When The Devil Whistles Page 13

  “Uh, that’s okay. We’re scheduled to talk about that tomorrow morning, aren’t we?”

  “Yeah. 11:30.”

  Silence.

  Something was weird. “Is anything wrong?”

  “No, no. I was just thinking that it might be fun to get together for a glass of wine or something. Not publicly, of course. Go to an out-of-the-way little bistro or bar, walk in separately, and sit in the back. No one will see us. What do you say?”

  He had no idea what to say, so he stalled. “Sounds like fun, but I’ve already got plans tomorrow. I don’t have my calendar with me, but I might be free Friday.”

  “Uh, Friday is bad for me. How about tonight? You’re always bragging on the restaurant at that one winery out in Livermore—what’s the name?”

  Tonight? His heart started beating faster. The firm wouldn’t like it, but then the firm didn’t really have to know. “Wente.”

  “That’s it. And I’d love to see your plane. Antique, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, P-51. World War II fighter.”

  “How cool! So, is tonight good?”

  Connor blinked and stared at the hangar wall without really seeing it. He knew this was a bad idea, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Besides, one of the perks of having a family like his was that he could afford a bad idea every now and then. “Um, sure. Tonight is great.” He glanced at the cockpit, which his grandfather had modified to seat two. It was a tight fit, but would that be so terrible? “Hey, would you like me to take you flying?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “I’d love it!”

  “Great!” He glanced at his watch. 5:00. “If you can be out here by seven, I can take you up for a ride before we head out to Wente.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Excellent. I’ll see you at seven. I’ll meet you in the parking lot outside the main building.”

  He clicked off the phone and sucked in a deep breath. He blew it out slowly and ran his fingers through his hair. Wow.

  Two hours later, Connor stood in the airport parking lot playing Brickbreaker on his Blackberry and trying not to think about the evening ahead. But the unanswerable questions kept sneaking back into his mind. What exactly were Allie’s intentions? For that matter, what were his? What would tonight mean tomorrow when he was back behind his polished walnut desk and Allie was his client?

  Better to just relax and let the evening unfold.

  A red Cooper Mini pulled into the lot and he recognized Allie behind the wheel. She spotted him, smiled, and waved. He waved back. “And here we go,” he said to himself as he walked over to meet her.

  32

  ALLIE PUT THE CAR IN PARK AND TURNED TO SEE CONNOR APPROACHING her. He looked like an Eddie Bauer ad—crisp khakis, white polo glowing in the early evening sun, light tan, easy smile crinkling the corners of his chestnut eyes.

  She got out of the car and gave him a hug. She held it a little too long, but didn’t care. “Good to see you.”

  “You too.” He put a hand in the small of her back and guided her around the corner of the building. “We’ve got an 8:30 reservation, so let’s get right up in the air. I’ve got the plane out and ready to go.”

  They reached the open area behind the building and Allie saw the plane. She didn’t know much about World War II aircraft, so she had vaguely expected Connor’s plane to look old. Maybe a biplane or something with an open cockpit and a boxy, cloth-covered fuselage. But what she saw looked more like a steel shark with wings. She smiled in anticipation.

  Connor turned to her and grinned. “Ever get sick on a roller coaster?”

  “Nope. Iron stomach.”

  “Good.”

  They got closer to the plane, and she could see White Knight painted on the nose in Gothic script. She stifled a laugh.

  Connor gave her a startled look. “What’s funny?”

  She nodded at the plane. “White Knight. It’s just very, very you.” If only he could save her. No, she wasn’t going to think about that. Just enjoy today.

  His smile returned. “Thanks. It was also very much my grandfather. He named it in honor of the fighter pilots he knew. Called them knights of the air.”

  He gestured to a spot on the wing with the words “Step Here” stenciled on it. “In you go. The rear seat is yours. Sorry it’s a little cramped. P-51s are single-seaters, so it wasn’t designed for that jump seat.”

  Allie carefully squeezed into the narrow space, regretting that she hadn’t spent more time in the gym. But once she was in, it was surprisingly comfortable. The custom leather seat cocooned her nicely between the rear of the cockpit and the back side of the pilot’s seat.

  Connor climbed into his seat, put on a headset, and buckled himself in. He started the engine and taxied to the runway. Then he opened the throttle and a deep roar filled the plane. Allie’s entire body thrummed with the power of the P-51.

  The plane jumped forward and accelerated down the tarmac. A giant invisible hand pressed Allie back into her seat. She felt the plane tip forward as the tail left the ground. A second later, the P-51 left the ground and soared into the bright azure sky.

  Allie had flown dozens of times before, but those had all been commercial airliners. Those were about as similar to Connor’s fighter as a commuter train is to a Corvette. She could really feel that she was flying in this plane—not just sitting in a cramped bus seat that happened to have a 30,000 foot view out the window.

  “We’ve got clearance for aerobatics,” Connor shouted over his shoulder. “Want to have some fun?”

  “Sure!” she yelled back.

  The word was hardly out of her mouth when the plane nosed up and the world wheeled under her. She suddenly found herself hanging from her seatbelts and she looked up—down?— through the canopy to see vine-covered hills rushing by. Then the plane rolled to the side and she was upright again.

  Connor turned and called over his shoulder. “That’s called an Immelmann. And this is called a split-S.”

  He flipped the plane upside down again and rolled it into a tight half loop that righted it and reversed their direction.

  Allie laughed with the pure joy and freedom of the moment. All her problems and hurts seemed a million miles away, part of a different, earth-bound world. “This is great! I never want to land!”

  “You like it?”

  She laughed again. “I love it! This is better than a roller-coaster with no rails!” It was even better because it was with him.

  The next hour went by in a blur. They slalomed through wisps of cloud at 300 miles an hour. They dove down and roared over pastures just above the treetops, so low that Allie could see the faces of the cows looking up as they passed. They made slow passes through the steep-walled canyons Connor had hiked and camped in as a boy.

  And then it was over. The red light of sunset turned the runway deep crimson as Connor brought the plane in for a feather-light landing. He taxied over to the hangar and then killed the engine.

  The silence rang in Allie’s ears. Connor slid back the canopy and a warm evening breeze wafted into the cockpit, carrying the faint scent of gasoline and hot asphalt. The dirty, painful, complicated earth-bound world swallowed her up again. She sighed, unbuckled herself, and searched for some way to lever herself out of the snug seat.

  “Getting out of there can be a bit of a trick.”

  She looked up and saw Connor already out of the cockpit and standing on the wing. He smiled and reached out to help her. She took his hand. It was warm and strong and she didn’t want to let it go. He pulled her to her feet in a smooth, strong motion.

  She stood on the wing, still holding his hand. They were so close that his face filled her vision and the scent of his Armani cologne surrounded her. She looked up into his eyes and for a moment she was flying again.

  But the moment passed. He stepped back and released her hand. “Everyone gets stuck the first time.”

  “Thanks.” Too bad there wouldn’t be a second time.

  33 />
  MITCH AND ED LEANED AGAINST THE RAIL AT THE STERN OF THE GRASP II. The ship’s diesel engines chugged below them. Despite a breeze, the air smelled of exhaust fumes. It wasn’t a pleasant place, which explained why Mitch and Ed had it to themselves.

  “So why’d you drag me up here?” asked Ed, raising his voice to be heard over the engines. He took a sip from his mug and made a sour face. “This is a Sumatran blend with complex and delicate flavors—and this stink makes it taste like I stirred it with a tailpipe.”

  Mitch was in no mood to trade pleasantries. “I wanted to go someplace we could talk privately. You see what I saw?”

  “Where?”

  Mitch pointed at the churning ocean below them. “Down there. That submarine. Don’t tell me you thought it was a Nazi wreck.”

  Ed looked into his cup and swirled its contents. “What’d you think it was?”

  Mitch looked around quickly to make absolutely sure no one was nearby. Then he leaned close to Ed. “Russian nuclear missile sub,” he hissed in Ed’s ear. “Typhoon class. And I don’t think, I know.”

  Mitch leaned back and watched his friend’s reaction. Ed nodded slightly and took another sip of his coffee. “Yep, that’s what I saw too.”

  Mitch leaned in to whisper again, but Ed shoved him away with his shoulder. “Would you quit that? No one can hear us out here, but they can see. They’re going to think we’re up to something. Or that you’re going Brokeback on me.”

  Mitch shoved him back. “Okay, fine. I was just going to say that Lee and Cho didn’t look surprised. I’ll bet they knew there was a Russian sub down there.”

  “Really? I’ll go you one better and bet the sun will come up tomorrow. Of course they knew. It all fits together, don’t you see?”

  Mitch thought for a moment. “You mean like Lee and Cho and, uh…”

  “I mean like everything.” Ed held up thick hairy fingers and started counting off points. “One: the nonferrous metal detectors for Eileen. They’re looking for uranium or plutonium, not gold. Two: the Nazi treasure sub cover story they fed Jenkins.”

  “And Jenkins fed you,” Mitch interjected.

  “Yeah, exactly. Think it’s a coincidence that setting up Eileen to look for gold also sets her up to look for a nuclear sub? Three: the Koreans. They’re obviously military. I wondered why a military unit would go treasure hunting. Nuclear missile hunting, though—that makes sense.”

  Mitch’s stomach dropped and he felt sweat prickling his scalp. The dark portholes of the bulkhead opposite him suddenly looked threatening. “What do you think they’re gonna do?”

  “To us? Nothing. At least not ’til they’ve got the bombs or whatever it is they want from that sub. After that?” He shrugged.

  Mitch swallowed hard and clenched his fists on the railing. He didn’t want to believe it, but he couldn’t find a way not to. It all made too much sense in a brutal way. He’d been in plenty of fights and thought of himself as a pretty tough guy, but he suddenly realized he was soft next to Lee and Cho. There was a hardness in their way of thinking that Mitch had never come up against in any barroom brawl. I’m going to have to start thinking like that. He set his jaw. “So what are we gonna do?”

  34

  CONNOR ENJOYED WATCHING ALLIE ENJOY WENTE. SHE OOHED OVER THE view from the patio and aahed over the crab cakes. He had eaten here a hundred times, so the restaurant held few surprises. For him, coming here was like visiting a good friend— one who could cook. But for Allie it had the special savor of a new discovery. Sitting across from her was almost like experiencing it again for the first time. It was beautiful; she was beautiful.

  She took a sip of Chardonnay and the corners of her lips curved up slightly in a smile that he was not quite sure how to read. “Mind if I ask a personal question?”

  His antennae went up. “Fire away.”

  “Your family is rich, right? I mean really rich—buy-your-own-island rich.”

  He laughed. “Depends on the island.”

  “But you never really had to work, right? You could just do what you wanted to do and there’d always be someone to pay the bills. Just call up Citibank or Bank of America and it’s taken care of.” She snapped her fingers.

  “Morgan Stanley, actually.”

  “But you didn’t have to work, right?”

  “Wellll…” He drew out the word to stall. Talking about the Norman-Lamont fortune always made him uncomfortable. He didn’t like how he sounded when he spoke of it—he could hear himself veering among arrogance, false modesty, and evasion. He also didn’t like the envy and gold-digging it brought out in too many listeners. He hoped the evening wasn’t about to start sliding downhill.

  Allie rolled her eyes. “Oh, cut it out. True or false: you could do whatever you wanted with your life.”

  He squirmed and looked at the table. So this is what it felt like to be cross-examined. He’d have more sympathy for his next witness. “True.”

  “So how did you decide?”

  “You mean why did I become a lawyer?”

  “Sure, let’s start there.”

  Connor swirled the merlot in his glass as he formed an answer. “In college, I wanted to be a senator like my father. The straightest road to the Senate runs through law school, so I went to law school. Then while I was there, there was a scandal in Washington. It had to do with defense contracts and campaign contributions. It was complicated, but the bottom line was that Dad was innocent. But a lot of his friends were guilty and Dad had known what was going on.

  “I asked him about it, and he just said, ‘That’s how Washington works. You don’t have to be dirty, but you have to put up with dirt in other people if you want to get anything done.’ I wasn’t willing to do that, so I gave up on the Senate.”

  “But you were already in law school.”

  “And loving it.” He took a sip of wine. “I was a round peg in a round hole. It was great. So I went through on cruise control, happy as a shark in a school of tuna. Then I graduated and took a job with a big firm because that’s what you do when you graduate from Harvard Law and you’ve got good grades.”

  “And here you are today.”

  He nodded. “And here I am today.” He lifted his glass. “To Harvard Law and Doyle & Brown.”

  She lifted her glass and clinked it against his. “Would you change anything? If you could start all over with a fresh slate, what would you do?”

  “Put more money in Google and less in GM and AIG.”

  She laughed. “But other than that, you’d do it all again. Harvard Law, Doyle & Brown—all that?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  She shrugged. “Well, it just seems like you took kind of a step down. You know, from a senator who’s helping shape the course of the country—the world—to a lawyer who sues people. No offense.”

  “None taken. Actually, I think it’s a step up.”

  “Really? Why’s that?”

  “I get to work with people like you.”

  She blinked and looked down. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Oh, I most definitely mean it. Dad had to make deals with criminals. His proudest achievements were—at best— compromises. I don’t have to make deals with criminals, I take them down. No compromises, no dirty friends. I get to spend my days representing people who put themselves on the line to clean up the system. People like you, Allie. I’m honored to be your lawyer.”

  She kept her eyes down and studied her wine intently. “You don’t know me.”

  He searched her for any hint of false modesty, but found none. A warm glow came over him. He wanted to know her. He needed to know her. “So tell me about yourself. You asked how I wound up where I am. Now it’s your turn. How did you wind up being a professional whistleblower?”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “I didn’t really plan on it. I had my CPA certificate but no job. So I started temping. One of my jobs was at NorCal Corporate Trust, remember them?”

  “Oh, yeah. The bank that kept mak
ing errors in their favor when they managed state bonds. Our first case together.”

  “And the rest is history. Simple as that.”

  Connor regarded her for a moment. “Is it really as simple as that? I know what you’ve done, but not why. Is it just to make money so you and your boyfriend can live the sweet life and go snowboarding? Or is there something more?”