Uhlrich laughed as he took a seat next to Packard, across from the only other treasury official on the trip, Lance Rapala, undersecretary of the treasury for international affairs.
Rapala, a former member of Congress, was a seasoned treasury official. Rapala was in his early seventies but still had a thick mane of black hair, aided no doubt by some product of American chemical innovation.
Packard was even higher on the treasury totem than Rapala. Packard, a former managing director at the legendary Boston private equity firm Mustang, was charged with managing the roughly one-trillion-dollar annual treasury-bond-sale effort, a linchpin in the creation of liquidity not only for the U.S. government but the American economy. It was Packard’s job to make sure money kept floating within the multilayered channels and back alleyways of the official U.S. economy, a feat that was accomplished via a tricky, mediated dance involving bond sales to foreign governments and corporations and a near-constant arm-wrestling match with the Federal Reserve.
If Packard had one of the most stressful jobs in government, she didn’t show it.
“You’re starting to sound like my daughter, Trix.”
“You’re starting to sound like my dad, Wood.”
“I wish I was your dad,” said Uhlrich. “Retired … living in Florida.”
“Eating soft food, bored out of your mind.”
“Exactly.”
“You don’t like twisting arms, Wood?” asked Rapala.
“No,” said Uhlrich. “I’m getting tired of it. So who am I meeting in Hong Kong?”
“Zhu,” said Rapala. “I set up a one-on-one meeting. He knows the subject matter.”
“What do we want?”
“England and Germany have each agreed to pick up fifty billion,” said Packard. “That means we need China to take the other four hundred billion.”
“That’s it?”
“No,” said Packard. “By year’s end, we’ll need to put another trillion out there. You should probably mention that to Mr. Zhu.”
Uhlrich watched as the attendant delivered his coffee and Advils. He popped the Advils into his mouth and followed it with a swig of coffee.
“Eight months ago, it was difficult to place a quarter billion dollars worth of bonds,” said Uhlrich. “Since that time, debt levels across the EU have shot up. Everyone is asking Germany for help; same with Britain. The entire continent is in a recession. So where is this money going to come from, Trix?”
“That’s why we’re flying to Hong Kong, Mr. Secretary. China is our only option.”
Uhlrich leaned back.
“Have you spoken to Zhu?” asked Rapala.
“No,” said Packard, looking at Rapala, then Uhlrich. “I don’t need to. China will buy the bonds. I’m not worried.”
“You better hope so,” said Uhlrich. “What’s the backup plan?”
Packard shifted in her chair.
“What do you mean, sir?”
“China’s always been the backup plan,” said Uhlrich. “Now, they are the plan. Which means we don’t have a backup plan, do we?”
“No, sir, we don’t,” said Packard. “We need China to buy the bonds. America’s dirty little secret, sir.”
30
BIRCH HILL
M
C
LEAN, VIRGINIA
Calibrisi was eating dinner at his home in McLean when his cell rang. He glanced at his wife, Vivian, who smiled understandingly.
“Yeah,” he said, putting the phone to his ear.
“CIA Control, sir. I’ve got Steve Owen patched in from CIA one-two-alpha.”
Calibrisi looked at Vivian.
“Do you want me to leave?” she mouthed.
Calibrisi shook his head no.
“Hi, Steve.”
“He’s refusing to talk, Hector. He’s also drinking.”
“Where does he want to be dropped?
“First airport inside U.S. territory. I thought I’d give you a chance to influence that decision. Where do you want us to leave him?”
Calibrisi was silent, thinking quickly about what assets he had in the southeastern United States. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to have any. But the last thing he wanted to do was drag in the FBI. This one was personal. He knew Dewey was likely headed for a tailspin, and he wanted to be there to catch him when he fell. He could have simply ordered Owen to fly him back to Andrews, but that would’ve been even worse. Dewey would resent him for a long, long time if he pulled a stunt like that.
“Miami,” said Calibrisi. “Drop him in Miami. Thanks, Steve.”
“No problem, sir.”
Calibrisi waited for Owen to drop off, then spoke to the CIA switchboard.
“Control,” said Calibrisi into the phone. “Get me Katie Foxx.”
31
MIAMI, FLORIDA
The CIA jet landed at Opa-locka Executive Airport on the outskirts of Miami. He wasn’t quite drunk, but he was well on his way. For the last hour of the trip, Dewey swigged from the bottle of whiskey, staring out the window, saying nothing, trying to push all thoughts from his mind.
In truth, Dewey was still lucid enough to understand where he was and why he was there. He’d poured enough whiskey down his throat over the years to understand what his limits were. He knew they all thought he was inconsolable, perhaps even suicidal, but he wasn’t. He was angry. The last thing he felt like doing was getting the third degree by a brigade of CIA analysts. Actually, strike that. The last thing, the truly last thing he wanted to do, was to listen to people he barely knew express their condolences. He wanted solitude. He wanted to figure out what would come next. More than anything, he wanted revenge.
At the airport gift shop, where he’d stopped to buy a pack of Marlboros, Dewey caught the sight of Chip Bronkelman, the Boston billionaire who had offered him a job running security for his hedge fund. Bronkelman’s round, pudgy, friendly face smiled out from the cover of
Forbes.
Jessica had been the one to set up the job with Bronkelman. It would have paid more than a million dollars a year. Still, Dewey had turned it down. Now, as he looked at the cover of the magazine, his mind played a cruel trick on him. If he’d taken the job, he wouldn’t have been able to accompany Jessica to Argentina. Whoever had targeted him for assassination wouldn’t have tracked him to Estancia el Colibri. If he’d taken the job with Chip Bronkelman, Jessica would still be alive.
He climbed into a cab outside the airport, asking to be taken to a hotel.
“What hotel?” asked the cabbie.
“I don’t care,” said Dewey. “Any hotel.”
“Nice? Expensive? Economy? You want fleas and bedbugs, or caviar and champagne?”
Dewey made out the man’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Just take me to a fucking hotel.”
The cab lurched forward.
“There are more than two hundred hotels in Miami,” said the cabbie.
“Well, then you have a lot of choices, don’t you?”
“Bars,” said the cabbie. “I have a feeling you want to be near some bars.”
Dewey sat back, a slight grin spread across his face at the cabbie, but he said nothing.
“What brings you to Miami?” asked the cabbie.
“None of your fucking business,” said Dewey, looking at him with bloodshot eyes in the rearview mirror.
“All right, I’ll shut up.”
Fifteen minutes later, the cab pulled into the Delano Hotel, stopping as a valet grabbed the back door of the cab and opened it.
“The Delano,” said the cabbie, grinning. “Great place for assholes like you.”
Dewey did a double take as he reached into his pocket for some cash.
“Did you just call me an asshole?”
“You weren’t going to tip me anyway.”
The fare was thirty dollars and Dewey threw down an extra twenty.
“What’s that for?” asked the cabbie.
“For having a set of balls, unlike most people.”
Dewey shut the door and went inside. It was an old hotel but modern, having been redesigned and decorated with a meticulous array of uncomfortable-looking modern furniture, strange art, and odd photographs.
“Bonjour,” said a pompadoured greeter in a white button-down shirt. “Welcome to the Delano. Consider this your home away from home.”
Dewey did a U-turn. He walked down the block to a plainer-looking hotel, the National. There was no greeter, and he walked to the front desk. He paid in cash for three nights and registered under the name Tom Smith.
The room was on the tenth floor, overlooking South Beach. He looked at the clock by the bed. It was 6:00
P.M.
He stripped down to his underwear, opened up the door to the small balcony, then ordered a steak from room service. He took a can of beer from the minibar and went out on the balcony. He sat down in one of the chaises and smoked a cigarette as the sky over South Beach turned purple with the coming sunset. The beach below was less crowded than he would have thought. He sat staring at the water and the beach, purging his mind of any sort of semblance of thoughts, until his dinner arrived.
After dinner, he went to the pocket of his jeans and removed the finger. He went into the bathroom and inspected it under the light. The finger was nearly black now, beginning to rot. He examined the fingerprint lines. Who would want him dead? Hector was right: maybe it was Iran. The dead man? Perhaps a mercenary. But who were the other two men?
He went to the minibar and removed a small bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He chugged it down, then went to the full-length mirror. He stared into his own eyes.
When Holly died, part of him died with her. Holly had been the only love Dewey had ever known. His first love. He didn’t know anything else, and it was pure. Losing her had been devastating. It had taken Dewey more than a decade to will the thought of her out of his head, ten long years of the hardest labor he’d ever experienced just to get over her. Dewey had found the most punishing work imaginable, as a roughneck on a succession of oil platforms, hundreds of miles offshore, first in the bitter winters of northern Europe, then in the miserable heat off the coast of South America. It had taken the punishing hell of hard labor to restore himself.
Jessica was different. He hadn’t been expecting it. She understood him, challenged him, accepted him. He’d grown to know her, then love her. They’d talked about different places to settle down. Jessica liked Portland, Maine, close enough to Castine for visits but also a city, with great restaurants. A place you could raise a kid. It wasn’t too late for that, they both knew. But there would probably be time enough for only one. Would it be a boy or a girl? They talked about names. For a girl, they liked the name Summer. For a boy, Hobey, after Dewey’s brother.
Now it was gone. It was destroyed. And the memories were like ashes in his mouth. They reminded Dewey that he was different. They fed his innermost fear, that he wasn’t meant to be happy, that he’d been chosen somehow to be tested in the cruelest of ways.
He stared at his reflection in the mirror.
“She was innocent,” Dewey said aloud, to no one.
Dewey swung his right fist against the mirror. He struck it once, but nothing happened. The next time, he swung harder. The mirror cracked, a spiderweb emanating out from the center of the glass, where he’d hit it. He looked at his fist. The knuckles were bloody where the skin had just been torn off. He punched again, harder this time. He felt glass enter his skin, then watched as a few pieces fell to the floor and shattered. He swung yet again, harder this time. The spiderweb disappeared as the wall of glass flashed silver, then cascaded to the floor at his feet, hundreds of shards of glass shattering around him.
He walked into the center of the bedroom, pulling pieces of glass from between the knuckles of his right fist. He got down on his knees, then put his hands down. He did a push-up, then another, and soon was moving up and down, up and down, up and down, his arms burning, sweat pouring off his chest and head.
Walk away,
he thought.
Leave it behind.
After fifty push-ups, he felt like throwing up. Blood dripped from his right fist onto the floor. He kept going. At a hundred push-ups, he did throw up, whiskey mostly. It poured from his mouth as he kept moving up and down. His arms burned like they were on fire.
He was back there, at the edge of it all, back where it began, in Ranger school, that long winter in Georgia. Nothing would ever be harder than Delta, but that first time, that pain that they drove you to, that first time only occurs once, and for Dewey it was Rangers. He threw up so many times that first week of Ranger school that he lost count. He got so used to it that he came to understand that beyond the throw-up, beyond the wall of pain that paralyzed you, came the other pain, the one that was from God, the one that told you that you alone could get to that point, you alone could bear it, you alone were forged in steel strong enough to endure it.
Blood and vomit covered the floor now, and tears of pain dripped from his eyes as he drove himself further, first 130, then, at some point, 200 push-ups.
Dewey needed to go back to that time and place now. He needed to go back and find that inner steel he knew existed, the steel he would need to survive Jessica’s death. The steel he would stab into the heart of those who’d taken her.
He lost count sometime after 220 push-ups, passing out on the floor, lying in a pool of his own sweat, vomit, tears, and blood. He curled up into a fetal position, sobbing, and fell into a deep sleep.
32
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA
The phone started ringing precisely at midnight.
The only woman in the small Recoleta apartment was in bed. Francita Marti, a frail woman of eighty-four, let it ring for more than a minute. After that, she realized whoever it was wasn’t going away. It required nearly another minute to get out of bed, with her arthritis.
“Yes,” she said in a soft but annoyed voice. “Who is it? If this is one of those calls—”
“Good evening,” came the voice. It sounded distorted and loud, as if the man on the other end had a disability. She could not have known he was using a device to cloak his voice.
“Who is this?”
“It’s about your son.”
The woman became alert. She reached for the lamp next to the phone and turned it on. She found a pad and pen to write with. It didn’t happen often, but in matters having to do with her son, she knew to listen and to obey. After all, he was the top law-enforcement officer in all of Argentina.