The Protégé (20 page)

GILLETTE SAT
on his patio, looking out over Central Park from high above. It was a beautiful early autumn evening. Crystal clear with a chill and the wisp of wood smoke wafting over Manhattan as people with fireplaces took advantage of the first wave of cool temperatures.

He reached for the cordless phone on the table and dialed Marilyn’s number. He didn’t need the piece of paper anymore. He’d looked at it so many times, he could have dialed the number backward.

“Hello.”

“Marilyn?”

“Yes?” Her voice was already shaking.

“It’s Christian Gillette.”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

And then he heard sobs as he’d never heard sobs before.

PAUL POINTED
a finger into Wright’s cheek on the darkened street in front of his apartment building. “That better not ever happen again, you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I told you, goddamn it. I have to know where Gillette is at all times.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All times!”

“Yes, sir.” This was way out of control, Wright thought. Maybe he ought to go down to the local precinct and turn himself in. In the long run, he’d probably be safer.

11

“
DO YOU MIND
if I smoke?” Russell Hughes asked, reaching for a pack of Marlboros in his jacket pocket.

Gillette and Wright were sitting in Hughes’s office, going through the Apex portfolio company by company with him, asking the tough questions. Gillette wanted to squeeze as much information out of Hughes as possible before he sank a billion dollars into another private equity firm. There was always the chance Hughes would slip up and give away something about Apex that would make Gillette back off the deal.

The truth was, Gillette hated cigarette and cigar smoke, though he liked the smell of a pipe—his father had smoked a pipe. But Hughes was under a huge amount of stress, so he allowed the man his vice. “It’s all right.”

Wright’s cell phone went off suddenly, ejecting a loud, shrill whistle throughout the room.

“Jesus, David,” Gillette snapped, “turn that damn thing off.”

Wright already had it out of his pocket and was staring at the number. “I’ve gotta take this,” he muttered, getting up and hurrying from the room.

Gillette watched him go, irritated. Wright still had a thing or two to learn.

“Can we talk, just the two of us?” Hughes asked when Wright was gone. Hughes’s eyes were rimmed with fatigue. “I’m sure David’s a bright young man, but I’d rather report to you. We’re closer in age, and I feel like I—”

“Russell,” Gillette said gently, “save it. David’s going to be running Apex. Full stop. Got it?”

Hughes nodded.

“I know this is difficult for you, but that’s the way it’s going to be.”

“Okay,” Hughes agreed quietly.

Gillette picked up the next company file off the stack—marked “XT Pharmaceuticals”—and began browsing through it. “This is one of your better investments,” he said, not waiting for Wright to come back in. He had a lunch at one, it was already past eleven, and they still had twelve companies to go through. “It’s a solid company, growing, with good cash flow.”

“It’s a
very
solid company,” Hughes agreed. “So solid even the damn government’s interested in it.”

Gillette stopped scanning. “What do you mean?”

“There were some guys up from D.C. a while ago who wanted to use it as a cutout for a new technology they were trying to hide. Typical DOD clandestine ops kind of crap, but I called my contact at the CIA, and he said to stay away from them. I’m glad I did, too. They wanted me to sign some bullshit confidentiality agreement that could have put me in San Quentin doing hard time for the rest of my life if I’d sneezed the wrong way.”

Gillette stared at Hughes for a few moments, then looked down, trying not to give away his shock. “What’s ‘a while ago’?”

“Few weeks.”

“Did they tell you what kind of technology it was?”

“They made it seem like the biggest thing since electricity, but they didn’t get into any specifics. It’s probably all just hype, but like I said, I called my guy at the CIA and that was that. So I’m not sure if it was real or not.”

“How do you have a CIA contact?”

Hughes fidgeted uncomfortably. “Look, I’m not supposed to tell anyone about this. It’s classified.”

“You want to keep your job?” Gillette asked. He didn’t like to be this way, but he needed the information. Now.

Hughes nodded.

“Then tell me.”

“Look, you can’t say
anything
about this.”

At that moment, Wright opened the door and stepped back into the office.

“David,” Gillette said, “leave us alone for a few minutes.”

“What?”

“I’ll let you know when you can come back in.”

“Chris, I—”

“David!”

Wright stalked out, shutting the door hard.

Gillette turned back around to face Hughes. “Tell me about your CIA contact, Russell.”

Hughes took a measured breath. “Are you familiar with cutouts?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s why I have a CIA contact. One of our portfolio companies is a cutout.”

“Which one?”

“The last one on the list.” Hughes pointed at a piece of paper that had the names of every Apex portfolio company on it. “The information technology company.”

“Omega IT?” Gillette asked.

“Yeah. Omega does IT consulting for financial institutions all over the world, including the Middle East. While the Omega people are installing and updating computer systems, they add a few extra options the customers don’t know about. Options that let people in Washington watch money come and go.”

“To track terrorist money,” Gillette spoke up. “Probably al-Qaeda in particular.”

“You got it.”

“But why would Middle Eastern banks let a U.S. company do their IT work? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“They don’t know it’s a U.S. company. With the CIA’s help, we’ve set up an elaborate corporate structure that winds its way through dummy relationships in Belgium and France and hides the ultimate ownership very effectively.”

“I want to talk to your CIA contact,” Gillette said tersely.

“If you’re going to buy Apex, you’ll
have
to talk to him. About Omega. In fact, he’ll demand to talk to
you.
I’ll set that meeting up right before we close the deal, when we’re certain everything’s a go.”

What Gillette wanted to talk to Hughes’s CIA contact about had nothing to do with Omega IT. “I don’t want to wait that long. Set it up as soon as possible.”

“
WHAT HAPPENED
back there, Chris?” Wright demanded. They were heading back to Everest in the limousine. “Why did you make me stay out of the room for the rest of the meeting?”

“Russell and I got into some sensitive issues about a few of the Apex employees. Severance. Stuff like that.”

“Shouldn’t I be in on those discussions if I’m going to run Apex?” Wright asked, his voice rising.

“Calm down, David, there’s no reason to get upset.”

“I’m not getting upset, I’m just trying to understand. Am I still going to run Apex?”

Gillette said nothing as he scrolled through e-mails on his Blackberry. At this point, he needed to have direct contact with Hughes, and he didn’t want Wright trying to find out why.

“Chris?”

Still nothing.

“Chris?”

“Russell is going to report to me for a while, until we’ve had a chance to understand exactly what we have at Apex.”

“
What the hell happened
? I thought I was the man.”

“I made a decision, David. I’ll let you know when you’re going to take over. It’ll probably be a few weeks. For now, concentrate on Hush-Hush.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, “I’ll concentrate all right.”

“
CHRIS.
”

Gillette looked up from his computer at Debbie. “Yes?”

“I know this sounds crazy, but there’s a woman in the lobby who says she’s your mother.”

After talking for two hours last night, Gillette and Marilyn McRae had ended their conversation with a promise to get together next week. He’d told her he’d come to Los Angeles after finishing his business in Las Vegas and they’d have dinner. So it couldn’t be her. Gillette stepped out from behind his desk and started to follow Debbie to the lobby. Then it hit him. Lana.

“
HEY, POP.
” Christian rose from the lumpy living room couch and moved toward his frail grandfather. Pop was shuffling in from the kitchen, pulling his blue oxygen tank behind him like a long-in-the-tooth hound dog on a leash. A lifetime in the coal mines of western Pennsylvania and thirty years of Camel no-filters had left him without much in the way of lungs.

“Let me help you,” Christian offered, holding out his arm and guiding the old man to the couch. “How you feeling today?” They sat beside each other, Christian’s palm resting atop his grandfather’s gnarled fingers.

“I’m fine,” the old man answered wearily, his voice like sandpaper on plywood. “I’m glad you came.”

“Of course, Pop.”

“I don’t know how much time I have.”

Mary Desmond bustled in from the kitchen carrying a tray of sandwiches and drinks. “Oh, you’ll probably outlive me
and
Christian,” she said, setting the tray on the coffee table in front of the couch and giving Christian a warm smile. “Pop thinks every day’s his last,” she blustered in a loud voice that belied her tiny frame. Mary was in her late fifties and lived next door. She often helped around the house with chores the old man couldn’t handle anymore. “But it’s probably good you came when you did,” she admitted, her voice drifting lower as she sat in the chair next to the couch.

Christian was on his way back to the West Coast after graduating from Princeton, planning to put five thousand miles on his Ducati as he zigzagged from New Jersey to California, seeing the great expanse between the country’s mountain chains. He knew the big cities on both coasts pretty well, thanks to traveling with his father, but he didn’t know much about the small towns in between. So he was spending the summer on his bike until the highways and September finally forced him back to the real world. His first stop was this little house on Elmore Lane.

His father had told him it was important to do so quickly. Now he could see why.

“What are your plans?” Pop asked, taking a glass of iced tea off the tray and easing back on the couch with a low moan. “What will you do with yourself now?”

“I’m going to Stanford in the fall to get my MBA. Then I’ll go to Wall Street, be an investment banker.”

“Just like your daddy.”

“Yeah, hopefully at Goldman Sachs.”

“Why
‘hopefully’
?”

“Goldman’s the best investment bank in the world, so it’s tough to get a job there. Everybody wants to work for them.”

Pop took a labored breath. “I don’t know much about Wall Street, but I know your father can get you a job anywhere you want.” The old man shook his head proudly. “He’s a good boy, your father. He loves you very much.”

Christian felt a lump rising in his throat, the same way it had two weeks ago when his father had hugged him after graduation. Under a beautiful azure sky with the smells of freshly cut grass and blooming lilac filling his nostrils and that diploma clutched in his hand. “I know he does,” he murmured.

“How’s that mother of yours?” Pop spoke up, contempt surfacing in his voice.

Christian wondered if Pop knew, if that was the reason for the icy tone. Probably not. It wouldn’t be like his father to share a piece of information like that with anyone—even Pop. “She’s fine.”

“Never did like her,” the old man grumbled.

“
Now,
Pop,” Mary piped up, “Lana’s nice.”

“She never calls or writes.”

“She used to try,” Mary argued, “but you wouldn’t say more than two words to her.”

“Didn’t have anything to say.”

Christian caught his grandfather’s sidelong glance as the phone in the kitchen began to ring.

Mary was out of her chair quickly. “Don’t forget, Christian,” she said over her shoulder, “you promised to call bingo down at the lodge tonight.” She laughed. “You’ll drive all the old biddies crazy.”

Christian smiled. He was looking forward to it. He and Pop were heading down there together. Team Gillette. Mary disappeared around the corner, and he heard her answer the phone. “Well, Pop, what are we going to do today?” he asked, settling back on the couch. “How about we wet a line in that pond down the lane? See if we can fool some bass?”

“Well, maybe in a—”

“Christian,” Mary interrupted. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, a troubled expression creasing her small face. “Nikki is calling from California.”

Christian moved quickly to the kitchen and took the old black receiver from Mary, who returned to the living room. “Hello.”

“Chris, it’s me.”

Something was terribly wrong; he could tell by her tone. “What is it?”

“It’s
Daddy,
” she whispered. “It’s Daddy.”

A blast of blue flame seared Christian’s chest. “What about him?” He turned toward the corner so Pop and Mary couldn’t hear. But somehow he already knew.

“His plane went down a few minutes ago. On takeoff from Orange County.” Nikki could barely get the words out. “He’s gone.”

Christian’s forehead slowly came to rest against the wall.
Gone.
An awful word. He felt tears welling in his eyes, and he shut them tightly and ground his teeth together, trying to stem the tide. But the tears cascaded down his cheeks anyway, over his lip and into his mouth. They were warm and sweet, and the taste only invited more. “Oh, God,” he whispered.

“I gotta go,” Nikki said suddenly. “Come home, Chris. Come home.”

He hung up the receiver and brought his hands to his face. The phone rang again, almost right away, and he picked it up, wondering what Nikki had forgotten to say. “Hello?”

“Christian.”

It was Lana.

“I know you just talked to Nikki.”

Lana’s voice was so calm, Christian thought. But that was how she handled everything, good or bad. “Yes, I did.”

“Then you know.”

“Yes.” He bit his lower lip. The last person in the world he wanted to show weakness to was Lana. “Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

“I’ll be all right.” Lana hesitated. “Christian, listen. You and I . . . we’re not . . .” She took a breath. “Christian, things are going to be very hard for us around here, and I’m not sure . . . I don’t think you should be here.”

Christian pressed the phone to his ear, uncertain he’d heard her right. Certain no one could be that cold. “
What?
I don’t think I—”

“Listen,” she said, now with full force, “I need to be alone with my children.”

He heard it plain and clear this time:
my
children. Troy and Nikki. Not you.

“I know what your father always wanted,” she kept going, “but you and I don’t belong to each other.” She paused. “Good-bye, Christian.”

LANA WAS
sitting on one of the plush couches near the receptionist’s desk. The last time he’d seen her was at his father’s funeral sixteen years ago. They hadn’t spoken there or since.