Kicking the Can (21 page)

“Tina from the spa did my hair and brought the pants and vest from the mainland.”

Dain stepped forward wearing a black leather hat with a broad brim and heavy metal loops. He wore bell-bottom jeans, a tie-dye shirt, and moccasins. He was nursing a beer.

“Very Jimi Hendrix,” Drummond said, giving him a high five.

“Tequila and a beer chaser,” Gupta announced, hiding behind mirrored glasses. He was wearing skin-tight jeans, black-heeled boots, and an Iron Maiden T-shirt with an imprint of a tree monster; “Fear of the Dark” was
printed on the bottom in gothic letters. The hair extensions from his wig reached six inches below his shoulders.

“Careful—alcohol will affect your coordination,” Lowsley said as he set him up with a Jose Cuervo shooter.

“I can feel the music pump through my veins when I’m buzzed…I’m going to destroy you guys.”

He ingested two more shots and drained the beer before he stepped to the microphone to announce the
Guitar Hero
competition. They drew numbers out of Hendrix’s hat, and Gupta was first to perform.

“Iron Maiden—‘2 Minutes to Midnight,’” Gupta shouted.

He used the remote to select his song choice from the computer menu and then tossed it on the cloth cover to his guitar. Gupta moved center stage and pulled the pick from between his lips, grinning; his white teeth glowed in the black light. Gupta was on fire from the get go. Iron Maiden tunes had killer guitar chords, and the solo in “2 Minutes” did not disappoint. His body language was even more entertaining: rotating from jumping up and down while still playing his guitar, to bouncing off imagined bodies in a mosh pit, to rocking forward-back, shifting his weight from front to back and waving his hair mop.

“The guy can key five hundred characters per minute. He won the competition at work,” Drummond said, screaming at Dain so he could hear above the music.

“Have you seen him on arcade games?”

Dain nodded.

Gupta wrapped up his performance. Baturina and Vogel whistled, and he gave them tongue before bowing. Vogel finished her second, or third, Tangier and tonic
and strutted to the elevated stage. Wearing slinky black bell-bottom pants that flapped when her feet “kicked out,” her butt joggled. No panty lines visible. She wore a bow tie and black lace bra, sans shirt.

“I’m enjoying this,” Dain said. “Great idea, Gupta!”

“Bon Jovi—‘You Give Love a Bad Name,’” Vogel said, pointing at Drummond. He turned to see if someone was behind him. Vogel had moves: dark, dangerous, and sexy. She received a rousing round of applause.

Dain and Drummond set up—Dain on percussion, Drummond on electric bass.

“‘All Along the Watch Tower’ by Jimi Hendrix,” Dain shouted.

When they were finished, Dain posed, flexing his biceps, abs, and quads, and then turned to flex his latts and calves. Vogel screamed, “Nice butt,” and Baturina and Jiang followed with choruses of “Take it off…Take it off.”

Dain and Drummond had practiced Hendrix several times. On the last session, Dain opened up, talking about Vietnam.

“When I was in my twenties, I would have spat back if demonstrators spit on me. The anger I felt then has dissipated. I understand what it means to lose your way when leaders disappoint. Disillusionment. Now I see it was a form of grieving. The sixties were a time when people still believed they could make a difference,” Dain had said. Dain and Drummond stepped off, and Lowsley jumped on stage.

“Billy Idol—‘Dancing With Myself.’”

“Playing with yourself,” Gupta shouted. Lowsley gave him the finger.

Lowsley didn’t have Idol’s voice, but he made up for it in costume and performance.

“He’s got the fist and arm thing down!”

“And the twisted snarls are perfect,” Vogel said, walking up from behind to grab Drummond’s butt. She latched onto his hand and dragged him to the dance floor to join Baturina and Jiang. When Lowsley finished, Baturina and Jiang took their places on stage.

“Kiss—‘Shout it Out Loud,’” Baturina said.

Wearing sixties-style miniskirts with boots zipped to the knee, Jiang’s face was painted black with a white star surrounding her right eye, and Baturina’s face was white with a black star. Multiple, Russian Standard vodka martinis aided their state of relaxation. Drummond figured Baturina picked the song so Jiang could sing the chorus. With Baturina’s encouragement, Jiang was coming out of her shell.

Vogel tallied the votes, and Gupta was declared the winner. His encore performance: Mötley Crüe—‘Looks that Kill.’ He racked up a gazillion points. As the evening wore on, there was more alcohol and more celebration. At ten thirty, Dain challenged Lowsley to a chess game, and the two took off after saying good night. Gupta was alternating fast dances among Jiang, Vogel, and Baturina.

“I’m sorry…the day we met…the vase,” Jiang said to Drummond between songs.

“No harm, no foul,” Drummond said to Jiang, who looked puzzled.

“I accept your apology, Jiang. Thanks.”

The next song was a slow dance, and Jiang and Baturina stepped onto the dance floor. Gupta jumped on stage—more air guitar.

“Let’s step out for a breath of fresh air,” Vogel said to Drummond, taking his hand in hers, pointing to Jiang and Baturina. Drummond looked over and Jiang and Baturina were slow dancing.

“They’re turning me on,” Vogel said.

85

N
atalya Baturina was surprised when Pan Jiang came to bed. Her hair was combed straight, partially covering a white lace teddy. She could smell newly applied perfume. Jiang sat down on the bed, her back erect, like a pianist. Baturina sat up, and the two faced each other. Jiang leaned over and kissed Baturina on the lips, lightly touching her, her body trembling. Baturina brushed her hair back.
Jiang had never experienced true affection as a child and young adult,
Baturina thought
. She grew up holding her daughter’s hand. Kissing and touching were a normal part of the bond between a mother and her daughter—it wasn’t sensual. It was parenting in a loving, nurturing home. Jiang was starving for affection and incapable of knowing boundaries…

“Jiang, you’re a tender soul and a beautiful person. Let me tuck you into bed.”

When Jiang awoke, Baturina was sitting next to her on the bed in her robe, sipping a cup of tea and stroking her hair. She leaned forward and kissed her on her cheek. Jiang sat up and pulled the sheet to her chest, tucking it under her arms.

“Jiang, I love you as I love my daughter. One day you’ll find a wonderful man. And when you do, you’ll be a terrific wife and mother.”

Baturina stood up and dropped her robe on the floor and walked into the bathroom.

“I’m going to take a bath,” she called out and shut the door.

Jiang’s robe was hanging in the bathroom. Baturina closed her eyes and held it to her face, smelling her perfume and visualizing Jiang sitting erect on the bed last night. She saw her face had expression and color.

Baturina had done the right thing, redirecting Jiang’s affection, establishing boundaries. Was blurting out the statement ‘I love you as I love my daughter’ a defense mechanism to hide her true feelings, she wondered.

86

P
an Jiang slid her legs out from underneath the sheets. Confused by Baturina’s statements, she hurried into the bathroom and locked the door, turning on the fan. In a rush of anger and emotion, she swept her toiletries into the sink and onto the floor—crash. She stood silent, hearing only the hum of the fan and bathwater running in Baturina’s bathroom. She was torn between sharing her true feelings for Baturina and compartmentalizing—the Chinese way. Angry and depressed, she stood for ten minutes to regain her composure before wiping her tears. She slid out the door unnoticed. She’d throw herself back into her work…what she knew.

THE INCURSION

87

C
hris Drummond barged into Jack Dain’s suite. The wooden door slammed against the backstop making a loud
clunk
.

“You’re asking me and the entire team to place our trust in you. I’m finding that cuts against the grain, knowing you lied to me about what happened after you testified in front of Congress,” Drummond said. He knew it was dangerous to make his accusation, but circumstances warranted it.

“Your dossier indicated as operations directorate you were scapegoated by Congress and the CIA cut you and three other veteran operatives loose to take the heat for WMD. The agency you swore your allegiance to and pledged your life to protect betrayed you. Integrity cost you everything. The rank and file took up a collection plate to ensure you’d be exonerated. You became a linguist because you were thrown out of the CIA.”

“Men will die for country…for countrymen…and for religion—but not for money. They know they can’t take it with them. That’s all the edge we need. I’m prepared to die, Drummond, are you?”

Dain removed his Beretta M9 from behind his back and pointed it at Drummond, who froze. After seconds
of agony, Dain tossed the pistol on the bed, landing it eighteen inches from Drummond’s hand.

“If my intentions were to kill you, seagulls would be choking down morsels of flesh from your stinking carcass.”

Drummond picked up the gun and pointed it at Dain, careful not to break the threshold of the trigger guard.

“Trust—the same can be said of you. You’re only here because of Sarah. She needed a lung transplant, and you made a deal with who knows who to get her one.”

Drummond continued to hold the smooth angular shape in his right hand. There was a fine sheen of lubricant over the working parts. Drummond guessed Dain kept the weapon in top working condition.

“That’s all true.” Drummond said. “How did you know?”

“Remember, I told you I still have friends at the CIA and at private military corporations. We served together in Iraq. That’s where I received my nose job.” Dain pointed at his face. “We’d have died if it wasn’t for a piece of makeshift wire we ran between our holding cells. We communicated by Morse code—long and short pulls on the wire. We spent nineteen days in captivity, all of us severely beaten. Mental toughness is a fragile thing. Daily communication was our lifeblood. When Iraq was liberated, we were rescued. We spent two months in rehabilitation, playing chess. One day, Jake Swain had this idea for a system of coded communication using chess notation: A-H, 1-8. The program converts a ‘typed message’ into a series of chess moves, which appear to the layperson as
game simulation
. The layered computer security Donald
is using—firewall, password authentication, etc.—has not detected our medium for external communication. I trust the guy on the other end of this computer with my life.”

Drummond changed his hand position on the Beretta, extending it butt first to Dain.

“I’m trusting you,” Drummond said.

88

T
he CEOs of Biological Sciences, Inc. Unified Health Insurance Partners, and American Hospital Operators, Inc. rendezvoused at a private residence on Martha’s Vineyard. It was 7:45 p.m., and the ship’s navigation lights were visible on the horizon as the night sky converged with the Atlantic. “This is our final offer,” Gail Hutchinson said, looking at her notes, bleary-eyed.

“We’ll form a new publicly traded company called Congressional Health Partners, CHP, and raise three hundred fifty-nine billion dollars through an IPO on the NYSE. Fifty percent of the stock proceeds—one hundred eighty billion dollars—will be set aside in a trust fund to be administered by the super committee. We’ll agree to trim marketing expenses, but our general and administrative expenses will stay level for up to three years. We need time to adjust our cost structure. In exchange for fifty percent ownership, the government will enforce President Obama’s health care mandate. We’ll focus on markets with excess capacity. The government will grant CHP an antitrust exemption to purchase up to fifty percent of the hospitals and physician practices in each of these markets and indemnify CHP from lawsuits filed by
businesses forced into bankruptcy. CHP will control the drug formulary.”

Hutchinson paused, running out of calories and steam.

“We guarantee no increase in premiums the first year and rate increases not to exceed the annual growth in GDP plus two percent after that.”

Bennett sat at the end of the table in a high-back leather chair, the patriarch of a new race of health care leaders.

“I don’t give a shit about the premiums as long as the government owns half of the company and my party controls how the money is doled out to pay for health care in the voting districts. I expect to be named to the board, of course. The new company will be called Bennett Congressional Health Partners. If we have a meeting of the minds, I’ll uncork the Chateau Mouton Rothschild ‘82, and ask the caterer to put the lobster and steak on the barbecue.”

The grueling negotiation now in its fourteenth hour was in neutral, as Bennett stepped away from the industry titans to take a restroom break. When the coast was clear, Hutchinson spoke.

“Can you believe Bennett? What an asshole.” They were chuckling.

“We couldn’t just cave in.”

“I’d say the charade has gone on long enough for Bennett to believe he’s bested us in the negotiation. I think it’s time we drink his ten-thousand-dollar bottle of wine. We’ll reconvene at a later date to draft the real
reforms once we’ve confirmed Drummond’s proposal is out of the picture. We’ll drop the bomb on Bennett minutes before the committee’s press release. He won’t know we did the ‘bait and switch’ until it’s too late.”

89

S
kip Davis tossed the manila folder onto Bennett’s lap.

“You can sure pick ‘em,” he said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Bennett said.

“These patriots are providing intellectual service to country. They didn’t sign up for military service and deployment—to be put in harm’s way.”

“I didn’t say you had to excoriate them. Just prevent their proposal from surfacing as a solution to our nation’s health care dilemma until I can implement the super committee’s plan. Then it won’t much matter.”