The Blowback Protocol

by Lars Emmerich

The first video ended and Grange felt disappointment. He hadn’t heard anything conclusive. Oren Stanley had done a great job evading questions, communicating general intent, leaving the other guy to make the logical leaps and assume the risks.

  The second file in the folder was a PDF. Grange read its contents, which were very technical. The document detailed characteristic consonants and vowel lengths and formants and pace and intonation and sibilance. It was a voice analysis of the two men involved in the videotaped conversation. The voice expert mathematically compared the voices in the video with several verified samples to arrive at his conclusion: the conversation in the video was between Oren Stanley and Alexander Wells, the president’s director of national intelligence.

  Grange pursed his lips and rubbed his chin. A secret meeting between the senator and the DNI was not unheard of, but Grange had a feeling the information in the investigator’s file folder was pointing in a disturbing direction.

  Grange moved on to the next file, which was an audio recording dated February 17. Stanley and Wells were speaking quietly. Judging by the ambient noise and muffled high-frequency content, it was an in-person conversation, probably recorded by a virus on one of their smartphones. Idiots.

  “Given the situation, I have something we need to consider,” Stanley said. “A very distasteful thing. Something a man wouldn’t normally entertain.”

  Grange heard a grunt from Wells.

  “It can’t be just another DC tragedy,” Stanley said. “Those are a dime a dozen, and it would backfire. Everything would intensify and Homeland would step up their investigation.”

  “So it needs to have shock value,” Wells said.

  “It needs to bring the investigation to a full stop.”

  Silence, then Wells: “How do we stay insulated from the blowback?”

  “We leave no one alive to answer questions.”

  “Two deaths?”

  “Can you think of any other way?” Stanley said.

  More silence.

  “Homeland is closing in,” Stanley pressed. “We need to do something.”

  “You have people in mind for this?”

  “I do.”

  “Who’s the victim?”

  “It has to be someone close to us, otherwise there will be suspicion,” Stanley said.

  “I can’t think of anyone in your camp whose death would arouse any sympathy,” Wells said.

  Stanley chuckled at the barb, then his voice became serious. “But you bring up an essential point. There are no innocents in this game but the women and children,” he said.

  A chill ran down Grange’s spine. He rewound the player and listened again to be sure he had heard Stanley’s statement correctly. Unbelievable.

  “Jesus,” Wells said as Grange resumed the playback. “You can’t be serious.”

  “That’s why we’re having this conversation,” Stanley said. “Go home and think about it. Tell me if you can think of any other way. We won’t move until we both agree.”

  “Who the hell would even consider doing a job like this?”

  “We have a double, a Muslim guy with a large family in Damascus,” Stanley said. “We’ll suggest word might get out back home about his divided loyalties if he doesn’t take the assignment.”

  “The fundamentalists would go crazy.”

  “I’m confident it won’t come to that.”

  “You think this guy will march to his own death?”

  “You know how these guys are,” Stanley said. “Death before dishonor. And the family angle is compelling, I think. His family would all know the reason why they were getting their fingers sliced off one at a time. Imagine the shame the guy would feel.”

  “I don’t know,” Wells said.

  “I don’t know either. That’s why I want you to think about it. If you can come up with a better idea, I’m all ears.”

  The audio ended and Grange sat in silence for a moment. It wasn’t just Stanley who had gone rogue. Bile rose in his throat and his face settled into a grimace.

  He moved on to the next file, a picture of a man sitting alone at what looked like a public library carrel. The man had dark skin and black hair and seemed to be in his mid-thirties. He wore a gray jacket, black jeans, and white sneakers. In the man’s hand was a handwritten note. Grange zoomed in on the note and studied its contents. The note listed days, times, and events:

  * * *

  M–F: 8–12, school

  M, W, F: 4:30–5:30, swimming lessons

  T, Th,: 6:00–7:00 p.m., ballet

  Saturday: 5:30 p.m., Littlefield Park

  * * *

  Littlefield Park. Grange nodded grimly to himself. He knew the location. It was where Tariq Ezzat and Sarah Beth McCulley had died during the Homeland op on February 25.

  He opened the last file, another photo of the man in the library but taken by a different surveillance camera. There were computer-generated squares, circles, and lines drawn over various features on the subject’s face. The facial-recognition software’s conclusion appeared beneath the photo. With over ninety-nine percent confidence, the computer determined the photo’s subject to be Tariq Ezzat.

  Grange closed his laptop and sat back in his chair. He laced his fingers together and rested them over the monk-like bald spot on top of his head. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment before opening them again. There was only one conclusion to be drawn: Alexander Wells and Oren Stanley had conspired to murder Sarah Beth McCulley.

  48

  Grange stepped out of the limousine with barely a nod toward the driver. He had earlier announced the evening’s destination as simply “dinner.” The driver knew Grange’s request wasn’t an invitation to discuss dining possibilities. It was a very specific locale, a restaurant named 1769.

  It was one of the few places in the District where the experience lived up to the hype. The building had indeed been around, in various incarnations, since 1769. A restaurateur had bought the ancient building in a fit of post-fifties optimism, negotiated the endless red tape required to convert a historical landmark into a business, and began the arduous process of renovating the space.

  One year and an ungodly amount of debt later, the restaurant opened its doors. It promptly fell on hard times. No banker in town would look the restaurateur in the eye, and in the 1960s there was not yet a thing called “venture capital.” The restaurateur was forced to accept alternative financing arrangements. Men in black suits with vague job descriptions and scary-looking friends began stopping by with infusions of cash, beginning 1769’s long tradition of catering to unsavory clientele.

  It continued to the present day, though the unsavories were now sufficiently upscale to keep from frightening away the lay clientele, who were mostly wonks, staffers, and the professional bureaucrats who ran the government while its titular leadership rotated in and out with each election cycle.

  Grange fitted neatly within either category. Even among the knee-cappers, embezzlers, politicians, and spymasters, he was revered. But his long history in the bureaucratic trenches—or shadows, more appropriately—had earned him enough legitimacy to walk around the District in the light of day.

  To anyone watching, Grange’s behavior wouldn’t have appeared to be anything but mundane. The maître d’ showed him to his customary table, the one in the corner with the commanding view of the room’s entrance and exits, and Grange took his customary seat, back against the wall, eyes surveying the crowd for friends and foes alike.

  “Good evening, sir,” the waiter said, his tuxedo exquisitely pressed and his demeanor achieving the rare standoffish solicitude that commanded generous tips. He placed the customary boisson in front of his guest, two fingers of Macallan 18, neat and undisturbed.

  Grange nodded in response. A downright effusive show of emotion, by Grange’s standards.

  Others in the crowd fiddled with phones or conversed among themselves. Grange did neither. He sat rigid as a statue, face implacable, motionless but for his eyes, which surveye
d the room habitually and subconsciously. He took an occasional sip of whisky, but he did so without savoring its nose, which many considered a boorish faux pas. Might as well be gargling vodka, the scotch snobs would have said, but Grange cared little for such things.

  Aside from acknowledging the alcohol’s burn in his empty stomach, his mind was otherwise occupied. Wells had lied. It wasn’t just Oren Stanley who was responsible for the incident in the park on February 25. Stanley and Wells had conspired together.

  Grange cursed himself for not seeing it sooner. He knew Stanley relied heavily on the cash he skimmed from what the Homeland people called the Doberman operation. Homeland’s investigation had made rapid headway in recent weeks, and Stanley must have been scared to death by the threat of discovery. Given enough time, the money trail would eventually have led to the right spot, so the senator engineered the Sarah Beth McCulley event to bring the investigation to a screeching halt. What Grange had missed was that Alexander Wells was about to be caught with his hands in the same cookie jar. Wells had been just as scared and desperate as Stanley. And foolish, Grange thought, his mouth tightening into a grimace.

  He rubbed his chin and took another sip of whisky. His thoughts turned to Sam Jameson. Wells had asked him to nudge the disgraced Homeland agent back into her Doberman investigation. Stanley had crossed the line, Wells had said, and the rogue senator needed to be discovered and punished. Grange had agreed wholeheartedly. What Stanley had done—having that little girl killed to save his illicit operation—was well beyond the pale. Aside from being grotesque and inhuman, it was also rash and risky. It put everyone in jeopardy.

  Grange had thought about killing Stanley himself, but that would have led to even messier complications. He had ultimately agreed with Wells: better to restart the Homeland agent’s investigation and let her corner the senator. He and Wells could easily spin their association with Stanley, if necessary. They were in the intelligence business and Stanley was a senior member of the intelligence committee. Grange hadn’t perceived much risk.

  Until now. Grange shook his head. Wells was complicit in the same damned crime. It would have been impossible for Grange to shepherd Sam Jameson to Stanley’s doorstep without also placing Wells in jeopardy, so why had Wells been so eager to get her back on task?

  Oh, shit. It came to him in a flash. The conclusion was obvious, Grange realized. Despite what he said, Wells wasn’t trying to burn Stanley. Instead, Wells and Stanley were working together to set him up to take the fall.

  Grange pursed his lips and his face flushed. The earth had shifted beneath him and he felt dizzy. The master gamesman had been gamed. He was in jeopardy. He had been blundering headlong toward a trap and he hadn’t even suspected. He sat motionless, stomach churning, mouth dry, wondering how and when and where Wells and Stanley would spring their snare.

  Then he thought of ChemEspaña and Hayward, and the fortuitous events that had brought Sam Jameson and Hayward together in Cagliari. His face relaxed. He had a few more arrows in his quiver than he had realized, and he planned to use them wisely. But it was obvious he had to act quickly.

  The waiter returned and Grange ordered the prix fixe menu, braised entrecôte with huntsman’s potatoes paired with a spectacular Cabernet Sauvignon. The waiter assured him it was well worth the wait.

  Grange didn’t mind the extra time, but he did have one request. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, Grange desired the house’s finest Merlot instead of the Cabernet.

  This gave the waiter pause. Not because of any degree of snobbishness—the staff was too well-trained to display any disapproval, regardless of how gauche a diner’s request might seem—but because of the importance of the request itself. Like many things in Washington, DC, the Merlot wasn’t simply a wine; it was also something else entirely.

  The waiter retreated to the kitchen, reported his customer’s dinner request to the staff, then announced his break.

  He braved the evening chill for a cigarette. He pulled out his iPhone and tapped in a memorized telephone number. After several rings, before anyone answered, the waiter terminated the call.

  He looked at his watch. His break was almost over. The on-duty manager, an officious and self-important older lady, wasn’t privy to all of the goings-on inside 1769’s walls. She didn’t know about the waiter’s off-the-books arrangement with the man with the aquiline nose, prominent chin, and monk-like bald spot, and she would give him hell for extending his cigarette break. The waiter puffed nervously and hunched his shoulders in the cold air.

  With a little over two minutes to spare, his phone jangled. It was a number he’d never seen before and one he would never see again, but he knew better than to let it go to voicemail.

  He also knew better than to expect a greeting. He answered, put the phone to his ear, and felt a presence on the other end of the line. Or maybe he just imagined that a real person was listening, ready to jot down the message. They didn’t tell him how the other end of the operation worked; they just told him to do his job. It went without saying that curiosity was strongly discouraged.

  The waiter counted to five-one-thousand. Then he said, “The diner ordered the Merlot.”

  He heard a single two-toned beep in reply, as if someone had pressed two number keys in quick succession on an old-school landline, then the line went dead.

  The waiter went on about his business, and Artemis Grange, preoccupied, went through the motions like an automaton as his five-course dinner unfolded before him.

  On the other side of town, set in motion by the Merlot and the waiter’s strange phone call, wheels turned.

  Another telephone call was made, this one to Grange’s limousine driver, who was given the remainder of the night off. It happened rarely but often enough that it didn’t arouse suspicion. The man wasn’t paid by the hour, so a night off was always a boon, and he was smart enough not to be curious about the sudden change in the old man’s plans.

  Another vehicle was dispatched, a panel van. It was painted white, and bold blue lettering on either side declared SVIGEL’S LAUNDRY SERVICE, TRUSTED SINCE 1983.

  The van left a warehouse on the outskirts of the city and made its way to Georgetown.

  Grange checked his watch, concluded that there was indeed time to order dessert, and made his selection. The crème brûlée sounded about right. Coffee as well, black, not too strong.

  It arrived in due course, moments after Grange had arrived at a decision about how he planned to handle the rest of the evening’s events. He signed the check—on the tab, please—and made his way to the front exit, allowing a nearly imperceptible nod toward the maître d’ as he opened the door.

  The cold nipped at him. It was always surprising just how frosty it could get in DC. Perhaps it was the humidity, or maybe the icy wind blowing in from the Potomac just a block or two south. He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned right on Thirty-Sixth Street, then right again on Prospect Street, heading west.

  He checked his watch, then slowed his pace. Amateurs arrived early or late. Professionals arrived on time. His tradecraft wasn’t what it used to be, but he’d been in the game long enough that some things just came naturally.

  He took a right on Thirty-Seventh Street. Two buildings north. Right again, into an alley between two ancient condo conversions, undoubtedly full of up-and-comers ready to make their mark in the New Rome, utterly oblivious, Grange thought, of the machinations necessary to keep a nation together.

  He emerged from the alleyway, stumbled over an uneven patch in the cobblestone across from the Georgetown University Art Gallery, cursed, regained his balance, and stood at the curb. The gallery was long closed. There was an endless line of cars parked bumper-to-bumper at the curb, a ubiquitous Georgetown sight, but there was no foot traffic. Grange was alone.

  He looked to his left. Headlights. A white panel van. It stopped at the curb, and Grange noted the laundry service logo on the side. The passenger door opened seemingly of its own volition. In the
cabin light, Grange saw the driver, a swarthy man with a Svigel’s Laundry ball cap pulled low.

  “I hope springtime shows up soon,” Grange said to the man.

  “I’m ready for a change myself,” the driver said in response.

  Satisfied with the driver’s coded reply, Grange got in.

  Nary a word was spoken on the drive to McLean, Virginia. A good portion of the trip was spent driving along the historic George Washington Memorial Parkway, perhaps one of the most beautiful stretches of roadway in any city on the East Coast, with stunning cross-Potomac views of countless famous landmarks. Grange was unmoved. He’d seen it all a thousand times, and anyway he wasn’t the kind to smell the roses. He looked straight ahead, eyes focused but unseeing, his mind going over his strategy one last time.

  The laundry van pulled into a long residential driveway. Perfectly shaped cherry trees lined both sides. They were bare but would soon erupt in brilliant pink as winter yielded its cold, clammy grip on the District. A gentle upslope traversed an immaculately manicured lawn, which surrounded a Victorian mansion that oozed money, class, and Old World snobbery.

  The driver eschewed the roundabout in front of the mansion’s grand stairway in favor of the service entrance around back. He parked and killed the engine.

  Grange got out of the van and walked to the service entrance. A steward showed him in with a graceful bow. “Follow me, sir,” he said. “Senator Stanley is expecting you.”

  Grange returned to the Svigel’s Laundry Service van half an hour later. “Back to Georgetown, please,” he said to the driver. Grange said nothing as the van left the Stanley property, wove through the posh neighborhood, and turned once again onto the George Washington Parkway.

  “Turn here,” Grange told the driver, motioning to a narrow side street several miles from Senator Stanley’s mansion.

  The driver gave him an inquisitive look. “Dead drop,” Grange said by way of explanation.