Whitewash

by Alex Kava

  It wasn’t like there was some chief of staff how-to-behave manual or that anyone had ever come right out and told him what was and wasn’t acceptable behavior for a senator’s chief of staff. No, that much he’d figured out for himself. It didn’t take long for Jason to realize that politics were constantly one major innuendo after another whether you were making deals or breaking balls. They even gave the insinuations fancy names and phrases like “the politics of personal destruction.” But where Jason came from it didn’t matter what you called it or how polite you did it, breaking balls was still breaking balls.

  His cell phone started ringing as soon as he stepped into the elevator.

  “Jason Brill,” he said.

  “Brill, it’s Natalie Richards.”

  He couldn’t help smiling, speaking of ball breakers. “Hello, Natalie Richards.”

  “What’s this about changing the venue for the presummit reception?”

  “Well, I’m fine. Thanks for asking. And how are you?”

  “Cut the crap, Brill. I don’t have time for that cute-ass sense of humor of yours. And I don’t appreciate it when people start playing musical chairs and not bothering to let our office know.”

  “Come on, Ms. Richards. Your team’s in charge of the entire energy summit. This is just a reception, a personal reception that Senator Allen is throwing for a few of his friends and acquaintances who happen to be coming to the summit.” Though he was pretty sure Richards knew it wasn’t just a reception but a celebration. If all went well, Senator Allen’s hard work would be rewarded with EchoEnergy being the first American oil-producing company supplying all the vehicles of U.S. troops. It was worthy of a celebration even if it was a bit premature.

  “Friends and acquaintances,” Richards said, “who just happen to be all the heavy hitters.”

  “Not to worry. Your boss is going to be invited.” Despite trying to trip up this deal every step of the way. He wisely kept the last part to himself.

  “That’s not the goddamn point, Brill, and you know it.”

  “All I know is you’re making much ado about nothing.”

  “You can’t continue to—”

  Jason began tapping the cell phone against the elevator wall, then brought it back to his ear only to interrupt her again. “I think I’m losing you, Ms. Richards. I’m in Tallahassee. In an elevator and I—”

  He clicked the phone off and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He’d probably be sorry later on, but he had more important things to do right now than to suck up to the White House. More important things like stock a fucking minifridge.

  4

  EchoEnergy

  Almost noon and Sabrina still hadn’t been able to track down her boss. She was certain she could leave an hour or two early without his permission, but she’d at least like to clear it with him, especially if he had anything he wanted her to finish up over the weekend. Dr. Lansik was on the schedule but no one had seen him all morning. The man kept to himself and hardly ever left the lab or his small office at the far end of the lab. No one probably would have even noticed he was missing if Sabrina hadn’t started asking for him.

  “Maybe something happened at his home…a sick child perhaps,” Pasha Kosloff suggested in his Russian-accented English. He said this without looking up from the vials he was filling with a murky-brown liquid.

  Sabrina didn’t say anything despite knowing their boss didn’t have any children. Instead, she watched Pasha’s long, delicate fingers place each vial carefully into the centrifuge. His tall, lanky frame slouched at the shoulders and bent at the waist, hunched over the metal contraption. He moved in slow motion as if he were creating a masterpiece, every gesture deliberate, almost painstakingly so.

  Sabrina’s own work sat in the distiller that took up the far corner of the lab, an old monstrosity that would need to hum and vibrate for another half hour before she could check on it. She glanced at her watch and stuffed her hands into the worn and sagging pockets of her lab coat.

  “Maybe he’s having an affair,” Anna Copello suggested. “You know, sneaking out from work during the day so his wife won’t get suspicious.”

  Sabrina knew this explanation wasn’t possible, either, at least not the wife part. Though she wasn’t surprised at Anna’s suggestion. The young woman seemed to have a talent for seeing the very worst in everyone. Sabrina glanced at Michael O’Hearn, the oldest of the group, a fit, compact little man with wild black hair and a goatee that was almost completely silver. He would know their boss the best. Despite his thick protective goggles she could see him rolling his eyes at Anna.

  “I don’t think so,” O’Hearn said. “I believe his wife died last year.”

  Sabrina knew this wasn’t true, either, and she stared at O’Hearn. How could O’Hearn not know the truth?

  “Oh, that’s awful,” Anna gasped and even Pasha looked up from his vials. “Why didn’t he tell us?”

  “He’s a private man,” O’Hearn insisted. “If you paid any attention you’d have heard him mention that his wife’s gone.”

  Sabrina escaped to the corner, pretending to check the gauges on the distiller. She couldn’t believe how little every one of them knew about their boss. Especially O’Hearn. She understood that the two men had been colleagues long before they came to spearhead EchoEnergy’s Product Laboratory. Sabrina had worked with Dwight Lansik for a shorter period than any of them, and yet she seemed to be the only one who knew he had no children and his wife was not dead, though she was, indeed, gone.

  In fact, it was quite by accident that Sabrina had learned the truth. Shortly after she started, she came in early on a Sunday, not unusual for either her or Lansik, but this particular Sunday she caught him sleeping on the old blue sofa in his office. Not just sleeping but with his robe, toothbrush and slippers in place as if it had been his routine for some time. He grudgingly confided that his house had not been the same since his wife was gone.

  At first Sabrina thought he meant that his wife had passed away. He had made it sound like a painful process, more that of a brokenhearted widower than an abandoned husband. But among the scattered paraphernalia was also a crumpled set of staple-bound papers, official-looking documents with the first page stamped Divorce Decree.

  It wasn’t any of Sabrina’s business. Lansik was her boss, not a friend or a member of her family. What happened in his personal life was…well, personal.

  The phone started ringing in the adjoining office and all of them stopped and stared. Finally Sabrina pushed open the door, hesitating as she looked around, checking the blue sofa before she reached for the phone on her boss’s desk.

  “EchoLab,” she answered.

  “Ms. Galloway?” a woman’s voice asked, startling Sabrina so much she stepped back. Why would anyone presume she would answer her boss’s phone?

  “Yes?” she said so quietly she wondered if the woman had heard her.

  “This is Anita Fraiser from Mr. Sidel’s office. He asked me to contact you. He needs you to meet him outside Reactor Area #1 at one o’clock. You’ll be giving the VIP tour.”

  “Wait a minute. I had no idea there was a tour today. I’m sure there must be some mistake.” William Sidel was the CEO of EchoEnergy and Sabrina was quite certain she’d remember an appointment with him, let alone a tour.

  “No, no mistake. You were on the list.”

  “The list?”

  “Let’s see here,” the woman said and Sabrina could hear pages being flipped and shuffled. She glanced outside the office, into the lab, and everyone was now staring, not bothering to disguise the fact that they were straining to listen in. “Yes, it’s right here. Your boss has you listed as the lead if for some reason he’s gone.”

  “Has he called in sick?” Sabrina couldn’t believe he would purposely do this to her.

  “All I know is that Dr. Lansik will not be in at all today. So again, that’s one o’clock, Reactor Area #1.”

  5

  Tallahassee, Florida

&
nbsp; Jason Brill was pleased. It was just as he had anticipated. Put the senator in the middle of some hot-topic environmental issue and they will come. They, of course, being the media. Now Jason was glad he’d talked the senator into the navy-blue suit, crisp white shirt and red tie though the senator fought him on the shirt, insisting white was for ultraconservative pricks and definitely not moderate Democrats.

  Jason made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal. He told the senator he could wear whatever he wanted, but for some reason the navy suit with a white shirt made him look taller. And on a photo op where they would be on their feet the entire time, Jason knew he didn’t have to say anything more. Without another word Senator Allen was peeling off his blue oxford and replacing it with the freshly pressed white shirt Jason had waiting for him on a hanger in the hotel closet.

  The drive from Tallahassee was not one of Florida’s most scenic. The senator had shot Jason one of those subtle, furrowed-brow looks of disapproval that Jason knew so well.

  It did look like the middle of nowhere. On the edge of the Apalachicola National Forest there were more pine trees than Jason ever expected to see in Florida. The limousine spent little time on the interstate, almost immediately taking a narrow two-lane blacktop with dirt shoulders that the car veered onto when meeting several large tanker trucks too wide for their own lane. The trucks barreled down the highway, obviously used to the locals giving them the space they needed.

  Twice the limousine driver, who introduced himself as Marek Zelenski, ended what appeared to be a game of chicken by skidding off the concrete and into the dirt. The second time the car slammed to a full stop was followed by a diatribe from Marek, a slew of profanities in what Jason could only guess was Polish. He glanced in the rearview mirror with a quick apology in broken English and pulled the car back onto the road.

  “Looks like they’re in dire need of a new road bill down here.” Jason tried to make light of the situation, but the senator shook his head.

  “Other than those tankers we’ve seen very little traffic,” the senator pointed out. “No sense wasting the taxpayers’ time and money.”

  Jason started nodding in agreement instead of simply saying he was sort of joking when he’d stated the obvious. But then he caught a glint in the senator’s blue eyes.

  “Also, no traffic means no voters,” the senator added with a smile. “Which means a waste of my time and money.”

  That was when Jason wondered if he would regret this whole fiasco. It had been his idea, after all. A surefire way for the senator to promote his position at the upcoming energy summit and at the same time tap into all the positive press EchoEnergy was getting. And why shouldn’t he? The senator had helped EchoEnergy from the very beginning, lobbying to get the federal grants to build the facility and later garnering the tax incentives that allowed the plant to hire and operate. In the last several years EchoEnergy earned an incredible reputation with environmental groups and was now the darling of the news media, like some shining beacon in the energy war. Why shouldn’t the senator capitalize on some of that? After all he had done he deserved some accolades and recognition as being a pioneer in this new breakthrough technology.

  But for some reason Senator Allen wasn’t crazy about Jason’s idea, once even suggesting that he didn’t want to risk upstaging the media focus for the energy summit. Jason’s whole point was not to upstage the summit as much as it was to highlight the senator’s role. Once the summit began so would the competition for media attention. Usually the senator took advantage of opportunities like this. Jason didn’t get it.

  They passed through the industrial park’s electronic gate, stopping only briefly at the security hut where Jason was surprised to see the uniformed guard, alert and at attention, reminding Jason more of a marine barracks than a commercial processing plant. And the limousine didn’t get an easy pass. Credentials were checked, the young man taking his time to examine details and match photos to faces.

  It wasn’t until they drove to the end of the road—a much wider, smoother path than the state highway they had left—that the plant could be seen through the thick forest that lined three sides of what Jason knew to be a hundred-acre property. It looked like a strange small town. On one side, what Jason figured must be the office complex, were five to six modern steel-and-glass buildings—two and three stories high—surrounded by a landscaped park. A slice of the river behind the park disappeared into the forest.

  On the other side of the industrial park were about a dozen giant silver tanks like high-rises glinting in the sun. Steel-grated catwalks instead of glass skywalks connected them. A maze of pipes, some a foot in diameter, and huge electric coils snaked along the tanks and overhead—all a shining white as if the plant had only finished construction. All of the pipes eventually attached each of the tanks to the top of one building that took up the back side of the park, a massive corrugated steel structure with no windows and very few doors.

  Jason had to admit he expected something else, something dingy and dark, considering the long line of tanker trucks—that he now realized were companions to the ones that almost ran them off the highway—were carrying either chicken guts or fuel oil. Yes, he was impressed and he looked to Senator Allen, hoping to see the same reaction only to find the senator sitting back against the soft leather car seat with…absolutely no reaction.

  They approached the office complex, turning the final corner to the entrance. And that’s when Jason saw them. They were parked on sidewalks and filling the circle driveway, all jockeying for the best spot. Jason counted nine news vans. He didn’t bother to count the crowd surrounding the entry to the building. But when he glanced at the senator, he noticed the man was now sitting forward at the edge of the seat, rubbing his hands together like he was getting ready for a feast.

  He gave Jason a rare but genuine pat on the back as he said, “Good job, son.”

  6

  EchoEnergy

  Sabrina kept thinking there had to be some mistake. She was the last person on their team whom Dwight Lansik would choose to lead in his absence. Not for lack of ability or experience, but simply because she had been the last hire. She knew the man had a rather strong opinion about seniority, with disloyalty being the only thing that could uproot it. Taking that into consideration, O’Hearn would be the next in line, and then Anna. When Sabrina told the others about being assigned as tour guide, she could see the question in their eyes, too. Though she couldn’t imagine any of them would really want the assignment. If it was up to her, she’d gladly pass.

  Anna was the only one who dared to ask out loud, “Mr. Sidel requested you to give the tour?” She raised one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows to emphasize that she was not pleased. She was always doing that, using facial expressions to say what she really thought.

  Pasha had commented once that he saw a physical resemblance between Sabrina and Anna, but Sabrina failed—or perhaps refused—to see anything the two might have in common. Sabrina knew the woman was several years her junior and yet Anna Copello had a way of making her feel like she was one of Anna’s problem students. Sabrina, according to Anna, was constantly using glass vials that Anna had set aside for herself, or documenting results using a substandard method. For some reason Sabrina had rubbed Anna the wrong way from the second she arrived at EchoEnergy. O’Hearn had once joked that with Sabrina’s arrival, Anna was no longer the only beauty in their group of mad scientists. And Sabrina couldn’t help wondering if that was true. Anna certainly treated Sabrina as if she was the spoilsport.

  “His secretary said my name was on the list,” Sabrina offered, trying to defend herself when it looked like Anna was waiting for an explanation.

  “The list?” At this, Anna turned to O’Hearn, crossing her arms over her chest. “There’s a list?”

  O’Hearn simply shrugged and swung his chair back to face the computer screen like it didn’t matter to him one way or another. Pasha had already wandered off to complete his work. Anna looked around at b
oth men, then threw her hands in the air as if the situation was hopeless. Without even a glance at Sabrina, she stomped off.

  Sabrina slipped back into Lansik’s office. While on the phone she had seen a file folder labeled Tour Briefing. It was right there on his desk when she replaced the phone, straddling his in-box pile, tempting her, daring her. It wasn’t like Sabrina to touch anyone else’s belongings, let alone take them, but she found herself thinking that if Lansik had gotten her into his mess, he certainly couldn’t complain about her taking a peek and utilizing the same information he had planned on using.

  She slid the bulging file folder that included a spiral six-by-nine-inch notebook inside her briefcase. She’d return it later, after the tour. Then she escaped her colleagues to find refuge at a small bistro table in the EchoCafé, the same table in the corner by the window where she sat every day for lunch.

  Same table, same time, same lunch. Her brother used to call her a slave to her routine, claiming it was too rigid for her to ever really enjoy life. This from a guy who couldn’t hold a job or maintain a relationship for more than six months. She might be boring, she argued, but she had a career she loved, money in the bank and a roof over her head. More than Eric could say for himself. Though how would she know? She hadn’t seen him in over two years.

  Over her usual egg salad on wheat she glimpsed one or two of Lansik’s notes, his chicken-scratch handwriting almost impossible to decipher. She hadn’t taken more than two bites of the sandwich. She knew she was eating only to settle her nerves, and she wasn’t sure why she was nervous.