Richard Halliwell’s personal flight attendant finished clearing away the light lunch of crayfish salad and the nose of the Learjet dipped as Halliwell’s pilots eased back the power. Simone Carstairs leaned back in the red leather of her armchair and raised her champagne glass. She was wearing a dark blue linen dress with a plunging neckline that exposed the top of her tanned breasts. Halliwell’s eyes were focused on her cleavage. Beneath the blue linen he could make out the faint outline of her nipples.
‘To tonight,’ she mouthed seductively, allowing her tongue to flick over her lips.
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ Richard Halliwell replied, raising his glass in response. ‘What are you doing this afternoon?’ he asked, curious to know her every move.
Simone smiled. ‘Well, since The Vineyard doesn’t seem to be too fond of women,’ she replied meaningfully, ‘while you’re out hitting little white balls with the President of this country, I’m sure I can put your black American Express card to good use in San Francisco,’ she replied evasively. One day she would get him to ditch that boring little wife of his, she mused, reflecting that when Constance Halliwell wasn’t in Church singing hymns, she was devoting the rest of her time singing the praises of that even more boring bible-bashing preacher Jerry Buffett. Simone drained the last of the vintage Krug and again licked her lips. Richard Halliwell, she knew, was calculating and powerful, and she was attracted to that in a man. She was sure that, one day, Halliwell would be on the presidential plane that was following them in, and she intended to be on it with him.
As Halliwell went back to reading one of the reports on China – an analysis of the security arrangements for the Beijing Olympics – she watched him as her thoughts turned again to his marriage. For the life of her she couldn’t see what Richard saw in his wife. He’d once confided in her that Constance had resisted anything other than the missionary position, recoiling in horror on their wedding night when he’d attempted oral sex. Simone suppressed a smile. She’d never been able to get her mind around Constance on top, let alone having oral sex, and Constance’s reticence in the bedroom was something that Simone Carstairs knew how to turn to her advantage. Simone would continue to ensure that Richard Halliwell got what his wife could never give him, even if that contained an extraordinary irony. He was quite possibly the most selfish and ill-equipped lover she’d ever encountered. In his case she’d reluctantly concluded that size did matter; it was just that for Simone Carstairs, power mattered much more. When he came to his senses, she and President Richard Halliwell would make a very powerful team. JFK and Jacqueline had taken the world by storm, and soon there would be a new Camelot, one that the world would have to take notice of.
Puffs of light blue smoke wisped from the tyres of the Learjet as Halliwell’s chief pilot eased the aircraft on to 21 Left, one of two long parallel strips at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield just outside San Francisco Bay. The sprawling 5000 acre base was home to the 60th Air Mobility Wing and the massive C-5 Galaxy and C-17 Globe- master cargo aircraft and today, like every other day, it was busy. As Secret Service agents scanned the perimeter in preparation for the arrival of the President’s plane, three huge KC-10 Extender refuelling jets were banked up behind one another waiting to land.
Halliwell’s pilot taxied towards the special arrivals area where a black Bell Jet Ranger helicopter was waiting, rotors already turning. A hundred metres away, close to the orange cross that marked the spot onto which Colonel Mike Munro would nudge Air Force One’s nose wheel, two more of the President’s pilots were already strapped in and going through their pre-flight checks on Marine One, the President’s olive-green and white helicopter. Her much bigger fixed wing sister was only 20 minutes out of Travis and had commenced her descent toward finals.
CHAPTER 30
C urtis O’Connor glanced at the clock on his wall. It was just before 6 p. m and he was contemplating an early night when a quiet buzzing on his private line interrupted his thoughts.
‘I’m on my way,’ O’Connor said, wondering what crisis had arisen that had the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations, Tom McNamara summoning him. Tom McNamara was the second most senior officer in the Agency and was responsible for running all of the CIA’s spies and foreign clandestine operations, including the insertion of CIA paramilitary teams into places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and more recently Iran.
‘Come in, buddy, have a seat,’ McNamara said, motioning Curtis towards one of two comfortable brown leather couches. The leather on each of them was torn and cracked. The furniture had been scheduled for replacement more than once, but each time Tom had told ‘those wankers down in the Director of Administration’s Office’ that he’d garrote the first person who laid a hand on them. His exploits in the field in his younger days were already the subject of folklore at Langley, with more than one foreign agent known to have breathed his last as McNamara had silently wielded a short length of chicken wire. The furniture had stayed put. The seal of the CIA – an eagle atop a shield with a sixteen pointed compass star representing intelligence from all points of the globe converging on Langley – hung proudly on the wood-panelled wall behind a desk covered in crimson files. The DDO’s powerful reading light was off and the office was lit by a number of elegant table lamps.
‘I’ve just come from the Director’s office,’ Tom McNamara said, rolling his eyes up towards the seventh floor and taking the other couch. The DDO had a big, round face, grey hair which he kept very short and piercing blue eyes. Weighing in at 120 kilograms, the ex-Marine had a huge barrel chest, and for such a big man, he moved with surprising grace and agility. ‘The new wunderkind’s been on the phone to the Vice President,’ he added disparagingly. Curtis and Tom had worked together for many years, both in the field and at Langley, and they enjoyed an easy rapport. The deep trust between the two men had been forged in adversity. Each would trust the other with his life but neither man trusted the new Director who’d been sent over by the White House to ‘sort the joint out’.
‘There are a couple of issues. For whatever reason the Vice President seems to be obsessed with China and the security of the Olympics. I’ve explained to the Director that we’ve already established an intelligence task force which will work closely with the US Olympic Committee to protect our athletes and officials, but I’d like you to sit in on their meetings when you can, just to keep an eye on things.’
Curtis grinned. Given his current workload, provided they met between midnight and dawn, that shouldn’t be a problem, but he said nothing as his DDO continued.
‘More importantly the brains trust down in Pennsylvania Avenue have hatched a brilliant new scheme to carry out research on biological weapons and you and I are about to get the football.’
‘Sounds like a hospital pass to me,’ Curtis observed, becoming serious.
‘Got it in one. The program’s black, so it’ll be run out of your office. If it fucks up you and I will wear it. It’s got that slime ball Esposito’s name written all over it.’
‘USAMRIID or CDC?’
‘Neither. Ever since that memo on phone tapping ordinary citizens hit the media, they’re paranoid about leaks. It’ll be done in that new lab we built for the Vice President’s mate down in Atlanta at Halliwell Pharmaceuticals. What do we know about this guy?’
‘One of my old buddies, Rob Bauer down at the FBI in Atlanta, has an interesting file on Halliwell,’ Curtis replied. Despite the intense public rivalry between the FBI and the CIA, true professionals like Deputy Director McNamara and Officer O’Connor had contacts that flew under the radar of the raging jealousies at the top. Those contacts sliced through red tape in an instant and were worth their weight in gold to both sides.
‘Outwardly Halliwell’s a pillar of the Southern Baptist Church, all-American boy made good, turned a piss- farting little biotech into a multinational, darling of the Wall Street set and the brokers worship the ground he walks on.’
‘And?’ Tom McNamara asked with a grin.
‘He’d assassinate his grandmother if he thought there was a buck in it. Right now he’s pushing on with that court case in Africa to prevent cheap generic AIDS drugs being distributed, even though the rest of Big Pharma have backed off. He’s also trying to dominate the AIDS drug market in China.’
‘Wife and kids?’
‘The kids are pretty smart; they left home first chance they got,’ Curtis replied cynically. ‘His wife Constance is as boring as bat shit and she’s a pillar of the church what’s-his-face runs, that crackpot evangelist mate of the President.’
