Coup D'Etat by Ben Coes Read Free Book Online

him in more than a year. In the days and weeks following Dewey’s killing of Alexander Fortuna, she had tried to convince him to join her at the White House, or the CIA. But he didn’t want any of it.
    Jessica, about to take a sip from her coffee cup, paused. “Yeah, what about him?” she asked as she took a sip. “He’s gone. I don’t know where he is.”
    “We both know he’s in Australia, Jess. I’m not a fucking idiot. Someone on Aswan Fortuna’s security team in Tehran said more than he should have to an informant we have inside VEVAK. Fortuna has men in Australia. They’re looking for Dewey and they’re getting closer. I thought you’d want to know. What you do with it is up to you.”
    Jessica was silent for a moment. “When you say men…”
    “Kill teams. Highly trained operatives. Al-Muqawama, the paramilitary wing of Hezbollah. They’re scouring the earth for Dewey. Fortuna wants revenge for the death of his son, Alexander. We know he’s posted a bounty of a hundred million dollars, but that’s old news. This is new. I read Echelon scans going back a month. The information from the Iranian informant corroborates an unexplained incident a week ago. Australian Federal Police arrested two Arabs in a car driving outside of Melbourne on the seventeenth. They were weaponed up and they had a bunch of biograph on Dewey; photos, news clips. They literally had four million dollars in cash in the trunk of the car they were driving.”
    “Where are they now?”
    “It was a shit show: one of the men popped a cyanide pill before they could even get the cuffs on. They got some information out of the other one but when they gave him a bathroom break he garroted himself with an electrical wire he tore out of the wall.”
    “My God,” Jessica gasped.
    “They don’t know where he is yet,” said Calibrisi. “They spent some money in Sydney buying what turned out to be false information. They know he’s in Australia and they have a lot of money. It’s only a matter of time before they find him.”
    “How many are there?”
    “AFP doesn’t know. That was one team. There could be others. There probably are others. By the way, I didn’t let AFP know Dewey was even in-country. If Fortuna’s offering suitcases full of cash for information, I didn’t want to run the risk of inadvertently helping them.”
    Calibrisi noted the look of concern on Jessica’s face.
    “I haven’t spoken with him in over a year, Hector,” she said.
    “Well, maybe it’s time you did.”
    “Yeah, sure. If I called and told Dewey that Fortuna had men looking for him he’d laugh. It would make him happy.”
    Calibrisi showed no facial expression. Like the gentleman he was, he didn’t wait around to try and read her emotions.
    “I just wanted you to know, Jess. That’s all.” Calibrisi turned and moved toward the door. He paused and looked at the photograph on the wall, of Dewey, Jessica, and President Allaire.
    “Do you know where he is?” she asked as his hand touched the doorknob.
    “He’s working on a ranch in Queensland.”
    “Do you know which one?”
    “You do remember what I do for a living, right?” Calibrisi asked, grinning. “You want a phone number?”
    “Sure.”
    “You got it. I’ll shoot it over to you.”
    “Thank you, Hector.”
    When Calibrisi left, Jessica stood up and walked to the door, shut it, then stood for a moment and leaned against the door. She shut her eyes and stood still. Then she walked back to her desk. She sat down and stared at the phone. She leaned down and opened the middle drawer of her desk. She pulled a small frame from the desk. It was a sterling silver frame. Inside the frame was a photograph of her and Dewey, his arm around her shoulders. They were both smiling. It had been taken outside the Carlyle Hotel in New York City just before he left. Jessica stared at the photograph. She wondered what Dewey looked like now. Was his hair long? Did he have a beard? Was he happy?