Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (69 page)

“Hey, now look at that!”  Logan exclaimed.  He switched the cursor from a cross to a white box, and put it around one person. “See him? The fat guy with white hair.”

“I see him,” said Alex.  “Is that the closest you can go?”

“Uh huh, the zoom is maxed out.  The only way to get in tighter is to drop some altitude.”

“No, forget it, this is close enough.  Yeah, that’s Senator Kelly.  Man, he’s gotten fat! What a whale!  Don’t get between him and the buffet table,” Alex joked.

“Or the bar.”

“No doubt.”

The radio scanner locked on a strong signal.

“Vedado radio, this is Gulfstream november whiskey zulu, seven niner three, over.”

“Whiskey zulu, this is Vedado radio, over.”

“Vedado, I’m twenty miles east at eighteen thousand feet. Request clearance, over.”

“Gulfstream whiskey zulu, you’re cleared for approach.”

Logan said, “Sounds like we’ve got a late arrival.”

“Yeah, we can check him out in a minute.”  The camera view remained locked on the mansion’s wide terrace.

“Look, is that Senator Montaine?  It sure as hell is!  Your informant was right on the money.  Kelly and Montaine—now there’s a matched pair of bipartisan traitors.”

Alex smirked. “I wish this Pelican came with little Hellfire missiles. I’d throw down some term limits right now.”

“Yeah,
‘You’re fired,’
right?”  Both men laughed, and Logan said, “Hey, who’s the old geezer in the wheelchair, with the funky glasses? Is that who I think it is?”

“I don’t recognize him,” Alex responded.

“Well I do.  That’s Peter Kosimos, I’m almost sure of it.  I didn’t know he was in a wheelchair though—I always thought he was in good shape for his age.”

“What is he, pushing ninety? I guess his staff can keep a secret. Who’s he talking to?”

“Oh my God, it’s Orozco!” exclaimed the FBI agent. “Pascual Orozco is here.”  Orozco was identifiable by his signature long white chin whiskers.

“Wait a minute—I thought he was leading a peasant revolt in Mexico?”

“Well,” Alex remarked sarcastically, “it doesn’t look like he’s hiding out in the Sierra Madre today.  Looks like he’s doing a little networking with the rich and famous instead.”

“And washing the shrimp cocktail down with champagne,” noted the pilot.  “Oh man, he is
so
busted!  This isn’t going to help his image.  Anytime I’ve ever seen a picture of Orozco, he’s wearing blue jeans and a peasant shirt.  Now here he is in a suit, looking like a capitalist pig.  It just doesn’t match his Ho Chi Minh beard.”

Alex laughed, “Ho Chi Minh, or Colonel Sanders?”

“Who’s Orozco talking to? Who’s the couple?”

“I’m not sure, but the man with the wrap-around shades might be our own ambassador to Mexico.  Joe Calavera—he’s one of the President’s old college buddies.  Well, I guess it figures he’d be here.”

Logan asked, “Didn’t Calavera marry a Mexican heiress?”

“Yeah, he did.  Right after he was appointed ambassador.  That must be her in the red sequins.  She’s not much to look at, they call her ‘horseface,’ but she’s worth three hundred
billion
blue bucks.  High society doesn’t get any higher than that! Her family owns about a quarter of Mexico.  I think she’s the second or third richest woman in the world, that’s what I read. So I guess that makes Joe Calavera the world’s richest ambassador.”

“I wonder what their prenuptial contract looks like?” asked Logan. “Become the ambassador to Mexico, and marry a Mexican billionaire.  Or is that billionairess? Is that even a word?  Anyway, it’s pretty friggin’ unbelievable.”

“Truth is stranger than fiction—you can’t make up a story like that,” said Alex.

“I’m
sure
that Ambassador Calavera only has America’s best interests at heart.  No conflict of interest there.”

“Well Logan, I guess it all depends on your point of view.  I mean, if you don’t believe in ‘obsolete concepts’ like independent sovereign nations, what’s the difference who’s paying you?  Joe Calavera’s been a big backer of the North American Community from day one.  I guess he’s just collecting his reward with horse-face.”

“Look, look, here comes Félix Magón!  This keeps getting better and better!  I guess he’s gotten over his grief for Governor Deleon.”  

“Yeah, the official mourning period must be over,” said Alex. “What’s it been, four whole days?”

Even from the current high camera angle, Felix Magón was easily recognizable by his slick black pompadour, wide pineapple face, and stubby physique. Unlike at the Civic Plaza “Rally for Social Justice,” today was apparently not a good day for wearing a traditional Hispanic guyaberra shirt.  Like the rest of the VIP attendees,
el gobernador
was dressed in a dark suit and tie for the Vedado conference.

While they watched, an aide handed Peter Kosimos a cell phone. After a brief phone conversation, Kosimos spoke with the man, and they both left the terrace reception.  Kosimos steered his motorized chair down a long ramp to the driveway in front of the castle, and then into the side of a waiting van.  Once the white van’s own ramp was retracted and its doors were closed, it departed from the Parker mansion with a pair of white SUVs in the front and in the rear.

Logan asked, “Should we follow Kosimos, or stay at the party? Or should we just pack it up and bring the Pelican back? I think we’ve got plenty, don’t you? I mean, we’ve already got the tail numbers, and lots of famous faces.”

Alex pondered this, looking out through the Cessna’s windshield at the surrounding pine forest.  “No, let’s wait until the new Gulfstream lands, and see who’s still coming.”  They had mentally tuned out the intermittent radio chatter from the inbound jet, while they were studying the outdoor luncheon at the Parker mansion.

Logan said, “He should almost be down, let’s take another look at the runway.”

The video image held steady on a medium wide angle, over the tire-marked touchdown point on the eastern end of the runway near the line of hangars.  While they watched, a white corporate jet appeared, and slid across the screen.  A hazy puff of gray smoke briefly appeared as the wheels contacted the tarmac.  Logan clicked the cursor directly on top of the jet, and the camera locked on and followed it to the end of the runway.

A half-dozen SUVs and vans surrounded the jet when it came to a stop at the end of the strip. One black SUV pulled in near the right front side of the Gulfstream, just ahead of the wing.  Alex and Logan watched the cabin hatch open outward and swing down, forming steps.  The border patrol pilot zoomed in to see who the new guest was, who deserved all of the attention and security.  After a pair of bodyguards or aides exited the jet, they saw the still-familiar face of Dave Whitman, the former President of the United States.  Even from a downward-looking camera, at a slant-range of almost two miles, there was no mistaking the unruly shock of gray hair, the puffy face, and the bulbous nose.  He walked between bodyguards to the black SUV, and disappeared inside of it.

Both of the men sitting in the cockpit of the Cessna 210, fourteen miles to the south, were momentarily stunned into silence.  Finally Alex asked, “Is that who I think it is?”

“Ay-up,” replied Logan.  “It’s old Weasel Dave himself.”

“Maybe it’s a stand-in, a double,” Alex suggested.  “Sometimes he uses a double, for security.”

“Then the double is somewhere else today, being seen. You know Whitman can’t miss a party like this.  Now we
can’t
leave—this is too important.”

Alex considered.  They already had a large amount of video evidence stored on the two computer hard drives.  The Pelican could remain aloft for another hour, but the longer they were transmitting radio commands to it, the greater their chance of discovery.  At last he decided, “Let’s follow Whitman back to the castle, and see everybody kiss his fat ass.  That’ll be worth filming, big time.  Then we’ll go.”

“All right, sounds like a plan.  They’ll be there in five minutes.”

However, the black SUV in the center of the little convoy didn’t drive directly to Wayne Parker’s mansion, as they expected it to.  Instead, it forked off onto another asphalt road, leading around the side of the oblong alpine lake between the runway and the mansion.  While they watched, the other vehicles in the convoy slowed and stopped, and the black SUV pulled around them and went ahead by itself.  The other vehicles then followed at a distance.  On the far side of the lake, on a grassy strip between the blue water and the dark green fir trees, the black SUV pulled off to the side of the road, close behind a white full-sized van.  The other vans, pickups and SUVs stayed several hundred yards back from these two vehicles.

The side doors of the white van opened, and a ramp extended outward.  Peter Kosimos steered his motorized chair out of the van, as David Whitman strode up to him, bent over, and the men exchanged prolonged handshakes.  

The former President appeared to speak to his nearest bodyguard, and this man seemed to speak into his wrist.  The other bodyguards immediately began backing away from the two principal VIPs, leaving them alone by the lake, within an outlying ring of security.  

“Can you believe it?” said Alex excitedly, “Dave Whitman and Peter Kosimos, together, in private!  One on one!  Oh, man, this is friggin’ awesome—this is history!”

“I’d give my left nut to hear what they were saying.  Whitman wouldn’t fly in just to say ‘howdy’ to Peter Kosimos.”

“You can’t get any closer?” asked Alex.

“No, the camera’s already at max zoom.  It wouldn’t make any difference anyway—we still wouldn’t be able to hear them.”

“Logan, if we could just get in a little closer, there might be a way to ‘hear’ them.  We could have a lip reader analyze the video, and tell us what they’re saying.”

“Are you serious?”

“Sure, we use lip readers sometimes, it’s court approved.  Sometimes all we have is video.  Sometimes a wire doesn’t work, or the audio tape is unclear.  Could you bring the Pelican down low enough?”

“She’s at 8,000 feet AGL now.  We might be able to get enough resolution from a mile, but it’d be risky.  Is it worth it?”

Alex Garabanda thought about this for a few seconds.  “To find out what Dave Whitman and Peter Kosimos have to say to each other? Yeah, I think so.  Definitely.”

“Okay then, down we go.”  Logan made the appropriate guidance inputs on his laptop, hit enter, and a compressed transmission was sent up to the UAV in milliseconds.  The image of the two men by the lake slowly rotated and grew larger as the Pelican descended in a slow spiral.

***

Former President Dave Whitman
walked beside the electric wheelchair, on a cinder pathway that led along the perimeter of the lake.  Peter Kosimos asked him, “Did you bring the Secret Service here, Mr. President? Was that wise?  Can you trust them?”

“Oh, hell no.  I left them back in California this morning. Wayne provided this bunch, along with the jet.  I’ll be back in LA in two hours. For the record, I’m watching a movie, a private screening at a director’s house.  You know him—Stephen’s covering for me.  Hey, even I can sneak off the radar once in a while.”

“I understand,” sighed Kosimos.  “It’s so difficult to have any private life at all.”

“Tell me about it,” laughed the former President, whose sexual peccadilloes were infamous, and had almost led to him being thrown out of office.

“I must say, Wayne has been absolutely fabulous in arranging this conference,” said Kosimos.  Even thirty years after becoming a United States citizen, the Romanian-born multi-billionaire retained his Eastern European accent, and stilted speech patterns.  Although legally an American, he spent most of each year traveling between the dozen homes and offices his foundations maintained on every continent except Antarctica.  The 87-year-old man’s legs were withered, and his head hung crookedly, but his voice was as clear and strong as his mind.  “Wayne is a prophet who is not appreciated in his own land.  I only hope that one day, he’ll be recognized as the world hero that he is.”  

Speaking confidentially with Kosimos, the former President dropped his usual folksy Southern accent.  “I couldn’t agree more.  Did you know he’s donating this entire ranch to the UN, as a World Conservancy Site? A million acres...” Whitman paused and looked far across the lake, and up at the timber-covered mountains which rose around them. 

“Mr. President, Wayne’s philanthropy is…beyond measure.  His actions in the service of humanity are almost without parallel, but he is only ridiculed and mocked in his own country.  Yet despite all of the attacks on his character, he’s been helping to lay the foundation of global governance for decades now.”

“One could say the same about you, Peter.”

“Oh, you flatter me, Mr. President.”

“Please, call me Dave.”

“Thank you…
Dave
. I must say, I’m quite honored to be on a first-name-basis with the next Secretary General of the United Nations.”

Whitman smiled broadly.  “Now Peter, that’s just a rumor—unless you know something I don’t know.  As an American, I can’t even be nominated for Secretary General.  Nobody from the Permanent Five of the Security Council can.”

“I assure you Dave, that is
not
going to be an impediment.  That rule is unwritten; it was only a gentleman’s agreement among the P-5, from the UN’s first days in San Francisco.  Given the extraordinary financial crisis facing the world today, that unwritten rule will be set aside—and why not? The people of every nation see you not as an American, but as the leading citizen of the entire world!  Mr. President,
Dave
—if there is one man the world needs at this moment in history, it’s you!”

The former President bit his lower lip, attempting to keep a somber face while hiding his delight.  Ever since he had stepped down from the Presidency after his eight years in the White House, it had been his ultimate goal to become the leader of the United Nations.