High Treason

by John Gilstrap

  “Good morning everyone,” he said to the room. A few people spoke a greeting in return, but it wasn’t necessary. Jonathan turned left inside the door and approached Charlie Keeling, another member of the guard staff. The two guards on duty split their time between guarding the front door and guarding the entrance to the Cave.

  “Listen, Mr. G,” Charlie said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I owe you an apology for this morning. Rick and I never should have helped with those boxes, but I couldn’t think of another way. Won’t happen again.”

  Jonathan smiled. “I appreciate that, Charlie.” All was forgiven.

  “Hey, JoeDog,” Charlie said. He patted his chest with both hands—a spot on his vest just above his slung MP5—and JoeDog planted her forepaws there, thus earning another ear rub.

  Charlie buzzed the door and Jonathan and JoeDog both stepped into the Inner Sanctum. The beast made a beeline for her favorite leather chair near the fireplace in Jonathan’s office while her nominal master peeled off and headed for the War Room.

  The teak conference table was buried in stacks of what had to be fifty file boxes, each of them marked with a sticker from the FBI proclaiming them to be SECRET: EYES ONLY.

  “Holy shit,” Jonathan said.

  “Welcome to my world.” Venice sat on the far side of the stack, the top of her head barely visible. “How many times do I have to remind you to be careful what you ask for?”

  Jonathan stepped to the table and peeled the lid off a box, revealing file folders. Lots and lots of file folders. “I guess I underestimated the number of her enemies.”

  “Oh, I think this is a more comprehensive file than just enemies,” Venice said. “This is essentially every person Yelena Poltanov ever talked to while she was in the United States.”

  Jonathan gave a low whistle. “This will take days.”

  Venice didn’t answer.

  Jonathan pushed up the sleeves of his sweater and started paging through the box nearest him. From what he could tell, the files were organized by date. He started fingering through a box that seemed to span the month of March, 1985—part of the month, anyway. A counterespionage agent codenamed Watchdog had been following Yelena’s every move and taking annoyingly complete notes. As a random sample, Yelena had entered the chemistry lab at 09:54 and emerged in the company of two unknown students at 11:42. From there, she’d proceeded to the campus cafeteria, arriving at 11:57.

  “Oh my God,” Jonathan said. “Imagine the poor SOB who had to read through all this minutiae and analyze it.”

  “Your tax dollars at work,” Venice said.

  Jonathan pulled out one of the rolling chairs that surrounded the conference table and sat. “We need context,” he said. “We don’t have the time to read through this stuff cold and figure out the cast of characters.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I’ve got nothing.”

  “Then keep reading.”

  “Have you called in Boxers for this?” Jonathan asked.

  Venice laughed. “Right. This is definitely in his wheelhouse.”

  Jonathan wanted to argue, but what was the point? Boxers’ attention span in fact did not lend itself to hours of document analysis. Still, it would be nice to have the extra set—

  “Bingo!” Venice announced.

  “What?”

  She held aloft a compact disk. “An index. I’ve been looking for it. The feds always index boxes of files like this.” She swung around to her computer terminal as she spoke, opened the cup holder, and inserted the disk. “I’ll put it up on the wall,” she said.

  Her fingers tapped wildly, but for the longest time, all Jonathan saw on the screen were inconsequential numbers and figures. There were dozens of file names—maybe hundreds—but they weren’t organized, and from what Jonathan could tell, the file names themselves were unreadable. Periodically, the cursor would move and Venice would make a satisfied noise, and then the screen would change all over again. Jonathan knew from years of experience not to interrupt her when she got into the zone like this. She was on the hunt, and she’d either find her prey or she would not, but it was always a bad idea to interrupt her concentration.

  Meanwhile, Jonathan amused himself by lifting another file out of a box, this one from June 13, 1986.

  “Don’t get those out of order,” Venice snapped without looking up from her keyboard. “Indexes don’t do a thing if the papers aren’t in order.”

  Jonathan rolled his eyes. “I promise to be careful.” This time, there were pictures. A much, much younger version of the First Lady sat in a bar with friends, her mouth open wide in a big laugh, while the three men who were with her seemed equally amused. According to the caption, the men were Peter Crenshaw, Albert Banks, and Stephen Gutowski, and the bar was the Bombay Bicycle Club in Alexandria, Virginia. Watchdog had either shot the picture from very close range, or he had a terrific telescopic lens. Either way, this was a picture of four friends having a wonderful time. It was the kind of image that every college student everywhere could have had taken of themselves at one point or another.

  Crenshaw, Banks, and Gutowski were described in the narrative as frequent acquaintances of Yelena’s, but they were largely dismissed as inconsequential to the case that was being built against her. Jonathan tucked the photos back into their folder, and tucked the folder back into the spot from which he’d removed it.

  Two additional random checks of files for June of 1986 showed equally boring activities, as did five random checks of July. When he reviewed the contents of the file from July 19, 1986, though, he sat a little straighter in his chair. In these photographs, Yelena was nose to nose in an intense conversation with a man who appeared to be slightly older than she. To Jonathan’s eye, they both appeared to be angry, but of course there was no way to be sure. Apparently, the FBI wasn’t using listening technology in their efforts to track Yelena’s movements. Accompanying documentation showed that the picture had been shot in a place called the Hairy Lemon, and that the man in the photo was one Leonard Baxter, a.k.a. Leonid Brava. This was apparently their seventeenth documented meeting.

  Jonathan flipped to the next photo in the file, which revealed another man and a woman, Peter and Marcia Carlson, husband and wife, whose names apparently were real. While the scenery from the first photo hadn’t changed, the number of empty glasses on the table had multiplied. While the women preferred wine, the men drank clear liquor straight. None appeared to be having a very good time.

  According to the narrative, The conversation at the Hairy Lemon lasted three hours and fourteen mins. This was the seventeenth meeting of all subs. While unable to hear the words that were spoken, the conversation was animated throughout. For a short while, all subjects got angry, but then they settled down. I believe that when all the evidence is finally analyzed, it will show that an important decision was made. Photo 7.19.86–3 documents the final moments before parting. It is clearly celebratory.

  Jonathan turned the page again, and the referenced photo showed all the subjects in a four-way handshake, a clear indicator of an agreement made.

  The narrative continued, Addendum added 7/24/86: On 7/23/86, twenty-five pounds of Semtex was stolen from Allied Armaments, Inc. in Radford, Virginia. Three days later, Semtex was used in a bomb that killed Soviet Attaché Yuri Brensk in his home in Arlington, Virginia. The explosion was reported to the media as a gas leak.

  “Huh,” Jonathan said. He remembered that explosion, just as he remembered the media clamor to turn it into something other than a gas explosion. For a Soviet diplomat to die of a peaceful explosion—as opposed to one created by his enemies—at a time of such political flux—was a hard gap to bridge. If he remembered correctly, it took a statement from the head of ATF—the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—to eventually calm the waters.

  “Okay, I’ve got something,” Venice said. “Take a look at the screen.”

  At the far end of the table, the projection screen blinked,
and what had been a mishmash of files was now sorted into well-defined columns.

  “It seems that our friend Watchdog was one organized fellow,” Venice said. “And his worldview fell into a very convenient black-and-white division.” She used her cursor as a pointer to highlight folders as she spoke. “When we last looked at this mess, it was organized by date, showing what could be found in every folder, date by date.” She clicked and the screen changed. “Here, though, is the topical listing that takes an incident or a question and then cross-references it back to the dates where the events happened.”

  Jonathan gave a low whistle. “That’s a lot of work.”

  “Yes, it is. I’m guessing they did it for the prosecutors in the case so that they could find what they were looking for.” She clicked again. “But here’s the Holy Grail for us.” The screen filled with a heading that read Cast of Characters, below which there were two files, one labeled Conspirators and the other labeled Acquaintances.

  Venice clicked on the Conspirators file, and after a second or two of electronic contemplation, the computer launched a screen full of pictures and names. There were more than a few—more than would fit on the screen—but Jonathan zeroed right in on Leonid Brava and the Carlsons.

  “I clearly haven’t had time to review all of this, but these appear to be the bad guys,” Venice explained.

  “Click on that Brensk guy for me,” Jonathan said. This picture, like the one he’d seen in the file, showed a man who’d stepped out of KBG Central Casting. He had a round, pugilist’s face with a jet-black hairline that nearly met his jet-black eyebrows.

  When Venice clicked the file open, the screen filled with personal data—name, address, phone number, place of employment, relatives, that sort of thing. When she clicked again, the screen blinked to another list of files cross-referenced to dates.

  “That’s a lot of information,” Venice said. “I’ll grant that it’s well organized, but it’s still a lot.”

  “Well, yes and no,” Jonathan countered. “We don’t need to try the case here. We don’t care about who they blew up or conspired to kill back in the eighties. We just need to track down the bad guys and find out where they took the First Lady.”

  “Shouldn’t they all be in jail?” Venice asked.

  “I think they should all be dead,” Jonathan said. “If they are, then we need to start looking at their friends and families. How long should the first cut take?”

  Venice backed out of the files and returned to the stacked pictures. She scrolled through them. “It looks like there are eighteen,” she said. “Give me forty-five minutes.”

  David Kirk had always wanted to be on television, though not in the way that so many of his classmates in J-school wanted to be there. While the others strove for fame as on-camera reporters, David wanted to find fame the way Bob Woodward or Charles Krauthammer did—by being so respected as a print reporter and columnist that the serious news shows would seek him out as the intelligent guest who could explain the news of the day. Respect was the key, and he was willing to earn it from the bottom up.

  He’d never dreamed that he’d end up reaching bottom on the very day that he first appeared on television. He’d awoken still tired—and, frankly, a little raw and achy in his southern parts, thanks to a series of carnal stunts that startled the hell out of him. It turned out that Becky had studied the Kama Sutra. Or yoga. Or maybe was a gymnast in her past life. Either way, it had been a hell of a night. It had apparently been good for Becky, too, because the deep rhythm of her breathing never changed as he reached over her to lift the remote from her nightstand. The clock read 6:59.

  Still glowing, he tuned into the Today show to catch the top-of-the-hour news. He didn’t learn much that he didn’t already know. The economy was still slogging along on its anemic recovery, the Arabs still didn’t like the Jews, and the American military was slumping back to the meals-on-wheels mission that had dominated it during his childhood years.

  At the quarter-hour break, when the “news” show switched to promoting upcoming movies and their stars, he rolled out of bed and padded to the bathroom for morning chores, as his mother used to call them. He’d just gotten the water temperature right for his shower when he heard Becky calling from the other room. Her voice had a touch of panic to it. “David! Come here! Quickly!”

  He damn near killed himself dashing back into the bedroom, where he found Becky sitting upright and bare breasted, pointing at the television screen. And what fine breasts they were. He allowed his eyes to follow the line of her finger, and that’s when his world ended. Again.

  The television screen had transformed into a giant portrait of his face. Along the bottom, just under his chin, an electronic caption read, Wanted in Cop’s Murder . What was it, he wondered, about seeing it on television made it more real than merely knowing it to be true? Just like that, the air in the room seemed to thin and he needed to sit on the edge of the bed, one foot curled under his butt, and the other dangling to the floor, as if to keep him in contact with the reality of the hardwood. Without looking, Becky laid a reassuring hand on his knee.

  The newsreader from Washington’s Channel Four said something about the “brutal murder” of DeShawn Lincoln around nine o’clock the previous evening, but David didn’t pay attention to the actual words. He was too overwhelmed by their meaning. This wasn’t just bad news anymore. This was an all-out call for the people closest to him to call the police. If his bank accounts hadn’t been locked out before, they sure as hell were now. At his apartment, his computer and his records and probably his underwear and socks were all in an evidence locker now, being pored over by cops who would sell their souls for the honor of shooting a cop killer.

  “We need to move quicker than I thought,” Becky said, and then she was on her feet. “Let’s shower together,” she said. “It’ll save time.”

  That had been two hours ago.

  Now, he sat on a bench in Farragut Park with the collar of his new down coat standing high and a stocking cap pulled low against the bitter cold. If there was one ray of sunshine to be found in the black pall that his life had become in the last twelve hours, it was the fact that the frigid weather made it easier to be disguised.

  He sat on the bench nearest the western side of Daniel Farragut’s towering statue, keeping a close eye on the mouth of the Farragut West Metro Station. Becky had called the other party for this meeting under the auspices of introducing him to a news source. She and David had both been surprised that he’d agree so readily, and that fact alone added more stress to the day.

  At a few minutes before nine-thirty, Grayson Cantrell emerged from the shadows of the subway station and stood at the corner of H Street and Connecticut Avenue, waiting for the light to turn, and for the red sign to turn white so that he could cross the street to the park. Seventy pounds overweight and bearing the ruddy complexion of a heavy drinker, Cantrell was to David part of the last of the old-school Washington journalists, for whom research meant a phone call to an old buddy, and source development meant buying a couple of rounds at lunch. At least thirty years younger, David didn’t so much feel sorry for the old guy who’d been caught in a weird time warp as he did envy him for having lived the life of the reporter that he’d always dreamed of one day being.

  Cantrell didn’t seem the least bit anxious or even curious about what lay ahead as the light changed and he strolled across the street and entered the park. In the summer, this was a place of Frisbee games and impromptu concerts. This time of year, however, Farragut Park was merely a place of transit, a spot for commuters to hurry through, on their way to their offices in the morning, and to their homes at night. Of the precious few who occupied the park benches, the vast majority were homeless people who lay insulated in a dozen layers of fabric.

  Grayson Cantrell walked right up to David and sat down. “How’s life as a fugitive?” he asked.

  David’s insides melted at the question. “You knew?”

  True to the o
verall image, Cantrell wore an old-style London Fog trench coat—with the wool lining installed—the collar of which he scrunched up around his throat as he helped himself to the seat next to the younger man. “Knew what?” he baited. “That you were you, or that you were wanted for murder?”

  “Um, both.”

  “I’ve known since last night that you were suspected of killing that cop,” Cantrell explained. As he spoke, he seemed more interested in the passing crowd than he did in David. “But I thought from the beginning that that was bullshit. You’re a lot of things—most of them less than complimentary—but I don’t see you as a murderer.”

  David found himself smiling. “Thank you.”

  “For what? I’m neither a jury nor a cop who’d mortgage his nut sack for a chance to shoot you. As for knowing that you were you, well, suffice to say that disguises are not your long suit.”

  David pulled his hat further down on his ears.

  “Is it safe to assume that you put Becky up to calling me?” Cantrell asked.

  David cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. It was all he could come up with.

  Cantrell chuckled. “Let me amend my last comment,” he said. “Deception in general is not your long suit. Tell me what is going on.”

  David didn’t know precisely how he thought this meeting was going to go, but he knew for a fact that this was not it. He’d been shitty with Cantrell for both of the two years that he’d been at the Enquirer, and as such, Cantrell had every right to be shitty back to him. This niceness routine made him uncomfortable. It took David the better part of ten minutes to catch Cantrell up on the essential elements of what had transpired in the last twenty-four hours.

  Cantrell listened intently through the whole recitation, and when David was finally done, he let out a low whistle. “Jesus, David. You’re in serious trouble.”