Multiple Exposure A Sophie Medina Mystery (19 page)

“How about if we take one of those benches by the fountains?” Jack pointed to two figures seated on enormous plinths on either side of the staircase. “The female statue on the left is the Contemplation of Justice. The male statue on the right is the Authority of Law. Which side do you want to sit on?”

“I’ll take justice,” I said. “I’ve had enough dealings with the authority of law today.”

We sat on the semicircular bench and watched the jet of water from the fountain cascade gracefully back into the pool and the thin strips of clouds turn orange and red behind the Capitol dome. Across the street, congressional staff and their bosses streamed out of the House and Senate, leaving work at the end of the day. Jack spun his empty water bottle in his hands and waited for me to go on.

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” I said finally. “Baz told me there are people who believe Nick might have murdered Colin in order to get the well logs and now he’s selling them to the high bidder . . . I know that’s not true. But I don’t understand why I haven’t heard from him . . . it’s eating at me, Jack. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

It felt like a weight rolled off me to say it, to finally get it out in the open. Why hadn’t Nick contacted me?
Why?

“Nick’s a good man,” he said. “I’d trust him with my life, Soph, and you know I’m a good judge of character. There could be a dozen reasons he hasn’t called or e-mailed or got word to you through someone he trusts. Maybe he was injured—you said there was a lot of blood at the house and in that car—and he’s got amnesia. Maybe he’s keeping silent to protect you.”

“I wish I knew.” I threw up my hands. “Sometimes I feel so alone.”

His arm went around my shoulders again. “You poor kid. I pray for you every day, you know that, don’t you? You
and
Nick.”

I nodded and bit my lip.

“I don’t know if this helps,” he went on, “but over the past couple of years people have started reaching out to me—from the White House, the Hill, administration policy makers, lobbyists. What they wanted was . . . I guess you’d call it spiritual guidance. How to deal with a professional conflict that troubled their conscience or went against their values and ethics.”

I sat up and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, for example, do you take money from a corrupt government or a company that uses child labor in China that wants to hire your public relations firm to promote their interests in America? Or what if you work for a senator who supports the Second Amendment because of all the hunters in his state and you’re in favor of gun control because your niece was killed by an illegal handgun bought on the street?” he said. “That sort of thing. A lot of the people I’ve counseled have been from the intelligence community.”

“You never told me this,” I said.

He shrugged. “It’s not like I hung out a shingle. Now I guess it’s word of mouth because all of a sudden someone calls and wants to talk. But let me tell you this: All of them are tremendously challenged and conflicted about where trust and honesty fit in their lives and marriages. Sometimes they can work it out. Other times, they choose loyalty to country over loyalty to family, believing that’s the greater good and the honorable thing to do. Except the spouse can’t handle being frozen out, never knowing what’s a lie and whether he or she—and maybe their children—are being set up or used as bait.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that it’s a hard life and that the choices aren’t always easy. You know that better than I do, especially after everything that’s happened to you. But you’re going to make it through this, Sophie, however it turns out. You’re tough as nails, you always have been.”

I gave him a twisted smile. “I hope you’re right.”

“I know I’m right.”

“There’s something else,” I said.

“What?”

“The receptionist who worked for us at Focus was found in the Potomac River this afternoon,” I said. “Her name was Alicia Jones, Ali. She was just a kid, twenty-one or twenty-two.”

“I’m so sorry.” Jack made the sign of the cross. “What happened to her?”

I told him, and about my gnawing worry that I was indirectly responsible. “What if someone made a mistake and thought it was me? Ali said we looked like cousins and even Bolton made a comment about it.”

Jack shook his head. “You’re not accountable for the actions or the behavior of anyone but yourself. Not for Ali, and certainly not for whoever did this to her if it was a homicide. So don’t go there or you’ll tear yourself to pieces.”

“That’s easier said than done, Jack . . .”

“Don’t beat yourself up, Soph. I mean it.” He stood and held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s go back to the house and get showered and changed. We can have cocktails in my room until the kitchen and dining room clear out downstairs. Then I’ll wow you with my fabulous gourmet skills.”

“I’d like that.” I let him pull me up. “I don’t know if I ran off enough artery-clogging calories. We did a lot of walking. And sitting.”

“We can remedy that,” he said as we jogged down the steps. “Last one back to Gloria House does the dishes.”

*

We sat by candlelight on Jack’s balcony drinking a bottle of Antinori Chianti Classico, a birthday present from a parishioner at Holy Trinity in Georgetown, where he occasionally helped out saying Mass. Afterward, we brought our glasses and the rest of the wine downstairs to the large communal kitchen, which we had to ourselves. Jack put me to work making pasta dough and showed me how to run it through his pasta machine and turn the thin sheets into fat strips of linguine.

We were standing across from each other at an old marble worktable in the middle of the kitchen and my apron was spattered with flour, as was my side of the table. He’d put newspaper on the floor under my feet and it looked like I was standing in a dusting of snow.

“What’s this dish called again?” I asked.

He dumped a can of tuna in oil into a food processor. “Linguine with tonnato sauce and arugula. You’re gonna love it.”

“Do you have to use the anchovies?”

He opened the tin. “The anchovies make the sauce. Take my word.”

“I hate anchovies.”

“Suck it up, cupcake. More wine?”

I nodded and he filled our glasses.

“Something else on your mind?” he asked. “You’ve been kind of quiet.”

“I didn’t tell you everything when we were at the Supreme Court,” I said. “There’s something else.”

Jack stopped working and stared at me as I told him about the assassination plot and Scott Hathaway’s name being mentioned.

“You overheard two guys planning a murder that might involve the Senate majority leader?” he said.

I nodded. “I ended up telling Luke about it, and this morning he ran into a neighbor who works for Homeland Security and casually brought up a what-if hypothetical situation. Then voilà, an hour later Special Agent Napoleon Duval, my CIA contact, who now works for a counterterrorism task force, showed up at the studio for a little chat like someone rubbed the magic lamp.”

“What did Agent Duval say when you talked to him?”

“I think he believes I’ve been listening to the strange voices in my head,” I said, “and that Nick’s disappearance has made me a little unhinged. He also thinks I deliberately went after the job at Focus so I could meet Arkady Vasiliev.”

“That’s crazy,” Jack said.

“Tell that to Duval.”

“What makes you think the person these guys want to assassinate is Taras Attar?” Jack asked.

“The timing fits. He’s coming to the States in the next few days on a book tour.” I shrugged. “Though Luke says it can’t be Attar because he and Hathaway are such good friends—and Hathaway supposedly knows about this plot.”

“A friend of mine, another Jesuit who teaches at the university, knew Hathaway and Attar when they were Georgetown undergrads thirty years ago. Hathaway’s pretty loyal to his old alma mater.”

“That’s right. Hathaway and Attar went to Georgetown, didn’t they?”

“Go Hoyas.”

“I wonder how they got to be friends.”

He shrugged. “I could ask Sully, my friend. He seemed to know them pretty well.”

I brushed my hair off my face with a floury forearm. “Would you mind?”

“Nope.” He pulsed the food processor. “But getting back to Vasiliev—and you—why are those well logs so valuable that Vasiliev called you in to talk to you last night and someone tossed your place today? Crowne Energy must have found something when they drilled for oil.”

“Nick couldn’t talk about it, but I know he and Colin were really excited about some development right before he disappeared. When Crowne Energy decided to drill that test well in Abadistan, they were the laughingstock of the industry. The geology in that part of the world wasn’t considered conducive to finding hydrocarbons—a large quantity of hydrocarbons, that is—meaning you’d also find oil or natural gas. Any drilling is a bit of a guessing game—there is only a ten to thirty percent chance of finding anything anyway. When you throw in the ethnic violence between the Russians and the Abadis, the threats and intimidation Crowne had to deal with from the Shaika, and Abadistan being a major supply route for drugs and arms from Afghanistan and Pakistan, on paper it looked like a terrible decision to go in there. No one could understand why they took such a huge financial—and personal—risk.”

“Maybe because the reward on a long shot like that would be worthwhile if it panned out?” he said.

“Nick used to say that for a small company like Crowne Energy it would be like hitting the jackpot.”

“If they did find oil—which it sounds like they did—then what?” Jack asked.

“Once you make what they call ‘a discovery,’ it takes another few years to drill more wells and build the infrastructure to develop them,” I said. “It’s not like some Looney Tunes cartoon where the oil gushes like a big black geyser and suddenly everyone’s rich.”

“So maybe Arkady Vasiliev wants to cash in on the risks Colin and Nick took, get in on the ground floor, and take over their operation?”

“I don’t think there’s much ‘maybe’ about it after what he said to me last night,” I said. “I guess what I’m wondering now is whether he’s also behind the plot to get rid of Taras Attar.”

“If Attar’s gone, it’s a huge blow to the Abadi independence movement,” Jack said. “Abadistan remains Russian and so does the oil. No one benefits from that more than the guy who owns the biggest oil production company in Russia. I don’t know much about this, but I would imagine it wouldn’t be hard for Vasiliev to take out a contract on Attar, especially with all his connections to the Shaika.”

“But why would Scott Hathaway be involved?” I said. “Luke’s right about it not making sense.”

“Maybe Sully could shed some light on that.” Jack put mayonnaise, capers, and the anchovies into the food processor. “I think the water’s ready. Did you finish making the pasta?”

“Yup. Want me to cut the lemons?”

He nodded and poured a steady drizzle of olive oil into the food processor. I handed him the lemons and he added the juice to his sauce.

My phone vibrated in my jeans pocket and I pulled it out. A text message from a phone number I didn’t recognize.
Can you meet me tonight to talk?
It was signed Moses Rattigan.

I wrote back.
About what?

Will explain. At KenCen fund-raiser. Do you know Bar Humbug? Barracks Row, 10:30pm?

“Something wrong?” Jack asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “The public relations director at the National Gallery wants me to meet him tonight at a place called Bar Humbug after he leaves a fund-raiser at the Kennedy Center. He says he needs to talk about something. Luke was going to send everyone a link to our photos this afternoon. I hope there’s not a problem.”

“Are you going to meet this guy?” Jack asked. “At least Barracks Row is only on the other side of the Hill, so it’s not far away.”

“I think I ought to. Maybe this isn’t about the pictures. Maybe Moses talked to Duval . . . or Bolton. I guess I’d better find out.”

“All right, but you’re not going alone,” he said.

“Don’t be silly. I love you, but I’m a big girl and I can do this. I’ve been in war zones. I can handle Capitol Hill.”

Jack shook his head. “Did you think you’d drive through this neighborhood on your windup scooter at this time of night? No way, sunshine. I can nurse a Perrier in a corner while you talk, so I won’t cramp your style.”

“Jack—”

“Someone broke into your place today and a car chased you down the Mall last night.” He was using his don’t-mess-with-God’s-earthly-representative voice. “I’m coming with you.”

“Okay. You win.”

My phone buzzed again.
Are we on?

I sent a reply.
See you at 10:30.

13

In the dozen years I’d been away from Washington, the city had changed, not all of it for the better. Unlike London, which seemed timeless and eternal, D.C. still felt as though it were searching for its identity, trying to prove itself and fill its own oversized boots as the capital of the leading world power. The most striking change, at least to me, was the number of federal buildings that had become walled-off fortresses and the proliferation of ugly barricades that now were the permanent post-9/11 landscape. My stepfather, Harry, called Washington the place people who didn’t want to live in America went to live.

But the 8th Street corridor, newly rechristened Barracks Row, was a success story, a neighborhood that had reinvented itself by coming back from near extinction. The city’s oldest commercial center, it had been chosen by President Thomas Jefferson as the Marines’ first point of defense for the Capitol and the Navy Yard. Over the years, especially after World War II, it grew seedy and run-down, nearly closing for business after the 1968 riots. On the drive over, Jack told me I wouldn’t recognize it now: a thriving neighborhood of restaurants, bars, and shops, all the old buildings renovated under a program sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

We parked across the street from the Marine barracks and walked one block down 8th Street to Bar Humbug. When Jack opened the front door, heads—mostly male—swiveled to check us out. The place looked comfortable and unpretentious, a long narrow room with a bay window overlooking the street, plenty of dark paneling, high-backed booths, and red pendant lamps that gave off cones of sepia light. The white-haired bartender waved a greeting. The clientele was a mix of easily recognizable buzz-cut Marines and folks who looked like regulars.