Switchback Stories (4 page)

‘On my way inside, then,’ Carpenter said to both of them. ‘You ready, Sam, for these arty, moody scenes you want?’

‘At last, recognition for my work. I’m ready.’

‘We’ll see you tomorrow morning,’ Alison said, ‘back on the Hill, second day of the shoot.’

‘Take care.’ Carpenter gave a wave and headed down the driveway to his front door.

• • •

Through his telescopic lens, the unit leader watched as Carpenter entered the house and the TV news vehicle drove off.

‘Carpenter’s inside. Coast clear.’ His voice was loud and clear on the communicators of each member of the team surrounding the house.

As he had every other night for the past two months, the leader observed the front and side window. The shadow seen through the curtained windows enabled him to discern Carpenter’s regular routine, as he went first to his kitchen, and then walked past those windows through to his living room.

They would wait a short while, just enough time for Carpenter to unwind, his energy levels relaxed, and then they would pounce.

The leader called his employer.

On the other side of the city, Guiterrez’s phone rang.

‘The target’s in place. We’re ready.’

‘Let me know when it’s done,’ Guiterrez said.

C
arpenter fixed himself a Scotch with ice, took a sip, savoured the taste and its calming effect, and then walked through to the spacious lounge area. Double glass doors led out onto a rear balcony that had a partial view of the Potomac River.

Carpenter stood at those doors for a moment, looking out at the moonlight dappling those waters.

He’d made a real connection with Alison Reslin. It wasn’t hard to sense she was drawn to him. The feeling was mutual.

He glanced around the room, at the paintings on the wall that had once hung in his mother’s gallery. As always, his eyes settled last on the painting that hung, pride of place, above the main mantelpiece.

The painting, his favourite, was an ethereal depiction of a chameleon. The artist had captured, in the creature’s eyes, a look that was simultaneously wild, majestic, intelligent and mysterious.

The skin colour changed from one tone to another, matching the brush strokes of shifting colors in the mosaic-like background.

Carpenter briefly stroked the surface of his medallion, his right forefinger tracing the finely engraved ridges of its silver chameleon.

• • •

The unit leader gave the command.

One of the two man teams would enter the premises while the others maintained their positions, guarding the exits.

From his vantage observation point at the front, the unit leader activated an alarm signal jamming device. It generated a signal that prevented the sensors from transmitting to the alarm panel.

The team that moved forward to the side entrance used specialized tools to dismantle the lock cylinder while it was still in the door.

When they retreated, with Carpenter, they would simply close the door, reconfigure the lock, and the alarm signal jam would be de-activated.

There would be no sign of forced entry.

The team wore dark, nondescript outfits, designed with materials that didn’t shed fibres.

There were no CCTV cameras in the street.

There would be no indication that there’d been anyone other than Carpenter in the house.

They moved with the speed and the stealth of panthers and were inside the house within minutes.

The house was dark but their night goggles gave perfect vision. Their tranquilizer guns were at the ready.

As always, surprise was the best form of attack. Carpenter would be knocked out by the drug before he even knew there was anyone else in his home.

The team leader moved to the side of the living room entryway, and peered in to the room.

No sign of his target.

Gun raised and aimed, he swept into the room, swivelling as he did so and covering all points.

No-one.

There were remnants of Scotch and ice in the empty glass on the coffee table.

Damn. Carpenter was somewhere else in the house.

The second man was by the entryway, keeping vigil on the area behind them.

No sound.

They pulled out the heat sensors. The devices detected body heat within a wide radius, taking in the whole of the house.

‘Not possible,’ muttered the second man.

Apart from the two of them, there was no other body heat detected in the house.

‘Faulty,’ the senior man said.

He indicated the floor above and the other man nodded.

They searched every room in the house, every cupboard or potential hiding space, the balcony, the basement, the attic, the garage, and the interior and trunk of Carpenter’s car.

The unit leader was rarely surprised by anything but he didn’t expect the report that came over his communicator from the team leader.

‘No sign of Carpenter in the house.’

‘All teams report,’ the unit leader snapped.

Each team responded the same. Carpenter had not been sighted at any of the exit points nor on the grounds, and all of the heat sensing equipment gave the same results.

Carpenter had been in the house for less than half an hour. There was no other way in or out.

Across town, Guiterrez was stunned when he received the call. ‘Search again,’ he barked into his cell phone, ‘and have the teams scan the surrounding streets and parkway, just in case.’

The result was the same.

The unit leader had never seen anything like this before.

Carpenter had simply vanished into thin air.

Where the hell was he?

I
t was not the morning Nancy Yates was expecting but it was one she would never forget.

Within fifteen minutes she received three calls, one from the chauffeur booked to pick Carpenter up from his home at 7.30. He’d waited but Carpenter hadn’t come out of the house or responded to calls. The second call from the congressman, who’d been expecting Carpenter for a breakfast meeting. The third call from Alison Reslin, due to start filming, wondering where he was.

Nancy tried calling him over and over, leaving messages. This wasn’t like Matthew. Something unexpected must’ve occurred, but why hadn’t he phoned her?

By 9
A.M.
she started to panic and was placing calls to every single colleague that Carpenter had, to see if he’d been in contact with any of them. Then she called the police.

Alison and Sam were on the spot, filming – with Nancy beside them – as the police forced entry to the house, fearing Carpenter had suffered a collapse and was lying alone in one of the rooms.

The regular practice of waiting twenty four hours before acting on a missing person was cast aside. This was a high priority case and the Chief Of Police intervened. An APB was issued and a city-wide police search was underway.

By late morning the news media erupted with the first reports that Matthew Carpenter had disappeared, and speculation began that he’d been the victim of a “hit” by the drug cartels.

‘T
his is the precise result we didn’t want,’ said the bald-headed man. ‘Carpenter’s name and his Initiative being taken up and championed to even greater levels, a martyr to the cause.’

It was a week since the disappearance that had become one of the biggest news stories of the year.

This meeting had been hastily reconvened, with just a few of the key members. The others had returned to their respective States and countries several days earlier.

‘Could he still be in that house? In an attic or a hidden safe room?’ the bald-headed man pressed the point.

‘The heat sensing equipment is definitive,’ Guiterrez said. ‘Neither Carpenter or any other living human being, apart from our team, was anywhere in the house or on the grounds. We had detailed long-range surveillance on the nearby parkland and surrounding streets, homes and vehicles, and we’ve kept all of that in place. And the police are, of course, conducting their own searches and maintaining a watch on the house.

‘There is no sign whatsoever of Carpenter.

‘In the week since he vanished he hasn’t accessed his bank accounts or credit cards. He hasn’t secretly been in contact with the woman who runs his office or with any of his colleagues. We’ve got extensive monitoring throughout the Capital to make certain we know if he surfaces.’

‘What about relatives?’ asked one of the others.

‘Carpenter has no living relatives,’ Guiterrez said. ‘No girlfriend, no particularly close friends, and he hadn’t been in contact with any of his old uni buddies for at least a few months.’

‘Could he have known we were coming for him that night?’

‘No. There are no leaks in the operation, and our surveillance ops are the best. Undetectable.’

‘This thing is the biggest national news story in years,’ Bald Man said. ‘How do we contain it?’

‘Our best and it seems our only remaining option,’ said Guiterrez, ‘is to find out what happened to Carpenter. Once we do that we can formulate a plan.’

‘And how the hell do we do that when the man vanished into thin air?’

‘We’re bringing in an international team, best of the best, who work for the European cartels. They claim they can track anyone, anything, anywhere. In the meantime, we can only hope the support for Carpenter eventually dies down. We all know this past week hasn’t been good. Carpenter is a martyr, a national hero.

‘His Initiative has been very publicly embraced by a group of senators, from both sides of politics, led by Senator Bill Harris from Ohio.

‘Nancy Yates, the woman who runs the Initiative office, has announced the campaign will continue, drawing on the strength of Harris, and from the pro bono contributions of a group of lobbyists and lawyers, all colleagues and friends of Carpenter. They intend to see the Bill drafted and passed through the Senate.’

‘And all we can do is bring in some alternative black ops mob to search for a ghost?’ The bald-headed man was ready to explode with frustration.

Guiterrez stared back. He could barely contain his anger that this derailment had occurred on his watch. If he could have found Carpenter, right then and there, he would have happily placed his hands around the lobbyist’s neck and strangled him to death.

T
he
Capitol Views
program went to air with ‘live’ coverage from Capitol Hill, where people lined the streets outside the Senate, quietly holding up small flags imprinted simply with a photograph of Matthew Carpenter.

The footage was accompanied by Alison Reslin’s voice-over: ‘Today, on the third anniversary of Matthew Carpenter’s disappearance, thousands of people attended the annual vigil, a tribute to the dynamic lobbyist whose influence has spread far and wide.’

The image on nation-wide screens switched to Alison in the studio.

‘And it’s a historic moment, as the Government this morning made a special announcement regarding The Carpenter Initiative.

‘While controversy still rages around the proposed Bill, the Senate has passed an interim proposal for a special project – a trial run – for a smaller-scale Anti-Drug Military Unit. Operating within the existing armed forces, the Unit – comprising specialists in law enforcement, psychological profiling and foreign diplomacy experts, will undertake a series of targeted investigations. A further analysis will then be made for a larger-scale operation.

‘Whilst it is a watered-down version of Carpenter’s vision, supporters say it nevertheless represents an important first step.’

After the program, Alison walked back into the office she now occupied as the lead reporter and the ‘face’ of the high rating
Capitol Views
.

Sam was lounging in the corner, looking over the printouts strewn across a side bench.

Alison and cameraman Sam had been a team for a long time.

Sam worked with Alison on all her upcoming news stories, but he hadn’t seen these papers before.

‘You planning something on DC’s prohibition-era history?’ he said, looking up as Alison entered.

‘You remember when we started shooting that week-in-the-life on Carpenter?’ she said. ‘As part of that I was planning a look at Carpenter’s early years, at his family’s history, and the history of that old house and the Georgetown area.’

‘Yeah, I remember. The week-in-the-life that ended up being the last-day-before-he-vanished doco.’

‘I’ve been thinking of going back to that idea, doing it as part of a new special on Carpenter.’

‘And it would be a good time,’ Sam said, ‘third anniversary, and now this Government announcement.’

‘Exactly.’

Sam cast his eyes back over the papers. ‘Fascinating period. I’ve just been looking at some of this Prohibition stuff you’ve amassed.’

‘I was interested in the illegal liquor at the speakeasies, particularly Chicago and Jersey, where there was a lot of police corruption.’

‘Why the interest?’

‘Because my research uncovered an interesting fact. Back in the 20’s the Carpenter home was owned by a powerful Washington councillor, John Rogerston, who ran a speakeasy in the house. I believe he copied many of the practices being used in those other cities. The Georgetown area was nowhere near as built up back then, and no-one suspected reputable politicians of anything illegal. It looked from afar that he was just fond of having parties there.’

‘But it was a full-on speakeasy, probably frequented by all sorts of his luminaries,’ Sam suspected.

‘You got it. Later on, 1932, he was exposed and arrested for a whole host of things, bootlegging, tax evasion, money laundering.’

‘I can see the irony,’ Sam said. ‘Ninety odd years later the same house’s owner is the creator of the Anti-Drug Initiative, one of the biggest news stories of the decade. What an angle. And it’s being used as a halfway house for ex-addicts now, isn’t it? Run by the woman who used to run Carpenter’s office?’

‘Yes. I’m heading over there a little later to have a catch-up with her.’

On his way out of the office, Sam was aware of Alison scooping the papers up and into a folder, which she placed in her briefcase.