Piranha

“What is it, Bill?” Washburn answered as he tossed the unfinished coffee in the trash and picked up the china cup of rare St. Helena coffee that his assistant had brewed for him. “I don’t have much time before my first meeting with the board.”

“This isn’t William Derkins,” an unfamiliar voice said. “But I do have some information that you will be interested in.”

Washburn was startled and looked at the phone’s display again. It was definitely showing the number for Bill’s personal cell, and only a handful of close friends and advisers had Washburn’s number.

He went to the floor-to-ceiling window that looked out on the Atlantic and took a sip of his coffee. “How did you get Bill’s phone?”

“I didn’t. It’s a technique called spoofing. I won’t bore you with the details. You wouldn’t understand them anyway. This was the only way I knew you’d take my call. Sit down.”

“What?”

“You’re going to want to sit down to hear what I have to tell you.”

Washburn laughed. “How do you know I’m not sitting already?”

“Because you’re standing next to your window.”

Washburn froze with the cup halfway to his lips. He sca

“Okay,” he said, playing along, “I’m sitting now.”

“No, you’re not. You’re standing by your extremely expensive pot of coffee, flown at a cost of a hundred dollars a pound from the island where Napoleon was exiled. I hear it’s quite rich, no pun intended.”

Now Washburn was truly alarmed. He was in the tallest building on Miami’s coast, so there was no way anyone had a view from the outside this far into his office. He looked around the office wildly, searching for the hidden spy gear.

“How did you plant a camera in my office?”

“I didn’t. I see everything.”

“Who are you?”

“You can call me Doctor for now. If everything goes well, we may meet in person in a few days. Now, take a seat at your computer. I have something to show you.”

“What if I call the police?”

“Then I will have to tell them what you did to poor Gary Clement.”

At the mention of Clement’s name, Washburn’s knees weakened. To his credit, he recovered and said, “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“I know that you do and I’ll prove it. Check your email.”

Washburn straightened up, walked slowly to his desk, and opened his laptop. He put the phone on SPEAKER and set it on the desk.

The most recent email was from Washburn’s own address. The subject line read “From the Doctor.”

Washburn was aghast at the breach in his security. “You broke into my email?”

“I thought the attached video was better coming from yourself than from my email address. You’ll know why when you see it.”

Washburn took a deep breath and clicked on the attachment. When he saw the first image, he was glad he was sitting down because he nearly fainted.

The video showed him and Gary Clement, a squat, balding man, sitting on the deck of Washburn’s yacht. Other than the bright lights of the boat, it was pitch-black. Washburn would never forget the evening three months ago. They were forty miles off the coast, a location specifically chosen for its privacy. No other boat had been within ten miles. It was just the two of them on the boat.

Yet it looked like the camera filming the scene had been on board the yacht with them, cutting back and forth between close-ups of each of them. Even the audio was flawless.

“I can prove you falsified those reports,” Clement said in his nasal whine. “I made copies when we were auditing your books. You may have destroyed them since then, but the discrepancies are clear. You shipped that body armor to Afghanistan even though you knew the manufacturing process had rendered it brittle and inadequate against the firepower they were facing. Hundreds of soldiers were killed and wounded because of you.”

Washburn had to admit Clement had the leverage. Not only would the explosive allegations end his political ambitions but the subsequent investigation would send him to prison for a long time if the real data surfaced. He would lose his company, his reputation—everything.

“What do you want?” Washburn replied coolly.

“You’re not even going to try to deny it?”

“Why should I? You showed me what you have, which is why we’re out here. I thought you wanted to negotiate.”

Clement smiled. “Then I want ten million dollars.”

Washburn nodded, as if he’d expected such a figure. “And next year?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, whatever number we settle on, you will always be out there lurking with the Sword of Damocles.”

“If you give me ten million dollars, I guarantee I will never talk about this again.”

“I think I’m the one who can make that guarantee,” Washburn said. He pulled a Smith & Wesson revolver from between the seat cushions and shot Clement in the chest.

As Clement gasped for air, Washburn said, “I found your files before we came out here. Not much of a backup plan.”

Clement sighed a death rattle and slumped in the chair. Washburn tossed the revolver overboard and disappeared from the picture for a minute. He came back holding four diving weight belts. He tied one to each of Clement’s wrists and ankles and heaved the body over the side. After scrubbing away any traces of blood with the bleach he’d brought with him, he tossed that over as well. No one knew there was a co

Now as he stopped the video, he knew this Doctor could ask for anything and he would have no choice but to give it.

“I would delete that immediately, if I were you,” the voice on the phone said.

Washburn did as instructed, his hand shaking as he worked the trackpad.

“How did you get that video?”

“I don’t divulge my secrets. But my talents could be very useful to a man like you.”

“What talents?”

“I told you: I see everything.”

“How much do you want?”

“You think this is about money?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Money I have, Governor Washburn. What I don’t have is your charisma, reputation, and commanding presence. I couldn’t buy those no matter how much money I had.”

Washburn shook his head in confusion. “Then what do you want?”

“The same thing as you,” the self-proclaimed Doctor said. “I want to make you president of the United States.”

After stopping to recover the Discovery without incident, and now well out of radar range and in international waters, the Oregon shifted course northwest.

By the next day, a rested Juan sat at his desk and read each team’s reports. Despite some hiccups in the execution of the plans, the outcomes were what they’d been expecting. Juan was consistently proud of the hard work his people put into their jobs, as well as their ability to think on their feet.

With a rap on the door and a curt “Enter,” Eric and Murph joined Juan in his cabin. Stoney wore what seemed to be the same outfit he’d had on the previous night, but Juan knew he had multiple versions of white shirt and khaki slacks. Murph, on the other hand, had changed into a T-shirt that bore the image of a burning figure and the line “I tried it at home.” After getting a few hours’ rest last night, the two of them had dedicated themselves to cracking the laptop and memory card. They gleamed with triumph.