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DAVID BALDACCI is a global #1 bestselling author, and one of the world's favorite storytellers. His books are published in over forty-five languages and in more than eighty countries, with 150 million copies sold worldwide. His works have been adapted for both feature film and television. David Baldacci is also the cofounder, along with his wife, of the Wish You Well Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting literacy efforts across America. Still a resident of his native Virginia, he invites you to visit him at DavidBaldacci.com and his foundation at WishYouWellFoundation.org.

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Can the President of the United States get away with murder? The fictional answer to this question has set the literary world on fire and transformed David Baldacci into a household name and overnight success. Going beyond the classic works of John Grisham and Robert Ludlum, Absolute Power combines the highest levels of political intrigue with big-money law, cutting-edge forensics, and the riveting search for a truth hidden within the power of the Oval Office.

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Absolute Power

Warner Books

Chapter One

The car was also stolen. And from a very unlikely source.

A pair of miniature palm trees hung from the rearview mirror. Hesmiled grimly as he looked at them. Soon he might be going to theland of palms. Quiet, blue, see-through water, powderysalmon-colored sunsets and late mornings. He had to get out. It wastime. For all the occasions he had said that to himself, this timehe felt sure.

Sixty-six years old, Luther Whitney was eligible to collect SocialSecurity, and was a card-carrying member of AARP. At that age mostmen had settled down into second careers as grandfathers, part-timeraisers of their children's children, when weary joints were easeddown into familiar recliners and arteries finished closing up withthe clutter of a lifetime.

Luther had had only one career his entire life. It involved breakingand entering into other people's homes and places of business,usually in the nighttime, as now, and taking away as much of theirproperty as he could feasibly carry.

Though clearly on the wrong side of the law, Luther had never fireda gun or hurled a knife in anger or fear, except for his part in alargely confusing war fought where South and North Korea were joinedat the hip. And the only punches he had ever thrown were in bars,and those only in self-defense as the suds made men braver than theyshould have been.

Luther only had one criterion in choosing his targets: he took onlyfrom those who could well afford to lose it. He considered himselfno different from the armies of people who routinely coddled thewealthy, constantly persuading them to buy things they did not need.

A good many of his sixty-odd years had been spent in assortedmedium- and then maximum-security correctional facilities along theEast Coast. Like blocks of granite around his neck, three priorfelony convictions stood to his credit in three different states.Years had been carved out of his life. Important years. But he coulddo nothing to change that now.

He had refined his skills to where he had high hopes that a fourthconviction would never materialize. There was absolutely nothingmysterious about the ramifications of another bust: he would belooking at the full twenty years. And at his age, twenty years was adeath penalty. They might as well fry him, which was the way theCommonwealth of Virginia used to handle its particularly bad people.The citizens of this vastly historic state were by and large aGod-fearing people, and religion premised upon the notion of equalretribution consistently demanded the ultimate payback. Thecommonwealth succeeded in disposing of more death row criminals thanall but two states, and the leaders, Texas and Florida, shared themoral sentiments of their Southern sister. But not for simpleburglary; even the good Virginians had their limits.

Yet with all that at risk he couldn't take his eyes off thehome-mansion, of course, one would be compelled to call it. It hadengrossed him for several months now. Tonight that fascination wouldend.

Middleton, Virginia. A forty-five-minute drive west on a slingshotpath from Washington, D.C. Home to vast estates, obligatory Jaguars,and horses whose price tags could feed the residents of an entireinner-city apartment building for a year. Homes in this areasprawled across enough earth with enough splendor to qualify fortheir own appellation. The irony of his target's name, the Coppers,was not lost upon him.

The adrenaline rush that accompanied each job was absolutely unique.He imagined it was somewhat like how the batter felt as henonchalantly trotted the bases, taking all the time in the world,after newly bruised leather had landed somewhere in the street. Thecrowd on its feet, fifty thousand pairs of eyes on one human being,all the air in the world seemingly sucked into one space, and thensuddenly displaced by the arc of one man's glorious swing of thewood.

Luther took a long sweep of the area with his still sharp eyes. Anoccasional firefly winked back at him. Otherwise he was alone. Helistened for a moment to the rise and fall of the cicadas and thenthat chorus faded into the background, so omnipresent was it toevery person who had lived long in the area.

He pulled the car further down the blacktop road and backed onto ashort dirt road that ended in a mass of thick trees. His iron-grayhair was covered with a black ski hat. His leathery face was smearedblack with camouflage cream; calm, green eyes hovered above a cinderblock jaw. The flesh carried on his spare frame was as tight asever. He looked like the Army Ranger he had once been. Luther gotout of the car.

Crouching behind a tree, Luther surveyed his target. The Coppers,like many country estates that were not true working farms orstables, had a huge and ornate wrought iron gate set on twin brickcolumns but had no fencing. The grounds were accessible directlyfrom the road or the nearby woods. Luther entered from the woods.

It took Luther two minutes to reach the edge of the cornfieldadjacent to the house. The owner obviously had no need forhome-grown vegetables but had apparently taken the country squirerole to heart. Luther wasn't complaining, since it afforded him ahidden path almost to the front door.

He waited a few moments and then disappeared into the embracingthickness of the corn stalks.

The ground was mostly clear of debris and his tennis shoes made nosound, which was important, for any noise carried easily here. Hekept his eyes straight ahead; his feet, after much practice,carefully picked their way through the slender rows, compensatingfor the slight unevenness of the ground. The night air was coolafter the debilitating heat of another stagnant summer, but notnearly cool enough for breath to be transformed into the tiny cloudsthat could be seen from a distance by restless or insomniac eyes.

Luther had timed this operation several times over the past month,always stopping at the edge of the field before stepping into thefront grounds and past no-man's-land. In his head, every detail hadbeen worked and reworked hundreds of times until a precise script ofmovement, waiting, followed by more movement was firmly entrenchedin his mind.

He crouched down at the edge of the front grounds and took one morelong look around; no need to rush. No dogs to worry about, which wasgood. A human, no matter how young and fleet, simply could notoutrun a dog. But it was the noise they made that stopped men likeLuther cold. There was also no perimeter security system, probablybecause of the innumerable false alarms that would be caused by thelarge populations of deer, squirrel and raccoon roaming over thearea. However, Luther would shortly be faced with a highlysophisticated defense package that he would have thirty-threeseconds to disarm-and that included the ten seconds it would takehim to remove the control panel.

The private security patrol had passed through the area thirtyminutes earlier. The cop clones were supposed to vary theirroutines, making sweeps through their surveillance sectors everyhour. But after a month of observations, Luther had easily discerneda pattern. He had at least three hours before another pass would bemade. He wouldn't need nearly that long.

The grounds were pitch black, and thick shrubs, the lifeblood of theburglary class, clung to the brick entryway like a caterpillar nestto a tree branch. He checked each window of the house: all black,all silent. He had watched the caravan carrying the home's occupantsparade out two days ago to points south, and carefully tookinventory of all owners and personnel. The nearest estate was a goodtwo miles away.

He took a deep breath. He had planned everything out, but in thisbusiness, the simple fact was that you could never account foreverything.

He loosened the grips on his backpack and then glided out from thefield in long, smooth strides across the lawn, and in ten secondswas facing the thick, solid-wood front door with reinforced steelframing together with a locking system that was rated at the top ofthe charts for holding force. None of which concerned Luther in theleast.

He slipped a facsimile front-door key out of his jacket pocket andinserted it into the keyhole without, however, turning it.

He listened for another few seconds. Then he slipped off hisbackpack and changed his shoes so there would be no traces of mud.He readied his battery-operated screwdriver, which could reveal thecircuitry he needed to fool ten times faster than he could by hand.

The next piece of equipment he carefully pulled from his backpackweighed exactly six ounces, was slightly bigger than a pocketcalculator and other than his daughter was the best investment hehad ever made in his life. Nicknamed "Wit" by its owner, the tinydevice had assisted Luther in his last three jobs without a hitch.

The five digits comprising this home's security code had alreadybeen supplied to Luther and programmed into his computer. Theirproper sequence was still a mystery to him, but that obstacle wouldhave to be eradicated by his tiny metal, wire and microchipcompanion if he wanted to avoid the ear-piercing shriek that wouldinstantly emit from the four sound cannons planted at each corner ofthe ten-thousand-square-foot fortress he was invading. Then wouldfollow the police call dialed by the nameless computer he wouldbattle in a few moments. The home also had pressure-sensitivewindows and floor plates, in addition to tamperproof door magnets.All of which would mean nothing if Wit could tear the correct codesequence from the alarm system's grasp.

He eyed the key in the door and with a practiced motion hooked Witto his harness belt so that it hung easily against his side. The keyturned effortlessly in the lock and Luther prepared to block out thenext sound that he would hear, the low beep of the security systemthat warned of impending doom for the intruder if the correct answerwas not fed into it in the allotted time and not a millisecondlater.

He replaced his black leather gloves with a pair of more nimbleplastic ones that had a second layer of padding on the fingertipsand palms. It was not his practice to leave any evidence behind.Luther took one deep breath, then opened the portal. The shrill beepof the security system met him instantly. He quickly moved into theenormous foyer and confronted the alarm panel.

The automatic screwdriver whirled noiselessly; the six metal piecesdropped into Luther's hands and then were deposited in a carrier onhis belt. Slender wires attached to Wit flashed against the sliver of moonlight seeping through the window beside the door, and then Luther, probing momentarily like a surgeon through a patient's chest cavity, found the correct spot, clipped the strands into place and then flipped on the power source to his companion.

From across the foyer, a slash of crimson stared down at him. Theinfrared detector had already locked on Luther's thermal offset. Asthe seconds ticked down, it patiently waited for the securitysystem's "brain" to pronounce the intruder friend or foe.

Faster than the eye could follow, the numbers flashed across Wit'sdigital screen in neon amber; the allotted time blinked down in asmall box at the top-right-hand corner of the same screen.

Five seconds elapsed and then the numbers 5, 13, 9, 3 and 11appeared on Wit's tiny glass face and locked.

The beep stopped on cue as the security system was disarmed, the redlight flashed off and was replaced with the friendly green, andLuther was in business. He removed the wires, screwed the plate backon and repacked his equipment, then carefully locked the front door.

The master bedroom was on the third floor, which could be reached byan elevator down the main first-floor hallway to the right, butLuther chose the stairs instead. The less dependent he was onanything he did not have complete control over the better. Gettingstuck in an elevator for several weeks was not part of his battleplan.

He looked at the detector in the corner of the ceiling as itsrectangular mouth smiled at him, its surveillance arc asleep fornow. Then he headed up the staircase.

The master bedroom door was not locked. In a few seconds he had hislow-power, nonglare work lamp set up and took a moment to lookaround. The green glow from a second control panel mounted next tothe bedroom door broke the darkness.

The house itself had been built within the last five years; Lutherhad checked the records at the courthouse and had even managed togain access to a set of blueprints of the place from the planningcommissioner's office, it being large enough to require specialblessing from the local government as though they would everactually deny the rich their wishes.

There were no surprises in the building plans. It was a big, solidhouse more than worth the multimillion-dollar price tag that hadbeen paid in cash by its owner.

Indeed, Luther had visited this home once before, in broad daylight,with people everywhere. He had been in this very room and he hadseen what he needed to see. And that was why he was here tonight.

Six-inch crown molding peered down at him as he knelt next to thegigantic, canopied bed. Next to the bed was a nightstand. On it werea small silver clock, the newest romance novel of the day and anantique silver-plated letter opener with a thick leather handle.

Everything about the place was big and expensive. There were threewalk-in closets in the room, each about the size of Luther's livingroom. Two were occupied by women's clothes and shoes and purses andevery other female accoutrement one could rationally or irrationallyspend money on. Luther glanced at the framed prints on thenightstand and wryly observed the twenty-something "little woman"next to the seventy-something husband.

There were many types of lotteries in the world and not all of themstate-run.

Several of the photos showed off the lady of the house's proportionsto almost maximum degree, and his quick examination of the closetrevealed that her dressing pleasures leaned to the downright sleazy.

He looked up at the full-length mirror, studying the ornate carvingsaround its edges. He next surveyed the sides. It was a heavy, niftybit of work, built right into the wall, or so it seemed, but Lutherknew that hinges were carefully hidden into the slight recess sixinches from the top and bottom.

Luther looked back at the mirror.



Continues...

Excerpted from Absolute Powerby David Baldacci Copyright ©1996 by David Baldacci. Excerpted by permission.
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