C
HAPTER
E
IGHT
W
hen his landline rang at 0730, Jonathan knew that it was Venice. Only a handful of people knew the number, and of those, only she had the courage to wake him at this hour. He fingered the handset from its cradle and brought it to his ear without opening his eyes.
“I hate you,” he said. Next to him on the bed, JoeDog stretched and farted. The seventy-pound black Labrador retriever had no official home—she was the town’s dog with special dispensation from leash laws—but more times than not, when Jonathan was in town, his bed was her bed.
“And good morning to you, too.” Yep, Venice. “A stern voiceless gentleman from the FBI delivered about two tons of paper. I believe they are the files you insisted on having. You know, because we’re in a hurry. Charlie and Rick were kind enough to stack them in the War Room.”
“Have you started sorting through them yet?” When he asked that, he made sure to project a smile that was louder than his words.
“And
you
hate
me
. Right. Please shower before you come up.” The line went dead.
The instant Jonathan pulled away the covers and sat up, JoeDog was on her feet and ready to play. Or eat. Or, if all else failed, to go back to sleep again. Jonathan gave her enough of an ear rub to elicit a moan of ecstasy, and then stood. “Okay, Killer. Time to go to work.”
Thirty-five minutes later, the three
S
’s were taken care of, and JoeDog and Jonathan were climbing the stairs together. At the top, Rick Hare tossed off a two-fingered salute. “Morning, Boss. Looks like you’ve got some research to do.” A former military policeman, Rick carried a .40 caliber Glock on his hip with which he could write his name in a target at twenty-five yards. His job was to serve as the first line of defense—offense, really—if anyone tried to duplicate the attack that nearly killed Venice a while ago. The HK MP5 he wore slung across his chest would help in that effort as well.
“Hi, Rick. I understand that you got stuck with schlepping duty. Sorry about that.”
“Well, that FBI troll wasn’t going to do it, and I didn’t see Ms. Alexander doing it all on her own. That wouldn’t have been right. So me and Charlie pitched in.”
Typical of many former military noncoms, Rick had a hard time addressing superiors by their first names. “I appreciate it,” Jonathan said, suppressing the urge to chastise him for abandoning his post and cooperating in what could have been a trap. Given the bucolic nature of Fisherman’s Cove, it would have sounded outrageously paranoid. Besides, Venice should have known better.
Jonathan pressed his thumb to the print reader and winked at the camera. When the lock buzzed, he pushed the door open and entered the hive of activity that was Security Solutions. As usual, it appeared that he was the last to arrive. You got to do that when you owned the place.
“Good morning everyone,” he said to the room. A few people spoke a greeting in return, but it wasn’t necessary. Jonathan turned left inside the door and approached Charlie Keeling, another member of the guard staff. The two guards on duty split their time between guarding the front door and guarding the entrance to the Cave.
“Listen, Mr. G,” Charlie said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I owe you an apology for this morning. Rick and I never should have helped with those boxes, but I couldn’t think of another way. Won’t happen again.”
Jonathan smiled. “I appreciate that, Charlie.” All was forgiven.
“Hey, JoeDog,” Charlie said. He patted his chest with both hands—a spot on his vest just above his slung MP5—and JoeDog planted her forepaws there, thus earning another ear rub.
Charlie buzzed the door and Jonathan and JoeDog both stepped into the Inner Sanctum. The beast made a beeline for her favorite leather chair near the fireplace in Jonathan’s office while her nominal master peeled off and headed for the War Room.
The teak conference table was buried in stacks of what had to be fifty file boxes, each of them marked with a sticker from the FBI proclaiming them to be SECRET: EYES ONLY.
“Holy shit,” Jonathan said.
“Welcome to my world.” Venice sat on the far side of the stack, the top of her head barely visible. “How many times do I have to remind you to be careful what you ask for?”
Jonathan stepped to the table and peeled the lid off a box, revealing file folders. Lots and lots of file folders. “I guess I underestimated the number of her enemies.”
“Oh, I think this is a more comprehensive file than just enemies,” Venice said. “This is essentially every person Yelena Poltanov ever talked to while she was in the United States.”
Jonathan gave a low whistle. “This will take days.”
Venice didn’t answer.
Jonathan pushed up the sleeves of his sweater and started paging through the box nearest him. From what he could tell, the files were organized by date. He started fingering through a box that seemed to span the month of March, 1985—part of the month, anyway. A counterespionage agent codenamed Watchdog had been following Yelena’s every move and taking annoyingly complete notes. As a random sample, Yelena had entered the chemistry lab at 09:54 and emerged in the company of two unknown students at 11:42. From there, she’d proceeded to the campus cafeteria, arriving at 11:57.
“Oh my God,” Jonathan said. “Imagine the poor SOB who had to read through all this minutiae and analyze it.”
“Your tax dollars at work,” Venice said.
Jonathan pulled out one of the rolling chairs that surrounded the conference table and sat. “We need context,” he said. “We don’t have the time to read through this stuff cold and figure out the cast of characters.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I’ve got nothing.”
“Then keep reading.”
“Have you called in Boxers for this?” Jonathan asked.
Venice laughed. “Right. This is definitely in his wheelhouse.”
Jonathan wanted to argue, but what was the point? Boxers’ attention span in fact did not lend itself to hours of document analysis. Still, it would be nice to have the extra set—
“Bingo!” Venice announced.
“What?”
She held aloft a compact disk. “An index. I’ve been looking for it. The feds always index boxes of files like this.” She swung around to her computer terminal as she spoke, opened the cup holder, and inserted the disk. “I’ll put it up on the wall,” she said.
Her fingers tapped wildly, but for the longest time, all Jonathan saw on the screen were inconsequential numbers and figures. There were dozens of file names—maybe hundreds—but they weren’t organized, and from what Jonathan could tell, the file names themselves were unreadable. Periodically, the cursor would move and Venice would make a satisfied noise, and then the screen would change all over again. Jonathan knew from years of experience not to interrupt her when she got into the zone like this. She was on the hunt, and she’d either find her prey or she would not, but it was always a bad idea to interrupt her concentration.
Meanwhile, Jonathan amused himself by lifting another file out of a box, this one from June 13, 1986.
“Don’t get those out of order,” Venice snapped without looking up from her keyboard. “Indexes don’t do a thing if the papers aren’t in order.”
Jonathan rolled his eyes. “I promise to be careful.” This time, there were pictures. A much, much younger version of the First Lady sat in a bar with friends, her mouth open wide in a big laugh, while the three men who were with her seemed equally amused. According to the caption, the men were Peter Crenshaw, Albert Banks, and Stephen Gutowski, and the bar was the Bombay Bicycle Club in Alexandria, Virginia. Watchdog had either shot the picture from very close range, or he had a terrific telescopic lens. Either way, this was a picture of four friends having a wonderful time. It was the kind of image that every college student everywhere could have had taken of themselves at one point or another.
Crenshaw, Banks, and Gutowski were described in the narrative as frequent acquaintances of Yelena’s, but they were largely dismissed as inconsequential to the case that was being built against her. Jonathan tucked the photos back into their folder, and tucked the folder back into the spot from which he’d removed it.
Two additional random checks of files for June of 1986 showed equally boring activities, as did five random checks of July. When he reviewed the contents of the file from July 19, 1986, though, he sat a little straighter in his chair. In these photographs, Yelena was nose to nose in an intense conversation with a man who appeared to be slightly older than she. To Jonathan’s eye, they both appeared to be angry, but of course there was no way to be sure. Apparently, the FBI wasn’t using listening technology in their efforts to track Yelena’s movements. Accompanying documentation showed that the picture had been shot in a place called the Hairy Lemon, and that the man in the photo was one Leonard Baxter, a.k.a. Leonid Brava. This was apparently their seventeenth documented meeting.
Jonathan flipped to the next photo in the file, which revealed another man and a woman, Peter and Marcia Carlson, husband and wife, whose names apparently were real. While the scenery from the first photo hadn’t changed, the number of empty glasses on the table had multiplied. While the women preferred wine, the men drank clear liquor straight. None appeared to be having a very good time.
According to the narrative,
The conversation at the Hairy Lemon lasted three hours and fourteen mins. This was the seventeenth meeting of all subs. While unable to hear the words that were spoken, the conversation was animated throughout. For a short while, all subjects got angry, but then they settled down. I believe that when all the evidence is finally analyzed, it will show that an important decision was made. Photo 7.19.86–3 documents the final moments before parting. It is clearly celebratory.
Jonathan turned the page again, and the referenced photo showed all the subjects in a four-way handshake, a clear indicator of an agreement made.
The narrative continued,
Addendum added 7/24/86: On 7/23/86, twenty-five pounds of Semtex was stolen from Allied Armaments, Inc. in Radford, Virginia. Three days later, Semtex was used in a bomb that killed Soviet Attaché Yuri Brensk in his home in Arlington, Virginia. The explosion was reported to the media as a gas leak.
“Huh,” Jonathan said. He remembered that explosion, just as he remembered the media clamor to turn it into something other than a gas explosion. For a Soviet diplomat to die of a peaceful explosion—as opposed to one created by his enemies—at a time of such political flux—was a hard gap to bridge. If he remembered correctly, it took a statement from the head of ATF—the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—to eventually calm the waters.
“Okay, I’ve got something,” Venice said. “Take a look at the screen.”
At the far end of the table, the projection screen blinked, and what had been a mishmash of files was now sorted into well-defined columns.
“It seems that our friend Watchdog was one organized fellow,” Venice said. “And his worldview fell into a very convenient black-and-white division.” She used her cursor as a pointer to highlight folders as she spoke. “When we last looked at this mess, it was organized by date, showing what could be found in every folder, date by date.” She clicked and the screen changed. “Here, though, is the topical listing that takes an incident or a question and then cross-references it back to the dates where the events happened.”
Jonathan gave a low whistle. “That’s a lot of work.”
“Yes, it is. I’m guessing they did it for the prosecutors in the case so that they could find what they were looking for.” She clicked again. “But here’s the Holy Grail for us.” The screen filled with a heading that read
Cast of Characters
, below which there were two files, one labeled
Conspirators
and the other labeled
Acquaintances.
Venice clicked on the Conspirators file, and after a second or two of electronic contemplation, the computer launched a screen full of pictures and names. There were more than a few—more than would fit on the screen—but Jonathan zeroed right in on Leonid Brava and the Carlsons.
“I clearly haven’t had time to review all of this, but these appear to be the bad guys,” Venice explained.
“Click on that Brensk guy for me,” Jonathan said. This picture, like the one he’d seen in the file, showed a man who’d stepped out of KBG Central Casting. He had a round, pugilist’s face with a jet-black hairline that nearly met his jet-black eyebrows.
When Venice clicked the file open, the screen filled with personal data—name, address, phone number, place of employment, relatives, that sort of thing. When she clicked again, the screen blinked to another list of files cross-referenced to dates.
“That’s a lot of information,” Venice said. “I’ll grant that it’s well organized, but it’s still a lot.”
“Well, yes and no,” Jonathan countered. “We don’t need to try the case here. We don’t care about who they blew up or conspired to kill back in the eighties. We just need to track down the bad guys and find out where they took the First Lady.”
“Shouldn’t they all be in jail?” Venice asked.
“I think they
should
all be dead,” Jonathan said. “If they are, then we need to start looking at their friends and families. How long should the first cut take?”
Venice backed out of the files and returned to the stacked pictures. She scrolled through them. “It looks like there are eighteen,” she said. “Give me forty-five minutes.”
David Kirk had always wanted to be on television, though not in the way that so many of his classmates in J-school wanted to be there. While the others strove for fame as on-camera reporters, David wanted to find fame the way Bob Woodward or Charles Krauthammer did—by being so respected as a print reporter and columnist that the serious news shows would seek him out as the intelligent guest who could explain the news of the day. Respect was the key, and he was willing to earn it from the bottom up.