Solid Oak

by William F Lovejoy

  She muted the sound on the TV and looked at the cell screen. November.

  “This is May.”

  “Hey, I’m in Des Moines. Where to, now?”

  “There’s been a change in plans.”

  Had to be. Malone hadn’t surfaced via credit card charges, flight manifests, or hotel registrations anywhere in Iowa or California or Arizona.

  “Ah, shit! Where we going with this?”

  “Get the first flight you can for San Francisco. Call me when you get there.”

  Somehow, deep inside, she thought that Malone had outfoxed her. It made her blood boil, but she managed to keep a cool head. Sherry would go to California, and Malone would never bother her again.

  For the present, Malone bothered her a lot. Reading what there was to read of his history and his awards, he might prove to be formidable. He already had proved that with Mal. She decided to call December, who lived in Seattle.

  Another decision made on her own, but she was pretty much in charge of the operation to silence Malone.

  She was certain the Chairman would approve.

  Chapter Eight – Monday, June 17

  The Chairman called the Treasurer at 9:00 a.m. Arizona time. He couldn’t help thinking that the phone had become too damned busy in the last few days. Usually, he called May about twice a month and she served as a conduit to the others. He wouldn’t talk directly to the Vice-Chair or the Treasurer for several months at a time.

  What had gone so smoothly for six years was suddenly in disruption. All because Dinmore had become so damned greedy.

  Not to mention accusatory.

  Not to mention paranoid, judging by what he had just learned from May.

  Mears had been waiting for the call and he answered on the first ring.

  “What did you find out?” he asked.

  “It’s not good,” the Chairman told him. “The Recruiter’s account is depleted.”

  “Depleted? What does that mean? He was supposed to have over seven million in it. And May didn’t show me any significant withdrawals.”

  The way it worked, May maintained their offshore accounts. As Treasurer, Mears was to receive monthly reports from her on the balances. Each of them had access to their accounts, of course, but it was May who made the distributions and deposits. As Treasurer and an expert on foreign economies and investments, Mears made recommendations for placement of some of the funds. The governing rule was that no one was to demonstrate excessive income. Use it for travel, use it for purchases outside the country. Do not draw attention to oneself or any of the others. The Chairman, as an example, had acquired a nice villa in the south of France where he spent some time when he was in Europe. He kept a yacht outside U.S. waters.

  Dinmore had always skirted the rule, the Chairman knew. The down payment for the house in Silver Spring, the cars. He had talked to Dinmore several times about it. And Dinmore had accused the Chairman of holding out on him.

  “May went back over the last couple of years for the Recruiter’s account. Generally, he transferred out four or five hundred dollars every few weeks to a separate account in the Bahamas. There were several large withdrawals of ten thousand or more. For the cars, I would imagine.”

  “We knew that,” Mears said. “I thought you’d talked to him about it.”

  “I did. He said he was being cautious. But then, on June 1, he transferred out 6.9 million.”

  “Shit! Whereto?”

  “Well, May said it went to his Bahamas account and then immediately somewhere else. The Bahamas account was then closed. She’s still trying to find the money.”

  Mears didn’t know how to respond.

  The Chairman gave him a moment, and then asked, “What does that tell you?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  “I don’t either. My guess would be that the Recruiter was planning to skip out on us. And his family, I expect. I suppose he was getting very impatient to get out in the world and spend his money. The tipping point would have been when he didn’t get the deputy position in the department. The only thing he liked better than money was supposed political and social stature.”

  “The asshole couldn’t figure out that that amount wouldn’t take him far,” Mears said, “especially if he buys a yacht at two mil and a plantation in Belize for four mil.”

  “That’s very likely what he was thinking. Or something close to it.”

  “So he was trying to hire this Malone guy to take care of us.”

  “That’s one interpretation, and a valid one. It’s the reason I had October watching him.”

  “What are we doing about Malone? What if Din . . . the Recruiter already paid him a half million to do the job?”

  “Malone is a loose end. I’m taking care of it.”

  “Keep us more in the loop, will you?”

  “I’ll do that.”

  After he ended the call the Chairman spent some time thinking about loose ends. Their organization was very well compartmentalized. Only Lani knew who he was, and they had never had any obvious public contact. Jim thought he knew who the Chairman was, but it was Lani who had recruited Mears for his investment expertise. The men Dinmore had recruited to take care of the various missions did not know anyone’s real names. Or supposedly did not. They accepted appointments, and if successful, found their foreign bank accounts embellished. And the man they knew, Dinmore, was no longer available to them.

  Of course, Dinmore had not known that he was considered mostly as a workhorse, and that he did not receive a full share of the proceeds. The Chairman’s own account was valued at slightly over 25 million U.S. dollars even after his major purchases, though his investments were also in other currencies. Jim and Lani each had 19 million put away.

  He suspected that they wouldn’t recover Dinmore’s cash. It had gone poof into some hidden account Dinmore had set up.

  *

  Bobbi Galway awoke in a strange bed, and it took her a moment to get oriented.

  The last strange bed had been located in Nassau, when she took a week’s leave over a year ago. She definitely had to get away from the office more often.

  This bed certainly felt good, the soft comforter pulled up to her chin. She should stay in it.

  Raising her wrist, she looked at the time: 7:10.

  That brought her upright. It was 10:10 in Washington! She never, ever slept that late. Jet lag. It had to be.

  Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she slid out and stood up. She was wearing her favorite nightgown, an oversized Washington Redskins T-shirt.

  Padding to the door on her bare feet, she opened it and looked into the hallway. It was quiet and vacant. The door to Oak’s bedroom was standing open. She walked around to the bathroom, where her tote bag of cosmetics and necessities rested on the counter. Over the years, Bobbi had learned to complete her morning ritual in about forty minutes, which included starting the coffee pot. This morning she took an hour and it felt like total luxury. She wrapped a towel around herself to get back to the bedroom. Different, having a man in the house.

  She dressed in yesterday’s jeans and a fresh T-shirt, figuring she wasn’t going anywhere important. Of course, out here in the Wild West, jeans and T-shirts were almost formal. It wasn’t the same as D.C. She hadn’t packed for a two week stay, had thought she’d be here a day or two. Now, it was beginning to look like half-a-month. She’d have to shop for more clothes. She checked that the Glock was still in her purse and took the purse with her.

  When she opened the door again, she smelled bacon frying.

  Downstairs, she found Oak in the kitchen mixing pancake batter. He too was in jeans and running shoes and T-shirt. His had a Grateful Dead logo on it, the five colorful teddy bears. Bobbi didn’t think she’d shop for a copy of it.

  “Morning, Bobbi.”

  “And to you. I could be doing that.”

  “Hey, breakfast is the only thing I know how to prepare.”

  It was sumptuous. Bacon and scrambled eggs,
pancakes, sliced cantaloupe, toasted sourdough, cranberry juice, and coffee.

  They ate side by side at the counter. This too was new, or renewed. She hadn’t eaten breakfast with anyone except her mother a few times in the past three years. She could smell Oak’s cologne, so he’d been through a shower already. His face was freshly shaved.

  “Were you up all night?” Galway asked.

  “I slept in the big chair in the office where I could hear beeps and peek at the monitor from time to time. Only one beep and that was an unattended Labrador retriever. It was uneventful.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “I am, though I didn’t think anyone would show up last night. Today or tomorrow are more likely.”

  “You really believe some assassin will come after you?” she asked.

  “Well, they tried once. Whoever we’re dealing with, he or they are worried that Dinmore told me something I shouldn’t know. They lost their guy Dean Mal, and that probably didn’t make anyone happy.”

  “Especially Mal,” she said.

  “Worse for them, I showed up on Jim Mears’ doorstep, so if he’s involved they’re worried about what names I might have. And I did drop Lani Dixon’s name with Mears.”

  “Did you think at all about telling your Detective Ford the whole story? Or maybe the FBI?”

  “To be truthful, I did, but not for long. What would I say? Dean Mal killed Dinmore and took a shot at me. Why? What for? I’m not sure I want to explain my reasons for looking at Dinmore’s job offer, and I wouldn’t want to mention your referral. I’d end up giving them the three names which could be a disservice to those three people.”

  There was that to think about, Bobbi agreed. Patrick didn’t need any adverse publicity. She didn’t need to have the Agency looking at her involvement.

  But she persisted. “Some police or federal agency could be guarding your house, you know.”

  “On what we have, I don’t think they’d budget the resources,” Malone said.

  Well, he was probably right about that. Every department of state and federal government was watching their budgets more closely.

  “Why are you even involved in any of this?”

  “Damned good question. Someone didn’t give me the chance to walk away, so at the moment, it’s a matter of self-preservation.”

  “Did you look over what we located yesterday?”

  Finding information about Patrick Corridan’s organizational memberships and the causes he supported had only taken a few minutes on his website. Tracy Dinmore was not as simple. He didn’t have a website or a Facebook page or a Twitter account, and there was nothing in the way of detail about him at the Treasury Department. Just an office listing on an employee directory.

  Bobbi had finally called Lorna Dinmore on the pretext of helping her notify organizations, but Lorna could only remember the American Cancer Society because Dinmore’s mother had died of cancer, the March of Dimes, a Silver Spring Little League team, and the Red Cross. She didn’t think he had contributed much to any of them, but she didn’t know.

  Over a few hours, Galway had searched the websites of a dozen different organizations that had appeared on Corridan’s, Dixon’s, and Mears’ lists. There wasn’t much to be learned, like the names of members or supporters unless there was a celebrity involved.

  “I did look at what you found,” Oak said. “The three of them have five organizations in common. I liked the Wounded Warrior Project on all three. Mears and Dixon both belong to the NRA, but I’m thinking Dixon belongs only because her father likely belonged. The weapons collection strikes me as his. She was more into horses and tennis racquets than late nineteenth century firearms.”

  “So what about the five common interests? Would they have met at some national or regional convention?”

  “We’ll have to see if any of them hold national meetings. Can’t imagine the Cancer Society doing that. The one that intrigues me, probably because I’ve never heard of it before, is the Institute for International Stability. It seems odd that our three names all belonged to a group with little national recognition.”

  Galway took a moment to recall what she’d learned about the Institute from viewing their website.

  “They’ve got over 1.6 million members. The mission is to promote harmony among nations as well as religious and ethnic groups. I glanced at a couple of their newsletters, and they primarily report on Institute representatives meeting with upper level members of government, religious organizations, and tribes or clans all around the world. It looks like they donate heavily to a number of worthy causes internationally.”

  “Any member meetings?” Malone asked.

  “I might have to check the site again, but I think members are invited to attend a couple meetings a year. I believe one is held in the east and one in the west. I sincerely doubt that all the members attend. The bill for pastries would be astronomical.”

  “Corridan, Mears, and Dixon are all from the west.”

  “But Patrick and Lani Dixon live primarily in Washington.”

  “Where Tracy Dinmore worked.”

  “This is really a stretch, Oak.”

  “Yeah, but what else do we have? Can you find out more about the Institute?”

  She sighed. “I can do that.”

  “How about Dinmore’s bank accounts? Tracking money is important.”

  That was problematic. Bobbi often looked for information is esoteric places, but privacy laws were supposed to be privacy laws. “Let me think about that one, Oak. Can we change the topic for a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you like what you’re doing?’

  Malone put down his coffee cup and turned on his stool to face her. His eyes searched her face, maybe trying to determine if she was serious or not. “I do, Bobbi. I’m good at it, and now, if I take on a couple projects a year, it’s satisfying. It’s not an eight to five job, and I like that.”

  “Those projects don’t take up all your time. What else do you do?”

  “Ah. Travel because I like to. I’ve got a sailboat I maintain and take out frequently. I tried golf but that didn’t work out so well. Why are you asking this?”

  “I want to know why you’re not married. You retired early to live a normal life, but I don’t see it happening.”

  His lips went to a half-smile. “My women friends, few as they are, don’t seem to like my lifestyle.”

  “You’re skirting the question,” she said.

  “Yeah, I am, but only a little. Okay, there’s been a couple meaningful relationships. Peggy lasted a couple years, but then I was gone for four months, and when I got back, she’d found a doctor in the City. Megan was around for maybe nine months, but I couldn’t get along well with the friends she wanted me to get along well with. I’m not much good at superficiality. My obscure history I don’t talk about didn’t encourage either of them.”

  He looked away from her for a moment, and then said, “Hell, Bobbi, I’m no good at this confessional stuff.”

  Galway studied him for a long moment, and then decided he was leveling with her. She could understand how some people would never fathom the depth of the commitment and patriotism that most of the people working for the Agency felt. And that mindset tended to isolate them. And her. She could relate to what Oak was telling her. Joe Q. Citizen didn’t know, or care, anything about the Agency unless it was a sound bite on the evening news, and even then, it had to an enticing sound bite. The country had real men and women fighting and dying in the shitholes of the world, and Joe Q. didn’t attend the funerals.

  “All right. Thank you. I’m sorry nothing has worked out for you.”

  Malone said, “You know, I watched you and Bob and thought that nothing could ever be better than what you had together. I couldn’t find it in the agency, so I left. Can’t seem to find it anywhere else, though. Character flaw on my part.”

  “No flaws that I can see, Oak. Maybe you’re too hard on yourself.”

  “I’ve
never told you, but losing Bob was really difficult for me. I pretty much thought of him as my brother.”

  “I knew that,” she said.

  “You haven’t moved on.”

  Think about that. She carried on with the normal routines, but had she moved on?

  “No. No, I haven’t. I sometimes think about what could have been. Patrick wanted to see Bob in his Senate seat one day. Kind of a Corridan dynasty, like the Kennedy’s. He pushed for Bob to move to the State Department, or to at least get out of operations with the Agency. Bob didn’t take pushing well.”

  “No, he wouldn’t have,” Malone agreed.

  “Kind of like you, I think.”

  *

  The Chairman finally reached the man code-named Tuesday in Riyadh. They agreed on a change of cell phones for Tuesday, and the Chairman called him back using the new number.

  “I have a project for you,” the Chairman said.

  “Yes?” The accent was British-learned English. Tuesday, whose supposed name was Abdul Wahhab, was a contract agent the Chairman had utilized several times in the past.

  “In Doha, Qatar. There is apparently an activist group calling for reform of the emirate. Do you know of it?”

  “A small news item on Al Jazeera. The report is that the protest is of no consequence.”

  “Yes, that is how they would report it. My information is that this group may be led by someone named Bijad or Musaid or Nayef. Can you find out who is in charge and make contact with him?”

  Short pause while the potential was considered. “I can do this.”

  “Very well,” the Chairman said. “If you can make contact, you must urge this group to continue its protests, and you will tell them that you can help with their funding.”

  “What is the amount?” Tuesday asked.

  “We will make $200,000 US available to you. You offer the leader what you believe will achieve the end, and the balance remains yours.”

  Again a pause. “Yes, this is possible. Is there a specific target?”