The Orchestration

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Darque watched silently as sunlight passed through a stained-glass panel creating colorful patterns that slowly crept across the floor like spiders in search of prey.

It appeared that the FSB, still better known as the KGB even after its evolution, had an interest in Davis becoming the next U.S. President, and Darque knew he had to determine what the Russian security agency was up to before he could allow Davis to become the next leader of the free world.

As head of the covert agency responsible for detecting and eliminating threats to the U.S. that were beyond the scope of known agencies, it was his responsibility to ensure Davis' motives for becoming President were in the best interest of the American people. If an ulterior motive existed that would endanger the country, Davis would have to be eliminated before he could achieve the Presidency.

Darque realized he would have to move cautiously. If his assessment of the situation was correct, there would be forces in place to ensure Davis’s ascension to power happened without interference: no one could carry out a plan of this magnitude alone. Davis as President might be a foregone conclusion, but he would not gain any real power until after his inauguration, and that was all the time Darque had to come up with a solution for the problem if one existed. With that thought in mind, he picked up his secure phone and called the Cave (the organization’s nickname for its headquarters) to notify the duty officer that he would be there shortly, and to have his staff assembled in his office.

Penny Miller, the Duty Officer and one of the team leaders at Olympus, was also his confidante and lover, and his face softened when he heard her voice.

“I thought you and your creature were enjoying your time away from here,” she said.

“We were, but something has come up that cut our vacation short.”

He told her about the contents of the package, and voiced his concern about how the man who would probably be the next President fit into the picture. He was rewarded with silence as he pictured her mulling over what he’d said.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked incredulously.

“As sure as I can be without having researched any of it.”

“This could be a bad one if you’re right,” she said apprehensively. “What do you want me to do?”

“Let Doc know I’ll be bringing in some stuff for the lab’s immediate attention. If Davis is a mole, his handlers wouldn’t have wanted him to do anything that would attract attention. Have the Research Department start checking him out, and let the people there know I want anything and everything they can find out about him. I’ll leave here shortly, and we can discuss the situation further at your place tonight.”

“It’ll be nice to have you home again,” she said softly before breaking the connection.

As he hung up the phone, he thought about Penny and wondered how they had ever been able to establish a close relationship. Both of them were loners and suspicious of others, and an abusive marriage was reason enough for Penny to avoid any intimate contact with males. Somehow, they clicked. Maybe it had something to do with two negatives equaling a positive. She was almost 10 years younger and 50 pounds lighter, and she was also the prettiest, blue-eyed blond he had ever seen. Bill just yawned and returned to his nap.

The fire was dying in the fireplace, but a loud popping noise coming from the ashes was enough to interrupt Darque’s reverie.

With the sun well below its zenith, he decided to pack some things and get on the road if he wanted to reach Penny’s by midnight. He took the last sip of beer, walked to the bookcase, and placed the empty bottle on one of the shelves … a commemorative souvenir of an unpublished international incident.

Darque completed his packing, and returned the items he had received in the mail to their carton … except for the other bottle of beer which now rested in the refrigerator.

He used the fireplace poker to stir up the remaining embers, and created a shower of sparks inside the hearth.

With the clothing bag dangling from his hand, and the box under his arm, he turned to Bill.

“Let’s go to Penny’s,” Darque said as he grabbed his jacket and pistol.

Bill was already tugging on the handle to open the door and get outside, and Darque followed closely behind.

The dog sniffed the air and looked around the area before walking across the yard to the pickup. Nothing had changed that caused him any concern.

After Darque opened the truck door, Bill jumped in and curled up on the passenger’s seat as Darque climbed behind the steering wheel.

It was a long drive to Penny’s, and Darque’s thoughts kept returning to Davis. The problems he thought he might encounter to resolve the situation were numerous, but he was sure of one thing: if Davis was a traitor, failure was not an option.

Chapter Four

T

he trip to Penny’s didn’t take as long as Darque had anticipated, but it was still close to midnight when they arrived. Bill displayed more excitement as they got closer to their other home. Penny was the only person in whose presence Bill wagged his tail.

Darque parked the truck in the driveway and carried the bag and cardboard box into the house. Although they hadn’t gotten married, he and Penny had exchanged house keys in a ceremony they decided meant the same thing.

Darque entered the house and found Penny asleep in an overstuffed recliner buried beneath a fake polar bear hide she called ‘Mr. Bear’.

The glowing embers of a recent fire were dying in the fireplace, and a sip of wine remained in a glass that rested on the table next to her chair.

He didn’t know how long she had been asleep, but he had learned not to awaken her by touching her if they hadn’t been together before she fell asleep. Because of her abusive marriage, she never went to sleep when she was alone without a readily accessible straight razor. When they were together the razor disappeared, and he never questioned her decision to keep the weapon nearby. It was one of her ghosts, and she dealt with it the best way she could.

As was their usual pattern if they arrived at the house while she slept, Darque went into the kitchen and made some noise, and Bill sat near Penny so she could see him when she awakened.

It took a while before Darque finally heard her moving around, and he went in to check on her.

“How long have you been sleeping?” he asked as he leaned down to kiss her.

“A couple of hours,” she said. “Give me a minute to figure out where I am, and I’ll fix you something to eat.”

“Sounds good,” he said.

Bill frantically wagged his tail as he tried to get her attention, and she finally scratched him behind the ears as an acknowledgment of his presence. She actually liked the dog, but this was a game she played to, as she put it, keep Bill in his place. It didn’t work.

Darque saw that she wore a pair of house slippers that depicted killer whales when she finally got out of the chair. She also wore a long nightshirt with a large picture of a rhinoceros head on it, and the caption: I’m horny.

“Very nice,” he said.

“You should know by now that I never wear anything but my best lingerie for you,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

She made her way to the kitchen where she constructed a couple of ham sandwiches, and they ate in silence at the table.

“So, tell me more about the package you received,” she said when she finished eating.

Darque retrieved the box and put it on the table in front of her.

“This is it,” he said, “but most of the contents are still a mystery to me.”

She removed the wads of newsprint and flattened them out on the table.

“I don’t think there’s anything in these that will help you, unless you’re interested in what the weather was like in Moscow a few months ago,” she said.

He gave her his really dumb look. Penny was fluent in six languages, and Russian was one of them. Darque was conversant in two, and Russian was neither of them.

She removed the compilation of papers from the envelope, and immediately showed signs of interest.

“Well,” she said, “what have we here?”

She silently read for a couple of minutes, so he tried his dumb look again. It worked.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I forgot; you don’t read Russian.”

He might have interpreted the comment as being condescending, except for the fact that she had punctuated it by sticking her tongue out of him.

She was the only person he could kid around with, and that was one of the reasons Darque found their relationship so special. If not for her, he probably would have fallen into the quicksand of despair, and the results of that would probably have been bad for a lot of people.

“It’s their equivalent of a TOP SECRET document about an immersion program to train personnel to infiltrate different countries. It appears that just about every country on the planet was targeted.”

She looked up from the document and considered the impact of such a program before she continued.

“I think we need to look at this a lot closer,” she said.

She put the documents back into the envelope, reached for the letter that had accompanied the box, and waved it at him when she had finished reading its contents.

“Any doubt about its authenticity?” she asked.

“None,” he said.

“The ugly pig thing, right?”

“Yep,” he said.

As Penny reached for the envelope with the signed forms in it, he asked her to wait and look at those last.

The small liquid filled vial caught her attention, and she held it up to the light so she could study the contents.

“What did you make of this?” she asked.

“At first I thought it might be a bullet, but it looks as if it has some rust on it and lead doesn’t rust,” he said.

“Well, I may have some news for you. I believe it is a bullet, but the brown specks on it are blood, not rust. It also appears that the collapsed slug captured some tissue in its folds,” she said as she handed him the vial.

He hadn’t noticed it earlier, but some type of matter swayed in the liquid, and remained attached to what might well turn out to be a bullet.

She stood up from the table and removed the thumb drive from the box. Bill, who lay at her feet, seemed a little annoyed at being disturbed.

“Let’s go to the other room so I can watch this,” she said as she headed for the living room.

She inserted the drive into a computer and turned it on, then watched the monitor in silence as he handed her the envelope he wanted her to look at last. She pulled the documents out and studied them as the video ended. When she was finished, she put the documents back in the envelope, removed the external drive from the computer, and returned to the kitchen where she put the items back in the box.

“This is incredible,” she said in a hesitant voice. “How could something like this happen?”

“Politics”, he said. “As you well know, in order to gain access to classified information, one must undergo an in-depth background investigation unless one is a politician; in that case, it’s assumed the person is OK and gets the access as part of his or her job title. In some cases, those individuals turn out to be the worst offenders, but the results sometimes go unnoticed until after the damage is done. We check the backgrounds of those in or trying to gain power, but even if we find disqualifying data, there isn't much we can do overtly to stop them. On the other hand, threats of public exposure will sometimes change the direction a politician takes, and an arranged accident will work every time, but we have to be sure before we consider that. Now is the time for us to find out what's going on, and when we figure that out, I'll decide how to resolve the problem if one exists.”

“So, what are we going to do?”

“Resolving this is now our priority. We need to get the material in the box analyzed, and start digging into every aspect of Davis' life looking for anything that might indicate what his true motivation is for becoming President. I want him kept under discreet surveillance 24 hours a day. If he even suspects someone is questioning his true motive, he may try to disappear. It’s imperative that we find out what he’s up to, and neutralize his efforts before any damage can be done. He’s a popular figure, so our actions can’t cause him or his background to come under public scrutiny.”

“Any ideas about how we’re going to do that?” she asked.

“Not a one,” Darque said, “but we better come up with some answers pretty quickly. If I’m right, whatever’s supposed to happen has been in the planning stage for more than 30 years, and Davis’ inauguration is in about three months. Time is not on our side.”