Chapter 23: Here Come The Brides

Saturday dawned bright and sunny. Mark rolled out of bed, dropped to the floor and began his morning warm up. Amanda got him started on an exercise regimen. Now it was his daily routine. He jumped to his feet at the finish of the hundredth push up and opened the bedroom window to breathe in the fresh, relatively smog free air. "It's good to be the king!" he shouted at the sky. The echo came back, "king ... king."

"Shut up," Amanda snarled as she staggered into the toilet to throw up.

Mark started the shower and waited for her to finish. He helped her to her feet and led her to the waiting warm water. He was gentle as he soaped her all over and held her close as the water sprayed over them. "I wish there was something I could do for you to ease your morning sickness." He felt helpless.

"You are doing all you can right now," she murmured. "I feel we are even closer when we share a shower and you pamper me like you do. I love you more every day. The more I tell you that, the more I want to tell you how much you mean to me."

He helped her out of the shower and followed. She stood still while he dried her off. This had become more and more a custom during their time together. He held his soon to be wife in his arms in a gentle embrace and kissed her, first her closed eyes, and then her nose and finally a lingering kiss on the lips. A knock at the door brought them back to the reality of the day.

"What?" Amanda yelled at the closed door.

"Call from Sacramento," Sam called through the door. "The lady said it was important."

She slipped on a pair of slacks and tee shirt, and then hurried barefoot downstairs. "Sam, Dirk, Mike, to the office," she yelled.

Sam followed him downstairs. "Put the call on speakerphone so we can all hear it," he suggested.

Amanda hit the speaker button. "Hello?"

"Do you recognize my voice?"

"Yes ma'am, you called me here before. What's wrong?" Amanda assumed, correctly as it turned out, that a problem had arisen.

"Your telephone has been tapped. There is a move by persons unknown to disrupt your wedding today and there may be an attempt to kidnap you and your husband to be. Your shenanigans have started a brush fire across this whole country, especially here in California. We got a heads up from the FBI. Someone has plans to try the Kennedy Solution on you."

"Why hasn't the FBI contacted me personally?" Amanda wondered aloud. "After all, if someone has plans to shoot me, I would say I am a very interested party. What gives?"

"It is believed you have a ringer on your staff," came the non-answer.

"But I don't have a staff. There are Sam, Mike, Dirk, Billy and his men and the three maids and our cook. That is it. We all know each other. What else is the matter? Or was that it?"

"The swearing in must be set up so you are sworn in today. The idea is to prevent your ascension to the governor's office. I shall be present at your wedding. Expect to be sworn in immediately after you say I do." The phone was disconnected.

Mark turned off the speakerphone and asked Dirk to bring Billy into the den immediately. "What's up?" Billy asked as he hurried in from the kitchen.

"According to the FBI there is a mole in this house. Everybody in this room can vouch for each other, so that leaves three maids and the cook, plus your men. Can you personally vouch for each and every one of your people?"

Billy thought hard, "Almost. These are all people I have known for years, well except the two new men."

"Call them in here," Mark ordered.

Billy murmured into the mini microphone affixed to his right shoulder. "Delaney, Hatter, to the living room on the double."

The front door swung open. The two men hurried in. "What's up, Billy, Problems?" asked Delaney, a solid looking six-footer. Hatter nodded and looked around.

"Both of you place your weapons on that table over there. One of you is a mole. It's now up to me to determine which one it is. Place your weapons on the table." Billy's expression promised hurt for someone.

Delaney shrugged and said, "Sure," as walked over to the small end table. He removed the Colt Anaconda from the clam shell holster on his hip and carefully placed it where ordered. "What now?" he asked.

Instead of answering, Billy turned to Hatter, a shorter than average man with a scowl on his face. "The hell I will," he blustered. If you don't trust me I'm out of here." When Billy took a step toward him, he drew his Beretta 9 millimeter and warned. "Nobody takes my weapon."

Unnoticed by the others, Nancy slipped up behind him and jammed him hard in his butt. "Bitch boy, if I pull the trigger on this little pistol you will literally have your brains splattered all over the ceiling."

"Woo!" he exclaimed as he went up on tiptoe. She jammed him harder and he rose up on his toes, his eyes round.

Billy came in from the side, grabbed Hatter's gun hand and twisted. He snatched the weapon from nerveless fingers as the hand opened. He smashed the man hard on the side of his face with a closed fist. "Nancy, ease your finger off the trigger," he ordered.

"I can't," she laughed, "I jabbed him in the butt hole with a ball point pen and it does not have a trigger. She stepped back and held up her "weapon," the pen from the notebook on the secretary table in the living room. "Ta daa! Men are so easy," she gloated.

"I don't ever want to play poker with this girl," Billy told Dirk. "You sure you can handle her?"

Dirk looked at Nancy in admiration and said, "Right now I am not certain of anything. Nancy had better learn to be more ladylike. Tough talk is cute on little girls, not on grown married women." Nancy looked at him, surprised at his tone of voice and said nothing.

Mark came into the room fully dressed. "What's wrong?" He looked at the prone man on the floor and repeated, "What's wrong?"

Amanda placed an arm around him and squeezed. "That man is a spy who was sent in here to do us damage. The FBI was well aware of all this and did not see fit to tell us we were in danger." She took a deep breath and added, "Maybe we better postpone the wedding. People may be coming in here to kidnap you. I don't dare to take a chance."

"No!" Mark yelled. Everyone looked at him in surprised at his outburst. "I am not going to let anything be postponed. At two this afternoon we are going to stand in front of that rabbi and we are going to get married. There will be no delays, we shall be married on time as scheduled Do you hear me?"

Billy raised his eyebrows at her outburst. "I bet they heard you in Florida. But the fact remains that right now you and Amanda are in danger. A wedding ceremony in the open is too good a target of opportunity. I can't protect you with a hundred men. Please, let's wait. I like you guys and don't want to lose you."

Mark's eyes blazed as he said, "Well, you had better arm yourself and the rest of the men with rifles and shoot anyone who tries anything. We will be married and that's all there is to it. Do you understand me?" Billy nodded without answering.

Billy kicked the man on the floor with a heavily clad boot. "Speak to me, you son of a bitch."

Hatter opened his eyes and scowled. "You don't have anything on me. You can't prove nothing." He slowly stood and stared defiantly at Billy. "You got to let me go. I know my rights." Billy jerked him off balance and he fell back to the floor.

"You worthless sack of garbage, you have no rights in this house." Amanda slapped Hatter alongside the head as he started to get up. Her open hand struck fast and hard. Hatter's head slammed hard against the floor. Billy picked him up on his feet again. Amanda slapped him again and drew back as if to slap him one last time. Automatically Hatter raised a hand to block the blow and received a kick in the stomach. As he began to double over Amanda's knee smashed hard against his nose.

"Wait, don't kill him. That could lead to problems," Billy cautioned.

"Not in the least. There is an old septic tank buried out back that will dissolve even the bones after a month. This was a dumping ground for the old Bugsy Siegel gang back in the forties. I only used it once and it worked fine then." Amanda reached for Hatter again.

His nerve broken, he begged, "Wait, I had no way to know what was going on. I'm just the errand guy that protected shipments of papers and stuff. This is all too much for me. What do you want to know?"

"Who hired you?" Mike demanded. Dirk had begun to cover everything with his camera from just before when Amanda kicked Hatter.

"Kettering, Job Kettering. He pays me. You can't prove nothing. He keeps his ass greased tight so nobody can catch him.

"Kettering? Job Kettering the banker? Why would he want to bother with Mark and Amanda? Get real." Mike showed a total disbelief in Hatter's statement to cause the man to open up more. "Hell, if that's the best you can do, I better help Mark dump you out back." Billy made a move as if to grab his ex-employee.

"No, man!" Hatter backed up in desperation, "It's true! Look, there's a bunch of corporations that work together. They plan to make all of the Americas one big super country. They will have one currency and one governing council, as they call it. The same thing is planned for Africa, Asia and Europe. I heard 'em call it, 'spears of influence'."

"Spheres of influence," Nancy corrected him.

"Yeah, whatever." He frowned, paused and tried a new tack, "They had California almost all tied up, then you got in the act and made it all fall apart. The president was in on it and most of the people working for him. The new money are called Ameri Dollars has already been printed up. There are two states down south and one of the ones in New England they have in the bag.

"They plan to take over Mexico in the next three years." He shut his mouth and looked at the astonished faces. "You didn't think I knew all that, did you?" He started to regain his bravado as he saw the effect his revelations had on them.