“I like that. Would you teach me?”
“You know Spanish?”
“I do,” Mike said.
“Will you teach me?” Akiva asked. “You teach me Spanish, I teach you Krav Maga. We have deal?”
“B’seder.”
Akiva smiled hearing Mike agree in Hebrew. “Mitzooyan,” Akiva said. (Excellent.)
They spent the next two weeks in intensive training before both men had to head out to new assignments. Akiva went back home to Israel and his work with the Mossad while Mike was sent to Libya to collect intelligence on a splinter cell operating freely inside that country and from there to his post in Saudi Arabia. Mike had eventually become proficient at Krav Maga, a tool which served him well on numerous occasions. The two spies had become fast friends and their relationship eventually became more personal than professional. Whenever possible, both men would negotiate their schedules to spend some time together, even if only for a day or two.
Mike had spoken to Akiva less than a month earlier, so it came as a bit of a surprise to hear anything from him so soon afterwards. He parked his car in the CIA parking lot, called his friend, then headed to his office.
“Habbibi, mah shlomcha?” (My friend, how is everything with you?)
“Mike, my friend, everything is good by me. How is by you?”
“Great.”
“I sent you something. Check my outbox. You have to see, very important,” Akiva said.
A great number of communications in the clandestine community were usually done through “dead drops.” A dead drop is a form of contact between an intelligence agent and their case officer that does not require them to meet directly. Instead, the information would be left at a pre-assigned destination, or inside an object somewhere out in the public, such as a mailbox, tree stump or a sewer. Over the years, the two friends had devised a system where letters, both English and Hebrew, and numbers, were interchangeable in emails or word documents and the two men were the only ones who knew what the code meant. Moreover, to retain security, they often changed the system every few months, so what the number four represented one month, might be totally different the next. These messages sent from dummy accounts, were deleted every few weeks, and never sent directly to the other party. Instead, they were sent to a bogus address and because that email account was inactive, the email was left in the sent box of the person who sent the email. Mike or Akiva would then go into each other’s dummy account, enter the password and find the intended message in the Sent box.
“Will do,” Mike said as he unlocked his office door and headed straight for his desk.
“I have to go. Be careful, my good friend. Shalom,” Akiva said.
“Shalom.”
Mike sat down and logged into his secured CIA account. He proceeded to sign into Akiva’s dummy account, entered the password, then checked the Sent box. He needed less than a minute to decode the message. He printed it out and placed it on his desk then leaned back in his chair, immersed in thought. A few moments later, he straightened up and searched for something else on his desk. Within a minute, he found what he was looking for. He studied it, thought about it for a moment, then put it back where he found it. Mike turned back to his computer, Googled something else, and after reading the results, printed the information and left it on his desk with the two previous pieces. He picked up one more report, read a few lines, stared at the print on the page then placed the memo next to the other three he had set to the side. He rechecked each transcript three or four times then sat in silence when he realized what he might be dealing with. Mike picked up his cell phone and called his partner.
“Todd, I think we got a problem.”
Nine
Callie checked her watch before stepping out of her office building and onto the K Street sidewalk. She headed west towards 21st Street. Back when she first started at M&G, Callie used to enjoy strolling the downtown area on her way to a mid-day meeting or an early dinner reservation, but now she found it increasingly difficult to saunter the streets without bumping into someone she knew. For most people that wouldn’t be a problem, but for the number one lobbyist in the nation’s capitol, it put limits on availability that she didn’t have. Callie soon hired a car service to drive her from place to place. She was through with encountering random acquaintances she barely recognized, and more often than not, spending the majority of their conversation trying to figure out how to end it.
But she was walking today. The TGI Fridays where she had arranged to meet Kacey was less than a five-minute walk from her office. The whirlwind morning showed no signs of slowing down and Callie thought it might not be a bad idea to step out and grab some fresh air. Her mind danced as she hung a left onto 21st street. Before she could turn the corner, Jenny Bledsoe, the chief of staff for Marcy Stillman, was rambling straight towards her. Bledsoe’s boss, the newly elected freshman Senator from Oklahoma, defeated long time incumbent Harry Males in a hotly contested run-off race that came down to less than one-hundred thousand votes. More importantly, it deadlocked the Senate at a 50/50 split between Republicans and Democrats.
Callie knew Bledsoe from the time she spent working in Mike Gorman’s press office. They had gone back and forth a few times regarding Gorman’s irresponsible appearances in the media including what he had said about Callie on television a year or so ago. Callie wanted nothing to do with Jennie and she felt confident Bledsoe harbored the same disdain for her, that is, until she accepted her new position with Senator Stillman.
“Callie Wheeler, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the longest time.”
Callie knew Bledsoe was lying, but she played her part. She looked forward to seeing where the conversation was going to end up. “I’m sorry, Jenny, I must have missed your messages,” Callie said with a business-like attitude. “Been busy with the election season heating up…I’m sure you understand.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Jenny Bledsoe stood barely five feet tall, with short black hair, sunk in eyes and a small stud on the side of her pierced nose. Her pale features and emaciated body looked similar to those of a drug addict in need of rehab. Callie always felt a little awkward towering over her the way she did, but was comforted by the feeling she got that the Senator’s aide was actually afraid of her. Naturally, Callie tapped into that fear and enjoyed the power it brought, whether real or imagined.
“Callie, I wanted to see if we could set up a meeting, with me, you, and the Senator to introduce you to her and have you get to know her a little. She’s a firecracker and I think you’d like her a lot.”
Callie knew all about Stillman and wasn’t going to bend over backwards to search her out though she was intrigued by what Bledsoe’s new boss could potentially do for her. She viewed Stillman as a lightweight who came to Congress by bludgeoning her opponent with money. It comes in handy when you’re the sole heir of the fortune from one of the wealthiest oil families in the state of Oklahoma. She thought about the possibilities and although Callie was careful which new members of Congress she dealt with, Bledsoe gave her an opening to explore and she could not let it pass without further inspection.
“Did the Senator actually mention that she wanted to meet with me or is this idea coming from you alone?” Callie asked, knowing Jenny would answer the way she thought Callie would want to hear.
“The Senator asked me who the most influential people in Washington were, and naturally, I mentioned your name. I told her that we had a very good relationship due to all our past experiences working together and stuff.”
It came as quite the surprise to Callie to learn that they had “a very good relationship,” primarily since they couldn’t stand the sight of each other. She continued to play along even though she knew Jenny was full of crap. “I’ll tell you what. Send me an email with three potential appointment times that work for Senator Stillman and I’ll check them against my calendar and see if we can make it work. How’s that sound?”
Jenny