Three Weeks in Washington, page 22
part #3 of Titus Ray Series
After explaining how Stormy swam regularly at the lake on my property in Norman, Arkady responded by telling me about a dog he had when he was growing up in Tbilisi. In the middle of describing how he’d taught the dog to catch fish, the ladies arrived with mugs of hot coffee and four dessert plates piled high with strawberry shortcake.
I urged Arkady to finish telling the story, and in a move that surprised us all, he immediately got out of his chair and grabbed Frisco, using him to demonstrate how he used to wrestle his childhood dog to the ground in order to force him to give up the fish he’d just caught.
Naturally, Stormy thought the sight of Arkady wrestling with Frisco looked like great fun, and he immediately jumped right in the middle of the twosome.
In the end, Arkady managed to extricate himself from the pile of wet fur without any help from the rest of us, which was a good thing, because I seriously doubted whether we would have been able to help him in the first place, since the three of us were laughing so hard.
As our laughter died down, I glanced over at Nikki.
By the look on her face, I could tell she was enjoying herself, and, at that moment, I realized how important her happiness meant to me.
Such a realization caused a wealth of emotions to well up inside of me, including a kind of happiness of my own, yet my predominate feeling wasn’t one of joy, but of fear.
Moments later, my fear was justified.
* * * *
Before Arkady sat back down at the table, he ordered both dogs away from the pool, and they reluctantly obeyed him. Stormy trotted over and sat down beside me, while Frisco made his way over to the big oak tree close to the garage.
About thirty minutes later, after the ladies had cleared off the table and gone inside, I saw Stormy’s ears perk up. The next thing I knew he was making a beeline for the front of the house with Frisco right behind him.
Arkady quickly looked down at a screen on his mobile phone and said, “There’s a car in the driveway.”
“Were you expecting someone?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “but sometimes people get lost out here.”
I pointed at his cell phone. “Mind if I take a look?”
After he handed me his phone, I saw him pull his weapon from the gun holster at his back.
I took a quick look at the screen, which displayed a video feed from the home’s security camera and handed it back to him.
“I’m coming with you,” I said, removing my Glock.
He nodded and pointed over to his right. “I’ll approach the vehicle from front. You bring up rear.”
I immediately headed off toward the gate on the other side of the property, the one opposite the garage, while Arkady moved out in the direction of the garage.
As I made my way forward, I realized the dogs had ceased their continual barking and were just yapping intermittently now. I knew that probably meant the driver was trying to reason with them, perhaps attempting to gauge their intentions, before exiting his vehicle.
The vehicle appeared to be a silver Ford Mustang with chrome wheels.
* * * *
Although it was after nine o’clock, the sun had just fallen below the horizon, and, consequently, just as I rounded the corner of the house, the automatic security lights in front of the house suddenly switched on.
This turned out to be both good and bad.
It was good because I could clearly see the target as he emerged from the vehicle. It was bad because the target could also clearly see me.
Fortunately, the driver was so focused on Arkady, who was standing directly in front of him, and on the two large dogs, who were circling around him, he wasn’t even aware of my presence a few feet behind him.
“How can I help you?” Arkady asked, keeping his pistol out of sight.
“I’m looking for the owner of that Range Rover,” the driver said, nodding his head in the direction of my vehicle.
“That would be me, Frank.”
At the sound of my voice, Frank Benson wheeled around, took one look at my Glock, and raised his hands.
“You can put away the firepower, Titus. You won’t be needing it.”
“You’ll have to convince me of that.”
Suddenly, Stormy bared his teeth and snarled at Frank Benson—something I’d never seen him do before—and Benson immediately took a step back and said, “I’m just here to have a conversation with you, that’s all.”
I walked around to where Benson was standing in front of the Mustang. After ordering Stormy to sit—which he immediately did—I looked over and nodded at Arkady, who holstered his weapon.
I lowered my Glock and said, “Start talking, Frank.”
“Some of what I have to say is classified,” he said, glancing over at the big Russian. “We should have this discussion in private.”
I was spared the embarrassment of asking Arkady to give us some privacy when he suggested,” You could use the study to entertain your guest.”
Although I found it difficult to think of Benson as my guest, I did as Arkady suggested. “You heard the man,” I said, nodding toward the front door. “Let’s go inside.”
The moment we entered the foyer, I realized I should have asked Arkady to let Nikki know where I was, but, as soon as we started down the hallway toward the study, she came around the corner.
“There you are,” she said. “I was just ...”
She paused when she noticed Benson standing beside me.
“Well, hi,” she said, giving him a smile.
Benson returned the smile and said, “It’s Nikki, isn’t it? I believe we met at the orientation yesterday at Quantico.”
“That’s right,” she said. “What are you—”
“Frank just dropped by for a chat,” I said, anticipating her question. “This shouldn’t take long.”
“Not long at all,” he said, stepping over to Carlton’s study and opening the door.
The moment he moved away from me, Nikki was able to see the Glock I was carrying at my side, which I’m certain was his intention all along.
She looked down at the gun and then glanced over at Benson.
“I’ll wait for you in the living room,” she said, heading down the hallway.
To say she looked disconcerted when she realized I was holding an FBI agent at gunpoint would be an understatement.
* * * *
Benson entered Carlton’s study as if he owned the place, and I suspected he’d visited The Meadows before. As one of Carlton’s former operatives, he might have even attended a couple of Gladys’ dinner parties, perhaps even a Thanksgiving dinner at the house.
“Nikki’s a beautiful woman,” Benson said, running his finger over a row of books on Carlton’s orderly bookshelves. “How do you know her?”
“None of your business,” I said, putting away my gun. “Why were you following me?”
Benson sat down in the same armchair Felipe Arcos had occupied just a few days earlier. As he did so, I found myself thinking about those implements from the basement dungeon Mitchell had wanted to use on Felipe.
Not that I would have used them on Benson—not at all.
He nodded. “So you knew I was tailing you? I borrowed my son’s car thinking it might throw you off.”
“Surveillance was never your strong suit, Frank.”
He gave a short laugh. “I’m here, aren’t I?” He pointed over to the other armchair and said, “Have a seat, Titus.”
At the moment, I was standing in front of Carlton’s desk, and I chose to remain there.
“I know I burned you right after mile marker 61,” I said. “That means you must have spent the last couple of hours trying to figure out where I could have gone after you lost me. Coming here to The Meadows wasn’t anything more than just a wild guess on your part.”
He didn’t dispute my conclusion. “Douglas has always treated you differently than the rest of his operatives. Personally, I think it’s because he feels sorry for you. Finding you here, entertaining your lady friend inside his house, just proves my point.”
I bristled at his reference to Nikki. “You have one minute to tell me why you’re here before I throw you out.”
“You know why I’m here. That stunt you pulled at the Navy Yard on Monday morning almost got me fired. I received an official reprimand because I allowed you to enter the compound without checking your creds. Now, the incident’s been noted on my record as a misconduct infraction. One more violation, and I’ll be getting my discharge papers from the Bureau.”
I was tempted to point out if the feds fired him, at least it wouldn’t be because his actions caused a bunch of hostages to lose their lives.
But, to save time, I decided not to bring up his past and deal only with the present.
As I thought about what he’d said, though, I suddenly felt guilty about the heartless way I’d used him at the Navy Yard. The feeling was like a weight pushing down on me in every direction, and I realized what I had to do.
“I apologize, Frank. I had my reasons for needing to check things out at the Yard, but I didn’t stop to think I might be putting your career in danger when I did so.”
He folded his arms across his chest and stared at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means what it means. I’m apologizing for my behavior.”
“If you think I’m about to do you another favor, then you’re—”
“Look, Frank. I just apologized. Take it or leave it, and then get out. We’re done.”
He settled back in his chair. “We’re not finished here until you’ve given me some answers. If that was a real apology, then you’ll have to prove it, because the Titus I knew would never have apologized to anyone for anything at any time.”
“You want proof I’m apologizing? How would that work?”
“Tell me what you know about the shooting at the Navy Yard.”
“I thought the Bureau had already decided it was a drug deal gone bad.”
“You and I both know it wasn’t.”
Even though Benson’s past actions proved he was incapable of making spur-of-the-moment decisions, he was extremely adept at drilling down below the surface of a knotty problem and extracting critical information.
I’d seen this on more than one occasion.
Once, when the two of us were tracking a Palestinian terrorist across Europe and were faced with an inconsistency in his movements, Benson had stayed up all night charting out a minute-by-minute timeline of the man’s activities. In the end, the only reason we’d been able to grab the guy was because of Benson’s dogged determination to ferret out some minor detail.
I asked, “What makes you think the shooting wasn’t drug-related?”
“Because that scenario doesn’t fit the facts.”
He reached in his jeans’ pocket and dug out a folded sheet of paper, bringing it over to Carlton’s desk.
“Take a look at this,” he said, unfolding the paper and laying it out on the desk in front of me.
The drawings on the sheet of paper turned out to be a synopsis of his research on the shooter, Reyes Valario. One look at it, and I quickly came to the conclusion he’d done his homework.
Benson had outlined what he’d discovered about Valario in a series of arrows and boxes, with each detail in the man’s life written in a rectangular box and each box used as a signpost leading over to the next event. Then, he’d tried to connect each of the signposts with an arrow pointing to Valario’s final destination—the Navy Yard.
Benson was still missing a few key details, though, and I suspected it was the absence of those details, and not primarily his anger at me for putting his job in jeopardy, which had caused him to follow me out to The Meadows.
Benson pointed to one of the rectangular boxes on his outline and said, “Let’s start here with WK Photography. Valario had his first contact with the studio three months ago.”
He moved his finger over to another box.
“One week later, he joined a hobby club, the Razorback Century Club in Fayetteville. Immediately after showing up at the club, Valario called the studio’s owner and chatted for a few minutes.”
“The owner? You mean Walid Khouri, the owner of the photography studio?”
Benson nodded. “That’s right, and that brings me to this question. What does the Agency have on Khouri?”
“Why ask me?” I said. “You know the Bureau has channels for acquiring information from the Agency.”
“I’ve submitted a request to the Agency but it’s taking too long, and I suspect it’s being stonewalled by Douglas or someone further up the chain of command. I’m still persona non-grata over there, thanks to you.”
I knew he was baiting me, but I refused to bite. Instead I said, “Since you’ve asked me that question, I have to assume you have something to offer me in kind?”
He nodded. “Oh, yeah. You give me the intel on Khouri, and I’ll tell you what Valario was doing on his visits to the Century Club.”
I shook my head. “Cartel Carlos is heading up the investigation into the Valario connection. If there’s anything new there, I would have heard of it by now.”
“Seriously? Are you kidding me? The only thing Cartel Carlos cares about is tracing that heroin back to the cartels. I just got back from Fayetteville, and I didn’t stumble across any of Salazar’s spooks anywhere near that hobby club.”
“You’ve been down to Fayetteville?”
“I just got back on Friday. This morning, when I heard you were also back in town, I headed over to Langley and—”
“Yeah, I know. That’s when you followed me out here.”
For the first time since seeing him in the driveway, I took a really good look at Benson.
He looked pretty haggard. I was guessing he hadn’t had much sleep, and his beard was more than just a five o’clock shadow. Whether it was a style choice on his part, or the result of not having enough time to shave, I wasn’t sure. At any rate, his square jaw seemed less prominent now, which made me wonder if Clarice Duncan would still find him so appealing.
Benson tapped the spot on the paper where he’d written Razorback Century Club. “Do you want to know why Reyes Valario joined the hobby club or not?”
“I’m sure Douglas has that information by now. He’s pretty tight with some of your colleagues over there at the Bureau.”
He shook his head. “The Director doesn’t know about these details yet. You’d be the first to hear what I’ve learned about Valario.”
Benson was hitting me in my soft spot. He knew exactly what he was offering me.
Fresh intel.
Newly minted.
Never touched by human hands.
I grabbed the bait. “It’s a deal.”
Chapter 30
I walked away from Carlton’s desk and sat down in the armchair by the fireplace. Benson immediately grabbed his outline off the desk and took the chair opposite me.
I said, “The details I have about Walid Khouri are pretty sketchy right now, but after tomorrow’s briefing, I could learn a lot more.”
Once I’d told Benson what Katherine had turned up on Khouri and what I’d learned from Carlton earlier in the day, he said, “That’s it? Khouri recently traveled to the Middle East, and he’s not connected to the drug trade. That’s all the intel you’ve got on him?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Your turn now. Tell me about the hobby club. Was Valario interested in photography? Was that his connection to Khouri?”
For a few seconds, he looked at me without saying a word, and I thought he was about to refuse to share his intel on Valario with me because of the limited details I’d given him on Khouri.
Finally, he shook his head and said, “Not exactly. Razorback Century Club is a conglomerate of hobbies housed under one roof. Besides photography, they offer classes in a bunch of crafty stuff like painting and quilting, but those are just their indoor activities. They also sponsor outdoor hobbies, and that’s what he was interested in.”
“Bird watching? Archery? What?”
“Reyes Valario was there to learn about model airplanes, specifically how to fly them.”
When I heard this, I experienced an immediate letdown. “You mean those remote-controlled airplanes made out of Styrofoam?”
“I guess that’s what they were made of when you were a kid, but, in these modern times, they’ve improved them quite a bit.”
“I’m not that much older than you.”
“Have you looked in a mirror lately?”
I tapped my watch. “Wrap this up, Frank. Nikki’s waiting for me.”
He smiled, and I thought he was about to make another smart remark, but then he turned serious. “I interviewed the president of the club and also the guy who’d been giving Valario lessons. Both of them told me Valario had already mastered the rudiments of flying the larger models. What he really wanted to do was to learn how to fly the new stuff, like drones, especially the commercial ones. He said he’d been offered a summer intern position requiring him to take aerial photographs for a real estate agent who owned a drone, and he needed to get up to speed quickly.”
I considered this new intel a moment. “Were you able figure out why Valario kept calling Khouri after every lesson? Did you find out if those conversations were ever overheard by anyone?”
“That’s a negative. The Agency should contact the National Security Agency and get a transcript of those actual conversations. I was only able to access the phone number Valario called. When I did, I realized he was making calls to Khouri after almost every session.”
“While this is interesting, Frank, for all we know, Reyes could have been telling the truth. Maybe he did have a summer job lined up with a realtor. Maybe he was just consulting a professional photographer about how to take aerial photographs.”
“I also did some research on his intern story, and I came up with nothing. It was a big fat zero.”
“What’s the bottom line on Reyes Valario then? What’s your assessment?”
Benson leaned forward in his chair. “Reyes had no connection with buying or selling drugs, except for the time he bought some weed. Yeah, I know he had over a million dollars’ worth of heroin with him at the Navy Yard last Monday, but I believe the heroin was a diversion.”
