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As he’d expected, Skip immediately straightened. “We can go to my study now. Calla won’t mind, will you, darling?”
“Of course not,” she calmly replied, knowing her role and in truth not giving a damn where her husband
was or what he did. She immediately turned away to see to the needs of her other guests, a select fifty or so of Chicago’s wealthiest citizens.
Skip led the way down a wide corridor to a set of double doors which he opened inward, admitting them into a mahogany-paneled office with a huge expanse of window overlooking Lake Michigan. “Magnificent view, isn’t it?” Skip asked with obvious pleasure, crossing to the window.
“Magnificent,” Parrish agreed. The view was more spectacular than his view of Lake Minnetonka, but he wasn’t envious. He could have had such a view, had he chosen. Instead he was well pleased with the more staid but equally moneyed Wayzata; it suited him to be slightly out of the mainstream of the larger cities, tucked away in Minnesota. His neighbors were incurious, and so long as he gave the impression of being socially and politically correct, no one ever looked beneath the surface.
The two men stepped out onto the balcony, and the brisk wind off the lake still carried a chill even though summer had truly arrived. Parrish looked both left and right to make certain they were completely alone. “We’re searching for a woman, Grace St. John. She’s been accused of murdering her husband.” He didn’t bother to explain that he himself was responsible for both the accusation and the murder. “I believe she has information we would find of vital importance, so of course I would prefer finding her before the police do.”
“Of course,” Skip murmured. “Anything I can do—”
“My men have the search operation in hand, but should things go wrong, I want you on hand to turn any interest away. I hope requiring your presence here won’t interfere with any vacation plans you’ve made.” Parrish said it knowing Skip and Calla were scheduled to leave shortly for a month-long stay in Europe, not that it mattered; Skip would cancel an audience with the Pope to be of service to the Foundation. Of the two, the Foundation was more powerful, though its power and influence were far less noticeable.
“No problem,” Skip hastily assured him.
“Good. I’ll call you if I need you.”
As Parrish turned to enter the study he saw Calla standing just inside the doors, and he paused, wondering what she knew and how much she’d overheard. It would be a pity if she fell over the balcony; such a tragic accident, but accidents happened.
“Dear,” Calla said to Skip as she glided onto the balcony. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but Senator Trikoris has just arrived, and you know how he is.”
The senator was notorious for expecting a great deal of ass-licking in exchange for legislative favors. The Foundation was working to develop a file on the senator, one that would bring him in line so that the favors he did were for the Foundation’s benefit. When that happened, the senator would be the one doing the ass-licking, and Parrish’s would be the ass being licked. The senator wasn’t yet aware of the future direction of his legislative efforts, and until he was, Parrish was content to let Skip keep him happy. He nodded a dismissal, and Skip hastily left.
Calla leaned against the wall, her gaze cool and brilliant and calculating as she watched him. The wind lifted the silky ends of her hair, playing with it. Out here in the night, her hair looked dark, as dark as Grace’s. Perhaps he would fuck her before assisting her over the balcony, Parrish thought, and felt his body respond to the excitement of the idea.
“Yes, I know about the Foundation,” Calla murmured, her gaze never wavering from his face. “Skip’s a fool. He leaves paperwork lying around in his office where anyone can see it. You would be better off to get rid of him and work with me.”
Parrish lifted his eyebrows. She was right; Skip was a fool, and an unforgivably careless one. He would have to be taken care of. Dear Calla wasn’t a fool, however, and the problem of what to do about her was one that demanded an immediate decision.
He leaned against the balcony railing, slim and elegant in his black silk trousers and white evening coat. His debonair image was both carefully cultivated and entirely natural to him, blinding people to the cold reality that lay beneath the silk. He sensed that Calla, unlike most people, had read him correctly and knew how close she was to death. Instead of being dismayed, she was excited by the danger. Beneath the clingy midnight fabric of her dress, her nipples were erect.
“It’s Skip who has the contacts, the money,” he said neutrally, but he was becoming more excited, too. Grace was the only other woman who had instinctively sensed the reality of him, and she had resisted his charm. Calla made no effort to resist him, but the similarity was enough to make him hot. It wouldn’t be like having Grace; Grace had an innocence, a shining incorruptibility, that would drive him to new heights in his efforts to sully her. He doubted there was any sullying in which Calla had not already indulged. But in a way Calla was a twisted, corrupted version of Grace, and he wanted her.
Calla grimaced at his statement. “He has the power, you mean, because he controls the money. But does the true power lie with the man who controls the money, or with the woman who controls the man? What I know about the movers and shakers in this city is ten times more useful than Skip’s social contacts.”
“You use the word know in the biblical sense, I presume?”
Her lips curved in a slight smile but she didn’t answer the charge. “The Foundation is real power. Forget the trade unions, the political parties; they all have ties to the Foundation, don’t they? No matter which party is in the White House, you have a private line to the Oval Office.”
In most cases, he thought, but not all. The Foundation hadn’t had good luck with the past two Republican presidents, or the Democratic one before them. Their luck had changed four years earlier, however, and he had moved swiftly to make the gains denied the Foundation for sixteen long years. He was also working hard to make certain he maintained guaranteed access for another four years, at least. Politics was boring, but necessary, at least for now. If he could get his hands on the documents Grace held, he wouldn’t have to bother with manipulating politics to try and ensure a reasonable occupant of the White House; the president would be coming to him, as would all the world’s ostensible leaders.
The Foundation had been poised for centuries, ready to act when the papers were found. How wonderful that the discovery had been made on his watch, Parrish thought, but less wonderful that a bungling fool in France had let the documents slip out of his hands. Those papers meant power. Unimaginable power. The world would be in the palm of his hand, to be manipulated as he willed. Oh, the money and the power would technically belong to the Foundation, to be passed on to his successor, but his to use as he wished for his lifetime. A man of limited imagination wouldn’t see the possibilities, but Parrish had no such limitations.
He had no interest in holding any office, whether president or prime minister, or in waging war. War was so gauche, so much effort for so little gain. The time had passed when nations could be won; now war meant little but destruction. Real power lay in money, as Calla had observed, and whoever controlled the money controlled the world as well as the puppets who stood onstage, in the limelight, and pretended to be the ones in power.
The documents in Grace’s possession led to such power, to unlimited wealth. Over the centuries legends and superstitions had formed about some magical source of power the Templars had controlled, much like the ridiculous claims about the Ark of the Covenant, but unlike some in the Foundation, Parrish secretly scoffed at the idea. If the Templars had controlled some magical power, how could they have been so easily destroyed by treachery? Obviously the only power they had possessed had been a material one, an enormous treasury that had attracted the envy of a king and caused their downfall. No, the Templars’ power had been wealth, more than could be imagined. There was nothing magical about it, though to the fourteenth-century mind the sheer magnitude of the treasury must have been beyond comprehension, and thus had to be magic. They had been nothing but superstitious fools. Parrish, however, was not.
Nor was he sentimental. If Calla thought to enslave him with her considerable charm, she was doomed to d
isappointment.
“I’m interested in working with the Foundation,” Calla said when he remained silent, his cold gaze fixed on her face. “My assets are considerably more useful than Skip’s.”
“No one works with the Foundation,” Parrish corrected. “The proper term is for.”
“Not even you?” she delicately needled.
