The Echo of the Whip Read Online Free Page B

personally and politically? The conversation was ongoing, the outcome to be determined.
    Meanwhile, the vice president asked as they skated along at the Verizon Center, “You think they have any directional mikes aimed at us?”
    “Your people do, but my people are jamming them.”
    The vice president’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding, right?”
    DeWitt gave a minimal shake of his head.
    “You’ve got a mole in your security detail. I thought I’d pass the word along today.”
    Jean Morrissey bit back a reply but points of red burnished her cheeks.
    The arm-in-arm skating had been loosely held, but now DeWitt found himself pulled close. The second most powerful woman in the world whispered to him. “The president is going to relinquish a good bit of her daily calendar to me, and you know what I’m going to do with it?”
    DeWitt didn’t miss a beat. “Kick some ass?”
    “Lots of it. You know who the mole in my security detail is?”
    He nodded and gave her the name.
    The vice president said, “Okay. So …”
    DeWitt bided the moment in silence, expecting to hear one thing but getting another.
    “I’m going to use that sonofabitch. Get the opposition looking the wrong way and cut their legs out from under them. Better yet, I’ll let them do themselves in.”
    Classic Sun-Tzu, DeWitt thought. “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” He’d given Jean The Art of War to read, and she’d actually done it. Not bad for a hockey player.
    Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t kick the opposition once they were down.
    “I think someone’s here to see you,” Jean said.
    She inclined her head to her left. Standing behind the protective glass was James J. McGill.
    “How do you know he’s here for me?” DeWitt asked.
    “When he wants me he uses a wolf-whistle.”
    The deputy director laughed, gave the vice president a wink, and skated off to the bench area adjacent to where McGill stood. Before either man said a word to the other, they turned to watch Jean Morrissey in action. She had more pucks lined up on the opposite blue line.
    This time she banged out nothing but slap shots, each one dead on target.

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California
    The house Edmond Whelan was calling home for the moment had nine bedrooms, eleven bathrooms, a wine cellar, sculptured gardens, a waterfall, stunning ocean views and, best of all, an encircling stone wall artfully hidden behind a stand of local trees and other greenery. The place was a fortress with the creature comforts of a palace.
    Normally, the security staff and the household help brought the population of the property to double digits. Whelan had given everyone who’d otherwise have catered to his needs an indefinite paid furlough. Not that any of the money for the service people or the house itself would come out of his pocket. That wasn’t the way Whelan worked.
    He flew first class, but always for free and under the radar.
    Under a string of pseudonyms, too.
    There would be no official record of his presence in California. He was simply a guest of the house’s owner. A friend welcomed to partake of the fresh ocean air and unwind from the pressures of his job as a senior staffer in the House of Representatives. Nothing wrong with that. As a working stiff, not an elected office holder, Whelan could plead that he was in no position to return the favor to his host. It wasn’t like he could direct, say, a Department of Defense contract that could pay for a subdivision of homes such as the one in which he’d found shelter, to a preferred CEO’s company.
    Oh, no, he couldn’t do that.
    But he could push his nominal boss, the House whip, to do it. With a list of explicit reasons why a specific contractor should be chosen. Should anyone ask. Which rarely happened.
    Such an inquiry should be even less likely now that Jordan Gilford, that whistle-blowing bastard, had been taken care of. Shot dead on the National Mall. Whelan liked that.