“Then there must be something in the Mercury files that a lot of powerful people want kept secret.”
He shrugged.
“Let’s hear it,” I said.
* * *
NOW, I leaned back in my fragile antique wooden chair. It creaked alarmingly. Schechter winced.
“Turning a slush fund into a hedge fund to funnel secret payments to some of the most powerful people in America for three decades,” I said. “That’s genius.”
I glanced pointedly at his ego wall. At all those photographs of him doing the grip-and-grin with former secretaries of Defense and secretaries of State and four former vice presidents and even a few former presidents. “But what was the point? Your own self-aggrandizement? What could you possibly have wanted? How much influence did you need to buy? For what?”
“You don’t have the slightest idea, do you?”
“About what?”
He paused for a long time, examined his immaculate desktop, looked back up. “You’re probably too young to remember that there once was a time when the best and the brightest went into government work because it was the right thing to do.”
“Camelot, right?”
“Now where do the graduates of our top colleges end up? Law schools and investment banks. They go where the money is.”
“Can you blame them?”
“Precisely. The CEO of Merrill Lynch pockets a hundred million dollars for driving his company into the ground. The guy who almost destroyed Home Depot gets two hundred and ten million dollars just to go away. Yet a hardworking public servant who helps run the fifteen-trillion-dollar enterprise called the United States of America can’t afford to send his kids to college? A general who’s fought all his life to keep our country safe and strong spends his retirement in tract housing in Rockville, Maryland, scraping by on a pension of a hundred thousand bucks a year?”
“This is good,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better rationalization for graft.”
“Graft?” Schechter said, red-faced, eyes glittering. “You call it graft? How about calling it retention pay? Stock options in America? The whole point of Mercury is to make sure that the best and the brightest aren’t punished for being patriots. Yes, Nick, we diverted the money and built a goddamn moat. We guaranteed that our greatest public servants would never have to worry about money. So they could lead lives of genuine public service. This sure as hell is about national security. It’s about rewarding heroes and statesmen and patriots—instead of bankers and swindlers who’d sell out their country for two basis points.”
I could see the veins on his neck pulsing.
“Well,” I said softly, “you make a good argument. And I’m sure you’ll have the opportunity to make it before a jury of your peers.”
“I’ll deny we ever spoke about it,” he said with a cruel smile.
“Don’t bother,” I said. I got up and opened the door to his office. Gordon Snyder and Diana Madigan were standing there, flanking Marshall Marcus. Behind them were six guys in FBI Windbreakers. “Marshall is cooperating.”
He shook his head. “You son of a bitch.” He pulled open his desk drawer and one of the FBI guys shouted, “Freeze!”
But it wasn’t a gun Schechter was after. It was a breath mint, which he popped in his mouth.
“Gentlemen,” he said with a beatific smile. “Please enter.”
He didn’t rise, though, which wasn’t like him.
“David, I’m sorry,” Marcus said.
I turned and saw that Schechter was staring at me, his eyes fixed. His mouth was foaming. I could smell almonds.
I shouted, “Anyone have a medical kit?”
A couple of the FBI agents rushed in. One of them checked Schechter’s pulse, at his wrist and on his neck. Then he shook his head.
David Schechter liked to brag that he always had all the angles figured out.
I guess he was right after all.
112.
Early in the fall I took Diana out for a drive. She wanted to see the New England foliage. I’ve never cared much about foliage, though the fiery red maples were impressive.
She had no itinerary in mind; she just wanted to drive. I suggested New Hampshire, where the leaves were further along.
Neither one of us spoke about the last time we’d been in New Hampshire together.
After we were on the road a while, I said, “I have something for you.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Look in the glove box.”
She gave me a puzzled look, then popped open the glove compartment and took out a small box, badly gift-wrapped.
She held it up and pretended to admire the wrapping job. “Aren’t you a regular Martha Stewart,” she teased.