High Treason (5 page)

The man in the trench coat pulled an iPhone knockoff out of his pocket. “Do you need me to call a cop?”

“No,” David said, and the answer sounded a little too quick. “No, I’m fine. Just got a little spooked.” He cast one more look back toward the carousel to make sure that those who spooked him were still nowhere to be seen.

Trench Coat planted his fists on his hips. He wasn’t buying.

“Honest to God,” David said. The spasm was easing as he massaged the muscle. “I’m a reporter for the
Enquirer
. I was doing a story and my imagination got away from me.” As soon as the words about his employer escaped his lips, he wished he could take them back.

He rose to his haunches to give his calf a good stretch. In another few seconds, he’d be able to trust it enough to stand.

“You looked awfully scared when you were running,” Trench Coat said.

David pointed back toward the carousel. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

“But you were yelling for help.”

“Just because there’s nothing to be afraid of doesn’t mean I’m not afraid of it.”
Whatever happened to the coldhearted city dwellers who never wanted to get involved?
He reached out his hand. “Do you mind helping me up?”

Trench Coat didn’t hesitate to grasp David’s hand in a power grip, one that involved more thumb than fingers. The hand was heavily calloused. A shiver—a warning shot—launched from his tailbone to his skull. You don’t expect a guy in a thousand-dollar coat to have workingman’s hands. On a night like tonight, anything out of the ordinary was a threat.

As David shot to his feet, he pulled his hand free and thrust a forefinger at the stranger’s face, the tip coming within an inch of the man’s face. In the same instant, he yelled—shrieked, really—“Stay away from me!”

Trench Coat jumped and took a step back. “What the hell—”

“Don’t you even!” David shouted. “Just stay the hell away from me!”

“What’s wrong with you? Jesus, I was just—”

David knew that he must sound like a lunatic, but what did he care? In the worst case, the stranger really was a Good Samaritan who’d gotten his feelings hurt. In the best case, he was a potential killer who’d been startled out of his mission.

David used the momentary confusion to take off again. With his leg still sore, he looked more like he was skipping than running, but he was putting additional space between himself and the people who would do him harm.

Behind him, Trench Coat yelled, “Ungrateful piece of shit!”

David hobbled on, stepping into the paltry traffic that straggled up Constitution Avenue. In the first bit of good luck for the evening, he found a taxi within hailing range. It pulled to the curb and David climbed into the backseat. “The Riverside,” he said, pointing the cabbie to his apartment building. “Quickly.”

Taking his orders a little too literally, the cabbie swung a U-turn in the middle of the street. David had to hold on to keep from getting thrown across the bench seat. “Whoa. Easy.”

What the hell had he gotten himself into?
Goddamn you, Deeshy.
Whatever his buddy had found, it had gotten the attention of some very bad people. What had he said? Something about the Secret Service, right? And he couldn’t talk to his own commanders about it.

“Stop the car!” he commanded.

The cabbie pivoted in his seat to look through the security barrier, but he didn’t slow down.

“I said, stop.”

“Before, you said to hurry.”

“Well, I want you to stop now.”

This triggered a string of angry Urdu. But the driver stopped the cab.

David felt sick. If the attackers knew his name, then they would know where he lived. There was no way he could go home, not without knowing what was going on and making sure that it was safe. So, what was the alternative? All his stuff was in his home—everything. He didn’t even have a computer, unless you counted his iPhone, and as smart as the phone was, it was nobody’s computer.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered aloud. His phone! He’d used it to call Deeshy. If they had his phone, they had his number, and if they had his number, they could trace him. Like physically trace him. Wasn’t that how it worked?

“Hey,” the cabbie said. “You want to go someplace or not?”

“Your meter’s running,” David snapped.

“Waiting is not driving, my friend. You want to think, think outside. I make money driving.”

“Then drive,” David said. “Just not to the Riverside.”

“Where?”

“You want to wait for directions, wait. You want to drive, drive.”

The cabbie’s eyes flashed humor in the rearview mirror. David winked and the driver pulled the transmission into drive.

What the hell was he going to do? The first step, he supposed, was to turn off his phone, but would that be enough? Did turning it off make it invisible, or did he have to pull out that card, whatever the hell it was called. The SIM card, that was it. Did he have to pull that out to make it invisible? And how do you do that on an iPhone? The thing was one solid piece. As a first step, he turned the phone off.

And where was he going to stay? Having grown up in mansions, wilderness survival skills were nowhere near his wheelhouse. In David’s family, camping meant staying at the Four Seasons instead of the Ritz-Carlton.

He recognized that he might be panicking, blowing this out of proportion, but his gut told him that things were desperately wrong. Deeshy was as paranoid as they came, and he saw conspiracy in the sunrise, but this time, he was
scared
. He’d almost cried on the phone. He was
very
scared. Of the Secret Service and the police.

“Think,” he told himself. “Prioritize.” Oh, God, it had to be bad if he was channeling his father.

David needed to get off the streets. He needed to hole up somewhere in a place that would give him a measure of safety and buy him enough time to think things through rationally. But where? His parents’ place was out because that was too logical. How freaking sad was it that after a lifetime living in DC, he couldn’t think of a single person to call to take him in?

There had to be someone. Then he got it.

David leaned in close to the taxi’s security barrier as he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and withdrew a bill. “Excuse me, driver.”

The cabbie met his eyes in the mirror.

“Here’s five bucks. Can I please use your cell phone?”

The cabbie reflexively moved the phone from the center console where it lay and placed it on his lap. “No,” he said. “Use your own phone. I saw it in your hand.”

“I can’t. That probably sounds crazy, but it’s really complicated. C’mon, five bucks for one phone call. Two, actually.”

The cabbie was clearly uncomfortable with this. “I will take you to a pay phone.”

“No, no, no. You’ve got that look in your eye. The second I step out of your cab, you’ll drive away.” David pulled another bill from the wallet. “Here, then. Twenty-five dollars. For two phone calls. I could call the moon and you’d still make a couple of bucks. All I need is directory assistance and then a local call. I swear. C’mon, please let me borrow your phone.”

The cabbie studied what he saw in the rearview mirror, his eyes leaving David only to check his progress on the road. “Fifty,” he said at last.

“Fifty! For a phone call?”

“Twenty-five for the call, twenty-five to use my phone.”

This was outrageous. No wonder the world was at war with these guys. David went back to his wallet and retrieved the appropriate bills. As he handed them through the opening, he also handed the driver his iPhone. “Here,” he said. “A little extra something for your effort.”

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

T
he universe that Jonathan Grave cared about resided on Virginia’s Northern Neck of the Potomac River in a waterfront burg named Fisherman’s Cove. He’d grown up there, and as a teenager he’d fled from there, only to return many years later to prove the old saw, “lo the memories be painful, there’s no place like home.” Or something like that.

Commercial fishing still thrived in the Cove, as did the dozens of businesses that supported fishermen and their families. Thanks in no small part to anonymous deep-pocketed finagling by Jonathan over the years, the big box stores that had consumed so much of tranquil America were still far enough away to give local small businesses an even shot. Tourists streamed to the Cove during the summer months, but those who were looking to stay in a major chain hotel had to shift their sights to local establishments, including a few bed-and-breakfasts that reset the definition of peace.

There was a nightlife if you knew where to look for it, so long as said nightlife didn’t extend beyond 10:00
P.M.
Monday through Thursday and midnight on Friday and Saturday. Fisherman’s Cove was the wrong place to go looking for nightlife on Sunday.

The two most impressive structures in Fisherman’s Cove were Resurrection House—a residential school anonymously endowed by Jonathan Grave for the children of incarcerated parents—and Saint Katherine’s Catholic Church, Saint Kate’s to the locals. The two buildings sat adjacent to each other on Church Street, on the long hill that led down to the waterfront. At the end of the block, facing Water Street, sat the three-story converted firehouse that served as Jonathan’s home on the first two floors, and as headquarters for his company, Security Solutions, on the third.

To their major corporate clients, Security Solutions was a high-end private investigation company that specialized in getting information that few others could obtain. It was all done legally, but it was also done aggressively, using means that sometimes pressed and bent—but never broke—the letter of the law. When a billion-dollar merger was in play, a board of directors could never have enough information, and information was what Security Solutions specialized in.

Those were the very sorts of investigations that bored Jonathan Grave to the point of misery. His passion lay exclusively with the unspoken, covert part of the company’s operations—the part about which even his most experienced investigators—employees who had been with him for years—knew nothing. Jonathan was reasonably sure they suspected, but they all knew to keep their mouths shut and to not ask questions.

Jonathan’s 0300 missions—hostage rescue missions, in the parlance of the Unit, with which he’d served for many years—were run out of the Cave, the half of the third floor to which only a handful of people had access, and which was guarded 24/7 by retired military policemen whose longtime specialty was convincing people to stay out of places where they did not belong. Building security had been heightened enormously after an unfortunate incident several years ago when an intruder had been able to make his way inside and nearly killed Jonathan’s most valued employee.

This evening, Jonathan sat with Boxers and Venice Alexander in the War Room, the Cave’s high-tech teak conference room, talking through this business about the First Lady, trying to cobble together some semblance of a plan.

Jonathan had known Venice Alexander (it’s pronounced Ven-EE-chay) since she was a little girl, the daughter of his family’s lead housekeeper. Separated in age by an improper number of years when he was in his teens, he’d enjoyed the crush she’d had on him, and he’d been moved by the emotion she’d shown on the day he moved out.

While Jonathan was off saving the world in the United States Army, Venice had become something of a wizard—and, strictly speaking, a criminal—in things computer related. In the early days of Security Solutions, as soon as it became apparent that advanced computer skills were needed, Venice had been Jonathan’s first choice. Now, she pretty much ran the place, stimulating ones and zeroes to accomplish amazing feats.

“I don’t understand why there’s been no ransom demand,” Venice said. She looked like she wanted to be typing something on her terminal, but was frustrated that she didn’t know what to type.

“And no announcement to the media,” Boxers added. “If this was a bunch of terrorists, it seems to me that they’d be all over the airwaves announcing their prize.”

“I agree on both counts,” Jonathan said. “And those two things together tell me that this isn’t your standard kidnapping.”

“Did the White House people give you any theories at all?”

Jonathan shook his head. “No. In fact, they seemed sort of intent on not going there.”

Venice cocked her head.

Jonathan elaborated. “Call it intuition. They want us to do our own legwork. I don’t know why.”

“Didn’t you say they promised to share all the intel they gathered?”

Boxers chuckled. “Promises from a politician. Now there’s something to take to the bank.”

“Ven, I know you must have done some research since our phone conversation,” Jonathan said. “What have you come up with?”

She beamed. Finally, a chance to play with the computer. “Let’s start with the troubling details,” she said. “In the aftermath of nine-eleven, you can’t scratch your ear or pick your nose in Washington without it being recorded by a camera. But guess what.”

Jonathan was way ahead. “None of the cameras near the Wild Times Bar were working.”

“Right. Now, that could be a coincidence—”

“But I don’t believe in those,” Jonathan finished for her.

“Exactly.”

“I sense that you have a theory,” Jonathan said.

Venice’s smile grew larger. “Look at the big screen.” Her fingers worked the keys. At the far end of the rectangular conference room, an enormous television screen came to life. There was no sound, but the images showed a list of news stories from various periodicals.

“Last night’s outing to the Wild Times was far from Mrs. Darmond’s first extracurricular nighttime adventure.” She clicked through the headlines.

They went on and on.

“This is all background,” Venice explained. “I don’t know how relevant it is, but Anna Darmond is no Pat Nixon. Apparently, the public eye is not something she relishes.”

“What’s a ‘First Step’?” Boxers asked.

“The stepson,” Venice explained. “The son born before she was married. Remember when he made a point of telling the press that he voted for the other candidate?” It was big news at the time, capturing the imagination of every television comic on the planet. “And these only scratch the surface. The Darmonds make the Clintons look like lifelong lovers.”

“Among all the pundits, are there theories as to why there’s so much discord?” Jonathan asked.

Venice gave him an annoying smirk. “You really are not dialed into pop culture at all, are you?”

Jonathan smirked back. “We’ve met, right?”

“She doesn’t like his politics. She says he’s wandered from the principles he held when he first ran for Congress. She’s been very vocal. She’s even done talk shows dissing her husband. How can you not know this?”

“I stopped watching television when the morning news shows stopped doing news and started hawking movie stars. Newspapers are only half a step better.”

“I say the prez off’d her to shut her up,” Boxers said.

Jonathan shot him a look. “Are you serious?”

Big Guy shrugged with one shoulder. “Half serious, anyway.”

Venice made a puffing sound, her ultimate dismissal.

The theory actually rang as not outrageous with Jonathan. If there was one lesson he’d learned over all those years serving as Uncle Sam’s muscle—and the additional years serving as an anonymous watchdog—it was that there was no limit to the degree to which power corrupts. If the president of the United States—particularly this president of the United States, whose own cabinet had already proven itself to be murderous—needed only to kill someone to gain reelection, Jonathan could imagine that being an easy decision.

“Let’s table that theory for a while,” Jonathan said. “Any others?”

“Maybe she just wanted to get away,” Venice offered. “Having everybody assuming that she was kidnapped is way better than having the country hate her for walking away from her husband.”

“You know that would make her a murderer, right?” Jonathan asked. “People were killed in that shoot-out. If it turns out to be some kind of tantrum-inspired ruse, that would spell really bad things for her.”

“You asked for other theories,” Venice said. “That was the first one that popped into my head.”

Jonathan’s gaze narrowed. “You’ve got some back-pocket research.”

Venice smiled. “I confess that I accessed some files that Wolverine might not want to know I know about.”

Time after time, Venice proved herself to be the mistress of electrons. As an analog guy trapped in a digital world, Jonathan had no idea how she worked the magic she did, but he’d come to think of her abilities as a force of nature.

“Anna Nazarov emigrated to the United States from Russia in 1986, the year before her future—and much older—second husband first ran for Congress. She had her only child, Nicholas, eighteen months later, courtesy of Pavel Mishin, an electrician whom she never married.”

“How old was she when she arrived?” Jonathan asked.

“Sixteen, and not by much.”

“Nothing wrong with her youthful libido,” Boxers said.

“It’s that clean American water,” Jonathan said.

“Can we grow up, please?” Venice chided. “Those years marked the last desperate breaths of the Soviet Union. Her baby was a natural-born citizen, and her ticket to stay in the US of A. There’s not a lot else on the record until she met Tony Darmond on a blind date in 2002. Apparently, it was a whirlwind romance, and yada, yada, yada, she’s FLOTUS.”

Jonathan recognized the acronym for First Lady of the United States. Something in the way Venice said the yada, yada, yada rang a warning bell. “You’ve got a suspicion,” he said.

“Not a suspicion, really. Okay, yes, a suspicion. It was hard to come to the United States back in the eighties. You had to be somebody over there, but when I search her family name, I don’t really get much. She held menial jobs, but never really made an impact anywhere. Here’s a woman who sleeps with the most powerful man in the world, and all we’ve got on a major chunk of her life is generalities. That makes me suspicious.”

“Be less mysterious,” Jonathan said. “Say what’s on your mind.”

“Really, that’s it. I don’t have a larger theory. It just seems incongruous to me that the First Lady would go so . . . unexamined.”

“Well, her husband does belong to the news media’s favorite political party,” Boxers said. In the Big Guy’s mind, being a member of the media put you very close to being an enemy of the state.

“But what about the bloggers?” Venice pressed. “And the networks of the opposition? Nobody’s given this chick a hard look.”

Jonathan grinned. “But I sense that someone’s about to.”

“I’ve tried,” Venice said. “I mean, I’ve
really
tried. She sort of disappears.” She drilled Jonathan with her eyes. “Remind you of anyone you know?”

Because of his covert work, Jonathan and Boxers had both disappeared off the grid a long time ago. Jonathan laughed. “What, you think she was an operator?”

“I don’t know what I think. I really mean that. But everybody leaves a footprint. Emigrés leave a
big
footprint. Mrs. Darmond, not so much. Just seems odd to me. I don’t know if she’s a Special Forces operator or part of witness protection, but it seems very, very weird to me.”

Jonathan thought about that. These were the days of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. CNN reported on zits that appeared on celebrities’ noses. First Ladies should have complete pasts. “Are you telling me that she’s invisible for those years between having her kid and marrying the future president?”

“Essentially, yes. I can’t even find a driver’s license application.”

“How about tax returns?” Boxers asked.

“Yes. There’s a tax return for every year. Not surprisingly, I suppose, they show a geometric growth in charitable contributions after she met Darmond.”

“Feeding the poor through pure ambition,” Boxers said. “A noble and long-standing American tradition.”

Jonathan smiled. No one did cynicism better than Big Guy.

Venice continued, “I even looked for good works. Maybe she worked for a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter. There’s nothing.”

Jonathan weighed the meaning in his mind, forcing himself to assume the worst, if only because years of experience had shown him that the worst was the norm. When people disappeared from view, it was either by their own choice, or by the choice of others. In Jonathan’s case, he was a cipher in official records because of the good—and occasionally bad—works he’d performed in service to Uncle Sam. Others disappeared because of testimony they’d provided for the US attorney, and still others—think the Unabomber—disappeared because they wanted to be anonymous. Nobody—
nobody
—disappeared accidentally.

“Plus, there’s one other big thing that bothers me. The first three digits of her Social Security number are one two eight. That’s a New York series.”