James Grippando - The Abduction

Nice to know they care.

“Hi, sweetheart.” It was Peter, emerging from the dining room. He had blocked out a week of work in New York to campaign with his wife, but with Allison’s sudden diversion he was sort of on vacation, in the most absurd sense of the word.

Allison gave him a quick kiss, then switched off the television. She followed him to the dining room table and sat at the place setting across from him. She was deep in thought, shaking off that television reporter’s last crack about a “happier ending” and trying to focus on the morning’s disastrous press conference.

Peter sipped his iced tea, studying the stressed-out look on his wife’s face. “Well,” he said, “Wally is at football practice, and Beaver has to stay after school for letting a toad loose in Mrs. Mergatroid’s science class.”

Allison shook herself free from alpha-land. “Huh?” she said, not really listening.

Peter’s eyes warmed. “Why don’t you tell me what’s rattling around in your head?”

She sighed, then held her thought as their multilingual housekeeper served them boneless chicken breasts baked in what she called a lovely “moose turd” sauce, which Allison was relieved to discover was actually a mustard sauce. When the housekeeper left, she spent the next twenty minutes telling Peter all that had happened, never once lifting a fork.

Peter pushed his half-empty plate aside, then said, “Are you really that surprised by any of this? The stakes don’t get any higher, and you’re dealing with Washington egos. You have to expect some political maneuvering.”

“It’s more than just maneuvering. I feel like the whole kidnapping is being…manipulated.”

The word hung in the air. “In what way?” he asked.

“In every way. First a cameraman ambushes me at the river trying to make me look like a publicity hound. Then the press runs photos of Lincoln Howe that make him look like a wimp. This morning the FBI director tells me point-blank that Howe has ordered him to cut me out of the investigation. It seems like nobody gives a damn about getting Kristen Howe back alive. All that matters is the spin.”

“If that’s the way it is, maybe you’re better off being out of the investigation.”

She shook her head. “Don’t you see it, Peter? By cutting me out, they’re pushing me into a no-win position. If Kristen is found, Howe’s campaign will vilify me as the missing attorney general who wouldn’t lift a finger to help save her opponent’s own granddaughter. But, God forbid, if something goes wrong, you can bet I’ll get all the blame. I’m the attorney general. The ultimate responsibility for Kristen’s life is mine.”

Peter poured another iced tea from the pitcher. “Sounds to me like you’re suggesting that the kidnapping isn’t just being politically manipulated. Sounds like you think it was politically motivated.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that everything that has happened in the past twenty-four hours isn’t just a bunch of political strategists reacting to a terrible tragedy. Maybe the terrible tragedy was part of the strategy in the first place.”

Allison looked him in the eye. “I would hate to attribute those kinds of motives to anyone.”

“It doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility. Some die-hard supporter of General Howe snags his granddaughter in the demented hope that the sympathy factor will help push him over the top.”

She swallowed hard. “Or a die-hard Leahy supporter who figures the kidnapping will send the Howe campaign into utter chaos, will take the public’s eye off the bogus infidelity issue that nearly ruined me at the debate, and will allow me to flood the media with tough-on-crime speeches for a solid week before the election.”

“I hadn’t thought about it being someone on your side.”

“I have. How much ink have the media spilled on adultery since Kristen’s abduction? Not a drop. Overnight, it went from becoming the deciding factor in the election to a complete nonissue.”

“Well,” he said, arching an eyebrow. “Which side is the bad guy on? Howe’s? Or yours?”

Allison sighed, then looked out the window. “Honest to God, Peter. I don’t have a clue.”

Room service at the Opry Land Hotel offered lunch as early as eleven, but Lincoln Howe was still too angry to eat. The photographs of him sobbing in the back of his limo had captured a side of himself that he didn’t think existed. Ed Muskie must be smiling, he thought. From now on, when the world spoke of weepy presidential candidates, they’d mean Lincoln Howe in 2000, not the late senator in the 1972 Democratic primaries.

Howe loathed public displays of emotion. Even when he was leaving for extended tours of duty with the army overseas, he had never let his wife see him off at the airport. They said their goodbyes at home, in private. No tears in public places. No hugs and kisses in front of the troops.

The thought of his teary face plastered on every newspaper in the country was enough to make him fall on his proverbial military sword. He needed someone to blame, and his anger was only fueled by his campaign director’s courageous confession that it was he who had hired the man who’d snapped the pictures.

Howe was pacing across LaBelle’s hotel suite, saying nothing, digesting everything he’d just heard. Blind with anger, he nearly tripped over an electrical cord that snaked across the oriental carpet. Since the abduction, the suite had been wired like a satellite campaign headquarters with computers and extra fax machines, but not even the phone dared to ring as he formulated a response.

“Of all the stupid-assed ideas,” the general boomed, pacing more furiously and waving his arms as he spoke. “Where the hell do you come off hiring someone to take my photograph without me knowing it?”

LaBelle cowered in the armchair, staring blankly at the floor. “I wanted candid shots, so naturally I couldn’t tell you about it in advance. But I would never have actually used them without your approval.”

“You could at least have hired someone you could trust.”

“I thought I could trust him.”

Howe faced him squarely, sharpening his tone. “Does that mean you believe this Red Weber character? Did somebody really break into his hotel room and steal his negatives, or did he just double-cross you and sell them to somebody else?”

“I don’t know. Seems to me that if he had wanted to double-cross me he would have waited until after I paid him the fifty grand. Then he’d sell an extra set of photos to somebody else.”

Howe nodded, agreeing with the logic. He was pacing again. “So, suppose there was a break-in. And suppose we can even raise the inference that Leahy’s campaign was behind it. Where does that take us?”

LaBelle scratched his head, thinking. “It’s a two-edged sword, I think. We can’t really make much of it in the press. Sure, a break-in orchestrated by Leahy’s supporters makes them look bad. But once the cops or the media start to probe, it’s bound to come out that we hired Weber to photograph you. That makes us look even worse than them.”

“Damn it, Buck! I thought you were fucking smarter than this.” He was more furious than ever, the veins bulging in his neck. “Don’t you see what kind of a bind this puts me in? I’ve been taking the high road with everybody. With the FBI, the press, even Allison Leahy. I’m on the record saying over and over again that I will not tolerate any manipulation of this kidnapping for political gain. How the hell is it going to look if it comes out that you hired a photographer to snag some candid Kodak moments of me mourning the loss of my granddaughter?”

“Sir, I-”

“Shut up, soldier!”