Curse of the Afflicted Read online

  "Nothing," she shrugged in her breezy adolescent manner as she reached for another tortilla. "Only that if you don't make it to my game, Dad, you've got a good excuse. I have to forgive you."

  Chapter 4

  The Assassin took off his jacket, folded it carefully into a pillow, and lay down on the concrete floor. He rested for over four hours, fully aware he could not do anything yet. Once the late afternoon clouds evolved into a blackened canvas, when the final remnants of light had disappeared, that was when he could begin his work. This was Los Angeles, so he didn't have to worry about many stars twinkling in the evening sky. And even if the cloud cover had temporarily lifted, the lunar charts said that only a crescent moon would be out. All bases were covered, just the way the Assassin had planned it. This would be an exceptional night for hiding in the shadows. It would be very dark here indeed.

  After rising from his nap, he walked near the window and opened his gym bag, unfolding the bi-pod and adjusting the height so it would be comfortable. He methodically put together the Barrett M107 sniper rifle, taking care to attach the night vision scope properly. The scope was everything. Placing the rifle near the window, he adjusted everything to his liking. He felt so comfortable with the M107, to him it was like an old friend. It had a range of almost two thousand yards, although he wouldn't need anywhere near that tonight. He just needed to be accurate, and the M107 was an unusual package that married accuracy with rapid fire. There was no margin for error. In his business, there was never a margin for error. But tonight was special.

  He looked across at the Century Plaza Hotel, two blocks away. It had a distinctive, curved facade that unfurled across an entire city block. In a couple of years, this opportunity would no longer be available, as new construction was starting on a pair of residential towers that would block any line of sight from the office tower to the hotel. He thought back to a few years ago, when he actually used to stay at the Century Plaza, the days when he was with the Company. But since going freelance, his tastes had become more refined. These days he normally stayed at the Peninsula in Beverly Hills, but with the fundraiser, that was impossible. He decided to check into the Loews by the beach. The ocean air would be good for him.

  The Assassin pulled a suction cup from the gym bag and fastened it against the window, a few inches up from floor level. Taking a grease pencil from his pocket, he drew a circle around the suction cup, with a six-inch diameter. Wide enough to focus on any room on the eighteenth floor, small enough so it was unlikely to be detected initially. No one would be looking for it from the hotel grounds, certainly not the B-level Secret Service detail that traveled with his target.

  He took out the glass cutter, lubricated the blade with some sewing machine oil, and, using increasing pressure, repeatedly scored the area, roughly tracing the line created by the grease pencil. He would wait a few hours before yanking this section of glass away from the window, well aware that his target would not return from the fundraiser until after ten o'clock. By ten-fifteen, the glass would be out and he would have unfettered and direct access to the western-facing side of the hotel. The target would surely be staying in one of the rooms there, the man so loved looking out at the ocean. He would be staying near the top floor, but not on the very top. The agents always made sure the rooms above and below Peacock, their code name for his target, would go unoccupied. He also knew his target would come out onto the balcony before he went to bed. When the weather permitted, he enjoyed a breath of night air. It was part of his routine, a pattern that had remained very consistent. The Assassin liked people who didn't stray from their routines ...

  * * *

  I pulled into the darkened parking lot at Santa Monica airport at eleven-thirty and swallowed two Advil tablets before getting out of my car. That should get me through the flight. Blair had just arrived, lifting his briefcase from the trunk of his Jaguar. Last year, right before Justin Woo asked us to manage his campaign for governor, we took him and his brother to lunch. Blair, a forward thinker if there ever was one, decided that a Korean-American candidate would be duly impressed by a consultant who drove a Korean car. So Blair spent the morning hunting for a Hyundai Sonata to rent. The candidate was more amused than impressed, and informed Blair he hadn't driven a Hyundai in twenty years, and frankly didn't know anyone who did. As much as Blair trumpeted his act, we were ultimately hired in spite of, not because of, my partner's overt and shameless pandering.

  "So, when are you going to get yourself a better ride?" he asked, looking down his nose at my Honda Pilot as we walked onto the tarmac. "I'm actually embarrassed to bring you around to meet my friends."

  I didn't bother to tell Blair I had no interest in meeting his friends, if one were to even call them that. People like Blair had alliances, partnerships, relationships, and flirtations. Friends was a term loosely bandied about, a title bestowed and removed, without much earned equity. Blair drew people into his circle when it was beneficial, and he shed them when it was not. Even though our consulting firm had survived for ten years, I knew that it could end in the blink of an eye, when the value of our separating outweighed the price of our remaining together. Blair would always be able to find work for himself, people knew he could attract business, and anyone who could bring money in the door would have an honored seat at their table. My future was less certain, or at least it felt that way, and as such, my lifestyle was less extravagant.

  We boarded the Gulfstream and a flight attendant told us to pick any seats we wanted. That was but one thing that differentiated flying on a private aircraft from flying commercial, for they were as similar as night and day. The cabin on the Gulfstream was more like a small living room, the seats were big, wide, cushy and inviting. Some faced forward, some backward, a few were lined against the windows. The seats were designed to maximize comfort, not maximize capacity. There were about a dozen people on our flight; they all looked important, smartly dressed, well-groomed, and yet all looked extremely weary.

  The two of us settled into a pair of seats against a window, and Blair immediately pulled out a cigarette. He was about to light it when a pretty, stylishly dressed woman in her late thirties pointed out there was no smoking. She had deep green eyes that were alluring, yet hardened. Blair looked at her in disgust.

  "For what we're paying?" he exclaimed. "We should be able to cook black tar heroin on one of these things."

  "You've never been on a Gulfstream before?" she smiled, and then introduced herself as Iris Hatcher. She was slender, pretty, her soft brown hair laden with golden strands, but it was those green cat eyes that stood out. Eyes that seemed to have read your thoughts before you even could conjure them up.

  Blair looked back at her carefully before sliding the cigarette back in the Old Gold pack. "I have," he said, choosing his words carefully, "just not on this particular Gulfstream."

  "Well, then you know, the jet owner gets to decide. And you're not paying anything, so stop whining."

  I laughed. "Is that little nugget in our itinerary, Iris?"

  "No," she said. "I used to work for the vice president. I'm hitching a ride back to D.C. He was kind enough to arrange it. I always ask ahead of time who I'll be traveling with. Keeps me out of awkward conversations."

  "Oh, really?" Blair asked, his facial expression suddenly more inviting. "What do you do?"

  "I work in the speaker's office. Media relations. But since he represents the West Valley, I fly back and forth all the time. In fact, I'm only going back for a press conference tomorrow morning," she said, reaching out her hand. "You must be Rich's new hired guns."

  "We are indeed," I said, jumping in. "What did you do when you worked for Sudeau?"

  "Generally speaking, whatever he wanted," Iris laughed. "That's the best way to get along with him. And even then, it's a challenge."

  "Not an easy boss?"

  "No, but at that level, none of them are. It's the price of admission. And you fellows have your work cut out for you."

  "How so?" I
asked.

  "The last campaign pollster didn't cut it. Or should I say the last three. With Sudeau, it's deliver results or you're gone."

  "And deliver great results, even when he's the one calling the shots."

  "You see the issue," she smiled. "But you're big boys. If you're good, you'll figure it out. Just do it quick. The first debate is in two months. If he's not at the center of the stage, you're toast."

  I sighed to myself. There is no good way to handle a difficult client. Smart politicians are savvy to sycophants, but they also have little tolerance for contrarians. We were lucky in one respect. The vice president's campaign was not igniting, and the Phelan team had been fired last week, when polling results again showed Sudeau's numbers failing to take off. At the very least, we could go in and pitch him a message of course correction.

  The president's second term would end next year, his popularity waning the way it does for most presidents. No matter how beloved they may have been, by the middle of their final term, voters have tired of them; not surprisingly, the presidents themselves have grown tired of the job. Endless wrangling with Congress, lofty promises unable to be fulfilled, a few staff members indicted over marginal accusations. Most presidents focus their energies on international affairs in their final years. Visiting foreign countries becomes a breath of fresh air, getting treated regally, as opposed to back home, where the countdown to their exit begins the day after they are reelected. A cagey vice president is able to navigate the path of embracing the president's successes while distancing himself from the failures. But even then, the presidency is still a very tough job to win.

  "What do you know about Frank Phelan?" I asked, well aware his team had been outfoxed by Grady Sanderson's campaign pollsters recently. A Des Moines Register poll showed Sudeau slipping in Iowa, but that was a rigged survey. Sanderson's pollsters learned when the Register was conducting their poll, and they simply amped up the advertising in Iowa that week. Politics could be a crafty business.

  Iris shrugged. "I've seen better, I've seen worse. Phelan's poll numbers were probably accurate. But every other candidate was doing push polling and they weren't. Sudeau looked bad by comparison. Sudeau hates that stuff with a passion, even if the polls are bogus he still wants to look good. Positive news makes him happy. But I guess in the end, the vice president is just too tied to the man in the oval. And even when the president's popular, it's unusual for his number two to follow him into the presidency. In the last hundred years, Bush forty-one was the only guy to do it."

  I nodded. This was playing into the pitch that Blair and I planned to give tomorrow. Sudeau needed to break out from the shadow. The president was the alpha male, Sudeau was the beta, the little brother, the hanger-on, the second-string ballplayer warming the bench. It didn't matter that Sudeau had been a senator for almost two decades, a seemingly distinguished statesman. Once he signed on as the running mate almost seven years ago, his stature diminished. While he was a key advisor to the president, his main job was to make sure the president's pulse was still active.

  Sudeau needed to do two things if he wanted to get elected. First, he needed to change his image. Second, he needed to reduce the number of candidates who had already plunged into the race. There were ten announced candidates, mostly sitting or former governors and senators, but none should have been serious challengers. Many were in the race to enhance their name recognition, fundraise prodigiously and live well off of the money they raked in. Following their unsuccessful run for the White House many would get a fat contract as a pundit with a cable news channel. Out of ten candidates in the primaries, nine would fail and one would advance to the general.

  "We have plans," Blair said. "Once in a century? I'm going to change that."

  Iris smiled a sexy smile. "Well, aren't you the confident one."

  "That's what got me on this plane, babe," he said, and I looked away before I could roll my eyes. Confidence was fine, but Blair's was more bluster and bravado. I admitted it had punched our ticket onto this plane. But it had also gotten us, and especially Blair, into plenty of trouble over the years. I continued to look away, although I listened to Blair begin to go into his macho act, telling splashy, enhanced stories about his successes in life, not the least of which was his interest in a bright, beautiful partner to share it with.

  Blair and I had met almost ten years ago, a partnership forged through a failed attempt by a Silicon Valley billionaire to win a senate seat. Cornelius Wetzel had brought Blair in as a strategist when he launched his campaign, and then brought me in as his pollster. We were a marriage of convenience, getting along well, mostly because I found Blair's act amusing and he found my work ethic valuable. Although the campaign itself failed miserably, it was mostly due to a blundering, incompetent and inexperienced candidate. But Blair and I learned we were a matched pair, our individual strengths shoring up the other's weaknesses. With better candidates, we might find success. So, for the next decade we worked as the Baker Lipschitz Team, running campaigns during election seasons, providing marketing research to corporations during the off years.

  Our partnership flourished, sputtered, and flourished again. Last year's Justin Woo campaign was supposed to have been our big pay day, but it turned out all Woo needed from us was rote polling and some minor consulting. The big money, the avalanche of funds, came from producing a lavish advertising campaign, a task that was reserved for another consultant, who turned out to be Woo's cousin. We received a lot of notoriety, but not a lot of money. But good luck sometimes falls into your lap, and if the vice president bought our pitch to advertise heavily, we could create and place a media campaign, and the money would come flowing in.

  "So, tell me," I said, interrupting Blair's discourse, and feeling the unspoken irritation shooting at me from behind his black eyes. "Iris. You worked as a staffer once. Is there anything about the vice president that the world doesn't know? Maybe something they should know?"

  She turned toward me and gave me a thoughtful gaze. "Well, that's an interesting question."

  "Thank you. Asking questions is my life."

  "Most people inside the beltway know he was doubly Ivy. Went to Yale undergrad and then Harvard Law. Rich likes to present an aura of being part of the local D.C. gentry. But he actually grew up in poverty."

  "Wasn't he raised in Chevy Chase?" I asked, referring to the upscale Washington suburb.

  "He spent his last year of high school there, with an aunt and uncle who finally took him in. Growing up, his father was a drunk and his mother had a couple of nervous breakdowns. Making rent in Baltimore was touch and go. They moved a lot. The one constant he had was the church; he was an altar boy. When he talks of his childhood, he speaks reverently about the importance of his faith. And it probably did save him. That, and the priests recognized how bright he was. He got a scholarship to a great college and made the most of it."

  "Why doesn't he talk about this?" I asked.

  "I think he's tried to run as far away from his childhood as possible," she scoffed. "Would you want the world to know that?"

  "Why not?" I asked. "It shows he's pulled himself up by his own bootstraps."

  "Sometimes facing the truth about yourself is difficult," she said. "I doubt Rich wants anyone to know just how poor he was. How unsuitable his parents were. Probably a lot of shame there."

  I shook my head. "It wasn't his fault, was it? He was born into it. And he found a way out. The only shame is in not letting the world in on the story, so they can appreciate who he really is."

  Iris shrugged again. "It might work. You know, at this point I think his campaign is desperate enough to try anything."

  Chapter 5

  The flight to Washington took five hours, with most of us dozing off during the last three. The crew gently shook us awake a mere twenty minutes before we touched down. They generously provided us with mugs of freshly brewed coffee and freshly baked muffins. I reached into my bag and grabbed two more Advil tablets, washing them down
with a long sip. I shook the bottle and saw I had just enough left to get me back home without doubling over in pain. I made a mental note to ask Eli for a referral about a chiropractor. And maybe a prescription for some pain meds.

  We exchanged business cards with Iris, shook hands, Blair grasping her hand for just a moment too long. She seemed amused, I was not. Blair's behavior with women had long been a thorn on our company's side, a harsh reminder of the pitfalls of partnering with someone who brings different strengths to the table. The sun was already high in the sky by the time we descended the air stairs. We found a member of the vice president's staff patiently waiting for us, and he whisked us through the small private airport and into a gleaming black GMC Yukon.

  While the vice president had an office in the west wing, he rarely used it these days. His campaign was now in full swing, which meant he either spent his time navigating the campaign trail or strategizing at his residence. The Yukon sped onto the grounds of the Naval Observatory, where Sudeau lived with his wife and four dogs. After going through a security check at the black gate with a pair of Secret Service agents, appropriately decked out in their customary dark suits, sunglasses and serious demeanors, we entered the compound. Their home was gorgeous, not as impressive as the White House, but marvelous nonetheless. A large, three-story Victorian home, white with black shutters, situated high atop a tall hill of green grass. The front yard was wide enough to accommodate a football field. We climbed out of the vehicle, and another agent led us into the house, down a plush, softly carpeted hallway.

  The room we entered was blindingly white. The walls were painted an optic white, with tall, narrow glass windows rising up near the ceiling. A hardwood floor was mostly covered by a fluffy white throw rug. The white chairs all looked plush, but oddly, none were the same style. A series of built-ins cradled more than three hundred books, their bindings smooth and distinguished, august tomes that did not appear to have ever been opened. The Secret Service agent told us the vice president would join us shortly. We sat down and waited thirty minutes in silence, neither of us bothering to speak a word.