Sedition (A Political Conspiracy Book 1) Page 7

  “You like the way I smell?” she asked, her lips still touching his. “It’s Bond Number 9 Coney Island.”

  Davidson pulled away and kissed her forehead. “You smell edible. But I have to go.” He walked to the door and left without turning around, knowing that if he looked at her again, he’d never leave.

  As the door automatically shut behind him, she walked over to the desk and saw five one-hundred-dollar bills fanned out next to the phone.

  He always paid in full.

  Twice a week they met in the same room at the same place. He was a creature of habit, her best and most regular client. They’d met through a mutual friend. It was pleasure for him, business for her.

  Sometimes, she imagined that Bill pretended they were a couple. He’d give her occasional gifts. She’d accept them and purr about how sweet he was to think of her.

  He’d often talk about his work and ask her about things that didn’t relate to her work. She was a student of history, and he enjoyed engaging her in philosophical debates. But she never pried too much. It would be stupid to ruin a good thing over a false curiosity.

  Davidson took the elevator down to the first floor and exited to the right into the large lobby. He pulled his shirt collar to his nose and inhaled. It smelled like her.

  He took another right to avoid the front doors of the Mayflower Hotel, slipped through a side door onto DeSales Street, and hailed a cab.

  “2100 Pennsylvania Avenue, please,” he told the cabbie. Davidson pulled out his cell phone and pressed a number saved in his speed dial. It rang twice.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Bill.” He spoke softly.

  “Hi, Bill,” she whispered back. “I thought you had a meeting?” She was already dressed and was pulling on her red leather heels. Her finger was stuck between her heel and the strap.

  “I do,” he answered. “But, look. About next time…”

  “Yes?” She was smiling. He could hear it through the phone. She freed her finger from the shoe and stood from the bed, cradling the phone between her ear and neck.

  “How about later tonight? After my meeting.” He was addicted.

  “Wow. That’s a change. Are you sure you won’t be otherwise entangled?” She picked up her large purse and walked toward the door to the room.

  “I’ll make sure that I’m free if you do.”

  “Okay.” She giggled. She told him that she wasn’t sure of her schedule but that she’d make arrangements to be available. She turned around to put down her bag and sat back down on the bed.

  “See you.” Davidson ended the call. He needed the stress relief. For three years she’d been good for that. He pulled his journal from his pocket and made note of the appointment.

  Davidson had never married. As he aged, his ability and desire to play the dating game had diminished. He didn’t want rejection. He wanted to cut to the chase.

  Discretion was important. He didn’t use traceable payment and he always stuck with the same woman. Nonetheless, it was a calculated risk.

  Davidson paid the cabbie and exited the vehicle, then walked up to the twin red doors and knocked. He checked the Omega on his wrist. It was 1:30 in the morning.

  *

  Sir Spencer glared at the former attorney general. “Now that Bill is here,” began Sir Spencer, “we can begin.”

  Bill Davidson leaned against the pony wall that separated the small dining area from the living room, where the other men were seated. Standing was his self-imposed penance for being late. He ran the tip of his tongue along the back of the bridge affixed to his gums.

  “I am of the opinion that we can effectively induce radical change in the country,” Sir Spencer said, leaning forward on the couch, his eyes scanning the room. “Given the peculiar constitutional predicament in which we find ourselves,” he continued, “there is a window of opportunity for us. We can, I think, significantly alter the political direction of this wayward government. I know our feeble attempts of the past have failed. Money isn’t worth what it once was to these heathens running around the bowels of the Capitol. We underestimated that. This time, we must fully commit. If we do, we will succeed.”

  “How is that?” Ings asked between drags on his unfiltered Camel.

  Sir Spencer struggled to stand against the depth of the sofa, but managed. He adjusted his jacket and pulled each arm down to ease the wrinkles, then leaned toward Edwards. “I think George has some ideas about technique. Then I will further explain the process by which we take control. George?”

  “Well…” Edwards began slowly, “I think the answer is Semtex.”

  “Semtex?” Davidson asked. “Why Semtex?”

  “It’s an explosive,” Edwards said, looking at the knight as he spoke.

  “I know what Semtex is, George!” Davidson snapped. He was once the head of the Justice Department. He knew that the plastic high-order explosive was developed in 1966 in Pardubice, Czechoslovakia. A combination of Semtin and explosive, it was originally produced in large quantities for use during the Vietnam War but had since become a weapon of choice for paramilitary groups around the world.

  The Pan Am Flight 103 explosion in 1988, the bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi and the World Trade Center attack in 1993, and the 2008 Irish Republican Army attack on Irish police were all accomplished with the help of Semtex.

  The explosive came to be known as “The Magic Marble of Pardubice”. After the Cold War, much of the product disappeared. Czech soldiers sold the product for as much as five hundred dollars per kilogram. Of course Davidson knew about Semtex.

  “What I mean,” Edwards elaborated, “is that we will use Semtex to alter the presidential succession process.”

  “Are you talking about killing people?” Davidson asked. “I don’t know about this. I don’t think I’m up for murder.”

  Sir Spencer interjected, “Were the founding fathers murderers? Were they terrorists? Or were they men for whom death was a small price to pay for freedom and democracy? Listen to the boy. Give him his due.”

  “Bomb-sniffing dogs cannot detect Semtex,” Edwards explained. “At least, not the older stuff. The newer plastics have an odor inserted into them, but the original compositions are perfect for our purposes. If we can find a way to get the plastic into the midst of the president’s funeral or memorial…”

  “You’re insane,” quipped Davidson.

  “It’s an impossible task,” Thistlewood said.

  “I must be drunk,” added Ings, “because I thought I just heard you say you want to bomb the president’s funeral.”

  “You are inebriated, James,” confirmed Sir Spencer, “but your ears are sober.”

  “It can be done,” Edwards insisted. “With the people we have in this room, we can get the Semtex where it needs to be. When President Foreman is memorialized or buried, most of the line of succession will be there.”

  “Not everyone will be there, George,” Thistlewood piped in. “There’s always a holdout. They always keep at least one person in the line of succession separated to ensure the continuity of government.”

  “I know,” replied Edwards. He looked past Sir Spencer to nod at Thistlewood. “But we don’t need to get everyone.”

  “How do we get our hands on Semtex?” asked Ings, eliciting nasty looks from Thistlewood and Davidson. “I mean, if we needed it.”

  “It’s irrelevant, Jimmy.” Davidson shook his head. “I am not going to resort to violence. That’s just going too far. How can any of you be okay with this?”

  Sir Spencer held up his hand. “Bill,” he said, “think about this rationally.”

  “I am the only one in this room who is thinking rationally.”

  “Okay. Then think about it irrationally.”

  Davidson frowned.

  “We have watched silently,” continued the knight, “as administration after administration has thumbed its nose at the foundations of our society. It’s either a secret CIA torture program okayed by a vice president
or a taxpayer bailout of an automotive industry too bloated to wipe itself after a bowel movement. We have been fleeced. The Patriot Act stole a little bit of our privacy,” Sir Spencer preached. “Then we take our eye off the ball and learn the so-called JV team, ISIS, is beheading infidels and posting videos on the Internet. North Korea goes unchecked. Syria crossed a flaccid line in the sand. Iran is minutes away from acquiring a nuclear bomb. The only way to save this nation and our world is to act swiftly and decisively. If that act calls for violence, so be it.”

  Davidson shook his head. “I don’t see it.”

  “You don’t see what?” Sir Spencer’s tone was condescending. “You don’t see that the children of this nation are strapped with a debt so deep they’ll never recover? The middle class is disappearing, Bill. Our borders are a joke. Our deficit exceeds the gross domestic product. The Federal Reserve is driving us into stagflation. It is only a matter of time before states begin to go belly up and the feds step in to save them as they did banks and the auto industry. The sovereignty of the states is a natural disaster or a fuel shortage away from disappearing. What is there not to see, Bill? Both political parties have failed us.”

  “You keep saying we, us and ours, Sir Spencer,” Davidson remarked. “You aren’t an American.”

  “You are right, Bill, I am not an American citizen. But I was born here, I own homes here. I am a citizen of the world. And the world needs a strong United States to lead it.” Sir Spencer stood and walked slowly over to Davidson as he talked. He was pointing his finger at him. “What do you politicians like to call it? The shining city on a hill? Something like that?”

  “I will hear you out, George,” Davidson offered, “but I am not complicit in this yet.”

  “I still want to know how we’re gonna get the explosives,” Ings said, easing the mounting tension in the room. The others laughed with the drunk before Sir Spencer answered his question.

  “I have enough,” he informed them, and the room quieted. “I have roughly twenty-eight kilograms of Semtex, which converts to about sixty pounds.”

  “Where did you get it?” Ings asked through a burp.

  “Let’s just say that the French are very generous.”

  Sir Spencer was tipping his hand to Davidson. It was known in intelligence circles that the French had long used a decommissioned facility to store Semtex. The storage house was a nineteenth-century fort at Corbas near Lyon. In July 2008, a thief had stolen sixty-one pounds of Semtex and packages of detonators. After the break-in, the French admitted they’d left the fort unguarded.

  Davidson’s eyes grew wide. He pointed at Sir Spencer. “You stole it from Lyon.”

  “The issue,” Edwards said, taking the floor, “is that we face a couple of obstacles. The first is access. How do we put the Semtex where it needs to be? Our plan is to use five pounds. It should be more than enough. But certainly, getting it into the right place is the primary concern.”

  Thistlewood, who had been quiet until that point, cut in. “Maybe not,” he said. “I think I can help get the Semtex into the right place.”

  “Really?” Sir Spencer turned to Thistlewood and slapped the professor on his knee. “How so?”

  “George, you say the explosive doesn’t have a smell?” Thistlewood asked. “I mean, we could hide it and security wouldn’t find it?”

  Edwards nodded.

  Thistlewood swallowed and cleared his throat. “I have a friend who may have access to President Foreman’s casket.”

  “If it were hidden in the lining of the casket, it would be undetected,” Edwards said, almost breathless with excitement. “The casket itself, whether wooden or metal, would be the shell of the bomb.”

  “Fantastic!” Sir Spencer was giddy. “Do you believe, Arthur, that you can rely on that friend to help you?”

  “I can make it work,” Thistlewood said confidently. “But I have a question.”

  “Go ahead.” Sir Spencer nodded.

  “Let’s assume we are successful,” Thistlewood said, leaning forward to look at each of the conspirators. “How do we change anything? The American people will hate us.”

  “Yes,” replied Sir Spencer, “but we’ll be in power. Everyone in the line of succession, save one or two, will be nearby when the bomb explodes. Whoever lives is the president.”

  “How does that help us?” Thistlewood said. “We’re just five men. None of us are in the line of succession.”

  “No.” Sir Spencer shook his head. “We are six.”

  “Six?” asked a suddenly re-engaged Ings. “Who’s the sixth?”

  “A friend who has asked that I withhold their identity,” Sir Spencer said coyly.

  “Even from us?” Davidson asked.

  “Especially from you,” Sir Spencer shot back. “The sixth member has been with us since the beginning, but needed to remain physically disconnected until the right time.”

  “And now is the right time?” Edwards asked.

  . “Now is exactly the right time,” Sir Spencer said smugly. He straightened his back and raised his chin slightly. “The sixth Daturan is the successor not there when the bombs explode.”

  PART TWO: THE PLOT

  “Our own Country’s Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world.”

  —George Washington, 1776

  Chapter 13

  On the top floor of the Wooster & Mercer lofts, in a modern 2500-square-foot Alexandria, Virginia, condominium, Felicia Jackson couldn’t sleep. She had underestimated Blackmon’s drive and acumen. He was an unexpected roadblock.

  A weary Felicia walked up the wrought-iron staircase to the second-floor catwalk/balcony which ran the length of the space directly above the kitchen. She stopped at the top of the steps to run her hand along the exposed brick in the corner.

  She turned to her left and leaned on the balcony railing, gazing through the picture window opposite her when her cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. It was her Chief of Staff.

  “Yes?” she answered.

  “I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

  The Speaker liked surrounding herself with ambitious backbiters who went beyond the pale to please her. She wanted young, energetic politicos who hoped to accumulate power and large Blackberry address books.

  Her employees were typical of the young Capitol staffing corps, but they were better at the game than most. They were intensely loyal. Felicia Jackson was their ticket and they knew it.

  “I’m fine.” She wasn’t. “I just wish I’d been more in control tonight. I was too emotional.”

  “You’re passionate about this,” he countered.

  Felicia paced at the railing along the balcony. “Tomorrow will be better. I’ll be less passionate, if that’s what it takes. Do you think we need to hit the morning shows? Should I make myself available?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. I’ve already arranged back-to-back interviews with a few of the morning shows.”

  “Network or cable?”

  “Both,” he replied. “We’re in a studio from five to nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  She was rethinking strategy. “Don’t we need to be in White House briefings? Shouldn’t we be available for court? Aren’t there a dozen other things I could be doing that are of more importance than spin and public perception?”

  “We’ll have a couple of staffers at the White House, and our attorneys will be in court. I think it would appear either presumptuous or desperate for you to be in the West Wing tomorrow, and showing up in court makes you seem defensive.”

  He made good points, she conceded.

  “The best thing you can do,” he continued, “is to talk to the people. You’re telegenic. You can handle the talking heads. I’m telling you, it will be great. It’ll give you a chance to…” He paused.

  “Appear presidential?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s Blackmon doing? Have a
ny of the shows booked him too?”

  “I’m getting a handle on that,” he said apprehensively. “Some of the bookers are evasive on that question.”

  “Find out!” she snapped back. “I don’t want to be unprepared.”

  “I got it,” he said. “I will have talking points for you before the first interview.”

  “What time?”

  “Be there at 4:45,” he advised. “That will give you enough time to get some coffee, go over the notes, and then be on the air. I’m told they’ll hit your interview at about five after. I will text you the location.”

  “I’ll do my makeup at home. If they need to fix it, they can.” She touched her hair subconsciously. “I’ll see you there.”

  She hung up and held the phone in her palm. She looked at the time displayed on the screen and figured she could sleep for forty-five minutes. That would be enough to recharge and refocus.

  The Speaker walked back down the steps, having forgotten why she’d gone upstairs. She plopped herself onto the sleek, uncomfortable sofa in the living room. It was contemporary, white, and not meant for relaxation. But in this case, with minutes to sleep, it was perfect.

  Felicia set the alarm on her phone, placed the device on the glass coffee table in front of the sofa, and leaned back. She was half sitting, half reclining when she closed her eyes. It felt good to rest.

  Chapter 14

  Jimmy Ings was standing at the bar of his small kitchen, sipping instant coffee from a Styrofoam cup. He looked over at Sir Spencer, who still sat on the sofa long after the others had left.

  Ings singed the tip of his tongue tasting the coffee and winced.

  “You could use a small piece of ice to chill the coffee,” suggested Sir Spencer. He could tell from the grimace on Ings’s face that the drink was too hot.