by Tom Haase
"Matt, did you or Bridget talk about your contract to anyone else before going to Texas?"
"I talked to my father in New York," Bridget volunteered.
"General, the only other person on our side who knew when we were going was Julia, our secretary, and we only told her that morning. Anyhow, she's cleared," Matt said.
"Something is bothering me about the whole thing. It wasn't an attack on a military or military-industrial facility like all the others yesterday. In case you don’t know, there have been two more attacks today. Limited press on it so far. The resources of the government are stretched thin in the homeland security arena, and the FBI is working overtime on these attacks."
"So what’s bothering you?" Bridget asked.
"The president asked about you at a reception the night before you left, and I told him you were going to a solar factory in Dallas the next afternoon. You talked to me that morning, and you’d signed a contract to start your legitimate business as he directed. The president appeared pleased to see you up and running so fast. Two staff members were present when I told him. Now this is where it gets dicey. Neither of them knew you do off-the-books operations that are very closely held. Maybe it’s nothing, but my gut tells me that one of them told someone else. I don’t know why, and I may be tilting at windmills."
"Why would they say anything if they didn’t know we were a private team for the president?" Bridget asked.
"I don’t know. Sometimes politicians talk to hear their own voices or to show off. It strikes me as more than a coincidence that you two were at that location at the exact time the terrorists hit."
"Funny, Matt speculated that perhaps the plant wasn’t the target, but we were," Bridget said.
"For your information, I think I’ll follow up on this," Mary Jean said, getting up from the desk with the Coke in her hand. "I’ve taken enough of your time. I do have one little favor to ask. My niece is coming to stay with me for the weekend to let my brother and his wife get away for some private time. She’s a seven-year-old bundle of energy. I remember your daughter is about that same age. I wonder if your little girl might be free to come over to my place and keep her company. I’ll admit my motherly instincts are not my forte, and I thought that two girls … well, maybe they could entertain themselves."
"No problem. I think that's doable," Matt said.
"Good. I can pick her up here tomorrow after work?"
"Okay, I’ll have our secretary pick her up and she’ll be here at six."
After the general left, Matt said, "Well, how about that drink? Now we have another thing to talk about."
"We need to celebrate a little," Bridget said as she grabbed her windbreaker and headed for the door. "We done good, if I do say so myself, so let’s go."
* * *
Mary Jean left the office of SPAT, Inc. and drove to the Gio restaurant in Georgetown. She discovered from a casual conversation with a secretary in the White House that one of the two men who had heard her give the president Matt and Bridget’s Dallas itinerary, often dined there. She didn’t know exactly what to expect, but it resembled what she called "playing a hunch." She started with Avery for no particular reason, because she knew where that man would be tonight. She would have to check on Gary Fazio as well. Her people could do this, but sometimes the boss needed to get her hands wet.
Mary Jean believed that someone had talked, leaking information willingly or unwillingly running his or her mouth off. She suspected a leak had motivated the attack in Dallas, but no concrete evidence existed. If a disclosure had occurred, it must be one of the two men who’d heard her tell the president, as no one else besides her knew about their mission.
Otherwise, the events in Dallas were simply a pure coincidence. Mary Jean believed in some coincidences—one in every three hundred million, just not in this case. She remembered not wanting to say anything at the time, but President Brennan had asked her about Matt and how he was doing. She gave him a brief update in front of Gary Fazio, the press secretary, and Dean Avery, the national security adviser. It shouldn’t have meant anything to either one of those men, since they weren’t in the meeting where the president had set up the black operations team of Matt and Bridget.
Something bugged her. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something smelled rotten. So, she decided to examine each man’s movements. Tonight she would start with Avery. She wore large fake glasses and a dark scarf to cover her hair in an attempt to create a "wouldn’t be noticed" disguise. She chose a spot in an alcove of the restaurant and was enjoying a shrimp cocktail when Dean Avery entered and sat down against the far wall. He remained alone. After viewing the menu for only a second, he opened a newspaper and started reading. Mary Jean’s research told her he had been a lifelong bachelor. He had served the president as an adviser since their days together at graduate school in political science at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
After Avery ordered a drink, he put the newspaper aside and again looked at the menu, but this time he stared at it for a long time. After a few minutes, Mary Jean could see his mouth moving, but she didn’t observe anyone sitting at a table with whom he could be talking. She let her eyes wander to survey the rest of the tables. She noticed another man at the table behind Avery. He was alone, too, and also seemed to move his mouth from time to time. She thought they might be speaking to one another. Weird.
She reached into her purse and got her cell phone. She managed to open it under the table, quickly brought it up to eye level, pushed the photo button and hoped the light proved enough to get a picture. Not of Avery, but of the man at the table next to him, who sat on a thirty or forty-degree angle from her. A good side shot provided it took without using the flash. She hit the camera image twice and put her phone back in her purse, left a twenty on the table and exited the restaurant without passing near their tables.
What the hell was that all about, she wondered. The national security advisor had talked to someone surreptitiously. She knew they definitely had talked and held high confidence in her conclusion. What were they saying? This evening had indeed proved fortunate, to find something out of the ordinary on her first night on the investigation, but sometimes she got lucky. Luck must reside in her genes.
This might be their regular meeting place, a public restaurant with no one seeing them together. Someone might recognize the national security adviser, but he would appear to be having a solitary meal, relaxing by himself to take a break from the rigors of the office. He had never married, didn’t like to cook, and eating out was always his norm.
She remained certain he’d talked to the other man. She would do some planning, and the next time she’d have a way to hear what they said. Somehow this might involve Matt and Bridget. She would get Admiral Kidd to render some assistance. He controlled the means at the National Security Agency to listen to phone conversations. For clandestine operations, he must know of a way to listen in on two people talking in a restaurant. She felt sure he did. Tomorrow she would take care of that little detail and come up with a solution before the next evening.
The other major problem centered on uncovering the identity of the unknown man, and she knew exactly where to go to find out. One of her former comrades-in-arms worked at the FBI. They had served as second lieutenants together and remained close friends for many years. He would help, and as a deputy director of the FBI, he knew how to keep his mouth shut.
8
Seven Days Ago — Atlanta, Georgia
Marilyn’s estranged husband stormed into the law offices of Hunter, Boyd and Clark on Peachtree Street, not far from the Georgia state capital. She sat in a conference room with her lawyer when he made his thunderous entrance. He looked at Marilyn, but she presented a stone-cold face and displayed dagger-sharp eyes.
"Marilyn, why are you trying to ruin me?" he said in a loudly, walking over to stand in front of her.
"Ruin you? You slimeball," she shrieked. "Cheating on me with the next-door neighbor! I told m
y lawyer to get me justice. I hope it hurts you like you hurt me." She put her head down and hoped he wouldn’t say anything else.
The overweight husband, dressed in an expensive blue three-piece suit with Bally black shoes and sporting a small mustache, did not wince, since the woman next door had fixed his guilt by telling his wife everything. The neighbor, with whom he’d enjoyed countless sex adventures, had caught him with another woman in a bar. Marilyn assumed he had forgotten which woman he’d intended to meet, and somehow they’d both shown up at the same time. The neighbor had rushed to tell Marilyn everything to inflict maximum damage for her betrayal.
Marilyn felt deep in her heart that she could only demand money, since her lawyer insisted that remuneration remained the only justice she was likely to get. She was glad that there were no children. They owned an expensive house in Buckhead, a well-to-do suburb of Atlanta, and his job brought in over $700,000 a year. She loved her position as an air traffic controller at the Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport, but she earned substantially less pay than her cheating husband.
Larry Boyd, their attorney, entered the reception area. He looked twice at Marilyn, who wore a black pantsuit with a white blouse, stunningly simple but exquisitely beautiful on her gorgeous frame. "Would you follow me? This should only take a few minutes."
In a small room with a four-person table, the attorney sat between the two onetime lovers, now enemies.
"I know this may be difficult, but you both agreed to use me as your attorney and I have discussed this settlement with each of you in private. This meeting is to sign the separation agreement, and for her to formally file for a divorce."
"I only want to sign and get out of this room," Marilyn stated.
"Come on. We have to get on with our lives," the husband said.
"Get on,” she shouted. “You ruined our life. Couldn’t keep your pecker in your pants and you want to go get on?"
"You’re getting the house, and a god-awful amount of money from me. So yeah—get on. Go on and sign it. Then get the hell out of here, so I don’t have to look at a sniveling money-hungry bitch."
Marilyn picked up the pen and signed on the lines where the yellow tabs stuck out of the multipage document. She used to go ballistic at times like this. Hold it in, girl. With all the documents notarized by the attorney, she stood up.
"Thank you, Mr. Boyd, for your help." She retrieved her purse and left without even acknowledging her estranged husband. She headed for the Capital Grille, where she planned to meet her friend Honey Jo for lunch before they went on duty at three in the afternoon. Her evening shift had provided her husband five nights a week to play while Marilyn worked.
Honey Jo sat in a booth waiting for her. She wore a red blouse accentuated by a gold brooch of some modern design that complimented her gold necklace. Her hair was slicked back into a bun, and her black face, although thin, shone with simple beauty. She raised her head, took in Marilyn, and said, "Girl, you look like shit. How did it go?"
"Just as bad as I thought it would." Marilyn shook her head from side to side, sat down, and placed her purse on the seat next to her.
"Did you get all you wanted?"
"I didn’t get to cut his pecker off, if that’s what you mean, but yeah, I got most of what I wanted," said Marilyn. "Now, I’m determined to start a new life."
"Well, honey, at least you won’t be broke."
"After ten years. The bastard. Banging the neighbor. No brains."
"He possessed brains, honey, but they was just all in his lower regions," Honey Jo giggled. "You need to find you a new man so you can quit this nerve-racking job we do."
"I got the supervisor to approve my leave starting tomorrow. I’m going to Savannah to spend at least one day on the beach at Tybee. I love it there. I’ll only be gone for three days, but it'll be a welcome getaway after the scene in the lawyer’s office today. Anyhow, we have two hours for lunch before we go on shift, so let’s do it on my new money."
She and Honey Jo arrived at the airport and parked in the FAA employee-parking garage, took the elevator up to the top level and walked to the base of the control tower. They swiped their ID cards to gain entry to the tower and took the elevator up to the top, some two hundred feet above the ground elevation.
On entering the airport control center, a group of Girl Scouts getting a tour surprised them. Not a normal thing, but someone had pulled some strings to get this exceptional treatment for the scouts. Kevin, the supervisor, was explaining which equipment in the tower allowed the controllers to talk to the airplanes. He saw Marilyn enter and motioned her to come over.
"Girls, this is Marilyn. She will finish telling you how a control tower works in a busy airport. She’s one of the best controllers we have here," he said. "Marilyn, they’re all yours."
He smiled at Marilyn, who winked at him in understanding. It seemed to Marilyn that he wanted away from these little munchkins as fast as possible and had given only a short presentation while waiting for her to arrive. He quickly exited on the elevator.
Marilyn picked up the commentary about the control tower. "This airport is the busiest airport in the United States. We have over two thousand flights a day, sometimes over a hundred planes an hour, and one of the three people in the tower gives the pilots permission to land on one of our runways. Of course, in a few days, we’ll get busier when the new runway opens." She walked over to the window, which offered a panoramic view of the airfield, and pointed. "You can see it from here. It’s the one without any planes on it. They’re putting on the final touches to get it ready for the dedication ceremony in a few days."
She waited for all the scouts to look out at the new runway, then continued. "Now I’ll show you how we get planes to land safely here. This control tower has many functions, but the area you’re in now is where we control the airplanes after the Atlanta center directs the planes to get ready to land at Atlanta Hartsfield International. Look out these windows and you can see the planes landing and taking off on different runways all at the same time." She pointed to the runways on both sides of the control tower. "Our duty here is to coordinate that movement. We tell the airplanes when they have permission to land and when they can take off. We don’t move the aircraft to or from the passenger gates to the taxiways. Ground control does that, and they’re located below us. Once it has them on the taxiway, we get the planes into position for takeoff by directing them to where they can line up on the runway."
One of the young girls asked, "How do they know where to go when they take off?"
"Very good question. Move over here, let’s listen and you’ll hear this controller"—she pointed at Honey Jo—"as she talks to that Delta airliner you see moving onto the runway." Marilyn pointed out the window to the aircraft taxiing into position.
"Delta 97 Heavy, taxi into position and hold," Honey Jo said. "He's going to Chicago,” she said to the scouts. “It's on his flight plan."
"See how the plane is now going out onto the runway? But it doesn’t have permission to take off yet," Marilyn said.
"Delta 97 Heavy, clear to take off, runway heading. Contact departure on 122.3." They could not hear the pilot repeat the transmission in the controller’s earpiece.
"Look out there." Marilyn pointed to a plane out in the distance. “That aircraft has now been handed over from the person in approach control. Approach control lines up the planes for the landing sequence. Then they pass them to someone in this control tower. Honey Jo here will soon give it permission to land. Let’s listen."
"Continental 2132, clear to land, runway nine west, winds zero seven zero at six," Honey Jo said.
"That’s the last transmission to the aircraft before it lands,” Marilyn explained. “The plane is still a few miles out, but no further transmissions will come from the tower unless some emergency occurs. Any questions?"
"Yes," said one of the scouts. "Why was one a heavy and the other plane wasn’t?"
"We have to call them heavy when the gro
ss weight of the aircraft is over three hundred thousand pounds. It’s information for other aircraft, so they’ll know that a heavy will cause air turbulence if they’re following one. Okay, young ladies, I’ll escort you back down to ground level, and that concludes your tour."
God, I’m so looking forward to the day on the beach, she almost said aloud.
* * *
Washington, D.C.
Ricky felt Clare Ann Rawlings as she snuggled up to him on a cold morning. They’d met in a bar in Old Town Alexandria a month before. He’d had a successful climax and lay on his back exhausted.
"When are you going to be ready again?" she said, groping him to see if any life remained. She flaunted her supersized breasts, which Ricky knew were her weapons of choice.
"Not now. Three times in one night is all I can do. Give me a little rest. Tell me what happened at the White House."
Clare, a White House intern, moved her head quickly to flip her long black hair away from her face. She possessed a dainty body, but the large breasts attracted involuntary stares from many men. Her face appeared like an exact replica of an angel’s, cherubic in appearance. "Not much. We did have some soldier come over to get decorated by the president for what he did in Saudi Arabia, . . .he . . . uhh . . .stopped some bomb or something. The chief of staff wasn’t in the meeting, and he had a hissy fit outside. That’s why I know about it. He asked his aide what was going on and why wasn’t he included and she told him about the soldier."
"Who was this man?" Ricky asked as she continued to fondle him.
"I think she said Captain Matt Higgins, or Hestings. Something like that. Anyhow, the interesting thing happened when the First Dog got loose and peed on the rug in the Oval Office. You’d think the world had ended. The boss threw a shit fit." Her continuous massaging of his lower region started to produce results. "You have such lovely green eyes. I’ve never had a man with green eyes. I need a green-eyed man right now."