75
Aboard the
Gulfstream V, Henry concentrated on his drink. His fifth scotch on
the rocks had done nothing but take the barest edge off his somber
musings, and he was getting frustrated.
He thought about
poor, stupid, dying Mickey Spangler. He paid employees of the New
Jersey correctional facility well to keep him abreast of Mickey’s
status through the years. Even before that, Henry hired local PIs
to keep Spangler in his sights. Now, in light of the latest news,
Henry had to believe that the old truck driver and petty criminal
had spilled his guts. Why else would he be released into the
attorney general’s custody? Spangler had nothing left to lose.
Jamie Robinson meant nothing to him. He had no idea of how the
events on Washington Street in 1977 had changed the course of so
many lives.
The lone flight
attendant served Henry his sixth scotch silently and left him
alone. Henry peered out the window at the earth below.
The plane was
cruising over the Smokey Mountains as it sped toward Oklahoma where
Anne still maintained the Davidson family ranch. Henry vaguely
recalled enjoyable moments early in their marriage when the two of
them had used it as a vacation spot.
It was another
lifetime.
Spangler wasn’t
Henry’s only problem, though. Eddie Karn was back from the dead and
getting cozy with the attorney general. Chase would no doubt want
to question Henry about the botched attempt on Karn’s life. Henry
played no personal role in the accident—that was Tabula Rasa’s
doing—but he’d still be questioned and he’d still come out looking
bad. With Spangler’s testimony, it wouldn’t help to have a
suspicious auto accident on his doorstep, too. It would be all too
easy to assume that Henry had perceived Karn as a threat to his
commercial interests, and that he had decided to do something about
it.
And then there was
the debacle with that damned reporter stumbling onto Transpac
files. Deleting files and shipping the coffee straight to Seattle
was a simple enough adjustment, but Henry knew that Stern had seen
sensitive documents and would stop at nothing to get to the
nitty-gritty details about Transpacific Coffee Imports—and about
Dieter Tassin’s role as well.
He drained his
scotch and chewed on an ice cube, signaling the attendant for
another.
Then, of course,
there was Anne. Henry still couldn’t believe that his own wife had
such boldness in her. Forcing his chief aide to resign, threatening
to reveal his dalliances, and then meeting with Phillip
Trainor—clearly, she was deluded enough to see herself as capable
of filling Henry’s shoes and carrying on the family business.
Ridiculous.
He’d have to deal
with all of it. On his own if necessary. He wasn’t going to let
anything in his past screw up his future.
The jet landed
ninety minutes later on a stretch of flat terrain in the northwest
corner of the Davidsons’ two-thousand-acre Wildcat
Ranch.
Henry’s thoughts
centered on how to get his derailed career back on track. The
powers that be wouldn’t let him fall all the way—they had too much
at stake, but he’d have to call in every single one of his markers
from over the years. Luckily, there were lots of them.
His plane was met by
a Jeep, driven by a Mexican man who’d worked for the Davidson
family since Anne’s grandfather hired him three decades
earlier.
“Hello, Señor
Henry,” said Reynaldo Rohin. “The main house, sir?”
“Yes, Reynaldo. The
main house. How are your grandchildren?”
“Very well, Señor
Henry. Very well, indeed.”
Henry’s BlackBerry
buzzed as he entered the enormous recreation room in the main
house. An e-mail from Eddie Karn. How the hell did that maggot get
Henry’s most private e-mail address?
Henry was too
curious to delete it without a look at its contents. The brevity
surprised him. Karn was normally such a loquacious
bastard.
TEXT MESSAGE: Henry … who’s in the dumpster now?
Henry dropped his
BlackBerry on the mahogany desk and proceeded to open a bottle of
thirty-year-old scotch. He poured two ounces into a glass, and went
into his private study.
Karn’s message got
to him. More than he would have expected. It also made one point
clear—the buzzards were circling overhead. Karn couldn’t have
gotten the e-mail address without access deep within Henry’s
organization—some of the people who’d covered for him in the past
had dropped their protection.
With a chill, Henry
Broome realized that they were setting him up to be the fall
guy.
Well screw all of
them. Maybe he’d never realize his dream of occupying the Oval
Office, but he could leave his enemies guessing—and his “friends”
as well. Henry hadn’t allowed anyone to bully him at Cottage, and
he wasn’t going to allow anyone to do it now.
Henry finished his
scotch. He reached for the bottle again, but it was empty.
Good thing I have such a capacity to hold my
liquor, he thought. I don’t feel a thing.
He stood and
unlocked a drawer, taking out his 1860 silver-plated Colt revolver.
Oh, but it was a beauty. Very old, but impeccably maintained and
rebuilt over the years. It was his legacy from Henry Broome I, who
claimed to have taken it off a Union Officer in the last days of
the Civil War.
Always clean, always
ready.
Henry called the
airstrip, ordered the jet fueled, and requested a flight plan for
Lanai. The pilot with whom Henry spoke started to say something
about his duty-day and FAA-required rest periods, but Henry brushed
aside his objections.
Less than an hour
later, the ranch car delivered Henry back to the airstrip and he
climbed aboard the jet.
The trip promised to
be a calm one, and Henry allowed himself to relax.
The Gulfstream V,
fueled for an hour’s reserve beyond its intended destination,
navigated its way toward Lanai, the most distant of the Hawaiian
Islands.
Henry’s mirth was
tempered only by occasional glimpses of his pilots’ slumped-over
bodies. They disturbed his sense of order. He sat in the owner’s
armchair, sipping scotch and feeling the power of the Rolls Royce
BR719 engines behind him. As the cabin altitude climbed through
fifteen thousand feet, he began to experience a sense of power and
euphoria. Whether induced by hypoxia or by the knowledge that he
was checking out on his own terms, Henry was at peace and satisfied
to be playing the last act. He would keep them guessing
forever.
At flight level 430,
the jet leveled off, flying on autopilot toward Lanai. By that
time, worried pilots in F-16’s had formed an escort around the
uncommunicative private jet known to be carrying a U.S. senator.
Since there were no grounds for a shoot-down, all they could do was
follow the craft as it crossed the Sierra Nevada and West Coast.
The fighters refueled over the Pacific, seeing no alternative but
to keep following. When the jet came within range of the Hawaiian
Islands, fighters from Hickam Air Force Base relieved the exhausted
escort.
The Gulfstream
navigated its way to Oahu perfectly, but failed to begin its
programmed descent. Henry had seen to that. Lacking descent
instructions, the jet kept flying west. Finally, it flamed out over
the Pacific Ocean, losing its wings and shattering its fuselage as
it entered an uncontrolled Mach 3 dive and scattered itself, and
the remains of the two pilots and of Senator Henry Broome IV, over
nine square miles.
The ocean was far
too deep for any but the deepest of submersibles to consider a
salvage mission. Unlike the waters off Martha’s Vineyard, the
Pacific had a considerable population of sharks. Within a day, all
that remained of Henry Broome were memories.