“Very good. We’ll arrange that. My thanks, Alicia.”
Paxton kept his dark eyes focused on her own, as he always did. Just once, she thought, he could take a look at the rest of her.
“You’ll act on it?”
“Very likely. We’ll discuss it at tonight’s conference. You’re simply terrific, Alicia.”
Paxton left in his normal quiet way, closing the door softly but firmly behind him. He would meet with his lobbyist group tonight, many of whom were experts in various fields. They would come up with a plan, identify the outside consultants to be utilized, and compose a list of talking points to send to the technical writers. The writers would devise brochures, mailers, email content, and potential audiences. They would come back to her later for help in organizing the mailing lists and setting up production runs.
Jeffrey never, ever asked her where she located her information. He might suspect, but he certainly didn’t want to know.
Alicia Hampstead’s paychecks came from the Institute, and she served the organization well in operational aspects, data gathering, budgeting, and financial management. All of that activity was located in what she pictured mentally as the ground floor of her digital house. It was somewhat boring.
More exciting was the activity that took place in the basement
Chapter Five – Friday, June 14
The shadow Chairman called the disposable cell phone number in mid-morning. This was always a one-way communication. His phone was blocked and no one could call him. The practice significantly improved the compartmentalization. He had worked it out years before.
It rang three times before it was answered. “May.”
“Chair. Are you alone?”
“Yes, sir. Three items to report, but first, you need to get rid of the phone.” She gave him the number of her new disposable cell phone. They each kept extra phones on hand in anticipation of occasions such as this.
He shut off the phone and stuck it in his coat pocket for later crushing. In his desk drawer, he found a new phone and powered it up.
He called back four minutes later.
“The Recruiter?” he asked.
“The Recruiter is no longer with us. He met with a man named Malone, though it is not known how much was said or if Malone received other data. As he was instructed, October acted.”
October had acted a number of times in the past, but never before inside the U.S. borders. And never against one of their own. What was necessary was necessary, however.
“Tell me about Malone.”
May gave him the details. Former military and CIA, highly decorated. Perhaps active internationally. As always, her research was good. He had made certain that she had the technological tools to conduct such raids on other people’s databases.
“I suspect, May, that the Recruiter was unhappy that he was passed over for the deputy position. He would blame me for that, for not securing his appointment.”
“Enough to hire a hit man, sir?”
She insisted on calling him “sir,” though their history might have precluded it. He didn’t object, however.
“I suspect so, knowing the Recruiter and the way his mind worked. So this much is good. We can find another recruiter. Malone, though, might be a problem.”
“I attempted to resolve that issue,” she said. “I told October to eliminate Malone.”
“Very good, May. I can always rely on you.”
“Well, that’s Item Two. A scan of Metropolitan Police files this morning tells me that October is dead, killed by Malone.”
That was disappointing. He had always been reassured by Mal’s finely honed skills and reliability.
“Is Malone in custody?”
“No. The preliminary report calls the shooting justifiable. And the police, of course, have October’s phone, which should have had only my number on it. I was hoping you would call so I could get rid of it.”
The reason for the early rotation of phones. Generally, they changed once a month.
Justifiable shooting. It very likely was justifiable.
“Can we keep monitoring Malone’s whereabouts, May?”
“That is not a problem, Chair.”
“Very well. I will talk to November.”
He still had November and December, but over the years, he’d lost five others. All to the benefit of the cause, of course.
“You had a third item, May?”
She told him what she’d reported to Paxton about Qatar.
That was interesting. About all he knew, except superficially, about Qatar was that the wealthy emirate funded Al Jazeera, a supposedly journalistic global news outlet.
If he thought about it for a little while, he’d probably figure out a way to make some money on this development. He would talk to the Treasurer, who was a certified expert on foreign investments and see if he had an idea or two.
“Very well. Please advise the Vice-Chair and the Treasurer of these developments when they call in. One thing, May, do not tell them you made the call on Malone. Attribute that to me if you would.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do that.”
*
On Friday night at 8:00, Galway and Malone connected with Malone’s reservation at Phillips Seafood in Baltimore.
When Malone picked her up at her condo in Alexandria in a rented Chrysler 300 and told her where they were going, she had protested about the distance.
“About forty miles. Small price to pay to protect you from my presence, Bobbi.”
“I’m not really too worried about that, Oak.”
He was a former operative which the Agency always thought should be treated as suspicious—why would he leave anyway?—but he did have a good reputation among people in his directorate.
“You probably should be. You look great, by the way.”
She’d decided on a black cocktail dress that had gone unworn for almost two years. It hugged her, but in a discreet way. High neck, hem at the knees. Matching jacket in case the wind picked up. Small diamond earrings that Bob had given her. Light on the makeup. Cinnamon lipstick.
“Thank you,” she said. “That looks like a new suit.”
“It is. I usually travel light, one sport coat, but I lost the one I had. And the suit I brought along didn’t seem appropriate for wild night life. So I went shopping this morning.”
It was dark blue with a light gray muted pinstripe. The shirt was a light blue Oxford, and the tie was also dark blue with gray stripes. The conservative Oak Malone. He didn’t look much older than the last time she’d seen him five years before, a little more gray in the hair, a couple more lines at the corners of his eyes. She wasn’t counting lunch two days ago when she’d been agitated enough to not notice details. She realized they’d known each other for over nine years and wondered how the time had elapsed so rapidly. Three years since Bob died, but she’d buried herself in her work and the days trickled off unnoticed.
Oak was presentable, despite being so lean. He wasn’t as good looking as Bob had been. Don Quixote came to mind for some reason. She still had a nine by eleven portrait of Bob on the dresser in her bedroom, and she looked at it every morning.
“You’re favoring your left arm. That’s where you were hit?”
“Back of the upper arm. EMT told me ‘no sweat.’”
They kept the conversation light all the way to Baltimore, and Malone posed no questions about her job. He wouldn’t, of course, because he knew the protocols. She worked the Middle Eastern desk now, and she wouldn’t mention that to him. She probed a little into his social life, but to believe him, he had none to speak of, or at least anything about which he wanted to speak.
So me, too.
Malone drove Highway 295 into Baltimore right onto the Washington Parkway and grabbed a right on Pratt Street. Past the docked USS Constellation, he found parking on the wharf that held the restaurant. There was a Navy gunboat tied up across the wharf in front of the restaurant’s entrance.
Once they were seated
opposite each other at a small table with menus, she remembered. She shouldn’t have requested lobster. It might bring up old memories. Two days before Oak retired, on a cold December night, she and Bob had a celebratory dinner with Oak and . . . Carol? Yes, Carol, but who knew where Carol had gone. The four of them ate lobster.
Bob and Oak were both in the operations directorate and had been paired on at least two missions that she knew about, so there were probably more. Bobbi thought the two of them were about as close as agents could get, or allow themselves to get. There were always reservations because one never knew the future, and futures could be uncertain in the Agency for the people who worked in hostile fire zones. She and Bob—Malone had called them the Bob Twins—had been married in 2007. Bob was killed by and Improvised Explosive Device in Afghanistan in 2010. Oak missed the memorial service because he was out of the country, and he had later apologized profusely over the phone.
They both ordered the Cream of Crab soup, Bobbi opted for the Baby Spinach and Arugula salad while Oak went for the Caesar salad. Twin lobster tails for each of them, and Oak let the server decide on a Chardonnay.
When the server moved away, Malone bored in with those eyes. Gray-blue, like honed steel. He could hold you in limbo with those eyes.
“What?” she said.
Bobbi was afraid he was going to ask about her love life, and that was tabula rasa. She had learned to avoid relationships within the agency, and she only dated civilians. Problem, in D.C., those civilians were boring beyond belief, in pursuit of political or monetary power. They had a firm grasp on me, and they didn’t worry much about you.
“I just realized how much I’ve missed you,” Oak said.
“Only because you want information.”
“Not true. Well, it was true a few days ago, but then we had lunch.”
She wasn’t certain how far this should go. She desperately wanted to remain stand-off and not get involved in anything complicated or contrary to her mission at the Agency. Her own work was complicated enough. And yet, Oak was kind of a known quantity. And quality.
“Tell me, Oak. I’m going to ask again. What kind of work are you doing?”
His eyes didn’t waver from hers. “No wet work, Bobbi. I generally track down people or money. Usually money. A lot of people, and I can’t vouch for their morals, seem to have money stolen from them, or they’ve mislaid it somehow, and they’d like to get it back. Have people gotten hurt? Yes. But that’s collateral, not the core mission. Sometimes I can arrange to have the bad guys picked up by whatever law enforcement group is handy.”
“All right, I believe you.”
Have to, with that solid gaze. No lies flew across the pupils.
“What about Dinmore? Have you learned anything new?” she asked.
“Since I had no clue about anything surrounding Tracy Dinmore, that is, about people who might want him eliminated, I spent yesterday afternoon and part of today trying to learn about the victim. Did it all by phone, once the morning newspapers reported that NYPD had identified him. No one I talked to cried about him.”
“No fond memories of Tracy?”
“Not from what I could tell. The people I talked to, mainly from Treasury, were reserved in their responses generally. A couple people, who asked not to be identified, called him ruthless, creating bureaucratic sabotage against some fellow bureaucrats in order to advance in his job.”
“That’s pretty much what I’d heard,” Galway said. “Ah, you were posing as a reporter.”
“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
“You didn’t uncover anyone who might have wanted him dead?”
“Maybe a few with disgust in their hearts, but not, I think, anyone who would actually fulfill the desire.”
“So then we come to Dean Mal, who probably did fulfill someone’s desire.”
“Exactly.”
“My search for Dean Mal was over in about ten minutes,” Bobbi said, and then reminded him, “You know I can’t be seen doing your work for you.”
“I know. I’m sorry if I’ve put you in a bad position.”
“Well, I found Mal in Charleston. Rented house. Leased car. No landline. One credit card up to date on payments. And that’s all. So I talked to a friend over at the Bureau, but he didn’t get back to me until late this afternoon.”
“Ah. What’s the friend’s name?”
“Need to know only.”
“I need to know in case I ever run into him, so I can thank him.”
“Oh, damn. Neal Salisbury.”
“Thank you.”
“He ran into the same short life span I’d found, but he got a copy of the fingerprints from the Metro police and ran those. Dean Mal was previously Gene Richardson of Birmingham, Alabama. Six years in Army Special Forces, rose to staff sergeant, and then quietly disappeared with a general discharge.”
“General, huh? I’d guess he had a disciplinary problem,” Oak said. “They let him slide out from under something or other.”
“You think? Nothing in his records, of course. According to the Bureau. Also, the Metro cops backtracked him by airline to New York.”
“That would have been my guess. They’ve probably asked NYPD to check on him.”
“My Bureau friend said Mal had checking and savings accounts totaling twelve thousand dollars, but he suspected there were some offshore accounts because the house was upscale and the car was a Mercedes roadster. No one has located the car. He’s going to try to run down any offshore accounts under different names but that’s a long shot. The Charleston cops have sealed Mal’s house in cooperation with the Metro police. He didn’t know whether or not anything interesting had been located in the house.”
“Metro cops say anything about a cell phone?” Malone asked.
“He had two. A standard phone and a disposable with one number on it. That number no longer answers. The standard phone had a half-dozen numbers, and they’re trying to run those down.”
“They’re bound to be innocuous. Otherwise, why have the disposable? It would be the business phone.”
The conversation went to pause while the server delivered the soup. Bobbi tasted it and found she had made the right choice. She was halfway enjoying this. She had been out to dinner with a number those boring men who unknowingly squelched any pleasure in a good meal.
Maybe this one was more like work with the conversational topics.
“Let me get your take on something I’ve been thinking about,” Oak said.
“You must believe I’m an analyst or something?”
“The best. Here’s what I know. There’s a ‘deal’ going on with at least four principals. There’s Corridan, Dixon, Mears, and probably Dinmore. I can’t find any known connections between any of them and have no idea what this ‘deal’ might be. Here’s what I suppose. Dinmore becomes suspicious of one of the other three about something or other. He wants to hire me to find out that something, or worst case, to take someone out. I also suppose that one of the three—or maybe someone else—becomes suspicious of Dinmore and does hire Mal to follow Dinmore and solve that problem if Dinmore appears out of line. They could have handled in the District, but they followed him to New York and acted when he met me.”
Bobbi thought it over and said, “Maybe that’s right. To take him out only if he tries to contact someone who looks suspicious, like you. I’m still not convinced that Patrick is. . . .”
“Let me finish. Here’s something else I’m pretty damned sure about. Mal assassinates Dinmore in New York. He’s seen me meeting with Dinmore, but since I haven’t told anyone about the meeting, he doesn’t have prior knowledge of who I am. And I know I’ve never seen Mal before. It doesn’t seem likely that Dinmore advertised the meeting, either.
“And the very next day, Dean Mal makes a try at me, probably with the same silenced .22. Now, if Mal is a contract killer, like I strongly suspect he is, he’s taking orders from someone. That someone told him to get Dinmore, then subseque
ntly, told him to go after me. Are you with me?”
“I am. Go on.”
Bobbi could see where he was going with this.
“How does Mal know who I am? And even if he does know me, how does he find out I’m in D.C. and in a particular room at the Hilton?”
Bobbi saw it immediately. “Given the short amount of time available, the someone giving the orders has access to a large number of databases. One, airline manifests. Two, hotel registrations. And three is problematic, but probably a governmental entity if the someone knows anything, or learned anything, about your background. Do you think Mal got a photo of you?”
“Even if he did get a shot of me with a cell phone or something, Bobbi, what would they compare it to? There are no known photographs of me with the agency. Hell, I think the last photo I had was at my commissioning in May of ’89. My parents had a collection of childhood snapshots plus my high school yearbook that I picked up after they died, and they’re in a shoebox in my closet like everyone else’s photos. I was just a skinny little kid then.”
Galway almost laughed out loud. He was still a skinny little kid. Well, not so little. And then she sobered when she thought about Malone not having any snapshots taken through most of his life. No one to want a picture of him?
“Did you and Dinmore talk on the phone?”
“Yeah, he called me. It was short and to the point.”
“If his phone records were scanned, your number was identified.”
Malone thought about that a minute, then said, “I’d bet Dinmore made lots of calls. Probably lived on the phone. My number wouldn’t be unique.”
“Yes, it would be, compared to other numbers on his phone record. And therein is my assumption about a governmental database. Get a list of active or retired agents, maybe even military, and compare their phone numbers to Dinmore’s list of calls and something will click.”
“You know about this stuff,” he said with a smile.
“I do the same thing, from time to time.”
The empty soup bowls disappeared, replaced with salads. The spinach was fresh.
Solid Oak Page 5