Primary Valor Read online

  The Caribbean Sea

  “This house is a palace,” Darwin King said.

  It was a strange thing to say, especially when he was by himself. But it was true. There were echoing stone floors, wide-open spaces, huge windows and doors. There was a magnificent southern exposure, looking out across the green hillsides to the open ocean far below. Today, it seemed like every window and door was thrown wide—curtains billowed on the ocean breezes.

  He sat on his private terrace, gazing out at his domain. Far away, across the water, he watched the sky darken. What looked like a rain squall was coming across from the Honduran coast. Even the rain storms here were fantastic. Sheets of rain blowing sideways, chain lightning, earthshaking rumbles of thunder.

  Why not? He had the best of everything else. Why not have the best storms?

  Darwin had eaten lunch and was enjoying a glass of white wine. The glass decanter was stationed in a metal bowl filled with ice near his elbow. The wine gave him a pleasant buzz. He wished he could stop time right in this moment.

  He was a king—no, a sultan—and this house was his palace. He had wealth beyond the imaginations of most people, all those dirty, grasping, toiling masses of humanity, just trying to make it from one week to the next. He had his harem girls, at his beck and call, and ready to carry out any whim. He had his rich and powerful friends and business associates.

  It was incredible to be him.

  But even so, doubts sometimes crept in. He hadn’t been to his place on Jupiter Island in six months or more. The police investigation, no matter how many times it had been quashed, repeatedly reared its ugly head. When he left, it was beginning to make life uncomfortable for him. There were whisperings on the social scene. His parties were not as well attended as they had been in the past. A little time away, out of the country, seemed in order. Let things die down again. He thought he’d be back in a month, maybe two, but half a year later, here he was.

  “I don’t really miss it,” he said.

  And that was true, as far as it went. He was going to be fifty-nine years old. His appetite for parties was not what it once was. In other ways, his appetites were as healthy as they ever were. But having lots of people around him, sycophants, yes men, blood suckers, and hangers-on? People like Jeff Zorn, the degenerate gambler, pathetic little money borrower and late night bridge jumper? Darwin could live without people like that. It was hard to believe that he had once considered Jeff among his friends.

  The only worthwhile thing Jeff had ever done, in his entire miserable life, was give 21 to Darwin. And even that came with drawbacks.

  No. Darwin would take the isolation here over people like Jeff, or Miles Richmond, or Bill Ryan, or innumerable other parasites, knowing as he did that the situation would not last forever. Life went in seasons, and this season of life was sure to end.

  The thing he didn’t like was the feeling of being driven out. He left Florida voluntarily, but there was a certain amount of duress involved. They had been trying to get him. And now they wanted to come here and get him.

  They. Them. Who even were these people?

  Enemies.

  Everyone had them. It was hard to reach such a point of absolute power that you had no enemies at all. But wouldn’t that be grand? Imagine being so powerful that the moment someone even thought of crossing you, you simply ground them into dust?

  It was something to strive for.

  He suddenly realized that he didn’t have to sit here, merely waiting to see what happened next. Would his people in the United States be able to stymie the attack before it happened? When was it supposed to happen? When would he find out?

  He did not have to wait. He could take action himself. He could bring the fight to the enemy. It was a Eureka! moment.

  It occurred to him that what he really had been doing was puzzling over the 21 problem in his subconscious. Give her back? Not a chance. Get rid of her some other way? When he was younger, it was possible he would have chosen that option. He had gotten rid of quite a few over the years. Some, you could pass down the line. There were places in this world, notably the Sunni Arab states of the Persian Gulf, where girls of the type Darwin preferred commanded top dollar, or even better, favored business arrangements.

  Others… sometimes you just had to get rid of them. They were damaged goods. Psychological problems, mostly. Failure to thrive. Trauma from bad upbringings. Those ones had to go. The fun wore off.

  He sighed. Bad memories tended to weigh heavily on him. He could go that route with 21, he supposed. The route of bad memories, of cutting his losses. But he didn’t want to. He liked her, and they hadn’t even had any fun yet. He couldn’t just write her off as a dead loss. It wasn’t her fault that these people were trying to rescue her. Not really. He should give her a chance before he took a step like that.

  Today. Tonight. He would do it. He would give her that chance to redeem herself.

  In the meantime, taking the fight to the enemy. Oh my. Oh yes.

  That was the ticket.

  He smiled and picked up the phone on the small table. It was the same phone that he kept in his living room. The base of it was hardwired to the house. It was on a long cord, and he could just carry it out here onto the terrace. It was a weirdly elegant thing to do. He loved it.

  Cell phones were for modern jerks. Darwin King was a throwback to a simpler, classier, better time.

  He put the handset to his ear and dialed zero.

  A moment passed.

  “Operator,” said a voice.

  “It’s Darwin. Get me an outside line.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  He got the line, and dialed a number from memory. Darwin had a near photographic memory for numbers, figures, contractual amounts, details of all kinds. He was practically a savant.

  He waited as the call traveled thousands of miles to a place right outside Washington, DC.

  “Hello?” a voice said.

  “Do you know who this is?” Darwin said.

  “Of course I do.”

  Darwin smiled. “I have a project I’m working on.”

  “I might have heard something about it,” the voice said.

  “Yes?” Darwin said. “Do tell.”

  “Rumors, nothing more.”

  See? He hated that. People talking. Especially a person like this one. It was hard to know who anyone was. The government? The CIA? Someone worse? The players obscured their origins, and half the time, you weren’t even quite sure who you were dealing with.

  The thing to know was he had a project, it was his project, and they worked for him. That was the important thing to keep clear. And this man, on the other end of this line, had never made the mistake of seeing arrangements in any other way.

  Darwin’s money was good, and they had mutual friends in common.

  “I need you to do something for me,” Darwin said. “Right there in town. And I don’t want to wait. I need it done tonight.”

  “We’re always happy to help,” the voice said. “You know that. What is the nature of this thing you would like me to do?”

  “I have a headache,” Darwin said. “Two of them, in fact.”

  He could almost hear the man smile over the phone.

  “We are the best pain reliever there is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  8:35 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

  An underground parking garage

  The offices of Richmond, Baker, Hancock and Pearl

  K Street, Washington, DC

  “Do you know who I am?”

  The voice came from the back seat of the car. Miles Richmond froze at the sound of it. The tiny hairs on the backs of his hands, and on the back of his neck, stood straight up. He had just slid into the driver’s seat of his white Lexus. He hadn’t noticed anyone sitting back there, but the lights in this garage were dim, and he hadn’t thought to look.

  Miles was the last person to leave the office tonight, by a lot. He had been waiting for word about the rescu
e operation, word that had not come. And he had not been careful, that much was clear. He was alone, alone with this stranger, and they were sitting in a darkened car, deep in shadow, at the back of a parking lot.

  “How did you get inside this car?”

  “You’re very stupid, you know that?” the man said. “People get in and out of this car anytime they want. This car is bugged, my friend. This car, the car before it. They’ve been listening to you talk for years. The only reason you’re not in jail is they like you where you are.”

  Miles began to turn to look at the man squarely.

  “Don’t turn around. You can see me in the mirror.”

  The man spoke forcefully, and Miles found himself obeying that voice. He looked in the mirror instead.

  The man was Hispanic, with a dark face, dark eyes, and dark hair. Everything about him was dark, save one thing. There was a long vertical scar down the left side of his face. That raised tissue stood out pale, nearly white, against the rest of the man’s skin.

  “I haven’t committed a crime. There’s no reason for anyone to put me in jail.”

  The man smiled and shook his head. He looked up at the sunroof of the car, as if he might find God there, and they might have a good laugh about how everyone denies everything. But God sees all.

  “Do you know me?” the man said. His English was good, but he spoke it with a faint accent that suggested it wasn’t his first language.

  Miles shook his head. “No. I’ve never seen you before.”

  “You know of me, then?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I have no name. They call me El Tigre. In English, the Tiger. The tiger is a solitary creature. Do you know this nickname?”

  “No. I don’t know it.”

  There was no mercy in those eyes. No compassion, no humanity. They were the hardest, coldest eyes Miles had ever looked into.

  “I took your granddaughter. It was just, how you call it, a job. I do things like that for money. I gave her off to the people who paid me. I did not touch her, and she was in perfect health when she was with me. You should know that.”

  “Okay,” Miles said. He could not seem to move now. His body was locked up. It occurred to him that the thing to do was open his door and burst out of the car, then run screaming through the garage. But he didn’t seem to have the muscle control to even try it. He couldn’t lift his hand to touch the door.

  “She’s a beautiful girl,” the man said. “I took good care of her.”

  Miles said nothing in response. He was stuck in place. He was stuck in time. He could not move forward from this moment into the next.

  “Two of my friends were killed by the FBI. One was a very good friend. He was with me a long time. I don’t blame you for that, even though you sent the agents.”

  “Thank you,” Miles said.

  He gazed out through the windshield at the parking lot in front of him. It was a bleak, forbidding place, a subterranean nightmare of a place. There was no one here. There were no cars here. Just dismal yellow light, bare steel pillars, and an empty concrete lot. It was hideous. He almost couldn’t believe that he had been parking down here for so many years.

  To makes matters worse, everyone parked down here—all the employees, the partners, the clients, the guests. Miles Richmond strived for excellence in everything he did. But look at this garage. What kind of impression did this place make?

  “I don’t come here because my friends got killed,” the man said. “When people get killed in my line of work, you can say they lived a dangerous life, and it was their time. The bill came due, that’s all. I always think that way. It’s for the best. You didn’t kill them, and revenge is a bad idea. I take revenge on you, someone takes revenge on me, someone else takes revenge on your wife and kids, on and on. It’s not worth it.”

  Miles was losing the thread of this conversation. The man was talking around in circles, talking without coming to the point.

  “Do you know why I am here, if not for revenge?”

  Miles shook his head. “No.”

  “I came because someone paid me to come. This is another job. You need to understand that as well. There’s nothing personal. It’s just business. I know almost nothing about you, for sure not enough to hate you. You’re just some guy who is on the wrong side. And it’s okay because you’re old. You would have died soon anyway.”

  Miles finally understood. Despite the fear, despite the terror that would see him turn to stone and never say another word, he found his voice.

  “You don’t have to do it,” he said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  Miles felt something pressing against the back of his head then. He glanced in the rearview, and could just make out the reflection of a gun. It was a handgun with a long silencer at the end, and the man, The Tiger, was holding it to Darwin’s head.

  The Tiger’s eyes showed no obvious emotion. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t worried. He wasn’t sorry. “Adios, Miles Richmond.”

  “Wait. You don’t have to do this. We can work something—”

  “Darwin King says hola.”

  Miles saw the gunshot that killed him. He watched it in the rearview mirror. It happened in an instant, but time seemed to slow to a crawl, if only for that instant. A lick of flame appeared at the end of the barrel of the gun. Something traveled from that hole, an energy more than something physically seen.

  Miles felt it enter his head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  9:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

  Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool

  The National Mall

  Washington, DC

  “Beautiful.”

  William Theodore Ryan, Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives, had just left work for the evening. The night was chilly, and he wore a long wool coat over his suit.

  Inside his coat, there was a shoulder holster he wore when he left the Capitol each night. Guns were not allowed in the House chamber, and he respected that tradition. But once he left the chamber, he was permitted to carry a concealed weapon, and he chose to do so.

  The gun he typically carried was small, a Beretta Nano—what they called a pocket pistol. Macho types that Bill had known over the years might say it was a “lady gun.” But it was a nice solid gun, heavier than it looked, loaded with eight rounds in the magazine, and very accurate for its type. No external safety—no fiddling around. Just pull it out and shoot bad guys.

  As he sometimes did, he had walked here to the Reflecting Pool, lit up in the evening, stood here below the base of the Lincoln Memorial, and gazed across at the Washington Monument.

  He enjoyed coming here. He enjoyed the anonymity of it. It was night, a handful of people out strolling or jogging or simply taking in the sights. No one recognized him. They were in their own bubbles, and so was he, soaking in the grandeur of American history.

  There was a lot to admire about this spot. For one, the design of the park, the genius, the sheer epic scale of it, and how it led you to contemplate the place in history of the country’s two greatest presidents.

  For another, the men themselves. Not ordinary men, certainly. Everything about them was gigantic, larger than life. Physically, they were just bigger than other men of their times. Washington was broad-shouldered, and thought to stand six foot two or six foot three, in a time when a more normal height for a man was five foot six or five foot seven. He was so imposing that people were hesitant to approach him from behind.

  Lincoln was even larger, perhaps six foot five, and as a young man, known for juggling axes and other feats of strength. One of the earliest photographs in existence was a distant shot of Lincoln just before delivering the Gettysburg Address, standing head and shoulders above the men around him.

  Washington likely died of pneumonia, from being out in a cold rain all day. Lincoln, of course, was shot in the head. So not ordinary men, but mortals nonetheless. Their greatness, and their permanent place in history, lay in how they
responded to crisis. How they stepped up to face the dangers and the opportunities of a challenging moment.

  This was a place where Bill Ryan allowed his imagination to run wild. He pictured himself in the august company of these two men, not as their underling, but as their equal. The United States was in crisis again. A president had been kidnapped and murdered. His own vice president had been implicated in the murder and forced to step down, though no link had been proven.

  The new president was seventy-four years old. He had also been kidnapped, this time in a hijacking of Air Force One by Muslim extremists, and taken to Somalia. He had only survived by the skin of his teeth, and through the efforts of an extraordinary group of American soldiers. There was very little chance that he would run for office again. His hand-picked successor, the current vice president, was a weak man, and compromised in every way.

  The time was coming once again for a strong man to step up and claim his rightful place in history.

  Bill Ryan was that strong man.

  Removing that weak vice president, Thomas Hayes, from the equation before he got the chance to ascend to the presidency and bring ruin upon everyone, was of paramount importance. Darwin King held the key to removing Hayes.

  Ryan didn’t like dealing with Darwin King. That was an understatement. His disdain for the man was as large as the big sky of Montana. Darwin was what many people in this town (and New York, and London, and any other capitals of finance and government you cared to mention) seemed to think of as a necessary evil.

  Darwin reveled in getting his hands dirty. He was the go-between, the man who was happy to make deals with the worst people on the planet. Why wouldn’t he? For all his privileged upbringing, he was one of them.

  Sometimes, the United States needed to deal with the worst people. But they couldn’t be seen doing it. They couldn’t be seen passing weapon systems, as obsolete as they might be, to warlords in the diamond mining regions of central Africa, despots who disappeared thousands of their own citizens across the Americas, and mafias of all kinds.