Gatekeeper, p.1
Gatekeeper, page 1
ALSO BY PHILIP SHELBY
Last Rights
Days of Drums
SIMON & SCHUSTER
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Visit us on the World Wide Web: http://www.SimonSays.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
COPYRIGHT © 1998 BY PHILIP SHELBY
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
ISBN: 0-684-86476-2
ISBN: 978-0-684-86476-1
eISBN: 978-0-684-86476-1
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author wishes to thank Regional Security Officer Jeff Pursell (Los Angeles) for his expertise and assistance.
Any deviation from strict procedure is wholly the author’s responsibility.
It should also be noted that, regarding the United States Embassy in Paris, certain details, along with surrounding landmarks, have been slightly altered for security reasons.
Philip Shelby
THIS BOOK IS FOR MY WIFE, Daphne, WHOSE HEART IS THE LIGHT OF MY LIFE.
LOVE ALWAYS, P.
PROLOGUE
MAY • THE HOUSE was built from the land: river rock, black slate, western red cedar. Its angled planes and linear facades suggested a hunting lodge, yet up close the entire structure seemed to dissolve into the landscape. The knoll on which it stood was surrounded by towering firs that shielded it from view from the air. The windows had been treated to eliminate glare.
All the principal rooms had a direct line of sight onto the private dirt road that dead-ended at the driveway leading up to the house. The two-and-a-half-mile road, deliberately left rutted, and near impassable after first snowfall, connected to a two-lane county blacktop. The blacktop meandered around the shores of Coeur d’Alene Lake for three miles before reaching the town of the same name.
The host was standing on the deck, which ran the length of the house. He was in his sixties, short, barrel chested, favoring the wide stance of a mariner on a schooner’s bridge. His hands were large and callused, like those of a fisherman who still used the nets. His tanned, deeply lined face had a two-day growth of whiskers, and his blue eyes, set in crinkly pouches of weathered skin, rounded out the nautical image. In point of fact, the host had an aversion to the ocean, although he had swum and canoed in Coeur d’Alene Lake so often that he could chart its shoreline from memory.
Feeling the wind stir the trees, the host raised the zipper of his down vest, beneath which he wore a red flannel shirt, the fabric tight over his forearms and biceps; below that, coarse, faded jeans and old but carefully tended hiking boots. The host knew that down at the lake, in the full brilliance of the sun, the temperature was ten degrees warmer; here in the north Idaho woods, the remnants of a cold, wet spring lingered into the first days of May.
The host could see for a half mile down the road. No sign of the vehicle yet, but he knew it was coming. There … a curl of dust rising above the tree line.
Over the years the host had had many visitors. All but a few were lifelong friends who shared his passion for fishing and hunting, or who came to enjoy the quiet and solitude. The exceptions were different. The one coming now was different.
Like the others, he had been instructed to fly into Spokane International Airport, forty miles away in Washington State. Better the hour’s drive from there to Coeur d’Alene than to land at the town’s airport, where private aircraft attracted unwanted attention.
Like the others, he was making his way without his retinue. Coming alone was the host’s nonnegotiable rule. It assured privacy and gave credence to the visitor’s ostensible reason for being here: a weekend of peace and quiet, perhaps an overnight horseback ride into the mountains. The breathtaking natural beauty of the area and its exclusive resort was a lure to wealthy sportsmen, who fished the lake and played golf on the spectacular waterfront course. Its name, associated with rough-hewn luxury, never aroused suspicion.
The host saw a flash of blue between the trees. Then a Jeep Cherokee came around the bend. The driver was going too fast, catching every pothole, the fat tires throwing up gouts of mud.
They’re always in such a hurry.
The host knew all there was to know about his visitor, about the questions that were streaming through his mind—the where and when and, most of all, how. Because like all others who had come before him, this visitor was carrying a problem that had defied solution. The host knew how galling it was for such men to have their vast resources and influence stymied. He could chart the inevitable downward spiral of their emotions, from indignation to anger to rage. He knew how spent and desperate they were when at last they made their pilgrimage to Coeur d’Alene.
The Cherokee turned up the driveway, growling in low gear. The host watched it rock to a stop in front of his house. The door opened, and a pair of shoes stepped onto the muddy gravel drive. City shoes. The visitor must have driven directly from Spokane Airport without bothering to stop at the Coeur d’Alene resort to register and change.
The host stepped into the living room. From a crystal decanter on the heavy pine sideboard he poured two snifters of his private, very old reserve cognac. At the foot of the staircase a door opened, closed. Leather soles brushed against the stiff bristles of the doormat, then slapped softly up the peg-and-groove stairs. The visitor reached the landing and looked around. His uncertainty dissolved into a tentative smile when he saw the host, his arm outstretched, fingers cradling a snifter.
CITY SHOES. CITY CLOTHES. CITY MAN.
Three thousand dollars’ worth of tailor-chalked, hand-sewn Dunhill ultralight wool. Charvet shirt. Sulka tie. Cologne blended by Armitrage of Jermyn Street. Sixty-two years old, tall, patrician, with the blood pressure and muscle tone of a man twenty years younger.
He sat in an ancient club chair in front of the stone fireplace, one long leg draped over the other, the pant crease perfect. The balloon snifter was cupped in his palm, the glass stained henna where the cognac had slid toward his lips. The long draft seemed to have steadied him.
“I’ve been expecting you,” the host said.
The visitor frowned. “Yes. The arrangements were made a while back—”
“I don’t mean today, now. Just in general.”
“Really?”
The host shrugged. “The election’s six months away. You’ve been trailing the president by a consistent seven percent in the polls.” He paused. “Some people are beginning to think they chose the wrong candidate at the convention. When that kind of feeling spreads, campaign contributions start to dry up. No one invests in a lame duck.”
The host laid this out in a matter-of-fact tone, implying no judgment for or against the man. Still, he was not surprised to see color rise to the visitor’s cheeks.
The visitor rotated his wrist lightly, swirling the cognac in the balloon, staring into it like a Gypsy seeking to divine the future in the whorls of tea leaves.
“I’ve spent forty years working for this,” he said. “The party owes me.”
“But can you collect?”
“I’m trying.” Both men knew that this was the first time in four attempts that he’d won the nomination. “No one’s going to give me another shot. Either I go all the way to the White House or I’m history.”
True enough, the host thought. His visitor had been a distinguished presence on the political landscape for more than forty years, as a representative, a governor, and finally as a long-standing senior senator. Divorced once, many years ago, he was now married to a Washington insider whose name was a staple in the media. With all that coverage there hadn’t been even a hint that the senator ever stepped out on his wife. Quite the contrary—in public they made a loving, supportive couple, as they had for twenty-two years.
Nor did he abuse the power and perquisites of his office. Certainly he was conscientious enough to ship substantial amounts of pork back to his home state, and he accepted enough special interest money to keep his electoral war chest topped off. But he had a nose for the treacherous and the corrupt who could bring him down and sidestepped them even when it cost him money or votes or both.
What set him apart, the host mused, was not only his dress, speech, and bearing, but the way he wore his life. Decently.
Which was a lot more than could be said for the scandal-plagued, morally bankrupt incumbent, whose legal and ethical problems had created a leadership vacuum. The country could not afford much more of him. It wasn’t just the anemic stock market, or the disastrous flip-flops on foreign policy. It was the malaise that was eating into the nation’s fabric like dry rot.
The host considered himself a patriot. As such, it was his duty to come to the assistance of his country. Which was why the visitor had been allowed to come here. He never suspected it, but he and the host had a confluence of interests.
“So … Can you get me the seven points—maybe a few more?”
The words sounded lighthearted but beneath them the host heard the trilling of nerves.
“The price is ten million.”
To his credit, the visitor laughed. “You really were expecting me. You’ve got this all figured out.”
“You wouldn’t be here ot
“Price isn’t the issue. It’s what I get for my money.”
“You get exactly what you want. But here’s the thing: You have to know, right now, how badly you want this. Because if I go ahead, there will be no stopping anything that follows.”
Always, a pause followed this declaration. The host could almost feel the visitor pull back, like a horse shying away from a snake. He would be thinking about the dark, circuitous path that had brought him here, remembering his first, tentative reach, what a trusted friend had told him about the host.
Look, if you really want to make a problem go away, there’s a guy you should talk to at Coeur d’Alene. He did some work for me a while back and everything came up roses … No, don’t ask for details. Just mention that you talked to me. You want the number or not?
In the end they all wanted the number.
The host had vetted his prospective visitors carefully. The majority of those who called were politely listened to, then firmly informed that there was nothing the host could do for them.
A lie, of course. In almost every instance there was a solution. But the host’s bare-knuckle consideration was always this: Could the supplicant be trusted? Could he be compromised in such a way as to ensure his trust and silence, forever?
The one sitting before him? Yes. That their agendas happened to overlap was mere coincidence.
But now came the moment when the visitor had to commit. He had to relinquish control of his destiny—an action that went not only against his nature but against every political lesson he had ever suffered.
“There’s no stopping anything that follows,” the host repeated. “Ten million. Five now, deposited in a Liechtenstein bank. The other five upon completion of the contract. That’s one hour after you declare victory in November.”
“Ten million should buy me a few details.”
“It buys you a result. Not the when or how or anything else. You get no reports. You don’t contact me again. Ever. We do not consult or debate.” The host paused. “Are we clear?”
Somewhere in the room, under the floorboards, came a tiny scratching. A field mouse had found a crevice in the foundation.
He saw the fight and the fury in the visitor, that struggle between ambition and conscience, the overwhelming belief in one’s destiny set against consequences that now were only vague and distant notions.
“We can stop right here,” the host said.
The visitor set down the cognac balloon and pushed it away.
“If what you intend to do involves hurting the president, we most certainly stop right here.”
The host smiled. “Never crossed my mind.”
The muscles of the visitor’s face slackened. He nodded slightly, an unconscious gesture.
“How will I know you’re working on this?”
“You’ll know. Now I’m going to ask you one last time: How badly do you want this?”
The visitor glanced down at his lap. “You can’t possibly imagine.”
The host knew exactly what possessed the visitor at this moment: a loss of innocence, shaved off like a curl from the limb of morality that over the years had been whittled smaller and smaller.
Mies van der Rohe, perhaps the greatest architect of the century, had missed the point: It wasn’t God who was in the details, but the devil.
There was a moral here: Always check the fine print.
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS TOO early in the season for the sirocco but the wind dashing against the fortress harbor of Marseille was hot and dry. It carried a North African legacy of grit and dust, the odor of persimmons and decaying ocean catch. It glazed the eye and embedded splinters of homicidal thoughts in a population that moved like an uneasy, suspicious herd.
Rue de la Colombe in the east harbor was a shabby affair, narrow, with overflowing gutters and dog-turd-stained, slippery sidewalks. The peeling facades of the buildings gave the impression of industrial leprosy.
Most of the market stalls belonged to Algerians and Tunisians and were shuttered for the midday respite. Cutting through the stink of cat piss and rotting produce was the sweet smell of burning hashish. The high-pitched wail of Arab songs on radios drifted through the cracks of doors and windowsills warped by the sea air.
There was only one café on the street, a dark hole with a bar by the door and five tables in the back. The owner-bartender was an old harki, an Algerian who had fought with the French against Algerian independence. His one good eye was focused on the small television perched above the bar. Olympique de Marseille, the local soccer team, was humiliating the visiting English team.
The only customer was also watching the game. Not because he followed the team or even the sport but because the young waiter, a Kabyle, was pouring thé de menthe. The teapot, filled with sugar-laden boiling water and mint leaves, was held four feet above the cup. The waiter dipped its narrow spout and deftly poured a stream into a glass decorated with faded gold trim. The customer remained motionless until the ceremony was concluded.
The waiter set down the teapot, slipped the bill across the table, and took one step back, waiting. The customer made as though to look up, then hesitated, and instead dug into his coat pocket and produced a fistful of greasy coins. He set them down on the table and carefully counted out the francs, setting aside the centimes. He added up the francs, then pushed a few of the centimes into the pile.
The waiter swept the coins off the table and walked away. A few seconds later the customer heard the ring of his tip being tossed contemptuously into a glass jar.
The customer leaned forward and cupped the glass of tea like an old man would, with both hands. Hunched over, he looked even older than at first glance. His hair was long, iron gray, streaked with scalp oil. His face was the color of rotting pomegranate, a brown sheen to the skin that had worked itself into the wrinkles on his cheeks and forehead. The glass shook slightly as he brought it up to tobacco-stained teeth.
In spite of the heat he wore a coat, the frayed cloth cut long with wide lapels. Over the left breast was a tattered three-colored service bar. Only in Marseille would men of his generation and experience recognize it as the symbol of active duty in Algeria.
Except that Algeria was one of the few places on earth where he hadn’t fought, because he detested it and the whole of North Africa.
The customer reached for the newspaper he had set aside while the waiter had served tea. His hands were large and fine boned, the fingers long and delicate but powerful. But all anyone ever noticed was the dirt under his cuticles.
The customer opened the conservative Parisian daily Le Figaro. The rustle of newsprint could not be heard over the blare of the television.
Nor could today’s edition of the International Herald Tribune, tucked into Le Figaro’s centerfold, be seen.
He bought the paper every day and always kept it hidden away in a French paper because it wasn’t in his interest to let people know he read or understood English. That English was, in fact, his mother tongue. Every day he came to this café for a late lunch, assured that other patrons would have come and gone. He always took this table in the corner, his back to the wall. Ordered couscous or merguez, a lamb dish, drank his tea, and read his paper. He’d overheard speculation between the bartender and the waiter as to what he was. The former said a vet, the latter insisted he was a clochard, a bum who panhandled enough coins for one meal a day.
The customer took no offense since both were wrong.
The Tribune was open to the international page. The lead—and only—story was about a U.S. foreign aid bill that was deadlocked in the House of Representatives. The rest of the page was devoted to the international real estate market and classifieds.
The subheadings in the classifieds began with Announcements, which included the times for upcoming Rosh Hashanah services to be held at the Mouvement Juif Libéral de France Synagogue; several prayers would be recited in English. Legal services in Huntington Beach, California, offered one-day certified divorces. Isle of Man trustees had 750 nameplate companies to shelter income. Funding problems for upstart companies would be a thing of the past if one were to contact Bancor of Asia.
After fifteen years the ads had become depressingly familiar. The names changed; the scams and false promises, never.
