the locals away so no one sees what they’re really up to. Even a seventeen-year-old knows something here stinks—and the only way to find out what is by going directly to the source.
29
TWO HOURS LATER, WE’RE in the back of a taxi in Dulles, Virginia. The sign out front is easy to miss, but I’ve been here before. Piedmont-Hawthorne’s Corporate Aviation Terminal.
“Just give me five back,” I say to the cab driver, who’s taken far too many glances at us in his rearview mirror. Maybe it’s our silence . . . maybe it’s the fact Viv won’t even look at me. Or maybe it’s the fact I just gave him a crappy tip.
“Actually, keep the change,” I tell the cabbie as I paint on a warm grin and force a laugh at the Elliot in the Morning promo that screams from the radio. The cabbie smiles back and counts his money. People are far less likely to remember you when you haven’t pissed them off. “Have a great day,” I add as Viv and I climb outside. He gives us a wave without looking back.
“You sure this is legal?” Viv asks, forever the good girl as she follows me toward the squatty modern building.
“I didn’t say anything about legal—all I’m looking for is smart.”
“And this is smart?”
“You’d rather fly commercial?”
Viv goes back to her silence. We went through this on the ride over here. This way, they won’t even ask for ID.
There aren’t many places you can get a private plane in less than two hours. Thankfully, Congress is one of them. And all it took was a single phone call. Two years ago, during a key vote on a controversial aviation bill, the head of FedEx’s government relations office called and asked to speak to Senator Stevens. Personally. Knowing they never cried wolf, I took a chance and put the call through. It was a gorgeous chess move by them. With Stevens on board, it set the tone for the rest of the Midwest Senators, who quickly followed with support for the bill.
Exactly two hours ago, I called FedEx’s government relations office and asked them to return the favor. The Senator, I explained, didn’t want to miss a last-minute fundraising opportunity in South Dakota, so he asked me to call. Personally.
That’s what brings us here. According to the ethics rules, a Senator can use a private corporate jet as long as he reimburses