Absolute Power

Chapter Three

As Luther stared through the glass, the thought struck him that the two made a very attractive couple. It was an absurd opinion to have under the circumstances, but that didn’t make the conclusion any less valid. The man was tall, handsome, a very distinguished mid-forties. The woman could not have ventured far into her twenties; the hair was full and golden, the face oval and lovely, with a pair of enormous deep blue eyes that now looked up lovingly into the man’s elegant countenance. He touched her smooth cheek; she nestled her lips against his hand.

The man had two tumblers and filled them with the contents of the bottle he had brought with him. He handed the woman one. After a clink of glasses, their eyes firmly set on each other, he finished his drink in one swallow while she only managed a small sip of hers. Glasses put down, they embraced in the middle of the room. His hands slid down her backside and then back up to the bare shoulders. Her arms and shoulders were tanned and well-toned. He grasped her limbs admiringly as he leaned down to kiss her neck.

Luther averted his eyes, embarrassed to be viewing this very personal encounter. A strange emotion to have when he was still clearly in danger of being caught. But he was not so old that he could not appreciate the tenderness, the passion that was slowly unfolding in front of him.

As he raised his eyes up, he had to smile. The couple was now engaged in a slow dance around the room. The man was obviously well-practiced at the endeavor; his partner was less so, but he gently led her through the simple paces until they again ended up beside the bed.

The man paused to fill his glass again and then quickly drained it. The bottle was now empty. As his arms encircled her once more, she leaned into him, pulled at his coat, started to undo his tie. The man’s hands drifted to the zipper of her dress and slowly headed south. The black dress slid down and she slowly stepped out of it, revealing black panties and thigh-high stockings, but no bra.

She had the sort of body that made other women who didn’t instantly jealous. Every curve was where it was supposed to be. Her waist Luther could have encircled with both hands touching. As she turned to the side to slide out of her stockings, Luther observed that the breasts were large, round and full. The legs were lean and defined, probably from hours of daily exercise under the watchful eyes of a personal trainer.

The man quickly undressed down to his boxers and sat on the side of the bed watching the woman as she took her time slipping out of her underwear. Her rear end was round and firm and creamy white against the backdrop of a flawless tan. With her last piece of clothing shed, a smile cut across the man’s face. The white teeth were straight and thick. Despite the alcohol, his eyes seemed clear and focused.

She smiled at his attention and slowly advanced. As she drew within his reach, his long arms gripped her, pulled her to him. She rubbed up and down against his chest.

Again, Luther began to avert his eyes, wishing more than anything else that this spectacle would soon be over and that these people would leave. It would only take him a few minutes to return to his car, and this night would be filed away in his memory as a unique, if potentially disastrous, experience.

That’s when he saw the man grip the woman’s buttocks hard and then slap them, again and again. Luther winced in vicarious pain at the repeated blows; the white skin now glowed red. But either the woman was too drunk to feel the pain or she enjoyed this sort of treatment, because her smile didn’t fade. Luther felt his gut clinch again as the man’s fingers dug into the soft flesh.

The man’s mouth danced across her chest; she ran her finger through his thick hair as she positioned her body inside his legs. She closed her eyes, her mouth gathered into a contented smile; she arched her head back. Then she opened her eyes and attacked his mouth with hers.

His strong fingers moved up from the abused buttocks and started to gently massage her back. Then he dug in hard until she winced and pulled back from him. She half-smiled and he stopped as she touched his fingers with hers. He turned his attention back to her breasts and suckled them. Her eyes closed once again, as her breathing turned perceptibly to a low moan. The man moved his attention again to her neck. His eyes were wide open, looking across at where Luther sat but with no idea of his presence.

Luther stared at the man, at those eyes, and didn’t like what he saw. Pools of darkness surrounded by red, like some sinister planet seen through a telescope. The thought struck him that the naked woman was in the grip of something not so gentle, not so loving as she probably anticipated.

The woman finally grew impatient and pushed her lover down on the bed. Her legs straddled the man, giving Luther a view from behind that should have been reserved for her gynecologist and husband. She hoisted herself up, but then with a sudden burst of energy he roughly pushed her aside and went on top of her, grabbing her legs and lifting them up until they were perpendicular with the bed.

Luther stiffened in his chair at the man’s next movement. He grabbed her by the neck and jerked her up, pulling her head between his legs. The suddenness of the act made her gasp, her mouth a bare inch from him there. Then he laughed and threw her back down. Dazed for a moment, she finally managed a weak smile and sat up on her elbows as he towered over her. He grabbed his erection with one hand, spreading her wide with the other. As she lay placidly back to accept him, he stared wildly at her.

But instead of plunging between her legs, he grabbed her breasts and squeezed, apparently a little too hard, because, finally, Luther heard a yelp of pain and the woman abruptly slapped the man. He let go and then slapped her back, viciously, and Luther saw a patch of blood emerge at the corner of her mouth and spill onto the thick, lipstick-coated lips.

“You fucking bastard.” She rolled off the bed and sat on the floor rubbing her mouth, tasting her blood, her drunken brain momentarily lucid. The first words Luther had clearly heard spoken the entire night hit his brain like a sledgehammer. He stood up, inched toward the glass.

The man grinned. Luther froze when he saw it. It was more like the snarl of a wild animal close to a kill than a human being.

“Fucking bastard,” she said again, a little more quietly, the words slurred. As she stood up he grabbed her arm, twisted it, and she fell hard to the floor. The man sat on the bed and looked down triumphantly.

His breathing accelerating, Luther stood before the glass, his hands clenching and unclenching as he continued to watch and hoped that the other people would come back. He eyed the remote on the chair and then his eyes shot back to the bedroom.

The woman had raised herself half off the floor, the wind slowly coming back to her. The romantic feelings she had been experiencing had vanished. Luther could see that in her body movements, wary and deliberate. Her companion apparently failed to notice the change in her movements and the flash of anger in the blue eyes, or else he would not have stood up and put out a hand for her to take, which she did.

The man’s smile abruptly vanished as her knee caught him squarely between the legs, doubling him over and ending any arousal he had been experiencing. As he crumpled to the floor, no sound came from his lips, except for his labored breathing while she grabbed her panties and started to put them on.

He caught her ankle, threw her to the floor, her underwear halfway up her legs.

“You little cunt.” The words came out in short gasps as he tried to get his breath back, all the time holding on to that ankle, drawing her closer to him.

She kicked at him, again and again. Her feet thudded against his rib cage, but still he hung on. “You fucking little whore,” he said.

At the menace he heard in those words, Luther stepped toward the glass, one of his hands flying to its smooth surface as if to reach through it, to grab the man, make him let go.

The man painfully dragged himself up and his look made Luther’s flesh turn cold.

The man’s hands gripped the woman’s throat.

Her brain, clouded by the alcohol, snapped back to high gear. Her eyes, now completely filled with fear, darted to the left and right as the pressure on her neck increased and her breath started to weaken. Her fingers clawed at his arms, scratching deeply.

Luther saw the blood rise to the man’s skin where she attacked him but his grip did not loosen.

She kicked and jerked her body, but he was almost twice her weight; her attacker didn’t budge.

Luther again looked at the remote. He could open the door. He could stop this. But his legs would not move. He stared helplessly through the glass, sweat poured from his forehead, every pore in his body seemed to be erupting; his breath came in short bursts as his chest heaved. He placed both hands against the glass.

Luther’s breath stopped as the woman fixed on the nightstand for an instant. Then, with a frantic motion, she grabbed the letter opener, and with one blinding stroke she slashed the man’s arm.

He grunted in pain, let go and grabbed his bloody arm. For one terrible instant he looked down at his wound, almost in disbelief that he had been damaged like that. Pierced by this woman.

When the man looked back up, Luther could almost feel the murderous snarl before it escaped from the man’s lips.

And then the man hit her, harder than Luther had seen any man hit a woman. The hard fist connected with the soft flesh and blood flew from her nose and mouth.

Whether it was all the booze she had consumed or what, Luther didn’t know, but the blow that ordinarily would have crippled a person merely incensed her. With convulsive strength she managed to stagger up. As she turned toward the mirror, Luther watched the horror in her face as she suddenly viewed the abrupt destruction of her beauty. Eyes widening in disbelief, she touched the swollen nose; one finger dropped down and probed the loosened teeth. She had become a smeared portrait, her major attribute had vanished.

She turned around to face the man, and Luther saw the muscles in her back tense so hard they looked like small pieces of wood. With lightning quickness, she again slammed her foot into the man’s groin. Instantly the man was weak again, his limbs useless as nausea overcame him. He collapsed to the floor, rolled over onto his back, moaning. His knees curled upward, his hand protectively at his crotch.

With blood streaming down her face, with eyes that had gone from stark horror to homicidal in an instant, the woman dropped to her knees beside him and raised the letter opener high above her head.

Luther grabbed the remote, took a step toward the door, his finger almost on the button.

The man, seeing his life about to end as the letter opener plunged toward his chest, screamed with every bit of strength he had left. The call did not go unheeded.

His body frozen in place, Luther’s eyes darted to the bedroom door as it flew open.

Two men, hair cropped short, crisp business suits not concealing impressive physiques, burst into the room, guns drawn. Before Luther could take another step they had assessed the situation and made their decision.

Both guns fired almost simultaneously.

Kate Whitney sat in her office going over the file one more time.

The guy had four priors, and had been arrested but ultimately not charged on six other occasions because witnesses had been too frightened to talk or had ended up in trash Dumpsters. He was a walking time bomb ready to explode on another victim, all of whom had been women.

The current charge was murder during the commission of robbery and rape, which met the criteria for capital murder under Virginia’s laws. And this time she decided to go for the home run: death. She had never asked for it before, but if anybody deserved it, this guy did, and the commonwealth was not squeamish about authorizing it. Why allow him life when he had cruelly and savagely ended the one given to a nineteen-year-old college student who made the mistake of going to a shopping mall in broad daylight to pick up some nylons and a new pair of shoes?

Kate rubbed her eyes and, using a rubber band from the pile on her desk, pulled her hair back into a rough ponytail. She looked around her small, plain office; the case files were piled high around the room and for the millionth time she wondered if it would ever stop. Of course it wouldn’t. If anything it would get worse, and she could only do what she could do to stem the flow of blood. She would start with the execution of Roger Simmons, Jr., twenty-two years old, and as hardened a criminal as she had ever confronted, and she had already faced an army of them in her as yet short career. She remembered the look he had given her that day in court. It was a countenance totally without remorse or caring or any other positive emotion. It was also a face without hope, an observation substantiated by his background history, which read like a horror story of a childhood. But that was not her problem. It seemed like the only one that wasn’t.

She shook her head and checked her watch: well after midnight. She went to pour some more coffee; her focus was starting to wander. The last staff attorney had left five hours ago. The cleaning crew had been gone for three. She moved down the hallway in her stocking feet to the kitchen. If Charlie Manson were out and doing his thing now, he’d be one of her milder cases; an amateur compared to the monsters roaming loose today.

Cup of coffee in hand, she walked back into her office and paused for a moment to look at her reflection in the window. With her job looks were really unimportant; hell, she hadn’t been on a date in over a year. But she couldn’t pull her eyes away. She was tall and slender, perhaps too skinny in certain areas, but her routine of running four miles every day had not changed while her caloric intake had steadily dwindled. Mostly she subsisted on bad coffee and crackers, although she limited herself to two cigarettes a day and was hoping with luck to quit altogether.

She felt guilty about the abuse her body was taking with the endless hours and stress of moving from one horrific case to another, but what was she supposed to do? Quit because she didn’t look like the women on the cover of Cosmopolitan? She consoled herself with the fact that their job twenty-four hours a day was to make themselves look good. Hers was to ensure that people who broke the law, who hurt others, were punished. Under any criteria she reasoned she was doing far more productive things with her life.

She swiped at her own mane; it needed to be cut, but where was the time to do that? The face was still relatively unmarked by the burden she found increasingly difficult to carry. Her twenty-nine-year-old face, after four years of nineteen-hour days and countless trials, had held its own. She sighed as she realized that probably would not last. In college she had been the gracious recipient of turned heads, the cause of raised heartbeats and cold sweats. But as she got ready to enter her thirties, she realized that what she had taken for granted for so many years, that what she had, in fact, derided on so many occasions, would not be with her that much longer. And like so many things you took for granted or dismissed as unimportant, being able to quiet a room by your mere entrance was one she knew she was going to miss.

That her looks had remained strong over the last few years was remarkable considering she had done relatively little to preserve them. Good genes, that must be it; she was fortunate. But then she thought of her father and decided that she wasn’t very lucky at all in the genes department. A man who stole from others and then pretended to live a normal life. A man who deceived everyone, including his wife and daughter. A man you could not depend on to be there.

She sat at her desk, took a quick sip of the hot coffee, poured in more sugar and looked at Mr. Simmons while she stirred the black depths of her nighttime stimulus.

She picked up the phone, called home to check messages. There were five, two from other lawyers, one from the policeman she would put on the stand against Mr. Simmons and one from a staff investigator who liked to call her at odd hours with mostly useless information. She should change her telephone number. The last message was a hang-up. But she could hear very low breathing on the end, she could almost make out a word or two. Something in the sound was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. People with nothing better to do.

The coffee flowed through her veins, the file came back into focus. She glanced up at her little bookshelf. On top was an old photo of her deceased mother and ten-year-old Kate. Cut out from the picture was Luther Whitney. A big gap next to mother and daughter. A big nothing.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” The President of the United States sat up, one hand covering his limp and damaged privates, the other holding the letter opener that a moment before was to have been the instrument of his death. It had more than just his blood on it now. “Jesus Fucking Christ, Bill, you fucking killed her!” The target of his barrage stooped to help him up while his companion checked the woman’s condition: a perfunctory examination, considering two heavy-caliber bullets had blown through her brain.

“I’m sorry, sir, there wasn’t time. I’m sorry, sir.”

Bill Burton had been a Secret Service agent for twelve years, and a Maryland state trooper for eight years before that, and one of his rounds had just blown apart a beautiful young woman’s head. Despite all his intense training, he was shaking like a preschooler just awakened from a nightmare.

He had killed before in the line of duty: a routine traffic stop gone wrong. But the deceased had been a four-time loser with a serious vendetta against uniformed officers and wielding a Glock semiautomatic pistol in a sincere attempt to lift Burton’s head from his shoulders.

He looked down at the small, naked body and thought he would be sick. His partner, Tim Collin, looked across at him, grabbed his arm. Burton swallowed hard and nodded his head. He would make it.

They carefully helped up Alan J. Richmond, President of the United States, a political hero and leader to young, middle-aged and old alike, but now simply naked and drunk. The President looked up at them, the initial horror finally passing as the alcohol worked its effects. “She’s dead?” The words were a little slurred; the eyes seemed to roll back in the head like loose marbles.

“Yes, sir.” Collin answered crisply. You didn’t let a question from the President go unanswered, drunk or not.

Burton hung back now. He glanced at the woman again and then looked back at the President. That was their job, his job. Protect the goddamned President. Whatever it took, that life must not end, not like that. Not stuck like a pig by some drunken bitch.

The President’s mouth curled up into what looked like a smile, although neither Collin nor Burton would remember it that way later. The President started to rise.

“Where are my clothes?” he demanded.

“Right here, sir.” Burton, snapping back to attention, stooped to pick up the clothes. They were heavily spotted — everything in the room seemed to be — with her.

“Well, get me up, and get me ready, goddammit. I’ve got a speech to give for somebody, somewhere, don’t I?” He laughed shrilly. Burton looked at Collin and Collin looked at Burton. They both watched as the President passed out on the bed.

At the sound of the explosions, Chief of Staff Gloria Russell had been in the bathroom on the first floor, as far away from that room as she could get.

She had accompanied the President on many of these assignations, but rather than growing used to them, they disgusted her more each time. To imagine her boss, the most powerful man on the face of the earth, bedding all these celebrity whores, these political groupies. It was beyond comprehension, and yet she had almost learned to ignore it. Almost.

She had pulled her pantyhose back up, grabbed her purse, flung open the door, run down the hallway and even in heels took the steps two at a time. When she reached the bedroom door Agent Burton stopped her.

“Ma’am, you don’t want to see this, it’s not pretty.”

She pushed past him and then stopped. Her first thought was to run back out, down the stairs, into the limo, out of there, out of the state, out of the miserable country. She wasn’t sorry for Christy Sullivan, who’d wanted to get screwed by the President. That had been her goal for the last two years. Well, sometimes you don’t get what you want; sometimes you get a lot more.

Russell steadied herself and faced off with Agent Collin.

“What the hell happened?”

Tim Collin was young, tough and devoted to the man he was assigned to protect. He was trained to die defending the President, and there was no question in his mind that if the time came he would. Several years had passed since he had tackled an assailant in the parking lot of a shopping center where then presidential candidate Alan Richmond had been making an appearance. Collin had had the potential assassin down on the asphalt and completely immobile before the guy had even gotten his gun fully out of his pocket, before anyone else had even reacted. To Collin, his only mission in life was to protect Alan Richmond.

It took Agent Collin one minute to report the facts to Russell in succinct, cohesive sentences. Burton solemnly confirmed the account.

“It was either him or her, Ms. Russell. There was no other way to cut it.” Burton instinctively glanced at the President, who still lay on the bed oblivious to anything. They had covered the more strategic portion of his body with a sheet.

“Do you mean to tell me you heard nothing? No sounds of violence before, before this?” She waved at the mess of the room.

The agents looked at each other. They had heard many sounds emanating from bedrooms where their boss happened to be. Some might be construed as violent, some not. But everybody had always come out okay before.

“Nothing unusual,” Burton replied. “Then we heard the President scream and we went in. That knife was maybe three inches from going into his chest. Only thing fast enough was a bullet.”

He stood as erect as he could and looked her right in the eye. He and Collin had done their job, and this woman wasn’t going to tell them otherwise. No blame would be put on his shoulders.

“There was a goddamned knife in the room?” She looked at Burton incredulously.

“If it was up to me, the President wouldn’t go out on these, these little excursions. Half the time he won’t let us check anything out beforehand. We didn’t get a chance to scope the room.” He looked at her. “He’s the President, ma’am,” he added, for good measure, as if that justified everything. And for Russell it usually did, a fact Burton was well aware of.

Russell looked around the room, taking in everything. She had been a tenured professor of political science at Stanford with a national reputation before answering the call in Alan Richmond’s quest for the presidency. He was such a powerful force, everybody wanted to jump on his bandwagon.

Currently Chief of Staff, with serious talk of becoming Secretary of State if Richmond won reelection, which everyone expected him to do with ease. Who knew? Maybe a Richmond-Russell ticket might be in the making. They made a brilliant combination. She was the strategist, he was the consummate campaigner. Their future grew brighter every day. But now? Now she had a corpse and a drunken President inside a home that was supposed to be vacant.

She felt the express train coming to a halt. Then her mind snapped back. Not over this little piece of human garbage. Not ever!

Burton stirred. “You want me to call the police now, ma’am?”

Russell looked at him like he had lost his mind. “Burton, let me remind you that our job is to protect the President’s interests at all times and nothing — absolutely nothing — takes precedence over that. Is that clear?”

“Ma’am, the lady’s dead. I think we—”

“That’s right. You and Collin shot the woman, and she’s dead.” After exploding from Russell’s mouth, the words hung in the air. Collin rubbed his fingers together; a hand went instinctively to his holstered weapon. He stared at the late Mrs. Sullivan as if he could will her back to life.

Burton flexed his burly shoulders, moved an inch closer to Russell so that the significant height difference was at its maximum.

“If we hadn’t fired, the President would be dead. That’s our job. To keep the President safe and sound.”

“Right again, Burton. And now that you have prevented his death, how do you intend to explain to the police and the President’s wife and your superiors, and the lawyers and the media and the Congress and the financial markets and the country and the rest of the goddamned world, why the President was here? What he was doing while he was here? And the circumstances that led up to you and Agent Collin having to shoot the wife of one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the United States? Because if you call the police, if you call anybody, that is exactly what you will have to do. Now if you are prepared to accept full responsibility for that undertaking, then pick up that phone over there and make that call.”

Burton’s face changed color. He backed up a step, his superior size useless to him now. Collin was frozen, watching the two square off. He had never seen anyone talk that way to Bill Burton. The big man could have snapped Russell’s neck with a lazy thrust of his arm.

Burton looked down at the corpse one more time. How could you explain that so that everybody came out all right? The answer was simple: you couldn’t.

Russell watched his face carefully. Burton looked back at her. His eyes twitched perceptibly; they would not meet hers now. She had won. She smiled benignly and nodded. The show was hers to run.

“Go make some coffee, a whole pot,” she ordered Burton, momentarily relishing this switching of roles. “And then stay by the front door just in case we get any late-night visitors.

“Collin, go to the van, and talk to Johnson and Varney. Don’t tell them anything about this. For now just tell them there was an accident, but that the President’s okay. That’s all. And that they’re to stay put. Understood? I’ll call when I want you. I need to think this out.”

Burton and Collin nodded and headed out. Neither had been trained to ignore orders so authoritatively given. And Burton didn’t want to be calling the shots on this one. They couldn’t pay him enough to do that.

Luther hadn’t moved since the shots had blown apart the woman’s head. He was afraid to. His feelings of shock had finally passed, but he found his eyes continually wandering to the floor and to what had once been a living, breathing human being. In all his years as a criminal he had only seen one other person killed. A thrice-convicted pedophile whose spinal cord had collided with a four-inch shiv wielded by an unsympathetic fellow inmate. The emotions sweeping over him now were totally different, as though he were the sole passenger on a ship that had sailed into a foreign harbor. Nothing looked or seemed familiar at all. Any sound now would do him no good, but he slowly sat back down before his trembling legs gave way.

He watched as Russell moved around the room, stooped next to the dead woman, but did not touch her. Next she picked up the letter opener, holding it by the end of the blade with a handkerchief she pulled from her pocket. She stared long and hard at the object that had almost ended her boss’s life and had played a major role in ending someone else’s. She carefully put the letter opener in her leather purse, which she had placed on the nightstand, and put the handkerchief back in her pocket. She glanced briefly at the contorted flesh that had recently been Christine Sullivan.

She had to admire the way Richmond accomplished his extracurricular activities. All his “companions” were women of wealth and social position, and all were married. This ensured that no exposé of his adulterous behavior would appear in any of the tabloids. The women he bedded had as much to lose if not more as he, and they understood that fact very well.

And the press. Russell smiled. In this day and age the President lived under a never-ending barrage of scrutiny. He couldn’t pee, smoke a cigar or belch without the public knowing all of the most intimate details. Or so the public thought. And that was based largely on the overestimation of the press and their abilities to nudge out every morsel of a story from its hiding place. What they failed to understand was that while the office of the President might have lost some of its enormous power over the years as the problems of a troubled globe soared beyond the ability of any one person to confront them on an equal basis, the President was surrounded by absolutely loyal and supremely capable people. People whose skill level at covert activities were in another league from the polished, cookie-cutter journalists whose idea of trailing down a tough story was asking puffball questions of a congressman who was more than willing to talk for the benefit of the evening news coverage. It was a fact that, if he so desired, President Alan Richmond could move about without fear that anyone would be successful in tracking his whereabouts. He could even disappear from public view for as long as he wished, although that was the antithesis of what a successful politician hoped to accomplish in a day’s work. And that privilege boiled down to one common denominator.

The Secret Service. They were the best of the best. This elite group had proved it time and again over the years, as they had in planning this most recent activity.

A little after noon, Christy Sullivan had walked out of her beauty salon in Upper Northwest. After walking one block she had stepped into the foyer of an apartment building and thirty seconds later she had walked out encased in a full length hooded cloak pulled from her bag. Sunglasses covered her eyes. She had walked for several blocks, randomly window-shopping, then taken a red-line Metro train to Metro Center. Exiting the Metro she had walked two more blocks and entered an alley between two buildings scheduled for demolition. Two minutes later, a car with tinted windows had emerged from the alley. Collin had been driving. Christy Sullivan was in the back seat. She had been sequestered in a safe place with Bill Burton until the President had been able to join her later that night.

The Sullivan estate had been chosen as the perfect spot for the planned interlude because, ironically, her home in the country was the last place anyone would expect Christy Sullivan to be. And Russell knew it would also be perfectly empty, guarded by a security system that was no barrier to their plans.

Russell sat down in a chair and closed her eyes. Yes, she had two of the most capable members of the Secret Service in this house with her. And, for the first time, that fact troubled the Chief of Staff. The four agents with her and the President tonight had been handpicked, out of the approximately one hundred agents assigned to the presidential detail, by the President himself for these little activities. They were all loyal and highly skilled. They took care of the President and held their tongues, regardless of what was asked of them. Up until tonight President Richmond’s fascination with married women had spawned no overwhelming dilemmas. But tonight’s events clearly threatened all of that. Russell shook her head as she forced herself to think of a plan of action.

Luther studied the face. It was intelligent, attractive but also a very hard face. You could almost see the mental maneuvering as the forehead alternately wrinkled and then went lax. Time slipped by and she didn’t budge. Then Gloria Russell’s eyes opened and moved across the room, not missing any detail.

Luther involuntarily shrank back as her gaze swept by him like a searchlight across a prison yard. Then her eyes came to the bed and stopped. For a long minute she stared at the sleeping man, and then she got a look on her face that Luther could not figure out. It was halfway between a smile and a grimace.

She got up, moved to the bed and looked down at the man. A Man of the People, or so the people thought. A Man for the Ages. He did not look so great right now. His body was half on the bed, legs spread, feet nearly touching the floor; an awkward position to say the least when one was wearing no clothes.

She ran her eyes up and down the President’s body, lingering on some points, an activity that was amazing to Luther considering what was lying on the floor. Before Gloria Russell had entered the room and faced off with Burton, Luther had expected to hear sirens and to be sitting there watching policemen and detectives, medical examiners and even spin doctors swarming everywhere; with news trucks piling up in vast columns outside. Obviously, this woman had a different plan.

Luther had seen Gloria Russell on CNN and the major networks, and countless times in the papers. Her features were distinctive. A long, aquiline nose set between high cheek-bones, the gift from a Cherokee ancestor. The hair was raven black and hung straight, stopping at her shoulders. The eyes were big and so dark a blue that they resembled the deepest of ocean water, twin pools of danger for the careless and unwary.

Luther carefully maneuvered in the chair. Watching the woman in front of a stately fireplace inside the White House pontificating on the latest political concerns was one thing. Watching her move through a room containing a corpse and examining a drunk, naked man who was the leader of the Free World was an entirely different matter. It was a spectacle Luther did not want to watch anymore but he could not pull his eyes away.

Russell glanced at the door, walked quickly across the room, took out her handkerchief, and closed and locked it. She swiftly returned to again stare down at the President. Her hand went out and for a moment Luther cringed in anticipation, but she simply stroked the President’s face. Luther relaxed, but then stiffened again as her hand moved down to his chest, lingering momentarily on the thick hair, and then dropped still lower to his flat stomach, which rose and fell evenly in his deep sleep.

Then her hand moved lower and she slowly pulled the sheet away and let it drop to the floor. Her hand reached down to his crotch and held there. Then she glanced at the door again and knelt down in front of the President. Now Luther had to close his eyes. He did not share the peculiar spectator interests of the house’s owner.

Several long minutes passed, and then Luther opened his eyes. Gloria Russell was now shedding her pantyhose, laying them neatly on a chair. Then she carefully climbed on top of the slumbering President.

Luther closed his eyes again. He wondered if they could hear the bed squeak downstairs. Probably not, as it was a very large house. And even if they did, what could they do?

Ten minutes later Luther heard a small, involuntary gasp from the man, and a low moan from the woman. But Luther kept his eyes closed. He wasn’t sure why. It seemed to be from a combination of raw fear and disgust at the disrespect shown to the dead woman.

When Luther finally opened his eyes, Russell was staring directly at him. His heart stopped for a moment until his brain told him it was okay. She quickly slipped on her pantyhose. Then, in confident, even strokes, she reapplied her lipstick in the looking glass.

A smile clung to her face; the cheeks were flushed. She looked younger. Luther glanced at the President. He had returned to a deep sleep, the last twenty minutes probably filed away by his mind as an especially realistic and pleasant dream. Luther looked back at Russell.

It was unnerving to see this woman smile directly at him, in this room of death, without knowing he was there. There was power in that woman’s face. And a look Luther had already seen once in this room. This woman, too, was dangerous.

“I want this entire place sanitized, except for that.” Russell pointed to the late Mrs. Sullivan. “Wait a minute. He was probably all over her. Burton, I want you to check every inch of her body, and anything that looks remotely like it doesn’t belong there I want you to make disappear. Then put her clothes on.”

Hands gloved, Burton moved forward to carry out this order.

Collin sat next to the President, forcing another cup of coffee down the man’s throat. The caffeine would help clear away the grogginess, but only the passage of time would clean the slate completely. Russell sat down next to him. She took the President’s hand in hers. He was fully clothed now although his hair was in disarray. His arm hurt, but they had bandaged it as best they could. He was in excellent health; it would heal quickly.

“Mr. President? Alan? Alan?” Russell gripped his face and pointed it toward her.

Had he sensed what she had done to him? She doubted it. He had so desperately wanted to get laid tonight. Wanted to be inside a woman. She had given him her body, no questions asked. Technically she had committed rape. Realistically she was confident she had fulfilled many a male’s dream. It didn’t matter if he had no recollection of the event, of her sacrifice. But he would damn sure know what she was going to do for him now.

The President’s eyes came in and out of focus. Collin rubbed his neck. He was coming around. Russell glanced at her watch. Two o’clock in the morning. They had to get back. She slapped his face, not hard, but enough to get his attention. She felt Collin stiffen. God these guys had tunnel vision.

“Alan, did you have sex with her?”

“Wha...”

“Did you have sex with her?”

“Wha... No. Don’t think so. Don’t remem...”

“Give him some more coffee, pour it down his damned throat if you have to, but get him sober.” Collin nodded and went to work. Russell walked over to Burton, whose gloved hands were dexterously examining every inch of the late Mrs. Sullivan.

Burton had been involved in numerous police investigations. He knew exactly what detectives looked for and where they looked for it. He never imagined himself using that specialized knowledge to inhibit an investigation, but then he had never imagined anything like this ever happening either.

He looked around the room, his mind calculating which areas would need to be gone over, what other rooms they had used. They could do nothing about the marks on the woman’s throat and other microscopic physical evidence that was no doubt imbedded in her skin. The medical examiner would pick those up regardless of what they tried to do. However, none of those things could be realistically traced to the President unless the police identified the President as a suspect, which was pretty much beyond the realm of possibility.

The incongruity of attempted strangulation of a small woman with death caused by gunshot was something they would have to leave to the police’s imagination.

Burton turned his attention back to the deceased and started to carefully slide her underwear up her legs. He felt a tap on his shoulder.

“Check her.”

Burton looked up. He started to say something.

“Check her!” Russell’s eyebrows were arched. Burton had seen her do that a million times with the White House staff. They were all terrified of her. He wasn’t afraid of her, but he was smart enough to cover his ass whenever she was around. He slowly did as he was told. Then he positioned the body exactly as it had fallen. He reported back with a single shake of his head.

“Are you sure?” Russell looked unconvinced, although she knew from her interlude with the President that chances were he had not entered the woman, or that if he had he hadn’t finished. But there might be traces. It was scary as hell, the things they could determine these days from the tiniest specimens.

“I’m not a goddamned ob-gyn. I didn’t see anything and I think I would have, but I don’t carry a microscope around with me.”

Russell would have to let that one go. There was still a lot to do and not much time.

“Did Johnson and Varney say anything?”

Collin looked over from where the President was ingesting his fourth cup of coffee. “They’re wondering what the hell’s going on, if that’s what you mean.”

“You didn’t te—”

“I told them what you said to tell them and that’s all, ma’am.” He looked at her. “They’re good men, Ms. Russell. They’ve been with the President since the campaign. They’re not going to do anything to mess things up, okay?”

Russell rewarded Collin with a smile. A good-looking kid and, more important, a loyal member of the President’s personal guard; he would he very useful to her. Burton might be a problem. But she had a strong trump card: he and Collin had pulled the trigger, maybe in the line of duty, but who really knew? Bottom line: they too were in this all the way.

Luther watched the activity with an appreciation that he felt guilty about under the circumstances. These men were good: methodical, careful, thought things through, and didn’t miss anything. Dedicated lawmen and professional criminals were not so different. The skills, the techniques were much the same, just the focus was different, but then the focus made all the difference, didn’t it?

The woman was now completely dressed, lying exactly where she had fallen. Collin was finishing with her fingernails. A solution had been injected under each, and a small suction device had cleaned away traces of skin and other incriminating remnants.

The bed had been stripped and remade; the evidence-laden sheets were already packed in a duffel bag for their ultimate destination in a furnace. Collin had already scoped the downstairs area.

Everything any of them had touched, except for one item, had been wiped clean. Burton was now vacuuming parts of the carpet and he would be the last one to leave, backing out, as he painstakingly extinguished their trail.

Earlier Luther had watched the agents ransack the room. Their obvious goal made him smile in spite of himself. Burglary. The necklace had been deposited in a bag along with her plethora of rings. They would make it appear as if the woman had surprised a burglar in her house and he had killed her, not knowing that six feet away a real-life burglar was watching and listening to everything they were doing.

An eyewitness!

Luther had never been an eyewitness to a burglary other than those he had committed. Criminals hated eyewitnesses. These people would kill Luther if they knew he was there; there was no question about that. An elderly criminal, a three-time loser, was not much to sacrifice for the Man of the People.

The President, still groggy but with Burton’s aid, slowly made his way out of the room. Russell watched them go. She did not notice Collin frantically searching the room. Finally, his sharp eyes fixed on Russell’s purse on the nightstand. Poking out from the bag was about an inch of the letter opener’s handle. Using a plastic bag, Collin quickly pulled out the letter opener and prepared to wipe it off. Luther involuntarily jerked as he watched Russell race over and grab Collin’s hand.

“Don’t do that, Collin.”

Collin wasn’t as sharp as Burton, and certainly wasn’t in Russell’s league. He looked puzzled.

“This has his prints all over it, ma’am. Hers too, plus some other stuff if you know what I mean — it’s leather, it’s soaked right in.”

“Agent Collin, I was retained by the President as his strategic and tactical planner. What appears to you an obvious choice appears to me to require much more thought and deliberation. Until that analysis has been completed you will not wipe that object down. You will put it in a proper container, and then you will give it to me.”

Collin started to protest but Russell’s menacing stare cut him off. He dutifully bagged the letter opener and handed it to her.

“Please be careful with that, Ms. Russell.”

“Tim, I am always careful.”

She rewarded him with another smile. He smiled back. She had never called him by his first name before; he had been unsure if she even knew it. He also observed, and not for the first time, that the Chief of Staff was a very good-looking woman.

“Yes, ma’am.” He began to pack up the equipment.

“Tim?”

He looked back at her. She moved toward him, looked down, and then her eyes caught his. She spoke in low tones; she almost seemed embarrassed, Collin felt.

“Tim, this is a very unique situation we’re faced with. I need to feel my way a little bit. Do you understand?”

Collin nodded. “I’d call this a unique situation. Scared the hell out of me when I saw that blade about to go into the President’s chest.”

She touched his arm. Her fingernails were long and perfectly manicured. She held up the letter opener. “We need to keep this between us, Tim. Okay? Not the President. Not even Burton.”

“I don’t know—”

She gripped his hand. “Tim, I really need your support on this. The President has no idea what happened and I don’t think Burton is looking at this too rationally right now. I need someone I can depend on. I need you, Tim. This is too important. You know that, don’t you? I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t think you could handle it.”

He smiled at the compliment, then looked squarely at her.

“Okay, Ms. Russell. Whatever you say.”

As Collin finished packing up, Russell looked at the bloody seven-inch piece of metal that had come so close to ending her political aspirations. If the President had been killed, there could have been no cover-up. An ugly word — cover-up — but often necessary in the world of high politics. She shivered slightly at the thought of the headlines. “PRESIDENT FOUND DEAD IN BEDROOM OF CLOSE FRIEND’S HOME. WIFE ARRESTED IN SLAYING. CHIEF OF STAFF GLORIA RUSSELL HELD RESPONSIBLE BY PARTY LEADERS.” But that had not happened. Would not happen.

This thing she held in her hand was worth more than a mountain of weapons-grade plutonium, more than the total oil production of Saudi Arabia.

With this in her possession, who knew? Perhaps even a Russell-Richmond ticket? The possibilities were absolutely infinite.

She smiled and put the plastic bag inside her purse.

The scream made Luther whip his head around. The pain shot through his neck and he almost cried out.

The President ran into the bedroom. He was wide-eyed, but still half-drunk. The memory of the last few hours had come back like a Boeing 747 landing on his head.

Burton ran up behind him. The President started toward the body; Russell dropped her purse on the nightstand, and she and Collin met him halfway.

“Goddammit! She’s dead. I killed her. Oh sweet Jesus help me. I killed her!” He screamed and then cried and then screamed again. He tried to push through the wall in front of him but was still too weak. Burton pulled at the President from behind.

Then with convulsive strength, Richmond tore loose and launched himself across the room and slammed into the wall, rolling into the nightstand. And finally the President of the United States crumpled to the floor and curled up like a fetus, whimpering, next to the woman he had intended to have sex with that night.

Luther watched in disgust. He rubbed at his neck and slowly shook his head. The incredibility of the entire night’s events was becoming too much to endure.

The President slowly sat up. Burton looked like Luther felt, but said nothing. Collin eyed Russell for instructions. Russell caught the look and smugly accepted this subtle changing of the guard.

“Gloria?”

“Yes, Alan?”

Luther had seen the way Russell had looked at the letter opener. He also knew something now that no one else in the room knew.

“Will it be okay? Make it okay, Gloria. Please. Oh God, Gloria!”

She rested her hand on his shoulder in her most reassuring manner, as she had done across hundreds of thousands of miles of campaign dust. “Everything’s under control, Alan. I’ve got everything under control.”

The President was far too intoxicated to catch the meaning, but she didn’t really care.

Burton touched his radio earpiece, listening intently for a moment. He turned to Russell.

“We better get the hell out of here. Varney just scoped a patrol car coming down the road.”

“The alarm...?” Russell looked puzzled.

Burton shook his head. “It’s probably just a rent-a-cop on routine, but if he sees something...” He didn’t need to say anything else.

Leaving in a limo in this land of wealth was the best cover they could have. Russell thanked God for the routine she had developed for using rented limos without the regular drivers for these little adventures. The names on all the forms were dummies, the rental fee and deposit paid in cash, the car picked up and dropped off after hours. There were no faces associated with the transaction. The car would be sterilized. That would be a dead end for the police if they ever snagged that line, which was highly doubtful.

“Let’s go!” Russell was now slightly panicked.

The President was helped up. Russell went out with him. Collin grabbed the bags. Then stopped cold.

Luther swallowed hard.

Collin turned back, grabbed Russell’s purse off the nightstand and headed out.

Burton started up the small vacuum, completed the room and then left, closing the door and turning off the light.

Luther’s world returned to inky darkness.

This was the first time he had been alone in the room with the dead woman. The rest of them had apparently grown used to the bloody figure lying on the floor, unconsciously stepping over or around the now inanimate object. But Luther had not grown accustomed to the death barely eight feet away.

He could no longer see the pile of stained clothing and the lifeless body inside of them, but he knew it was there. “Sleazy rich bitch” would probably be her informal epitaph. And, yes, she had cheated on her husband, not that he seemed to care about that. But she hadn’t deserved to die like that. He would’ve killed her, there was no question about that. Except for her swift counterattack, the President would’ve committed murder.

The Secret Service men he could not really fault. That was their job and they did it. She had picked the wrong man to attempt to kill in the heat of whatever she had been feeling. Maybe it was better. If her hand had been a little faster or the agents’ response a little slower, she might be spending the rest of her life in jail. Or she’d probably get death for killing a President.

Luther sat down in the chair. His legs were almost numb. He forced himself to relax. Soon he would be getting the hell out of there. He needed to be ready to run.

He had a lot to think through, considering that they were unwittingly setting up Luther Whitney to be the number-one suspect in what would no doubt be deemed a heinous and gruesome crime. The wealth of the victim would demand that enormous law enforcement resources be expended in finding the perpetrator. But there was no way they would be looking to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the answer. They would search elsewhere, and despite Luther’s intense preparations, they might very well find him. He was good, very good, but then he had never faced the types of forces that would be unleashed to solve this crime.

He quickly thought back through his entire plan leading up to tonight. He could think of no obvious holes, but it was the not-so-obvious ones that usually did you in. He swallowed, curled and uncurled his fingers, stretched his legs to calm himself. One thing at a time. He still wasn’t out of here. Many things could go wrong, and one or two undoubtedly would.

He would wait two more minutes. He ticked off the seconds in his head, visualized them loading the car. They would probably wait for any further sight or sound of the patrol car before heading out.

He carefully opened his bag. Inside were much of the contents of this room. He had almost forgotten that he had come here to steal and in fact had stolen. His car was a good quarter mile away. He thanked God he had quit smoking all those years ago. He would need every ounce of lung capacity he could muster. How many Secret Service Agents was he confronted with? At least four. Shit!

The mirrored door slowly opened and Luther stepped out into the room. He hit the remote one more time and then tossed it back onto the chair as the door swung closed.

He eyed the window. He had already planned an alternate escape through that aperture. A hundred-foot coil of extremely strong nylon rope, knotted every six inches, was in his bag.

He made a wide berth around the body, careful not to step in any of the crimson, the position of which he had programmed into his memory. He glanced only once at the remains of Christine Sullivan. Her life could not be brought back. Luther was now faced with keeping his own intact.

It took him a few seconds to reach the nightstand, and probe down behind it.

Luther’s fingers clutched the plastic bag. The President’s collision with the furniture had toppled Gloria Russell’s purse on its side. The plastic bag and its immensely valuable occupant had fallen out and slid down behind the nightstand.

Luther’s finger nudged the blade of the letter opener through the plastic before secreting it in his duffel bag. He went quickly over to the window and carefully peered out. The limo and van were still there. That wasn’t good.

He went across to the other side of the room, took out his rope, secured it under the leg of the enormously heavy chest of drawers, and ran the line across to the other window, which would drop him at the opposite end of the house, hidden from the road. He carefully opened the window, praying for a well-oiled track, and was rewarded.

He played out the rope and watched it snake down the brick sides of the house.

Gloria Russell looked up at the massive face of the mansion. There was real money there. Money and position that Christine Sullivan did not deserve. She had won it with her boobs and artfully displayed ass and her trashy mouth that had somehow inspired the elderly Walter Sullivan, awakening some emotion buried deep within his complex depths. In six months he would not miss her anymore. His world of rock-solid wealth and power would hurtle on.

Then it struck her.

Russell was halfway out of the limo before Collin caught her arm. He held up the leather bag she had bought in Georgetown for a hundred bucks and was now worth incalculably more to her. She settled back down in her seat, her breath normalized. She smiled, almost blushed at Collin.

The President, slumped in a semicatatonic state, didn’t notice the exchange.

Then Russell peeked inside her bag, just to be sure. Her mouth dropped open, her hands frantically tore through the few contents of the bag. It took all her willpower not to shriek out loud as she stared horror-stricken at the young agent. The letter opener was not there. It must still be in the house.

Collin tore back up the stairs, a thoroughly confused Burton racing after him.

Luther was halfway down the wall when he heard them coming.

Ten more feet.

They burst in the bedroom door.

Six more feet.

Stunned, the two Secret Service men spotted the rope; Burton dove for it.

Two more feet, and Luther let go, hitting the ground running.

Burton flew to the window. Collin threw the nightstand aside: nothing. He joined Burton at the window. Luther had already disappeared around the corner. Burton started to head out the window. Collin stopped him. The way they had come would be faster.

They bolted out the door.

Luther crashed through the cornfield, no longer concerned with leaving a trail, now only worried about surviving. The bag slowed him down slightly, but he had worked too hard over the last several months to walk away empty-handed.

He exploded out from the friendly cover of the crops and hit the most dangerous phase of his flight: a hundred yards of open field. The moon had disappeared behind thickening clouds and there were no streetlights in the country; in his black clothing he would be almost impossible to spot. But the human eye was best at spotting movement in the darkness, and he was moving as fast as he could.

The two secret service agents stopped momentarily at the van. They emerged with Agent Varney and raced across the field.

Russell rolled down the window and watched them, shock on her face. Even the President was somewhat awake, but she quickly calmed him and he returned to his half-slumber.

Collin and Burton slipped on their night-vision goggles and their view instantly resembled a crude computer game. Thermal images registered in red, everything else was dark green.

Agent Travis Varney, tall and rangy, and only vaguely aware of what was going on, was ahead of them. He ran with the easy motion of the collegiate miler he used to be.

In the Service three years, Varney was single, committed entirely to his profession, and looked to Burton as a father figure to replace the one killed in Vietnam. They were looking for someone who had done something in that house. Something that involved the President and that therefore involved him. Varney pitied whoever he was chasing if he caught up to him.

Luther could hear the sounds of the men behind him. They had recovered faster than he had thought. His head start had dwindled but it still should be enough. They had made a big mistake by not jumping in the van and running him down. They had to have known he would have transportation. It wasn’t like he would have coptered in. But he was grateful that they weren’t quite as smart as they probably should have been. If they had he would not be alive to see the sun come up.

He took a shortcut through a path in the woods, spotted on his last walk-through. It gained him about a minute. His breath came in quick bursts, like machine-gun fire. His clothes felt heavy on him; as in a child’s dream, his legs seemed to move in slow motion.

Finally he broke free from the trees, and he could see his car and was again grateful for having taken the precaution to back in.

A hundred yards behind, a thermal figure other than Varney’s finally came alive on Burton’s and Collin’s screens. A man running, and running hard. Their hands flew to their shoulder holsters. Neither weapon was effective long-range but they couldn’t worry about that now.

Then an engine roared to life and Burton and Collin ran like a tornado was raging at their heels.

Varney was still ahead of them and to the left. He would have a better line of fire, but would he shoot? Something told them he would not; that was not part of his training, to fire at a fleeing person who was no longer a danger to the man he was sworn to protect. However, Varney did not know that at stake here was more than a mere beating heart. There was an entire institution that would never be the same, in addition to two Secret Service agents who were certain they had done nothing wrong, but were intelligent enough to realize that the blame would fall heavily on their shoulders.

Burton was never much of a runner, but he picked up his pace as these thoughts flew through his head, and the younger Collin was hard-pressed to keep up with him. But Burton knew it was too late. His legs started to slow down as the car exploded out and turned away from them. In moments it was already two hundred yards down the road.

Burton stopped running, dropped to his knee, aimed his gun, but all he could see was the dust kicked up by the fleeing vehicle. Then the taillights went out and in a moment he lost the target entirely.

He turned to see Collin next to him, looking down at him, the reality of the whole event starting to set in. Burton slowly got up and put his gun away. He took off his goggles; Collin did likewise.

They looked at each other.

Burton sucked air in, his limbs shook. His body was finally reacting to the recent exertions now that the adrenaline had stopped flowing. It was over, wasn’t it?

Then Varney came running up. Burton was not too distraught to note with an envious twinge and a small measure of pride that the younger man wasn’t even out of breath. He would see to it that Varney and Johnson didn’t suffer with them. They didn’t deserve that.

He and Collin would go down, but that was all. He felt bad about Collin; however, there was nothing he could do about that. But when Varney spoke, Burton’s thoughts of the future went from complete and absolute doom to a small glimmer of hope.

“I got the license plate number.”

“Where the hell was he?” Russell looked incredulously around the bedroom. “What? Was he under the goddamned bed?”

She tried to stare Burton down. The guy hadn’t been under the bed, nor in any of the closets. Burton had examined all those spaces when he was sanitizing the room. He told her so in no uncertain terms.

Burton looked at the rope and then the open window. “Jesus, it was like the guy was watching us the whole time, knew right when we left the house.” Burton looked around for other possible bogeymen hovering nearby. His eyes rested on the mirror, then moved on, stopped and went back.

He looked down at the carpet in front of the mirror.

He had gone over that area repeatedly with the vacuum until it was smooth; the carpet nape, already plush and expensive, had been a good quarter inch thicker by the time he was finished. No one had walked there since they had come back into the room.

And yet now as he stooped down, his eye discerned very rough traces of footprints. He hadn’t noticed them before because now the whole section was matted down, as if something had swept out... He slapped on his gloves, rushed to the mirror, pulling and prying around its edges. He yelled to Collin to get some tools while Russell looked on stunned.

Burton inserted the crowbar about midway down the side of the mirror and he and Collin threw all their weight against the tool. The lock was not that strong, depending on deception rather than brute strength to safeguard its secrets.

There was a grinding sound and then a tear and a pop and the door swung open.

Burton plunged inside with Collin right behind. A light switch was on the wall. The room turned bright and the men looked around.

Russell peered in, saw the chair. As she looked around, her face froze on the inner side of the mirror door. She was staring right at the bed. The bed where a little while before... She rubbed her temples as a searing pain ripped through her skull.

A one-way mirror.

She turned to find Burton looking over her shoulder and through the mirror. His earlier remark about someone watching them had just proven itself prophetic.

Burton looked helplessly at Russell. “He must have been right here the whole time. The whole goddamned time. I can’t fucking believe this.” Burton looked at the empty shelves inside the vault. “Looks like he took a bunch of stuff. Probably cash and untraceables.”

“Who cares about that!” Russell exploded, pointing at the mirror. “This guy saw and heard everything, and you let him get away.”

“We got his license plate.” Collin was hoping for another rewarding smile. He didn’t get it.

“So what? You think he’s going to wait around for us to run his tag and go knock on his door?”

Russell sat down on the bed. Her head was spinning. If the guy had been in there he had seen everything. She shook her head. A bad but controllable situation had suddenly become an incomprehensible disaster, and totally out of her control. Particularly considering the information Collin had relayed to her when she had entered the bedroom.

The sonofabitch had the letter opener! Prints, blood, everything, straight to the White House.

She looked at the mirror and then at the bed, where a short time before she had been on top of the President. She instinctively pulled her jacket tighter around herself. She was suddenly sick to her stomach. She braced herself against the bedpost.

Collin emerged from the vault. “Don’t forget he committed a crime being here. He can get in big-time trouble if he goes to the cops.” That thought had struck the young agent while he peered around the vault.

He should have thought a little more.

Russell pushed back a strong urge to vomit. “He doesn’t have to exactly go and turn himself in to cash in on this. Have you ever heard of the goddamned phone? He’s probably calling the Post right now. Dammit! And then next the tabloids and by the end of the week we’ll be watching him on Oprah and Sally being shot on remote from whatever little island he’s retired to with his face blurred. And then comes the book and after that the movie. Shit!”

Russell envisioned a certain package arriving at the Post or the J. Edgar Hoover Building or the U.S. Attorney’s office or the Senate Minority Leader’s office, all possible depositories promising maximum political damage — not to mention the legal repercussions.

The note accompanying it would ask them to please match the prints on it and the blood with specimens of the President of the United States. It would sound like a joke, but they would do it. Of course they would do it. Richmond’s prints were already on file. His DNA would be a match. Her body would be found, her blood would be checked and they would be confronted with more questions than they could possibly have answers to.

They were dead, they were all dead. And that bastard had just been sitting in there, waiting for his chance. Not knowing that tonight would bring him the biggest payoff of his life. Nothing as simple as dollars. He would bring down a President, in flames and tatters, crashing to earth without a chance of survival. How often did someone get to do that? Woodward and Bernstein had become supermen, they could do no wrong. This topped the hell out of Watergate. This was too fucking much to deal with.

Russell barely made it to the bathroom. Burton looked over at the corpse and then back at Collin. They said nothing, their hearts pounding with increased frequency as the absolute enormity of the situation settled down on them like the stone lid of a crypt. Since they could think of nothing else to do, Burton and Collin dutifully retrieved the sanitizing equipment while Russell emptied the contents of her stomach. In an hour they were packed and gone.

The door closed quietly behind him.

Luther figured he had a couple of days at best, maybe less. He risked turning on a light and his eyes went quickly over the interior of the living room.

His life had gone from normal, or close to it, straight to horror land.

He took off the backpack, switched off the light, and stole over to the window.

Nothing — everything was quiet. Fleeing from that house had been the most nerve-racking experience of his life, worse than being overrun by screaming North Koreans. His hands still twitched. All the way back, every passing car seemed to bore its headlights into his face, searching out his guilty secret. Twice, police cars had passed him, and the sweat had poured off his forehead, his breathing constricted.

The car had been returned to the impoundment lot where Luther had “borrowed” it earlier that night. The plate would get them nowhere, but something else could.

He doubted they had gotten a look at him. Even if they had, they would only know generally his height and build. His age, race and facial features would still be a mystery, and without that they had nothing. And as fast as he had run, they probably figured him for a younger man. There was one open end, and he had thought about how to handle that on the ride back. For now, he packed up as much of the last thirty years as he could into two bags; he would not be coming back here.

He would clear out his accounts tomorrow morning; that would give him the resources to run far away from here. He had faced more than his share of danger during his long life. But the choice between going up against the President of the United States or disappearing was a no-brainer.

The night’s haul was safely hidden away. Three months of work for a prize that could end up getting him killed. He locked the door and disappeared into the night.