“Listen, Frank, I’m sorry for being so hard on you earlier,” Sam said to Ekman when they met in the parking garage at DHS headquarters in DC. It took concentration for her not to call him “Francis.” It had become a habit.
Ekman was silent, so Sam went on. “It was a bit of a rough night, and I was a little cranky, and a little out of line,” she added. “Sorry.”
“I’m used to your abuse,” Ekman said. Sam couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not. He didn’t sound angry, though it was tough to tell with him. He was a good enough guy, but he usually had all the personality of an ashtray, although he sometimes surprised her with a wry remark.
She didn’t think she had pushed him too far during their somewhat heated conversation at her house earlier in the morning, but she wasn’t certain either way.
Sam had decided that she needed to keep Ekman close while she sleuthed out his agenda. Doing so required an apology for her sharp tongue, which was the easy part.
It also required her to remain on her best behavior in front of the deputy director, which was going to be hard. She wasn’t the president of the Deputy Director Tom Jarvis fan club. As far as she could tell, the feeling was mutual.
But she needed to change the game up. Ekman had clearly had an idea in his head when he questioned her earlier in the morning, and Sam needed to figure out his angle. She had the distinct impression that he was withholding information from her. She hated that on principle, but more than that, being kept in the dark was a potential health issue given all that had transpired in the preceding twelve hours.
She had realized that she suddenly didn’t know who was on her side. And obviously, judging by her banged-up Porsche and the bomb crater in her front yard, at least a few people were playing for the opposition. It would be nice to know who was who.
Ekman held the door for her – chivalry before rank – and they walked through the dingy hallway and into Jarvis’ spacious office. The décor screamed, “Fed.” The furniture looked like it came straight out of the Dick Van Dyke Show. The air smelled vaguely of mothballs, which turned Sam’s stomach.
“You’ve had quite a morning, haven’t you, Sam?” Tom Jarvis was a career bureaucrat in his early fifties. He had bovine eyes and a bulldog’s jowls, but none of the latter’s tenacity. If there was a decision to be made, Jarvis generally felt that it ought to be made at a later date, and by someone else. He treated his charges with kindness, but rarely stuck his neck out for anyone. He was in to memos, meetings, calendars, and keeping the stakeholders informed, whatever that meant.
He didn’t motion for Sam and Ekman to take a seat, which wasn’t a good sign.
“Yes, I have,” Sam said with a small smile. “In fact, I can’t recall a more eventful Saturday night. At least since my sorority days.” Jarvis laughed politely.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sam saw Ekman squirm a little. She wondered if there was some agenda at play other than just giving the big boss a rundown of the evening’s kerfuffle.
“Can you tell me how you came to be mixed up in all of this?” Jarvis asked.
That’s one hell of a strange question. “I’m not quite sure what you mean,” Sam said. “Frank called me last night at about eleven to work the John Abrams scene. What else am I mixed up in?”
She saw Ekman squirm again.
“Sam, it’s not a good idea to act dumb,” Jarvis said.
“It’s no act, Tom,” Sam said. “In fact, I’m starting to get the distinct impression that it’s you who probably owes me an explanation.”
Jarvis looked at Ekman, who took the cue to reign in his employee. “Sam, let’s keep our cool, shall we?”
“I’m cool as a cucumber,” Sam said. “Especially considering you guys dispatched me to a fake suicide, where I discovered my name and address on the victim’s nightstand, and after which I was chased by crooked cops. And I probably don’t need to mention the fucking bomb that remodeled my house this morning.”
“Another way to look at those events,” Jarvis said, “would be to say that you left a scene prematurely, then led police on a high-speed chase through the city.”
“Police?” Sam asked, incredulous. “Oh, you mean the dead cop in my entryway who was moonlighting as a gangster or something? And maybe the policeman who tried to run my car off the road? Those police? You need to open a window and let some fresh air in here. All the fumes from that pile of bullshit on your desk have affected your brain.”
“That’s enough, Sam,” Jarvis said. “We’re looking into the facts. I have not yet ruled out administrative leave while we sort this out.”
“Are you serious?”
“I can’t have agents running rogue out there. Consider yourself on notice.”
Consider yourself a jackass. “Unbelievable,” Sam said.
Ekman chimed in. “Sam, I think you should go home, take some time to get your house put back together, and let us sort through this.”
“Sure thing, Frank. Just as soon as you tell me what you should have told me hours ago. You know something about why I’m suddenly so popular. I’m not leaving until I hear it.”
“I’m afraid that’s above your pay grade at the moment,” Jarvis said.
“Then earn your paycheck and make the decision to lower the classification. These people attacked me at my home, Tom.”
Unbidden, Sam sat down in a chair across from Jarvis’ desk. “And if either of you knew something beforehand and didn’t warn me,” she said in a low tone, “that’s a hell of a lot more than just a bad decision. It’s a crime.”
Sam watched Jarvis stew. Jarvis had the power to cause problems for her, but she was mindful that the party who cared the least held the power in any relationship. She cared a great deal about figuring out who was wreaking havoc in her world, but she cared far less than Ekman or Jarvis about office politics, niceties, and the formal rank and protocol structure of the Department of Homeland Security. She wasn’t afraid to make a mess.
She also knew that she could easily create the kind of problem that kept both of her supervisors awake at night. It would take no more than ten minutes of her time to file an Inspector General complaint. Both Jarvis and Ekman were in line for promotion, which would be frozen for the duration of the IG investigation – easily half a year, sometimes longer.
If the IG found against them, their careers would be redlined. In the federal government, an IG complaint was the nuclear option. Both men knew that she wasn’t afraid to go there. She had done it before.
Jarvis exhaled heavily. “Okay, Sam. Let me make a phone call. We do owe you some information.”
“Damn right you do. And an apology.”
Jarvis frowned. “Don’t push it, Sam.”
**********
“What would you like to know?” Jarvis asked after returning to his office from the top-secret vault down the hall.
In his five-minute absence, Ekman and Sam had exchanged scarcely a word, except for Ekman’s tongue-in-cheek thanks to Sam for having kept to her best behavior in front of the boss.
Sam thought for a second before replying to Jarvis. “I think you should tell me what you know you should tell me. Whatever that is.”
“Cute, Sam.” Jarvis observed.
“I’m not being cute, Tom.” No one but Sam called Jarvis by his first name, and she knew her insolence hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“Frank gave me the third degree already this morning,” Sam said. “And your first response to my near-death experiences of the past evening was to critique my adherence to chapter and verse of the fucking rule book. I mean, are we on the same team here, or aren’t we?”
“Of course we are,” Jarvis said. Something in the way he said it made Sam’s bullshit alarm go off. It was the answer a boss obviously had to give, but Jarvis hadn’t quite made enough eye contact to be convincing. Something’s up, Sam thought.
“It’s just that sometimes,” Jarvis explained, “I don’t have the ability to let people in the organization in on things that I know they would be interested in.”
“Like who is trying to kill them? Because I would be interested in hearing a thing like that.” Sam smiled to take the edge off her barb.
“Sam, if we had had any warning, or even if we suspected anything might be amiss, you have to know that we’d have moved mountains to stop it.” Jarvis did make eye contact this time. Maybe he meant it.
Or maybe he knew that it was an important lie, and he was a little more deliberate about his delivery.
“I know, Tom. This isn’t the CIA, after all.”
That was a bit of a low blow. A while back, someone had started a rumor that Jarvis was actually an Agency plant, placed in Homeland to keep tabs on the fastest-growing bureaucracy since the Soviet Communist Party.
Whether or not the Agency was engaging in domestic espionage had been largely academic. People believed the CIA was shady enough to do something like that, and Jarvis had protested a bit too much for some people’s tastes, giving life and legs to what would otherwise have been idle water cooler gossip.
Sam saw his eyes narrow, and knew she had made her point.
She smiled again, and made a demand, disguised as an olive branch: “It’s hard to piece things together in advance, and I know it’s hard to manage need-to-know to protect your sources and minimize risk of exposure.” Jarvis nodded, and Sam went on. “But I think we can all probably agree that even if I didn’t have a need to know before, it’s safe to say that I do now. And hell,” she added, “I’ve even been known to solve a these kinds of cases from time to time. Maybe I can be helpful.”
“This stays between the three of us,” Jarvis said. “I don’t have permission to brief your deputy. Just you.”
Sam suspected that was bullshit – Dan Gable held all the same clearances she held, and by virtue of his involvement in the morning’s insanity, the same need-to-know. They want to keep us from comparing notes, she thought.
“Understood,” she said. My fingers were crossed.
“Operation Bolero,” Jarvis said.
“Bad movie with Bo Derek?”
“Funny. No. But a plot line just as awful. American mob meets Venezuelan mob, or government – we think it’s kind of the same thing – and it looks like they’re teaming up for some Stateside shenanigans.”
“Everett Cooper?” Sam asked.
“Yes, and a few others, though it’s not certain that the Metro cops fully understood who they were actually in bed with,” Jarvis said. “By all accounts, these guys are loyal Americans and good cops. On the job, I mean. They maybe could have picked a better hobby.”
“So they’re good guys, except for the thuggery and espionage? I’m with you so far,” Sam said.
“Like I said, it all looks a bit more tangled up than that.”
“Why do you think I’m in with them?”
“I didn’t say I thought you were in with them,” Jarvis said.
“I know you didn’t say it.” Sam eyeballed Jarvis. She liked the hardball game, and she was good at it. She saw Jarvis flinch just a little bit. “Tell me why you think it.”
“I can’t comment on who we might be looking at.”
“I thought you were going to let me peek up your skirt, Tom. Just between the three of us, and all of that. Did I misunderstand?”
“No, Sam, you didn’t misunderstand. But you know as well as anyone that there are limits.”
That didn’t take long, Sam thought. It only took a couple of questions to run smack into the stonewall tactic again.
“No, Tom, I don’t know that,” she said. “See, when there are limits to how much you’re willing to let me find out about a case that almost killed me, that tells me that we’re really not playing on the same team. If you have something against me, you need to make your move. Otherwise, you need to cut the bullshit. Either way, there’s a corpse stinking up my house right now, which means that we’re miles beyond the point where it’s okay for you to mushroom me.”
Jarvis was clearly unaccustomed to anyone handing him an ultimatum, least of all a subordinate, and it was evident to Sam that his patience was wearing thin. That makes two of us, she thought.
Jarvis spun his pen, mulling.
Sam glanced at Ekman. Always uncomfortable with confrontation, he had faded into the furniture.
She shifted her gaze back to Jarvis and sat patiently, legs crossed, one foot swinging rhythmically.
Jarvis finally broke the silence. “Do you know that Brock James is married?”
The left-field question took her aback.
She blinked twice before regaining her mental footing. “Legally separated, and divorce pending. Did you know that the price of tea rose in China?”
“Not yet divorced means married,” Jarvis said. “Technically, you’re both guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer.”
“I’m sorry, Tom. You must feel so disappointed in me. I’m having sex with a soon-to-be-divorced guy, who’s been separated for a couple of years. What the fuck does that have to do with Venezuela, the dent in my rear quarter panel, and the brains on my wall?”
“They’re related, Sam. We caught wind of your affair—“
“Brilliant work. We have the same mailing address.”
“As I was saying, your affair––”
“It’s a relationship, Tom. Not an affair.”
“Legally, it’s an affair. The end of the sentence I keep trying to complete goes like this: we had an obligation to investigate your affair in order to make sure you’re not vulnerable to blackmail. As you know, that’s a byproduct of having a top-secret security clearance. In the process of that investigation, we found some things that might connect you to Bolero via Brock.”
Sam sat dumbstruck. She couldn’t fathom what connection Brock might have to the Venezuelan government or American organized crime. He had spent twenty-three years in the Air Force—not exactly the kind of environment that would have exposed him to mobsters and spies.
And Brock probably couldn’t find Venezuela on a map, she thought. He religiously ignored international politics. All politics, for that matter.
“I’m pretty sure Brock hasn’t been any further south than Cancun,” Sam said.
“I think you’re mistaken,” Jarvis said.
“Tom, Brock is a no-shit hero. They gave him a Silver Star after Kosovo. You’d damn well better have something more than rumor and innuendo behind what you just said.”
Jarvis’ voice was quiet. “I do, Sam.”
Her heart pounded in her chest, and a surge of adrenaline slammed her stomach. The suggestion that Brock might be hiding something important from her awakened deep-seated trust issues. Her throat constricted and she fought tears. “Tell me, Tom.”
“Arturo Dibiaso,” Jarvis said.