The Successor Read online

  Christian had his young people at Everest do the acquisition analysis—run the numbers—of the Ohio company, then told her it wasn’t going to happen and, in so many words, told her that there wasn’t going to be any further discussion about it. Even today, the Ohio firm was still a thorn in her side, driving MuPenn’s earnings per share down a couple of percentage points each quarter. But what had really gotten to her at the time—what had really irritated her—was that she had believed Christian had seen one of MuPenn’s board members at a dinner party and told him that she had tried to skirt the law. He’d been right—she had been trying to skirt the law—but he hadn’t needed to tell her board member that, hadn’t needed to rat her out. She’d been forced to address the issue in a closed session of the executive committee a few days later, and while nothing had come of it—the board hadn’t taken any kind of punitive action—she’d almost had to live under a dark cloud for a while.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Dorsey said softly, leaning over and kissing her on the cheek. “Why don’t we finish these drinks upstairs?”

  She gazed at him as he pulled back. “You’ve got everything all planned out, don’t you? How to take Wood down, make yourself president, and keep me happy without having to lose half your net worth in a divorce. You’re a smooth operator, Senator Dorsey.”

  Dorsey gave her a hurt puppy-dog look. “That was a mean shot, Vicky. You know I’m going to tell my wife soon. I can’t just sit her down and tell her we’re getting a divorce. It has to be a gradual thing, almost her idea, you know? I wish you wouldn’t treat me like—”

  “Oh, stop your whining,” she scolded, standing up. “Come on, let’s go. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I can’t resist you.”

  CHRISTIAN CHECKED his watch: eleven thirty. He’d just said good-bye to Beth. He’d offered her a ride wherever she wanted to go, but she’d politely turned him down, saying she didn’t want to bother him, and he hadn’t wanted to press. The dinner had gone too well and there was no reason to push it. They’d already made plans to see each other again in a few days.

  “So, Romeo, how’d it go?” Quentin asked.

  Quentin had picked Christian up in front of the restaurant right after Beth had caught a cab. “I’m sure we won’t see each other again,” Christian answered. He could tell that Quentin was relieved. “Not anytime soon anyway.”

  “Why not? What was the death blow? Her dad call while you were having dinner to remind her she had a midnight curfew? Find out he was younger than you are when he called?”

  “Very funny.”

  “Come on, what was it?”

  “She didn’t know who the Beatles were.”

  Quentin nodded triumphantly. “I told you. You don’t have anything in common with that girl, do you?”

  Christian shook his head as they passed through Times Square, headed downtown on Broadway in Quentin’s BMW 760. “Let’s put it this way, dinner went four hours. You know me, I’ve got the patience of an empty hospital.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “If it was obvious we didn’t have anything in common early on, don’t you think I would have been out of there after the appetizer?”

  “But what about the Beatles?” Quentin grumbled, obviously disappointed. “I thought you said she didn’t—”

  “She knew more about them than I did. She’s up on music, sports, politics, movies. Our vintage, too. She’s amazing.”

  “What does she do?”

  Christian cocked his head to one side as Quentin dodged a cab at Thirty-sixth Street. “I don’t know.” He’d completely forgotten to try to pin her down on that stuff, he was having so good a time. Quentin had reminded him on the phone right before he’d gotten to the restaurant to dig for answers at dinner, answers they hadn’t gotten in the car in Maryland. Answers to such basic things as where she was from, where she’d gone to school, what she did for a living. But somehow all that had slipped his mind. “I figured you’d get answers to all that stuff.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” Quentin muttered. “I couldn’t find anything on a Beth Garrison anywhere. Not one that fit her description, anyway.”

  “Did you talk to your buddies down in D.C.?”

  “Not yet, but I will.”

  “What about the Maryland troopers who interviewed her the other day?”

  “I tried. I’ll be able to get that file, but it’s going to take a little longer than I hoped. They weren’t real helpful.” Quentin shook his head. “I don’t like this. I don’t like that it’s so hard to find out anything about her.”

  Christian waved. “Ah, it’s nothing. She’s probably just a small-town girl who went to Washington to try to spice up her life and got caught up in something she couldn’t handle. She’s probably an embassy secretary or something. I think you ought to be more worried about this.” He gestured ahead, toward downtown and the clandestine meeting they were going to.

  Strange thing about dinner tonight, Christian realized, was that, in a way, Beth had reminded him of his half sister, Nikki, who’d passed away a few years back. He and Nikki had been close growing up until Clayton had died and Christian’s stepmother, Lana, had cut him off from the family. Then they’d reconnected when she’d gotten sick. Christian had actually paid for Nikki’s treatment because she didn’t have insurance and Lana had pleaded poverty—which was a joke. Beth had the same joy for life as Nikki, even some of the same mannerisms. He’d realized that early on during dinner when she’d lifted her left eyebrow and leaned back slightly—the exact thing Nikki always did.

  “So this is the guy from Camp David?” Quentin asked.

  Christian shut his eyes for a few moments, still mentally at dinner.

  “The same guy that handed you the file on the way out of there?” Quentin pushed.

  “Yeah.” Debbie had interrupted Christian’s meeting with Jim Marshall to let him know that the special caller was holding. The man Christian had told her was to have priority access all the time. A man she should put through to him anytime, no matter what he was doing. “Dex Kelly.”

  “You should have had a rolling code or something, not just a name. People forget faces pretty quick, and it’ll be real dark.”

  “A name like that’s good enough. Besides, I’ll recognize him.” Kelly had one of those faces you didn’t forget. Dark eyes, straight, dark eyebrows, defined features: a turned-up button nose, thin lips, hollow cheeks, and a pointy chin with a deep cleft. He was older, midfifties probably, with a paunch that bulged over his belt. “If it isn’t him, I’ll know fast. Besides, you’ll be watching. You’ll see if I’m in trouble.”

  Quentin shook his head worriedly. “These guys are good. I may not know.”

  “Why would the president’s people want to screw with me right now?”

  “It’s not government people I’m worried about. Not U.S. government people anyway.”

  Christian had gone ahead and given Quentin the full download on his meeting with President Wood at Camp David. Done it this afternoon when Quentin had gotten word about passing his background check. And it had been a big relief to do it. What had happened on the way back from Camp David had shaken him. He hadn’t let on to Quentin, but it had. That Maryland troopers had speculated that the incident might have to do with him and not Beth had gotten him thinking. “What are you saying? You mean—”

  “Yeah, I mean Cubans,” Quentin interrupted. “I’m worried because that file you got from Kelly has so much sensitive information in it. And from what you told me, you haven’t committed to help President Wood yet. If you got that file, the Cubans might have it, too. Doesn’t sound like Dex Kelly’s running a real tight ship.”

  “I doubt anyone else got it.”

  “Why not?”

  Christian shrugged. He really had no idea how good—or bad—Wood’s people were. He didn’t even know if Dex Kelly was Secret Service, CIA, or something else, and he sure didn’t have any idea how experienced the guy was.

  “One thing I can tell you
is that the first meeting won’t be in Miami,” Quentin said quickly. “Not now that it’s been in a memo like that. Really, anyone could have gotten their hands on it.”

  Christian smiled. He knew Quentin so well.

  “Look, this is a dangerous thing you’re getting into,” Quentin continued. “Personally, I recommend that you not get into it. I recommend that you get yourself as far away from it as fast as you can and stick to things you have experience with, like running Everest Capital. Make me and the other partners more money, like the forty million bucks I just made off Laurel Energy.” He hesitated. “Seriously, you have no idea how the Cubans might go, what they might do to you if they figure out you’re involved. They’ve got to be paranoid as hell, got to try as hard as they can to infiltrate every administration as fast as they can because they know every U.S. president, Republican or Democrat, is out to get them. The island’s too full of politics. Just like China hates us being close to Japan, we’d have a psychological meltdown if we thought China and Cuba were getting to be buddies. Especially now that we’ve had fifteen years of the Soviet Union out of there. We’ve gotten used to feeling that there’s no threat from Cuba.” Quentin coasted to a stop at a red light at Canal Street. “I don’t give a damn about the money, Chris,” he said, his voice turning somber, “you know that. About forty million or four hundred million. I care about you. This is dangerous.”

  “I’ll be careful, believe me.”

  “That won’t be enough, believe me,” Quentin said, accelerating through the intersection when the light turned green.

  “I can handle myself.”

  “Said like a true babe in the woods.”

  “You’ve seen me in a fight. You’ve seen what I can—”

  “These people won’t be out just to kill you, Chris, these people will be out for information. If they catch you, they’ll want to know who you’re working with, and they won’t stop until they find out. Killing you will be an afterthought, something the low man on the team does. A bullet to the head and an unmarked grave in a rain forest somewhere in Cuba where no one will ever find your body. Do you understand what I mean? I’m talking about torture.”

  Christian glanced up. They were through TriBeCa now, almost down to the financial district, just passing the Woolworth Building. Maybe he was still harboring some resentment toward Jesse Wood for passing him over as vice president—as Quentin had suggested when they were down in Maryland. For getting his hopes up so high when Wood had asked him to take the job, then having them dashed when Wood changed his mind. Especially because he really had saved Wood’s ass. Maybe he was out to prove to Jesse Wood that he’d made the wrong choice, that he should have chosen Christian as his VP. Maybe that was part of what this was about after all.

  “You think I’m just trying to show Jesse he was wrong to drop me? You think that’s what this is all about?”

  Quentin was checking street signs. “Maybe.”

  “It’s up on the left across from the Trinity Church,” Christian said. It hadn’t occurred to him that Quentin wouldn’t know exactly where Wall Street was. Everest’s offices were in Midtown, so Quentin rarely came down here. But it was second nature for Christian. He’d started his career at Goldman Sachs, which was on Broad Street right off Wall and down from the Stock Exchange. “You can’t miss it.”

  “I know where it is,” Quentin shot back.

  Christian grinned. “Suuure you do.”

  “Yeah, I think that’s exactly what this is all about. Absolutely you’re out to prove something to Jesse. Just like you were out to prove something to yourself tonight by going out with Beth. You were out to prove that a girl who’s barely out of training bras could find you attractive. That you’re still attractive to younger women. And you’re out to prove to Jesse that he made a mistake.”

  “Bullshit. To both.”

  “Don’t ‘bullshit’ me, pal. You know it’s true.” Quentin spotted Trinity Church on the right, then the parking garage beyond it in the next block.

  Maybe Quentin was right about proving something to Jesse, though Christian would never admit it. But there was that other, more important reason driving him to take the huge risk. He wanted to be part of something, something big. Selling Laurel Energy for all that money wasn’t enough anymore, just more dollar signs in an account. He wanted more, wanted to satisfy that hunger. Of course, that was the problem—he always wanted more. Had since he was a kid. In this case, to have an impact on history. He shut his eyes, careful not to let Quentin see his frustration. Getting older was turning out to be a real bitch. “You want to know the real reason I’m not worried?”

  Quentin looked over. “Why?”

  “Because you’ll be there every step of the way. You’ll have approval over everything I do. I’ll tell Dex Kelly that tonight. If he doesn’t like it, then I’m gone. I won’t be part of this. I trust you that much.”

  Quentin reached over and patted Christian on the shoulder. “You should, too.”

  “I know.”

  “Promise me you’ll really say that to Kelly.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good. That makes me feel better.”

  “I knew it would.”

  Quentin pulled into the all-night garage and tossed the attendant the keys as they both climbed out of the car. “We won’t be long,” he said to the guy, “an hour tops.”

  Outside the garage Christian took off ahead of Quentin, heading up Broadway until he reached Wall Street, then turning right onto the narrow little lane. Christian had always enjoyed bringing friends from out of town down here when he worked at Goldman Sachs—before going to Everest Capital—because they were always so surprised when they saw it. They assumed Wall Street was a massive avenue, like Park or Fifth, but actually it was barely wide enough for a car to pass a delivery truck parked at the curb.

  He headed east toward the Stock Exchange, then crossed over to the north side of Wall Street, taking a left at Federal Hall and moving up the darkened side street. Halfway up the block he spotted a solitary figure in the shadows, leaning against the building. It was a chilly night for late spring and the figure was wearing a long trench coat. As Christian neared the man, he saw that it was indeed Dex Kelly.

  “Hello, Christian.” Kelly held out his hand as they came together. “Thanks for meeting me all the way down here. It was easier for us to make sure it was clear down here than in Midtown. Almost no one down here after around ten o’clock at night.”

  Christian glanced around, looking for any others who might be with Kelly, but he didn’t see anyone. “No problem.”

  “We can’t talk on the phone about anything important after this.” Kelly spoke brusquely, and Christian detected a slight New England accent. “Got it?”

  “I got it.”

  “You look at that file we gave you in Maryland?” Kelly asked, checking up and down the darkened street.

  It was funny how the brain worked, Christian thought to himself. His mind had been in a completely different place because something strange had just struck him out of the blue. He’d been thinking about Beth’s response to the waiter’s request to see her ID. How she’d explained that it was in her other purse at the apartment where she was staying. A reasonable explanation because usually women did use a different purse from their everyday bag for a nice dinner. A reasonable explanation except that Beth had come straight from the train station, small rolling suitcase in tow. He’d checked it for her himself with the owner’s daughter. “Yeah, I looked at it.”

  Kelly gritted his teeth. “There was a lot of information in there.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Information that shouldn’t have been in there, and I’ll take accountability for that.”

  “So what happened?”

  “We had a miscommunication internally. We thought you were already committed. Sometimes President Wood gets ahead of himself.”

  It was Christian’s turn to glance down the street. Quentin was down there somew
here. “I am committed. You can tell President Wood that. A hundred percent.” He thought he noticed a subtle slump of Kelly’s shoulders and a quick smile cross the older man’s face through the darkness.

  “Good man. Good to have you aboard. The chief executive says you can be trusted.”

  When they’d met at Camp David, Kelly had referred to President Wood as the “chief executive” then, too.

  “And that’s good enough for me,” Kelly went on. “When you’ve been in this business as long as I have, you realize that sometimes the only thing you can do is trust people, most importantly yourself, your own instincts. You can try to confirm, try to do all that fancy due-diligence stuff. But when it really comes down to it, you have to trust your gut. What you see in the other guy’s expression.”

  “What business is it exactly that you’re in?” Christian asked.

  “You know what business I’m in, Mr. Gillette. Don’t play me, young man. What you meant to ask was, what branch of the business am I in? Right?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m not going to tell you, but I will tell you this.” Kelly stuck a finger in Christian’s face. “I know you have experience with the intelligence cells of the United States government. I know this because I’ve been through the background check that was done on you during the time the chief executive was thinking about making you his vice president. That background check makes it clear that you knew that a couple of the Everest portfolio companies have been and still are being used by the CIA and the DIA.” Kelly chuckled. “And by one group you don’t know about.” Kelly leaned in close. “I’ll tell you this, too, just to give you a little hint on who I run with. I knew well before I went through that background check of your familiarity with the U.S. intelligence operations. Maybe nanotechnology rings a bell?”

  Christian froze. He’d already paid the price for messing with that nest of vipers once. Didn’t want to pay it again because this time the price might turn out to be a lot higher.