They walked to the end of the wing and stood looking at
“It’s an election year, Jake.”
“Yeah, it is. But let me tell you something, Tommy. If I were you, I wouldn’t go leaking this around. If it’s real, it’ll come out. But there are elements of a conspiracy here—a conspiracy with a murder, and you guys are in it. We’re not talking about six weeks in minimum security anymore.”
“I know that.”
“So don’t mess with it. Talk to your people, too. Sit on them. This is gonna be . . . this is gonna be difficult.”
Danzig would still be in his office: Jake said good-bye to Merkin and called. Gina picked up the phone.
“It’s Jake, Gina. I gotta see him.”
“He’s done for the day. The president’s back and they’re talking.”
“Get him out when you can. I’m down by the Mall, but I’m headed that way. Clear me through to the blue room.”
“Can you give me a hint?”
“You don’t want to know about it, Gina. Best if you asked the guy about it. I’m really telling you that for your own good, if we all wind up in front of a special prosecutor someday.”
“Uh-oh. I’ll clear you through.”
Jake flagged a cab. Five minutes later, he was checking through White House security, heading for the waiting room. The place was crowded, but nobody spoke, simply sat and stared, poked keys on laptops, or browsed through week-old copies of the
He’d waited twenty-five minutes before an escort touched his sleeve: “Mr. Winter?”
Danzig’s two junior secretaries were gone, their desk lights out. Gina sat in a quiet glow, working with pen on paper. When Jake came in, she touched a desktop button and said, “I hope it’s not that bad.”
“Bill can fill you in,” Jake said.
The green diode came up, and she said, “Go on.”
Danzig was standing behind his desk, frowning at a stack of paper. When Jake came in, he looked up and asked, “Is it bad?”
“It could be,” Jake said. “Really bad.”
Danzig pointed at a chair: “What?”
Jake sat down and said, “A low-level operator for the RNC has been talking to another operator, a guy who worked a bunch of Senate and gubernatorial campaigns, including Bowe’s last campaign. He’s a Bowe guy, now with ALERT! His name is Tony Patterson. He was making tentative inquiries about dropping a scandal on you. On us. Supposedly, a rock-solid accusation against Vice President Landers that would dump him off the ticket. The question he was putting to the RNC was, when to drop the package on us. The timing.”
“Why would he ask the RNC?” Danzig asked. “Why not Bowe? Bowe would know.”
“I don’t know. I do know that he and this woman, the woman at the RNC, were old campaign buddies. So it was partially old-buddy stuff. And there was just a hint that the package might be
“Goddamnit,” Danzig said. They looked at each other in silence for a moment, then Danzig said, “If it’s true, one obvious conclusion would be that Bowe was killed to stop this package from coming out.”
“Yes.”
“That’d be a disaster.” Jake said nothing and Danzig spun his chair away, thinking. Then he said, coming back around, “On the other hand, if we push the investigation into this hypothetical package, and it turns out that Bowe was killed for some completely unrelated reason, we’re still in trouble. Because once anybody knows about the package, it’s gonna leak.”
Jake nodded. “If the package exists. If it’s not part of some scheme by Bowe, including his disappearance, to mess with us.”
“He had himself killed to mess with us?”
“I haven’t worked out that part,” Jake said.
Danzig smiled, a rueful smile, said, “Ah, God,” twirled again in his chair, came back around, said about the vice president, “Landers is a crooked sonofabitch and we’ve known it from Day One. But he gave us Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa, and we needed them.”
Jake said nothing.
Danzig said, “He’ll deny everything. He’ll ride it right to the end. There’s no way we could go to him and say, ‘Is there anything in your past?’ because we all know there is, and we all know he’ll deny it. Deny, deny, deny.”
