Fate of the Union

Fourteen

Dawn arrived with them as they hit DC, the sun making picture-perfect postcards of the Capitol and its majestic neighbors. Rogers, behind the wheel, thought about nudging Reeder awake, but decided against it, though she knew he had a sentimental streak for the city and its history.

After a long night into wee-hours morning, dealing with efficient but dogged local cops, she’d caught an hour’s catnap while Reeder spelled her; snoozing in the passenger seat, arms folded, he seemed to have finally found a comfortable compromise between his sore shoulder and the seat belt.

He asked from behind closed eyes, “Who knew we were going to Charlottesville?”

“We made the decision in the conference room, remember,” she said, “and left from there.”

His eyes remained closed. “So most of the task force team knew... including Miggie.”

“Right. Excluding Bohannon and Wade, over at Constitution Hall.”

He opened his eyes, tasted his mouth, didn’t like it, straightened, grimaced, readjusted his seat belt, asked, “What about the motor pool guy?”

“I signed out the car without a destination.”

“That narrows the suspect field by one, anyway.”

“You think we were set up?”

“You don’t? Our best lead, so far, blows up in our face, and not metaphorically. You can’t think that’s a coincidence.”

She was a few blocks from the Hoover Building. “I don’t, but I trust my team. I vetted them personally.”

He gave her a sideways glance. “You and I have less than spotless records in that regard.”

Rogers didn’t need to be reminded that the Supreme Court task force had included a betrayer.

“I was very damn careful,” she said, “when I put this team together.”

“You didn’t select Detective Woods,” Reeder said.

“He’s not one of us.”

“In a way he is.”

“But Woods wasn’t around when we decided to go to Charlottesville.”

He shrugged. “Maybe somebody on the team filled him in about our road trip. Maybe somebody called Bohannon and Wade, just keeping them up to speed, and then they told Woods. We need to check, first opportunity.”

“All right.”

“And even if Woods didn’t know about Charlottesville, what do we know about the man? Just that he’s new, was assigned the Bryson investigation, initially bobbled it, and then was on the scene right away at the security office break-in.”

“You might be reaching, Joe.”

“Probably am. But just the same, let’s have Miggie check him out — discreetly.”

“Then you do trust Miggie?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Even though he sent us to a couple of buildings that exploded in our laps?”

Half a grin cracked his placid mask. “You’re starting to sound like me.”

“Paranoid you mean?”

“Patti,” he said, “if after all we’ve been through together, you aren’t paranoid? You’re just not trying.”

She laughed. “Okay, you’ve made your point. But looking at our team, and its extended family? It’s hardly the only possibility.”

“I’m listening.”

“Miggie says whoever removed Bryson from the equation had skills enough to turn on the GPS on that burner phone, and track him with it, with your friend none the wiser.”

He gave her a sharp look. “Then they weren’t following Chris — they were ahead of him.”

She nodded. “I think we’re up against some seriously professional big-leaguers who we need to get a bead on, before we start accusing our own.”

He thought about that.

Then he said, “Consider me on the same page.”

She smiled, trying not to look too proud of herself.

“But, Patti, let’s still be careful about what we say in front of our people... till we know who your big-leaguers are.”

The number of media vehicles outside the J. Edgar Hoover Building had tripled by the time Rogers pulled into the underground garage. Some were waiting on foot next to the ramp, catching Rogers and Reeder arriving on camera; but uniformed officers kept the reporters and camera crews back and out of the garage.

Upstairs in the Special Situations Task Force bullpen, she and Reeder found every desk vacant but for the one that had recently been assigned to Miggie. Before they’d left for Charlottesville, Rogers had encouraged her team to work for another hour and then go home for some rest and cleanup; it would be late morning before they’d be back in.

As for their Latino computer expert, he had obviously been glued to his chair all night, no doubt mainlining free-trade Sumatran, at least judging by the way his fingers were still flying at the virtual keyboard.

Reeder went right to him and pulled over chairs for himself and Rogers.

He said to Miggie, “Once upon a time there was something called Senkstone... do you know the rest of the story?”

Miggie grinned, obviously ready to be asked. “Okay if I skip the fairy-tale framework and stick to the facts, Mr. Reeder? ’Cause there’s no happily ever after.”

“Make it ‘Joe.’ A coffee guy like you oughta be able to remember that.”

Another grin. “Let’s start with the SIM card pic of that black what’s-it. I’m pretty sure Senkstone, Senk for short, is what our solid-black Rubik’s Cube consisted of. Now, from the outset you need to understand something — none of the net hits we got on ‘senk’ referred to any kind of explosive. Not one.”

Reeder’s smile was faint but there. “So how is it you found out that’s what it was?”

“I’ll get to that. But next let’s look at Chris Bryson and Jay Akers — two smart guys who used to be in the Secret Service, both of whom had long since developed a good, experienced feel for big-time dangerous.”

“Fair statement.”

“Both of them are concerned about Senk. Both of them got recently made dead — the first after expressing concern about Senk to his wife, the other killed on the job, but making Senk one of his last words.”

Rogers asked, “What do we make of that?”

“We come up with two smart guys who mention a word that refers to something that, I think we can safely extrapolate, both of them considered incredibly dangerous.”

Reeder said, “Let’s so extrapolate.”

“Fine,” Miggie said, sitting forward, “but this incredibly dangerous thing called Senk doesn’t exist... at least, not if you ask the net about it.”

“Everything that exists is on the net.”

“Right, Joe. That’s why I started searching places that don’t exist.”

“Miggie,” Rogers said, half smiling, “maybe you need to knock off for a while. Catch some sleep like the other humans.”

He waved her off. “Joe... Patti... there are entire networks not open to the public: the Silk Road for illegal drugs, the Armory for guns, dozens of others on the Dark Web. Nucleus, Agora, a slew of ’em used for all kinds of illegal activities.”

Reeder said, “And that’s where you found out about Senkstone.”

“Not quite. I found rumors of a compound that was said to be the next generation of plastic explosives... but at first it was like a sea creature said to inhabit a certain loch in Scotland — lots of talk, no proof. Then, at the Armory site, I found a chat room where guys were talking about how cool this compound would be if it did exist.”

“What would make it ‘cool’ to a chat room like that?”

The lightness went out of Miggie’s tone: “For starters, it could be made into anything.”

“Molded,” Rogers said, “like plastic explosives?”

“No,” Miggie said. He tapped his desk. “I could use Senk to make this desk or that tablet or anything in this office. The chairs you’re sitting on could be fashioned from this explosive material, and you’d never know it... till it went off.” Miggie’s eyebrows went up, then down. “Well, actually, you still wouldn’t know, because you’d be dead.”

Reeder’s brow furrowed. “Sounds like a geek fantasy. How could that even be possible?”

“Because,” Miggie said, “you could theoretically put liquid Senk into a 3-D printer and just ‘print’ yourself a desk, a chair, whatever, and it would also be a bomb. A very lethal one.”

“How lethal?”

“A pound of the stuff would take out a three-story building.”

Reeder and Rogers exchanged slow glances.

“And,” Miggie was saying, “because Senk was deemed unstable, and never went to market, there are no dogs trained to sniff it. Airport-style puffer machines don’t work on it. It’s plastic, so metal detectors won’t pick it up. There’s just no good way to know for sure what it is you’re sitting on.”

Rogers shifted in her chair. “If this Senk stuff got out into the world,” she said, feeling a little sick, “it’d make terrorists unstoppable.”

Miggie just nodded.

“But you said it was unstable,” Reeder said, “and research was shut down...?”

The computer expert’s excitement, at sharing what he’d discovered, had vanished. He was coldly serious now, even somber.

He said, “After I left the Armory site, I got into some secure DOD files...”

“What?” Rogers said.

“... which might, technically, be above my clearance and pay grade.”

“You hacked the Department of Defense?”

Miggie shrugged, smiled sheepishly, but Reeder gave him a grin and a nod and said, “Good man.”

Rogers knew that Miggie’s actions could come back on her, but — like Reeder — she cared more at the moment about moving forward than worrying about trifling repercussions, like losing her job or going to prison.

She asked, “What did you find?”

Very quietly, Miggie said, “A company called Senkian Chemicals developed Senkstone eight years ago, on a DOD contract, working on it for three years and a few months. Five years ago, the DOD shut down Senkian’s research when an explosion killed three employees, including one of the company’s main partners.”

“If they were shut down five years ago,” Rogers said, “why is Senk a topic of discussion now? Even if it’s just limited to the Dark Web.”

Miggie said, “For a year after the Pentagon shut them down, Senkian was in limbo. The company was built strictly around that one area of research — this new breed of explosive. Then, four years ago, an obscure firm called Chemical Solutions, Inc., bought Senkian out.”

Reeder frowned. “And the DOD didn’t stop it?”

Miggie nodded. “Why that’s the case, I haven’t found out yet — it’s all very hush-hush. Payoff to someone high up to sign off, maybe. An elaborate black op, possibly. Anyway, after that, Senkian dropped off everybody’s radar.”

“Absorbed,” Reeder said, “into Chemical Solutions.”

Rogers asked, “What do we know about Chemical Solutions? What’s the ownership?”

“That’s just it,” Miggie said, with a shrug. “They’re a shell within a shell within a shell — if the trail has an end, I haven’t found it yet.”

Reeder asked, “A shell that owns the two buildings that blew up in Charlottesville?”

“No — that’s a company called Barmore Holdings. Who and what that is, I don’t know yet.”

“Any sign of Barmore Holdings in the ownership chain of Chemical Solutions?”

Miggie shook his head. “Not that I’ve found. Haven’t tracked down the actual owners of any of these companies, but this kind of entity is created to protect the anonymity of owners. These aren’t exactly publicly held companies. I know it’s a familiar refrain I’m singing, guys, but it’s going to take time. I could have a team on this for months, and it would still take time. Doing it by myself, it’s slow going.”

“Stick with it,” Rogers said. That had been a lot to absorb, and in truth she hadn’t absorbed it yet. But she pressed on. “Anything else, Mig?”

“Yeah,” he said, and turned to Reeder and said, “Your instincts were right about our friendly neighborhood would-be assassin, Thomas Stanton.”

“How so?”

“Stanton’s sons have Cayman Islands trust funds — each with one hundred K in them. Opened two days ago.”

“By whom?”

“That’s still murky,” Miggie said. “These people clearly don’t want to be found out. Let’s face it, they were paying for an assassination.”

“Keep an eye on those accounts,” Reeder said. “Since Stanton failed, maybe whoever paid him will try to renege. Might provide a path.”

Rogers said, “How about the body Joe and I hauled out of that building? Any luck with facial recognition?”

“Yes!” He summoned a front-on mug shot — type photo on his tablet screen of a man Roger immediately recognized as their half-charred, all-dead rescue. “Our latest double-tap is one Lester Blake.”

Leaning in for a look, Reeder asked, “Did he work for Barmore? Or whatever the business in those buildings was calling itself?”

“No, surprisingly. Actually, Lester Blake was employed in the maintenance department at the Capitol.”

“The US Capitol?”

“The one and only.”

“Maintenance,” Rogers said, frowning. “A janitor?”

“Limited information on that so far. But I’d say, probably, yes.”

Reeder said, “Jay Akers’s last words weren’t limited to ‘Senk’ — he also said ‘Capitol.’ And now a Capitol Hill maintenance man winds up dead in a building that exploded after he was killed? A building that may have been a site of manufacture for a highly dangerous, impossible-to-find plastic explosive?”

Rogers said, “Sounds like we better get over to the Capitol and find somebody to talk to.”

Reeder was already on his feet.

She said to Miggie, “While we’re gone, we need you to run a discreet background check on Detective Woods.”

“Oh, that’s already done,” Miggie said. “You have to multitask when you’re running these searches, or you’ll go gonzo waiting.”

“What do you have?”

“Detective Peter Arthur Woods,” Miggie read. “BS in criminal justice from Virginia Commonwealth, high marks, spotless record, citations, youngest on DC PD to make detective in twenty-five years. Seems like a really good guy.”

“So,” Reeder reminded him, “did Thomas Stanton.”

Miggie shrugged. “I’ll dig deeper.”

Rogers said, “Incredible job all around, Miggie. Uh, did Lester Blake have a family?”

“Wife and three kids.”

She sighed. “I’ll have Hardesy and Nichols make the survivor visit. While Reeder and I go over to the Hill, make the same level search on Blake that you gave Stanton — okay?”

“No problem.”

“But, Miggie — when did you sleep last?”

“... Day or two ago?”

“Go take a nap on that nice couch in your office. That’s an order.”

Miggie’s expression was just a little mocking. “Technically, I’m just helping out here. You’re not my boss, you know.”

“Then it’s not an order. It’s an earnest request from a caring friend.”

“Now you’re making me sick.”

“Then maybe you better lie down.”

In the hallway, Rogers and Reeder ran into AD Fisk, still in yesterday’s apparel, meaning she’d been here all night as well, though she looked typically perfect. The AD had been on her way to the Special Situations bullpen, having been alerted that Rogers was back in the building.

After a quick update from Rogers, Fisk said, “I’ll call ahead and set up a meeting for you and Joe with the chief of the Capitol police. I’m going to make it for this afternoon, so the two of you can go catch some sleep. But first, there’s something I need Joe to do.”

Reeder frowned a little. “What would that be?”

“I’ve been dealing directly with the media, under the guidance of our top PR officer, of course.”

“Okay.”

“But here’s the thing — I can protect our agents, to some extent, but you’re a consultant, Joe — not technically an employee — and there’s only so much I can do to keep the press away from you.”

He chuckled. “Thanks, but I can handle myself.”

“I know you can. But the reporters did not get the chance to quiz you after the Constitution Hall incident. I spoke to a large group outside the building, not long ago, and they’re already asking questions about Charlottesville — the local police there seem competent enough, but haven’t exactly been discreet.”

“We drove in the building,” Reeder said, “we’ll drive out the building.”

“I prefer you wouldn’t. That same group is waiting now in the press room. I indicated I’d ask you if you were willing to talk to them.”

Reeder’s eyes and nostrils flared like a rearing horse’s. “A press conference?”

“That sounds more formal than I mean it to.”

“Director Fisk,” he said, “as a dollar-a-year man, I reserve the right to pick and choose my assignments.”

“Joe, you and Special Agent Rogers are running our most important current FBI investigation. The media’s going to dog your heels and impede that investigation at every turn, unless you get out ahead of it.”

He turned to Rogers, who said, “You’re on your own. I can’t talk to the media before I deal with a shooting board. Two shooting boards, now.”

Fisk said, “She’s correct, Joe.”

“Okay,” he sighed. “I don’t suppose you could find me a shaver, safety or electric, and somewhere I can throw some water on my face? Unless you enjoy having somebody who looks like a homeless guy representing the Bureau.”

“Give me your sizes,” Fisk said with a smile, “and I’ll get you fresh clothes as well.”

“You’re a full-service operation, I’ll give you that.”

All of that was done, and quickly. Rogers took advantage of freshening up, too, and she had extra clothes in her office closet. As she’d pointedly told Reeder, she would not be taking questions, but would have eyes and cameras on her.

Soon she, Reeder, and Fisk were in a room the size of the task force bullpen, filled with chairs, all taken by reporters who looked as harried and sleep-deprived as Rogers felt, with TV cameras along the side walls and in back.

The AD introduced Reeder, then joined Rogers behind him at his podium. When Reeder stepped to the microphone, Rogers half expected the press to leap to their feet and frantically pelt him with questions. They leapt to their feet, all right, but what they gave him was applause.

“Thank you,” he said, looking surprised and frankly humbled, and said, “I’ll take a few questions.”

Rogers smiled. He knew how to silence their applause. They resumed their seats and hands shot up.

Reeder pointed.

“Mr. Reeder,” a Fox News reporter asked, “some years ago you took a bullet for your president. Last year, you saved the life of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Now you’ve prevented the assassination of a possible candidate for the presidency. That’s an impressive trifecta.”

Some laughter.

“Would you care to comment?”

Reeder said, “I prefer to call it a hat trick. It depresses me to think I made a trifecta and didn’t put any money down.”

More laughter.

“Frankly,” Reeder said, in the affable yet unreadable manner he reserved for the media, “I didn’t prevent an assassination last night. I played a secondary role, but my friend and associate, Special Agent Patti Rogers, really prevented the tragedy through her quick-thinking action. And, no, you can’t talk to her, because there are internal FBI procedures that must be addressed first.”

No laughter at all.

“In the case of President Bennett, I was doing my job. As for the Chief Justice, I was working at the time as a consultant with the FBI... hired through my ABC Security, if I might inject a brief commercial message... so that was doing my job as well. Last night, I was attending a political rally as a private citizen, and I also did my job, as any citizen would — I saw someone in trouble and tried to help. And really, that’s all I’d like to say about it at this time. I’ve been up for some hours and, in fact, I’m pretty sure I’m hallucinating this press conference. Thank you.”

He began to step away from the podium and a woman from MSNBC called out: “Mr. Reeder, is it true you’re working with the FBI on another case?”

He returned to the mic. “I’m working with the FBI as a consultant on a matter, yes.”

“Could you elaborate?”

“No.”

Another reporter asked, “Were you in Charlottesville at the site of an industrial explosion last night?”

“Yes.”

“Is that part of the FBI investigation you’re attached to as a consultant?”

“I was at the scene in my consultant role. Now if you don’t mind—”

A voice called out, “Are you a supporter of Adam Benjamin’s assumed bid for the presidency?”

“My politics are private. I made the mistake of going public with political opinions, once, and decided never again.”

That got a few laughs, particularly from older members of the press.

Another shouted question: “Mr. Reeder, you were right there, on that stage — anyone watching could easily take that as support for Mr. Benjamin.”

“I was there because I was invited. I was interested in hearing what Adam Benjamin had to say. But it’s not my practice to endorse candidates for office.”

From the back came: “Do you think your implied support played a role in Benjamin’s surge in the presidential polls?”

“I wasn’t aware of any such surge. I was busy last night.”

Rogers was also unaware of that. Of course, she’d been busy, too...

“Yes,” the reporter said. “Polls have Benjamin pulling even with all the major potential Republican candidates and only a few percentage points behind President Harrison.”

“Meaning no disrespect,” Reeder said, “these political matters are not of much interest to me right now. My friend Jay Akers, a former Secret Service agent, a good man, was killed last night. My thoughts, like my prayers, are with his family during this terrible loss.”

Apparently unmoved, another reporter called out: “Do you think Mr. Benjamin will announce his candidacy at his press conference?”

“I didn’t even know he was holding a press conference.”

“Yes, on the Capitol steps this afternoon.”

Finally Fisk stepped in, Reeder stepped back, and the Assistant Director said, “Thank you, everyone. That’s all for today.”

Reeder gave the reporters a nod and went out. Rogers followed.

As they walked quickly down the corridor, Rogers said, “You did fine. What’s the idea of making me out a hero?”

“You are one. Anyway, maybe it’ll get some of the heat off me.”

They went their separate ways, to go home and get a few hours sleep.

Looked like date night with Joe Reeder was finally over. With more fun soon to begin.