“How do you do that without even moving your feet?”

  “Listen for the counter rhythm.”

  “What’s a counter rhythm?”

  “You’d be pathetic if you weren’t so cute. Follow my lead.”

  She moved left, Patrick went the other way. He apologized, and they started again. The old man turned up the music on the radio, and this time Olga counted the steps for him aloud.

  “You got it,” she said, as she pressed his hand more firmly into her hip, as if to help him feel the music.

  The old man started singing. They were face-to-face, hips swinging, as Olga led him back and forth across the small cabin. Patrick crushed her foot only once, but she smiled and kept counting. The old man was clapping to the music, which replaced Olga’s counting, and soon Patrick was leading.

  “You’re dancing,” she said.

  “Like a Colombian?”

  “Hmmm. Close enough.”

  The music stopped. The old man grabbed the radio and shook it, trying to make it work again. It was dead, but Patrick and Olga remained in their dance pose, choosing not to pull apart, her right hand in his left. Slowly, her left hand slid from his hip, gently, all the way up to his shoulder blade. Her shirt had a long opening in back that followed her spine, and his fingers traveled from the gentle curve of her hip to the small of her back. Their bodies drew closer, so close that the space between them was almost gone. Patrick tingled with the imagined feeling of her breasts pressed against him. Her breathing caressed his neck as she looked up at him with those dark brown eyes. His hand slipped inside the opening of her shirt, and he duplicated the light swirling motion across her back, skin so warm and smooth. So smooth. Until it wasn’t. The tips of his fingers found an inch-long ridge, then another, and another. Her body stiffened in his arms.

  “Scars,” she said.

  “From what?”

  “Not important.”

  Patrick didn’t pursue it, but it saddened him to know that this fallen angel in his arms lived in a world where getting stabbed in the back, literally, was an occupational hazard.

  “They’re nothing,” she whispered.

  The cabin door suddenly burst open. Olga dove to the floor and took Patrick with her. The old man shouted, but he was quickly silenced by a single gunshot. It resounded like cannon fire, sandwiched between the metal floor and ceiling.

  “Don’t move!” the gunman shouted, and Patrick knew that voice.

  Javier had found them.

  Patrick and Olga lay side-by-side on the floor. Until then, Patrick hadn’t noticed that the old ship was listing, but it was evident from the port-to-starboard flow of blood on the floor from the crewman’s mortal chest wound.

  Javier stood over his hostages, pointing his gun first at Olga and then at Patrick.

  “Nice move, El Rubio. You boarded the one ship in the harbor that isn’t going anywhere.”

  Chapter 41

  It was a cloudy Sunday morning in the District, and Kate reached the theater on two hours of sleep and three cups of coffee. She had hardly thought about her play since the blow-up with Sean the Snake. But Irving Bass was still committed to a January opening, and Kate couldn’t miss the first table reading, even if it was the last thing she felt like doing. If nothing else, she needed to confront Irving about shopping her script.

  “Places, please,” said Sean, as he and Bass entered.

  Kate and three actors took seats at the round table in the center of the stage, each with a printed copy of Kate’s script. To Kate’s right were two men in their sixties, one cast in the lead role as Watson and the other as his secretary. The actor across the table from Kate was about her age, a Brit who, to Kate’s continued amazement, played Thomas J. Watson, Jr., with absolutely no British accent. Bass and his assistant joined them at the table, no chitchat.

  “Act three, scene one,” said Bass.

  It was the newest material, and it was Kate’s favorite scene in the play. The setting was Watson’s corner office at IBM headquarters on Madison Avenue. Watson was with his son, some years before Tom Watson, Jr., would succeed his father as CEO. It was October 1946, at the conclusion of the world’s first war crimes trials.

  Even though it was just a table reading, the actors brought it to life. Kate was so exhausted that it unfolded like a dream for her. She could hear and see it the way she’d imagined it, as Watson’s most trusted secretary—all of his secretaries were men—burst into the office to deliver the news.

  “Verdicts are in at Nuremberg,” said Burns.

  “And?” asked Watson.

  “I see a very busy month in the hangman’s future. Twelve death sentences.”

  “They all deserve it,” said Tom Junior.

  “What about Hjalmar Schacht?”

  “There were just three acquittals. Schacht was one of them. Which is remarkable, considering that his successor as head of the Reichsbank got life in prison.”

  Watson glanced at the wall, where his Merit Cross—draped around his neck by Hjalmar Schacht in Berlin—used to hang.

  “Mr. Schacht is one very lucky man.”

  “His luck doesn’t make what you did any less stupid,” said Tom Junior.

  “Burns, would you excuse us for a moment?” asked Watson, and his secretary exited quietly. The father glowered at his son. “Don’t you ever speak that way to me in front of Burns.”

  “Did you expect me to just sit there and listen to you wax on about Schacht’s luck, as if he’d just won the pot at church bingo? The man who draped Hitler’s medal around your neck stood trial at Nuremberg for conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

  “And he was acquitted.”

  “Imagine that: the businessman gets off, scot-free. Just as you did when the Justice Department indicted you for criminal violations of the antitrust laws.”

  “Don’t you dare compare me to a Nazi!”

  “You should have never accepted the award!”

  “I accepted it only because it was given in recognition of my efforts for world peace through world trade.”

  “Yeah? How did that peace thing work out?”

  Tom went to the door and called to his father’s secretary, asking for Sunday’s edition of the Times, missing not a beat in the showdown with his father.

  “You should be glad I speak up,” Tom continued. “Don’t you realize people laugh at you for having the longest entry in the history of Who’s Who in America? Sixteen and a half inches! Seriously: it’s a record. What self-respecting businessman goes on and on about himself for three columns of fine print in Who’s Who? I thought Burns was pulling my leg when he told me you belonged to the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. But then I checked the Who’s Who and, lo and behold, there it was. You’re so full of yourself, you couldn’t even turn down an award from Adolf Hitler!”

  “I gave the medal back.”

  “Only after the Brits were literally running for their lives at Dunkirk. Why you kept that thing so long I’ll never understand.”

  “You don’t even try to understand.”

  “No one understands it!”

  Burns entered with the newspaper, as requested, and Tom flipped angrily through the pages.

  “What are you doing?” asked Watson.

  “Showing you how blind you were,” he said, as he laid the paper flat on Watson’s desktop before him. “Here. Yesterday’s Times summarized the key evidence against each of the Nuremberg defendants.”

  “I know, I read it.”

  Tom read aloud, making his point. “‘Hjalmar Schacht. Reich minister of Economics and president of the German Reichsbank. May 1937: attended secret “War Economy” games at Godesberg. July 8, 1937: issued written report to General Werner von Blomberg, commander in chief of the German Armed Forces, laying out “measures for the preparation of the conduct of war.”’”

  He stopped reading, looking his father in the eye. “When did Schacht give you Hitler’s medal for world peace?”

  Watson didn’t answer.

  “When, Father?”

  “At that time, how was I to know what was coming?”

  “What day was the award?”

  Watson was silent, but his secretary replied, as if it were a day he would never forget. “July third, 1937.”

  Tom slapped the desktop. “Five days,” he said in quiet but angry disbelief. And then his voice erupted. “Five days before Schacht’s written report to the commander in chief of the German Armed Forces, you let him double-kiss your face and decorate you with the Nazi Merit Cross.”

  “You’re linking events that have no connection. No fair-minded person is going to tie this together the way you are.”

  “Most fair-minded people don’t work for you, sing silly songs in your honor every morning, and worship the ground you walk on.”

  “You have no idea what it means to be a CEO, do you, son?”

  “Stop it! Stop that tap dance right now! You are not going to make this about me!”

  “Do you think it just happened by accident that IBM never lost a single company to the Nazis? Entire countries fell. German custodians took over our factories. Still, hardly any IBM employees lost their jobs overseas. And now that the war is over, there’s a good chance our lawyers can unfreeze profits tied up in Nazi bank accounts. And you know who benefits the most from this? My shareholders. Many of whom are Jewish.”

  “So, it’s their fault? Your shareholders?”

  “It’s not about fault. It’s business. And sometimes business is a matter of survival. When you finally come to terms with that basic fact, you’ll be ready to step up and lead my company. Because then you’ll know there’s a world of difference between a CEO who is trying to protect the interests of American shareholders in a foreign country that has lost its bloody mind, and a traitor to his own country who wants to help the Nazis.”

  Tom turned sharply and headed for the door.

  “Tom!”

  He stopped, but his back remained to his father.

  Watson checked his anger and spoke in an even tone. “You know something, son? Charles Lindbergh never returned his Merit Cross. Not even after we entered the war.”

  Tom turned slowly, facing him, and breathed out his response.

  “Charles Lindbergh is not my father.”

  “Hold, please!” shouted Sean.

  His words stirred Kate from her creative zone, and then she held her breath. Whenever a director’s assistant shouted “hold, please!” at a table reading, it meant the director had changes.

  “Cut page thirty-four, line one, to page forty-one, line eight,” said Bass.

  The actors marked their scripts in red ink. Kate checked her copy to see how much damage Bass had done, and her blood was about to boil. “That’s the entire scene we just read.”

  “It’s out,” said Bass.

  “That’s a critical scene. Clearly, Tom Junior loves his father, but Watson measures his worth not by the love of his son, but by how he compares in the public arena to people like Charles Lindbergh.”

  “That’s not the story we’re telling,” said Bass.

  “That is the story.”

  “No, the story is about capitalism and exploitation of personal information.”

  “It’s about the people who have to live with the decisions they make and how they justify their actions.”

  Bass groaned. “Listen, Katie.”

  “Kate.”

  “Fine. Kate. I don’t know what kind of screwed-up, love-hate relationship you have with your father, and I don’t care. Maybe it’s therapeutic for you to sit at your computer late at night and write scenes about Tom Junior confronting his father the way you wish you could confront yours. But I’m a director, not a psychiatrist, and this shit is not finding its way into my play.”

  “Your play? I’m the playwright.”

  Sean raised his index finger, interjecting. “Actually, I’ve been meaning to raise this with Irving. The billing credit for the play should be a single line: ‘Developed and directed by Irving Bass.’”

  “No,” she said. “It’s a play by Kate Gamble.”

  “You’ll receive an appropriate acknowledgment as an independent contractor for a work made for hire.”

  Any law student who’d taken a course on copyright law understood that a “work made for hire” was the lowest form of credit. Worse, it gave the writer no ownership rights. The sneaky assistant who was shopping her script to Hollywood behind her back was now claiming ownership of the copyright.

  “Irving, are you in agreement with Sean?”

  Irving made a face. “Sean, what the hell are you talking about? Kate never agreed to give up her copyright.”

  “She has to give them up, or she’ll kill the film deal!” said Sean.

  Irving glared with the intensity of burning lasers. “Have you been shopping the film rights without telling me?”

  Sean stood silent, but Kate answered for him. “He has an agent.”

  Irving pointed at the door, his hand shaking. “Get out.”

  “You can’t fire me,” said Sean. “You can barely stand up, let alone direct a play.”

  “Get out!” he shouted, his voice booming, but he was suddenly pale. The grimace on his face twisted into the same gruesome expression Kate had seen that morning at Swing’s Coffee Roasters. Just as he’d done there, Bass closed his eyes, placed his palms flat on the table, and drew a deep breath.

  Then he passed out and fell to the floor.

  “Irving!” one of the actors shouted.

  Bass lay in a heap on the floor, motionless. Sean hurried to him, knelt at his side, and checked his vitals.

  “He’s not breathing! Now look what you did, Kate!” Sean yelled.

  Kate grabbed her phone and dialed 911.

  Chapter 42

  Kate caught a ride to the hospital with “Watson” behind the wheel. Fueled by fear of the show closing before it opened, he tailed the speeding ambulance all the way to the emergency room entrance. Kate and the entire cast watched from the sidewalk as paramedics whisked the gurney toward the ER. It was a relief to see that Bass was fully conscious. More than just conscious. He was practically himself again.

  “Get lost!” he said, wagging his finger, his silver hair flowing in the rush of wind as the pneumatic entrance doors parted. “I don’t want any of you here! All I want—”

  “Is a script,” said Kate, finishing for him.

  Watson offered her a ride home, but she caught a ride with one of the other cast members who was headed her way—toward Jeremy Peel’s country estate. Kate phoned ahead and told him it was imperative that they speak in person. One of Peel’s staff met her at the gate in an all-terrain vehicle. They drove along the creek and then over a set of rolling hills to the grassy meadow, where they found Peel at the skeet-shooting range.

  “Pull!”

  A pair of clay pigeons took to the air simultaneously, one from each tower. Two quick shots followed, obliterating each target in rapid succession.

  “Well done, sir,” the driver said. He motored away, leaving Kate alone with Peel and whoever was inside the towers launching the clay pigeons.

  Peel switched on the safety and opened his break-action shotgun, releasing the spent cartridges. He left the chamber open, muzzle pointed at the ground, as he walked toward Kate.

  “Sorry to interrupt your shoot, Mr. Peel.”

  “Please, I think it’s time you started to call me Jeremy.”

  That wasn’t going to be easy. It was like shaking the “Baby Patrick” habit. “All right, Jeremy.”

  “Since this was too important for you to discuss on the phone, I’m guessing it has to do with the kidnapping.”

  “I’ll get to that. First I wanted to ask you about Sandra Levy.”

  He fished a couple of fresh cartridges from his ammunition pouch. “Not my favorite subject. What do you want to know?”

  It was a perfect setup for the question she’d come to see him answer, face-to-face, so she could gauge his reaction—the question that had been burning since her visit to FCP Alderson.

  “Why do you think Sandra did it?”

  Peel’s gaze drifted off toward the woods, and then he looked back at Kate. “The only way to know why she did it is to pinpoint exactly when she made the decision to do it.”

  Kate had hoped her question would lead to a discussion of what “it” was—what Sandra meant by her remark that she did “it” for her daughter. But Peel’s response had thrown her.

  “I’m not sure I follow you,” said Kate.

  “It’s simple. Did Sandra decide to steal code and then sleep with your father toward that end? Or did she sleep with your father, see an opportunity, and then decide to steal code?”

  “And what if the premise baked into your questions is false?”

  “You’re a good daughter, Kate. But you’re kidding yourself if you think your father wasn’t sleeping with Sandra Levy.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  His expression turned very serious. “Your mother told me.”

  The predictable response would have been that her mother was an alcoholic and said a lot of things that weren’t true. But she hadn’t journeyed all the way out to this country estate to replow old ground. “Is it something she told you? Or that you told her?”

  “Are you asking if I called your mother and ratted out your father?”

  “‘Ratted him out’ isn’t exactly what I was suggesting. I was thinking more along the lines of putting ideas in my mother’s head.”

  “The idea was already firmly in your mother’s head when she called me.”

  “And you confirmed her worst fears, without any proof.”

  “You make it sound like I went out of my way to hurt your old man. Why would I do that?”

  A gust of wind whipped between the towers, and Kate felt the chill. “The same reason you overruled my father on paying Patrick Battle’s ransom.”

  “Buck shouldn’t pay a ransom. The reasons I gave are all valid.”