House Divided. Джек Марс

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СКАЧАТЬ will cost you a million dollars in cash,” Eddie said. “Can you manage that amount? I know your friends can do that and much more. It is an expensive item. I lost two friends today acquiring it.”

      Yisrael smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “A pity. They died for money.”

      “Better than your men,” Eddie said. “Who die for a fairy tale.”

      Suddenly, a tall man in a white kaftan had a gun in his hand. He was a broad man, very dark, with very big hands. He pointed the gun directly at Eddie’s head.

      “Allah forbids this talk!” he shouted, and for an instant Eddie thought he might really pull the trigger. Words. The man would kill and die for mere words. Well, if it happened, at least it would be… abrupt.

      But a second later, all of Eddie’s men had their guns out. The barrel of one was an inch from Yisrael’s scalp. And Yisrael’s men had their guns out. Guns pointed everywhere in the room, a forest of guns. That’s what Eddie got for even trying to talk to these people.

      “Can you pay the money or not?” he said.

      Yisrael sat back and smiled. Now he seemed relaxed. Perhaps he couldn’t relax unless murder was in the air. “I think we are not so poorly off as you suppose. Three hundred and fifty million naira, and you get to keep your head for the time being. It sounds like a wonderful deal for you. You would not enjoy meeting my friends.”

      Eddie shook his head. “Dollars,” he said. “A million American dollars.” He smiled again, but it didn’t feel authentic. People like Yisrael could really ruin a good mood.

      “I’m a citizen of the world. What good are naira to a man like me?”

      CHAPTER TEN

      2:05 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

      The Oval Office

      The White House, Washington, DC

      “I can’t believe we’re about to take this meeting,” Susan said.

      She didn’t say what she thought inside: I want to wring Stone’s neck.

      Instead, she looked at Kat Lopez, who was perched in a high-backed chair across the Oval Office sitting area from her. Kat looked fresh and relaxed. Like Kurt Kimball, Kat was an Energizer bunny – she just kept going and going and going.

      “Give me the details,” Susan said.

      “ARTS,” Kat said. “A Return To Sanity. More than thirty thousand members across the United States, and growing. Their headquarters are here in Washington, and they have a committed pool of donors across the United States, especially among wealthy people in the Bible Belt. They were founded and originally funded by Midwest corn magnate Nathan Davis. As a lobbying organization they are growing in influence, especially among conservatives in Congress. They raised and spent over fifteen million dollars in the last fiscal year, not counting another five to ten million raised by their nonprofit arm, the American Family Education Foundation.”

      “And Lucy?” Susan said.

      “Lucy Pilgrim,” Kat said without hesitating. “Current president of ARTS. Sixty-seven years old. Lucy was a hippie and a political activist from her earliest days – birth control, environmentalism, anti-nukes. In the mid-1970s, she and a group of her followers used to go topless in Central Park every Sunday for three straight summers. If men could do it, so could women.”

      Kat paused.

      “What’s good for the gander…” she said.

      “Right,” Susan said, almost laughing. “Is good for the goose. That was clever. Do you even know about that, or is it just on your cheat sheet there?”

      Kat shrugged. “I learned all about Lucy while I was in college. Women’s studies. She came and spoke one time.”

      Susan shook her head. “She’s something else.”

      Kat raised a hand. “At some point, Lucy must have gotten religion. Or maybe it was always there, and she wasn’t eager to talk about it. In any case, she’s been president of ARTS for eight years. There is some talk that she is going to step down in the near future. She was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Parkinson’s disease two years ago. It hasn’t seemed to slow her down any, but you should realize that we may be dealing with a lame duck.”

      Susan leveled her sternest gaze at Kat. “We’re not going to deal at all, Kat. What deal are we going to make? This is an organization that wants American women to stay home and have more children, am I right? Because of some misguided idea about keeping immigrants out?”

      Kat nodded. “I doubt they’d put it that way, but yes, more or less.”

      Susan shrugged. “We’re taking this meeting as a favor to the Vice President and nothing more. Let’s get it over with so we can get on with the rest of our day.”

      Kat went over to the large closed-circuit TV monitor hanging on the wall and turned it on. It was an eyesore, but it made a convenient way to communicate with her Vice President, Stephen Lief. It had been there since his inauguration more than a month ago. But since then, Susan had begun to think she and Stephen weren’t going to be doing all that much communicating after all. Only a short time in office, and he had immediately begun to overstep his bounds.

      Lief’s bespectacled face appeared on the giant screen, sitting in the upstairs study at the Naval Observatory. Susan’s study. Arrgh. That irritated her. The study was her favorite room in the best home she had ever had. He sat there like he owned the place.

      Stone!

      She could blame Luke Stone for Stephen Lief. Or she could blame herself for going along with it. Or she could blame human biology, and the love endorphins released by physical intimacy – they made your brain lose its reasoning ability.

      Susan had known Stephen a long time. In her Senate days, he was the loyal opposition across the aisle from her, a moderate conservative, unremarkable – pig-headed but not deranged. And he was a nice man.

      But he was also the wrong party, and she had taken a lot of heated criticism from liberal quarters for that. He was landed aristocracy, old money – a Mayflower person, the closest thing that America had to nobility. At one time, he had seemed to think that becoming President was his birthright. Not Susan’s type; entitled aristocrats tended to lack the common touch that helped you connect with the people you were supposedly there to serve.

      It was a measure of how deeply Luke Stone had gotten inside her skin that she considered Stephen Lief at all. He was Stone’s idea. She could remember the exact moment Stone brought it up to her. They were lying together in her big Presidential bed. She had been pondering out loud about possible Veep candidates, and then Stone said:

      “Why not Stephen Lief?”

      She had almost laughed. “Stone! Stephen Lief? Come on.”

      “No, I mean it,” he said.

      He was lying on his side. His nude body was thin but rock hard, chiseled, and covered with scars.

      “You’re beautiful, Stone. But maybe you better let me do the thinking. You can just recline there, looking pretty.”

      “I interviewed him СКАЧАТЬ