Chapter 18

Colleen and I were flown, with my staff - nothing is ever easy for the Vice President - to a remote base in Montana. By the time we landed and choppered to secure facilities, the Secret Service still hadn't gotten a handle on what happened.

Anyone could see that the constant violence attempted against Charles and me was way outside the norm, and there had to be connective tissue that told the rest of the tale. I was interviewed for hours by a combination Secret Service/FBI/CIA team that had one agenda and one agenda only.

They wanted something to go on, somewhere to start, some tree to shake ... something ... anything.

I was transparently truthful, because they never strayed anywhere near our 'other' activities, and they left as perplexed about the flare up of assassination attempts as when they arrived. I did leave them with one parting word of wisdom. "Is it possible that they weren't trying to kill me as much as they were trying to destabilize things?"

I could tell that my question did exactly what I hoped it would do. They needed a starting point outside the box, if they were going to get anywhere with the investigation. Hopefully that trail would lead somewhere good and give us another avenue to secretly pursue.

Charles called before he turned in for the night, and I discovered he was spending the week at Camp David - out of an abundance of caution on the part of the Secretary of the Treasury. He and his wife, Diana, were accompanied by his daughter Shirley and his granddaughter, the lovely little Casey, both saved by John Gray who sacrificed himself when he pushed them to safety.

That act got him killed, and me in his body, along with her

"Mr. President, I hope little Casey is riding the pony they brought up there for her."

Charles stopped me right there. "John, I know you have a highly developed sense of loyalty and respect, but I insist that you use my Christian name when it's just us and the family."

"Of course, Sir, I will try my best."

He laughed because he knew respect was hard to set aside, especially when a man earned it like Charles Thornton had. "I bet..." was all he said about it. "I will tell my girls that their hero said to tell them, 'Hello!'" We laughed and he rang off.

Colleen was cuddled at my side and we smooched, petted, licked, sucked, and finally sexed ourselves off to sleep.

The stay in Montana was mercifully short. After three days, we jetted home. The only one sad to leave the mountains was Benjamin. He loved playing out in the tall timber and having plenty of time with me and Colleen. The ride home was at night, as my protectors wanted as little known about my movements as possible for the time being. On the way I got a call from Ken Stanton, Treasury Secretary, with a bit of news. "Mr. Vice President, we have had a break in the assassination attempt against you.

"It appears that a small group of Russian oil magnates hired the mercenaries that stormed the Naval Observatory. The surviving members of the team agree. The photo lineup we showed them was a winner, as both men instantly picked out Uri Kostanovich from the group of pictures and positively identified him as the bagman.

"Kostanovich is an underling of Mikhail Fridman. He owns an enormous amount of oil-rich land and is one of the richest men in Russia. But he is pinched financially by the precipitous drop in oil prices. Somehow, we think, Fridman blames President Thornton, and by extension, you, for the dangerously low price for a barrel of oil and thought that killing you might destabilize the oil market sufficiently for prices to recover.

"I can't tell you how we will proceed with this news, but we are throwing a blanket over Fridman. One possibility is to simply hand the information over to Putin and let him deal with it. He HATES Fridman and all the other oil billionaires, for that matter. It seems like Putin hates anyone that does anything special, becomes wealthy, is famous, or outshines him in any way. The instability is not in America, Mr. Vice President. It is in Russia and getting worse.

"He won't cough that we won't know it, hear it, and probably see it from a satellite. Once we have more clear information, I promise to share it.

"In the meantime, we believe there is no other team, sent out by Fridman in the United States. I have expanded your detail and ordered several security enhancements put in place. It is my hope that they do not overly limit your activity, Sir, but they might just keep you alive, and that's all to the good."