Barry Lando: Deep Strike

“No way,” said Charlie, “we’re going to get the bastards.”

“Steve, there’s only one thing I don’t get,” said Sarah.

“What’s that?”

“Why the abrupt change? I mean, when Brian tried to wind us up in the bar a week ago, you put a damper on it. It was useless, you said, hopelessly naïve. Now all of a sudden you’re itching for the fight. What’s up?”

“I’m pissed about our investigation being totally ignored. I’m pissed to find Stokes in my face. I’m pissed because I’m convinced that people working for Stokes killed my closest friend.”

“Still doesn’t explain it all,” said Sarah. “I’m not convinced”

Steve hesitated. This was not the conversation he came for. “Brian was also like a younger brother to me.”

“Yeah, you’ve said that before,” said Charlie. “Did you actually have a younger brother?”

“Two years younger than me.”

“What happened?” asked Sarah.

Steve felt his throat tighten. “What do you mean?”

“To your brother, obviously.”

“It’s a long story,” Steve said, averting Sarah’s gaze. “I’m going to need another beer.”

“Here,” said Charlie, handing him one.

Steve took a long drink. “Okay. My father was a wannabe poet, took off when I was three. Never returned. A year later, my mother ran off with a dentist to Texas. Left me and my one-year-old brother with her parents, my grandparents.”

Sarah leaned forward with a sympathetic look on his face. “Your brother’s name?”

“Benjamin—Benjy.”

“So you and Benjy were dumped with your mother’s parents.”

“Yeah, then the year I turned eighteen,” Steve continued, “was also the year my grandparents were killed. Head-on crash with a truck. It was Grandpa’s fault. They found an empty bottle of vodka beside him. My brother and I went to live with my grandparents’ neighbors. They didn’t really want us, but I guess they felt bad about the situation. I kind of took care of Benjy. That’s when I started cooking. I tried to protect him. Helped him with his homework, stuff like that. He didn’t do as well as I did. Got into drugs in high school.”

“Consuming?” asked Charlie.

“And dealing; I knew what was happening, and I tried to prevent it. He listened to me. Stopped hanging out with the druggies, agreed to join a group to help him stay clean. His marks got better. Things were really looking up, or so I thought,” Steve paused.

“Then?” asked Sarah.

“I lucked out. Got a scholarship to Stanford.”

“So where did that leave Benjy?” said Sarah.

“You a mind-reader?” asked Steve. “Benjy insisted I take the scholarship. He’d learned his lesson. He would be fine. So I left. At first, it seemed okay. We talked every day, but then, less and less. There was always something getting in the way. But he insisted everything was fine, school going great, etcetera, etcetera. It was bullshit.”

Steve paused and took another drink, wondering how the others had gotten him to disclose so much about himself. He’d never revealed this to anyone.

“One night in my second semester, the neighbor, who was supposedly keeping an eye on Benjy, called. They’d found him dead in his bed, he’d OD’d from heroin. When I went back for the funeral, I spoke with his so-called friends. Within the first month after I’d left for Stanford, he’d begun shooting up, then dealing himself. He’d stopped going to classes. All the stuff he’d been telling me over the phone was bullshit. If I’d stayed of course, it would never have happened.”

“You did what you had to,” said Charlie. “He did what he had to. It’s karma.”

“That’s also bullshit.” Steve took another long sip of his beer and looked squarely at Charlie. “It’s an excuse to make people feel good for stuff they should have done but didn’t. For me, guilt doesn’t wash off that easy.”

“That’s crazy,” said Sarah. “Besides, Brian wasn’t your brother. He didn’t die because of you.”

“He had the guts to demand action when Stokes was elected,” said Steve. “I kept silent, yet I was the one who led the hacking investigation.”

“So now you’re making up for it?” asked Charlie.

“Also I can take the lead in this. I don’t have any family. I’ve got less at risk than you guys. And I’m determined we’re going to deal with Stokes,” said Steve. “We just have to figure out how.”

The Hampton Motel in Arlington had only two stars in the guidebooks. The neon sign in front proclaimed, “ICE and TV in every room.” Paint was flaking around the main door. Despite the occasional cleaning, the odor of stale cigars pervaded the lobby and corridors. The tattered carpets looked like they hadn’t been replaced since the hotel was built in the Reagan era. The rooms, however, were clean, the linen changed every day or after every guest, whichever was more frequent. The receptionist dealt mainly in cash and never asked to verify I.D., which made it easy to register under an assumed name, as Steve Penn did two days after his evening meeting with his fellow agents in Lincoln Park.

Steve booked a deluxe room, with a queen-size bed, a couple of beige armchairs, and a matching convertible sofa. For a one dollar fee, one of the armchairs provided a five-minute full-body massage. There were framed lithographs of 19th century London on the walls.

Steve took a bottle of bourbon from his attaché case and set it on the coffee table next to the bucket of ice and two glasses the bellboy brought up.

Ten minutes later, Senator Bill Gurd knocked on the door.

When Steve ushered him in, the senator’s eyes immediately darted into the shadows.

“No one else,” said Steve. “Just us.”

“This meeting never happened,” said the senator, tossing his coat and an old-fashioned, broad-brimmed hat on the bed.

“You’ve got my word,” said Steve. “You have your mobile with you?”

“Jane told me not to bring it,” Gurd said.

Jane Nagler was the senator’s legislative assistant. She’d been working for Gurd for the last ten years. Prior to that, she’d been at the CIA, where she became a coffee-time buddy of Steve’s.

“ Jack Daniels,” said Steve, handing a glass of bourbon to the senator. “Jane says it’s your only vice.”

“Don’t believe her.” The senator took a sip, lowered himself onto an armchair, and undid his double-breasted jacket. White goatee, gray vest, gold watch chain: he looked like Colonel Sanders – a throwback to another era, which he was. The senior senator from Arkansas was a respected constitutional lawyer who had served on the Judiciary Committee for thirty years and headed it for the last ten. He was a vanishing breed of Republican – one with principles.

“Thanks for coming,” said Steve.

“Pleasure,” the senator said dubiously.

“I wanted to talk with you about your president,” said Steve.

“Not mine alone,” said Gurd with a soft drawl. “The American people elected him.”

“A minority,” said Steve. “If the leaders of your party had more guts, Stokes would never have made it.”

The senator leaned forward. “Look, Mr. Penn, I agreed to meet as a favor to Jane. She says you’re serious and for real. I was impressed by the brief you gave us before the election. Damn fine job. But if you want to talk just to break my balls, I’ll leave right now.”

Steve held up his hand. “Apologies. I don’t mean to rake you over the coals. But I want you to understand where I’m coming from. Our team spent a long time investigating Russian hacking. Some of us put our lives on the line. We got chapter and verse. We showed how the Russians and Kozlov intervened to help get Stokes elected. We provided solid information about meetings between some of his key people and Russian leaders. Even before the elections, Stokes refused to criticize Kozlov, no matter what kind of stuff the Russians were up to. And what did the congressional leaders do about it?” Steve snapped his fingers. “Zip.”