The Buck Stops Here

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’m lucky you’re even willing to meet with me.”

  “I’ll do whatever I need to do to get some answers,” I said. “I mean, it isn’t all that common for a man to say he wants to marry you and then abandon you in the space of a few minutes.”

  He nodded, and in his eyes I could see pain and grief. I had to remember that he was hurting too.

  “What’s this about, Tom?” I implored, leaning forward. Our faces were mere inches from each other, and I had to resist the urge to fall into his arms. I missed him so badly!

  “We’ll talk when she’s finished,” he said, gesturing toward the door, meaning the agent who was sweeping for bugs. I nodded.

  Sitting there, his eyes studied my face as if he were memorizing it. Unable to stand his scrutiny, I closed my eyes.

  “I miss you so much,” I whispered.

  “Callie, can I hold you? Please?”

  While my mind said no, my head nodded yes. Tom moved onto the couch and pulled me into his arms, burying his face against the top of my head.

  “I love you,” he whispered, kissing my hair, my face as his lips sought mine. I loved him too. I knew that despite everything, I always would.

  When the knock came at the door, it jarred us from some other place, some other time. Tom pulled away, cleared his throat, and told whoever it was that we would be out in just a minute.

  “Agent Nelson’s all finished,” we heard Kimball say. “We can get started.”

  We stood, smoothing our clothes and hair. What on earth had possessed me—after all that had happened—to sit there on the couch, kissing Tom? Had I gone utterly insane?

  He turned to me and ran a hand over my hair, smoothing it down.

  “You have some lipstick on you,” I said softly, reaching up to wipe a smudge from his lower lip. He caught my wrist and kissed it, and then he pulled me into a long, fierce hug.

  Finally, we returned together to the conference room, where Kimball and the agent were chatting. As we stepped inside, she approached us with a handheld tool, a personal sweeper, and examined us each in turn.

  “Okay, that about wraps it up,” she said when she was finished, slipping the unit back into its case. “You’re all clear.”

  “Any problems with the room?” Tom asked.

  “Nope. Clean as a whistle.”

  “Very good.”

  Kimball saw her out while Tom and I sat at the table. He took the end spot, so I sat to his left. When Kimball returned, he closed the door and took the place at Tom’s right.

  Lifting his briefcase onto the table, Kimball rooted through it for a moment and then took out a plain manila file. He shut the case and set the file on top of it.

  “Callie Webber,” he said, reaching into his front pocket for a pair of glasses. “Thank you for meeting with us today. Well, tonight, I guess I should say.”

  He took his time unfolding his glasses and putting them on. Though my heart was hammering away in my chest, I remained silent.

  “I’m sure you want to know what’s going on,” he continued, “so I’m going to cut right to the chase.”

  He opened the file, tilting it toward himself so that I couldn’t see inside. After flipping several pages, he paused.

  “Here it is,” he said, pulling off his glasses and fixing his gaze on me. “I’m sure you’ve heard of a confidentiality agreement.”

  I nodded, wondering if they would ask me to sign one.

  “Often, a company will make you sign such an agreement as a condition of employment. Being in technology, Tom has signed more than his share over the years. There are a lot of secrets to be kept in the computer business.”

  “I’m sure there are,” I said. I glanced at Tom, but his eyes were fixed on some distant point across the room.

  “Six years and six months ago, Tom signed a confidentiality contract with the National Security Agency. Two years later, he signed an addendum to that contract. The fact that I can even tell you that such a contract exists required special permission from the agency and necessitated my presence at this meeting.”

  “I understand,” I said, though I didn’t, really.

  “In business,” he continued, “these contracts are often enforced with fines—sometimes heavy fines. You talk, you pay.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that.”

  “In Tom’s case, however, the contracts are not just enforced with fines.”

  “They’re not?”

  I looked at Tom and then back at Kimball. The lawyer was putting on his glasses again, and he skimmed the page in front of him.

  “Pursuant to section five, paragraph four,” he read, “violation of the confidential nature of this agreement subjects agent to fines not exceeding five hundred thousand dollars and imprisonment not exceeding ten years.”

  He put the paper down and pulled off his glasses.

  “Imprisonment not exceeding ten years,” he said. “That means that Tom Bennett risks up to ten years in prison if he breathes even one word to you about the facts restricted by this document.”

  I sat back in my chair, my mind spinning.

  Ten years in prison…for telling me a few secrets?

  “Callie,” Tom said, reaching for my hand. “What you overheard in the hospital in Florida were things that should never have been said. I can’t take them back, but I also can’t ever tell you what we were talking about.”

  I pulled my hand away from his grasp.

  “But Eli knew things—”

  “Eli ferreted some stuff out on his own a long time ago. I never confirmed or denied what he learned, but he found enough outside sources to gain a full understanding of the facts anyway. Because he was former NSA himself, I felt free to talk with him that day at the hospital, though I really shouldn’t have.”

  “Tom, was the ‘James’ you spoke of James Sparks?”

  Tom looked back at me, helpless.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t answer that question.”

  I stared at both men, thoroughly confused. Had they really gone to all of this trouble in order to tell me…nothing?

  “You said I have the right to know the truth.”

  “You do have the right to know the truth,” he replied. “But I can’t be the one to give it to you. Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve pulled every string, spoken to every legal expert at my disposal, exhausted every option I have. My hands are tied.”

  “So what does this mean?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer. “Is there someone else I can talk to? Kimball?”

  The lawyer shook his head.

  “Tom sought my counsel on this matter, and I’m sorry to say that I also have exhausted every avenue available to us. He is under a strict gag order. That’s the long and short of it.”

  “I’m so confused,” I said, appealing to Tom. “You know you can trust me. Why can’t you tell me these things you think I have a right to know? Why, in the privacy between the two of us, can’t you say what’s going on?”

  “Because I signed a contract,” he said simply. “Because I gave my word.”

  I shook my head, closing my eyes.

  “No one would ever know,” I said, shame coursing through my veins even as I uttered the words. “I wouldn’t tell.”

  “You can’t know that,” he replied simply. “You can’t know what you might do with this particular knowledge.”

  My heart pounded in anger, frustration—and fear. Just what sort of information did he have?

  “I’m so sorry, Callie.”

  I looked down at my hands in my lap. His apology was not sufficient. “So who’s been following me for the last ten days?” I demanded. “Am I under some sort of round-the-clock NSA surveillance?”

  “Actually, that’s the FBI,” Tom said. “The NSA isn’t allowed to do domestic surveillance. The FBI sometimes works on their behalf.”

  “But why?”

  “Just to keep tabs on you. Just to make sure you stayed local until some decisions we
re made about how much, if anything, I would be allowed to tell you. You can’t know how sorry I am that this is the final, official word on things.”

  The final word? Not very likely.

  I thought of Pastor George and what he might tell me to do at this moment, and then I remembered my list of questions.

  “Hold on,” I said, reaching into my pocket. “I’m going to ask you some questions. You’re going to answer the ones that you can.”

  Neither man responded as I pulled out the list of questions I had scribbled in the prayer garden. Hands shaking, I read the first one.

  “Tom, did you know Bryan?”

  Tom looked surprised by my question.

  “No. Gosh, Callie. No.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “Was my husband’s death an accident?”

  “As far as I know, yes,” he said earnestly.

  “Was Bryan…” I felt myself faltering. “Was Bryan involved with the NSA in some way?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Prior to his death, was Bryan involved with James Sparks in some way?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Is there anything I didn’t know about my husband?” I asked, hating the words even as I said them. “I mean—you know what I mean.”

  Tom clasped his hands together on the table.

  “Callie, let me say something. Bryan was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was an innocent victim of a terrible accident. He had no ties with the agency and his death was not intentional.”

  “And there’s nothing else that connected him to you?”

  Tom hesitated, looking at the lawyer and then back at me.

  “Not prior to his death, no,” he said.

  Not prior to his death. I thought about that, about all of the unspoken implications. If Tom and Bryan were not connected prior to Bryan’s death, then they must have been connected after his death. For the life of me, I couldn’t guess what that meant.

  I tried a different approach.

  “Tom, do you know James Sparks, the man who killed my husband?”

  Tom didn’t reply, so I looked up at him. Clearly, there was anguish on his face.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  Our eyes held. My instincts had been right. James Sparks was the man Tom had spoken of in the hospital, when he said James may be the one behind bars, but all of our lives irrevocably were changed that day.

  “How did you meet him?”

  “Um…we were introduced.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “About ten years.”

  “What was your connection with James Sparks at the time of Bryan’s death?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t answer that question.”

  “Do you still keep in contact with him?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t answer that question.”

  I let out a frustrated breath.

  “What about me?” I asked. “How is it that you came to offer me a job?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t—”

  I held up a hand to stop him, a cold shudder coursing through me.

  “It’s no coincidence that I work for you, is it?” I asked. “My position here, with this foundation, was it somehow…engineered?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Tom said. “I…I created this foundation with you in mind, yes.”

  “With me in mind? What does that mean?”

  “I knew I wanted to hire you. I knew you were the right person for the job.”

  “A job you sought me out for,” I said. “Even before you hired me, you knew who I was, you knew all about my husband’s death, and in fact you knew the man who killed him.”

  “Yes.”

  I could feel my face burning with anger.

  “What about our relationship, Tom? Our personal relationship? Was that preordained too?”

  Tom surprised me by standing and going to the door and opening it. At first he didn’t answer my question. Then he said, “Kimball, could you excuse us for a minute?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Please, just for a minute.”

  Without reply, the lawyer put the file back into the briefcase and stood.

  “I’ll be in the hall,” he said.

  Five

  I listened as the door shut with a soft thud, leaving Tom and me alone in the room.

  “Do you remember Wendell Smythe?” he asked me suddenly. “My friend in Pennsylvania?”

  I thought back to last September, nine months ago, when Tom sent me to deliver a grant to a friend of his in Philadelphia. When I showed up with the check, I found the man dead on the floor behind his desk. As a favor to Tom, once Wendell’s death was classified as a homicide, I investigated and found his killer.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Do you remember when you went to his funeral? How much it upset you?”

  I nodded. I could remember the whole thing vividly. Wendell’s widow, Marion, had arranged for a singer to perform the hymn “It Is Well” at the gravesite. Still grieving for my own late husband, it had been difficult for me to handle the funeral, but when that song began, I simply lost it. I sobbed my way through most of the service, crying not for Wendell’s survivors, whom I hardly knew, but for myself and my own loss, my own pain. It wasn’t until later that I learned Tom had also been at that funeral. He hadn’t identified himself or told me hello, he said later, because it didn’t seem like the right time. Though at that point we had become good friends through our phone conversations, we continued with only a long-distance relationship for some months more. He had left that day without ever telling me he was there.

  “Something happened to me at that funeral,” he said, sitting down in his chair.

  “Something happened?”

  “I fell in love with you,” he said. “I didn’t expect it. I didn’t want it. But at that point you and I were already such good phone friends. When I saw you in person, everything changed. But then I saw you crying so hard, and I knew this could never be.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there was too much between us, too much that you couldn’t know.”

  I turned my face up toward the ceiling, wishing I could just reach down Tom’s throat and pull the truth out.

  “Then why did you come to see me at my home two months later?” I demanded. “Why did you come to me again when I was in North Carolina and sweep me off my feet?”

  “I couldn’t help myself, Callie. I fought it long and hard, but a part of me just wouldn’t let go. I thought if we could give our relationship a chance, maybe none of this other stuff would matter.”

  “But it does matter.”

  “Yes, it does. In my heart, I always knew it would.”

  “And so that’s the end of it. Of us.”

  He leaned forward onto the palms of his hands.

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  “Tom, you are somehow connected with the death of my husband. Am I simply supposed to forget that, to go on through life without ever knowing what that connection was or what you had to do with it?”

  “I said I couldn’t personally tell you the facts about Bryan’s death. I didn’t say you couldn’t learn them some other way.”

  I sat back, thoroughly confused, trying to understand what he was saying. He looked toward the door and then back at me, an imploring expression on his face.

  “You want me to investigate,” I whispered suddenly, sounding as stunned as I felt. “You can’t tell me what’s going on yourself, so you want me to figure it out on my own.”

  He was silent, but I could almost detect a slight nod of his head.

  “That’s what you’re implying, isn’t it?” I pressed. “You think I can learn the truth some other way.”

  Again, he did not speak, but I could tell from his expression that I was correct.

  “You overestimate my abilities, Tom,” I protested softly, glancing toward the door. “I can’t go up against the NSA.”


  “Maybe you don’t have to,” he said. “Sometimes there’s more than one way to get at the facts. Eli did it. I think you can too.”

  I simply stared at him, flummoxed. After all these years of asking me to respect his privacy, now he wanted me to investigate him? In my entire life, I had never undertaken a full investigation simply on behalf of myself. Could I do it? Could I treat this like any other investigation and get down to the facts of the matter?

  More importantly, if I did, what would happen then?

  “Tom, if I knew the truth, the whole truth, about Bryan’s death,” I said, faltering, “would you and I have a future together? Could we go on, as a couple?”

  He took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

  “I don’t know, Callie,” he said finally. “I just don’t know. But at least with all of the facts out in the open, we could make that decision together.”

  Without another word, he rose and went to the door, letting the lawyer back into the room. The meeting ended soon after that. There wasn’t much more to say, really, so Tom offered to wait while I put away the projector and gathered my things. Kimball stayed with us the whole time, and I had a feeling he was starting to have his doubts about Tom’s ability to keep silent in this matter. Maybe the man hadn’t realized how much love was there between us until he saw it firsthand. What he didn’t understand was that Tom truly was a man of his word. If he had promised not to talk, he wouldn’t talk. It was as simple as that, whether the threat of a prison sentence hovered in the balance or not.

  We all stepped outside into the darkness, and with a surge of guilt I realized that Harriet and Margaret were still probably cooling their heels over at the Red Rooster, waiting to make sure I was okay. I locked the door to the foundation office and then allowed the two men to walk me to my car. As we went I used my cell phone to call Harriet; I told her that all was well and that she really could go home now. She could tell by my voice that I wasn’t alone, and she made me promise to call her later and fill her in. Little did she know, there was absolutely nothing from our meeting that I would be able to tell her about.