Stone Cold

CHAPTER 97

WHEN CARTER GRAY HAD INFORMED Roger Simpson of Lesya’s demand, the senator’s initial response had been predictable.

“There must be something we can do,” Simpson had wailed. “I’ve worked my whole life to make this run for the White House.” He eyed Gray hopefully.

“I don’t see what can be done,” Gray replied.

“You know where she is? If we can-”

“No, Roger. Lesya has suffered enough. This is about more than you or me. She gets to live out what’s left of her life in peace.”

It was clear from Simpson’s expression that he was not in agreement with this. Gray gave him one more warning to leave it alone and then left.

Months passed and still Simpson brooded. Solomon’s name cleared. Lesya given a medal! Gray was back in power. It was all so unjust. This all gnawed at the man, making him even more morose and insufferable than usual. Indeed, his wife started spending more time in Alabama; friends and colleagues avoided him.

In the predawn hours one morning Simpson sat moodily in his bathrobe, which he typically did, after retrieving the newspaper from outside the front door of his condo. His wife was visiting friends in Birmingham. That had been another thing that had infuriated him. No one had kidnapped his wife. That simply had been a bluff that Finn and Carr had used to get him to go quietly. Once out of his office and away from the bomb he could have had Carr arrested immediately. Only he had been too afraid. This just made him angrier.

Well, he’d really had the last laugh. Both Finn and John Carr were dead. Simpson had not bothered to check up on Finn, and Carr had vanished. Yet it was also true that he would now only be a senator, his shot at the Oval Office gone. The destruction of his lifelong dream made Simpson throw his cup of coffee against the wall.

He slumped down at the kitchen table and stared out the window into the darkness; the sun was still hours away from making its creep up the wall of the eastern seaboard.

“There must be a way, there must be,” he told himself. He could not let a former Russian spy, who by all rights should be dead, deny him the highest office in the land, an office he felt he was predestined to hold.

He sighed, opened his paper and froze.

Staring back at him was a photo that had been taped inside the front page of the newspaper he was holding.

As he stared at the picture of the woman, it suddenly occurred to him who she was.

Then her head disappeared. Left in its place was a large hole. Simpson gasped and then looked down at his chest. Blood was pouring out of it from where the bullet had entered after passing through the newspaper and neatly obliterating the identity of the woman. By any standard, it was a hell of a shot.

His eyes started to flutter as he stared out the window where the glass had been cracked by the bullet. He looked at the shell of the building across the street, the one that had never been finished. As he pitched forward, dead, onto his kitchen table, the thought did occur to Simpson of who had just killed him.