The First Lady's Second Man, page 19
part #3 of Linda Darby Mystery Series
“And after that?”
“I continued to kill, from time to time. When ordered. I did work for the defense department, and several intelligence agencies, ours and those of our allies. There was also some work outside the government for men like the one you remember from when we met. I left the justification for each killing to my superior officers. Some years later, once, I ended up refusing. That particular ordered killing felt inappropriate and unnecessary.”
Linda stopped walking and turned to face Ryan. He met her turn. She raised her eyebrows. He nodded. “You. Yes.”
They began walking again, drifting into the cool Pacific surf. Her arm inside his, their hands held.
“I’m tired of what I do. There, I’ve said it. I’m tired of it. Problem is some of it must be done. And, truth is, I’m very good at it.”
Linda grinned. “I’m living proof this is true. Still, no one is indispensable.”
“The adventure of doing it, is gone. It now seems, I don’t know, mechanical. Certainly not patriotic. Still, the belief that any of it will change anything in a permanent way has left me. As for the mission I came to you after completing, it had a strong patriotic bent. But, in the long run, it will change nothing, at best it’ll delay some evil.
“Let me bring this to the level of us. I want us to settle down together. I want to help raise Stephanie, if you’ll let me. I want to care for you, love you, and hope that you’ll return those sentiments.”
“Are you ready to give up this . . . Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid death wish?”
“It’s not like that.”
“No. They went to Bolivia. You go, God knows where. I don’t even know where you were last week when I couldn’t reach you. … I know, you can’t tell me. That’s a big part of the problem. I don’t know where you are, what you’re up to, and you’ll be under orders not to tell me. I just wait and wonder. If you die I might not ever be told.”
“Are you saying you want me to promise that no matter the threat to America, no matter the threat to you, that I will never again do what I do … what I’ve done? If I had promised that two weeks ago, I couldn’t have helped you save your daughter. I couldn’t have helped you avoid killing Billy Knight. Conversely, if you had killed Knight, he could not have attempted to assassinate the president. Ultimately, that assassination was prevented because of my tip to the CIA. Without all of what I had done and what you did, I wouldn’t have had the knowledge to pass on to the CIA. Perhaps then the president may have been assassinated. All this stuff’s connected. If you tip over the first domino the rest fall, or if don’t tip over that first one, the rest don’t fall. Our part in all this? Who the hell knows. All you can do, as I see it, is what you think is right, or what you decide is necessary. The rest becomes the growing ripples in a pond.”
Linda turned to Ryan. “Asking you for that promise seems unreasonable when you put it that way. On some level, all Americans will respond to protect their loved ones, the country. I suppose I’d want you to do it if there’s a sufficient threat.”
“Even with that, it’ll come down to defining what is and isn’t a sufficient threat.”
“I’m just afraid you don’t want to let go of the adrenaline rush you get from your way of life.”
“Put it however you want.”
“I just did. But, truly, I don’t know.”
They stood still. As the waves ebbed and flowed, the swirling, foamy water alternating between lapping at their ankles, and climbing up closer to their knees.
Ryan watched Linda’s lips darken as a cloud shrouded the moon. Watched them move as she spoke.
“I just don’t want to hear, or, if not told, surmise you’ve died in some unknown corner of the world that I can’t even find on a map. That I can’t even spell.”
“All I can say is what I want. You. Steffi. A life together. To grow old standing here under the moon, in the surf, looking into your beautiful face.”
“One day it won’t be so beautiful—if it’s now.”
“Yes it will.”
“Ryan Testler, my romantic gunslinger.”
They laughed and began to walk again.
She circled his bicep with her hands. She pulled him close. “We didn’t find the answers tonight, did we?”
“But we better understand the issues we’ve shared.”
They started to walk back toward Linda’s condo. She kicked at the low surf, the water sprayed ahead of them. In the distance the moon silvered the caps on the waves.
“How about we talk some more about this tomorrow?”
He nodded. “Right here. Same place. Let’s do that.”
Linda kissed him and they made love in the sand.
Epilogue
Two weeks later:
President Walker was ahead in the polls for reelection, by a razor-thin margin.
The bodies of Charles Darrow, Ralph Martin, and Brad Sander had still not been found. Apparently, the people who knew them, weren’t interested in going to the authorities.
Given Ryan’s knowledge of the efficiency of Cash & Carry, they would likely never be.
Carlson Bickersley, soon after resigning, went on a two-day fishing trip for marlin off the coast of Baja, California. He’d been hounded by the press and avoided by everyone he knew in D.C. He went alone, reportedly to fish and think. At the last minute, another man, a stranger, booked on with the boat owner just before it left the dock. The two men and the skipper were the only people aboard the boat. Bickersley and the other man, a man the owner and skipper of the boat said paid cash and introduced himself as Brad, drank heavily the first day and well into the night. The skipper eventually went to bed below leaving the two men still drinking on deck. During the night, another boat came abreast and tied on. Brad knew a man on the other boat, and decided to join him and return to the shore. The skipper, aware of how much Brad had drunk, helped him move over into the other boat. At that time, Bickersley remained on his boat, passed out. The next morning, he too was gone.
“Ees dronk,” the skipper said. “Ees fall over, I gess.”
The skipper was unable to estimate the time Bickersley fell overboard. He was certain it was after Brad moved to the other boat. The skipper didn’t know the name of the other boat and hadn’t recognized its skipper. “Ees not from my port.” The skipper did remember Brad saying goodbye and paying him a generous tip, and that Brad went over to Bickersley to say goodbye, but that the man was passed out, dead drunk. “I go back to my bunk, below. That is all I know.”
The consensus view was that Bickersley got up during the night, stumbled and fell into the water. His body wasn’t found.
The investigation into William “Billy” Knight didn’t go far and didn’t establish much. He was dead and buried. His connection, if any, to Islamic terrorism unproven. No direct connection could be established between any group in Iran and his mother beyond the fact she was born there and emigrated to America over forty years before. A recording of a phone call, supposedly between Knight and his mother, had mysteriously appeared in a CIA field office. It strongly supported the contention that Knight’s mother was behind her son’s attempt to assassinate President Walker. The recorded phone call was probative to that point, but took the investigation nowhere beyond the mother being a lifelong fanatic with no clear connection with modern Iran.
Mrs. Knight, Billy’s mother, was arrested under a terrorist charge with the possibility of more specific charges. The government pressured Knight’s mother for the names of the terrorist organizations and individuals to whom she’d reported over the decades, along with the names of other sleeper cells in America. From what Ryan learned through the CIA, to date, there had been no progress. With her lifelong charade ended, she remained silent. Apparently, proud to play the martyr. The U.S. government remained hopeful, but had nothing to show for it.
Mr. Knight, Billy’s father, died of a heart attack after learning his son attempted to assassinate the American president, and that his wife of sixty years married him only to provide cover for her life as a sleeper agent for Islamic terrorism. He’d tried to visit her in prison. She refused to see him.
Linda and Stephanie agreed that after her graduation from Hobart at the end of the school year, they, along with Ryan Testler, would move to Caruthers, Kansas. Stephanie would go to school there and continue getting to know her patchwork family of honorary Aunt Vera, Uncle Dix, and her surrogate grandmother, Mrs. Caruthers.
Deciding they had more than enough money to retire, Linda and Ryan kept her condo on the Oregon beach. They would have two homes. They discussed his possible retirement, getting married, and his adopting Steffi. All that seemed right, just not now. Steffi had to know Ryan much better and, they both admitted, they needed to see how Ryan would handle life in a small town instead of in the fast lane of intrigue and adventure.
In the end, as so often occurs in life, they reached an imperfect agreement. Ryan would no longer take independent assignments. He would continue to work as a special assistant to the Deputy Director for Covert Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. There would still be great risk, just, perhaps, not as often. At least that was the hope. The only permanent item in his portfolio for the CIA would be handling Henri Benoit, and the situations that would come to light as a result of information obtained from the French banker.
Linda didn’t love that part of their uneasy agreement. But, she could no longer deny she loved Ryan. They would postpone their marriage and his adoption of Steffi until some unspecified point in the future when they expected, at least hoped, to cross both those bridges. Perhaps when the saga of Henri Benoit had run its course. Perhaps, when peace came to the Middle East. They weren’t holding their breath on that one.
The next morning, Ryan and Linda drove to a local shipping service and sent off a package to the headquarters for the Israeli Mossad, attention Adi Selinger. The package contained the digital player Adil Suileman, the leader of the Turkmen Brigade had requested, along with a copy of the motion picture film, Fargo, and all the episodes of the TV series of the same name. With the assistance of the CIA deputy director, Ryan was able to obtain a copy of the screenplay for one episode from the first season, signed by Billy Bob Thornton.
Their next stop, the Portland Airport. Ryan still had to fulfill the last part of his promise to Adil Suileman. His promise to go fart in Fargo.
The End
Note to Readers
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Excerpt from the First Linda Darby Story
A few pages farther ahead is the beginning of an excerpt from the first story in the Linda Darby series, The Woman. If you enjoyed The 1st Lady’s 2nd Man, please read the excerpt for a taste of how Linda Darby and Ryan Testler met and their first mysterious adventure.
A Personal Note:I love to hear from readers, so please drop me an email to share your thoughts on this story. I can be reached at david@davidbishopbooks.com.
For those of you who write or who aspire to write, I encourage you to keep writing, keep rewriting, until your prose lives on the pages the way it lives in your mind. I will reply to all emails that do not contain an attachment.
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David Bishop
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About the Author
David Bishop enjoyed a varied career as an entrepreneur during which he wrote many technical articles for financial and legal journals, as well as a nonfiction business book published in three languages. Eventually, he began using his abilities as an analyst to craft the twists and turns and salting of clues so essential to fine mystery writing. David has, as of now, thirteen stories of the mystery, suspense and thriller genres available for your pleasure reading. For more information on David and his writings please visit his website. He would appreciate hearing your thoughts on this mystery or any of his stories. Email contact is especially appreciated.
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Books of the Matt Kile Mystery Series
Book one in the Matt Kile Mystery Series is Who Murdered Garson Talmadge
Book two in the Matt Kile Mystery Series is The Original Alibi
Book three in the Matt Kile Mystery Series is Money & Murder
Book four in the Matt Kile Mystery Series is Find My Little Sister
Book five in the Matt Kile Mystery Series is The Maltese Pigeon
Book six in the Matt Kile Mystery Series is Judge Snider’s Folly
The Woman
Starring Linda Darby and Ryan Testler
On the following pages is an excerpt from the first story in the Linda Darby and Ryan Testler series. If you haven’t read it, please stick your toe in and learn how these two fascinating characters found each other. Here are a few of the comments by readers:
The Woman captured my attention in the first two pages. I have read books by Flynn, Margolin, Connelly, Thor, Baldacci, Morrell and many others. I just finished David Bishop’s books, The Woman, and The Blackmail Club and have enjoyed these books as well as any I have read.
My Third David Bishop Read and I’ll be back for more. This guy can really, really tell a story.
Mr. Bishop has written a remarkable book.
This is an absolute gem of a book.
“The Woman” grabbed me and had me hooked within the first few pages.
David Bishop has mastered the art. I am a fan.
The Woman
Preface
The woman marked for death was prettier than most, but otherwise, in many ways, an ordinary woman living an ordinary life in a quiet let-the-world-go-by beach town on the coast of Oregon. For Linda Darby, Sea Crest was a retreat, an escape, a place to hide. She had grown up knowing only that she did not want to become her mother: housedresses, housecleaning, and a butt too wide. That mindset had led to her present state, an ex-husband and enough one-night stands to have stopped counting.
Linda jogged on the beach most mornings. There was nothing better for maintaining trim legs and a tight butt. She dined alone most evenings before returning to her computer to enter any day trades she wanted executed upon the next opening of the financial markets. She had positioned the desk in her oceanfront condo so she could watch the comings and goings of her neighbors, whose lives seemed more exciting than her own. She was good enough at day trading to have bought her condo with cash, and several jumbo CDs that provided a steady living income.
Day trading was flexible work and Linda appreciated the insulation from the questions of coworkers: Do you have children? What happened to your marriage? She just wanted to be left alone.
Then Linda Darby went out the door to go for a walk, and nothing for her would ever again be the same.
Chapter 1
The mild beach town night air cooled Tag’s arms. Despite being well muscled, his arms felt chilly. He considered asking his partner to hold their position while he drove back to the motel to get his windbreaker. He could be back in fifteen minutes. But he knew he couldn’t chance it. The call could come at any moment, letting them know Linda Darby had settled in for the night. They were ready. The drop cloth and dental instruments were in the back of the rented van. Tag’s partner would have her talking nonstop in no time. No one resisted the dentist for long.
*
Linda Darby did not believe in the supernatural, yet tonight felt different somehow, as if gods long forgotten were whispering just beyond human hearing. She worked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. It felt dry and tasted metallic.
Her fortieth birthday was fast approaching. Perhaps her premonition had been born of that and nothing more. The days came and went, the seasons repeated, and all of it merged into history. Another year spent without any real change. The only constant, the horizon at sea always looked close enough to reach out and trace with her fingers. But her life remained just as she had made it, a mire. Every day aged her, gradually but definitely. Her body had never screamed, you’re getting old, at least not in any meaningful way, but her mind knew. Men still noticed her. Thank God. She hoped they always would, but one day they wouldn’t, at least not in the same way. Time remains the true enemy of us all.
Her sense of foreboding had started just before dusk, but Linda had forced herself through her routines. She entered her stock trades for the morning. Then called Cynthia Leclair to confirm they were on for lunch tomorrow. Her friend had sounded distant and preoccupied on the phone. Perhaps Cynthia also sensed whatever was crawling along the edge of Linda’s consciousness.
