“Can we talk a sec?” Kacey asked as she knocked on Bob’s door and disrupted his solitude.
“What’s on your mind?”
Kacey walked towards his desk and handed him the one page e-mail.
“What’s this?” Bob said as he grabbed the page from her extended hand.
“I got it late last night. No idea who it’s from or anything.”
Bob read the three lines and handed the paper back to her. “What do you think?”
Kacey fidgeted with the pen she’d been holding, winding it through her fingers like a majorette in a marching band. “I have no idea, that’s why I’m coming to you.”
Bob leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. “Check it out and see if there’s any truth to it. If it has legs, we can run the story and see what it flushes out.”
Kacey’s eyes widened just a bit. “You want me to do it?”
“It’s your e-mail.”
“What about Walter? Or Margie?”
“Not your concern.”
Kacey tried to contain her smile as she turned towards the door. “You sure?”
“Don’t make me second-guess myself,” Bob said with his head down already moving on to the next urgent crisis on his agenda.
Kacey ran down the hallway to find Walter Bloom. Walter was sixty-three years old, a father of four, and a grandfather to nine and counting. He still had all of the hair on his head, albeit exclusively white, wore glasses that he took off constantly in order to read and had a belly that, very shortly, was going to make his belt disappear from view.
She searched for Walter in his office and the newsroom before finding him alone in the break-room munching on a Kit-Kat bar. “You sure you should be eating that?”
“No,” he said as he swallowed the last piece then smiled at her. “What’s up?”
Kacey reached out to hand Walter the e-mail, then pulled back and reconsidered. “Wash your hands.”
“What for?”
“Chocolate.”
“Who are you, Miss Manners?”
“Have it your way,” Kacey said as she turned to leave.
“Wait.” Walter walked to the sink and ran cold water on his fingers while Kacey stopped dead in her tracks at his command. “What ya’ got?”
Kacey slipped him the e-mail and waited for his response as he read the short note.
“Where’d you get this?”
“No clue”
Walter wiped his mouth with his bare forearm. “Anything to it?”
“Bob just asked me to find out.”
Walter picked up a cup from the counter and headed back toward the sink. He turned on the cold water and watched it cascade across his index finger. “Normally I’d say it’s a dog except the Senator Lank thing intrigues me.”
“You think there’s something there?”
“Did Bob say it’s your story?”
Kacey nodded her head and smiled.
Walter, satisfied with the water’s temperature, filled up the cup halfway, then took a drink, but left the water running. “He say if we’d run it?”
“If there’s legs…”
Walter filled the cup again. “Nothing left to do but find out…if this thing has legs though, we’re talking huge story…”
“Like how huge?”
“Like front page, make the politicians piss themselves, huge.”
Kacey ripped the e-mail from Walter’s hands, leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, Walter.”
“Be careful, if there is something here, there will be plenty of people trying to destroy it,” Walter said. “And the best way to destroy it, will be to destroy you.”
Six
Thursday, July 21, 2011
“You want to get together for lunch?” Callie lifted her hair and turned around, her usual sign for Mike to zip up her dress.
“I have a meeting with the Director at eleven in Langley, but if you want to meet me at the Dirksen Cafeteria, I think I can be there by 12:45. Before that, I have to sit and listen to Senator McCombs tell me why he thinks the CIA should be abolished,” Mike softly kissed the middle of Callie’s back as he slowly slid the zipper to the top of her dress.
It had been two years since Mike worked in the field. In the aftermath of another Congressional lobotomy on the intelligence community, Mike accepted an appointment by Ted Biggs to be his assistant in the CIA’s new Covert Operations Center. He had grown increasingly frustrated with the red tape and government bureaucracy that hampered the work he and his colleagues were doing in the field. Mike became acutely aware that constant congressional interference was costing agents their lives and he jumped at the opportunity to change the status quo from the inside. The other reason he agreed to work at the new COC had to do with the woman he intended to marry. Life as an operative left very little time for family. Moving to Langley gave him a chance to spend more time with her at home. Though she never came straight out and said it, Callie persistently hinted around the subject of marriage. She had grown tired of Mike’s procrastination and little by little became more obvious with her frustration at his feet dragging. For his part, Mike was well-versed in how she felt and had every intention of asking her, but he was having too much fun messing with her head. It wasn’t until two nights ago however, that he finally got around to putting an end to her misery.
“My mom wanted to know if you were coming with me to Kingston for Labor Day,” Callie had said, as she pulled a cut-off tee-shirt over her head and slipped into bed.
“Not sure I want to do that.”
Mike loved her parents and they loved him, which would explain why his response to her question felt like a punch to the gut. Earlier in the day Callie had accepted her mother’s invitation telling her they would both be there for the holiday weekend.
“Why do you say that?”
“I think it’s kinda’ weak, me going over to your parents house and not being able to sleep with you in the same room. What are we, eighteen?” Mike actually had no problem with her parents rule that only married couples could sleep together in their home. He respected them for it, but with an opportunity to wreak havoc in Callie’s head, he couldn’t resist.
“Wait a second. We talked about this...”
“I know we did, but I’m darn near thirty-five years old, been running ops for the CIA in eighteen different countries, been shot at a few hundred times, killed more bad guys than I care to admit and I’m not allowed to sleep with my girlfriend at her parents home because we’re not married? I mean, it’s the twenty-first century for god’s sake.”
Callie wasted no time broaching her favorite subject. “Ya’ know, if you don’t like the rules, there’s always a way you can…um…play within