by James Bruno
Gen. Mack Krautscher leaned forward, his bemedalled chest glistening from the light of the overhead chandeliers. “That’s right, Mr. President. We’re confident that the Bosnians can fight back should the Serbs ever get itchy for another scrap.”
President Merriman caught special advisor Walter LaFontaine’s eye. With a slight nod and sparkle in his eyes, Merriman telegraphed, “Good job Walt.” He rubbed his face, stifled a yawn and forced himself to focus.
With both hands, Fennimore smoothed back the few graying strands of hair on his balding head, straightened his coke-bottle glasses on his nose and delivered the anticipated verbal coup de grace. “You miss the point. Don’t you see? The more we do to ensure that they can fight well, the less motivation there will be for peace. They will dig in their heels.”
There was a protracted silence in the room as each participant digested this particular insight.
“Will you have the Bosnians fold then, should the Serbs get aggressive again?” asked Vice President Ransom with a touch of incredulousness.
“No. I go back to individuals. Remove the troublemakers. Insist on it while holding out the threat of sanctions. This goes for all the parties. Croats, Serbs and Muslims.”
“CHASM,” Beringer said in a barely audible voice.
CIA Director Will Agropoulos cleared his throat loudly. “This really isn’t the forum to get into details of various programs,” he said pointedly.
“He’s right,” President Merriman said. “I’m off to Africa tomorrow. Herb, things still on track to polish off that peace treaty in Sudan?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” the Secretary of State replied. “We’ve learned a lot from the Bosnia experience. All parties are ready to receive you and to sign.” He shuffled frantically through a stack of papers with trembling hands. He had difficulty focusing. An aide approached from behind to assist.
Lisa felt sorry for the Secretary. A party stalwart who practiced major league law at one of the capital’s most prestigious firms when not holding one senior position or another in government, the seventy-year old had gone through life-draining chemotherapy. Though the leukemia was in full remission, he wasn’t the man he used to be. The scuttlebutt was that he would stay on until the next election, then retire.
Lisa discreetly observed Tulliver while Secretary McHenry fumbled with his briefing papers. The Deputy National Security Adviser eyed carefully every tremulous move, every twitch of the brows. He looked uncannily to Lisa the way her cat did before pouncing on an injured insect or baby mouse.
“I hate to sound overly political, but the NAACP is praising us to the rafters on this one. And Congress has no choice but to cough up the funding necessary for the aid package. Can’t hurt when election time comes around again, eh gentlemen?…er, ladies and gentlemen?” Merriman said.
Little question marks and asterisks started gracing Lisa’s notetaking. They were losing her at times, starting with Beringer’s utterance which she could hardly hear. She nudged the Marine lieutenant colonel who sat adjacent to her against the wall. She pointed her pen at Chasm which she had scrawled in large letters and underlined twice. “What is it? Do you know?” she asked.
A flicker of recognition, followed by agitation crossed the rock-like face of the Marine officer. He thought quickly, then took her notepad in his hand and scratched out Chasm till it was completely blotched out. In its place he scribbled, Kashmir .
He leaned over and whispered, “Beringer was referring to past peace efforts in Kashmir. That’s where Fennimore’s ideas fall apart. Fulla shit.” He winked at her.
“Oh,” Lisa replied, nodding. It didn’t quite make sense to her at first blush. She’d tuck it away in a mental shelf to be taken out later for fuller consideration.
She began to put the finishing touches on her notes when all in the room rose. She looked up. The President had adjourned the meeting and turned to leave the conference room with LaFontaine in tow. Clumsily, Lisa jumped to her feet too, her notepad and pen falling to the carpeted floor. So fast did she rise that she lost her balance, caught in time by the iron grip of the Marine officer. She quickly brushed wayward hairs back away from her eyes. Tulliver saw it all. He wore a bemused and inviting expression.
She bent to pick up her notepad and pen. On rising, a muscular forearm and large hand confronted her. “I’m Dan Haley,” the Marine said, offering a handshake. A broad smile marked an open face framed by a quarter-inch jarhead haircut.
“Oh, Hi. Um, I’m Lisa. Lisa Valko.” They shook hands. Though he pressed lightly, she felt the bones scrunch uncomfortably in her right hand.
“You’re new, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Three months. I’m a PMI. The first eight weeks, they had me doing research, gofering, learning the ropes. Now I’m notetaking and writing reports. I’m in the Democracy shop now. And you?”
“I’m special assistant in OPC,” he said uninformatively.
“OPC?”
“Office of Policy Coordination.”
“Uh huh.”
“They got you working on Bosnia full time?” he pressed.
“Looks like it. What does OPC do?”
“We synthesize policy. Make sure nothing gets out of joint. That kind of thing.”
An exclusive circle of attendees had formed in a far corner of the room. Beringer, Agropoulos, Fennimore and Tulliver were engaged in animated, yet hushed conversation. The CIA Director gestured to Haley that he should join. The “special assistant” mumbled something about seeing each other around and beat a direct path to the group.
The Secretary of State, fourth in line of succession to the President, stood alone, bowed, gathering his papers. In the peculiar prism of Washington politics, those sliding downside on the power curve received the kind of attention a floundering shipwreck victim gets when all seats in the life boats are taken.
“Sort of pathetic, isn’t it?”
Lisa turned. A thirtyish fellow with a preppy air stood smiling at her. His cheery demeanor was accentuated by bright red suspenders and a large bowtie. The unstated message he sent in the starched, subtly pretentious corridors of power was of non-threatening non-conformity — horn-rimmed glasses and short hair combed back notwithstanding.
“Buckwheat Thompson’s my name.” He offered his hand.
Lisa stifled a giggle. “Oh. Sorry.” She recomposed herself. “Lisa Valko, PM—”
“PMI, Democracy and Humanitarian Affairs. I know. I always do my research. And don’t apologize. I’m used to it. Buckwheat isn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill name in these quarters. I ditched Munro Bathgate Thompson III in college. The only place anyone will see it is on my tombstone — that is, unless I legally change it in the interim.”
Lisa took an instant liking to the man. He exuded openness and warmth, not superiority and ambition, which were as de rigeur in the upper reaches of government as Brooks Brothers pin-striped suits and a bad back.
“Look at poor McHenry over there.” He nodded in the Secretary’s direction. “Nobody wants to know him, not even his own senior staff. Pity too. He knows a lot. Been around a long time. He also knows where the skeletons are buried, but he’s too much of a gentleman to play hardball.”
“Just because he was sick is no reason for people to treat him with indifference,” Lisa said.
“Look around you. What do you see?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t get you.”
“What do you see?”
Responding to Thompson’s persistence, Lisa took a careful look around the chamber still cluttered with officials huddled in various power pow-wows, arms crossed, nodding gravely, ensuring outsiders weren’t eavesdropping before driving home an important point.
“Well, I see an impressive conference room where the President holds meetings—”
“Wrong.” He was shaking his head in the manner of a grade school teacher when a pupil makes an obviously wild stab at answering a question for which he hadn’t prepared.
Lisa was now gett
ing impatient with this character. Maybe he wasn’t as nice as he first appeared. She folded her arms, arched her eyebrows and interjected, “Okay. I’m hallucinating. What am I missing, Professor Socrates?”
Thompson chuckled at her sassiness. He surveyed the room expansively, extending his arms outward. “This. Where we’re standing. You and me. This is a fish tank and those are sharks. They circle around endlessly, constantly sniffing for blood. Once the sweet smell hits their vicious little snouts, they go in for the kill.”
“Uh, sure. Right. I get your point.” Lisa gathered her notetaking materials, stuck them in her purse. Time to get away from this clown. In a town dripping with cynicism, this guy appeared to be trying to corner the market.
“Wait.” He softened up. His voice lost its edge. “Sorry if I come on a little strong.”
“No sweat.”
“But you’re new here. I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt.” His eyes searched her face sympathetically.
This struck a chord. She looked directly at him. “Hurt? How do you mean?”
“Look over there. Look how he’s eyeing McHenry from the corner of his eye.”
“Tulliver.”
“Right. He’s bucking to replace McHenry. Doesn’t give a crap about anybody else, least of all Fennimore. He sucks up to him on the job, but otherwise connives against him behind his back. He’s either at your feet or at your throat.”
“Or in my face.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Uh, never mind.”
“Anyway, be careful. These people devour little PMI’s like you as a pre-breakfast snack.”
Lisa smiled again. Her big brother in Wheeling used to protect her in the same manner. Oh, how she missed Arn, ma and pa, her old friends.
“I can look after myself. Thanks. I didn’t catch what you do around here.”
“Yep. Right.” Thompson fished around his pockets, pulled out a business card and presented it to her.
Buckwheat Thompson
Deputy Director, Office of Policy Coordination
National Security Council
The White House
“OPC,” Lisa stated curiously.
“Right, OPC. You know it. How?”
“Well, I just met that Marine officer…Dan…” She visually searched the room, but the Marine lieutenant colonel had departed, along with the others he’d been conversing with.
“Haley.”
“Right. Is he your boss?”
“Not in a million years.” He caught himself. “Actually, yes.”
“Should I drop by and talk to you guys? I mean, you work on Bosnia too, right?”
“We work on everything.” He broke eye contact and looked at his watch. Suddenly, he seemed to be in a hurry. “Hey, how about lunch soon? I’ll call.” Thompson parted as abruptly as he had appeared.
Lisa shook her head briskly as if to clear clouds from her vision. Washington’s full of strange characters, she pondered. Always best to be on one’s toes. If for no other reason than to be ready for a host of personal idiosyncrasies.
Lisa returned to her windowless office space tucked away in a loft, which she shared with two other interns in the sprawling Victorian mansion adjacent to the White House known as the Old Executive Office Building — OEOB for short. A message slip by her phone said, “Mr. Tulliver wishes to see you tomorrow at 4:00.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Hi. I’m Molly Jacobs. This is my husband, Harlan.” The sixtyish matron extended her hand. The Brankos remained silent. Mrs. Jacobs pulled out one of those pre-computer era fat ledgers which nobody uses anymore. She licked her right thumb and began to flip through the oversized pages. “Let’s see. We’re fully booked through the fifteenth. When were you boys looking to stay with us?” One of those smiles that belongs to all good grandmothers blossomed across her beneficent face.
Seven guests were digging into homemade scones, butter and jam preserves on the wide old table in the dining room behind Mrs. Jacobs. Harlan poured coffee.
The aroma of freshly baked breads and just-brewed coffee perfumed the air. Overstuffed furniture in lived-in rooms, photos of children now fully grown, the trappings of comfortable middle class living defined sweet domesticity in early twenty-first century America.
Milan carefully cased the interior of the bed & breakfast tucked on a quiet street in the leafy, upscale Lakes District of Minneapolis.
“How many people can stay here?” he asked curtly.
“You mean guests? Why, we have five rooms. So that means we can accommodate—”
“How many here now?” He jerked his chin in the direction of the breakfast table.
Mrs. Jacobs looked perplexed. She cast an eye over her shoulder. “Eight. Uh, eight boarders at the present time.” Harlan nodded assuringly.
Milan moved his lips as he silently counted seven at the table: two elderly couples, another pair who were middle-aged, and a portly traveling salesman.
Zlatko slowly made his way to the hallway door, blocking any egress.
“Would you boys like a cup of coffee?” Harlan asked, steaming pot in hand.
Milan looked at him with hard eyes, then returned his gaze to the man’s wife.
“Seven. Only seven.” He jut his chin again toward the table.
Mrs. Jacobs was getting nervous.
A huge old grandfather clock clanged eight bells. The guests continued to attack the goodies.
“Oh! Suzy. She’s in the…the…” Harlan nodded helpfully toward the restroom in the corner.
“Eight,” Milan said. He moved toward the restroom door.
Mrs. Jacobs’s face betrayed her sense that something wasn’t right. These unshaven men with their brusque foreign accents. Determined not to provoke them, she glanced at the table.
“Oh, dear. Out of scones, are we? Well, I’ll just fetch you all some more straight from the oven. Mrs. Jacobs proceeded toward the kitchen. Weighing more importantly on her mind than scones right now, however, was the phone. 911 flashed in her brain. Zlatko blocked her way. He smelled of stale sweat and liquor. His cold, flint-dark eyes challenged her.
She looked up at him, her face devoid now of gracious hospitality. “What is it you want?” she asked in a low voice.
The breakfasters halted their feasting in unison. Like deer sensing a predator, they instinctively froze. Slowly they put down their scones, butter knives, napkins and coffee cups and beheld the confrontation before them. Harlan, trembling, but still holding up the coffee pot, retreated backward into a corner.
“Eight!!” Milan bellowed as he yanked open the restroom door. The occupant screamed. She frantically tried to pull up her panties as she faced instant exposure.
Milan’s hand enmeshed itself in the front of her blouse and yanked her off the toilet. A loud rip pierced the air. The girl, about 15, screamed again, this time louder. “Stop!! Please, no!!!” Tears streamed down her terrified face.
The girl’s father bolted up. Zlatko planted a 9mm Beretta squarely in the man’s face.
His hand locked tighter into the blouse, Milan pulled the girl to him. “So, now we have eight!” he snickered. He held a long, narrow blade against her neck. “Do not move, beautiful. Do not move.” With his other hand, Milan deftly removed the girl’s panties and used them to bind her hands behind her back.
“For God’s sake! Leave my girl alone. Take what you want. But please leave her alone!” the father pleaded. Zlatko brought the Beretta crashing against the side of the man’s face. Blood sprayed on the scones, he collapsed onto the floor. His wife screamed hysterically and bent down to attend her husband.
“Oh, my god! Oh, my god!” Mrs. Jacobs cried. The other guests sat back in their chairs with hands raised and wearing expressions of horror as they faced Zlatko’s Beretta and the brute force of Milan.
Milan grabbed the table cloth and pulled hard, sending everything flying off the table. He threw the girl onto it stomach down, then trussed her legs like those of a pig in an abattoi
r. She cried uncontrollably, the tears soaking red curls hanging limply over the edge of the dining table.
“Okay. Money. All money on table. Now!” Zlatko yelled. The guests emptied their pockets and gently placed the cash on the table.
In a lightning motion, Milan slashed the arm of Harlan, a man on the cusp of seventy with a heart problem. Zlatko slapped Mrs. Jacobs with a devastating blow to her face as she instinctively moved to protect her husband.
“Money! Money you get from them!” Zlatko waved at the boarders. Where is? You keep where?!”
Mrs. Jacobs, her hand covering the reddening cheek, pointed meekly at a jar on a shelf. Zlatko darted over and pulled it off. He emptied the contents onto a sideboard. He looked incredulously at the multicolored checks and credit card slips that tumbled out. Only a few greenbacks poked through. He examined a fistful of the financial instruments as an ape does some object it cannot comprehend.
“Not money!!” he shouted. In a single motion of rage, Zlatko knocked the sideboard over. The antique crystal which graced its top crashed to bits on the floor.
The Croats pulled out rolls of packing tape and proceeded to methodically bind the legs and arms and cover the mouths of each of their victims. Their pitiful pleas went unheeded. The pure cruelty which emanated from these men was as deathly potent as any fissile material found in a warhead. The muffled wails of their helpless victims seemed only to goad them.
Zlatko frantically pocketed the small pile of cash on the table, then vaulted up the stairs to ransack the rooms in search of more.