THE PRESIDENT 2 Page 10

“Not for another two years.”

  “But people don’t forget. We’ve got to elect more Democrats. I don’t need a Republican House that I’ll have to fight tooth and nail in the last years of my term. But that’s exactly what will happen if I keep making a mess of things for our party. And if I let you go to some prison in Texas to see that man, it’ll be the very definition of making a mess of things.”

  “But I need to see him, Dutch.”

  “Because some kid asked you a question? Come on, Gina!”

  “Because I need to see him. He’s my flesh and blood.”

  “He’s a murderer.”

  “He’s my brother who happens to be a murderer. I understand he’s a terrible, despicable human being. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s my flesh and blood and I think I should go and see him.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, so you can go and see your racist mother but I can’t go and see my brother?”

  “Half-brother. And it’s not the same thing.”

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “Because my mother didn’t kill anyone! My mother wasn’t on death row!”

  “And your mother,” Gina said, “isn’t always at the center of political controversies that hurts the Democratic Party.”

  Dutch looked at Gina, threw his napkin onto the table, and stood and left.

  Gina threw her napkin onto the table too. But she just sat there.

  A day later, Dutch took Air Force One out of Andrews Air Force Base and then Marine One to his mother’s estate on Nantucket Island, leaving from the guest room before Gina woke up. And Gina, once awake, took a Boeing 757 out of Andrews and then a convoy of SUVs to the Alan B. Polunsky Unit of the Texas State Penitentiary in West Livingston, Texas.

  EIGHT

  Dutch sat in the parlor of his mother’s home, his muscular body leaned forward, his arms resting on his thighs as he read a series of text messages on his customized, Secret Service-issued Blackberry. Although he was reading the messages, he couldn’t stop thinking about Gina and that awful argument they had had last night. Then to get word from a member of his staff, while he was en route here to Nantucket, that she had decided to go to Livingston anyway, concerned him.

  Just after their marriage, when parts of America was stunned, other parts elated, the Secret Service chief had asked if Dutch wanted to have final approval over all of the First Lady’s travel itinerary. Dutch had thought it rather condescending for him to even ask it, as if he expected Gina to hop a plane to rendezvous with one of her lovers or something, and he had said no without hesitation. And even now he stood by his decision. Gina was too smart and savvy a lady for him to dream of keeping tabs on her, and he told that chief, who seemed to be among those more stunned than elated by the marriage, that his wife was more than capable of approving her own schedules.

  But he still worried about her. She wanted to meet this half-brother of hers, this murderer Marcus Rance, when Dutch knew that going down a road like that rarely, if ever, ended well. Although he did understand her curiosity. This Rance fellow was, as she rightly pointed out, the only son of her beloved, deceased father. But he also was a cold, calculating killer who decided to do a drive-by that mowed down those innocent people as if they were targets on a shooting range. And he didn’t want a guy like that playing with his wife’s emotions. Because Dutch knew that Gina was an advocate to her soul, a woman who never met a human being she viewed as beyond redemption. And his fear was that she’d go down there to Texas, find in this brother of hers another redemption project, and begin advocating for him. Which could be painful for her. Not to mention, as Max did repeatedly on their ride over, politically devastating for him.

  But Marcus Rance was her blood relative, and Dutch understood her need to connect. But even so it had been Dutch’s experience, with his own mother as his guide, that some blood relatives, when those layers peeled away, were better left alone.

  Max, who was with Dutch and sat beside him on the sofa, could not have agreed more and told the president so on their ride over to Massachusetts. But it went in one ear and out the next, it seemed to Max, because the president, for all of his great skills of human acumen, was tone-deaf when it came to that wife of his. She could parade around Washington in her Dashikis and braids and the rest of that African shit she loved to wear, could cuss out reporters, could behave like the ghetto-fabulous hood rat she really was, and he just sat back and let her. Slap the shit out of her was what he needed to do, Max figured, but could he tell that to Dutch? To his best friend since they were kids together on this very island? Not if he wanted to keep his job. Not if he wanted to keep his teeth. Not if he wanted to keep his life!

  And now this phone call from Victoria. What was this about? What, he wondered as he sat there, could possibly be this important that a proud lady like Dutch’s mother, who had vowed to never speak to her son again after his marriage to Gina, would have insisted that he come?

  But before Max could even propose the question to Dutch, the doors were opened by longtime household servant Nathan Riles, and Victoria Harber, along with another petite woman, walked in. As soon as Max saw the woman walking in behind Victoria, he stood, in utter shock, to his feet.

  “Hello, Maxwell,” Victoria said, pleased by his reaction.

  Max, however, couldn’t speak.

  Victoria smiled and looked beyond Max. “Hello, Walter.”

  Dutch stopped reading his text messages as he slowly looked up. When he saw his mother, he stood up, slipping his Blackberry inside his coat lapel. “Hello, Mother,” he said as he began to approach her, his eyes scanning the length of her as if to determine, in a cursory way, if this request for him to come had anything to do with her health. Which, he concluded, given her upbeat appearance, it did not. But when his eyes moved from his mother and landed on the younger woman now beside her, a sudden sense of déjà vu hit him, and then the reality of it hit just as hard, and he stopped in his tracks.

  It had to be a mirage, a trick of the eyes, a harsh, cruel hoax.

  “Yes,” his mother said, smiling greatly now. “It’s Caroline!”

  Dutch just stood there, staring at the younger woman. Max moved up beside him, staring too.

  “But,” Max said in a voice so shocked it sounded like an exhale. “How can this be?”

  Dutch, however, still just couldn’t believe it. Caroline? The woman he had planned to marry, was ready to marry, had made all of the arrangements to marry? Or did she just favor her? That had to be it. Perhaps she was just an older version of the woman he used to love so completely. Because it couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. Caroline died in that plane crash over a dozen years ago. How could she be standing here today?

  Victoria, seeing her son’s distress, touched Caroline on the arm. Caroline, more affected by seeing Dutch again than she thought she would be, began to move toward him. He was older now, but he was the same too. He was still so gorgeous, still so virile, still that same man who used to wrap her too tightly in his arms; who used to make love to her in such a way that no man, not even her beloved Pierre, had ever been able to match.

  When he became president, she had thought to reassert herself in his life then. But it would mean telling Pierre about her sordid past. And she wasn’t about to do that. Besides, her life was idyllic then. She had a rich, fantastic looking, just as virile husband, lived in the perfect French villa, had all those other fantastic-looking, virile Frenchmen clandestinely at her disposal. Until the French authorities came, arrested Pierre for running what they said was an international Ponzi scheme that financially crippled thousands of unsuspecting investors, and she was left devastated, poverty-stricken, and alone.

  Now her savior was in front of her, the man she was determined to reclaim. Twelve years ago, Victoria Harber was the only one who could ruin her, because she was the only one with the evidence. Others in their circle suspected Caroline of infidelity, of sleeping around with every Tom, Dick, and Harry, but Victoria was the only one with the
video to prove that Caroline was nothing more than a high-class slut of a nymphomaniac. And she warned her: if she showed up at that altar, she would expose her for what she truly was right there in that church. Dutch would dump her, their circle would abandon her, and she’d be left penniless and alone.

  The plan, as hatched by Victoria and agreed by Caroline, was that Caroline would go to France on the pretense of finalizing the arrangements on the villa where she and Dutch planned to stay on their honeymoon. She would fly over on one of the Harber’s private jets, tell the pilot at the last minute to leave without her, and then she’d keep the money Victoria had given to her, some half a million dollars, and get lost in that vast French countryside. But then, as if fate itself intervened, the plane that left without her did what planes sometimes were prone to do and crashed. Giving her an out, an airtight reason why she was not coming back to Dutch: the plane crashed into the mountains, leaving no survivors. And she was therefore counted among those dead bodies that ended up scattered like incinerated ashes along the northern face of Mont Pelvoux, in the picturesque French Alps.

  And suddenly an improbable life, where she could change her identity, live off of Victoria’s half million until she could meet and marry one of those rich Frenchmen whom she just knew would go goo-goo eyed over a beauty like her, became possible.

  But after Pierre’s arrest and her eviction from their villa, all their money and possessions seized by authorities, and with nowhere else to turn: she turned to Victoria. And now Victoria was on her side. Not because she suddenly loved her and was so thrilled she didn’t die in that plane crash that she wanted to welcome her back with open arms. But because, in Regina Lansing, Victoria had finally found a woman even more ill-suited for her special son.

  Dutch, however, didn’t have the advantage of all of that back story. All he knew was what he saw in front of him. And all he saw was that the woman he once loved with all of his heart, the woman he thought was long since dead, appeared to be standing right in front of him. Still petite, still had that long, healthy, shiny black hair, still had those undeniably sexy hazel eyes.

  “Caroline?” Dutch said as if it were an impossible question to even ask. Because intellectually he knew it couldn’t be. But emotionally he knew, somehow he was certain, that it was.

  “Hello, Dutch,” Caroline said as age lines appeared on the sides of her gorgeous eyes. She was twenty-five at that time of that plane crash, and Dutch had just turned thirty-two. She would be thirty-eight years old now. And although she still looked remarkably beautiful, she also looked every year of her age. Whatever journey she had traveled, Dutch decided, it hadn’t been an easy road.

  “I know you’re shocked,” Caroline continued. “But I assure you it’s me.”

  “But it can’t be,” Max said, still reeling too. “You died in that plane crash. In the Alps for crying out loud! Are you telling us there was no plane crash? That those people didn’t die?”

  “They died. And I was listed on the flight itinerary. But I wasn’t on that plane. I thank God I wasn’t, considering the tragedy that occurred, but as fate would have it, I had decided to stay in France.”

  Dutch stared at her. Caroline immediately felt that same discomfort she used to feel when he would seem to be studying her so intensely. “Why?” he asked her.

  She and Victoria had rehearsed this moment. She was never to mention the fact that Victoria, before the crash, had paid her to stay, had threatened to expose her “problem” if she so much as thought about coming back. The plane crash was incidental, a fluke of nature that took care of all questions back then. Dutch would simply believe she was lost forever, like the rest of those poor souls, in the crash. But now, when questions needed answering, when Victoria had told her exactly what to say, words failed her. It was that earnest look in his deep green eyes that spooked her.

  Tears came. And to her surprise and certainly to Victoria’s, she couldn’t staunch the flow.

  When she began to cry, Dutch remembered her. He remembered her so vividly that it stunned him. And he pulled her into his arms.

  Victoria pressed her hand to her chest as Dutch held Caroline. There wasn’t an actress in Hollywood that could have put on a better performance. No words, no histrionics, just simple tears. And just like that, Victoria thought with great cheer, Caroline Parker belonged to Dutch again. And the Harber family gene pool was safe.

  ***

  They allowed the First Lady to wait in the Warden’s office. This was so unprecedented that they didn’t know what else to do. No one of her caliber had ever come to Polunsky to see a prisoner before. To see the prison, yes, the high and mighties loved to tour the facilities and accidentally see a random prisoner or two. But none of this caliber had ever had a specific inmate in mind.

  Gina leaned back in the big, uncomfortable executive chair behind the Warden’s oversized desk. Christian was with her and was so protective that he stood beside her chair the entire time. LaLa was there too, sitting in front of the desk, but she hated prisons and was as muted as the secret service agents in the room.

  When Gina realized that Christian was literally hovering over her, she smiled and told him to sit down.

  “I can’t do that, ma’am,” he said. “The president expects me to protect you.”

  Gina smiled. Christian was like a son to Dutch, but Dutch was like some great, mythical figure to Christian. His every move seemed to center around making sure he was doing right by Dutch.

  Dutch, Gina thought, as her mind drifted to their dust-up last night. It was their first severe argument and it was a doosie. It was so bad that Dutch not only walked out on her, but he spent the night in the guest room. And it wasn’t because he had a late meeting, either. It was because he had had it with her.

  He was opposed to what she was about to do, and she understood his concern. But what hurt her was the way he never once tried to see it from her point of view. Yes, Marcus Rance was the scum of the earth for the crimes he was convicted of committing. Gina was one of those attorneys who had seen it all and she knew all about those drive-by shootings where the shooter had such low regard for life that he didn’t care who was caught in the crossfire. He knew Marcus’s crimes were inexcusable.

  But he was still her father’s son. He was still her flesh and blood. And now that he was off Death Row and granted permission to have guests, she felt compelled to come.

  The timing was wrong, she understood that. Dutch’s political opponents and what Sarah Palin rightly called that lame street beltway media would try to make hay out of it, she knew that too. But ever since she found out about Marcus Rance’s existence last year, she’d wanted to see him. But it was an impossibility then. Dutch was in a bitter re-election campaign and the press was trying, through her, to link him in every way to Marcus Rance. No way was she going to give them the hammer to hammer Dutch with.

  But the election was over now and Dutch had won. He was now constitutionally barred from ever seeking the presidency again and therefore, for all intents and purposes, his political campaigns were over. The Democratic Party was relying on his support, of course, but that, Gina felt, wasn’t about her. She wasn’t delaying any longer seeing her father’s son because of any allegiance she had to the Democratic Party.

  And when Marcus Rance walked into the Warden’s office, chained from hand to foot like the animal he probably was, surrounded by not only prison guards, but the Secret Service too, Gina understood Dutch’s resistance. Because in just that moment she was resistant too. She wanted to get up and run away herself.

  But she didn’t. She stayed. And what struck her was the familiarity of him. In the newspaper photos of him, which were always mug shots, he looked like some wild-haired, menacing-looking thug of a man. But now, in person, he was this short, chubby, bespectacled, nerdy-looking man who looked remarkably, almost uncannily, like her father.

  “Sit down, Rance,” the Warden ordered as guards pressed on his shoulders and slammed him down into the chair i
n front of the desk. After Gina assured the Warden that she was fine, he and the guards left. The Secret Service, however, remained in the background, but they remained.

  “I know who you are,” Rance said with a wide, gap-tooth grin.