DAVID HAD NEVER been on a private jet before, but he suspected he could get used to it very quickly. Instead of being groped by a TSA agent—there was no way on Earth he’d allow one of those radiation-leaking scanners to mess with his genes—he’d walked in his own shoes up a rolling staircase before he sat down in a comfortable leather armchair.
Because this was Simon’s plane, of course there was a model-level beautiful stewardess handing out drinks. David had been up all night in the lab, and he felt a buzz behind his eyes after just a few sips.
He put the drink down before they took off.
Aside from the stewardess and the pilots, they were the only ones on board. Simon said this was the only time they’d have to talk.
“Where are we going?” David asked. Nobody had bothered to tell him the itinerary. His instructions included only the time of departure.
Simon rubbed his eyes. He wore yesterday’s clothes and smelled like body spray and club girls. There was a small patch of body glitter stuck to one of his cheeks.
“Washington, D.C.,” he said. “See an old friend about this.” He took a sheet of paper from a folder on the seat next to him and tossed it over to David.
It was another letter from the FDA, demanding more information for the investigation into possible side effects from Revita.
Simon crunched the ice from his drink between his teeth. “Wish I knew who tipped those bastards off,” he said when David had finished reading.
David looked up at him, saw Simon eying him carefully.
“It wasn’t me,” David said. “But I did warn you. You should have pulled it.”
“Saying ‘I told you so’ is not the way to convince me that you didn’t call the New York Times.”
David shrugged. “Maybe I should have. Those patients wanted a new outlook on life, not cancer.”
Simon sighed. “They took their chances. Way down in the small print of the warning label, we put in a clause about everything possible. We included everything from rickets to STDs. We can beat them in court. But it’s still a huge pain in my ass. Stock is tanking. Feds are sniffing around. We can’t have that. That’s why we’re headed to Washington now.”
“Maybe you can do something for the people who did get cancer. Offer to pay for their care.”
Simon laughed. “Yeah. And why don’t I just hand over the keys to my Porsche while I’m at it? No. We’re going to stall this out in court. Most of those geezers will be in the ground long before it ever goes to trial.”
“How humanitarian of you.”
Simon scowled at him. “I don’t pay you for your legal advice. You’re so concerned about these coffin cases, why don’t you give me another miracle cure to sell them? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to talk about? Why don’t you have a solution for me yet?”
“I told Max—”
“Max is not here. I am. Tell me.”
“I need the original sample. Whatever it is. I’ve done everything I can with what I’ve been given, and I’m at a dead end. I have to see the original compound if I’m going to duplicate its effects.”
Simon sat with that for a long moment, just looking at David.
“And here I thought you were smart,” he finally said.
David felt himself flush a little. “I’m on the right track now. It’s a process that has to be observed, in real time. Without getting too technical, I need to see how it works if I’m going to know how it works.”
Simon gritted his teeth in what was definitely not a smile. “I told you from the start. I gave you everything else. But I told you, there was only one thing, one thing, you couldn’t have. And now, of course, you want it.”
“You’ve asked me to re-create a unicorn just from hoofprints. I’ve come closer than anyone else you’ve ever had on this. And yes. Now I need more. I’m asking you—no, I’m telling you—I need the original sample. Or we’re done.”
Simon didn’t appear to hear him. He stared at the bottom of his glass for a long time, then looked up again.
“Oh, you’re telling me, are you?” Simon said. His voice was different. There was no mocking tone, no trace of the usual twist of irony that usually punctuated every sentence out of Simon’s mouth.
“One thing,” Simon said. “And now, of course, you have to have it. You goddamn child. You think you can make demands of me? If you were as brilliant as you thought you were, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But you’re not. You’re not the man you think you are. You are simply not on my level. If you were, you wouldn’t need to ask me for favors.”
David would have replied, but Simon got up and walked to the bedroom in the back of the plane.
“You disappoint me, David,” he said. “I expected more from you.”
He slammed the door behind him and did not come out until the pilot announced they would be landing soon.
EVEN THOUGH SIMON WAS freshly shaved, showered, and dressed, his mood hadn’t improved. He’d communicated to David mostly in grunts since they left the plane.
“Nice suit,” David said.
“Piece of crap,” Simon shot back. “I’ve had this one six months and the stitching’s already falling out. I’ve got a Savile Row in my closet that was sewn in 1953, still looks brand-new.”
“From your father,” David said.
Simon gave him a face. “Right. From my father.”
They waited in the lobby of Senator Anthony De la Cruz’s office. The senator was “on an important conference call,” according to his assistant. This didn’t help Simon’s attitude, either.
De la Cruz was a rising star. Even David watched enough CNN to know that. He was the fourth member of his family to enter politics: his grandfather had been a state legislator, his father a governor, and his uncle a well-known congressman. But none of them had reached the heights he had. His blandly handsome features, vague ethnicity, and carefully crafted media image made him a valuable property with both parties recruiting the Latino vote.
Even so, he’d barely squeaked into office in the last election. He’d been up against a well-financed and well-liked incumbent, and voters weren’t certain they wanted to take a chance on a new guy, no matter how inoffensive and polite he seemed. A last-minute blitz of phone calls trashing his opponent pushed enough voters to pick him.
Looking at him, David would have thought De la Cruz had been elected by a landslide. He practically bounced through the office door to shake Simon’s hand. The smile barely dimmed when he offered Simon condolences on the death of his father. “He was quite a guy,” De la Cruz said.
“Yeah, he was a prince,” Simon said. “Can we take this inside, please?”
They went into De la Cruz’s office. It was surprisingly small, but everything about it screamed money: the thick carpet, the richly polished furniture, the butter-smooth leather on the chairs.
The three of them sat down in a conversation area in a corner away from the desk. De la Cruz took a chair under a wall of pictures from his career, a halo made of images of himself.
De la Cruz read through the same FDA letter that Simon had shown to David. He frowned and nodded. Then he put it down on his desk.
“I am sorry for your trouble, Simon. But I’m not sure what you expect me to do.”
“It’s pretty simple. I want you to make this go away.”
De la Cruz looked uncomfortable. “You know I can’t do that.”
“You’re on the Finance Committee. You hold the purse strings for the FDA. I’m pretty sure you can.”
Senator De la Cruz ran a hand through his thinning hair and sighed. “I would like to help you, Simon. I really would. But this is going to get into the media. A lot of my constituents are elderly, and they pay attention to things like this. They know all about medications that don’t work as promised.”
“Not the point,” Simon said. “The drug isn’t the problem. It’s the FDA investigation. We’ll pull it. Let the supply work its way through the pipeline, take it back for more testing. But it has to be voluntary.”
Another hapless smile from De la Cruz. “Again. I wish we could work out a solution like that. If we’d had the results we wanted the last election, we’d be facing a friendlier FDA. We didn’t. It means we’ve got to work harder, of course. That’s why we need contributions from you and your company, to carry on the fight.”
Simon stood up and loomed over the senator. He appeared to be struggling to hold himself in check.
“You are not seriously asking for money right now.”
“Now? No, of course not. But in 2016, who knows? With a better president, businesses like yours will not be in situations like this.”
“You’re saying you don’t want to risk getting your hands dirty when you’ve got a possible shot at the Oval Office.”
De la Cruz stood up to look Simon directly in the eye.
“I’m saying I am sorry I can’t help you. Maybe this is a hit you have to take. The regulatory agencies, you know, they need a scalp now and then.”
Simon’s face grew even darker. “Don’t talk to me about scalps.”
De la Cruz smirked. “Simon. Look. I knew your dad. Our families have been very successful together over the years. You’ll survive this. And if I do make a run at the White House, well, you know, I won’t forget those who were there with me at the start.”
Simon stared at him coldly. “That’s all you have to say for yourself? After everything I’ve done for you? That’s really how you want to respond to me?”
De la Cruz choked out a laugh. “Look. I owed your dad. Not you. You’re not your father, and this isn’t The Godfather. This is reality. You can’t just come in here and dictate—”
Whatever else he was going to say was lost in the sudden contact between Simon’s fist and his face.
David was stunned. Simon just punched a U.S. senator. He half rose out of his chair. Simon gave him a warning look and turned back to De la Cruz.
It wasn’t a particularly hard punch, but it was enough to rock De la Cruz. He sat down in his office chair and then touched his nose, which started to bleed.
He looked at the blood and then at Simon in a kind of horrible fascination.
“You—you can’t—” The senator gulped like a goldfish violently spilled from its bowl. “You’ve got to be crazy. I’m going to have you arrested—”
Simon raised his fist again, and De la Cruz immediately shut up and covered his head with both arms.
“Jesus, Simon,” David blurted out. He couldn’t believe he was seeing this.
Simon turned on him, suddenly furious. “You shut up,” he ordered David. Then he wheeled back on the senator.
De la Cruz peeked out from between his fingers again. Simon unclenched his fist and simply pointed at the senator.
“Don’t interrupt me,” he warned. “You want to talk about reality, Senator? Then allow me to reintroduce you to reality. I know you’ve been spending a lot of time on CNN and Fox lately. I know there are a lot of people filling your head with grand plans for the future. And I don’t blame you for liking those plans. It’s easy to get your head caught up in big dreams.
“But you should never forget your past. My grandfather owned your grandfather. Everything your family has, you owe to me. You think you owe my father? You owe me. I paid for your diapers, whether you know it or not. You are my employee. And when I tell an employee what to do, I expect him to say nothing more complicated than ‘Yes, sir.’ ”
De la Cruz almost spoke up, but a warning look from Simon was all it took to close his mouth again.
“If you’re still having trouble with the concept, I’ll put it in plain terms. I know about the slush funds, the bundling of contributions, and the PAC money that paid for the last-minute ad blitz that saved your ass in the last election. I have the records. And I also know where the cameras were in your hotel suite in Miami last fall. I know who else was in the room. And, unlike my father, I know people who can have that video up on YouTube in fifteen minutes.”
David noticed the senator’s face turn very pale against the blood from his nose.
“This is not a negotiation. This is me with your life in my hands, and you begging me to do whatever it takes to keep it safe and undisturbed. And so far you’re doing a piss-poor job of convincing me.”
De la Cruz looked up, eyes filled with panic. Simon gave him the slightest nod in permission to speak.
“Please,” he said. “I’ll make it happen. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll—”
Simon looked bored again. “You call that begging?”
De la Cruz gave a spastic jerk of his head, and then looked back up at Simon. His expression seemed to ask a question, but he found the answer in Simon’s eyes.
Quickly, clumsily, the junior senator from the state of Florida slid out of his chair and kneeled. Then he put his forehead on the carpet in front of Simon’s feet and begged.
FOR AT LEAST TWO minutes, they walked through the Capitol halls in silence, the sound of their shoes echoing from the marble walls and floors.
David watched Simon, unbelieving. “What the hell was that?”
“You try to be polite with some people. It never pays,” Simon said. His mood had improved dramatically. He seemed almost joyful now that he had the senator’s blood on his knuckles.
“No, seriously, Simon, what the hell were you doing in there?”
Simon stopped and looked at David. “He forgot who signs his checks. I reminded him.”
David wondered if he should push it, but decided he had to know.
“What did he do in that hotel room?” David asked.
“What?”
“Nobody behaves like that unless they’re terrified. He would have kissed your feet if you’d asked him. So what did he do in that hotel room that made him so afraid you’d release the video?”
Simon smirked and took his time answering.
“There are a lot of trade-offs involved in making a better world, David. I’ve known it for a long time.”
“From your father,” David said.
Simon gave him a suspicious look. “Yes, from him. But also from watching the way the world works. You have no right to be this naive. You should know better than anyone by now that there are very few people willing to be good on their own. Most of them are scared, selfish, and horny, and they’ll step on their own grandmothers’ necks to get what they want. That makes our task—yours and mine—more difficult in many ways. But it’s better for us in at least one way. Because all those scared, selfish, and horny bastards are predictable. We can use them because we know how they will respond. They will never surprise us with a sudden burst of conscience. And that means that sometimes we have to dip our hands down into the sewer where they live.”
“Simon. What did he do?”
“He followed his nature, David. That’s all I’m going to tell you. And he will always follow his nature. That’s why he’s useful. I’m glad you saw this. Now you know: the world doesn’t behave unless you force it.”
They were outside the Capitol now, walking to the spot where the limo would pick them up. David was considering how to respond when Simon stopped suddenly.
He thought for a moment, then appeared to come to a decision.
“You can have the sample,” he said.
He held out his hand for David to shake. David took it. He started to thank Simon—out of polite reflex, if nothing else—when Simon cut him off.
“I expect you to solve the problem. But if you can’t, then we’re going to have a problem. And I don’t think you’ll like my solution. Do you understand?”
Simon would not let go of his hand. Even though Simon was smiling, there was a coldness that David had never felt from him before.
It was like meeting a different person, hiding underneath the surface of Simon’s party-boy facade. Someone stronger. Older. A purer version of Simon, undiluted by concern with anything but his own agenda. With a shock, David realized that man had been there all along.
For an instant, David reeled as his mind struggled to reject what his intuition was telling him.
Simon still waited for an answer. David didn’t know what to say. Then it came to him. He’d already been told his lines.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I understand, sir.”
Simon kept his smile and hard grip on David’s hand. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “Yes, I think you do.”