by Mike Gilmore
Karen Phillips did not keep as close a watch on Randy Fisher as her colleagues kidded her. He was happily married to a very nice woman, and she currently had a new man of her own. Her brother, employed by a large investment company on Wall Street, had recently introduced her to the manager of a hedge fund. They had already gone on three dates, which was almost a record for Karen. So far, so good in the love life department.
As she approached an open area in the Capitol Rotunda, she saw Don Bailey. Unlike the on-air reporters who must maintain a perfect professional image, the thirty-five-year-old camera operator was dressed in blue jeans and a heavy open-collar cotton plaid shirt under an open zippered jacket. The shoulder-held camera was set up on a tripod, the legs extended, ready for her broadcast to the studio. After she had completed her broadcast, she would determine if the network could discover where Senator Fisher was located and why he was not attending to business.
Chapter 30
Washington, DC
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
3:15 p.m.
Sally LaSalle replaced the phone hand set in the telephone base and sat back in her office chair. She had the television in her office muted as Senator Cameron Saunders was broadcast over C-SPAN. He was continuing with his new pattern, reading the list of American companies who were paying federal taxes. If they held to their established schedule, Senator Roberta Hanley would be taking the floor in about forty-five minutes.
She was worried. Her boss was AWOL, absence without leave, and refused to offer any reasons for not returning from London. She had asked if there was anything she or the staff could do to resolve whatever was holding him in London. The answer on the line was more double talk.
She had just closed her eyes. A knock on her door opened them again, and she leaned forward to bring her swivel chair back to its upright position. Brad Guilliams and Renee Stockli were standing in the threshold to her office. The two legislative aides to the senator had recently announced their engagement and were planning on a spring wedding. Brad was slender, six feet tall, with close-cropped brown hair. His politics leaned toward the right, making him the office conservative. Renee was about five foot-two, solid but slender, with finely textured blond hair. Her sparkling eyes always reflected her perky personality through the wire-rimmed glasses perched on her small Roman nose. She leaned toward the liberal side of the spectrum. Three years ago, the two aides would argue like a cat and dog over most of the political issues in then-Senator Robert Moore’s office. Brad had been looking to make a change when Randy Fisher took office. The new senator decided to use their differences to work out issues in any newly proposed piece of legislation and come up with solutions he could use with the other senators. To everyone’s surprise, the two young staffers had discovered they had more in common than they realized. After three years of working together almost every day, they were going to be married in the spring.
Brad stood behind Renee. “Any word when the boss will return? We’ve got a pile of work building up that needs his attention.”
Renee piped up. “Yes. We are fairly sure where he stands on this Fair Share bill, but we need his guidance on other legislation very soon.”
Sally motioned for the two to take the empty chairs in front of her desk. “I have no answers for you. I just hung up from talking with him. He is still in London, and his return to Washington is still open. I’ve asked him if there is something we can do to help with whatever is keeping him in London, but he says he’s got all the help he needs except insight.”
Brad’s face screwed up with confusion. “Insight! What the heck does that mean?”
Renee leaned over toward him and grasped his hand. “It means the senator has a problem and needs help. This man never misses a day of work in Washington. The senator logs as many hours as most other elected politicians in Washington does, perhaps more than most. Something happened in London while he was over there, and he needs time to figure out a solution to his problem.”
Brad laced fingers with his bride-to-be. “Surly it’s not a problem with his wife. I can’t believe there would be a problem between the senator and Annie.”
Renee’s little laugh came out more like a snort. “Fat chance of that. That marriage is a solid as a rock. If there were a problem with their marriage, the senator would not be in London. He would be right back here in DC, fighting to save his marriage.” She shook her head. “No. Something else is going on that we are being kept in the dark about.”
Sally rested her elbows on her desktop. “I’ve only been here a few months. If Tim Smith were here, he would probably call Annie Fisher and just ask her what was going on. I’ve only met her once, so I’m not sure how she would respond.”
Tim Smith had been Randy’s former chief of staff prior to Sally LaSalle. The black American had left to run for the House of Representative in his home district in Ohio. Randy Fisher was planning to campaign for his friend when the election really got into swing next year.
Sally saw Renee’s expression change. “What?
Renee took her hand from Brad’s grasp and used it and her other hand to help formulate her thoughts. “On the day before they were all scheduled to return to Washington, I sent a text message to Annie asking if they needed someone to pick them up at the airport. She replied that Marion Bellwood would have several of his men at the airport to meet them. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but why would operatives working for the CIA deputy director of operations send men to meet them at the airport?”
Sally LaSalle was back in her element and made a quick decision. She flipped her computer to the contacts section and located Annie Fisher’s cell phone number. With no hesitation, she picked up the telephone and dialed the number.
After two rings, Annie Fisher answered.
“Mrs. Fisher, this is Sally LaSalle from the office. I sorry to bother you, but we are worried about the senator still being in London. Is there anything we can do on our end?” Sally listened for almost a full minute without interrupting. Brad and Renee could only sit and wonder what Annie was telling their supervisor.
Sally finally responded to the senator’s wife. “All right, Annie. If you need anything or hear from the senator about anything that we can do to help, please let us know. Yes. That is all right. Thank you.”
Brad and Renee both spoke together. “What?”
Sally leaned back in her chair again and raised both hands. “Something happened over there all right, and I think it’s got to do with national security. She told me Randy had to stay to take care of some old business but not to worry because Marion Bellwood was there with him.”
Renee asked the question on her mind. “So what do we do now?”
Sally’s left wrist rested on the edge of the desk. She pointed her index finger toward the two and moved it back and forth. “For now … nothing. If this involves national security, the last thing we want to do is stick our noses where they do not belong. Senator Fisher will contact us if there is something we can do for him.”
She was about to issue new instructions to the legislative aides when her office intercom buzzed. June Little was calling.
“Sally, Karen Phillips from CNN is on hold. She’s asking when the senator will be returning to Washington.”
“Thanks, June. I’ll take the call.”
She looked at Brad and Renee. “Stay quiet but listen in.
Sally hit the illuminated button on her desk phone and then activated the phone’s built-in speaker.
“Good afternoon, Karen. How are you?”
Karen Phillips’s voice came clearly over the speaker. “I’m fine, Sally, but we are wondering why Senator Fisher is missing all the fun with this Senate filibuster. It seems the other members could use a dose of his well-known common sense. Can you tell me where Randy Fisher is right now?”
Sally replied quickly so as not to show any hesitation. “He’s still
taking some personal time off, Karen. To protect his privacy, I can’t tell you where.”
“Come on, Sally. What is going on? Senator Fisher never misses work. Do not tell me he is in some sort of rehab or some other dip-shit excuse. For him to not be in the Senate right now means something more important is going on.”
“I’m sorry, Karen, but there is nothing sinister happening with the senator. I am sure he will be back to work in a few days. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Sally heard a slight laugh from the speaker. “There is, but I’m just going to get the same BS answer.”
Sally looked at her office companions and shrugged her shoulders. “Well … call back if there is anything else we can do to help.”
Karen Phillips heard the telephone on the other end disconnect. She dropped the handset back into its cradle and looked across her desk to Bud Wilson. Her boss was sitting in the only chair in her cubbyhole of an office in the CNN Washington Bureau near the Capitol.
“Well … what do you think?”
Bud Wilson was sixty years old and had headed the Washington Bureau for almost fifteen years. The overhead fluorescent lights made his baldhead shine. He had a slight grin on his face. “You’re right. Something is going on with the famous Senator Fisher.” He sat back in the chair and looked out the small office window behind his congressional reporter. “Where was he during the Thanksgiving recess?”
Karen unconsciously used her right hand to flip her long black hair behind her ear. “I think I heard someone over on the hill talking about Fisher taking his wife and some other family members to England.”
Wilson rubbed his eyes using the back of his hands. “I wonder how we could find him if he’s still over there? If we had an idea, we could ask our London people to look into him.”
Karen Phillips had a growing smile on her face. “I’ve been covering Randy Fisher since the terrorist incident down in Columbia, South Carolina. He has a few habits that we might be able to use to find him if he’s still in London.” Karen looked at the small clock built into the decorative inkstand on her desk, a birthday gift from her parents. “It’s 3:30 here in Washington. What time is it in London?”
Bud took a few moments to work out the time difference out in his head. “Eight thirty in the evening. Put the phone on speaker and call over there. Ask for Janice Curtain. She should still be in the office.”
Karen took about thirty seconds to look up the international phone exchange and the local telephone number for their CNN London office. The phone rang twice before a woman’s voice answered. Karen quickly asked for Janice Curtain. After a short time on hold, a rough, raspy voice came on the line. Karen could visualize someone sitting on the edge of a newsroom desk smoking a cigarette. The person on the other end of the line did not waste any time.
“Curtain here. Who’s speaking?”
“Janice, this is Karen Phillips calling from Washington. I have Bud Wilson in my office with me. How are you today?”
There was a slight pause on the other end. Karen and Bud Wilson could hear muffled sounds but could not make out the words coming through the speaker. The raspy voice came back over the speaker.
“Listen, love, we got a bit of a flap going on over here, and I don’t have time for chit chat. Now, what do you want?”
Bud Wilson leaned closer to Karen’s telephone. “Janice, this is Bud Wilson. Have you married that old goat you’ve been shacking up with for the last ten years?”
They could hear the woman laughing and coughing at the same time. “Bud Wilson, as I live and breathe. Have you starting growing any hair yet? You’ve been bald since you were in nappies.”
Bud laughed back but then got serious. “Janice, what’s going on over there? You said something about a flap?”
The laughter on the London end of the phone stopped. “Something is happening here in London. Scotland Yard pulled in a bunch of extra bobbies from the outer boroughs, and our spotters have reported a heavier than normal police presence around the tourist hotspots. They are mostly dressed in plain clothes to keep a low profile, but it looks like some sort of security flap. So far the Yard’s director of public affairs has been completely mum on the subject.”
Bud asked, “How long has this been going on?”
There was a slight hesitation in her response. “It seemed to start Sunday morning. First it was around Trafalgar Square and Charing Cross Station, but now the extra presence seems to also be around Buckingham Palace and most of Central London, out as far as Windsor Castle.” There was dead air for about ten seconds.
“Tell me something, Bud. You got a handle on any of this?”
Bud answered quickly. “It’s the first we’ve heard of it, but maybe we’ve got something to help you find your answers. We’ve got a missing United States senator who was last known to be in London over the Thanksgiving holidays.”
“Who is it?”
“Senator Randy Fisher.”
“The Randy Fisher? The one who stopped the bomb a few years ago and the war in Southeast Asia earlier this year?”
“The one and only,” Bud answered back.
They heard Curtain take a deep breath; a short coughing fit followed. “Blimey. That would get the Yard Birds’ knickers in a twist. What else can you tell me?”
Karen spoke up. “The senator has some habits from his younger days. He usually stays at the Hilton hotels. You might check to see if he was registered with any of them.”
Curtain replied, “Well, that shouldn’t take too long. There are only two Hilton hotels in London. The best is across the street from Trafalgar Square, right where this current mess might have started. Might be a coincidence, might not. I think I’ll put a few people onto this and see where it leads us.”
Chapter 31
London
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
8:30 p.m.
Randy Fisher was tired. Probably not as tired as the members of the Metropolitan Police department involved in the search for the terrorist but still tired after a full day at Scotland Yard.
After breakfast, Marion Bellwood and BookReader drove Randy in their rental car to the New Scotland Yard building on Broadway in Westminster. They showed their identifications to the security guards at the rear entrance gate and parked in a VIP spot at the rear of the building. Inside the lobby, they showed their IDs once again and requested that the security clerk telephone DC Shepard’s office and obtain his permission to enter the building.
Four minutes later, they exited the elevator on the eighteenth floor and met a uniformed employee of the Met. The same woman who had operated the projector at their Sunday meeting was their new guide. She gave them a cheery smile supported by very white teeth. “Good morning, gentlemen. I am Constance Langhorne. DC Shepard is waiting for you in the command center. He asked if I would escort you to the room.”
They followed the woman out of the lobby area down a long hallway. They would have guessed her age somewhere in the early thirties, but her long, light brown hair was twisted into a tight bun at the back of her head, and that always shaved years off a woman’s appearance.
At the end of the hallway, they came to a pair of double glass doors. The frosted glass panels prevented them from seeing through to the other side. Constance Langhorne approached a stainless steel box mounted next to the left door. It had a number keypad to punch in a combination. She kept her body close to the entry system to prevent them from seeing the combination of numbers she used to unlock the door.
“We all have our own unique set of numbers, so there is a record of who is in the War Room at all times. Please follow me, gentlemen.” She opened the door to allow them to enter the room. Agent Reader hurried to grab the door from Langhorne and gave her a big smile. She smiled back. “Thank you, Mr. …”
“Thomas. Thomas Reader. It’s very nice to meet you.”
Randy
and Marion were first to follow Constance into the room. Marion gave his younger agent a stern look. Phillip Booker grinned a little at Thomas Reader and shook his head. As he walked past his partner, he dug his left elbow in his midriff and quietly mumbled a warning. “Let’s stay focused, shall we, Tommy.”
Inside the room, eighteen or twenty people were working to monitor the Met’s operation to find the two terrorists. The room must have been fifty feet square, with a ceiling at least twenty-five feet above the floor. The glass wall to the left was the same opaque glass of the entrance doors, allowing a limited amount of natural light into the room. A number of glass-enclosed offices lined the right wall. However, the first thing to draw every one’s attention when they entered the room was the front wall of flat-screen monitors. A series of seventy-two inch high-definition plasma screens in a large block, six screens wide and six screens high, displayed a number of complicated maps of Central London and the surrounding area.
Randy and his fellow Americans stared for several minutes at the screens, trying to make sense of the massive amount of information in front of their eyes.
Constance Langhorne offered an explanation. “We can put up almost any image we want from the Earth satellites. It quite similar to Google Earth that you look at on your computers screens, but now we have it focused on Central London. The center screens show a compilation of different pictures to make up one large picture. The outer row of screens on both the left and right side and along the top row show individual locations that we can monitor. If needed, we can bring any one of them into the large center screen and enlarge the image. We can redirect the satellites images to any part of London, or England for that matter.”
She gave them another minute to watch the screens. “Let’s move a little closer, and I will give you a more detailed explanation of what you’re seeing.”
The center of the room was an open area of about ten square feet. A single row of desks placed in a large L-shape lay along the back wall and ran against the outer opaque glass wall. A man or woman occupied each of the desks, each with their own twenty-seven-inch monitor, keyboard, and telephone. As new information from the security teams in the field arrived at their desks, they would update the screens with the new information.