Mark Gilleo - Sweat

“That’s pretty close to the truth.”

“That is the truth. How could I have known any better? I’m just a student who wants to be an English teacher.”

“Did you use that? It sounds rehearsed…”

Jake looked around. “You better believe I used it.”

“That’s not bad.”

“Thanks. What do you think is going to happen to your friend in Saipan?”

“Technically he didn’t break the law either. He lied, but he followed the letter of the law. Besides, it looks like he will come out of this smelling like a rose. He was on hand to pick up C.F Chang in Saipan. Our friend Tom may even end up with a medal pinned to his chest. Responsible for grabbing a suspect in the attempted assassination of a senator. And the beautiful thing is that we got him on U.S. soil. No red tape with extradition.”

“We got lucky.”

“Yes, we did.”

Jake had beaten around the bush for as long as he could.

“And my father?”

“He’s still in there. But he’s not alone. He’s got the A-Team of lawyers playing hardball. His political connections are rattling cages.”

“What do you think is going to happen to him?”

“I don’t know, Jake. I’m sure they are up his ass with a microscope as we speak. Travel history, phone calls, emails. They are probably still investigating you too.”

“I didn’t do anything. I told them everything I know.”

“There may be some lingering questions about Marilyn. Those two detectives you met when the senator was shot know you were with her the night she died. They have you and the guy who shot the senator on the same tape near the scene where Marilyn died. They are still trying to put the pieces together. And they are under a lot of pressure. They are the only law enforcement officers in the city who were pursuing the guy who tried to kill a senator. They are going to need a good explanation for letting him slip by.”

“Can’t be guilty of something you didn’t do. If they had a case against me, I would still be inside. Regardless.”

“Yes, you would be.”

“So where to?”

“I need something to eat. Been on orange crackers from the vending machine for over a day. Orange crackers and Coke. I need real food. Then we can check on Wei Ling.”

“And Kate?” Al asked.

“What about her?”

“You plan on keeping that promise you made to her father?”

“Not sure yet, Al. But you know how I do like to keep my promises.”

Al smiled as he got behind the wheel. “You’ve kept every one since I’ve met you.”

About the Author

Mark Gilleo holds a graduate degree in international business from the University of South Carolina and an undergraduate degree in business from George Mason University. He enjoys traveling, hiking and biking. He speaks Japanese. A fourth-generation Washingtonian, he currently resides in the D.C. area. His first two novels were recognized as finalist and semifinalist, respectively, in the William Faulkner-Wisdom creative writing competition.

Read an excerpt from Mark Gilleo's LOVE THY NEIGHBOR

Clark Hayden is a graduate student trying to help his mother navigate through the loss of his father while she continues to live in their house near Washington DC. With his mother’s diminishing mental capacity becoming the norm, Clark expects a certain amount of craziness as he heads home for the holidays. What he couldn’t possibly anticipate, though, is that he would find himself catapulted into the middle of a terrorist operation. As the holiday festivities reach a crescendo, a terrorist cell––which happens to be across the street––is activated. Suddenly Clark is discovering things he never knew about deadly chemicals, secret government operations, suspiciously missing neighbors, and the intentions of a gorgeous IRS auditor. Clark’s quiet suburban neighborhood is about to become one of the most deadly places on the planet, and it’s up to Clark to prevent the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in the nation’s capital.

Here’s an excerpt from Love Thy Neighbor .

AUTHOR’S NOTE

(This part is true.)

In late 1999 a woman from Vienna, Virginia, a suburb ten miles from the White House as the crow flies, called the CIA. The woman, a fifty-something mother of three, phoned to report what she referred to as potential terrorists living across the street from her middle-class home. She went on to explain what she had been seeing in her otherwise quiet neighborhood: Strange men of seemingly Middle-Eastern descent using their cell phones in the yard. Meetings in the middle of the night with bumper-to-bumper curbside parking, expensive cars rubbing ends with vans and common Japanese imports. A constant flow of young men, some who seemed to stay for long periods of time without introducing themselves to anyone in the neighborhood. The construction of a six-foot wooden fence to hide the backyard from the street only made the property more suspicious.

Upon hearing a layperson’s description of suspicious behavior, the CIA promptly dismissed the woman and her phone call. (Ironically, the woman lived less than a quarter of a mile from a CIA installation, though it was not CIA headquarters as was later reported.)

In the days and weeks following 9/11, the intelligence community in the U.S. began to learn the identities of the nineteen hijackers who had flown the planes into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. In the process of their investigation they discovered that two of the hijackers, one on each of the planes that hit the World Trade Towers, had listed a particular house in Vienna, Virginia as a place of residence.

The FBI and various other agencies swooped in on the unassuming neighborhood and began knocking on doors. When they reached the house of a certain mother of three, she stopped them dead in their tracks. She was purported to have said, “I called the CIA two years ago to report that terrorists were living across the street and no one did anything.”

The CIA claimed to have no record of a phone call.

The news networks set up cameras and began broadcasting from the residential street. ABC, NBC, FOX. The FBI followed up with further inquiries. The woman’s story was later bounced around the various post 9/11 committees and intelligence hearings on Capitol Hill. (Incidentally, after 9/11, the CIA closed its multi-story facility in the neighborhood where the terrorist reportedly lived. In 2006 the empty building was finally torn down and, as of early 2011, was being replaced with another office building).

There has been much speculation about what the government should have or could have known prior to 9/11. The answer is not simple. There have been anecdotal stories of people in Florida and elsewhere who claimed to have reported similar “terrorist” type activities by suspicious people prior to 9/11. None of these stories have been proven.

What we do know is that with the exception of the flight school instructor in Minnesota who questioned the motive of a student who was interested in flying an aircraft without learning how to land, and an unheeded warning from actor James Woods who was on a plane from Boston with several of the purported terrorists while they were doing a trial run, the woman from Vienna, Virginia was the country’s best chance to prevent 9/11. To date, there has been no verification of any other pre-9/11 warnings from the general public so far in advance of that fateful day in September.

For me, there is no doubt as to the validity of the claims of the woman in Vienna.

She lived in the house where I grew up. She is my mother.