by HN Wake
“How did she open the account? Do you remember anything about that?
“Let’s see.” She clicked on the account records. “Ah yes, deposited one million. Anything that large would have had to have been with a check.”
His heart picked up a beat. “Can you track down who wrote that check?”
“Well, that’s highly unusual, Agent.”
“I’d get a warrant but we’re under a very strict timeline here.”
She wavered.
He leaned in. “The timeline pertains to a drug deal. And we have agents involved. Who may get hurt.”
“This gal Dora was involved in that?”
“I’m afraid so.”
She whispered, “Let me go see what I can find.”
She sat down a long 20 minutes later, empty handed. “My, my, what a trial that was. So first I found that Ms. Maar opened the Julep Foundation account with a cashier’s check from Credit Suisse in Zurich. We had a copy of that on file. So I called Credit Suisse and got a bit of an old fashioned run around.”
He waited.
“Well, it turns out, a Swiss national picked that check up. And according to Swiss rules unless it’s a foreigner they can’t get involved. They can’t tell us anything. Cold case or whatever you call it.”
“Dead end.” He settled back into the chair.
Clever, clever Maar.
An unusually strong disappointment swelled through him. He sighed and looked up at the bank manager. She was watching him intently, with a slight grin.
He asked, “Any chance you found something else?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” She handed him her own sticky note with a telephone number. “That was on the original paperwork. She left a contact number.”
His lungs emptied. “Thank you.”
“You go get those gun runners now, ya hear?”
Outside in the heat, he punched in Ruby’s telephone number. “Ruby, just one more. Just one more GPS check.”
Her voice was strident. “Did you get my text? Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?”
“Ruby, I shouldn’t, I wouldn’t ask - but I’m literally hours away from closing this thing.”
“No.” She hung up.
He dialed her back and groveled. “Ruby, how many years have we worked together?”
“You’re going to lose your job.”
“Not if he doesn’t hear about this. Please, Ruby, I’m begging you. I can not let this one slip through my fingers.”
She took a deep breath. “Give me the number. I’m going to look it up now. I am not logging this in the system.” She put him on hold. When she came back she was whispering. “Most of the calls from that number were made from a neighborhood in Philly called Manayunk.”
“Manayunk. You got the street address?”
“135 Cresson Street, Philly, 19127”
“Ruby, that’s the last favor I’ll ask, till I’m right with the Director again.”
“If you get right with the Director, Cal. If he asks about who was feeding you GPS, it was not me.”
He immediately looked for a cab. Jumping in he practically yelled, “The airport, and there’s 50 bucks in it if you do it fast.”
The taxi squealed into the light afternoon traffic.
New York, NY
Freda and Stacia sat in Freda’s office with the television turned on to C-Span and a view of the US Senate floor. A vote was in progress.
Freda looked over the desk at Stacia. “You wanna go get a drink after the vote?’
“Uh, no thanks. I’m meeting a friend.”
“A guy? A date?”
“Uh, no. Just my friend Charlotte.”
“Oh. Ok. Well, listen, well done on your articles.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“We’ll need a piece for tomorrow,” she said nodding to the C-Span image on the screen. “You want it?”
Stacia stood quickly. “Absolutely.”
“You deserve it. Ok, you better go get started.”
Stacia was half-way out the door. “On it.”
Freda stared out the window and listened to the reporters’ camaraderie on the other side of the glass wall. Some joked, others laughed, and still others responded loudly. On the desk was the ATF agent’s card. The phone number had a DC area code. DC wasn’t so far from New York.
In her office in Times Square, Penny also watched C-Span. She picked up her phone and dialed Laura.
Laura’s voice was hushed. “Hey. I’m watching it right now.”
“It’s crazy, right? It seems to be falling our way.”
Laura almost whispered, stunned. “Crazy.”
Penny glanced out the window. “I wanted to thank you —“
“No need. It was worth every penny.”
Penny grinned before she turned serious. “I’m waiting to hear from Mac. But I’m pretty sure this won’t come back on us.”
“Penny, it was worth the risks. All the risks each of us took. You, Freda, Mac, me. It was worth the risks.”
“I hope you’re right. God, I hope you’re right.”
Langley, VA
Odom sat at his desk staring at the green lamp. His hands rested heavily on the armrests of his chair.
A text from Beam arrived. “We’re leaving New Orleans. Flight to Philly.”
Odom jumped up and ran down the hallway, typing a response. “DO NOT LOSE HIM”
He rushed into the Hawkinson’s office. “Philly. The ATF agent is headed to Philly. I know Mac is originally from Philly. She’s gotta be camped out there.”
Hawkinson recovered quickly. “If he finds her, I want our guy to engage”
“How?”
“I don’t care. I want our guy to interfere somehow. I do not want her talking to the ATF agent. Odom, do you understand? ”
“Yes.” Odom backed out through the door.
“This is career make or break time Odom.”
Out in the hallway, Odom punched in Beam’s cell phone. “Beam, listen to me. If the ATF agent finds Mac, I want you to engage him.”
Beam’s voice pitched high. “What?”
“She cannot spend time with the ATF agent.”
“How am I supposed to engage him?”
“Do what seems as natural as possible in the situation. Do not let Mac spend time with the ATF agent alone. He is a loose canon with nothing to lose - we cannot allow him to ask her questions.”
“Sir, how do I do that?”
“Just do it, Beam. Your career depends on this.”
53
Manayunk, PA
Joe ambled along the sidewalk below the loft. Mac leaned over, eyeing down three floors of warehouse wall, watching his bald head bobbing slightly.
Her burner phone pinged with a text from Penny, “You watching the news?”
Mac watched Joe to the end of the block. He had a book under his arm.
When he turned the corner, Mac responded. “Nope.”
“We should know in 30 minutes!”
Mac counted to five then hustled down the loft stairs.
She poked her head out the street door. The street was empty.
She raced to the corner, slowed. She looked around the building’s corner.
He was sauntering along Roxborough Avenue toward Main St.
She remained by the corner, watching him.
On Main Street, he turned left and headed up the small hill.
She hustled along to the next corner, peeking around onto Main Street behind him.
He was in her line of sight.
She let him advance 100 feet, then followed.
Two blocks down he stepped into a bar with an open, large front window topped with a red awning. Bright red umbrellas were stretched over sidewalk tables.
She entered a women’s boutique and pretended to browse, giving him ten minutes lead time. In between racks, she opened the burner phone and typed a response to Penny. “You can stop worrying. ATF agent not after you anymore.”
He sat alone at the end of the bar, his back to the window. He had a beer in front of him and a book open in his hand. His head was bowed, reading.
She passed. When she reached the next corner, she stood for a moment, killing time. She felt her pulse with her injured finger. It was normal. Strong.
Penny had texted. “Are you sure?”
Mac typed back. “Yes.”
She slipped the burner phone down into her courier bag, crossed at the corner, and meandered back on the opposite side of the street.
Minutes behind her, Cal stood at the door to the loft. The lock had been jimmied and it stood ajar.
A naked mattress rested, tilted length-wise against the far wall next to an old fan. Otherwise the loft was barren. Only the sterility of the space, the absence of dust, suggested someone lived here.
Through the window, a street lamp blinked on.
Cal shook his head once, twice. A small smile formed.
Clever, clever Maar, you saw me coming a long time ago.
He slipped his Glock inside his belt at the small of his back.
He walked the loft’s perimeter slowly, noncommittally opening empty drawers and the bare, warm refrigerator. She must have had an arsenal of cleaning products; the place was spotless. Even the waste basket was empty.
There was a noise in the hallway.
Cal pulled his Glock as he turned on the open door. A tall, dark-haired man walked by and glancing in saw Cal with his gun drawn. The man jumped out of sight, yelling, “Holy shit, man. Just making my rounds. I’m the building manager!”
Cal called around the doorway. “ATF. Sorry. Come on in.”
The man peeked around the doorframe, hands raised by his head. “Just making sure everything is ok up here.”
Cal holstered his gun and flashed his badge. “Sorry to scare you. ATF.”
The man retreated backward down the hallway, mumbling, “Ok, man, really, ok. Will leave you to it.”
Cal continued his search. In the makeshift bathroom, he found a damp sliver of soap. It smelled of rosemary and mint.
At one of the huge windows, he gazed into the dusk. In the park, under the light of the street lamps, two dogs enthusiastically rough-housed. One of them was a pug.
A mixture of disappointment and relief flowed through him. He had lost her.
On the desk, he noticed a piece of paper. It was a baggage claim ticket from 30th Street Station.
Down on Cresson Street, Beam called Odom. “It’s clean. She’s gone.”
“What did you see?”
“He was inside checking it out. It was a big loft. Spotless. No sign of life. Except a mattress on the floor.”
“She’s flown. Damnit. Ok, keep on the agent but from a distance.”
There was silence down the line.
Beam spoke again. “Maybe she’s finished, Sir”
“Maybe she is.”
New York, NY
Freda watched the MSNBC newscast on her screen. An excited reporter stood outside Capitol Hill. He gushed, “We’ve just learned the Senate has passed the Assault Weapons Ban!” Behind him on the lawn of Capitol Hill, a crowd holding a vigil threw up their arms, hugged each other. Whoopie horns blared and cameras flashed. The camera panned wider. The crowd started chanting, “U-S-A! U-S-A!”
Freda glanced up. Jack stood in her door. He smiled. She smiled back. He turned and walked down the hall.
RESOLUTION
The Weeping Woman's right ear has turned into a bird sipping at her tears, a sign of new life. Her hair flows like a river. She has a flower in her hat. But this moment of hope does not erase the fury of the painting.
- Jonathan Jones
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me:
I am a free human being with an independent will.
- Charlotte Brontë
54
New York, NY
Penny softly closed the door to her apartment behind her. The smell of grass and soil from dirty cleats tickled her nose. She leaned against the inside of the door, listening to the silence; the boys weren’t home from school yet.
In the kitchen, she poured a glass of water and took a long sip, the cold hitting the lump in the back of her throat.
She found Kenneth in bed in a t-shirt and boxers, unshaven, unbathed, typing on his laptop. He didn’t look up.
“Kenneth.”
“I’m right in the middle of some killer dialogue.” He purposefully kept typing.
She waited.
He finally looked up.
She swallowed. “I’m not going to let you follow this Peter Pan dream anymore.”
He lifted his fingers off the keypad, annoyed at the interruption, not taking her seriously.
She said, “I’ve been letting this go on for too long.”
He leaned back, waiting.
“It’s time.” Her tone was sympathetic, soft. “I take part of the blame. I haven’t done you any favors by allowing this dependency.”
He rested his hands on his stomach and gave her a ‘go ahead’ look, taunting her to carry on.
She did. “While you’ve been able to chase your dream, Kenneth, I’ve had to work. But you know what? I have dreams too. We don’t talk about them. You don’t ask about them. But I have them.” She shifted on her feet, took a moment to clarify her thoughts. She redirected. “It’s not fair to blame you for not asking about or not knowing about my dreams. But it’s also not fair to me to keep them buried. I need the space to let them breath. This is really, truly, about me. Not about you.” She chuckled to herself, her relief now unfiltered. “That’s such a line, but it’s really true. This is about me letting me dream.”
He finally spoke. “What are you talking about Penny?”
She took a large breath and exhaled slowly. “You have three months to find a job. If you don’t, I’m going to file for formal separation. One of us will have to move out and get a second apartment. It’s time.”
Philadelphia, PA
Cavernous 30th Street Station was a cacophony of noise and movement. Late evening commuters rushed past Cal as he entered through the West doors.
He found the ‘leave luggage’ counter, handed the baggage ticket to the attendant, who in turn returned with a white courier envelope.
Reaching for the envelope, Cal asked, “How long do you hold bags?”
“Only 24 hours.”
“Then what?”
“We clean ‘em out.”
“So this has been here less than 24 hours.”
“For sure.” The attendant nodded to the envelope. “Actually, I remember her.”
“The one who dropped it off?”
“Yeah.”
“Blond, 5 foot 8, slender? Short bob cut?”
“Exactly. Nice lady.”
Moments later, at a cafe table off the main station hall, Cal sipped a coffee and stared at the sealed package on the table. The train announcements blared loudly in the main hall. A policeman and his dog passed. An Amtrak employee laughed loudly to a colleague.
Cal opened the envelope and slid out a bulky pile of documents.
The top document appeared to be a simple cover memo.
Final Operations Report - SFG Destabilization
Classification: Need to Know
Tags: Rogue, Firearms, National Security, Fraud
He began flipping through the stack. The package included a snapshot of one of the Picasso Weeping Women series. It included photographs from the internet of a run-down tenement building captioned Harlem Polo House and what appeared to be the former Newtown elementary school. There were the three photos of Neil Koen sitting across the restaurant table from Congressman Peters. Cal recognized these as the same photos the New York News had been sent.
Next in the pile were the four Blue Lantern cables. They were followed by a photo of the raid on Scimitar taken from a local newspaper’s website. In the photo, up on the hill
, Cal stood to the right of Sheriff Soloman.
Deep below the station a train churned to the platform. A forlorn bell announced its arrival, followed by the whistle of brakes. The air pressure changed slightly as the train pushed fully into the station.
Cal turned the pages. There was the ‘post-Newtown strategy’ email from Neil Koen to Charles Osbourne.
Each of Stacia DeVries’s New York News articles on the SFG had been neatly clipped and included.
Dora Maar - whoever she was - had compiled a full, final report on her entire operation.
Toward the end of the pile, Cal found a black-and-white photograph. His hand hovered over it. In the photo, a man was lying on a bed in a dark room. A yellow sticky note was attached to the right top corner: “Your ‘get out of jail, free’ pass.”
His eyes narrowed on the photo. It was his apartment. It was his bedroom.
Across the bottom of the photo she’d written in Sharpie: CIA Case Officer Frank Odom: birth name - Thomas Apostle: DOB: 8.20.68, Cincinnati, OH: SS#: 405-80-1329
Maar had given him proof of a CIA officer undertaking a domestic op against an ATF agent.
The last page in the pile was a short, hand written note on clean, crisp linen parchment.
“Cal, I know you’re probably in trouble with your boss. This should help that. But I wouldn’t use it further than that. I’d recommend a safe deposit box in an international bank. But in the end, you decide what’s best for the country. Be careful, they’re watching you right now. - Dora Maar”
Across the busy station hall, Beam stood in a corner with a cell phone to his ear, watching Cal. “He’s finished looking through the documents. Now he’s looking around.”
