Sarah sighed.
Nicholas Drake watched as Sarah left the room. Ann was sticking with her, just as he had asked. Ann was dedicated and tenacious. Sarah would be no match for her, unless she elected to turn and literally run. But if she did that...well, they would have to take stronger action. These were critical times, and sometimes strong action was essential. Just as in wartime.
But Drake suspected dire action would not prove necessary. True, Kenner had managed to disrupt the first two events, but only because ELF was a bunch of amateurs. Their brand of do-it-yourself schoolboy spontaneity was unsuited to the demands of modern media. Drake had said that to Henley a dozen times. Henley shrugged it off; he was concerned about deniability. Well, NERF could certainly deny they knew these clowns. What a bunch of fuckups!
But this last event was different. It had been planned far more carefully--it had to be--and it was in professional hands. Kenner would never be able to disrupt it. He could not even get there in time, Drake thought. And between Ted Bradley and Ann, Drake had lots of eyes and ears on that team as they progressed. And just to be sure, he had other surprises in store for Kenner as well.
He flipped open his phone and dialed Henley. "We've got them covered," he said.
"Good."
"Where are you?"
"I am about to deliver the news to V.," Henley said. "I am pulling up to his house now."
Through binoculars, Kenner watched as the silver Porsche convertible pulled into the driveway of the beach house. A tall, dark man in a blue golf shirt and tan slacks got out. He wore a baseball cap and dark glasses, but Kenner recognized him at once as Henley, the head of PR for NERF.
That closed the circle, he thought. He put the binoculars down on the fence and paused to consider the implications.
"Do you know who he is, sir?" the young FBI agent said, standing by his side. He was just a kid, no more than twenty-five.
"Yes," Kenner said. "I know who he is."
They were standing on the cliffs of Santa Monica, overlooking the beach and the ocean. The beach here was several hundred yards wide, from the shore to the bike path. Then a line of houses, packed close together along the coast highway. Then six lanes of roaring traffic.
Even though they abutted the highway, the houses were phenomenally expensive--twenty or thirty million dollars each, it was said, and perhaps much more. They were inhabited by some of the wealthiest people in California.
Henley was putting up the cloth top on his Porsche. He moved in a precise, almost fussy way. Then he went to the gate and buzzed it. The house he was entering was ultra-modern, curving shapes of glass. It glistened like a jewel in the morning sun.
Henley went inside. The gate closed behind him.
"But you don't care about peopleentering the house," the FBI agent said.
"That's right," Kenner said. "I don't."
"You don't want a list, or a record of who--"
"No."
"But it might prove--"
"No," Kenner said. The kid was trying to be helpful, but it was annoying. "I don't care about any of that. I just want to know when they all leave."
"Like, if they go on vacation or something?"
"Yes," Kenner said.
"What if they leave a maid behind?"
"They won't," Kenner said.
"Actually, sir, I'm pretty sure they will. These guys always leave somebody to watch the house."
"No," Kenner said. "This house will clear out. Everybody will go."
The kid frowned. "Whose house is it, anyway?"
"It belongs to a man named V. Allen Willy," Kenner said. He might as well tell him. "He's a philanthropist."
"Uh-huh. What is he, mixed up in the mob or something?"
"You might say," Kenner said. "Sort of a protection racket."
"It figures," the kid said. "Nobody makes that much money without a story behind it, you know what I mean?"
Kenner said he did. In fact, V. Allen Willy's story was as typically American as Horatio Alger's. Al Willy had started a chain of inexpensive clothing stores, taking clothes sewn in Third-World sweatshops and selling them in Western cities for thirty times the cost. After ten years, he sold his company for $400 million. Soon after, he became (by his own definition) a radical socialist, a crusader for a sustainable world, and an advocate for environmental justice.