Double blind

Chapter Twenty-three

Congressional aide Keith Bennington did not enjoy confrontation. Given the choice, he much preferred to leave such unpleasant social interactions to Simon Whatley, and merely enjoy the relatively minor perks associated with his position as a powerful congressman's local assistant while he decided how to pursue his own lucrative political career.

While, at the same time, pursuing the charms of young and vivacious congressional Interns like Maria Cordovian.

A definite perk of the job, he thought with a smile.

But much to his dismay, and for the second day in a row, Maria hadn't shown up this morning.

And Simon Whatley, his normally dependable and available boss, was in no position to deal with this latest confrontational issue either, because he was somewhere over Tennessee on his flight back to Jasper County, Oregon, and, judging from the noise in the background, in very close proximity to a least two screaming children.

And Bennington's news — that the profiles on the agents of Bravo Team had not arrived that morning by FedEx as their deeply burrowed source in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Washington, DC Headquarters had promised — had done nothing whatsoever to soothe Whatley's simmering sense of frustration, outrage, and betrayal.

Although limited by his surroundings, his barely contained whispered fury came across loud and clear over the plane's satellite relay circuits.

Bennington would track Robert — Smallsreed's deeply burrowed intelligence source in the Department of the Interior — down, right now, from three time zones away,

even if he had to use the goddamned FBI.

Robert, if he wished to remain employed anywhere within the legislative or administrative confines of the District of Columbia, would obtain and fax the federal wildlife agents' profiles to Whatley's private office within the hour.

Once the faxed pages arrived, Bennington would lock the door to Whatley's office, put on a pair of gloves, carefully trim the imprinted fax headers off every incoming page, place the wildlife agents' profiles in a plain manila envelope, seal the envelope, address it to Post Office Box Fourteen, Loggerhead City, Oregon, apply the necessary postage without, under any circumstances, using the district office postage machine; and then personally deliver that envelope immediately to the Loggerhead City rural post office at the intersection of Brandywine Road and Loggerhead Creek.

And at 8:45 that evening, Pacific standard time, when congressional district office manager Simon Whatley stepped off his plane and entered the terminal at Rogue Valley International Airport, Keith Bennington — if he was interested in future employment of any sort in Jasper County, Oregon, much less the goddamned District of Columbia — would be there to inform him, in person, that every one of those steps had been accomplished.

It took the thoroughly frightened congressional aide nearly an hour of increasingly frantic phone calls to locate Robert, who profusely apologized for his failure to get the profiles out the previous day, but insisted that none of them could imagine how difficult it was to access the personnel files of federal employees. Especially federal law-enforcement employees involved in covert investigations. Didn't they understand what would happen to him — and his girlfriend — if he got caught in the Personnel Office file room using her security keys to access those files? Didn't they understand that the unauthorized copying and removal of restricted law-enforcement personnel information was a felony? Didn't they…?

Numbed and frustrated by the magnitude of his own problems, and in no mood to listen to someone whining who claimed to spend the better portion of his free time dating bright, attractive, and influential congressional staffers, Bennington cut him off with a curt expletive and demanded to know if he had the profiles in his possession.

Yes, as a matter of fact he did, which just went to show how valuable and dependable he was, Robert had replied haughtily. But it was eight-thirty in the goddamned evening, and it just so happened that a rather luscious young House Foreign Relations Committee staffer — a recent acquaintance that his current girlfriend and her friends didn't know about — had agreed to accompany him to a conveniently secluded trendy nightspot for a few drinks and whatever. So Bennington ought to be pretty damned grateful he'd even answered his pager.

And besides, the FedEx offices were all closed now, and there wasn't anything Keith Bennington or Simon Whatley or even Regis J. Smallsreed himself could do about that. So, as far as he was concerned, they could all just take their petty-ass little problems and…

It took Bennington another five minutes to convince Robert that Simon Whatley was deadly serious about his threat — which, Bennington noted thoughtfully, would undoubtedly include a discreet call to Robert's current girlfriend, because Bennington wasn't about to hide anything from a man like Whatley — and that everyone would fare much better if Robert simply reined in his overactive libido long enough to fax the damned profiles to Whatley's office ASAP because if he didn't, Bennington's next goddamned phone call would be to Regis J. Smallsreed himself.

Thirty-five minutes later, the temporarily empowered congressional aide received his first inkling of how wretchedly things could go when the cover page of Robert's fax dropped out of Simon Whatley's office machine and informed him that eighty-seven more pages were about to follow.

Fifty-three minutes later, the last page finally arrived, by which time jagged fax header strips covered the floor of Whatley's office and Keith Bennington hovered on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

According to his watch, which he had glanced at two or three times between every faxed page, he had exactly one hour and nineteen minutes to deliver the profiles to the Loggerhead City post office and reach the Rogue Valley International Airport ahead of his boss… a total distance, if he added the map segments correctly, of seventy-two miles. He'd already called the airport three times and received the same message. Yes sir, the flight is on time.

Which was probably bullshit, he tried to reassure himself. The flights were never on time.

Except this one will be, he thought sullenly. Hell, the way things've been going on this deal, it'll probably be…

Early? My God.

The idea numbed his mind.

A mile a minute — that was what, sixty miles an hour? — with seven minutes to spare. Jesus, gotta hurry, he thought as he stuffed the ragged-edged pages into the envelope with his gloved hands, hurriedly licked the seal — cutting his tongue on the sharp-edged flap in the process — and then ran to the postage machine. All I have to do now is

… oh Christ!

He'd almost forgotten Whatley's admonition about the stamps.

Bennington wasted two of his spare minutes tearing Simon Whatley's office apart in a desperate search for the envelope of government-purchased stamps that Whatley used for private mail, and then burned three more ransacking the desks of their four office workers and volunteers. He found dozens of franked mailers and franked labels and franked envelopes. But no stamps.

He was running for the office sedan with the keys and envelope clutched desperately in his hand, vaguely aware — but not really caring — that it was raining, and that he'd forgotten to grab his raincoat and left the office in a shambles and the front door unlocked, when it occurred to him.

Wait a minute. I'm going to a post office. They have stamp machines at a post office!

Another momentary flash of panic brought him to an immediate halt in the middle of the parking lot. The cold rain began to soak through his light jacket as he quickly dug his hand into his pocket and came up with a small handful of change. Two quarters, four dimes, three nickels. He hefted the thick envelope.

Not enough. Not nearly enough. Shit!

He dug for his wallet, ignoring the fact that his hands trembled.

A twenty, and five — no, six ones!

Yes!

They'd have change machines at the post office, he told himself. Either that or the stamp machines would take ones. They'd have to.

He looked down at his watch. Seven twenty-seven.

Seventy-eight minutes to go seventy-two miles.

Gotta get going… right now!

Oblivious to the rapidly deteriorating weather conditions, Keith Bennington ran for the car.

At seven-thirty that Wednesday evening, the woman finally gave up.

For whatever reason, the cat simply refused to come down from her high-limb perch.

"Okay, be that way," she muttered to herself as she firmly closed the door to the ancient-tree-decorated living room and turned the dead-bolt knob.

She knew the cat was agitated. She'd been that way ever since the intriguing stranger — what was his name, Henry something? — had left. And to a limited degree, she even sympathized with her sulking pet.

You and me both, babe, the woman thought irritably. Just what we need right now.

After closing and dead-bolting the second connecting door to the living room, the woman walked down the corridor to the door leading to the porch, confirmed that the darkness, the cold, and the now rapidly falling rain had driven away all of her restaurant customers, and returned to the main kitchen.

"Hey, Danny," she hailed the cook over the loud rhythmic sounds of a Cajun fiddler calling out an old bayou tune.

"Yeah?" The music immediately dropped to a low background level.

"It's dead out there, so I'm going to close up and run out to Costco. We're getting low on hamburger, coffee, hot chocolate mix, and a few other things, and I don't want to take a chance on getting snowed in tomorrow."

"Tell you what, if you pick up a couple of ham hocks, too," the young cook suggested after a quick survey of the refrigerators, "I'll brew up a big batch of navy bean soup. That'll keep the customers happy for a few days if we start running short."

"Sounds wonderful," she replied. "But the way this weather's changing, I'm not sure we're going to have any customers at all the next couple of days."

"Great, all the more for us."

The woman laughed.

"Hey, listen," she warned, "I left Sasha in her room. She's in one of her moods, so don't go in there."

"Don't worry. I wouldn't go back there even if I thought she was in a good mood."

The woman smiled, then placed the CLOSED sign in the window and turned off all the outside lights except those illuminating the pathway and the post office.

"I'll be back in a couple of hours. Don't forget to lock up when you leave."

Danny agreed, and as she closed the door behind her, she heard the plaintive voice and music of a Cajun fiddler slowly rose in volume.

The brief interchange with the young cook improved the woman's mood greatly, and she began humming to herself as she hopped into her small four-wheel-drive Toyota pickup truck with the strange-looking tracking device mounted on top of the cab, strapped herself in, and headed toward the distant shopping complex in Medford.

At exactly seven minutes after eight, Keith Bennington turned onto Brandywine Road and accelerated the heavy sedan down the dark, narrow, and extremely wet and slippery backcountry lane.

A steady rain had accompanied the panicked congressional aide ever since he left Regis J. Smallsreed's district office, and he'd almost gone off the road twice already, so he knew better than to push his luck.

But it was getting terribly late, and the Rogue Valley International Airport was a good thirty-five minutes away — thirty, if he really pushed it — and Bennington didn't even want to think about how Simon Whatley would react if his congressional aide wasn't there in the lobby waiting to take his briefcase and carry-on luggage the instant he walked off the plane and into the terminal.

Why am I doing this? Bennington asked himself for perhaps the twentieth time that evening as he gripped the vibrating steering wheel tightly, trying as best he could not to drive beyond the safe braking distance defined by the car's intersecting headlights as he peered through the water-streaking sweeps of the windshield wipers into the increasingly violent downpour.

It was a meaningless and useless question because he already knew the answer.

Like all too many of his peers, Keith Bennington was already addicted to the rush of high-level political power. Worse, the man who had led him into that addiction, the man who showed him exactly how to ride the coattails of a political powerhouse like Smallsreed to the maximum benefit of all concerned, was also the man who could take it all away in a heartbeat.

Clash with Simon Whatley just once, and Keith Bennington knew he'd spend the rest of his life in some dreary, meaningless job, remembering the taste of power that had been his… if only for one brief and tantalizing moment.

The thought proved more than the congressional aide could stomach, and he pressed down just a little more on the accelerator as he entered the sweeping turn.

And suddenly, there it was.

The sight of the darkened inn at the end of the long, narrow dark road almost caused Bennington to lose whatever remained of his lunch right there in the car.

No, it can't be closed. It can't be!

But then he saw the lighted path that led to the makeshift post office at one end of the rambling structure.

Bennington accelerated the sedan into the parking lot, skidded to a stop that sent mud and water flying across the wooden deck adjacent to it, and was running up the path and into the rustic post office before the car stopped vibrating on its sorely abused shocks.

The first thing he saw when he entered the office — or more to the point, the first thing he didn't see — was the stamp machine.

This can't be! he thought as his eyes frantically searched every inch of the small area. This is a post office. It says so right there on the wall. There must be a stamp machine here somewhere.

But there wasn't.

He pounded on the roll-down, but no one responded.

A brass slot next to the window smirked at him. DEPOSIT STAMPED MAIL HERE the sign above it said.

What if I put it in there without stamps? He asked himself. Wouldn't they put it in box fourteen anyway, along with a postage due notice, if there wasn't any return address on the envelope?

Because he didn't know for sure, he didn't dare risk it.

He even tried the door on box fourteen, praying that whoever opened it last hadn't closed it fully. But the door remained tightly shut, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't pry it open.

Only when the increasingly desperate congressional aide staggered outside, searching for someone, for anyone at all who might know where he could buy three or four dollars' worth of stamps in the next two minutes, did he notice the door.

The sign said PRIVATE, EMPLOYEE ENTRANCE ONLY, but Keith Bennington, long accustomed to the ready access that came with his proximity to Congressman Regis J. Smallsreed, easily ignored it.

Nobody responded when he knocked loudly.

No alarms went off when he turned the knob and the door clicked open.

So he went in, telling himself that it was clearly an emergency, and he only wanted a few dollars' worth of stamps… which he intended to leave the money for, so it wasn't like he was entering a private residence to steal something, for God's sake. By the time he convinced himself of all that, he barely noticed the PRIVATE, DO NOT ENTER! sign when he turned the dead bolt on the door.

But the third door did catch his attention.

The one with two dead bolts.

Something about them caused congressional aide Keith Bennington to wonder if he shouldn't go straight to the airport, right now, pick up Whatley, explain the situation, take him home, find an all-night market that sold stamps, and then drive all the way back to the Loggerhead City post office to mail the envelope as instructed.

That would be the smart thing to do, he told himself, as his hand paused on the first heavy dead-bolt knob that gleamed dully in the meager light shed by a single, distant wall source.

But then Bennington remembered Simon Whatley's voice over the Airphone. So Keith Bennington took a deep breath, turned the two hefty bolt knobs, cautiously opened the door a few inches, and whispered, "Hello?"

No answer.

If anything, the room on the other side of the door was darker than the hallway, and the congressional aide felt a terribly sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

But the luminous dial on his watch reminded him that his vindictive employer would land in precisely twenty-eight minutes, so, in a burst of mindless courage, he pushed open the door and stepped inside the room.

Keith Bennington became aware of the acrid smell immediately. Unfortunately, he wasn't an animal person, so he had no way of knowing that the pungent aroma far exceeded anything that emanated from the average household pet.

Thus it wasn't until his pupils dilated…

And he saw the ancient tree in the center of the large room…

And he stepped forward in awe to touch its huge trunk…

And heard the soft, heavy thump behind his back, whirled, and found himself staring at a pair of half-lidded yellow eyes with tightly focused black pupils set terribly far apart that hovered in midair…

That he understood the enormity of his error.

He tried to say something that would give credence to the idea that that creature couldn't possibly be in this room, but the words simply froze in his mouth.

When the eyes began to move toward him, Keith Bennington did the only thing that he could think of at that moment. He held the envelope containing the eighty-seven faxed pages that had consumed his life for the past six hours in front of his body in the ludicrous hope that it might somehow, miraculously deflect the attack of the terrifying creature and allow him to live a few seconds longer.

He felt the whiskers of the terrifying beast brush against his hand, and tensed — even as his mind went mercifully numb — for the searing impact of extended claws ripping open his throat and chest and stomach… then stood stunned as the huge panther ripped the envelope out of his hand instead, turned, and then leaped upward and disappeared into the darkness.

Waves of adrenaline flooded Keith Bennington's frozen muscles, but it took the sound of paper tearing high above his head to finally galvanize the terrified young man into action.

Less than three seconds later, and with no memory of how he did it, Bennington stood in the dark hallway fumbling with the heavy dead bolts.

It took him fifteen more seconds to close and dead-bolt the second door, exit the house, get into the car, start the engine, launch the heavy sedan into a tire-spinning U-turn onto the dark, narrow, and extremely wet backcountry road… and another twenty-seven minutes and thirty-two seconds to pull into the entrance of the Rogue Valley International Airport parking lot, take a ticket, park the car, run into the terminal, and plant his trembling body in front of the ARRIVING PASSENGERS door.

The clock over the door read 8:54.

He was still standing there twenty-three minutes later, numbed and glassy-eyed, when Simon Whatley's late-arriving airplane finally touched down and taxied to the terminal.

But only much later that night, as he lay in bed trembling under his electric blanket, did Keith Bennington finally realize that his equally numbed, glassy-eyed, and completely exhausted superior had simply handed him his briefcase and carry-on luggage, followed him out to the car… and during the entire trip home, never once asked about Robert, or the delivery of the agent profiles, or the reason that the district office staff car — not to mention Keith Bennington himself — reeked of human urine.