Read Born with Secrets: A Political Thriller Online
Authors: Bowen Greenwood
At once, she sighed. Vincent.
Congressman Mike Vincent, who came to visit her in
prison regularly even though, if it became known, his approval ratings would
drop ten points.
Congressman Mike Vincent, who testified in her favor
at her sentencing even though he lost dozens of donors for it.
Vincent, whose last advice to her before she got
arrested hadn’t been about how to win. It had been about letting go of her
rage.
Vincent was a good man, and the country needed
someone like him in office. That was why she’d done what she’d done. It was a
strange interplay between her old life and her new one.
In her old life, she used secrecy and stealth to
gain advantage for one politician over another in exchange for large quantities
of cash.
In her still-only-half-formed new life, she was fumbling
toward doing the right thing. Matt Barr and Mike Vincent were her role models.
So she used the methods of her old life to try to
help a man she admired in her new life.
And the result? She’d lost everything. A second
time. Two years ago, her whole life burned down when she got arrested. She’d
spent the intervening time rebuilding and now all that was gone, too.
And when they heard about it, the men she admired
were probably going to be terribly disappointed in her.
Alyssa found it hard to imagine how she could feel
much worse.
Alright, God. Matt says you’re all about second
chances. I need one. Make that, I need another one. This time, I won’t screw it
up. Please give me one more chance.
Vincent dropped him off at this hotel before dawn,
paid for a room, and put his card on file to pay for as much room service as
Matt wanted. It was all to keep the reporter from having to show up in a
computer system anywhere. Matt’s credit card hadn’t been used, his phone and
laptop had been destroyed in the house fire, and his car had been left at
Congressman Vincent’s house. In general, there was no record of the reporter
anywhere since he crawled into bed last night.
He would have gone down to the hotel business center
to check email and do a little work, except that Mike had forbidden him from
going online at all.
“If it’s got a screen, they can track it,” the
Congressman had said. “If someone is really trying to kill you, and they’ve got
the resources to commit both arson and a car chase, then they have the
resources to track your location data. Do not touch a computer until you’re
done with this, whatever it is.”
Consequently, Matt had nothing better to do than sit
in the hotel room reading, or watching TV. Mike chose the place for anonymity
and it showed in the room. The bare white walls were decorated with cheap
prints and the brown carpet had probably been chosen more to hide stains than
to look good.
He flipped on the TV to watch some pundits on cable
news debate Mike’s campaign.
“A week ago, insiders were saying the President
might endorse Vincent in his Senate primary,” the talk show host intoned. “Now,
the White House is being carefully neutral. Joe, what happened?”
The analyst, a frequent guest on the show, replied,
“I can’t say for sure, Rick, but Cobalt has some pretty powerful backers. He’s
the party establishment’s favorite, and a lot of the guys with money and power
are behind him. They might have leaned on the President. It’s also true that
Cobalt’s Genetic Probable Cause Bill offers a lot of tools that the
intelligence community would like to have. It’s possible they were the ones who
persuaded the President.”
Matt knew both the host and the analyst/guest. He’d
been on this show more than a few times to talk politics. He hated being stuck
watching other people commit journalism when he should be doing it himself.
But, although he’d never tried it, he suspected that he’d probably hate getting
shot worse. So here he sat, watching his professional rivals dig into his
friend.
The host said, “Vincent’s been critical of that
bill. How did a bill that hasn’t even been introduced yet become the focus of a
race for U.S. Senate?”
The analyst replied, “Cobalt built his whole
campaign on it. Every speech is about protecting people from violent crime.”
The first analyst said, “It’s hard for me to believe
the bill can really do what Cobalt says. Can they really know who’s going to be
a criminal before they commit a crime, just based on whether they have one
gene? What about free will?”
The analyst explained, “Genetics aren’t that simple.
It’s not, ‘You have this gene, so you’re a criminal.’ What happens is having
that particular genetic makeup creates a tendency toward a certain kind of
behavior. If you have a thousand ordinary people, maybe only two percent would
ever commit a violent act. If you have a thousand people with this marker,
maybe ten percent would. What Cobalt wants to do is let the NSA and the FBI bug
everyone who has the gene. They want to read their social media, check their
email, tap their phone calls, all of it. Then, the police will know enough to
stop someone before they become violent.”
The host asked, “Bug everyone?”
“Just people with the wrong genes. What if it can
save lives?”
Matt clicked the TV off. It was too annoying. He’d
overheard that conversation at the debate between Doyle Cobalt and one of his
men about the Genetic Probable Cause Bill. Now, he didn’t trust what anyone
said about it. What if there was more? What if the plan as Doyle Cobalt talked
about it on the stump wasn’t fully honest with the people?
And what could he do about it sitting in a hotel
room without Internet access?
He went back to the Gideon Bible. At least he could
be reasonably sure it wouldn’t mention his friend’s race for Congress.
***
He was walking away from
the Oval Office, more than a little bit shaken. Only days ago, the President
seemed to be coming around to Mike’s way of thinking. The President’s right
hand man, Tom Wheeler, had become a friend since the campaign, and Vincent had
hoped that would matter.
Now, everything seemed to
have flipped upside down. He was leaving a meeting in the Oval Office where the
President had completely refused to respond to any of Mike’s attempts to get him
to commit. It had been as though the man were a cardboard cutout of himself. He
was almost completely without expression or emotion. And Wheeler hadn’t even
shown up. Instead, it had been some lower level deputy assistant to the
assistant.
Was the President still on
his side? Was Wheeler? The news media were reporting that the administration
was no longer sure about Cobalt’s Genetic Probable Cause Bill, let alone an
endorsement.
Not that he trusted the
media, but he’d just seen the proof with his own eyes. It was a complete
reversal. In recent weeks, Tom Wheeler had been coming to him more and more for
advice. He even started asking him for Bible verses that he could share with
the President. That was why Vincent had hope that the man was finally changing
from his past. It was also why he thought he had hope for the endorsement.
Was that all gone now?
What had happened?
Even though he might be in
the Senate next year at the moment, Mike was just a rank and file Congressman.
That meant he got zero special consideration from the security personnel.
Getting in and out of the President’s bubble required procedures not that
different from boarding an airplane. Mike used the time to think. And all those
thoughts kept coming back to one inescapable conclusion.
Without the President’s
endorsement, his campaign was probably sunk.
Since forming his company
to sell DNA-based surveillance to the government, Doyle Cobalt had the kind of
wealth Mike had never had or wanted. He had connections to the people who could
fund a first-class campaign. And he was favored by a lot of the inside beltway
crowd.
Vincent, on the other
hand, was famous for being a naive idealist.
He didn’t think of himself
as naive, but he was unashamed about hoping for the best.
That was an outlook it was
getting increasingly hard to maintain. If the President wasn’t going to endorse
him, Vincent wasn’t sure whether there was any other route to victory. No
matter how many calls he made, the money wasn’t coming in fast enough. And
without money, it was impossible to buy enough TV or direct mail to change the
poll numbers.
“Need a little help,
boss,” he prayed aloud as he left the White House.
***
As the rotors spun down and the whine of the engine
gradually reduced, Doyle walked away from the landing pad and toward that
office. It was a simple matter of going in the door, walking down one flight of
stairs, walking down about twenty feet of hallway, and passing through his
secretary’s antechamber.
He nodded brusquely at her as he walked by. She
looked like she wanted to tell him something, but he ignored her.
Inside his office, Doyle realized what she probably
had wanted to tell him. Luther sat in his chair, boot-clad feet propped up on
Doyle’s desk. He was reading on Doyle’s tablet.
Doyle sighed and went to sit on the couch.
He asked, “Progress?”
“I sent the email,” Luther replied. “Wheeler’s been
stalling me since then. ‘Who are you, I need some proof she’s really who you
say she is, I can’t convince the President without more evidence’… blah, blah,
blah. It doesn’t really matter if they ever formally agree to our terms or not.
They just have to know that, if they endorse Vincent, then the whole world
learns about the President and Ms. LeBlanc. That’ll be more than enough to keep
them out of our race.”
Doyle nodded. “So basically it’s a done deal now?
Just keep enough money coming in to keep our ads on TV and wait for the 55% win
on Primary night?”
Luther made a low grumbling noise in his throat for
a second or two.
Finally, he said, “Well, I wouldn’t say done deal.”
At once, worry spread over the older brother’s face.
“The consultants say I’m up five points. I don’t like hearing about problems.”
Luther shrugged and said, “You’ll be fine. I’ve just
got to keep one tiny little complication from blowing up into a big deal.”
Doyle said, “We’ve got the girl. You sent the email.
I thought she was enough to settle that.”
Luther replied, “Yes, we have her. But the means by
which I got her is posing a small problem.”
When his brother just lifted his eyebrows, Luther
continued speaking.
“She wasn’t doing us any good hidden away in a
prison, so I had to do something to get her out. It wasn’t exactly… well, it
wasn’t pretty.”
The older brother’s only reply was a wordless worried
rumble coming through pressed-together lips.
“Short version, some video of that ugly little
business found its way out of the prison and into the hands of a reporter.”
Doyle took a deep breath then asked, “How bad is the
video?”
Luther didn’t reply right away. He just sat there
wordlessly.
Finally he said, “It’s me arranging to have LeBlanc
beaten.”
Doyle exclaimed, “To have… what the… how… Luther!
Beaten?”
“I had to get her out of prison. If we left her
there, then as soon as we sent the note telling the President to butt out of
our primary or we’d expose her, then he’d just get her under his control and
put his own spin on it. We needed her in our hands to make the plan work, but
it’s not exactly a trifling matter to just walk out of a Federal prison with a
convict under your arm. My idea was to have her wounded bad enough that she’d
have to go to the hospital. From there, it would have been way easier to grab
her and bring her here. It didn’t exactly work out like that but… well, we’ve
got her and now I’ve got to clean up the mess.”
Doyle said, “Normally, I’m happier when I don’t hear
anything about the ugly side of this business. Whatever you get up to with all
your black ops contacts and whatnot isn’t my business. I don’t want to know.
But… make me feel confident that the mess is really going to get cleaned up.”
“Relax,” Luther said. “I sent some guys to get the
video back. The reporter who has it tried to give us the slip, but then he left
his car right where we could find it. I’ve got an old buddy at the NSA who can
help me trace credit card numbers so now we know that the guy he left his
Camaro with rented him a hotel room. We’ll have this wrapped up by tonight.”
Luther figured it was better if his brother didn’t
know that the guy who rented the hotel room was the one and only Mike Vincent.
Doyle would get cold feet over the risk of exposure.
Doyle asked, “You’re certain?”
Luther replied, “Dead certain.”
“The one and only. Except
for being pretty, you’ll be shocked by how ordinary she is.”
“Judging by the news
coverage, I keep expecting to find her in a straightjacket to keep her from
getting out. I mean, she’s supposed to be this master of escape and disguise.”
“She’s never once tried to
escape. We haven’t had trouble with her for a almost two years until that fight
in the yard. She’s only been in the SHU for the past day because everyone
suspects she was somehow involved with LeBlanc’s escape. The picked lock in the
server closet is the kind of skill she’s famous for.”
The two men were
Correctional Officers. One was middle-aged and very physically fit, with a
graying crew cut and wire-rimmed glasses. The other was younger, overweight,
and shorter. His hair was sandy brown.
Cold concrete walls
wrapped the two men in a cocoon of impersonal space as they walked. The
utilitarian environment did not encourage smiles.
The younger CO said, “When
I heard I was being assigned here, I looked the place up online and practically
every single link is about her. If you believe what’s written on the Internet,
she’s half ninja and half Catwoman.”
The older CO replied, “The
testimony at her trial – not Internet sensationalism, but the real sworn
statements – all paint her as a champion martial artist, award-winning
small-caliber marksman, and genuine expert at disguise and concealment. I don’t
know about all that, but she’s an extraordinarily skillful woman. I’ve seen her
in fights.”
“No way, really? You’ve
seen her fight?”
The older officer nodded.
“It doesn’t happen much anymore, but it used to. Some idiots had to test
themselves against the legend.”
The younger correctional
officer asked, “What’s it like seeing that?”
The older man chuckled.
“'See' her fight is sort of an exaggeration. She’s so fast you don’t see much.
I saw four women – all members of the same gang – try to take her on once.
Before I even realize what’s happening, one of them flies across the room and
breaks a table by landing on it. Another one gets thrown into the wall. I’m
just reaching for my baton when I see a fist to the nose of number three. Then
the fourth collapses right where she’s standing somehow, without me being able
to see anything hit her.
“And then she stood
straight – like a raw recruit at FLETC standing at attention.”
He pronounced it
“Flet-see” and referred to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. All
Federal law enforcement agents started there, including Correctional Officers.
The older CO paused for effect
and then said, “Get this: then she bows – no kidding, just like a Bruce Lee
movie. When the fight’s over she nods at me, beckons me over, and puts her
hands behind her back, waiting for the cuffs. We’re lucky she’s a model
prisoner. There’s not a CO here who could take her in a fight. You and I
together couldn’t do it.”
The younger man said,
“Sheesh, that’s intense. I wish I’d seen that. I heard that when she was on the
run, she fought five Secret Service agents at once and KO'd them all.”
His older colleague said,
“That's in some of the testimony from her trial. Her friend – the guy who
visits her all the time here – was under guard because they thought she would
contact him for help. She knew he was secured and went in anyway. She snuck
past four guards outside – all wearing night vision – got inside, then beat up
five more on her way out. I don't think she actually knocked them all
unconscious, though.”
The younger man grinned,
then asked, “A guy who visits her all the time? I was hoping she was single.”
The older one laughed.
“Like I said, she's got a couple guys who visit her a lot. I think one of them
is her boyfriend. But anyway, that’s so far against the rules we’re not even
supposed to joke about it.”
As the two men approached
the cell, they could hear fast, strong breathing. It wasn’t panting so much as
the deliberately focused exhalation of an athlete in the middle of exertion.
Once they arrived at the cell, in addition to the breathing, they could hear a
count.
“One forty-six. One
forty-seven. One forty-eight.”
Through the thick steel
bars, the COs could see she was doing pushups, and she gave no sign that she
was aware of their presence.
The younger man glanced at
the older and said, “One forty eight? At FLETC, I topped out at thirty-nine.”
From inside the cell they
heard, “One forty-nine. One fifty.”
She pulled her knees in
and rose to her feet, turning to face the cell door.
“Good evening, gentlemen.”
Chambers managed a small
smile. She wore sweatpants and a tank top. Her chest rose and fell as she
caught her breath from the workout. A sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead,
sticking her bangs to the skin.
“Evening, Chambers,” the
older CO said. “We’re here to take you to a visitor.”
She made a show of looking
at her wrist, where a watch might have sat if she had worn one. Then she looked
back at the bars and raised her eyebrows. The question was obvious. They were
far outside of normal visiting times. In addition to which, prisoners being
held in the SHU were not allowed visitors.
“Ours is not to reason
why,” the CO said and then added, “Whoever it is has some serious bureaucratic
muscle. Our orders are to drop you in a conference room, and we're not allowed
back until called for. This kind of thing literally never happens. Never.”
He moved his finger in a
circle to indicate she should turn around.
This Alyssa did, crossing
her wrists behind her back to wait for the cuffs. The two men unlocked the
door, came in and cuffed her, and then led her down the hall.
The older one said, “I
think my young colleague here has a bit of a crush on you, Chambers. He says
there’s a lot written about you on the Internet.”
“Hey–”
Before the younger man
could go very far with his rebuttal, Alyssa said, “I don’t expect to go on any
dates for about 28 years.”
The older CO laughed.
“Come on, Chambers. Good time, credit for time served before your sentencing,
parole… you could be out in ten.”
She replied, “I think my
good conduct time credits went up in smoke since everyone thinks I helped
LeBlanc escape.”
Rather than respond, the
older Correctional Officer opened the door at which they had arrived. He gently
urged Chambers through it ahead of him, stopping short of a push. He removed
her cuffs, then shut the door behind her.
She heard the sound of the
door locking. Massaging her wrists, she looked at the room. It was obviously a
conference room that the COs and prison staff used. There were motivational
posters, as well as advisories about work comp coverage, thumbtacked to cork
boards all the way around the room. A cheap conference table dominated, with
chairs arranged around it. They were swivel chairs with wheels on the base,
made of fake wood and fake leather.
Sitting in one of them, at
the far end of the room from Alyssa, was the explanation for how she could have
a visitor so far off hours when she was stuck in the SHU. It would take a man
with a lot of Federal government horsepower to make all this happen. And the
one at the far end of the conference table had more than enough.
“Tom Wheeler,” Alyssa
said. She wasn’t sure what else to say.
His last-minute call to
the Attorney General, back when he was managing the campaign of the man who
would become the next President, had probably saved her life. But on the other hand,
he was the one who had hired her to break into the West campaign headquarters.
As far as anyone had ever learned in the investigation and trial, he’d had
nothing to do with the assassination plot, including framing her. But she’d
never fully trusted him anyway.
He wore his gray hair in a
high and tight flat top. Big, bushy eyebrows gave the impression that his hair
would have been thick and unruly if he didn't cut it so severely. Green eyes
tried to trade stares with Alyssa but looked away after only a moment.
He wore a navy blue suit
and a bright yellow tie. He slouched in his chair, though, spoiling the image.
Wheeler, she knew, held
the office of Counselor to the President in the current administration. Before
they were elected, he had been the Communications Director on the campaign.
It was in that capacity
that he had hired Alyssa Chambers for a twofold job. The first part had been to
clean up his candidate’s past, destroying evidence of his manifold
indiscretions. The second had been “aggressive opposition research” on Rich
West, their top opponent in the primary election. The actual conspiracy to kill
West and frame Alyssa had been her father’s doing. But the fact remained:
Wheeler had been the one who hired her for the job.
He made eye contact with
her again and waved toward one of the chairs near him at the conference table,
indicating she should sit. Alyssa took the chair at the far end instead. She
stared at him without saying a word, waiting for him to speak first.
“You know it’s not my
fault you’re here, Chambers. I had nothing to do with the plot to kill West.
That was–”
She cut him off. “I know
who killed him, and I know who framed me. But whether or not you truly had
'nothing' to do with it remains to be seen.”
Wheeler didn't reply.
Instead, he lifted up a fat briefcase from beside his leg and opened it with
the lid facing Alyssa so she couldn't see what was inside. Familiar with lawyer
visits, she expected him to take some papers out. But she was wrong.
Wheeler proceeded to set
out two cut glass tumblers, an expensive brand of bottled water, and then a
tall clear bottle of amber liquid. Chambers recognized it right away. It was
25-year-old single malt Scotch whisky. Not only that, it was her favorite
distillery.
He quietly poured a couple
fingers into each glass and splashed a tiny bit of water in. With a gentle
shove, he sent the glass sliding all the way down the table to Chambers.
She looked at the glass.
She had been a scotch connoisseur once upon a time. Knowing different
distilleries and at what ages they sold their product had even been a small
clue in figuring out who framed her.
But she hadn't so much as
smelled it in almost two years.
She picked up the tumbler
and held it to her nose, breathing deep. “The best Scotch in the world” was a
debate that connoisseurs could have for hours at a time but in Alyssa's
opinion, this was it. MacAllan 25. She enjoyed the scent, then took a delicate
sip. It was her first alcohol in almost two years, and the taste was like an
electric current on her tongue. Smoke, peat, elegance, and a lifetime of
privilege were all in the taste.
Then she belted down the
entire rest of the glass, set it back on the table, and slid it back to
Wheeler.
She nodded at the bottle
and lifted her eyebrows expectantly.
Wheeler smirked at her,
filled the glass again, and sent it back down. When she wrapped her hand around
it, he spoke.
“I want to hire you
again.”
She waited for a moment
before responding, letting the silence grow just enough to be awkward. She
sipped the whisky and said, “Setting aside for the moment certain restrictions
on my freedom of movement, I’m clean now Wheeler. I’m a law-abiding citizen.”
Wheeler sipped his own
glass of whisky before replying.
“That’s not what the staff
here says. They say you helped another prisoner escape.”
Alyssa shook her head and
replied, “I was as surprised as anyone else when she turned up missing.”
He nodded and drank the
rest of his whisky. He carefully, deliberately set the empty glass down. He ran
his finger around the edge.
“I note that that is not a
denial.”
Alyssa put her nose in the
tumbler, breathed in the sharp aroma of the scotch, then took another sip.
“You’re not an attorney,”
she eventually replied. “The prison staff is under no obligation to respect the
privacy of our conversation.”
Which was a roundabout way
of communicating the message that the room could be bugged and anything
incriminating she might say could be used against her.
Here, Wheeler let a grin
spread across his face.
He said, “Funny thing about
that. Actually they are. They’re all Federal employees and subject to executive
orders. We just quietly issued Executive Order 15342 this morning. It has a lot
of really explicit provisions about how the staff at FCI Rocky are supposed to
conduct themselves toward you.”
Alyssa nodded and
responded, “Must be nice to work in the White House. Whatever kind of executive
order you need, just ask the boss.”
“You have no idea,” he
said. “In fact, speaking of that, I’m pretty sure I have the means to persuade
you to do this one last job for me, no matter how clean you claim to be these
days.”