Keep Calm (10 page)

Georgia reached across the table and shook Steel's hand warmly. Steel caught a strong whiff of her perfume, which she found surprisingly alluring.

“There's one more thing I need to tell you, Madam Chancellor, about the American, the one in Heaton's delegation. His name is Adam Tatum. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He's originally from Michigan, just outside of Detroit. He's an ex-cop.”

“Really?”

“Yes, ma'am. There's something else about him you should know.”

“What is it?”

“He spent ninety days in jail in federal prison. Almost two years ago. The case was quite serious. It was very public. He admitted his guilt, but for some reason that we've yet to discern the charges were dropped and he was released.”

“What was he arrested for, this Tatum?”

“Attempted murder.”

“Who in god's name did he attempt to murder?”

“The governor of Michigan.”

 

BEFORE
■
4

Kate wanted to make good on a return to the amorous moment from the night before. She had even looked past the fact that he had come in at eight in the morning smelling like someone had poured a gallon of whiskey on him and stuffed lit cigars in his pockets, or that he had smashed up his hands roughhousing with her father and some of his friends. She wanted him to have a good time, wanted him to enjoy London, to get on well with Heaton. It all played wonderfully into her game plan. She came out of the shower in his favorite orange pajamas, a pair that he always took great joy in peeling her out of.

It wasn't to be. He was fast asleep. She crawled into bed and went back to her book, a memoir from several years earlier by the comedienne Tina Fey. She, the sleeping kids in the next room, the snoring hubby, her orange “sexy PJs,” and Tina Fey. All was fine. She was in London. That's what mattered. She was home.

The hotel phone did its thing once again. Like a clanging giant iron cat, the old mechanical ring commanded Adam out of a deep sleep. He sat up straight in bed as if he'd been hit with a hammer. It was another HGI rep on the line. Sir David wanted him to “pop round the house for a quick chat.” It didn't seem to matter that it was eleven at night. Adam seemed to be okay with it. He actually welcomed more face time with Sir David. Kate thought the hour was odd, but she happily helped him dress and gave him another sweet kiss at the door.

Gordon was there in the lobby, as usual. They almost had words as he walked him toward the Mercedes across the way, with Harris up front and Peet at the wheel.

“I'm gonna get to the bottom of all this shit right now, Gordon. This guy's going to come clean with what he's up to.”

“I'm telling you to stay as calm as can be, son. Just listen. Do not bang pots. Do you hear me? It's not the way to play it.”

“I'll do what I have to do. Fuck you, Gordon. I'm done playing with you.”

The old man stopped him and pulled him back into the lip of the lobby, away from the eyes of the bodyguards.

“You watch how you talk to me! I am on your side, you hear me? I told you I have your back and I intend to keep my eyes on it. You need to be steady here. I know what you're up against. You don't have a clue.”

“If you know what I'm up against, then you knew what you were getting me into, so quit playing dumb, Gordon. I'm getting tired of it.”

He stared at him. Gordon wanted to smack him, it was obvious. Adam would have done more than smacked him back. That was also good and evident. Adam turned, left the lobby, crossed the small street toward the square, and got into the back of the Mercedes. The bodyguards didn't say a word as they pulled away. Adam hadn't expected them to.

*   *   *

HEATON'S HOME WAS
on the Palace Gardens Mews, a mansion or two down from the sultan of Brunei's place and two doors up from the Lebanese embassy. It was five stories on two acres in the center of London, backing up to the Kensington Palace Gardens. It was a walled estate with more security than the embassies around it. As they drove through the gate, Adam saw several more men in nondescript suits similar to the ones Harris and Peet always had on. They all wore the same non-smile and were most likely armed. Adam wondered why a guy like Heaton needed all of that security, all this muscle.

Heaton met him at the front door, dressed impeccably once again, every hair in place. The mansion was landscaped to perfection, the front door an aged mahogany that must have been six inches thick.

“Tatum, good of you to come. Come on, I'll give you a quick tour and then fix you up with a very nasty drink.”

Adam was in no mood: he couldn't make small talk if he tried, so he didn't.

“I don't need a tour, or a drink, Mr. Heaton. That's not what I'm here for. Let's get to it, okay?”

Heaton chuckled. “I've got your blood flowing, haven't I? I like that. Good for me. Come into the study. We'll show each other our goods and have a drink and the tour afterwards.”

Heaton went inside as Adam followed across a highly polished marble foyer, past a massive stairwell that hugged the wall tight and coiled its way up toward a second-floor landing. They finally made it through the back hallway, into a wood-paneled study. The overly cushioned den was finely made up with expensive sofas and chairs, a Victorian-era pool table, and a ninety-inch flat-screen TV. There was a quietly subdued bar built in across the back wall.

Heaton immediately went to work making himself a drink. Adam just stared at him, waiting to unload. Heaton giggled and offered one up again. Adam declined with another version of his longest face. Heaton pointed to a set of chairs, took his drink, and followed Adam over.

“You're sore about the call girl? Is this it?”

“I'm sore about so many things, I'm not sure where to begin. Let me say up front, whatever it is you have me here to do, whatever ‘job' you have for me, I'm not in. You understand? Not interested.”

“Yes, you are. Trust me, you are, but go ahead.”

“No, Mr. Heaton, Sir fucking Heaton, I'm not! Not in the slightest. You drugged me, had me thrown in jail, got me right out, all for what? To scare me? You didn't scare me. You just made me realize who you are.”

“No, now, no, I have to stop you. Right there.” Heaton leaned forward and grabbed a cigar from a box on the table between them. “The point wasn't for you to realize who I am. The point was for me to realize who you were. I liked that you didn't want to cheat on your wife. It was cute. It gave me a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling.”

“Don't be an asshole. I mean it. I'm not here to play cute with you. You may have all the money in the world, but it doesn't give you the right—”

Heaton cut him off. “Okay, come on. Yes, it was a little show of power. May have even been over the top, Tatum, but you're a cop, a son of a cop. I knew you wouldn't scare too easily. I was showing off, okay? I was setting the stage.”

“Setting it for what? What is it that you want from me?”

Heaton cut his cigar, lit it, and looked Adam in the eye.

“I want you to leave something at Number 10 for me after our conference, something that I may not be willing to take the blame for having left behind myself. In short, I want you to be the fall guy if it goes bad. I want to be able to blame you, the nut job from America that even once went so far off the rails as attempted murder on the governor of Michigan.”

Adam was surprised, blown away, even. He didn't expect Heaton to come out and be so honest about his intentions. Not that Adam hadn't, somewhere in the back of his mind, even mildly suspected such a scenario had brought him to London—he just didn't think Heaton would be this bold and up front about it.

“There's a brief—it's about five hundred pages long—in a thick, forty-pound binder like this one here.” Heaton pointed to a wieldy, leather-bound folder on the table next to the box of cigars. He reached over and slid it toward Adam. Heaton motioned for him to pick it up. Adam did. He leafed through the pages of numbers and figures. He had seen a binder like this before, back in Barry Saffron's office in Chicago: it was a dossier spelling out the company's course of action to take over an expansive pension system. This was obviously one of the more detailed ones he'd seen.

“It's one of fifteen we've presented to the civil service. It's the only one that matters. It's the bible of the system we'd create. The new law would be written based exactly on what's in here. Precisely. They have one exactly like this already at Number 10. There's only one difference between the one in your hand and the one we've submitted to them, the one that has been okayed by the chancellor, the Treasury, and the minister of pensions for government workers. Turn to page 657.”

Adam turned to page 657. It was just a lot of figures, a spreadsheet. He couldn't see anything worth looking at, only a sea of numbers.

“The one at Number 10 has a flaw.”

“A flaw?”

“It's off. We messed up. It has what might be seen as a statistical error. If we say nothing, it's fine. That will be how the money flows for the length of the agreement. This is how the Treasury will write the law. Twenty-five years.” He shrugged and sipped his drink.

“If we live with our error it will only cost us a billion and half dollars a year. No problem, right? Forty billion dollars over the course of the deal.” He chuckled. Adam tried to see where the error was. Nothing jumped out at him.

“Trust me, Adam, several top people have been fired over this. I don't take it lightly. This is four and a half years in the making.”

“Why can't you just tell them you made an error? Tell them you want to amend it?” Heaton chuckled even more at that remark.

“Obviously you've never dealt with Lassiter and Turnbull. They'll stick it right to me. That, plus the fact that it's done. The conference at ‘10' is a formality. Turnbull's signed off. It's a Lassiter deal, this one. If I have to go back in and make changes of any kind, that iron ass Georgia will send me straight back to the drawing boards and she'll enjoy doing it. It'll be another four and a half years if it's a month.”

Adam followed it through in his mind, nodded when he had it. Heaton watched him closely.

“So, you want to sneak in a new ‘bible'? Hope no one ever notices the difference? A new one with the right figure, so the law is written up in your favor? I make the switch, take the old one when I leave?”

Heaton nodded. “A new one with the new figure. The correct figure anyway. We're not doing anything wrong. We're fixing a mistake. No more.” Adam just looked at him. It all seemed to make sense.

“And if for some reason the switch is uncovered? If it all goes bad? You blame the American. The ‘nut job.' The mixed-up ex-cop who you hired as a favor for a childhood friend. The one that famously went bonkers in Michigan. He did it. The American. It was his error, and he made the switch at the meeting.”

“You got it, Adam. Right on the money.”

“Yeah. I got it. I'm the fall guy.”

“You would be the fall guy. Yes.” Adam couldn't believe what he was hearing. Heaton pressed on.

“Number one: it won't go badly. No one will ever notice the change, not even Georgia Turnbull. She has plenty more on her mind, I'm sure of that.”

“If they do? If it's spotted?”

“They then have a case for fraud.”

“Exactly.”

“When we leave Number 10, you will get a fifteen-year contract starting at one million pounds a year. It will have no escape clause: if we fire you for any reason, you will be paid in full. Fifteen million pounds. If things were to go awry, which they won't, you will be long home in Chicago, and you would then of course be fired immediately, your contract settled. As per the contract, we will be responsible for all legal bills, and we will start a long, drawn-out legal battle with the British courts that would conceivably take them a good ten years to prosecute—a battle that I will have many tools at my hands to use to help force an ultimate settlement, of which I will bear the full costs.”

“So in a worst-case scenario, I walk away with fifteen million pounds? You blame an errant employee for the whole thing while accepting all of the responsibility.”

“And in a best case, you have a job for fifteen years and you work for us and learn the business. You grow with the firm as a key man that I personally look out for.”

“Sounds great. I'm not interested.” He got up and walked out. Heaton shook his head and giggled lightly as he quickly followed.

“You want the tour before you go? A drink? Cigar? Come on, you can say no. Don't be rude. Don't just run off.” They arrived at the front door. Peet was waiting in the Mercedes. Adam stopped.

“Look, David, Sir David, Heaton, whatever…”

“Call me what you want. I'm not particular about that.”

“Okay, how about ‘shithead'? Does ‘shithead' work?”

“It works if you say yes. Of course it does.” Heaton was once again enjoying the back-and-forth, thriving on the heat coming off of Adam's forehead.

“I don't think you realize the toll it took on my life the last time I was talked into doing something else that absolutely ‘couldn't possibly' go bad. I don't have it in me to do it again.”

“The difference between that last escapade and this one is me. I don't think there was anyone in that prior debacle you took part in in Michigan with the resources that I have, was there?”

“No, there was no one in that group quite as charming as you are.”

“Oh, look at me. Now I'm blushing.”

“Heaton, I know that you're not a man who's going to take no easily. I know that's what the thing with the hooker was about. I get it. You have moves. I'm not your guy, though. If you want to find someone else, I'll never say a word to anyone. You can find another fall guy and give him my fifteen mil. If you fuck with me, though, you'll be fucking with my family, with my marriage. If you do that, we'll have a problem. I promise I won't let that happen to me again. Do you understand?” He leaned forward and got right into Sir David's space. Heaton just let loose the same cocky grin he was famous for flashing.