The Successor Read online

  “Of course, I do. He’s a good man.” Wood smiled. “I also remember Allison Wallace.” Allison Wallace was another of Everest’s managing partners. She’d joined the firm after her family had made a huge financial commitment to the fund prior to the one Christian had just finished raising. “You and she still hot and heavy?”

  “We were never hot and heavy.”

  “That’s not what my Secret Service guys told me.”

  “Jesse, I don’t think—”

  “Okay, okay.” Wood held up one hand. “Look, at some point I agree that you’ll have to bring Quentin in on this, but don’t tell him yet.”

  “That doesn’t work. Quentin has to know right away.”

  The president thought about it for a few moments. “All right, I’ll leave it up to you when you tell him. But damn it, Stiles better not—”

  “I trust Quentin more than anyone else in the world. It’ll be fine,” Christian assured Wood.

  “He’ll need a background check, too.”

  “Fine.” Quentin would raise hell about that, but so be it. “I assume, given his history, that’ll be a quick process.”

  Wood nodded. “It’ll be fast.”

  “You said there were a few challenges,” Christian continued. “We’ve covered how I deal with the legal issue. What else is there?”

  Wood grimaced. “Like you said, this thing could actually get pretty dangerous, Chris. If people inside the Party find out about it, there’s no telling what they’ll do. Ultimately you’ll have to go to Cuba secretly. I’m talking Special Forces stuff to smuggle you in there. Choppers and a jungle-drop-at-night kind of crap. While you’re in there, you’ll be a hell of a target if somehow they smell you. If we’ve miscalculated and there’s a spy inside the civilian group, for instance.”

  Christian took a sip of water. “I’m not worried.” He’d never served in the military and had long felt a strange type of guilt about that. The possibility of being part of a Special Forces mission was exhilarating, even if he was just going to be the football. Maybe it would satisfy his growing hunger to do something bigger, something more important, than manage Everest. A hunger he understood more and more was being brought on by age. “Let me rephrase that,” he said. “I’ll be plenty worried, but I won’t let it stop me from going.” He’d earned a lot of money in his career because the United States was the safest place in the world to do business, but he’d never had any part in making it safe. “Plenty of young men and women went to Iraq. They didn’t let the danger stop them.”

  “No, they didn’t,” Wood agreed. “Look, we’ll have protection for you while you’re there. A squad of Army Rangers just to protect you. And we’ll be able to get you off the island quickly if the revolt doesn’t look like it’s going to succeed. If the general we’re working with doesn’t turn out to have the influence with his subordinates we think he does. We’ll have plenty of ships right off the coast we can get you back to.”

  “Unless China has ships out there, too.”

  The president ran a hand over his hair. “I don’t even want to think about that.”

  Christian knew this would probably be the most sensitive question he could ask. “Will we be supporting the revolt militarily?”

  The president started to say something, then stopped. “I can’t tell you that, Chris.”

  Christian nodded to let Jesse know he wouldn’t dig any more on that issue. At least, not right now. “Okay.” That Wood had gone silent spoke volumes anyway. The U.S. military would be there. And not just the Rangers who would be protecting him. “What else?”

  Wood shrugged. “I don’t know what to do for you in return. It’s really hard to—”

  “You don’t have to do anything for me in return, Jesse,” Christian interrupted. “If I do it, I’ll do it because I think it’ll help the country.”

  The president nodded slowly. “Thanks, Chris.” He hesitated. “If there is anything I can do, you know I will.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  They were silent for a few moments.

  “Answer me this,” Christian spoke up. “A few minutes ago you said that you wouldn’t have thought this a few years ago, but that we might actually have a chance to win back the Cuban people. Has the embargo been that devastating?”

  “It has,” Wood confirmed, “but the root of the problem the Cuban people have with us goes further back than that. It really started back in the late 1800s when we won the war with the Spanish.”

  “I thought we granted Cuba their independence pretty soon after that.”

  “We did, but it wasn’t without a lot of strings attached. Which is the problem,” Wood explained. “There was something called the Platt Amendment that went along with their independence, which basically let us intervene in Cuban affairs anytime we wanted to. It gave us carte blanche to make things go our way whenever it suited us, and we did. That’s really where the Cuban people’s resentment toward us began.”

  “Mr. President.” The Secret Service agent stuck his head out onto the porch. “Your next appointment is here.”

  “Tell him I’ll be ready in a few minutes.” Wood shifted his eyes back to Christian. “I need your help, Chris. Take a few days to think about it, but no longer. Like I said, we have to move on this. If it’s not going to be you, I’ll have to reach out to others.”

  Christian wanted to ask a few more questions, but an older man with a gray beard strode out onto the porch with a Secret Service agent right behind him.

  “Hello, Jesse,” the man said loudly.

  Wood rose up off the couch. “Richard, hello. I’m not quite ready for—”

  “It’s fine, it’s fine. Just finish up…quick.”

  “Yes,” Wood said slowly. “Well, I—”

  “I’m Christian Gillette.” He held out his hand toward the man. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Richard Hart.”

  Christian recognized the name instantly. Richard Hart was a legend in the movie industry. “I’ve admired your films for years, Mr. Hart.”

  “So many people have,” Hart said with a wave. “What do you do, Gillette?”

  “I manage money.”

  “Ah. No wonder I don’t recognize your name. I don’t pay much attention to that financial stuff.” He glanced at Wood, then back at Christian. “How much longer will you two be?”

  IT WAS THE FIRST great lesson of Melissa’s adult life: You can’t defy the king no matter who you are—even if you’re his daughter.

  The night she’d won her award there’d been more than fifty screenplays stacked up on the dining room table of her apartment. Several she was extremely interested in, with roles she felt might win her the ultimate Oscar—Best Actress. The next morning her agent had called—again and again—to tell her that directors were demanding the scripts back. Then he’d called one final time at the end of the day—to quit, right on the phone. Richard Hart had struck with fury and force.

  A month later she’d been out of money—and friends. Even the girls she’d gone to Elaine’s with wouldn’t return her calls. So she’d taken a job as a waitress and—nightmare of nightmares—been forced to sell her Oscar on eBay.

  That’s when they’d called, just when she was at her most vulnerable. With an opportunity to make a big pot of money—an amount that wouldn’t have seemed like much a few months ago, but seemed like a ton now—and an opportunity for revenge. As poor as she’d suddenly become, the chance to one-up her father was almost as big an incentive as the money. Calling him out in public for being a failure as a husband and a father wasn’t enough anymore. Now she wanted to take him down. She was still too young to understand that revenge never ended up tasting as sweet as you thought it would.

  Melissa glanced into the sports car’s rearview mirror. The long blond hair and blue eyes were gone. Now she had short dark hair and green eyes. She hadn’t wanted to be recognized as that young woman who’d won the Oscar, then been banished from Hollywood.

  Now she couldn’t be
recognized as that. They’d made that clear in no uncertain terms. They’d put so much emphasis on staying anonymous she got the feeling that if anyone ever found out who she was and these people heard about it, she might not be around long.

  She shook her head. A few months ago she’d been on top of the world. It was amazing how quickly life could change.

  6

  ALLISON WALLACE looked around anxiously. It was like no other office she’d ever been to. It was more like the reptile house at a zoo. Not the conservative surroundings of a prominent Manhattan senior executive she’d been expecting. Lining two walls were shelves of aquariums and cages, filled with snakes and lizards of all shapes and sizes. And a three-foot alligator lay in a tank in one corner.

  “Everything all right?”

  Allison glanced at the plump, middle-aged woman wearing cat’s-eye glasses who’d led her in here from reception. She’d barely heard the question because she couldn’t focus. The whole scene was too distracting. “Um…”

  “Never been here before, huh?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t worry, they usually stay put.”

  “Usually?”

  The woman smiled. “Do you want anything to drink while you wait for Ms. Graham?”

  “How about boric acid? In case I have to throw it at something slithering at me?”

  “Sorry. The guy who was here before you got the last bottle. Good thing, too. That cobra over there would have nailed him if he hadn’t.”

  Well, at least she had a sense of humor about it. “Pepsi would be great,” Allison said, checking in the direction the woman had looked when she’d mentioned the cobra. Sure enough, there were eyeglasses on the back of the coppery hood. It was a small snake, but so what? Weren’t baby snakes supposed to be even more poisonous than adults? “Thanks.”

  When the woman was gone, Allison took a closer look at some of the creatures, keeping her distance, especially as she neared the alligator. The teeth on the thing were already getting big and the tank didn’t look that sturdy. It seemed as if it were smiling at her with those menacing pearly whites—not in a friendly way, either. More like he was hungry—and she was dinner.

  “Like him?”

  Allison whirled around. Victoria Graham stood in a far corner. She’d entered the office from an anteroom. Allison hadn’t heard the door open.

  “I call him Tricky Dick,” Graham continued, moving toward Allison. “He reminds me of President Nixon. Powerful but sneaky. Got that sly look about him all the time. Like you never know what he’ll do next.” She held out her hand as she reached Allison. “Victoria Graham.”

  “Allison Wallace. Nice to meet you.”

  “You’re probably too young to remember Nixon in any personal way,” Graham said with a sigh. “He’s probably nothing but a picture in a history book for you. Just those two quick vees as he stood in the chopper doorway that last time on the White House lawn.” She held her arms up and fingers out in the classic Nixon stiff-upper-lip, farewell pose. “Maybe not even a picture for you, now that I think about it.”

  “I don’t remember him,” Allison admitted, “but I’ve read about him and Watergate, all about the tapes.”

  Tall and statuesque with pretty white hair swept back on both sides, Graham made a striking first impression. Fifty-seven, she looked her age, but was still beautiful—even sexy—for an older woman. She had a high forehead, a sharp chin, and her mouth seemed stuck in a mysterious semismile. She spoke in an aristocratic Katharine Hepburn croak and gestured with her hands a lot. Allison had done a Google search on Graham this morning and found several photographs of her. She was pretty in those pictures, but was much more impressive in person.

  Allison’s Internet search had also turned up a litany of testimonials to Graham’s being a leader in the worldwide financial community as well as a ceiling-buster for women. The first woman to run a major U.S. insurance company, first woman to serve on five Fortune 500 boards at the same time, one of the first women to own a professional sports team. There were lots of firsts when it came to Victoria Graham, Allison had learned. Maybe Graham had the right to be a little eccentric about picking her officemates.

  Graham gestured at the alligator. “I’m sure you’d like to hear the explanation.”

  In fact, Allison was interested. Not just in the alligator though. “Well—”

  “I own a house on Marco Island down in Florida, and this little guy kept coming up out of the canal onto my lawn this past winter, scaring everybody half to death. We think he was after my cats because a couple of them disappeared. Almost took a chunk out of the pool boy’s leg one afternoon. But he’s so cute I just had to have him. So I had him trapped and flown up here. Unfortunately I’m not going to be able to keep him here at the office much longer. He’s growing too fast what with all the rabbits we’re feeding him. So, I’m building him a place out at my house in Connecticut. All climate-controlled. It’s very nice.”

  Allison’s eyes grew wide. “You feed him here?” This woman really was quite a character. Which hadn’t come through in the news articles—nor had Christian mentioned anything like that. Of course, that was Christian. He usually let you form your own opinions about people. “In your office?”

  “Well, of course. Where else would I feed him?” Graham asked. “You want to watch?”

  “No, no.” Instantly, Allison wished she hadn’t been so quick to turn down the opportunity. It might be interesting to see the hunt. It would be sad to watch a cute little rabbit die, but the alligator was going to get his dinner whether she was here or not. “But thanks.”

  “Fine, fine.” Graham headed to a big leather chair behind her desk. “Maybe one of the snakes when we’ve finished our meeting. The boa’s a lot of fun to watch, too. But sometimes it takes him a while to strike after we put the rat in there.”

  Allison glanced at the thick, coiled snake as Graham’s assistant came back in to deliver the soda. “Yeah, maybe,” she murmured.

  “I’ve always liked reptiles,” Graham volunteered, sitting down. “In fact, I thought I was going to be a biologist or even a zoologist when I went to college.” She raised both eyebrows, pursed her lips, and gazed out the window.

  Almost longingly, Allison thought to herself. As though despite all the success she’d achieved, something inside her caused her to wonder what it would have been like to have had a simpler life. As though there was even the tiniest seed of regret about how her life had turned out.

  “But I ended up in the insurance business,” Graham continued.

  “How?”

  “My father owned an insurance brokerage business in Philadelphia. He died suddenly when I was a junior at the University of Florida, of a heart attack, and I had to come home and run the business because my siblings were too young to do it. Never went back to college,” she said ruefully. “I sold the business four years later to a big firm, then took a job with Mutual of Pennsylvania.” She fluttered her hand in the air and rolled her eyes. “The rest, as they say, is history.”

  “Things turned out pretty well.”

  “I suppose.”

  “What is it that you like about reptiles?” Allison liked digging into the psyches of successful people, especially older women. She’d been looking for a role model all her life.

  “The fact that a lot of them haven’t changed much in millions of years. I like that kind of consistency because I believe it’s consistency that builds dynasties and longevity, which reptiles have certainly enjoyed.” Graham smiled. “You’re a beautiful woman, dear.”

  Victoria Graham was fascinating, not stiff and reserved as Allison had anticipated. Reputed to be tough as nails—she’d have to be tough to have been so successful in the male-dominated worlds in which she operated—she had a soft side as well. It seemed as if she said exactly what was on her mind, too. Something most people would never dream of doing. “That’s nice of you to say.”

  “You’re lucky.” Graham shook her head and motioned toward
the door. “I’ve done everything I can for Marcia. Poor girl. Plastic surgery, weight-loss spas, makeup specialists. But it hasn’t done much good. She’s the best assistant I’ve ever had and I love her like a daughter. But she’s going to die a spinster if she doesn’t watch out. She wants a husband so badly, but she’s going to have to lower her sights if she’s ever going to get a nibble.” Graham smiled. “You, on the other hand, must be beating them away with a stick.”

  In her midthirties, Allison was pretty. Blond and vivacious with a body that still got those long whistles from Manhattan construction workers, Allison understood that she’d been blessed. She tried not to stick it in other women’s faces during the day, keeping her outfits conservative for business. But when she went out clubbing on weekends, she loved dressing provocatively. It was fun and she didn’t mind the stares. When the stares stopped, that’s when she’d worry.

  “Are those real?” Graham asked, pointing at Allison’s chest.

  Allison put a hand on her blouse and smiled self-consciously. “Excuse me?” Christian hadn’t said much about Victoria Graham, but he had warned Allison that there wasn’t a question the older woman wouldn’t ask. Allison had just assumed he meant there wasn’t a business question she wouldn’t ask.

  “They’re just so perfect.”

  Allison burst into nervous laughter. “Jesus.”

  “Oh, I know, I’m direct.”

  “I’d say.”

  “But it’s fun.”

  “Maybe for you, but—”

  “And you don’t have to worry, I’m not a lesbian. That’s not why I’m asking.”

  “Oh, God.”

  Graham chuckled. “I’m a little peculiar, too, I guess.”

  “Well, I don’t know about—”

  “Christian probably told you.”