The Dirty Secret Page 8

  “I’m not a very happy man,” Vincent declared coldly. His hard gaze tunneled into Bowen.

  “Absolutely, Mr. Governor,” Bowen replied, his voice sounding as gravelly as ever despite the tense atmosphere. Ordinarily, he would have referred to Vincent by his first name. Today, circumstances dictated greater deference. “We didn’t anticipate the Mingo County canvass would turn this direction.”

  “Why not?” Vincent loudly demanded. Beneath his thick waves of silver and light brown hair, his forehead and cheeks began to turn pinkish-red.

  Bowen sat rigidly in the chair. His fingernails dug through his black dress pants into the tops of his thighs. “Our lawyers misread the statute that covers voting machine malfunctions. They researched the issue and discussed it at length with both national counsel and the geeks at AIS. Everyone thought utilizing the back-up data from the servers would ‘correct’ the problem, as required by the law. No one foresaw the law might be interpreted differently.”

  “Except for Royal’s lawyers, that is. Right?”

  Bowen gritted his teeth. “There’s no need to panic. The county commission will make its decision on Monday, and since Ruth Thompson holds the swing vote, we’ve been going through her life with a fine-toothed comb, looking for something that might … persuade her to vote properly when the time comes.”

  Bowen sighed and rustled through a stack of papers. “Unfortunately, she may be the most boring person on the planet. Sixty-two years old. Never married and no kids. Worked at a dentist’s office for thirty-five years before retiring. She plays piano at the biggest Baptist church in Mingo County, and she has three cats. Which eat Friskies cat food, by the way.”

  “What?” Vincent asked incredulously.

  “Her cats eat Friskies,” Bowen repeated.

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  Bowen sighed again. “Because the info our buddies at AIS have systematically accumulated in their database is fucking terrifying, that’s how. For instance, every time you use a coupon at the grocery store and pay your bill with a check, credit card or debit card, the register’s software – designed by AIS – collects that data. Slowly but surely, their database grows until they know almost everything about you. Your age, address, phone number, spending habits, favorite products, etc. Which they sell to other corporations who want to sell you other products you might like, according to your AIS profile.”

  “Wow. I had no idea.”

  “That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Combined with the other information it has obtained from the public sector like voters registration records, criminal charges, speeding tickets, permit applications and lawsuits, AIS probably has more dirt on American citizens in its database than the FBI does.”

  “I’m glad they’re on our side,” Vincent quipped.

  Bowen guffawed. “No shit. One guy from the old Soviet Union makes a fortune from the communists’ oil and gas reserves and then starts buying American companies. No wonder some people imagine there’s a New World Order controlling everything behind closed doors.”

  The governor strolled over to an ornate, antique black walnut liquor cabinet sitting behind his desk and pulled out a fifth of Gentleman Jack and two old-fashioned glasses. Pouring double shots into each, he extended one to Bowen. “Man,” he said wistfully. “I wish I had been alive back in the good old days when you could just properly distribute pints of bourbon in the coalfields and wait for the election to be safely delivered inside stacked ballot boxes.”

  Bowen clinked glasses with his boss and guzzled the whiskey. “Ah, hell, Luke,” he said, his mouth twisting sourly. “We had shit go wrong back then, too. You just have to handle the curveballs that come your way.”

  Vincent licked a trickle of whiskey from his lower lip and placed his glass on the desk. “Speaking of curveballs, I have a little situation on my hands I could use some help with.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  The governor edged his chair back. “It’s a long story, Dick. And not something I’m particularly proud of.”

  Bowen’s eyes narrowed as he directed his full attention on Vincent. “If you were proud of it, you wouldn’t need my help dealing with it. Would you?”

  Vincent grinned sheepishly. He paused, trying to describe his problem with a modicum of decency. “Let’s just say I have a female admirer I have become a little too intimate with.”

  Bowen folded his sausage-like fingers together across his belly and leaned back in his chair. “I see. How long has this intimacy been going on, and when did it become a problem?”

  “About a year, but it wasn’t a problem until the campaign heated up around Labor Day.”

  Bowen nodded curtly, absorbing the information. “Give me the lowdown on your admirer, Luke. I need to know what I’m dealing with here.”

  “It’s Tabatha McCallen.”

  “Jack McCallen’s wife? The State Senator?”

  The governor nodded. “That’s her.”

  Bowen whistled. “Well, I’ll give you one thing, Luke. When you decided to complicate your life, you didn’t half-ass it like Clinton by trolling through the trailer parks or the college interns. You went straight to the top of the food chain and picked the hottest, craziest woman in sight. And one married to a prominent Republican with every incentive in the world to destroy you. That takes moxie, or maybe just a staggering degree of stupidity.”

  “A little of both,” Vincent admitted. “In the beginning, I was just letting my little head do the thinking for me. Stupid, I admit. But you’ve seen her, for crying out loud.”

  “I’d drink her dirty bathwater to nail her,” Bowen conceded. “But I’m not the fucking governor, Luke! I’m a crusty old lobbyist whose wife has been dead for ten years. But you…”

  Vincent closed his eyes and shook his head sadly. “Yeah, I know. I’m running for vice-president, and I’m a slack-jawed moron. I can’t fart without a TV reporter telling the world what it smells like, and yet I’m sneaking around Charleston, cheating on a saint like Donna with a state senator’s wife who’s crazier than a one-eyed squirrel on acid.”

  “When you put it like that, it sounds even dumber than I thought,” Bowen cracked. “So what is she doing that’s got you so worried?”

  Vincent stared out the window at the State Capitol lawn, tight-lipped. Groundskeepers busily removed mountains of fallen leaves from the sprawling expanse of grass between his office and Kanawha Boulevard. “She’s become awfully needy lately,” he said, still gazing outside. “At first, as long as we saw each other once a month or so, she was fine. But now she’s getting pushy. Plus she has a sex clip of the two of us she’s threatened to use against me if I don’t see her more often.”

  Bowen winced. “That was the message you received on your phone the other day?”

  Vincent turned from the window, faced his advisor and nodded.

  Bowen’s eyes turned cold and calculating. “Who else knows about this?”

  “Just Marco Zakarias. He’s owns the new hotel downtown where I usually meet her.”

  “I know Marco,” Bowen said. “He’s solid. So when are you gonna see her again?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. I was vague the last time we talked, but I hinted around I might try to see her next week.”

  Bowen glanced over at a giant fish tank, watching a pair of silver angelfish swim lazily through the water. “We’ll get it taken care of, Luke,” he said. “Mrs. McCallen will either wise up and realize that screwing you isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, or she’ll wish she’d never tripped and let your dick fall in her. Either way, this problem will be taken care of.”

  CHAPTER 19

  VIENNA, VIRGINIA

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2:00 P.M.

  Yuri Petrenko was peripherally aware that Maryland had just scored another touchdown. He wasn’t following the game closely, but the broadcasters’ excited voices indicated the Terrapins were pulling away from Virginia Tech.

  Yuri glanced up from his papers and saw
a kicker wearing a red jersey boot the football through the goalposts. The score at the bottom of the screen rolled over and increased by one, showing the Terps now ahead 34-20. Yuri drained the last swig of his beer and set the empty bottle down on the coffee table.

  The longer he lived in America, the more he enjoyed its version of football. At first, he was drawn mostly to the spectacle – the pure violence – of the sport. But as he watched the game more, he began to appreciate its strategic aspects: Should the offense run the ball or try to throw downfield? Should the defense stack the line to defend the run or blitz a cornerback into the backfield to disrupt the play? Because so many of the game’s concepts applied to the real world, he understood why observers often used military analogies to describe events on the field.

  Looking down at the thick dossier of information in front of him, Yuri viewed it as a detailed scouting report on his team’s opponent in the national championship game. And Yuri viewed himself as the team’s offensive coordinator, looking for weaknesses in the enemy’s defense that could be exploited to win the most important game of the year with the highest stakes imaginable – the White House itself.

  After two tours of duty with the Spetsnaz in Chechnya, Petrenko spent five years in Moscow with the Federal Security Service handling electronic surveillance and cyber warfare. Then Mazniashvili made him a financial offer he could not refuse, so he finished his term with the military and moved to America.

  The front page was embossed with the words “Operation Aristocrates.” God only knew why Mazniashvili had chosen that moniker for the project. But since he was fronting all the project’s expenses, Yuri supposed he could call it whatever he wanted. After all, “Screwing Jonathan Royal while Keeping My Rich Ass away from a Firing Squad In Tbilisi” may have more precisely described the project, but it gave off no cool, yet sinister vibes. Thus, “Operation Aristocrates” carried the day.

  Petrenko waded through the document with a highlighter, highly impressed with the quality of information his boss had accumulated. Unfettered access to exceptionally private and valuable information was apparently one of the privileges Mazniashvili enjoyed in his role as the financier and behind-the-scenes puppet-master at AIS.

  Yuri had spent most of the past five days reviewing the voluminous file for “Operation Aristocrates,” painstakingly trying to identify the one man or woman best suited for their project. After initially narrowing his choices down to four, Yuri found his focus returning to one particular candidate over and over.

  Staring at the photographs for at least the twentieth time, Petrenko concentrated on the candidate’s eyes, attempting to probe his soul. Then he closed his eyes and focused his mind.

  Yes, he told himself with certainty. This is the one.

  Yuri lifted his laptop from the coffee table, leaned back and tapped on the keyboard. In his mind, the game had kicked off and he had called his team’s first offensive play of the game.

  It’s game time, boys! Let’s put the ball in the end zone.

  CHAPTER 20

  CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA

  GOVERNOR’S MANSION

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 10:00 P.M.

  Arriving home from a fundraiser, Vincent stripped out of his tuxedo and tried to get comfortable. He slipped a green Thundering Herd tee-shirt over his head and pulled a pair of matching cotton pajama bottoms over his black silk boxers. Throwing a pair of slippers on his feet, he headed into the bathroom while his wife completed her own clothing transformation.

  The Vincents had been married for 25 years, and his wife rarely deviated from her Saturday night routine. In the absence of some calamity, he knew Donna would crawl in bed at 10:00 p.m., flip on the bedside lamp and watch a re-run of The Golden Girls. When the show was over, she would read the Bible for 20 minutes, turn off the light and go to sleep. In his mind, neither solar eclipses nor the phases of the moon were as predictable as his wife’s behavior, and he derived a certain degree of comfort from that predictability.

  By the same token, in a self-analytical moment that arrived while he was taking a leak, he wondered whether his own boredom with that predictability had led him to pursue his tryst with Tabatha McCallen. If you wanted more excitement in your life, you should have taken up skydiving instead of playing ‘hide the sausage’ with another woman.

  Such self-indictments were not amenable to a good night’s sleep. Vincent flushed the toilet, washed and dried his hands, then let out a deep sigh. Opening the door, he saw Donna propped up in bed facing the television with a smile. Sure enough, the four Golden Girls were sitting around the kitchen table, and when Sophia let loose with one of her biting one-liners, the First Lady let out a chuckle that was perfectly on cue with the show’s laugh track.

  Vincent strolled over to his wife, bent down and gave her a kiss on the forehead. “I’m going to check out the scores online.”

  Donna looked up, still smiling. “Okay, honey. But don’t sit too close to the computer screen or you’ll hurt your eyes.”

  “I won’t. Be back in a jiffy.”

  The First Lady nodded and patted his hand. “Don’t keep me waiting,” she said with a wink. “You looked awfully handsome in that tuxedo tonight, Mr. Governor.”

  Vincent grinned back. “You looked quite smashing yourself. Don’t fall asleep on me.”

  “Not a chance,” Donna replied. “I’ll be waiting.”

  The governor raised her hand to his lips, gave it a little peck and then walked across the hallway to the extra bedroom that served as his office in the Mansion’s living quarters. He crossed the room, sat down at the red oak desk and brought the computer to life with a tap of the mouse. Just as he opened ESPN’s website, his cell phone began playing Marshall’s fight song. Peering at the viewscreen, he saw Dick Bowen’s face and phone number.

  “Hello?”

  “Good evening, Luke. How was the fundraiser?”

  “Just like all the others,” Vincent deadpanned. “Dressed-up rich people hobnobbing, writing checks, nibbling on hors d’oeuvres and drinking booze like the plane is going down. What’s up?”

  “We’ve made our pitch to Ruth Thompson on the memory cards. She didn’t give us a firm commitment, but we’ve given her some food for thought. I’ll touch base again tomorrow.”

  Vincent heard the phone click before he had a chance to respond. If nothing else, Dick Bowen was astonishingly focused. Give him a task, and he would demolish a brick wall with his skull if necessary to get it done.

  I just hope he applies that same tenacity to my dilemma with Tabatha.

  CHAPTER 21

  ST. MARYS, PLEASANTS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 9:00 A.M.

  Rikki slept later than anticipated, so she quickly walked down to the basement and jumped on the treadmill, trying to work up a good sweat before heading to work. Listening to her favorite workout mix via wireless Bluetooth earbuds, her running shoes rhythmically pounded the treadmill belt as the sculpted muscles in her long, dark brown legs stretched and contracted with each step.

  The television mounted to the ceiling was tuned to CNN’s Sunday morning show. Although the music blocked out the talking heads, she followed the discussion via closed captioning. West Virginia’s fifty five counties were depicted on a map, variously colored blue or red and she noted with satisfaction that Pleasants County was depicted in blue. Then one county in the southern part of the state was expanded into a separate graphic by itself.

  Rikki pressed a button on her earbuds and the music came to a halt. Grabbing the remote, she turned up the TV to drown out the treadmill’s whirring engine. The words “MINGO COUNTY” had morphed onto the screen along with a circle labeled “Williamson” on the west-central edge of the map.

  “Mingo County is the only county that still has not completed its post-election canvass,” an off-screen male anchor reported. “Technical glitches in the county’s voting machines have delayed that process, and the two campaigns have waged a bitter battle over what
the County Commission must do in this situation.

  “Joining us today from Charleston, West Virginia, is Susan Mathis, the lead attorney for Senator Wilson’s campaign in Mingo County. And from Williamson, West Virginia, we also have David Anderson, Governor Royal’s chief legal advisor. Thank you both for being here.”

  “Thank you for having me,” Mathis replied.

  “It’s my pleasure,” Dave added. He stood in front of the boxy-looking county courthouse wearing a light blue dress shirt and a solid silver tie.

  “Ms. Mathis,” the anchor opened. “Why do you want the commission to throw out the initial election returns in favor of this ‘backup data’ we’ve heard so much about?”

  “Because it’s the most accurate reflection of the voters’ intentions. The memory cards in nine machines were malfunctioning when the tabulations were run on Election Night. The backup data was uploaded to the server before the malfunctions occurred. Using that data is the only way to determine how those people voted and we must make sure every vote is counted.”

  Mathis disappeared and was replaced by a split-screen image of the anchor on the left side and Dave on the right. “How do you respond to that position, Mr. Anderson? Why shouldn’t every vote that was cast in this election be counted?”

  Dave cracked an amused grin. “We agree that every vote cast must be counted. But there’s no evidence this so-called ‘backup data’ is any more accurate than the calculations which were made twice on Election Night …”

  “The computer experts from AIS testified that the backup data is more accurate than those initial calculations,” Mathis loudly interjected from off-screen.

  Anderson chuckled, and the look on his face was one Rikki instantly recognized as the likely precursor to some wickedly disdainful response.

  “Ah,” Dave said, feigning enlightenment, “you mean the same bozos who didn’t detect any malfunctions in those nine machines on Election Night? Whose paychecks are signed by Dmitri Mazniashvili, an indicted criminal that Governor Royal wants to deport to face justice for defrauding his homeland of billions of dollars? Who has given millions from those ill-gotten gains to Senator Wilson’s party? You want us to take their word for it?” Dave laughed caustically. “For all we know, this ‘glitch’ is just a scam Mazniashvili dreamed up to cook our election results and avoid extradition for his crimes. Personally, I’ll put my faith in the results originally reported on Election Night.”