John Gilstrap - Damage Control

“You a little high-strung?” Jonathan asked.

Boxers gave him a droll look. “Funny how I get that way when people shoot at me.”

Once inside with the engine started, Jonathan oriented himself to the map and pointed the way.

Father Dom D’Angelo crossed the parking lot that separated St. Kate’s from the Security Solutions offices and headed straight upstairs. Dom was the only civilian on the planet-“civilian” was Jonathan’s slightly derogatory term for anyone not a part of the community that included employees and Special Forces operators-who had ready access to the inner sanctum of The Cave, passing unmolested through multiple layers of security.

The inside of The Cave was larger than it appeared from the outside. Occupying the third floor of the firehouse that served as Jonathan’s home, the main part of the office space housed twenty or so investigators and support staff. The Cave, on the other hand, housed only three offices and the War Room, though it occupied one-fourth of the total floor space. Opulence was the order of the day in The Cave-the best of everything, from technology to furniture.

Whereas Jonathan’s taste ran to clubby leather and dark woods, Venice’s was chrome and glass all the way. Dom crossed the thickly carpeted space quickly and made a beeline for the high-tech teak conference area that someone had dubbed the War Room.

Venice and Gail were already at work. Each had taken a position at the massive conference table and was clacking away at their own built-in computer terminal. The enormous screen at the far end showed a map of Mexico. He presumed-correctly, it turned out-that the blinking dot in the far southwest corner of the country marked Jonathan’s location.

“What do we know?” he asked.

“Clearly, Digger’s been sold out,” Gail said. “What I can’t figure out is, who would have that level of knowledge? They had names, for heaven’s sake.”

“Could it be the Mexican government?” Venice asked. “If they decided to get into the kidnapping business, they would certainly have the planning resources to pull it off. Plus, if they were using their own people, they would know the names of kidnappers. Getting the hostages’ names after they’d been taken would be a cakewalk.”

“But they wouldn’t have Leon Harris’s name,” Gail said. “Or Richard Lerner’s. I can’t imagine why the Mexican government would want to engineer a kidnapping, but even if they did, they couldn’t engineer the rescue. How did they get the guys’ aliases?”

“You’re thinking that Dig was the target from the beginning?” Venice asked.

Gail nodded. “I don’t see another way. I think whoever is responsible knew about some guy named Leon Harris, or maybe they knew about someone named Scorpion. With all the cutouts and email diversions it takes to contact our covert side, there’s no chance that anyone could link it to Security Solutions. Without Dig’s real name, and without a company name, they’d have no dots to connect. Maybe this whole rescue op was just bait to snare the guys”

Dom’s next thought arrived whole and fully formed. And it scared the hell out of him. Gail’s comment about bait triggered it. “It’s the church,” he said. “The Crystal Castle or whatever. That has to be the source of the betrayal. They found Jon as the rescuer, and then passed the information along to someone in Mexico. That has to be it.”

Gail shook her head. “There has to be an intermediate step,” she said. “There aren’t many who do what we do, but there are a few. What’s the guarantee that the church would choose Security Solutions for the rescue? Surely, it’s not just a random plot to entrap random rescuers.”

“I don’t think that at all,” Dom said. “I’ve been chewing around the edges for a while now, ever since I heard about the three-million-dollar ransom. Where does a church get that kind of money? I’m sure they have good reserves, thanks to their television stuff, but three million? That’s a lot of money, even before Digger’s fee. What does that run, anyway?”

“Six figures,” Venice said. Money matters always embarrassed Jonathan, and as a result, his fee was a more closely guarded number than nuclear launch codes.

“Okay, six figures,” Dom said. “Another big sum. Thanks to Dig, St. Kate’s is one of the best-endowed churches in the diocese, but a number like that would bring us to our knees.”

“Maybe the Crystal Palace is really rich,” Gail suggested. She looked to Venice, who started tickling the keys right away. “Maybe three million is just a drop in the bucket to them. The Crystal Palace is a moneymaking machine. Have you ever watched one of their broadcasts?”

Dom smirked. “Um, no.”

“Well, I have. Every other verse of the Bible is followed by a plea for money. There’s the Building Fund, the Outreach Fund, the Prayer Circles, and on and on and on.”

“I wonder what happened to their fund-raising after the good Pastor Mitchell was caught in her dalliances,” Venice thought aloud. She turned to her keyboard and started typing.

Over the course of the past year, Jackie Mitchell had spent more time as a punch line than a preacher, following some Internet videos that showed her providing extra-special counseling to a young male member of her flock in one of Scottsdale’s finest hotels. Over and over again. The righteously aggrieved Mr. Mitchell-the pastor’s husband-had not only left her, but had recently started taking to the airwaves to pronounce her a fraud.

Pastor Mitchell had many defenders among her congregation, of whom more than a few had written op-ed pieces for the newspapers. But as far too many celebrities had learned the hard way, once you earn a slot in Jay Leno’s nightly monologue, your future is more or less sealed in poo.

“Uh-oh,” Venice said. “Oh, my God, this can’t be true.”

“What?” Dom and Gail asked together.

Venice scowled and shook her head. “Is this even possible?” She looked at the others and typed some more. “Check the screen,” she said. As she spoke, she pushed a button on the master control panel that she alone knew how to operate, and the lights dimmed. Not all the way, but enough to make the screen more prominent. Given the technology of the room, Dom imagined that she could make it snow in here, too, if she’d wanted. Or maybe not.

She tapped a few more keys. The map of Mexico dissolved to a screen full of numbers arranged in neat columns. “These are the bank records for the Crystal Palace.”

Dom’s jaw dropped. “How did you get those?”

Venice raised an eyebrow. “Do you really want to know?”

“Actually, I don’t.”

“Me either,” Gail said. “When the feds finally figure out what we do, I want to have some shred of plausible deniability.”

“According to Google, the Crystal Palace scandal first broke about fourteen months ago, just after they’d committed to a multimillion-dollar building project, and contracted for three more years of television time.” She looked to the others. “I guess you know that unlike commercial television, where the networks pay for the programs they broadcast, these religious shows have to pay for their own time.”

Dom hadn’t realized it because he’d never given it any thought. Now that he did, it made sense.

As Venice went on, she used the cursor as a pointer. “If I’m doing the math right, for the two years previous to that time, they averaged an income of four-point-three million dollars a month, with expenses of just about four-point-three million a month. They were just breaking even. I haven’t had time to find out where all that money went, but it’s probably not important for our purposes. At least not yet. Now look at this.”