The Enemy Inside

SIX

The phone on her desk buzzed. Maya Grimes reached for the receiver.

“Senator, you have a call. The man refuses to identify himself but says you know him.”

She thought for a moment. “OK, put him through. And hold my other calls and appointments.” She put the receiver down and a few seconds later it buzzed again. Grimes picked it up. “Hello.”

“Sorry to bother you at your office.”

“I told you never to call me here. You’re not calling from a cell phone, are you?”

“I’m at a pay phone. It was unavoidable. We’ve got a problem. We have to talk.”

“Not here,” said Grimes. She glanced at her watch and thought for a moment. “The bench on the north side by the reflecting pool. You know the one.”

“Where we met last time?”

“Give me fifteen minutes.” Grimes hung up the phone.

Early spring, and the Mall outside the Capitol was already bustling with early tourists and busloads of children on school field trips. Senator Maya Grimes walked quickly, trying to melt into the crowd, as unobtrusive as possible. Still, her face was recognizable to some of the passersby who stared at her and others who stole second glances as she clicked along quickly in her high heels down the path.

Usually, if she had a private meeting, she would do it at some offbeat restaurant in the suburbs, take a car from the congressional fleet with darkened windows and a driver to deliver her to the door. But she wanted no record of this meeting popping up in the computer in the motor pool.

Grimes had been twenty-two years in the US Senate, chairperson of the Committee on Banking, vice chair of Senate Finance, and a senior member of several subcommittees on financial affairs. She came from California, where the cost of an election to the Senate was approaching thirty million dollars. This, coupled with her political gravitas around the Capitol, gave her more hours on television than most seasoned pilots have in the cockpit. Hers was one of those faces that people tended to recognize. She lost count of the number of times some idiot had stopped her on the street wondering what film it was they had seen her in. Usually she didn’t mind, but today she had a terminal case of bad temper. She nearly ran down a couple of third graders who aimlessly bolted into her path in a misguided game of tag.

A grandmother and seasoned politician, Grimes could usually turn on the charm for kids. Today she gave them a look from the Wicked Witch and kept moving quickly toward a small clump of trees along the north side of the reflecting pool. The walkway curved a little to the right. As she made the turn she saw him sitting there alone on the bench.

Grimes slowed down and looked around to make sure no one was watching, there were no idle picture-takers with their backs to the pool glancing at the bench and the bushes behind it. Of course they could be a mile away with powerful optics listening through an electronic bug the size of an aspirin glued to a man’s chest.

She walked slowly toward the bench, passed him by, and stopped. She stood there for a couple of seconds with her back to him, a few feet away. There was no one in earshot. “What do you want?”

“You want to walk and talk?” he asked.

“No!”

“Suit yourself. I’m just trying to help. You wanted to be kept informed. That’s what I’m doing.”

“So what is it?”

“She’s dead.”

“I know that!” It had been in the early-morning paper, identification of the woman killed in a car crash in Southern California. The Washington Post had played it up, page three with a two-column headline. Serna was a local political player, a lobbyist who was in and out of the Capitol on a regular basis. She had friends, lots of them, most of them women. Some of them were powerful. Grimes was no doubt at or near the top of that food chain.

“But there is still a problem,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Loose ends,” he said. “It wasn’t done cleanly-”

“I don’t want to know the details!” She cut him off quickly through clenched teeth. “I don’t know what happened and I don’t want to know. I am not part of it!”

“Of course not.” He smiled, looking at her from behind. For a woman in her early sixties, she still had a pretty good body. There were times when he wondered what she might be like in the sack; whether all that intensity would translate into sexual energy once you got her there. “Why don’t you come over and sit down.” He gently patted the slatted wood on the bench next to him.

He was lean, about six feet, gray-haired, tan complexion, blue eyes with just enough wrinkles in the forehead and the bags above his cheeks to look distinguished. It was a face that had seen some wear. His three-piece pinstriped navy suit might just as well have been a uniform around the government buildings and monuments in Washington. So ubiquitous were his looks that he was nearly invisible. This was well practiced and honed over the long course of his career. He had lived in many countries and could disappear like a ghost in almost any of them. He carried a walking cane, though he seldom used it. This was insurance against a trick knee that at times could go out on him without notice, the result of an injury sustained in his youth. The cane sported the sharp-beaked head of an eagle cast in silver. It was the work of a Mexican silversmith. The bird’s slitted eyes, tarnished a little from wear, mimicked its owner’s. Ever vigilant, they peered out at the world in cold judgment.

“Loosen up. Relax. You seem troubled.” He studied her body language, tense, wary. “There is no one here but the two of us.”

“How can I be sure?” she said.

“If we wanted to expose you, you would already be sitting in a federal penitentiary. Oh, one of the country clubs, to be sure,” he said. “They would never subject you to, what is it they call it, the general population.” He smiled, though with her back to him she couldn’t see it. “There’s supposed to be a very nice one, I think they call it Pleasanton, out in your neck of the woods in California. I am told it is not a bad place. At least it’s close to your family.”

Whenever he met up with her he always stoked the coals, feeding the fires of anxiety that burned within. Keeping her on edge was part of the practiced technique, honed over generations by its practitioners.

Still, his words today made the women’s correctional facility at Pleasanton sound almost idyllic. There were nights when she lay awake, unable to sleep, wishing that they would pull this cord, put her out of her misery. At least the worrying would be over. That was the worst part, wondering if and when the world would cave in on her. They would remind her first of how far she had to fall, and in the next breath tell her she had nothing to worry about. She often thought this must be how they lived in the old Soviet Union, constantly in fear, wondering when they might come for you.

“Please. Sit down. You will worry yourself into an early grave,” he said. “In time you will learn to trust us.”

“That’ll be the day,” she told him.

“Believe me, we have absolutely no interest in doing you any harm whatsoever. Why would we? Think about it. We are invested in you, long term,” he told her. “We are like partners in a business enterprise. Simple as that.”

“If that’s true, I’ll be happy to sell you my interest cheap,” she said.

“Sounds like you’d like to retire?”

“I’ve thought about it.”

“Sorry, but it’s not that easy,” said the man.

Dealing with the devil never is, she thought.

“We gave money to your last campaign. A lot of it. I’ll bet you didn’t even know that.”

“I didn’t,” she said.

“The donations were not in our own name, of course. The media, to say nothing of the federal election commission, would have made a big stink over that. But it was support nonetheless. Come, sit down.”

“Save the pleasantries. Can we keep this short? What is it you want? I don’t have a lot of time.”

“Make time.” he said. “After all, I’m not one of your fawning constituents looking for a photographed handshake to put on my mantel.”

She took a deep breath, released some of the muscles in her back, dropped her shoulder, and slowly turned around to face him.

“That’s better. I came here to warn you.”

“Warn me about what?”

“It’s possible that the press, some of the media types, might be contacting you now that Serna is no longer with us,” he said.

This caused a spike in the adrenaline already running through Grimes’s body. He saw the startled look in her eyes.

“Why would they be calling me?”

“The two of you ran in the same circles. She plied the Capitol, came in contact with you regularly. It’s only natural.”

“She came in contact with a lot of people,” said Grimes.

“Yes, but she managed money for two of your campaigns before she registered as a lobbyist.”

“I thought you said that’d been taken care of? That the records were purged.”

“We thought they were,” he said. “Seems we were mistaken. Some old tapes containing FEC reports on campaign funding apparently got out. There’s nothing to worry about. Nothing illegal about any of it. She just shows up as the campaign finance chair on two of your early reports, that’s all. That’s it.”

Grimes put a finger to her lips, as if to seal them as she thought and looked away from him off into the distance. Those records placed them in the same universe, the circle of hell that led Serna to Maya Grimes’s life of sin. If she found it, so could others.

“It’s not important,” he told her.

“That means they know we had financial dealings,” said Grimes. “If they start poking around and somebody finds out we had a falling-out, they’ll want to know why. One thing leads to another.”

“Relax! We’re confident they don’t know anything.”

“Where did these tapes go?” she asked.

“Purchased by some Internet news group.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know,” he lied. “It happened more than a year ago. I’m sure it’s nothing. For all we know, they have probably thrown them out by now.”

“You’re telling me everything, right?”

He raised two fingers. “Honest injun,” he said.

“I’m not sure I believe you,” said Grimes.

He looked at her, arching an eyebrow as if to say, “What else is new?”

“I’m just trying to give you a heads-up. I’m not saying they will call. Just that they might, ask you a few questions.”

“And what do I say if they do?”

“Don’t deny it, the fact that she worked on your early campaigns, that’s all. Just tell them that you and Serna were friends way back in the early part of your career. Ancient history,” he told her. “She helped you run a couple of your campaigns and that’s it. But don’t bring it up unless they do. If they are doing an obituary on her, it’s only natural that they might contact you. I didn’t want you to panic if they should mention the campaign stuff. That’s all.”

“Still, I don’t understand why they would call me,” she said. “There are plenty of others who were closer to her. It’s not like we were friends. What if they know we had a fight?”

“They won’t.”

“What if they know about Ginger and Spice?”

“They don’t. Trust me, how could they know?”

“You found out.” Grimes almost spit the words at him.

“Yes, but we had the means.”

“So did Serna.”

“That was your fault,” he said. “You were careless. Now stop worrying. They know absolutely nothing. Of that we are certain.”

“How can you be sure?”

“If they contact you, just give them a few happy remembrances, how much she’ll be missed, what a great person she was, and hang up. That’s all you have to do. It shouldn’t be difficult. Just a little white lie. Think of it as campaigning,” he said.

“You said there was still a problem. Some loose ends. Plural,” said Grimes.

“Yes, well, leave that to me. Forget I mentioned it.” He didn’t want to load her up with too many worries at one time. There was no purpose in telling her they had failed to bag Alex Ives, or that Ives and his boss were the ones digging for dirt, and that she might be hiding in the hole where they were shoveling.

The Washington Gravesite was stepped around gingerly like a poisonous serpent by any shrewd politician in the Capitol. It had a bite that was toxic and it seemed to be growing another rattle every year. Grimes didn’t need to know about Ives or the story he was working on. If she had known, she would have panicked. That and the girl. Ives, no doubt, would by now have told his lawyers about the little Asian beauty. They definitely had some mopping up to do.

“How serious is it?” she asked.

“It’s nothing for you to worry about. You just take care of the items on your agenda. You have two up this week. Make sure the votes go the right way.”

A pained expression crossed Grimes’s face.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked.

“There’s a problem with the appropriation on the Siderail Software deal,” she said.

“What kind of problem?”

“I need one more vote. I was counting on Mendez. Senator from Arizona.”

“I know who Mendez is.”

“He won’t return my calls,” she said. “He’s avoiding me. His assistant says he has problems with the item, something about a manufacturer back in his state who wants a piece of the contract. Mendez won’t vote for it unless he gets a guarantee.”

“It’s too late for that,” said the man. “We need that bill.”

“Without Mendez I can’t get the item out of committee.”

“Don’t worry about Mendez. When the vote comes up he’ll be on board. But you should have called me. I can’t help you unless I know,” he said.

“How are you going to do that?”

“Leave it to me.”

Before he could say anything more, a man came into view walking quickly toward them. He was carrying a brown bag in one hand and a plastic bottle of Coke in the other. In his twenties, he had on a dark pair of slacks, a white shirt, and a tie. His collar was open. He had that hurried look, one of the sea of civil servants punching the clock for lunch. He plunked himself down on the other end of the bench and started opening the brown bag.

The man in the three-piece looked over at him and said, “Do you mind? This is a private conversation.”

The younger man was good-sized. He appeared fit. And apparently this was not his day to take shit. “You want privacy, find an office!” he said.

“I’d prefer you find another bench.” The man in the suit twisted the handle on his cane just enough to release the bayonet thread so that the razor-sharp blade slid a few inches out from the cane. He could have shown him the SIG Sauer nine-millimeter under his coat, but why go nuclear in a quiet park?

The man with the brown bag looked at the glint on the blade and swallowed. “No problem.” He didn’t even look up at Grimes. Instead he got up, grabbed his Coke, and walked quickly down the path away from them.

“Does that make you feel big?” she asked.

“I don’t have a problem with it. Oh, I forgot. That’s right, you don’t like weapons. I apologize,” he said. He gave her a sinister grin. “I forgot your crusade. That you authored all those bills to outlaw, what was it, assault rifles and large clips? And you worked behind the scenes so quietly to sell all that used US military brass to the Chinese, mountains of it, just so that crazy gun loaders in America couldn’t get their hands on any of it. That was a stroke of genius,” he said. “Must have really put the press on the gangbangers in South Chicago. Only being able to kill a hundred people or so a night now. All those years pushing the ATF button to push them in the face of the gun dealers. Put as many of them as possible out of business, along with the manufacturers. You’re just up to your little honkers in good works, aren’t you?”

He stopped for a moment and looked at her, the smile gone from his face. “But then, of course, you have a permit to carry, don’t you?” He knew she did. He sometimes wondered if she might bring her pistol, a snub-nosed.38, to one of their meetings and try to put an end to it. But it wouldn’t do her any good unless she turned it on herself. “Where exactly do you hide it?” he asked. He looked her up and down with a kind of lustful leer as if the next thing he might do was strip-search her.

A good number of the political class constantly railed against guns and gun owners and then used their influence to obtain permits so that they could carry concealed weapons themselves. This was done mostly when they were back in their districts. Firearms were frowned upon in the highly sanitized atmosphere of the Capitol, where security was now so tight that members of the public had to make appointments, sometimes weeks in advance, and get ten-printed just to do the public tour of the hallowed halls that for more than thirty years had been the scene of the collective crime.

“I got that permit years ago when I was being stalked!” She said it with a tone of defiance. The instant the words left her lips she knew it was a mistake.

“Oh, I hope he didn’t hurt you,” said the man.

She shook her head, said nothing. Why compound the error?

“Thank God for that!” He shook his head. “It’s a sick world out there. You do have to wonder what’s going on in some people’s minds. That an honest, hardworking public servant such as yourself would be the victim of a stalker. You do have to wonder what could possess someone.”

The way he said it and the fact that he seemed to be waiting for an answer made her feel like a bug pinned under his microscope.

“One who didn’t know better might think you had done something wrong,” he offered. “But then, of course, we know better. Like I say, it’s a sick world.”

She stood there, the quiet anger fixed in her eyes. He was right about one thing. She had no one to blame but herself. Back in the Senate Office Buildings or in the Capitol she was part of the aristocracy. Out here she belonged to him.

Under the dome she might be whisked into the private members’ elevator between floors, and be able to jump aboard the little private underground choo-choo that chugged them beneath the sweltering streets of Washington so they wouldn’t wear out shoe leather or have to mingle with the unwashed.

Here, faced with the reality that others knew her secret, she was forced to stand by silently and accept the humiliation. She hoped in time he would let her go. He assured her that they would at some point. Until then there was nothing she could do, nothing she could say. Serna had discovered Grimes’s secret and had tried to extort favors and money from her only to discover that she was standing in line, that the people in front of her had a prior claim and that they held it with a death grip.