The Washington Lawyer

by Allan Topol

  Next, Xiang picked up the special encrypted cell phone dedicated for calls with Jasper and dialed Jasper’s matching cell. The senator immediately answered, “Tomorrow,” Xiang said and ended the call.

  As he drove, Xiang thought about how difficult his meeting would be the next morning with Jasper in the park. In theory, Liu’s idea of using the solution to Jasper’s CD problem as a way of getting the Pentagon’s five-year plan made sense. But in their last meeting, Jasper seemed to be coming unglued. It would be difficult to strike a rational deal with an irrational man. Somehow Xiang had to find a way to do it.

  The Chinese Embassy occupied a large complex in what was the new embassy row in Washington on Van Ness Street, just west of Connecticut Avenue. Its neighbors included such foreign powerhouses as the Pakistani, Saudi Arabian, and Israeli embassies with one important distinction. In size, the Chinese dwarfed all the others. For its construction, Beijing had insisted on using Chinese firms to minimize the risk that listening devices would be built into the walls, floors, and ceilings.

  As soon as Xiang reached his office, he called Hu. “I’m ready for you.”

  “Well, I’m not. I’m finishing up something. I’ll be there shortly.”

  More gamesmanship. Ten minutes later, Hu called. “You better come to my office. I might get an urgent call.”

  Grin and bear it, Xiang thought when he entered Hu’s office, that was much larger than Xiang’s. Hu, a tall bean pole with a long narrow face led the way to a table.

  Xiang saw a map of the DuPont Circle area spread out.

  They leaned over the map. Xiang smelled Hu’s garlic breath.

  “Here is Vanessa’s apartment building,” Hu said pointing. “She has a corner apartment with windows to the north and west. Across a narrow alley to the west is a hotel that we’re using for surveillance.”

  “We caught a break.

  Hu sneered. “What do you mean we caught a break? My men and I carefully canvassed the area. We worked hard to find the hotel.”

  “Okay. What’s the surveillance?”

  “We’ve taken a hotel room which gives us an unobstructed view into the large bedroom in Vanessa’s apartment. I’ve had a man in the hotel room with binoculars for the last ten hours. Nobody has come into that bedroom. I also have two men in a gray Lexus parked in front of Vanessa’s apartment building. They’re ready to follow anyone if I give the order.”

  “Good work,” Xiang said.

  “I know it’s good work,” Hu said in a haughty tone. “But I’m convinced we’re wasting our time. I don’t think anyone’s coming.”

  Xiang was ready to slam that one back to Hu. “Surveillance was Minister Liu’s idea. Would you like me to tell him that you don’t think it’s wise?”

  Hu reddened. “No, of course not.”

  “Good. Let’s go to the hotel.”

  “Why do you want to do that?”

  “To see the surveillance for myself.”

  “You don’t believe my report?”

  Polite wasn’t working. Xiang was ready to dig in. “Minister Liu put me in charge of this operation. I have to see it. You can go with me, or I can go alone.”

  “We’ll both go.”

  They parked two blocks away. When he was in the hotel room, Xiang picked up a pair of binoculars. The set up was perfect. Not only would they see anyone in the large bedroom, but if the visitor turned the lights on and didn’t close the curtains, they’d be able to watch what the visitor did. Pluck the CD from a secure hiding place?

  The problem, Xiang realized, was that they didn’t have cameras throughout the apartment, and they couldn’t see into the other rooms from their observation point in the hotel.

  Suppose Allison or someone else came into the apartment and uncovered the CD in a room other than the large bedroom. How would Xiang know? How would Xiang get the CD from her?

  Xiang Googled Allison Boyd. He studied her impressive academic resume and her athletic prowess on the US Olympic field hockey team. He read about the new project she had undertaken in Israel. One colleague described her as tenacious. He realized she would be a tough nut to crack. He was developing a plan in his mind to take advantage of that tenacity.

  * * *

  Walking into Michel Richard’s Central with Paul at eight thirty, Allison noted that the restaurant was crowded. Seemed like mostly young lawyers, briefcases at their feet, BlackBerries and iPhones on the table, stopping for dinner after working late. At the bar, still a score of thirty somethings who hadn’t hooked up yet for the evening. Loud, after drinking for a couple of hours, the women’s skirts riding high on their thighs, an extra button undone on their blouses. A TV above the bar, showing a Caps game.

  Paul, looking self-confident, approached David the maître d’, who gave him a big greeting, then led them to a prime table in the back, close to the kitchen, which was visible on the other side of a metal counter where chefs in high white hats left dishes for waiters under heat lamps.

  Initially, Allison didn’t want to go to dinner, but Paul had convinced her. “You have to eat to keep up your strength. Your investigation can wait for a few hours.”

  The waiter came by and handed them menus with a wine list. “Something to drink?”

  Paul turned to Allison. “I remember from the time we had dinner with Vanessa that you like red wine.”

  “Right.”

  Without looking, Paul said, “We’ll have the St. Joseph, the only one on your list.”

  The waiter nodded and rushed away.

  “I’m starving,” Allison said. “I haven’t eaten all day.”

  “Don’t you count the two bags of pretzels we had on the plane?”

  “How could I have forgotten?”

  “You’ll like the food here. It’s bistro with creative touches.”

  “What do you recommend?”

  “Mussels first. Then I’m having the rib eye steak. You’ll like the lobster burger.”

  After the waiter returned and opened the wine, he took a pad from his pocket and looked at Allison.

  “Mussels to start,” she said. “Then the rib eye with fries.”

  Paul raised his eyebrows. “Whoa. That’s a surprise.”

  He turned to the waiter. “Ditto for me.”

  Once the server departed, Paul said, “I thought you only eat fish.”

  “Most of the time, but I like a big juicy steak now and then.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Okay. If you say so.” Then he raised his glass and clinked it against hers. “To being with you again. Despite the awful circumstances.”

  The dark Rhone, with a full bodied flavor, was delicious, she thought.

  “I feel guilty being here and Vanessa’s gone,” she said. She couldn’t bring herself to use the word dead.

  “I still can’t believe it.”

  “Why did you two break up? She knew I thought you were good for her. She wouldn’t tell me what happened.”

  “It’s not much of a story, I’m afraid. On her birthday I went to her apartment to pick her up for dinner. I had a bottle of Krug and a diamond ring from Tiffany’s in my pocket.

  “We drank a glass of champagne. As soon as I brought out the ring, she raised her hand and said, ‘Stop, Paul. You’re a great guy, I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t want to marry you.’ When I asked her why not she made it clear she wanted to marry a powerful Washington figure. Not an associate or even a junior partner in a law firm.”

  Allison shook her head sadly. She thought again about how she had urged Vanessa to marry Paul as she worried about Vanessa making a mess of her life. She had been convinced that if Vanessa had settled down with dependable Paul, Allison’s worries would be over.

  Paul sipped some wine, then continued. “Anyway, I realized arguing with her was futile. We went out to dinner and never saw each other again.”

  “She had so much to live for. She was beautiful, and …”

  Allison thought she might cry again. Perhaps sensing it, he put h
is hand on hers. It helped her regain some self-control.

  “When I called you on Tuesday, you told me you had been in Israel when you got the call about Vanessa. What were you doing there?”

  Allison was impressed at how smoothly Paul had changed the subject.

  “I’m heading up an archeology project with an Israeli partner. We’re trying to uncover a town from the time of King Solomon.”

  “That’s good,” he said with enthusiasm. “Before we broke up Vanessa told me you’d been promoted to professor, the youngest one ever in the archeology department at Brown. That’s quite an achievement. And she also told me you won a bronze medal for field hockey in the Olympics in Barcelona. She was there and so proud of you.”

  “God, that was almost fifteen years ago.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  The mussels came. After eating a few, she said, “I took off a year after undergraduate college to try out for the Olympic team. My dad had been a hero in the Vietnam war and he inspired a love of country in me. I wanted to represent the United States. Somehow I made the team. The brutal training was the hardest part. It included a workout with Navy Seals, which involved 1,000 pushups, 1,000 sit ups, 1,000 jumping jacks, three miles of rowing, lifting a 250-pound log with seven team mates and carrying it the length of a football field, and after all that, a run up a mountain. At the end, I thought I’d throw up and never move again.”

  “It obviously paid off.”

  “Yeah. A bronze wasn’t bad, but we really wanted the gold. I always play hard to win. In everything. Anyhow, we lost our last match to England. I did something stupid.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I injured my leg, but played while hurt, ignoring the doctor’s orders. I scored one goal, but my career was over. My limp’s gone, but I can’t play sports that involve lots of running. I paid a price.” She sounded wistful. “I still work out with an exercise bike, weights, and machines. I also do judo. So I keep in shape.”

  “Would you play hurt again?”

  “Of course.”

  He laughed. “Then it wasn’t stupid.”

  As they finished the mussels and ate their steaks, he asked her to tell him more about her work in Israel. Looking across the table while she spoke, she thought he was genuinely interested.

  The waiter cleared their plates and left desert menus.

  “Do you have time for dessert?” she asked Paul. “You were working pretty hard on the plane.”

  “I have to go into the office after dinner to pull together some stuff for my boss, Andrew Martin, but I’m in no hurry for that. The chocolate mousse here is great.”

  “Count me in on that.”

  After he signaled the waiter and ordered their desserts, Allison said, “This Andrew Martin must be a tyrant, having you work this late at night.”

  He laughed. “Actually, I love working with Andrew. He founded the firm, and he’s the managing partner. He is the most incredible lawyer, and I always learn so much, not just about law, but how he deals with clients.”

  Paul was so in awe of Martin, she thought. He had Martin up on a pedestal. “You make him sound like some kind of God.”

  Paul blushed. “Martin is my patron. He’s the reason I came to the firm. And besides, he’s a very good lawyer. In fact, right now, he’s on the short list to be chief justice. So others agree. The reason I have to go into the office tonight is because Martin has a New York Times reporter, Jim Nelson, trying to smear him because of a pro bono case we handled for a Guantanamo prisoner. I have to pull the facts together and meet Martin at his house early tomorrow morning. He has a lot riding on this Supreme Court appointment. It’s the ultimate gold ring for a lawyer.”

  “Do you think he’ll get it?”

  Paul wrinkled up his nose for a minute. “He should, but he has a big problem. He’s very much a Washington insider and a lot of people don’t like that. Another reporter, Rick Potts from the Washington Post, did a profile on Tuesday comparing Martin with Abe Fortas. Potts doesn’t like Martin, and I’m afraid that may have hurt.”

  “If Martin leaves, will that affect your chances of becoming partner?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Other partners have given me very good reviews. I should know next September.” He laughed. “In the meantime, I’m trying to stay out of trouble.”

  After they finished dessert, the waiter left the check. She wanted to split it. He insisted on paying.

  “Thanks, Paul. I enjoyed dinner with you.”

  “Would you like to stay in my house tonight? I live alone in the poor part of Georgetown.”

  “You have your own house?”

  “I bought it with another associate. He didn’t make partner and left town to teach in Austin. I bought him out. I could give you a key while I go back to the office.”

  “Very nice of you, Paul, but I’ll spend the night at Vanessa’s. That’s where I want to start digging into what really happened to her.”

  “If I can do anything to help, please call or e-mail.” He sent his contact info, including home address, to her iPhone.

  At the curb, he told her that his office was only a short walk. He raised his hand and signaled a cab for her.

  As she opened the door, he said, “Be careful.”

  At first, it seemed like an odd comment. But when the cab pulled away, she thought about it some more. If whoever left Vanessa and ran away learned that Allison was trying to find him, he might play rough with her.

  * * *

  Climbing out of the cab and approaching Vanessa’s apartment building, Allison noticed a gray Lexus parked in front with diplomatic license plates. DPL6279. One man in the front, behind the wheel. She couldn’t see his face.

  In the lobby she removed from her bag the key to Vanessa’s apartment and her mailbox in the lobby. She recognized the young man sitting behind the reception desk, Fidelis, a Nigerian engineering student. He greeted her with sad eyes. “So sorry to hear about your sister. She was a nice person.”

  “I appreciate your saying that, Fidelis. I really do.”

  “Swimming in the sea can be dangerous,” he added.

  Allison kept her thoughts to herself and simply nodded.

  She stopped at the wall of mailboxes on the other side of the lobby. Vanessa’s was jammed with mail, and Allison pulled it all out, glancing through it as she rode up in the elevator. There was nothing of particular interest. Besides bills, catalogues from Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Gucci, and junk mail from stock brokers and real estate agents, there were a couple of printed invitations to political fundraisers, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.

  As she opened the door to the apartment, she took a deep breath. She’d never been here without Vanessa before. Well, she didn’t have time for emotions or sentiment. She had a mission: somewhere in this apartment there had to be something that would help her identify that bastard Vanessa had been with in Anguilla—the one who cut and ran, leaving her dead body on a deserted beach at night.

  She made a beeline for Vanessa’s study. The calendar Vanessa always kept on top might tell Allison whom she went with to Anguilla.

  It wasn’t there!

  She checked the desk drawers. No calendar!

  But what about Vanessa’s diary? That would probably tell her about Vanessa’s plans for the weekend.

  Her sister was obsessive about never taking the most recent volume of her diary out of the apartment, even when she traveled, for fear of losing it. She locked prior volumes of the diary in a bank vault. She told Allison she was guarding her diaries because one day she planned to write a tell-all memoir about her adventures in Washington. “Vanessa in Potomac Land.”

  Allison looked in all the desk drawers. No diary!

  Someone must had been in the apartment and taken the calendar and diary.

  But maybe she was being too rash, Allison thought. Maybe no one had been here and stolen them. Perhaps Vanessa took the calendar with her. And she
could have just finished her recent diary and put it in the bank vault. But then there would be a new one, unless she didn’t have a chance to buy a new one.

  Allison didn’t want to believe that someone had been here and removed these objects. She didn’t want to believe that her twin was having an affair with someone so crummy. But if he left her body on the beach, he could easily have done that. Allison, a scientist, couldn’t ignore the evidence.

  Someone had been there. But her lover might have missed something that gave away his identity.

  She booted up Vanessa’s laptop on the desk. The password was supermodel. She checked e-mails for the last two months. Nothing about Veteran’s Day weekend plans.

  She dumped the contents of all of the desk drawers onto the oriental carpet. For the next hour Allison searched carefully through all the papers, and there were plenty, because Vanessa just tossed things in. There were restaurant receipts, movie tickets, Christmas cards, unpaid parking tickets, and tax receipts. But nothing to indicate whom she was dating.

  Allison saw a stack of utility bills and bank statements, which she looked through. How sad, Allison thought, that Vanessa, who had made millions modeling, only had about $30,000 in assets. Even the apartment was heavily mortgaged. She had burned through it all.

  Allison often wondered how Vanessa had spent so much. She realized her sister was a major shopaholic, constantly buying the designer clothes she had formerly modeled. She had once told Allison, “I’m getting bad financial advice. They put me in a hedge fund that went bust. Allison hoped that’s all it was—hoped that Vanessa hadn’t gone back to drugs.

  Phone bills, Allison thought. That’s what she needed. Vanessa might have called the man she was going with to Anguilla, either from her apartment phone or her cell. But she hadn’t seen any phone bills. She looked through all the mess of papers again.

  No phone bills.

  Bastard must have taken those, too.

  Allison called Verizon, explained to the customer service rep that her sister died, and asked her to send the current bill with a list of all calls for Vanessa’s house and cell phone, as well as the two most recent bills. The Verizon rep, sounding surly, said, “They will be there in a few days.”