Destiny

SIXTY-FOUR

At six a.m., the digital alarm chirped from Marcus’ phone on his bedside table. He got up and looked out the hotel window. The Paris cityscape was in silhouette. Dawn broke as if a smoldering match was burning beyond the horizon, the sky looked aged — a sulfurous chemical grey. The Eiffel Tower resembled a lighthouse rising above a sea of taxis and commuters moving in elliptical orbits below the hotel.

Marcus made coffee and was walking to the shower when his phone rang. It was Alicia Quincy. “I spoke earlier with Larry Foster at the Mayflower Assisted Living center.”

“Is he the same guy from the Nuremberg Trials?”

“Yes. He’s eighty-eight and in fairly good health. No signs of dementia.”

“What’d he say?”

“He says he knew James Tower. Said Tower was thought to have been British, but in reality he was an American who worked for the OSS at the end of World War II. After the war, he relocated to England. Foster said Tower was one of an elite group who carried out daring missions over Germany during the latter part of the war. After the war ended, he was in Mannheim, Germany, the same time General Patton was there. That’s all Foster could remember.”

“That’s all we need. So James Tower is still alive?”

“Yes. I found his address.”

“You could find a needle in a haystack.”

“Only if it left a cyber-trace somewhere. I’ll text his address to you. He lives in Wallingford, a village about ninety minutes west of London.”

“How are you Alicia?”

“Okay.” She sighed. The funeral was hard. “Because Dad was in such pain, Mom’s at peace with his death, but she still misses him terribly when the silence sets in. It took the cancer two years to kill Dad. I’m ready to come to Israel.”

“I’m in Paris.”

“Paris! What are you doing there?”

“I have reason to believe that the hit on the prime minister was never meant to happen at the Lincoln Memorial.”

“What do you mean?”

“The weeping angel wasn’t the Lincoln statue. I believe it’s a statue of an angel resurrected from the rubble of a nuclear bomb over Nagasaki. The statue was placed in the UNESCO Garden of Peace in the heart of Paris.”

“Secretary of State Hanover is there for the ceremonies.”

“Yes. I met with her. She and everyone I’ve talked with seem to look at me with a cynical eye after the Lincoln Memorial. But something in my gut…my heart is telling me this is the place it’s going to happen.”

“Dear God…I hope you’re wrong.”

“I do too.”

“I’ve busied myself researching the Kinsley Group.”

“Have you found anything more?”

“Yes.” She lowered her voice on the phone. “The Kinsley Group has people on their payroll that are from the White House on down. They include a former presidential chief of staff, secretaries of defense, state, treasury and ex-chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The roster of former and current advisers and directors on their payroll includes a mixture of some of the most powerful people in the nation and even around the world.”

“So we have a private equity company morphing into a defense contractor.”

“Yes. The Kinsley Group conducts business within what’s known as the iron-triangle of industry, government and the military. So what you have, for example, is a past secretary of defense setting policy while in that position. When he leaves the cabinet level post, the policies he set in place help funnel in huge government contracts, most of them worth billions, and our new Kinsley Group consultant and his friends reap the rewards he planted.”

“I’d call that a slight conflict of interest.”

“They’re so big, like BP and the oil spill disaster — the Kinsley Group pays fines as part of the cost of doing business. They even consider bribes as part of their business model. They were fined fifty million dollars for making payments to middlemen in exchange for investments into the California Retirement System and Florida’s Education Retirement System. The middlemen are multimillionaire pimps who get huge kickbacks for setting up these deals.”

“Who are they?”

“Jonathon Carlson, one in particular, owns a ten-thousand acre Texas ranch where he flies in board members from Kinsley and the state retirement system directors to hunt exotic animals by day and frolic with exotic dancers in hot tubs by night. So far I know of two banks that received taxpayer’s bailout dollars and are complicit in some of these investments. The Kinsley Group retains some of the nation’s top PR and law firms to caulk the cracks and paint the walls when needed.”

Marcus was silent for a few seconds, and then he said, “Would there have been reasons for any members of this group, its board, advisors or people they do business with, to take out John Kennedy Junior? If Kennedy had become a senator, or president, could they have feared that one or some of their billion-dollar deals might be at risk of not happening? And if so, what were these risks and the transactions underway that fit that timeframe? How long before they were completed would they have been planned? What events happened around the world to influence these multi-billion dollar deals?”

“Those are all good questions. I think some of the answers are related to the death of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Something else, Paul, I found names of two former members of the Kinsley board who are believed to be or have been members of an ultra-secretive faction. I don’t know the name of this club, but I do have two names.”

“Who are they?”

“I’d rather not say over the phone. I’ll tell you when I arrive in Paris?”

“Paris?”

“I’m changing my flight as we speak. Bonjour.”

Marcus sipped his coffee and set his cell phone on the dresser just as Alicia’s text arrived: James Tower — 1281 Canterbury Road, Wallingford — England.

Alicia opened the door to her family home. Her mother sat quietly by herself in the living room. She looked up from the photo album she held in her lap. She closed the album when Alicia entered the room.

“Hi, Mom. Are you okay?”

Her mother blinked her eyes then looked out the bay window into the backyard. She watched a cardinal land on the edge of the birdfeeder and peck at the seed. She looked back at her daughter. “The cardinal was your father’s favorite bird.”

Alicia smiled. “He loved to hear them sing in the spring.”

“Once a week, for forty-one years, he filled the birdfeeders. The birds relied on him. I saw a blue jay land on your father’s shoulder one time. It was a bird that had fallen from its nest as a baby, sort of fluttered down from the big oak out back. Dad put it in his shirt pocket while he climbed the oak tree and placed the little bird back in its nest.” She looked up at Alicia through watering eyes. “Oh, honey, what am I going to do without your father? I miss him so much.”

Alicia embraced her mother and simply held her. After a minute she said, “Mom, I’m going overseas.”

“What?”

“I’m going to do everything I can to help Brandi. I can’t stand to see Dianne like this. I’m going to do my best to bring Brandi home.”

“How will you do it?”

“I don’t know. I just feel compelled to go there.” Alicia lifted the small golden cross from the chain on her neck. “Mom, if I get in some kind of a situation where I can’t speak with you, somehow I’ll find a way to get this necklace to you. When you receive it, you will know I’m fine. Okay?”

She looked at her daughter, eyes swollen and sad. “Okay, baby. Alicia, you were always so different from your sister and brother. You’re a risk taker, just like your dad. If he were here, I’m sure he’d tell you to do what you feel you need to do. As your mother, I say do it with care. Just return to me, please? ”

“I will, Mom.”