Power Play (An FBI Thriller)

by Catherine Coulter

  “You know I can’t, but I’ll try.”

  “Davis, look. Your being there at that shopping mall at that particular moment—the way you dealt with Jitterbug—to me it was a sign.”

  Now he was a sign? He said, “You weren’t at all afraid of Jitterbug, not for an instant.”

  “Not after I realized he wasn’t one of them, that he was only a pathetic addict who needed to be punched in the head. Or elsewhere.”

  Them? He said nothing, only looked at her. She blinked first, nodded. “All right, I’ll speak to your boss, but only if you agree to do something for me first.”

  Now he was negotiating with an ambassador. “You want me to dismiss my harem?”

  She laughed, actually laughed. “I want you to come with me tonight to a function at the secretary of state’s house. It’s a show of solidarity to invite me, and a sort of testing of the waters as well. If Arliss and I hadn’t been friends for more than half our lives, I think she’d have asked me to resign herself by now with outward regret and inward good riddance. But she wants to go the extra mile. I want you to come with me, as my escort and bodyguard.”

  Why didn’t she want Hooley going with her? Well, okay, dumb question—Hooley would stick out like a shark in a fishbowl. He looked like what he was, a wrecking ball, and he’d maim anything or anyone with the poor judgment to set the Enterprise down within three feet of Natalie Black.

  “I’m not trained as a bodyguard.”

  “I’ve seen you in action, Agent Sullivan. You don’t get excited and go off the deep end, you do what you have to do, nothing more. If there was an attacker, you’d deal with him, then you’d remove him from the premises, no one the wiser.”

  Davis liked her, really liked her, and he didn’t want her to be hurt. “Is your daughter going with you? From the looks of Ms. Biker Babe, she’d keep you safe.”

  “Perry is not a diplomat, so it wouldn’t work. I’m afraid if someone threatened me or even made a snide remark, I might end up seeing her give me her heartbreaker smile while she stood over a bleeding body.

  “She’ll be there, though. Actually, she’s coming with the secretary of state’s son. And that’s another reason Arliss doesn’t want to cut me loose. Her son, Day, would blow a fit. You see, Day and Perry were practically raised together. I used to think of them as brother and sister, but now, well, maybe they’ll get married, but I’m by no means sure yet, since Perry’s a clam on the subject.”

  Davis ruminated, then gave it up. “All right, tonight I’ll be your bodyguard with the understanding that first thing tomorrow, you speak to my boss, Agent Dillon Savich. Shall we shake hands?”

  She gave him a patrician down-the-nose stare, but he stared back. He knew all it would take would be for her to be with Savich for two minutes to change her mind. Davis wondered if Hooley would think Savich was a pretty-boy tool. Somehow he didn’t think so.

  “Very well,” she said, rose, and stuck out her hand.

  Washington Post offices

  1150 15th Street NW, Washington, D.C.

  Tuesday, late afternoon

  Bennett John Bennett was a ferocious linebacker at Ohio until he wrecked his knee during a snowboard competition at Squaw Valley. After a six-month funk he decided that writing about sports was the way to go, since playing pro ball wasn’t in his future. Now he was the top sports editor at the Post, had four flat-screen TVs in his living room all set to sports channels, and was lucky enough to have a very tolerant wife. He was picked for his job because he was smart and focused and dealt with his staff like a magician with his deck of cards.

  He now looked around at each of them in turn. “We’ve got a situation here—any of you read Walt Derwent’s tweet from half an hour ago that just came up on ESPN? Yeah, of course you have, Perry. Okay, for the rest of you, here it is:

  “Is Tebow returning to Patriots to become Brady’s heir? Sources say yes. Sounds right to me.”

  “Now, all Walt has at this point—Sources say yes—and what does that mean?”

  Alonzo Petri, aka Einstein, said, “Probably something he overheard in the ESPN men’s room.” Alonzo was known as Einstein for two reasons: he was always spouting esoteric trivia about baseball and his hair looked like it had been fried in an electrical socket.

  Bennett said, “Could be, but I’ll bet it comes from someone more reputable, otherwise old Walt wouldn’t go out on a limb like that. You can bet he’ll continue to milk this, now that he’s whetted everyone’s interest. We’ll be fighting every sportswriter and announcer you can think of to get to Tebow, his agent, and the Patriots’ coaching staff. This story will build and build, until someone gets an absolute denial or an absolute confirmation.”

  He looked at each of them again, then focused on Perry. He said, “Perry, I gotta tell you, you know the make of the towels in the Steelers’ locker room, but you didn’t know about this? What’s going on here?”

  “Sorry, boss, but nothing came my way,” Perry said. “The first I heard about it was from Walt’s tweet. I was on it when you called us all in.”

  Einstein said, “Easy enough to tweet, boss, as you know. Walt’s blog is close to tanking; he needs to regain reader interest. Maybe he made it up. Perry and the rest of us can dig out the real facts, if there are any. Everyone will forget that Walt Derwent ever floated the rumor.”

  Lolita Barcas, aging hippie and worldwide soccer maven, said, “What are you going to do next, Einstein, ask Perry out? I say go out with him, Perry, and thank him because, fact is, you blew it. If this had anything to do with the Mexican soccer team, I would have known about it instantly and tweeted it myself.”

  Einstein sneered. “Yeah, Lolita, but who gives a flying hoot about the Mexican soccer team?”

  Lolita tossed her long, thick gray braid. “My readers and most of the world, numb nuts. If only you’d had the brain to bet on the U.S. team when they played Mexico last year at Estadio Azteca, like I told you to, you could have taken us all out to dinner.”

  Einstein raised his hands, palms out. “Yeah, yeah, I should have listened, okay? How about I say you’re right, Lolita, Perry blew this one.”

  Bennett said, “This isn’t about blame, people. We don’t have much time. Perry, who do you think gave Derwent this juicy morsel?”

  “I’m thinking it was someone in Kary Munson’s office,” she said, and added for those in the room who didn’t know who he was, “He’s Tebow’s agent. I heard a couple of months ago Kary owed Walt a favor for something, I don’t know what. Still, it would take guts for Kary to risk any of his people calling Derwent to even float this rumor. Is it true? Have the Patriots decided to bring him back, coach him up, see if he can eventually take Brady’s place after he retires? I don’t know, but there’s something that doesn’t feel right. I mean, if it’s true, why not an official announcement?”

  Lolita said, “I can’t see it being Tebow’s agent. Why would he? Maybe Belichick is still thinking about bringing Tebow back, and the agent leaked it to force his hand.”

  “Kary Munson will deny to his dying day his office was the leak,” Bennett said. “Beyond his dying day.”

  Perry thought she might have picked something up, that was the truth, if she’d been on her game. But she’d been worried about her mom, of course, and now about this FBI agent her mom thought was her special knight from God. A rumor about Tebow going back to the Patriots didn’t even come close. But it was her job to care, her livelihood, and she was fiercely proud of it. She had to stay more turned in. It was one thing that her mom was a huge distraction, but that clean-bathroom-shower-grout FBI agent who’d saved her mom’s bacon yesterday? She’d have been all over the Tebow news, antennas buzzing, if she hadn’t given that moron with his come-hither saunter more than a passing thought. It was the cardinal rule in sportswriting: the more outlandish the rumor, the more important if it’s true.

  “So I guess we all need to get on this, Perry,” Lolita said, giving her thick hippie braid another flip, “befor
e this big whomping story blasts out all over ESPN and its dozens of talking heads and leaves the Post on the sidelines.”

  Bennett said, “Perry, you have twenty minutes to find out if this rumor is true and give me two hundred words. We can be online within the hour and get a longer piece going for tomorrow’s paper.

  “People, this is hair-on-fire time, so every one of you, go get comments, interesting takes we can use for tomorrow’s story.”

  Perry was on her cell in under a minute. She started with assistant coaches, got the runaround, which she expected. Of course Walt Derwent had done the same thing, and four dozen other sportswriters as well.

  Why not go to the Top Dog? She called Robert Kraft, owner of the Patriots, while she poured creamer into her coffee. Kraft had to know about the rumor, because no doubt every coach in the organization was talking about it and a gazillion sports people had called. But she’d bet he hadn’t spoken to any of them. Maybe he’d realize the best thing to do was be up front with her, not let the media chew on it and come up with absurd conclusions.

  It was a huge relief when Mr. Kraft took her call and came clean with her. From experience, he knew she’d get everything right. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Kraft had known and liked her father, even remembered her as a skinny kid on the Redskins sideline.

  She waited exactly six minutes before calling Belichick, time for Mr. Kraft to pave her way. He took her call, said since she’d already spoken to Kraft, what was there for him to say? And so he’d said only one word: no. No surprise, since Belichick was known for speaking only one word when fifteen would be better. He kept things close to the hoodie, his signature garb.

  She was typing her story when she finally got ahold of Kary Munson, Tim Tebow’s agent. “Hey, Kary, I finally realized why you had one of your people feed Walt the rumor that Tim was being called back to the Patriots.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Black. That rumor didn’t come from me or my office—”

  She rode right over him. “Turns out it wasn’t a very smart move on your part. You’ve got to know Tim is going to roast you when he finds out what you did, all in hopes of raising his price tag for the CFL, specifically, for the Toronto Argonauts, by floating the rumor that he was going back to the Patriots. I know from my own sources Tim is talking to them and he isn’t going to like this a bit; he might fire you for it.”

  And here came the music to her ears. “No, he won’t! I mean, it wasn’t even my idea—” Long pause, then Munson’s voice fell off the cliff. “Ah, damn, Perry. How’d you find out?”

  “I spoke to Damien Cox with the Toronto Star. He knows everything that’s going on in Canadian football, plus I figured you wouldn’t shop Tim to any but the biggest team in the CFL, and that’s the Toronto Argonauts. How many Grey Cup championship victories do they have now?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “To make sure, I called one of the assistant coaches up there and he didn’t deny it. Hang it up, Kary, I called to tell you I’m putting the truth on my blog in seven minutes, and there’ll be a lovely headline in tomorrow’s Sports section in the Post. Fair warning.”

  She grinned as she hung up.

  She handed her story in to Bennett five minutes later. “Kary Munson’s going to be in deep caca,” she said, and she told him what she’d found out.

  “So it all boiled down to Munson wanting to soak the Toronto Argonauts for more money?”

  She shrugged. “Looks like.”

  “Okay, then, we’re good.” He nodded up at the TV screen on the wall in his office. “It was reported again about two minutes ago on ESPN as a rumor that’s ‘flying around’ the league. You know how that works, the more it’s repeated and speculated on, the better the chance of it coming true. Morons.” He took a minute to clean up her copy, then said, “Get this up on the Internet immediately. Get it on Twitter. Get it on Facebook. It’ll go viral in three minutes.”

  She raced to the door of his office.

  “Perry? I know this deal going on with your mother makes it tough for you to concentrate. You did a good job with this, in spite of that.”

  • • •

  When she got home to change for the A-list party at the secretary of state’s incredible antiques-filled Federal-style home on Caldicott Road, she was feeling pretty good, except for the greasy slick of fear always there deep inside, for her mother.

  She wondered if Tebow and the Toronto Argonauts would close a deal. Damien Cox said Tebow was as big a deal in Canada as he was in the United States. She hoped it would work out for him. She remembered one sportswriter on the football channel say that if he was a coach he’d want Tebow to marry his daughter, not play on his team. Ah, well, fans who continued to root for Tebow would have something to follow. At least she’d set things straight.

  She wondered if Tebow would ever have the chance to be the Seabiscuit of the NFL.

  Criminal Apprehension Unit

  Hoover Building

  Tuesday afternoon

  Ishould have told Dillon over tacos at lunch. But she hadn’t. A moment of honesty. Sherlock hadn’t told him because he wouldn’t have let her go to the women’s room without an escort, so she’d kept quiet, but only until after she took her stalwart Volvo in to get serviced. Tonight, she’d tell him after they’d gotten Sean down, when the house was settling around them, when it would be quiet and there would be time to talk. She pulled out of the Hoover Building’s garage, managed with little finger waves and big pleading smiles to squeeze herself between an SUV and a tiny Fiat. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and government employees were pouring out of buildings like a tide. Cars gridlocked the streets, people were thick on the sidewalks and at the crosswalks. The temperature had plummeted again. It was so cold she could see her breath.

  Sherlock turned up the heater and drove to Georgetown, to her service station on Prospect Street. She left her baby with Honest Bob, the owner she now trusted since he knew she carried a gun. She stepped off the sidewalk to flag down a taxi even though she wasn’t more than a quarter-mile from home, and she’d walked it before. She was more worried than she’d realized, more than she’d let on to herself. But there were no taxis to be had, and after five minutes, she gave up. She didn’t want to walk home in the dark. She pulled her small Lady Colt from her ankle holster and slipped it inside her coat pocket. She felt stupid, particularly since her new-issue Glock was clipped to her belt. You’re still healing from that gunshot wound. It makes sense you’re still paranoid, picturing a rifle sighting in on you, and blah, blah, blah. She was being ridiculous. She was in the middle of Georgetown, the streets crowded with people huddled in their coats, heads down, all moving fast. No one was looking at her, no one was stalking her, no one was out to kill her. It was here and now, not San Francisco three weeks ago.

  She crossed Wisconsin and began walking quickly down O Street NW, thinking about dinner. Dillon had made an eggplant Parmesan the night before, so all she had to do was warm it up along with a baguette, throw some tomatoes in lettuce, and not forget the croutons. Sean loved croutons and lots of ranch dressing. No problem, thirty minutes, tops.

  One block away from Wisconsin Avenue, the crowds began to thin out. Sherlock walked faster. She was cold, walking into the wind, but the lovely leather gloves Sean and Dillon had gotten her for Christmas were warm enough.

  She felt a single set of eyes staring at her, as she had two days ago at Chad’s Market in Georgetown and again yesterday afternoon when she was out buying a baby gift for Dillon’s sister Lily’s new little boy, Ethan. Sherlock felt the same thing again, a sense of knowing that someone was staring at her fixedly, and only her. She whipped around, bumping into a young mother with a toddler in her arms, and apologized. She stood perfectly still and slowly looked at the circle around her. A college student from Georgetown University, a ratty backpack hooked over his shoulder, several couples laughing and talking, an older man walking a teacup poodle. No one watched her, no one stared at her,
no one wanted anything. Everything was perfectly normal. Are you on edge or what? Stop it, get yourself home where it’s safe—no, don’t think that, either.

  As she was crossing 33rd Street, she heard the roar of a motorcycle and whipped around to see a Kawasaki coming directly at her. The rider was all bundled up, a dark wool scarf covering his mouth, and wearing, of all things, sunglasses. He held a gun in his hand, aimed at her.

  A woman behind her screamed. Sherlock shoved her to the ground and fell on top of her as the man fired, the bullet chipping a shard of concrete from the sidewalk. The man was only twenty feet away, but thankfully he had to handle the moving motorcycle. Sherlock pulled her Glock and fired off her magazine at him as he fired off five shots at her. A revolver, she thought, when he fired again, but nothing happened. He stuffed the gun back in his coat, swerved away from her, and accelerated. With her final shot, Sherlock got the front tire and the motorcycle weaved and lurched out of control, threading through honking horns and yelling people to the far side of the street, and hit a fire hydrant, luckily enough for an old couple standing a few feet behind it. The shooter managed to jump off before the motorcycle slammed against the hydrant and the guy jumped, fell, landing hard, then managed to get himself together and run.

  The crying woman was on her feet, yelling as she grabbed Sherlock’s arm, “That idiot! He was going to shoot me! You stopped him. That was a great shot. Are you a cop?”

  “Yes. FBI. Stay!” Sherlock managed to break free and took off after the man. After running full-out for a half-block, she slowed and leaned down, her hands on her knees. Then she straightened and slowly looked around. No sight of him. The woman had cost her valuable seconds. He hadn’t seemed very agile or fast, so she imagined he’d hidden himself behind one of the bushes that surrounded many of the houses that lined the block. He could have gone anywhere from there. She jogged back and nodded to the old couple standing by the wrecked motorcycle, called out for them to please stay. She ran back to the woman, who was hugging herself, shaking. She was on the small side, in her thirties, all bundled up and shivering, not with cold, Sherlock knew, but from fear. As for herself, after all the running, she was toasty warm, her adrenaline level now starting its way back down. She knew exhaustion would follow later.