Star Chamber Brotherhood by Preston Fleming Read Free Book Online Page A

in private, regardless of quality or value. On the other hand, they’ll gladly pay top dollar for a label that will impress their friends and clients.”
    Werner paused to observe Nancy Widmer’s reaction. Though she was old and widowed and vulnerable in many ways, she was nobody’s fool. She had spent a lifetime buying and selling all sorts of things in all kinds of markets and remained both well informed and well connected. Not for a moment did he sell short her ability to see through his puffery. She might have heard, for example, that the Unionist elite and their New Class enablers, despite their public rhetoric, had recently fueled a renewed boom in fine wines and spirits. What she could not know, since she was not a professional in the field, was that that the supply of famous labels had dwindled to the point where even formerly unfashionable wines and liquors now fetched prices that far exceeded pre-Unionist levels.
    Nancy Widmer remained silent. The transaction was not going quite as smoothly as he had anticipated.
    “I’m very sorry if the total wasn’t what you expected,” he summed up. “But here’s what I can do for you. I’m willing to take up the price on all the spirits by 10 percent. That will bring the new total north of five thousand New Dollars. Would that be acceptable?”
    Nancy Widmer appeared to breathe a sigh of relief as she nodded her assent.
    “Yes, I’ll accept that,” she declared, putting on a brave smile—or faking it.
    “Very good,” Werner concluded. “Then we have a deal. I’ll bring the money on Saturday.”
    “Excellent. Where I come from, that calls for celebration. May I freshen up your cup of tea, Frank?”
    “Certainly,” he replied.
    But instead of reaching for the teapot, Nancy Widmer rose and opened a cabinet near the stove, and returned with a bottle of Mount Gay Extra Old Rum. She poured an ounce or two in each of their cups and added tea until both were filled.
    “I suppose you know this, Frank, you being educated at Exeter and all. But back in colonial days, coastal New England practically ran on rum. A few in the interior made whiskey from their corn and rye, but true New Englanders never considered whiskey fit for human consumption. So let’s celebrate the end of one New England tradition with another…”
    She raised her cup and drank deeply. Werner did the same. With their business behind them, Nancy asked Werner to tell her more about his career and what path had led him to Boston. Werner gave her a capsule version of his cover story, starting with his birth in Grosse Pointe, boarding school at Exeter, back to Ohio for college, four years with the U.S. Government in the Middle East, then an MBA, a new job in New York, marriage, children, and a succession of other jobs that eventually brought him to Boston.
    “When we moved here from Salt Lake City in ‘16,” he explained, “we didn’t even look at houses in Concord. When the girls started going to Concord Academy, we wished we had. But by then, the economy had crashed and the value of our house had plummeted and we just couldn’t afford to move. Too bad we didn’t, because it seems to me that Concord managed to remain untouched by the crisis longer than many other parts of Boston. Every time I came here in those days, it was a sort of haven for me.”
    Nancy poured more rum into his cup as he spoke, then added some to her own.
    As he knew she had been an Establishment Liberal and a Unionist throughout the Events, he was careful not to turn the conversation toward politics.
    But suddenly, to his surprise, Nancy Widmer leaned across the table and addressed him in a low voice.
    “Tell me, Frank, how could it have come to this? With a President-for-Life, no less! How on earth could we have supported these scoundrels without having any idea where they were taking us? And all the while thinking we were doing everything right!”
    “Don’t ask me, Nancy,” Werner replied with a bland smile. “I