“How?”
“Write your congressman.”
Earl asked for a hand vote. Without objection or comment, he quickly got thirty-five in favor. Twenty of those yeas had recently received mysterious donations to their reelection committees; three had been promised assistance or support on various pet bills or pork requests; two new members were simply trying to garner favor with the committee chairman.
Amazingly, Earl had pulled this off with only one million dollars; the other million contributed by CG to his buying spree, of course, ended up in his pockets. Democracy at its best.
He slammed the gavel and the hearing immediately broke up. Mia ignored the noisy exodus of chattering congressmen, staffers, and reporters and stayed glued to her seat, pretending to read a memo, until the last member quietly closed the door behind him.
She got up and approached one of the C-SPAN cameramen, a large man with a big belly, awkwardly bent over gathering his equipment, preparing to move on.
“Sorry to bother you,” she said to his back. “Would it be possible to get a copy of your tape?”
He was playing with a machine on the floor. He never looked up. “Sorry, no.”
“Try yes instead.”
“Not mine to give, lady. Belongs to C-SPAN.”
“Would it help if I showed you this?” she asked, flashing a card at his back. He turned around and stared at it: Mia Jenson, Investigator, Defense Criminal Investigative Service. Then out popped her DCIS shield, which he glanced at also for another moment. “It’s quite real,” Mia assured him. “I’m a federal agent.”
“What’s this about?” he asked, now staring at her,
“That’s none of your business.” She glanced at the identity card hanging around his neck. “Listen, Carl, I’m asking politely now. I could just as easily come back with a subpoena.”
“Look, I’m not trying to be a pain.”
She gave him a slight smile. It seemed apologetic. “Oh, what the hell. Between you and me, Carl, we’re looking into a few irregularities in the GT 400.”
“I see.”
“Probably nothing. Chasing rumors. My bosses ordered me to come back with the tape.”
“Why don’t we bring this to my bosses?”
“I’d rather not.”
His forehead was wrinkled with suspicion. “Is there a reason why?”
“It’s a confidential investigation at this point. That’s how we’re treating it. Like I said, it’s merely exploratory and we’d rather not have GT learn we’re looking.” Her features wrinkled with disgust. “They’ll throw a battalion of lawyers at us, and hide anything incriminating. The investigation will be dead before it gets started.”
“Okay.”
“Make me a copy. Nobody’ll know. Please, Carl.”
“Sure. No problem.” Carl happened to have a high-speed tape copying machine, and two minutes later he handed her the tape.
Mia thanked him and disappeared.
They walked at a fast clip through the elegant lobby of the Madison Hotel until they were met by a duet of burly men; East Europeans of some variety, both of them. They looked like bookends, spectacularly muscled, fierce-looking, and no doubt armed to the teeth. Neither spoke a word of English. They greeted Bellweather and Walters with respectful grunts, escorted them to the elevators, then stood stiffly and quietly in the corner while the elevator whisked them to the ninth floor.
Next, a brisk walk down the long hallway to the very end, where one of the Madison’s most opulent and expensive suites was located. Another pair of brutish bookends was planted beside the door. After quick nods and more courteous grunts, they ushered the Americans inside. No patdowns, no questions. They were expected, obviously. And they were welcome.
The large suite they stepped into had been transformed from standard American luxury fare into an Arabian fantasy. The floors were plastered wall to wall with thick, handwoven oriental carpets. Shimmering silk fabrics and tapestries hung from the ceilings. The sofas and chairs had been replaced with enough oversize floor cushions to seat a hundred. The temperature was set at a sweltering ninety degrees. All the discomforts of home.
Two gentlemen in white robes with bright gold edging sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor. They were sharing a silver hookah pipe and munching from a large bowl of dates.
The one on the left offered a faint smile. “Ah, Daniel, nice of you to arrive on time.”
“Your highness,” Bellweather said, and bowed slightly. The exaggerated and entirely phony formality brought smiles to both their faces.
“Won’t you be seated,” Prince Ali bin Tariq requested with a commanding flourish of his right hand. Ali was the forty-third son of the Saudi king, formerly, and for an amazingly long eighteen years, the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, he was highly westernized, an accomplished diplomat, a drunk, a womanizer, and a flamboyant rascal who had once treated D.C. as his own playground.
During his long tenure as ambassador he had helped fix three presidential elections, bought enough congressmen and senators to stuff two Rolodexes, fathered countless illegitimate children, purchased six fabulous homes from Palm Beach to Vail, along with three luxury jets to shuttle him around his real estate empire, and along the way became the senior and most esteemed member of Washington’s diplomatic corps.
Eighteen years away from his stuffed-shirt kingdom, eighteen years of sin and frolic, and all the pleasures and contentment unlimited wealth could buy.
During many of those years, Bellweather had been his frequent partner in bar-hopping and whoring around town. They shared women, they drank an ocean of booze, and on one amazing occasion they christened Ali’s newest Boeing 737 with a wild, fantasy, around-the-world orgy. Just Bellweather and Ali, and thirty women chosen for their physical variety and amorous skills.
That exhausting but remarkable trip had been the cause of Bellweather’s second divorce, the ugliest of the three. Definitely the most enthusiastic and sexually imaginative of the ladies, it turned out, was a very determined PI hired by his wife. The PI returned from the trip with a thick photo album showing Daniel in an assortment of insane poses.
After one glance at the album, he offered wife two a swift, uncontested divorce with a “fair settlement.” When she then mentioned her ambition to open a public photo gallery, he collapsed completely; whatever she wanted, she could have it. She took him at his word and looted him for all he was worth. The house, the cars, all of his cash that she knew about.
It was worth every penny. The thought of those terrifying photos in the public eye was nauseating.
Then, three years ago, after a series of media articles about the prince’s outrageous lifestyle became too ugly to ignore, his father called him home. It was one thing for a Saudi prince to bribe, corrupt, fix, and blackmail in a foreign land. Infidels, after all, were born incorrigibly corrupted; what was wrong with squirting a little more fuel on the fire?
His father, however, drew the line over a photograph of Ali in Entertainment Weekly, a leering smile on his lips, a bubbling flute of champagne in one hand, the other planted firmly on the rather skinny fanny of one of Hollywood’s most celebrated sluts, which said something. The girl was only sixteen. Worse, she was made up to look only thirteen. Ali was crushed. For eighteen years he had lived the life of dreams. The idea of returning home, to a hot, sandy, dry country, to give up his American mansions, his powerful dedication to scotch, to live in a barren land without booze or blonde women-he’d developed a particular longing for golden hair-sickened him. He sent a long letter home, an elegantly worded missive telling his father to screw off.
But after the king threatened to cut off not only his inheritance and lifestyle emoluments, but also his head, Ali decided his affection for his family was calling him.