No Rules, Ridge King [the snowy day read aloud TXT] 📗

Kucherov nodded in the direction of a large motor yacht heading north, about four miles away.

“The other boats.”

He nodded toward the south, where a sailboat elegantly rode the swells, dipping gently into the troughs before rising again.

“What about them?”

“There were boats yesterday.”

“Yes, I saw. So what?”

“One of them had to be watching us.”

“You serious?”

“We left, they came in, took the money, left before the sun went down.”

“How could they get the exact position?” Derek wondered.

“I don’t know. You have any other explanation?”

“No,” said Derek.

“No one knew where the sub was except Flores and Duarte. No one.”

“Someone knew.”

“No,” Kucherov shook his head. “Only Flores and Duarte.”

“Well, it would be nice if we could ask them,” said Derek with a bitter edge to his voice. “But then, you had to be a hog and a showoff by shooting them both in the head, didn’t you, big guy?”

Kucherov’s first impulse was to reach out and slap Derek as he turned and moved away aft, but he nibbled his lower lip in deep concentration as he restrained himself.

Because Derek was right.

He had, as the Americans say, fucked up royally.

* * *

When Slanetti went into the Oval Office, Secretary of State Thomas Uptigrow was just leaving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff after briefing the President on the military standoff between the Russians and the Chinese in the Xinjiang desert. Eric Stathis was there, of course, as he was for most of the meetings Norwalk took.

“Ah, there you are, Phil,” said Norwalk. “You have the information on the foreign aid bill I wanted to see?”

“Right here, Mr. President,” said Slanetti, holding up a file folder.

“Shall I sit in, Mr. President?” asked Stathis.

“No, Eric. I’ll talk to Phil alone. He’ll report back to you later.”

Stathis nodded, gave Slanetti a short, hard look, and left the room. An aide closed the door behind him.

Norwalk motioned to a chair and Slanetti sat down.

“I have some bad news for you, Mr. President.”

Norwalk eyed him carefully before smiling a devious little smile.

“Enough to make me drink this early in the morning, Phil? Maybe I should have a glass of wine.”

“You might want the bottle,” said Slanetti, before telling him everything he knew about what had happened the previous night at Horizon.

“Oh,” said Norwalk softly, rubbing his chin and swiveling his chair around to look out of the windows behind his desk.

“That’s right. He took Thurston and Perryman into the library and told them he’d found a couple of files while snooping around my office when I was in a meeting with you.”

“How much does Eric know? How much could he know?” asked Norwalk, suddenly getting up and walking around the desk, putting his hands in his pockets. As a sign of respect, Slanetti rose from his chair.

“Not much, apparently. I know from what he told them which files he saw, and I was only with you for a few minutes that day, so he couldn’t know much.”

“This is bad.”

“If he hadn’t run into Perryman, we’d never have known.”

Norwalk rubbed his forehead.

“What can Thurston do?”

“I’m not sure, but I think we might stop him. You’ll remember I told you I expanded the files somewhat.  I have something on Thurston, but how potent it will prove remains to be seen.”

“We’ll use it if we have to. Do what you think’s best,” said Norwalk.

He wondered to himself as he walked over to the two couches facing each other by the fireplace and sat on one of them. On the coffee table between the couches was a bowl of fresh fruit. He reached out and picked up an orange.

“You know, I’ve been here for eight years and always wondered what happens to this fruit. Every day I come to work and that damned bowl of fruit is there. It never gets old, no one ever takes a piece of it, not a banana, not an orange, not an apple.”

Slanetti smiled.

“I guess they just replace it,” he said.

Norwalk pulled out a Swiss Army knife from his pocket, put down the orange and picked up an apple. He rubbed the apple on his sleeve and sliced a wedge out of it and put it in his mouth.

“Nice and crisp, just the way I like ’em,” he said.

Slanetti just stared at the man as he ate two more slender wedges. He looked up at Slanetti and on an impulse picked up an orange and tossed it to him.

“Take that with you, Phil. Oranges are good for you.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

“I guess the best thing to do is just keep on with it. If Eric didn’t mention this thing to me this morning, he won’t mention it at all, not while we’re in office.”

“That’s the way I read it, sir.”

“All right. I want a report from you on a daily basis from this point on, OK?”

“Yes, sir.”

As Norwalk sat there slowly slicing his apple up and eating it, he wondered just how extensive were the files in Keystone. He brooded about Stathis, his closest friend. He was deeply sorry he’d found out about the Keystone File. His relationship with Stathis went back many years and meant much to Norwalk. He imagined that Eric would keep quiet on the subject, knowing that he didn’t want him to know about it originally. He figured Eric would remain docile until Norwalk left office. But Norwalk knew his friend’s high moral opinion of himself. And he knew that whatever became of either of them after the new President was installed, he’d never be as close to Eric again, that Eric would avoid him as much as humanly possible when Norwalk went into retirement, that Keystone would plague them both and haunt their later