One Last Scent of Jasmine (Boone's File Book 3) (13 page)

Boone made it down to the hotel’s ground floor and had her hand on the latch of the glass door leading into the deserted spa when her phone buzzed to signal an incoming text.
Bloody hell. Who is this?

Navigating her thumb to her messaging app, she began to open the panel partitioning off the gym. Seeing the sender as the ODNI messaging server, however, she removed her other hand to allow the entrance door to swing back into place. Boone opened the SMS text message:  “LEVEL ORANGE HAS BEEN DECLARED. ALL ESSENTIAL ODNI PERSONNEL ARE TO REPORT IMMEDIATELY.” The SCO turned, deciding on the stairs rather than a potential wait for the elevator.
Someone at Terry’s level or above has declared a governmental emergency.

The USIC Senior Case Officer walked through the doors of ODNI less than an hour later. Observing Bradley’s office to be already open, Boone knew she was the second responder. She made a beeline for his door, not bothering with the usual settling-in routine of ditching her coat and bag. Her boss sat at his desk, apparently watching live news feeds from multiple sources via his computer.

“Terry … what’s happening?”

Glancing up, he lowered the volume a bit. “Delmar Givens was found this morning—by a mother and her kids—dead in Fort Marcy Park.”

Boone blinked, disbelieving. It took her a moment to formulate a response. “Isn’t dumping the bodies of Administration officials there considered trite by now?”

Bradley was less than amused. “It has the appearance of a suicide, from the first reports.”

“Who is on the scene?” Boone asked, approaching his desk. Flipping windows via his keyboard, Bradley answered, “McLean has just handed it off to National Park Police and FBI on site.”

Her hand gripped her bag. “Who’s the agent in charge?”

Another deft stroke of the keys and he had her answer. “Ed Catania. He’s assigned to the DARIUS investigation as well.”

Yeah, Terry, I know. I wish I could have told you.
She feigned a moment of consideration although she wanted to be in motion already. “Terry, I know Eddie. I should evaluate the scene. We have plausible cause for interest.” Looking up, she could perceive his accepting her suggestion.

“Agreed,” he allowed. “
Orange
might not last the morning. The incident seems not to have been a precursor for anything unfortunate. Go ahead. I will wait out the interim.”

Thanks, Terry.
“On my way,” she acknowledged. Turning for the door, Boone found she was glad for having listened to her instincts and donned black.

Fort Marcy Park was less than five miles from the campus. Between the raven and reinforced Escalade she was driving and her USIC identification, Boone got past the Park Police as they cordoned off the entrance to the public lot. Most of the spaces within were taken up by an assembly of official vehicles. Boone parked on the periphery and strode purposefully toward the yellow crime-scene tape providing another barrier at the transition of asphalt to grass.

“USIC ODNI,” she informed more Park cops who might or might not have known what her parent organization was. Her confidence, ID and tone proved convincing enough, however, for them to nod and lift the tape up for her.

The scene was not hard to pick out. As Boone came closer, she saw a dead man in his fifties sitting on a park bench, staring up at the morning sky with his gun in hand on his lap and an amazed expression on his face. She watched forensic photographers snapping frame after frame from varying angles, documenting the sight.
Not the last likeness I would want to leave behind.
Judging from the location of his wound, at least Del Givens had died instantly
.
Nearby she spied Eddie having an animated conversation with a younger, larger and far slimmer Park Police supervisor.

“Lieutenant, you damned well
will
accommodate the Bureau on this one, if you don’t want to call down a shitstorm that’s gonna last from now until Martin Luther King Day.”

“I don’t appreciate your language, Agent Catania. As I said before, my Captain is addressing the jurisdictional question right now. I insist your people will
not
proceed without his authorization.”

“Eddie. Take a break,” Boone called, for the sake of her friend and Special Agent’s blood pressure as much as her appetite for his assessment.

Catania glanced her way and then to the resolute Park Police official, shaking his head. After a moment he stomped the few yards to her position, just out of the way of the photographers. “Hey, Boone. Fancy seeing you here.”

The small woman in black did her best to look unconcerned. “So what can you tell me, Eddie?”

Motioning with both hands, he answered, “What you see is what I know. Nine-millimeter derringer, a hundred fifty bucks in any pawnshop. We checked with his family, apparently he never mentioned owning the thing … but the trace said he bought it in Virginia two weeks ago. No note, here or at home. They say he seemed distracted over the last couple days.”

“I imagine a Senior Advisor to the President would seldom be anything but,” Boone commented. She sighed. “Oh, Eddie … why am I not buying into this?”

“Probably because you’re big on current events—all happening in McLean. It’s been a heavy local news cycle lately, ya gotta admit.”

Eddie’s being discreet. He still plays well with others
. “Does the Bureau always pile your cases on this hot, heavy, and high,
paisan?
”

Catania looked into her eyes. “Not if it turns out to all be goin’ in the same folder, ya know what I mean?”

“Good point,” Boone clipped.
On Friday the Administration loses a minor staffer burglarizing a defense contractor. On Saturday one of the President’s insiders caps himself after visiting what’s becoming the D.C. equivalent of a Japanese suicide forest. Connecting these dots is a game even stupid kids can win. Speaking of …
“So when does the connection go out to the press?” Boone asked in a nonchalant if conspiratorial tone.

“Pretty much as we speak. Word came down to CID this morning we’ll treat it as we would any other case.” Eddie looked back at the remains of Delmar Givens, Senior Advisor to the President of the United States. “This bit,” he said, gesturing toward the crime scene, “is gonna make it a story.”

“Or an explanation,” Boone observed, cool as the weather.
FBI still has most of the stand-up guys left in government. Kudos on nutsack content, fellas.

The FBI Special Agent nodded his agreement. “One way or the other, kid,” Catania pointed again to the corpse on the bench. “whoever started all this got a ball is responsible for a man bein’ dead. That’s the person who I wanna find.”

“Me too, Eddie. Me too.”
And the info ever going public might depend on which one of us gets there first.

Chapter 8 - Control Issues

The White House West Wing

Washington, D.C.

“What a bloody mess this is. What a stupid, tragic, utterly senseless day,” Valka Gerard said, having been alerted by the same Level Orange advisory which had so many key players in the government reporting this Saturday. She sat at her desk on her side of the jointly occupied Office of the Senior Advisor to the President. The woman bit her knuckle and watched the breaking story of not only her colleague’s death, but also his apparent involvement in criminal activity on the property of one of the U.S. military’s largest defense contractors.

With her in the office was Bobbi Wetzel, who served both as the Director of Strategic Initiatives and a Deputy Assistant to the President.
This is History … and we’re seeing it happen right before our eyes
. Wetzel experienced the thought often, working as she did in such close proximity to some of the most powerful people on the planet. She glanced to the obviously distraught Valka Gerard. The short woman with the bobbed, white hair was universally regarded as one of those … as one of the true powers here. Wetzel had watched Senators walk out of the woman’s office in a daze, stunned after a dressing-down.
She had so many responsibilities before Del’s death … and with this even more is riding on her shoulders.
Roberta Wetzel drew a heavy breath. “Val, it’s a shock to all of us. We have to think about the President. We have to do our jobs.”

Gerard’s hands dropped, balling into fists on her lap as the ForwardNews live feed droned on in the background. The Senior Advisor nodded, her face regaining her usual, resolute demeanor. “You’re right, of course, Bobbi. I’m so glad you’re here today.”

As one of Gerard’s subordinate units, Wetzel’s group—Strategic Initiatives—dealt with any issue affecting the political standing of their President. “Have you talked to the Man?” the younger woman inquired.

Shaking her head, Gerard answered, “Not officially. Off the record, we’ve agreed there needs to be a firewall … for a distance to be kept … for a while anyway, until we see how this situation will shake out.”

Wetzel found herself wrapping her arms around her own thin frame. “What
is
going to happen, Val?”

Gerard’s pale-blue eyes took on a positively icy glint. “I’ll tell you,” she almost growled, staring at the distant flat-panel television. “Right now, some low-level weekend warrior at
FN
is taking the opportunity to advance his or her career, while the prime-time anchors and their usual daytime counterparts are still on their way into the city.”

Her words were always worth the time it took to listen. They chilled Roberta Wetzel even more today.

The Senior Advisor went on. “In a few minutes, one of them will dredge up the sound bite from Seoul.” The cold glare of the President’s longtime political ally turned to focus on her junior colleague. “We will have speculation of Del’s involvement in this business with DARIUS and the President’s offhand remark being somehow related. We'll see a rehash complete with the video. The damage done, and the bones made, their little shit will retire to the background, smirking about the points garnered while our President takes the hit. By then, the senior journalists will be on-camera, and we can start to breathe a little easier until the time comes to follow up. It will not be until then—once we have our position on the matter distributed—that we can put the entire matter to bed and start the next news cycle.”

As if on queue, the blonde anchoring
FN
’s Saturday special broadcast turned to another of the network’s reporters.
This
one the junior woman in Gerard’s office could not remember at all, despite swimming in a sea of current events for a living. Gerard raised the remote and then the volume of the television.

“Jack, I understand you have a report on growing speculation saying this morning’s tragic death of Delmar Givens is about to be tied to a very recent break-in at a Washington-area weapons-development firm?”

“Marla, that’s
exactly
what we are hearing. As you know, this spring in Seoul, the President had an open-mic incident—”

In a flash Gerard angrily snapped off the power to the set. “Little
shit
. What did I just tell you?”

“Val, we have to get on top of this, fast,” Wetzel implored.

“It’s your job, Bobbi. Suggestions?”

The Director of Strategic Initiatives thought the matter through. “We have to insulate the President, obviously. We’ll do this by providing the clearest picture we can of the proper narrative.” She looked at the expectant Gerard. “Del was a former chair of the PIAB.”
That’s it … the definite explanation the press will want.

His most recent appointment prior to Special Advisor status, on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board Givens had acted as a buffer between USIC oversight and the Office of the President. Working closely with so many dark elements of not only the government’s intelligence organs, but also those of foreign powers, Wetzel figured, had undoubtedly led to an unfortunate arrangement with one or another of them.
Del had become aware of the potentially lucrative nature of DARIUS missile defense technology, and obviously went rogue.

“He could have retained any number of entanglements which returned to haunt him later.” Wetzel continued to grow her narrative. Suddenly aware of her gaze into the distance, she refocused on Valka Gerard. “The temptation to cash in on an intel windfall got the better of him. Being leveraged into involvement in a data breach at DARIUS could easily have been the result of one of those past associations. We can leak enough of Del’s past ties to intelligence types to make the meme fly.”

“And it gives the
next
little shit a story to run down—one which will take long enough to develop it will get lost in the current of more clearly enunciated items.” Gerard nodded her head in a slow and contemplative fashion. Afterward, a hint of a smile reappeared. “This will do, Bobbi. Run with it.” The decision, as typical for the Senior Advisor, had come quickly.

“I’m
on
it, Val.” Wetzel pivoted to reclaim her coat and bag from the chair near Gerard’s door. The Deputy Assistant’s brainstorm meant she had just drawn a long weekend of work in the Eisenhower building …
but how often will I get the chance to save a Presidency?
Agility was everything in Washington politics. The key to survival was to ready acceptable answers to questions which had not yet been asked. It was time to assemble a buffet line of responses long enough to feed a hungry press pool.

Valka Gerard spent the remainder of the morning digging into the security briefing summary of the overnight incident at DARIUS, since the press seemed determined to link the break-in to Del’s suicide.
Something is different here.

She referenced an earlier edition sitting farther down the stack in her overloaded e-mail Inbox. Scanning the summary item again, the discrepancy jumped out at her. There was no initial identification of the bodies due to a lack of documents at the scene. Switching back to the current revision, she found the explanation.
Ah, so Del’s employee just happened to have his wallet slip out of his pocket and hide itself under a server cabinet. Of course it did,
the cynical thought came.
That sort of thing happens all the time.