The Successor (15 page)

When class was over, he’d subtly motioned for her to come up to the lectern and, while everyone else was filing out, asked her to lunch. Told her directly in his smooth drawl that he’d never seen a woman so beautiful on the outside and wanted to find out if she was the same on the inside. She’d hesitated, not exactly certain what he meant, aware that she might be naïve and not realize he was referring to sex and not matters of the heart. Then he’d smiled warmly and touched his chest, reassuring her. She’d melted.

It had been the most intense four months of her life. Lloyd had flown her to Dallas almost every Friday from the University of Florida. Wining and dining her all weekend until that long kiss at the airport on Sunday afternoons, tears streaming down both cheeks as she turned and ran for the plane back to Gainesville. But they’d never made love. He’d asked once—at the airport, as they were saying good-bye one Sunday—and she’d said no, said she wasn’t ready. She’d figured he would never call again after that, but she’d figured wrong. Five minutes after she’d gotten back to her dorm room from the airport, the phone was ringing and it was just as it had always been. He’d never asked her to have sex with him again—until just before a delicious chocolate torte dessert was served at that state dinner a few months ago. That time, she’d said yes.

Four months into her relationship with Dorsey, her father had died of a heart attack. She’d dropped out of the University of Florida immediately to run the family insurance brokerage business, and she and Lloyd had fallen out of touch. Not that Lloyd hadn’t tried to keep the fire burning. He had, even flying to Philadelphia one weekend, but she’d been too distracted to be any fun. The next thing she knew she was thirty and Lloyd had been married to Betty for seven years and had two children. It was still the biggest regret of her life. Maybe Allison was right, maybe Lloyd Dorsey was the reason she’d never gotten married. Maybe she’d always wanted to be married to Lloyd. Maybe she
still
wanted to be married to him. But that was impossible now. Lloyd had promised her in Washington that night he was going to get divorced, but he hadn’t said anything more about it since.

“Why does Lloyd want me to help him?” she asked, still awash in her memories. “Why has he asked me to arrange this whole thing? Every time I’ve come down I’ve been expecting the whole story, but I haven’t gotten it. Even in bed.” There was no reason to dance around the fact that she spent nights at Lloyd’s house in Georgetown. Bixby had given her a ride from the White House to Dorsey’s house after the state dinner that night a few months ago. He knew everything Dorsey did. Almost. “What’s this all about?”

“Senator Dorsey wants you to help him expose something President Wood is involved with.” Bixby’s voice was low.

She glanced up. Finally. “What?”

“Cuba,”
Bixby replied, his voice strengthening. “Basically, helping the Cuban military lead a coup against the old regime. Armed aggression using U.S. forces.”

Graham gazed at Bixby for a few moments, her eyes transfixed.
“Are you serious?”
She already knew all this, but she’d always been a good actress. You had to be at board meetings.

Bixby nodded. “Yeah. Amazing, huh?”

“How did Lloyd come up with this one?”

“A deep throat in the Pentagon. It’s one of the most sensitive projects ever parked over there, but it’s parked in a cave in the basement of D-ring so it’s all but invisible. Most of the people working on it don’t even know they are. The senator’s contact couldn’t tell him much, but what he did say was incredible. Apparently—”

Graham held up her hand, cutting Bixby off. “Is Lloyd trying to use this thing to get President Wood caught up in some kind of scandal?”

Bixby hesitated. “Yes. As you might imagine, there are others involved as well.”

She furrowed her brows. “I don’t understand how that’s going to work. I think Lloyd’s barking up the wrong tree.”

Bixby seemed perplexed, as if his entire understanding of the world had suddenly been called into question. “Why?”

It seemed obvious to her and she couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t be to him. He wasn’t likable, but he was savvy. Maybe he was just too close to the situation to see it. “The American public knows we’ve been trying to take down the Communist government in Cuba for fifty years. They just assume every president since Kennedy’s been trying to do it, whether it’s been advertised or not.”

Bixby bit his lip.

Obviously because he wasn’t sure how much to say, Graham could tell. That in itself told her how secretive this thing was. Usually Bixby knew exactly what to say—and what
not
to say.

“Sometime early this year or late last,” Bixby began, “President Wood signed a top secret directive giving a small cell inside the United States military permission to covertly assist and support a senior Cuban army leader with taking down the regime, with leading a revolt against the Communist Party. A
very
senior general, code-name Zapata. In turn, this general is working with a small group of senior Cuban officials in the important government ministries who will take over high-profile roles in the new government if the coup succeeds. President Wood gave this U.S. military cell the authority to covertly support the general and the secret group of officials with the coup. That coordination and support includes the possibility of a U.S. invasion of the island immediately after the coup is initiated to make certain Zapata’s people are successful. At the very least there will be U.S. Special Forces people on the ground in Cuba when the revolt starts. Rangers, Seals, etc.”

“I still don’t see how that puts President Wood in hot water,” Graham argued. “At least until something happens.” She thought about it for a few moments. “Probably not even then. Heck, he might even be a bigger hero afterward.”

Bixby looked around, then reached down and picked a blade of grass. “There’s an assassination list, approved by President Wood himself.”

“But—”

“That list includes civilian targets,” Bixby went on. “The top people at the important ministries and at the Central Bank of Cuba, most of whom are hard-core Party members. The plan is to kill them in the first few days of the coup so the next level down—the people Zapata is working with within the ministries—can take over and not have to worry at all about the regime regrouping or about reprisals.”

Graham ran her fingers through her hair. It was one thing to approve a plan to work with Cuba’s military to engineer a coup.
Quite
another to approve assassinations of civilians, even if they were members of a Communist regime that had been committing awful atrocities against the Cuban people for half a century.

“It’s actually a crime to do that now,” Bixby spoke up. “For the president to approve assassinations of any kind. Not to mention civilian assassinations.”

She knew that. It was a function of the new politically correct landscape where people thought they had the right to know everything their government was doing. Which, in her opinion, was wrong. It would be just like every shareholder knowing everything she was doing. Sometimes you couldn’t tell people how you made the money because then you wouldn’t be able to make it. Some things had to be done in the dark and you just hoped they never came into the light. “Do you have proof President Wood has done that? Ordered assassinations?”

“We’re working on it. We’re almost there. Our contact inside the Pentagon is scared to death to say anything, and he should be. Even more scared to make a copy of a presidential assassination order. I think you can understand. We think he’ll get us what we need, but we’re trying to find other ways to get confirmation of it, too. That’s part of the reason I’m here.”

She had a feeling she knew what was coming.

“We think President Wood has recruited a very prominent individual from the private sector, as well. A man who—”

“Christian Gillette,” she broke in.

Bixby gazed at her, dumbfounded. “How did you know?”

Graham’s expression turned grim. “I have friends on both sides of the aisle in Washington.” Actually, Senator Dorsey had told her himself that the man he was interested in was Christian. He’d told her the night she’d been at his town house months ago, and several times since. That he needed to follow Christian closely, and he needed Graham to help him with that. That he couldn’t arrange it himself—or have Bixby arrange it—because if that was uncovered, he’d be expelled from Congress for spying on a U.S. citizen. But he’d told her in no uncertain terms that he needed to know everything Christian did before he did it, everywhere he went before he went. “You don’t get where I’ve gotten without that kind of help, especially when you operate in a very regulated business like insurance.”

“Well, of course but…” His voice trailed off.

She appreciated that he didn’t press her for how she’d gotten her information. It was a sign of respect, probably newfound because she’d known about Christian working with President Wood before he’d told her. “A lot of people in this country think President Wood is doing a damn good job, Grant.”

“No one can look at what he’s planning to do in Cuba and approve of it,” Bixby said. “You can’t target civilians for assassination, you just can’t. And the order is very clear, according to our contact. These people are not to survive the coup. There’s to be no chance of them somehow reforming and retaking control. No trials for human rights violations because there won’t be anyone to try.”

“Sometimes a president has to do things the public doesn’t approve of.”

“You mean like introduce legislation to force big insurance companies to offer health insurance to inner-city populations for next to nothing.”

Graham had been watching the tractor in the distance as it moved around the field, slowly making the uncut rectangle in the middle smaller and smaller. “What are you talking about?” she asked, catching a triumphant tone in his voice.

“President Wood has been quietly working with several congressmen from inner-city districts in New York, Houston, and Los Angeles on this legislation for the last three months. It’s designed to boost his support with Hispanics without pissing off whites. At least, not in the short term,” Bixby said. “He’s already got the black vote, of course, but he’s trying hard to increase his support with the biggest minority group. He didn’t get as much of the Hispanic vote last time around—they usually do vote conservative. But he’s trying to change that. And he won’t really piss off whites with this thing. The only whites who’ll know what’s going on are the executives at the insurance companies. Like you,” Bixby said, pointing at her. “I mean, ultimately you’ll end up raising your rates on everybody else to pay for this, which President Wood knows. They’ll understand how bad it is when their premiums go up or companies start charging them for their health benefits because carriers are suddenly charging so much. But by that time Wood will already be reelected. It won’t matter then. He won’t care what whites think at that point.”

“Are you serious about this?”

“Absolutely. I can confirm that President Wood is working with these guys, a couple of black guys he’s gotten close to in Congress, to introduce the legislation. We’ll show you the preliminary draft. We lifted it out of one of their offices last week.”

“How far along is the president with this thing?”

“Another couple of weeks and he’ll announce it. That’s so there’s enough time to get it passed and start implementing it before the election.”

“What are we talking here?” Graham asked. “What kind of premiums?”

“I believe I heard that under the proposed plan a single mom will be able to buy full coverage with only minor deductibles for a hundred dollars a month. Each kid she has will be covered for just another twenty-five dollars.”

“What?”
That was absurd. No one could offer health insurance at those rates and make any money, especially to people in the inner city. “The carriers simply won’t do it.”

“They won’t have a choice,” Bixby retorted. “If they don’t comply, they’ll have to pay a penalty tax of some sort, which will be just as expensive as offering the coverage or not be allowed to operate in the state in which they refuse to make the offering available. Not be able to sell
any
insurance in that state. Not just be barred from selling health insurance.”

Graham thought it over. The insurance industry would fight it hard, but ultimately there’d be a compromise—or Wood might just win flat out. Plus, he had the majority in both houses at this point. However it turned out, the president would gain a lot of points with inner-city voters, especially, as Bixby had suggested, Hispanics. “What does President Wood want Christian to do for him as far as Cuba goes?” she asked.

“You don’t know?”

She shrugged. “How would I?” She was still digging, still taking advantage of the fact that Bixby and Dorsey hadn’t gotten their stories straight.

“You just told me you knew they were working together.”

“All I know is that Christian met with President Wood not long ago and that the whole thing was very hush-hush.” Dorsey
hadn’t
told her this. This had come from another source—the one Dorsey wanted to know about. “Even how he got to wherever they met was kept quiet. I don’t know exactly when it was or where it was, and I didn’t know it was about Cuba.” Graham could tell it was killing Bixby not to ask her how she knew Christian had met with Wood. “It’s the first time they’ve met since Wood almost chose him to be the vice president.” She knew Bixby was aware of that—Christian almost being Wood’s VP—as this was another thing Lloyd had told her. And at this point she was really just messing with Bixby. Now he couldn’t figure out what Dorsey was telling him and what Dorsey was telling her. It was beautiful. “How did Lloyd find out about Wood almost choosing Christian to be his vice president?” This would tell her how much they really wanted her help.

“Are you going to help us?”

“I don’t know, Grant. Christian’s made a lot of money for me at Everest over the last ten years. I get the feeling he may get caught up in what you’re trying to do to President Wood. If you could prove he was somehow passing information about the coup and the assassinations to this general, to this Zapata character, I suppose he’d have a problem as well.”