David Baldacci - Simple Genius

The doctors had kept Sean and Michelle segregated, refusing to tell them anything about the other. Finally Sean would have no more of it. Wielding a chair before a cowering nurse and attendant, he demanded to see Michelle. “Now!” he screamed.

When Sean walked into her room, she was sitting over by the window looking out at a depressing gray sky. As though sensing his presence, she turned around, cried out, “Sean,” and raced to him. They stood there in the middle of the room clinging to each other, trembling.

“They… they wouldn’t tell me anything about you,” she began as tears welled in her eyes.

“I didn’t even know if you were alive,” he stammered. “But it’s all over, Michelle,” he said. “We’re safe. And they arrested Valerie.”

“Did they put you in the coffin?” she asked.

“More than once. They said you never cried.”

“I cried, Sean. Trust me. I cried a lot.” She looked out the window. There was a bed of flowers below her window. Their blooms were done for the season; their stems drooping. “A lot,” she added.

“I’m sorry, Michelle.”

“For what? You got the same treatment in there that I did.”

“It was my idea to go over the fence.”

“I’m a big girl, Sean. I could have let you go it alone,” she added quietly.

“I know why you didn’t,” he said. “I know.” They sat in the window seat looking at the dead flowers.

After Sean and Michelle were sufficiently recovered they were flown by private jet to another location, driven by car with blacked-out windows to an underground parking garage and taken by secure elevator to an enormous office suite that had nothing in it except three chairs. While two muscular men with guns inside their suit coats waited outside they sat down across from a small, thin, impeccably dressed man with thick white hair and slender wire rim glasses. This gentleman put his fingertips together and gazed at them with a sympathetic expression.

“First, I want to extend to both of you the official apologies of your government for what happened.”

Sean spoke up angrily. “Funny, I thought it was our government that was trying to kill us.”

“Government can be an unwieldy thing, Mr. King, with certain parts of it overstepping boundaries of authority from time to time,” the man replied evenly. “That doesn’t make the rest of government evil. However, you did break into a CIA facility.”

Sean was not in a conciliatory mood. “Prove it!”

Before he could answer Michelle said, “Do you understand what was going on there? Do you blame us for trying to do what we did?”

The man shrugged. “My job is not to assign blame, Ms. Maxwell. My task is to move forward from this point in a way that benefits us all.”

“How exactly do we do that?” Sean demanded. “ Our government kicked the shit out of us. A girl named Viggie Turing has been taken by our government. People have been murdered by our government. How do we move forward in a way that benefits us all from that!”

The man leaned forward. “Here’s how. We have viewed the video that was used to issue the search warrant for Camp Peary. As you know it shows certain… compromising activity. Our technical people tell us that the video has been copied.”

“You want the video that shows our government breaking about a hundred laws.”

“It wasn’t our government, Mr. King,” the man snapped. “As I said, sometimes people overstep their boundaries of authority.”

“In our case they didn’t step, they stomped. ” Sean studied the man. “So that’s why they sent you with your nice manners and white hair and glasses looking like an old Cold War warrior right out of a damn John le Carré novel to give us the pitch.”

“I’m glad you understand the situation. And the fact that we need any and all copies of that video, Mr. King,” the man added quietly.

“I bet you do. But I’m a lawyer and I need to see the quid pro quo and let me tell you it better be ten times bigger than whatever you might be thinking of right now if you really want to do a deal.”

“I have authority to make certain concessions-”

“Screw that. Here’re our terms. First, we want Viggie back safe and sound and if you tell me that’s not possible the tape goes straight to a journalist friend of mine who’ll take it and win the Pulitzer he so desperately wants. Next, Valerie Messaline, or whatever the hell her name really is, gets everything she has coming to her and I’m not talking a promotion. Third, Alicia Chadwick with the one leg gets the same treatment. And the shit that they’re doing over at Camp Peary has to stop. I mean really stop. No more drugs. No torture. And consider yourself lucky.”

The man sat back and considered this. “The two women have already been taken care of. You have my word on that.”

“Your word means shit to me. I want real proof!”

“All right.”

“What about Viggie?” Michelle blurted out. “Is she okay?”

The man nodded curtly. “But the actions you’re talking about at Camp Peary; some of them will stop, Mr. King, indeed some of them already have. But I cannot promise that all of them will. Yet I can assure you that these activities are absolutely essential to preserving the security of this nation.”

“Isn’t that what you always say when you want to piss all over someone’s rights?”

“How is drug running essential to our nation’s security?” Michelle asked.

“We’re not selling it,” the man said impatiently. “We destroy it.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t inhale,” Sean barked.

“Three people were killed,” Michelle pointed out. “Murdered.”

“A very unfortunate fact. But the sacrifice of three lives to save thousands, if not millions?”

“Well, I guess that’s just great so long as you or someone you care about isn’t one of the people sacrificed,” Sean countered.

“Nevertheless, I cannot promise that all the activities you witnessed at Camp Peary will cease.”

“Then I guess we have a problem,” Sean said. “And if you’re thinking of maybe eliminating the two problems you see sitting in front of you, think about this. I had five copies made of that video. And they’re all in very safe places. Now unless Michelle and I die in our sleep at age ninety, one copy is going to be delivered to my aforementioned Pulitzer-hungry friend so he can write the story first, with other copies going to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Times of London.”

“That only makes four. What about the fifth one?”

“That goes to the president. I bet he’d get a real kick out of it.”

“And yet as you pointed out we seem to have reached an impasse.”

Sean stood and paced. “Good lawyers always think of a compromise so here’s one for you. There’s a hidden treasure at Camp Peary.”

“Excuse me,” the man said, startled.

“Just shut up and listen. It’s hidden in the foundation wall of Lord Dunmore’s Porto Bello lodge. Gold, silver, jewels. The whole thing’s easily worth millions.”

“My God!” the man exclaimed.

“Yeah, before you get permanent dollar signs etched in your eyes that treasure is to be taken and sold for the highest possible price. Hell, if the government wants to buy it they can. I don’t really care. But the proceeds of those funds will be divided into three equal shares.”

The man pulled out a pen and a piece of paper. “All right. Presumably with one share going to each of you.”

“No!” Sean snapped. “One share goes to Viggie Turing. It won’t make up for her dad getting killed but it’s a start. The second share goes to Len Rivest’s two kids. They’re in college and could probably use the money. And the third share goes to the family of the medical examiner who was killed in that gas explosion. You got that?”