The Alexandria Link

“So nice of you to notice my trim figure. Where’s your girlfriend?”

“I have no idea. I assume she was sleeping with me to see what she could learn. Which was nothing. I was doing the same thing. Again contrary to what you think, I’m not a complete idiot.”

Per Daniels’s suggestion, she’d called Daley two hours before and requested the meeting. He’d eagerly agreed. What bothered her was why Daniels, if he actually wanted her to talk to Daley, had interrupted the encounter at the museum. But she simply added that quandary to the growing list. “We didn’t finish our conversation.”

“Time for a reality check, Stephanie. The stuff you have on me? Keep it. Use it. I don’t care. If I go down, so does the president. Truth be told, I wanted you to find it.”

She found that hard to believe.

“I knew all about your investigation. That whore you sent my way? I’m not that weak. Do you think that’s the first time a woman has tried to learn things on me? I knew you were digging. So I made it easy for you to find what you wanted. But you took your time.”

“Nice try, Larry. But that dog doesn’t hunt here.”

He worked on a combination of eggs and grits. “I know you’re not going to believe any of this. But for once could you forget you hate my guts and just listen?”

That’s why she’d come.

“I’ve been doing some snooping. Lot of crap swirling. Strange stuff. I’m not privy to the i

“Why didn’t you just ask for my help?”

“Get real. You can’t stand to be in the same room with me. You’re going to help me? I figured once you peeped into the window and saw what was happening, then you’d be a lot more receptive. Like you are right now.”

“You still bribing Congress?”

“Yeah. Me and about a thousand other lobbyists. Hell, it should be an Olympic sport.”

She glanced at Cassiopeia and saw nothing that triggered alarm. Families and older couples populated the many tables.

“Forget all that. It’s the least of our concerns,” Daley said.

“I didn’t know we had any concerns.”

“Much more is happening.” He gulped a few swallows of orange juice. “Damn, they load this stuff with sugar. But it’s good.”

“If you eat like this all the time, how do you stay so thin?”

“Stress. Best diet in the world.” He tabled the glass. “There’s a conspiracy going on, Stephanie.”

“To do what?”

“Change the president.”

This was new.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense.” He shoved the plate aside. “The vice president is in Europe attending an economic summit. But I’ve been told that he left his hotel last night late and went to meet with a man named Alfred Herma

“And discovered that Herma

A look of amazement flooded Daley’s face. “I knew you’d be a help. So you already know about it.”

“What I want to know is why any of that is important.”

“This group cultivates political influence and they have reach all over the world. Herma

Daniels had said nothing about this subject.

“You still have those flash drives you took from my house?”

She nodded.

“On one are some digital recordings of telephone conversations. Only a few, but damn interesting. They’re with the VP’s chief of staff-a true asshole if ever there was one. He fu

“And how did you manage to learn that?”

“I was there.”

She kept her face blank.

“Right there with him. So I documented the whole encounter. We met Herma

That was new, too.

“Yeah. I went to her and told her what was happening with the link. I also told her about the meeting with Herma

“That wasn’t real bright.”

“Seemed so at the time. The Israelis were the only ally I could muster. But they thought the whole thing to Herma

“Now I’m getting sick.”

Daley shook his head. “It was about a month later when the VP’s chief of staff and I were alone. Asshole that he is, he still likes to brag. That’s what usually gets guys like that in trouble. We’d had a few drinks and he made some comments. By then I was suspicious, so I kept a pocket recorder on me. I got some good stuff that night.”

Cassiopeia stood from her table and walked toward the glass wall. Outside, cars came and went in the shaded parking lot.

“He talked about the Twenty-fifth Amendment. How he’d been studying it, learning details. He asked me what I knew about it, which wasn’t much. I acted disinterested and drunk, though I was neither.”

She knew what the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution said.

In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

SEVENTY-ONE

SINAI PENINSULA

MALONE CHECKED HIS WATCH: 11:58 AM. HE’D ALREADY glanced through the two openings once and seen nothing. Pam and McCollum stood below him as he balanced atop the fourteen stones.

Noon arrived and a carillon of bells pealed in the distance.

“That’s eerie,” Pam said. “Out here in the middle of nowhere.”

He agreed. “Sounds a ways off.” Like from heaven, he thought.

The sun blazed overhead. His body and fatigues were damp with perspiration.

He stared back through the openings.

Point after point, stretching down the backbone of the ridge, came into view. What may have been hermit caves dotted the rock wall like black eyes. Then he noticed something. A stony trail etched up one of the mounds. A camel track? He’d checked in Lisbon before they left and learned that the mountains of this region concealed fertile hollows the local Bedouins called farsh. Usually that meant a water source and drew whatever few inhabitants the land enjoyed. St. Catherine’s monastery to the south, near Moses Mountain, occupied a farsh. He’d assumed more surrounded him.

He watched as shadows disappeared and the color of the granite mountains transformed from pewter to beet red. The twisting course of the path up the hillside, now maroon, assumed the shape of a serpent. The two openings framed the view like a painting.

See the endless coil of the serpent red with anger.

“Anything?” Pam asked him.

“Everything.”

STEPHANIE GLARED AT LARRY DALEY. “YOU’RE TELLING ME that the vice president is pla

“That’s exactly what I think is happening.”

“And how are you the only one on the planet who’s noticed this?”

“I don’t know, Stephanie. Maybe I’m just a smart guy. But I know something is happening.”

She needed to learn more. That’s why Daniels had sent her.

“Larry, you’re just trying to save your ass.”

“Stephanie, you’re like the fellow who’s searching for a lost quarter beneath a streetlight. A guy comes along and asks what’s he doing. He says, ”I’m looking for my lost quarter.“ Guy says, ”Where did you lose it?“ The fellow points off in the distance and says, ”Over there.“ The guy’s puzzled, so he asks, ”Why are you looking here?“ And the man says, ”Because this is where the light is.“ That’s you, Stephanie. Quit looking where the light is and look where you need to.”