High Treason

CHAPTER TWO

Jonathan Grave waited at the Learjet’s door while the stairway deployed. When it was down and locked, he centered his rucksack between his shoulders with a shrug and hefted the two green duffels that contained rifles and electronic gear. He turned his head to the right, where he could see Boxers, his longtime friend and cohort, in the cockpit, shutting things down.

“Hey, Box, your ruck and the other duffels are here on the floor.”

“Got it,” Boxers said without looking. “Be sure to leave the heaviest ones for me. I don’t want you hurting your little self.”

Jonathan grinned. “I always do.” And in fact, he always did. A couple of inches shy of seven feet tall with a girth that made linebackers look puny, Boxers was easily the strongest man Jonathan had ever known. Big Guy always did the heavy lifting.

As Jonathan made his way down the narrow stairs onto the tarmac, it occurred to him that this would be the first time in a long while that he wouldn’t need to spend twelve hours after an 0300 mission cleaning weapons and replacing gun barrels and receivers. The mission had been a quick one, and surprisingly uncomplicated. They hadn’t even fired a shot.

As a rule, the covert side of Security Solutions didn’t get involved with recovering errant young people from the clutches of cults, but this case had had the feel of a kidnapping. At least, that’s what the family had thought, though the FBI disagreed.

The kid’s father — Daddy Lottabucks — contacted Jonathan through the usual combination of cutouts and fake e-mail addresses, and was anxious to pay the gate rate for Jonathan’s services. In the end, when Jonathan and Boxers crashed the door to recover the PC — precious cargo — the cult leader just handed the kid over.

That fact alone — the absence of shooting — helped explain Boxers’ fouler-than-usual mood. For the Big Guy, self-actualization had a lot to do with wreaking havoc. It wasn’t that he was homicidal — not really — but rather that he enjoyed the… efficiency of solutions that created fire and noise.

Jonathan waited at the base of the stairs for Boxers. He had to laugh when the Big Guy’s massive frame filled the doorway. With his ruck in place and the two duffels in his hands, squeezing through the door took on the elements of a high school physics calculation.

“There’s some butter in the galley if you need to slather up,” Jonathan quipped.

“My mama’s womb had a bigger opening than this,” Boxers grumped.

Jonathan let it go. No matter how close the friendship, jokes about men’s mothers were eternally off-limits.

“I vote you tell Mannix we’re done with his sardine can,” the Big Guy said when he joined his boss on the tarmac.

Austin Mannix had thrown in two years’ access to his private plane when Jonathan negotiated the fee for this latest job. Given their line of work, it helped to have air service that was traceable to a third party. Commercial aviation options were out of the question. Between the two of them, they carried enough weapons, ammunition, and explosives to repel an invasion. You never knew what might go wrong on even the simplest of ops, so it always paid to be prepared. One man’s preparation, though, was a TSA agent’s heart attack.

But man this plane was tiny.

“We’ll see,” Jonathan said. “At least it’s based in Fredericksburg.” Other airplanes they’d negotiated for had been hangared in Dulles and Leesburg, easily an hour farther away from Jonathan’s home in Fisherman’s Cove.

“You say that like it’s a good thing. It’s still a long friggin’ drive.”

Again, Jonathan let it go. Jonathan knew how much money the Big Guy made for his contributions to Security Solutions, and there wasn’t a community from Miami to New York City where he couldn’t afford to live comfortably. Very comfortably. The fact that he’d chosen the hustle of Georgetown over bucolic Fisherman’s Cove was his own problem.

Crossing in front of the civil aviation terminal building, Jonathan plotted a straight-line walking course toward the Batmobile, Boxers’ pet name for Jonathan’s customized and armored black Hummer H2. While not especially fast, the truck held its own on the highway, but it truly earned its keep off-road where, despite its weight, it could climb trees once you engaged the four-wheel drive.

He hadn’t paid attention to the nearby vehicles until the doors of a black sedan opened in unison and disgorged two men in suits and sunglasses.

“At last,” Boxers grumbled. “The day gets interesting. You thinking good guys or bad guys?”

“Feds,” Jonathan said, knowing full well that he hadn’t answered the Big Guy’s question.

“Just so we’re clear,” Boxers said, “if they draw, I draw.” He’d long been on the record that he would never tolerate any form of incarceration, whether at the hands of a foreigner or the local constabulary. Like anyone who had to deal with the meddling bullshit that doubled these days for due process, he had a particular hard-on for feds.

“Let’s clear our hands, then,” Jonathan said. He dropped his two duffels to the concrete, reducing his weight by one hundred pounds and clearing the way for him to draw the Colt 1911 .45 that always rode high on his right hip. Loaded with eight rounds, one hot in the chamber, that was six more bullets than he’d need if it came to a shoot-out.

Boxers likewise dropped his duffels to clear access to his holstered 9 millimeter Beretta.

They kept their gait steady as they approached the two men who’d clearly meant to intimidate them more than they had. You might even say they looked a little frightened themselves.

The guy on the driver’s side lifted his hands to show that they were empty. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, guys,” he said. “We mean no harm.”

Jonathan shifted his eyes to the other one. “And you?” He stopped striding when good guys and bad guys were separated only by twenty feet and a door panel.

Mr. Passenger Side resisted joining the program. He took a hesitant step back, then stood his ground. His hands remained out of sight at his sides when he said, “We’ve done nothing to threaten you.”

“It’s more about you feeling threatened,” Boxers said with a grin.

“Don’t be an idiot, Kane,” the driver said. Closing in on fifty, the driver had an easy twenty years on the younger man named Kane. One of the greatest gifts of maturity and experience was the ability to read the dynamics of a situation for what they were.

They were definitely feds, Jonathan decided, and the different degrees of swagger defined in his mind the difference between old school and new school. Since 9/11, federal law enforcers had been bestowed with remarkable power that they seemed oddly incapable of not overflexing.

“Let me guess,” Jonathan said. “FBI.” Actually, the matching high-and-tight hairstyles and attention to fashion spoke more of Secret Service, but he couldn’t imagine how this could be their jurisdiction.

“Yes, sir,” the driver said. “Special Agent Edward Shrom. This is Special Agent Carlton Kane. We both report out of headquarters in Washington. I’d be happy to show you my creds if you promise not to go Chuck Norris on me.”

“Not necessary,” Jonathan said. “I have every confidence that you have the skill to forge a set of creds if you were so inclined.” He drilled Kane with his gaze. “Son, if you don’t show me an empty pair of hands right by God now, we’re going to have an issue.”

Somewhere north of eighteen and south of thirty-five, Kane had the look of a quarterback from a second-tier school. He had a lot of neck, but not much girth, and the kind of self-righteous smirk that Jonathan loved so dearly to wipe away.

“I am a federal officer, Mr. Grave. I’d be careful—”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Shrom said. “Give it a rest. Either show him your hands or draw down on him. Just stop dancing.”

Jonathan liked Shrom.

Grudgingly, Carlton Kane raised his palms so that Jonathan could see them.

“Thank you,” Jonathan said. He felt tension drain from his shoulders. “So what’s up, gentlemen?”

Shrom answered quickly, as if hurrying to get in before his young partner could screw things up. “I have orders from my boss’s boss, Director Rivers — I believe you know her as Wolverine — to talk you into taking a ride in the car with us.”

Boxers made a growling sound that perfectly reflected Jonathan’s unease.

“Where would we be going and why?”

“That’s need to know, sir,” Shrom said. “I can’t answer that.”

“You want us to go with you to a place where we have no need to know where we’re going?” Boxers asked with a derisive chuckle. “What are you Fibbies smoking these days?”

“We’re the ones who don’t have a need to know,” Kane said.

Jonathan cocked his head and smiled at the illogic. “And how are you going to drive us to a place you’re not authorized to know?”

“I’m betting they drive blindfolded,” Boxers quipped.

Shrom forced a smile that looked more like a wince. “We know the where, Mr. Van de Muelebroecke, although I suspect that it’s only a first step. What we don’t know is the why.” The fact that he knew Boxers’ real name was a card well played.

“Suppose we say no?” Jonathan asked.

Shrom seemed ready for that one. “When I asked the director that very same question, she guaranteed me that you would say yes if I told you she said it was important. The choice to come along or stay is entirely yours.” He paused and shrugged. “That’s it. That was the speech I was told to make.”

Jonathan inhaled deeply through his nose and vigorously rubbed his chin. He’d known Irene Rivers for years — since long before she ran a field office, let alone been named director. He’d done the kind of work for her that the FBI officially never did, yet needed to do to protect the citizens of the United States. Her Wolverine code name had started as a joke nearly two decades ago, a quasi-insult that reflected her feisty personality. As so often happened in the unpredictable world of nicknames, it stuck as her handle within the tiny covert world of Security Solutions. The only way for these two Fibbies to know that the name even existed would be if Irene had shared it with them.

“Does this have anything to do with the East-West Airlines attack?” Nearly a week ago, an as yet unidentified bad guy had launched a Stinger antiaircraft missile into a fully loaded 747 as it climbed out of its takeoff from O’Hare International Airport. The perfect shot had scattered burning aircraft and human parts over a mile-long swath of Lake Michigan.

“We don’t yet know that that was a terrorist attack,” Kane said. That was the official line of the government to stave off panic, but insiders knew the reality. Whether Kane was too young to be among those insiders was a topic for the future.

“Okay,” Jonathan announced. “We’ll come with you.”

Boxers’ eyes popped. “We will?”

Jonathan shrugged. “If Director Rivers requests the pleasure of our company, it’s only polite that we accept the invitation.”

Boxers smiled and scowled. Simultaneously. It was an odd combination of expressions that was unique to him. Jonathan read it as a kind of amused tolerance — and perhaps a touch of anticipation that he might get to shoot something after all.

Before the smile could fully form on Shrom’s face, Jonathan added, “But you come with us, not the other way around. In our vehicle.”

“Absolutely not,” Kane said.

Jonathan didn’t drop a beat. “Then this conversation is over,” he said. He turned on his heel and started walking back toward the bags they’d dropped.

Boxers followed.

“Wait,” Shrom said.

Jonathan stopped, turned.

“What are you doing?” Kane asked, aghast. His ears turned red when he was upset. Jonathan found that amusing. Cute, even. Like he needed a hug and a teddy bear.

“We’ll do it your way,” Shrom conceded.

Kane’s jaw dropped. “We will?”

Jonathan winked at the Big Guy. “Déjà vu,” he mouthed.

Shrom said to his protégé, “I have orders from as high up as I can imagine. If you were Mr. Grave, would you climb into a car with us?”

“I would do what a federal agent told me to do,” Kane said. Way to defend your position to the very end.

“Then you’re an idiot,” Shrom said.

Jonathan laughed. So did Boxers, and he was a much tougher audience. When Kane turned purple, it was as good as it got.

“Follow me,” Jonathan said. He turned again, walked to the dropped duffels, and picked them up, Boxers with him every step. He led the four-man parade to the Batmobile and waited while Boxers thumbed the remote to unlock the doors. He called over his shoulder, “Don’t get in until I tell you.”

He didn’t look back to confirm compliance because that would have telegraphed weakness. From this point on, the Fibbies needed to do exactly what he instructed them to do.

With the cargo bay doors open, Jonathan and Boxers heaved the heavy duffels onto the floor.

“Do I even want to know what’s inside those bags?” Kane asked.

“I’m sure you do,” Boxers said. “Which is sort of a shame.”

When purple transitioned to grape, Jonathan actually started feeling sorry for the guy.

“Here’s the deal,” Jonathan said. “My friend will drive. Agent Shrom, you and Agent Kane will ride in the middle row of seats, and I will sit behind you.”

Kane opened his mouth to say something, but Shrom put a hand on his arm. They all ended up in their assigned seats.

Jonathan boarded last, taking the spot behind everyone. He didn’t really expect the agents to try to hijack the ride, but if they did, he’d nail them both. One could never be too careful.

“So,” Boxers said, once the doors were all closed. “Where are we going?”

David Kirk never picked up his phone on the first ring. Or the third ring, for that matter. He was a fifth-ring guy. He figured that if someone really wanted to speak to him, they’d wait at least that long. On the sixth ring, the call would have gone to his voice mail.

“Washington Enquirer,” he said as he snatched up the receiver. “This is David.”

“Yo,” a familiar voice said. “This is DeShawn. Have you got a few minutes?”

David rolled his eyes. DeShawn Lincoln was one of David’s bar buddies. He was also a disgruntled rookie in the Metropolitan Police Department, which made him a reliable source for the kind of salacious news that city editors publicly decried yet secretly loved because it sold a hell of a lot of newspapers.

“Hi, Deeshy,” David replied. “What’s up, man? I’ve always got a few minutes for you.”

The usual smile was missing from DeShawn’s voice. “What’s up is my bosses’ heads. Completely up their own asses.”

David’s Spidey-sense tingled. “Are you calling because I’m a friend, or because I’m a reporter?”

“Can I choose both?”

“Absolutely.” As he spoke, David donned his telephone headset and pushed the button to connect it. This way, David’s hands were free to type notes. “Does this mean you have a lead for me?”

“Lead, no,” DeShawn said. “Whole friggin’ story, yes. It’s not for the phone, though.”

“Ooh,” David said in his spooky voice. “Sounds scary.” DeShawn’s criticality sensor was dozens of degrees out of phase with David’s.

“It is scary, David.” Deeshy was rattled. David could hear it in his voice. “Do you want to meet with me or not?”

The elevated angst got his attention. He closed his e-mail screen to reduce distraction. “When and where?”

“You know where the merry-go-round is on the Mall?”

“Of course. And I believe they call it a carousel.” Located outside the original Smithsonian Castle, it was also known by locals as one of the most sublime ripoffs in Washington.

“Whatever. Meet me there at eight o’clock tonight.”

“Oh, Christ, Deeshy. It’s cold and windy, and that’s like the coldest and windiest spot in town.”

“Don’t be a pussy. See you there at eight?”

David groaned. The problem with DeShawn Lincoln was that he became a cop to break huge cases — the kind that only came up once or twice in a thirty-year career — or every week on network television. This was Deeshy’s fourth imagined career-maker in eight months. When his bosses pushed back, Deeshy turned to his newspaper pal for support. Even in as corrupt a town as DC, sometimes the smoke you thought was a fire was really a cigar that was really a cigar.

“Give me a hint,” David said. “You’re talking about pulling me out of a warm apartment when I could be devoting my evening to Internet porn. What’ve you got?”

DeShawn hesitated. David imagined that he was checking his surroundings to determine if he could speak freely. Finally, he said, “What I’ve got is what Washington’s best at: a cover-up.”

David’s neck hairs rose. “Of what?”

The answer came as a whisper. “Murder. I think the Secret Service is involved, and that means it goes to the very top.”

David felt blood drain from his head. “Say that again.”

“Did you hear about the shooting last night at the Wild Times?”

David prided himself at being a devoted reader of the newspaper that employed him. “Yeah. Secret Service was there. They lost a couple of people.”

“And what is the Secret Service doing in force at a bar in the middle of the night?”

“Was the first family there?”

Deeshy paused. “I’ll see you tonight.” The line went dead.

David laid the receiver in its cradle, but his hand stayed in place for a long time.

“Are you all right?” The question came from Becky Beckeman, a fellow graduate of Radford University’s journalism school, though she one year before he.

“I’m fine.”

“You just got bad news on the phone,” Becky pressed.

“No, really.”

Becky’s desk was directly opposite his, and when she stood, her untethered boobs swayed behind her blouse, threatening to drown out any sound she might make with her mouth. “Is it about the attack?” she asked. She was an earthy Birkenstock gal.

The directness and the accuracy of the question startled him until he realized that she was speaking of the East-West Airlines attack at O’Hare. One hundred seventy-three dead people.

David shook his head. “No, it has nothing to do with that.”

But did it? He hadn’t connected those particular dots, but if there was an unreported attempt on the first family’s life last night, just a week after the airline attack, couldn’t they be related?

“Kirk!” Charlie Baroli’s voice boomed like a cannon across the vast expanse of the newsroom. “You! My office! Two minutes ago!”

Eighty pounds overweight, with an alcoholic’s nose that looked like it might have been chewed by a dog, Baroli was certain to stroke out one day. David just prayed that he could be present when it happened.

David killed his monitor and pushed himself away from his workstation. As he stood, Becky gave him a look acknowledging the torture that lay in his future, and that she was on his side. Becky was always on David’s side. He knew about the crush she had on him — everyone within twenty feet knew about it whenever they saw her look his way — but she wasn’t his type. He preferred his women less… free-spirited. He’d tried not to encourage her. Except sometimes, when she had a tidbit of a source and wanted to get his attention with it. On those occasions, it maybe was possible that he gave her a mixed message. Or maybe a wrong message. Maybe.

David didn’t dawdle on his way to the city editor’s desk, but he didn’t hurry, either. If you internalized Baroli’s perpetual angst, you’d end up beating him to the grave.

Baroli’s office was little more than a cube with real walls, and was decorated in Early Ceiling Collapse. Think hoarder. Think roaches. Think Taco Bell wrappers that were older than David. Baroli had already closed the door before David could arrive.

The door thing was a power play, a requirement to knock. David gave three quick raps with the knuckle of his forefinger.

Baroli made eye contact through the glass panel that ran the length of the door and motioned him in with his middle finger. His way of flipping off employees while maintaining plausible deniability.

David opened the door. “You needed me, sir?” In his mind, it was treacly irony, but he had every confidence that Baroli would miss it.

“Come in and close the door.”

He did, in that moment thanking the Holy Things for the fact of the window and the witnesses it created. If the two guest chairs had not been stacked with meaningless crap, David might have sat down. As it was, he remained standing.

Baroli filled his seat with flesh to spare. He pushed himself away from his desk and simulated crossing his arms across his ample man-boobs. “You know that if it was up to me we never would have hired you, right?”

“I believe that you might have mentioned it, sir. Sixty or seventy times in the last fifteen months. Sir.”

“You’re here because your father is a major shareholder.”

“Again,” David said. “Seventy-one times now.” In reality, his father would have been more than delighted to see him crash and burn, but Baroli wouldn’t care. David was supposed to be in law school now, on his way to a Wall Street job that would add to the Kirk family’s billion-plus-dollar legacy. “But I disagree,” David said. “I like to think that I’m here because I’m a talented journalist.”

Baroli laughed. “A journalist,” he mocked. If he’d been tasting the words, they’d have been long on sulfur and garlic. “You’re so green you’re still wet.”

David waited for the rest. He was in fact new to his profession, but he was damn good at it. He met his deadlines and was ahead of the curve on developing sources. He sensed that the trouble he was in had nothing to do with his job skills.

“Grayson Cantrell was in my office about a half hour ago,” Baroli said. Grayson owned the choice stories from the city beat. “He told me that when he contacted Malcolm Sanderson to get a quote on the DC City Council’s decision to walk away from school vouchers, Councilman Sanderson told him that he’d already spoken to a reporter named Kirk. He was disinclined to repeat himself.”

David gave the smug smile that he knew pissed Baroli off. “I’ve known Mr. Sanderson my whole life,” he said. “Peter Sanderson, his son, and I were best friends from elementary school through high school.”

“How special for you,” Baroli said. “But that was not your story. That story belonged to Grayson Cantrell.”

“Grayson Cantrell is lazy.” The words were out before David could stop them. He was like that sometimes when it came to stating the truth.

Baroli recoiled. “Grayson Cantrell was working sources before you were a viable sperm.”

“Yet I didn’t make my call to Councilman Sanderson until eight hours after the announcement,” David said. “The story is up on my screen now, if you want to take a look at it.”

“I want you to delete it,” Baroli said. “I want you to concentrate on the job you were hired to do.”

“I’m doing the Sanderson story on my time. If you don’t want to print it, I can put it on my blog. Mr. Daniels told me that he reads my blog regularly. I’m just sayin’…” Preston Daniels owned the Washington Enquirer, having inherited it from three previous generations of Danielses.

Somewhere below the layers of facial flesh, a muscle twitched in Baroli’s jaw. “You signed a noncompete,” he said.

David shrugged. “My words for you are work for hire. My words for me are mine to do with as I please. If it makes you feel better, I don’t pay myself very well.”

But his advertisers did. Kirk Nation, David’s blog, had just north of 172,000 subscribers now, and was viewed by well over a million people every day. He had influence peddlers lined up at the door to throw money at him in return for visibility on his masthead. David worked at the Enquirer for the 401(k) plan and the health insurance. And it didn’t hurt to pad your résumé with time served on one of the most read and most influential newspapers on the planet. He was in the Big Leagues.

Baroli would have made a shitty poker player. His eyes grew hot and his jowls trembled. A poster child for the old generation of editors who no longer understood the realities of their own jobs, he clearly couldn’t think of anything to say.

Baroli blurted, “Get out of my office.”