Chapter 15 - The Viper’s Banquet
Eleanor Mercer did not arrive in Washington in handcuffs.
She arrived in a diplomatic limousine flanked by private security contractors carrying foreign state immunity passes.
At eighty-two years of age, she stepped into the private dining salon of the historic Hay-Adams Hotel looking like an ancient, gilded empress.
Her snow-white hair was sculpted into an immaculate crown, her throat encircled by three strands of South Sea pearls, and her sharp blue eyes carried the predatory chill of an eagle watching prey from a mountain peak.
She had sent an official diplomatic summons through the Department of State requesting an audience with the newly appointed four-star General Katherine Mercer.
I walked into the private room alone, unarmed, wearing my service dress uniform with my four stars gleaming under the crystal chandeliers.
Two armed bodyguards in Italian suits moved to frisk me at the doorway.
"Touch me," I said, my voice dropping an octave, "and the thirty snipers from the 75th Ranger Regiment currently locked onto your skulls through those windows will turn this suite into an abattoir."
The guards froze, glancing nervously toward the heavily draped windows overlooking Lafayette Square.
"Stand down, boys," Eleanor’s voice chimed like ice clinking in fine crystal.
"Let the soldier come forward."
"She has her mother’s stubborn jaw, but thank the heavens she didn't inherit Evelyn’s fragile heart."
I walked to the table, pulling out the heavy mahogany chair directly across from her, and sat down without waiting for an invitation.
"Eleanor," I said evenly.
"You should address me as your grandmother, Katherine," she replied, cutting a slice of rare venison with a sterling silver knife.
"Or at the very least, as the woman who funded the very defense infrastructure that built your precious career."
"You funded defective armor that killed thirty-eight soldiers in the Shok Valley," I countered, looking directly into her cold eyes.
"You smuggled advanced guidance chips into our territory on a burning freighter."
"And you murdered my mother with thallium."
Eleanor didn't stop chewing.
She swallowed delicately, dabbed her lips with a linen napkin, and smiled a smile that was completely devoid of human warmth.
"Your mother was an insect, Katherine," she remarked dispassionately.
"A petty auditor who thought she could dictate policy to an empire that shapes the foreign borders of Western civilization."
"I gave Evelyn an opportunity to be part of greatness, and she chose morality."
"Morality is the crutch of the weak who cannot bear the weight of ruling."
"And Arthur?" I asked.
"Did Arthur choose morality when you turned him into a coward?"
Eleanor scoffed, waving her diamond-encrusted hand in dismissive disgust.
"Arthur was a genetic disappointment."
"A weak-willed boy who wept whenever he had to fire a vice president."
"I knew twenty years ago he would eventually break under the pressure of the Senate."
She leaned forward, her wrinkled face tightening into a mask of pure, concentrated ambition.
"That is why I allowed you to survive, Katherine."
"What did you say?" I asked, my blood turning to liquid nitrogen.
"Do you really think an impoverished orphan from the South Bronx could obtain an appointment to West Point without a Mercer signature on the congressional nomination?" she whispered, her eyes dancing with wicked amusement.
"I watched your career with great interest."
"You survived the mountains."
"You took down Arthur."
"You dismantled his bloated, inefficient executive board."
"You proved yourself to be the only true Mercer born in three generations."
She pushed an antique fountain pen and a leather-bound agreement across the table toward me.
"Arthur is ruined."
"His shares will be liquidated by the federal government at auction next Tuesday."
"Sign this document, Katherine."
"Take your rightful place as the sovereign heir to the Mercer international holdings."
"Together, we will privatize the entire command structure of NATO logistics."
"You will be more powerful than the President."
"You will be the architect of the new world."
I looked down at the paper, then back up at the monster who had murdered the only woman who ever loved me for who I was.
"You spent eighty-two years collecting gold and blood, Eleanor," I said, my voice steady, resonant, and cold as the grave.
"And you still don't understand what this uniform means."
I picked up the fountain pen.
And then, with deliberate precision, I snapped the antique gold barrel in half, letting black ink bleed across her white linen tablecloth.
"I am not your heir, Eleanor."
May you like
"I am your executioner."
***
