Windmills of the Gods. Sidney Sheldon

or no, please?’

      ‘No …’

      ‘Freyr?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Sigmund?’

      ‘Nein. The danger –’

      ‘Thor?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Tyr?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘I vote “yes”. The resolution is passed. I will so inform the Controller. At our next meeting, I will give you his recommendation for the person best qualified to carry out the motion. We will observe the usual precautions and leave at twenty-minute intervals. Thank you, gentlemen.’

      Two hours and forty-five minutes later, the cabin was deserted. A crew of experts carrying kerosene moved in and set the cabin on fire, the red flames licked by the hungry winds.

      When the Palokunta, the fire brigade from Ilomantsi, finally reached the scene, there was nothing left to see but the smouldering embers that outlined the cabin against the hissing snow.

      The assistant to the fire chief approached the ashes, bent down and sniffed. ‘Kerosene,’ he said. ‘Arson.’

      The fire chief was staring at the ruins, a puzzled expression on his face. ‘That’s strange,’ he muttered.

      ‘What?’

      ‘I was hunting in these woods last week. There was no cabin.’

Part One

       Chapter One

       Washington, D.C.

      Stanton Rogers was destined to be President of the United States. He was a charismatic politician, highly visible to an approving public, and backed by powerful friends. Unfortunately for Rogers, his libido got in the way of his career. Or, as the Washington mavens put it: ‘Old Stanton fucked himself out of the Presidency.’

      It was not that Stanton Rogers fancied himself a Casanova. On the contrary, until that one fatal bedroom escapade, he had been a model husband. He was handsome, wealthy, and on his way to one of the most important positions in the world, and although he had had ample opportunity to cheat on his wife, he had never given another woman a thought.

      There was a second, perhaps greater irony: Stanton Rogers’ wife, Elizabeth, was social, beautiful and intelligent, and the two of them shared a common interest in almost everything, whereas Barbara, the woman Rogers fell in love with and eventually married after a much-headlined divorce, was five years older than Stanton, pleasant-faced, rather than pretty, and seemed to have nothing in common with him. Stanton was athletic; Barbara hated all forms of exercise. Stanton was gregarious; Barbara preferred to be alone with her husband or to entertain small groups. The biggest surprise to those who knew Stanton Rogers was the political differences. Stanton was a liberal, while Barbara had grown up in a family of arch-conservatives.

      Paul Ellison, Stanton’s closest friend, had said. ‘You must be out of your mind, chum! You and Liz are practically in the Guinness Book of Records as the perfect married couple. You can’t throw that away for some quick lay.’

      Stanton Rogers had replied tightly, ‘Back off, Paul. I’m in love with Barbara. As soon as I get a divorce, we’re getting married.’

      ‘Do you have any idea what this is going to do to your career?’

      ‘Half the marriages in this country end in divorce. It won’t do anything,’ Stanton Rogers replied.

      He had proved to be a poor prophet. News of the bitterly fought divorce was manna for the press, and the gossip papers played it up as luridly as possible, with pictures of Stanton Rogers’ love nest, and stories of secret midnight trysts. The newspapers kept the story alive as long as they could, and when the furore died down, the powerful friends who had backed Stanton Rogers for the Presidency quietly disappeared. They found a new white knight to champion: Paul Ellison.

      

      Ellison was a sound choice. While he had neither Stanton Rogers’ good looks nor his charisma, he was intelligent, likeable and had the right background. He was short in stature, with regular, even features and candid blue eyes. He had been happily married for ten years to the daughter of a steel magnate, and he and Alice were known as a warm and loving couple.

      Like Stanton Rogers, Paul Ellison had attended Yale and was graduated from Harvard Law School. The two men had grown up together. Their families had adjoining summer homes at Southampton, and the boys swam together, organized baseball teams, and later, double-dated. They were in the same class at Harvard. Paul Ellison did well, but it was Stanton Rogers who was the star pupil. As editor of the Harvard Law Review, he saw to it that his friend Paul became assistant editor. Stanton Rogers’ father was a senior partner in a prestigious Wall Street law firm, and when Stanton worked there summers, he arranged for Paul to be there. Once out of law school, Stanton Rogers’ political star began rising meteorically, and if he was the comet, Paul Ellison was the tail.

      The divorce changed everything. It was now Stanton Rogers who became the appendage to Paul Ellison. The trail leading to the top of the mountain took almost fifteen years. Ellison lost an election for the Senate, won the following one, and in the next few years became a highly visible, articulate law-maker. He fought against waste in government and Washington bureaucracy. He was a populist, and believed in international détente. He was asked to give the nominating speech for the incumbent president running for re-election. It was a brilliant, impassioned speech that made everyone sit up and take notice. Four years later, Paul Ellison was elected President of the United States. His first appointment was Stanton Rogers as Presidential Foreign Affairs Adviser.

      

      Marshall McLuhan’s theory that television would turn the world into a global village had become a reality. The inauguration of the forty-second President of the United States was carried by satellite to more than 190 countries.

      

      In the Black Rooster, a Washington, D.C., hang-out for newsmen, Ben Cohn, a veteran political reporter for the Washington Post, was seated at a table with four colleagues, watching the inauguration on the large television set over the bar.

      ‘The son-of-a-bitch cost me fifty bucks,’ one of the reporters complained.

      ‘I warned you not to bet against Ellison,’ Ben Cohn chided. ‘He’s got the magic, baby. You’d better believe it.’

      The camera panned to show the massive crowds gathered on Pennsylvania Avenue, huddled inside their overcoats against the bitter January wind, listening to the ceremony on loudspeakers set up around the podium. Jason Merlin, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, finished the swearing-in oath, and the new President shook his hand and stepped up to the microphone.

      ‘Look at those idiots standing out there freezing their asses off,’ Ben Cohn commented. ‘Do you know why they aren’t home, like normal human beings, watching it on television?’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because a man is making history, my friends. One day all those people are going to tell their children and grandchildren that they were there the day Paul Ellison was sworn in. And they’re all going to brag “I was so close to him I could have touched him.”’

      ‘You’re a cynic, Cohn.’

      ‘And proud of it. Every politician in the world comes out of the same cookie cutter. They’re all in it for what they can get out of it. Face it, fellas, our new President is a liberal and an idealist. That’s enough to give any intelligent man nightmares. My definition of a liberal is a man who has his ass firmly stuck in clouds of cotton wool.’

      The