Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

For an instant the cold, irrational hand of dread gripped him. Ever since he first started diving, he had learned that fear, particularly the blind fear of quick panic, was the deadliest killer in deep water, far more lethal than sharks or any other natural predator. And the only antidote was self-control. If you wanted to stay alive, you had to fight it, master it, as he did now.

He cleared the water in the snorkel’s tube and looked around again. There was still no sign of Aranda, but no reason for concern. Aranda was a strong swimmer. He knew what he was doing in the water. They had become separated, that was all, a common enough occurrence in open water.

Ginnis regrouped. Rather than remove his mask in the chop of the sea, he cleared it by blowing air out through his nose, holding the top of the mask to his forehead.

He placed his face back in the water to test the seal and to see if Aranda might have dived down to look at something on the bottom. It was then he saw it: a bleak gray form resting on the bottom, an occasional glint, the orange flake of rusted metal. It was the stern of a small boat beneath him and perhaps thirty feet farther out to sea.

As it had been with the divers, it was hard to tell how deep the wreck was. It looked as if it lay on a shelf. Ginnis guessed that it might have hit the shallow reef as it cut too close to the point coming out of the harbor, since its bow was facing toward the sea.

The vessel was small, maybe twenty feet in length, and old, one of the little working tugs that might have been used years earlier for close work in the many small inlets that served as harbors around the island. From its state of decay, it appeared that the boat had been on the bottom for a while.

As Ginnis floated listlessly, facedown on the surface, a small school of French angelfish, their bulging yellow eyes black-dotted by the pupils, flashed in front of him, then just as quickly returned, stopped, and seemed to stare at him. Ginnis groped for the camera on his wrist, brought it up to his eye, and snapped another picture. He lifted his head from the water and scanned the surface one more time for Aranda. The clerk must have turned back or taken the wrong route between the large mooring platforms. Sooner or later he would turn up.

Ginnis returned his attention to the sunken tug, sucked in a lungful of air, then flipped head over ass and pulled for the rusting metal hulk on the bottom.

June

San Diego, California

“I’m going to tell you something I haven’t told anyone else. Can you keep a secret?” the man at the mirror said.

“You have to ask?”

Scarborough was busy shaving in the palatial master bath in the top-floor suite at the Presidential Regis Hotel in San Diego. The room overlooked the bay and the arching Coronado Bridge off in the distance.

Dick Bonguard, leaning against the frame in the open doorway behind him, was a talent and literary agent, a man with media connections and top-notch PR skills. He had picked up Terry Scarborough as a client on the rebound from a New York literary agency a year earlier. Scarborough had wanted edgier representation, an agent who, like the second stage on a rocket, could boost his self-made celebrity beyond the grip of gravity.

Bonguard had this in spades. In his thirties, tall, blond, blue-eyed, and ruddy-faced, he had become part of the young power set in New York media circles. Even though Scarborough was ten years older, if you stood the two of them together dressed alike, they would look like a matching pair of salt and pepper shakers, Bonguard light and fair, Scarborough darker.

The relationship paid off in a smash-hit book for both men. Perpetual Slaves: The Branding of America’s Black Race, authored by Scarborough, was on its way to becoming one of those “must-reads of a generation,” as one review said. The book was cemented at the top of the bestseller list and showed no sign of budging anytime soon. Scarborough was earning his bones as the hottest fire-belching political dragon on the national scene. Colleges and universities couldn’t get enough of him. That the roots of slavery were deeply embedded in the United States Constitution and still showing was his message.

“I’m thinking about using the opportunity tonight to leak the letter,” said Scarborough.

“What? Why would you do that?” Bonguard stood in the doorway, stunned.

“I know what you’re going to say. Just listen to me for a second. I mean revealed with skill, in an offhand manner. What better venue for something like this than Leno? Scarborough looked up to make sure that Bonguard was following him.

The two men had been using code words to talk about this in front of others for months. They called it the “J letter.” It was the second and burning secret of slavery, the glowing embers of which Scarborough had stirred with his book.

“I thought the plan was to hold the letter for the sequel?” said Bonguard.

“Plans change,” said Scarborough.

The author was already sitting on $22 million in book royalties. Every week Perpetual Slaves stayed at the top of the list, the royalties grew. They hadn’t even started counting foreign sales, and with anti-American fervor peaking in Europe, Latin America, and the Near East, the prospects loomed large.

“Listen to me,” said Bonguard, “you don’t want to do that. Outing the letter now would be a huge mistake.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. There’s a rhythm to all this-it’s called timing, and if you screw with it, you’re going to pluck the golden goose.” The agent was flummoxed. As far as he was concerned, this had been nailed down months ago.

“You forget, I am the golden goose,” said the author.

“Of course you are. I know that. But we’ve been all over this,” he said. “You ride the first book to the bank as many times as it will go.”

Naturally, this meant that Bonguard was hanging on the back, riding the animal with him.

“In the meantime you take the letter, you write the second book, nobody knows anything about it, we just tease the mobs every once in a while to keep them awake, ‘blockbuster revelation on the way-same topic-plumbing the true depths of white bigotry at the founding of our nation.’

“Then, when the fury over Perpetual Slaves is just starting to ebb, we unpack the boxes and load the hardcover sequel onto the shelves. That’s when we leak it-discovery of the parchment of national shame.” Bonguard stood there looking into the mirror, making sure his client got it.

“Trust me, between the millions of zealots on the right who don’t believe it and the millions on the left who say I told you so, the fallout will send the second book into orbit.”

Scarborough continued to drag the razor across his face. “I don’t think so.”

“Are you getting cold feet?” said Bonguard. “I know you’re taking a lot of heat out on the circuit, a lot of criticism from the press about the flamethrowing speeches…”

“Screw the press.” Scarborough laughed, and a halo of fog covered the mirror. “What used to pass for the fourth estate is now a duplex,” said the author. “Where have you been? Online bloggers are eating their circulation, and cable news has their advertisers. And the day I can’t jack up the print press, light a fire under their ass, and enjoy the warmth, you can retire me.”

“Then what’s the problem?” said Bonguard.

“No problem. It’s just time to begin outing the letter.”

“What’s in the damn thing?” said Bonguard. “If you’re going to tell Leno, why don’t you at least let me in on the secret? Why don’t you just show it to me?”

This was a sore point with Scarborough. Since he’d acquired the copy from the source, who had the original, he’d never allowed anyone to see it. It was part of the deal. He could write the book, but the original letter stayed with the party who possessed it, and no one else could see the copy. Of course, that was before the beginning of the time of reckoning.