The Last Man

Chapter 42
WASHINGTON, D.C.

JOEL Wilson didn't have the energy or the desire to take his dog for a walk, but it was part of the plan, so he slid on a pair of tennis shoes and grabbed his barn jacket from the front hall closet. His wife, a skinny little platinum blonde who was a fitness freak, walked the dog both before and after work, so when Wilson grabbed the leash the dog cocked his head to one side as if to say, Are you kidding me?

"I don't need any attitude from you. I've got enough shit going on."

"What was that, honey?"

"Nothing," Wilson called to his wife, who was down the hall working on the computer. "I'm going to take Rose for a walk."

"Really?" Sally Wilson appeared in the doorway of the study, a pair of black reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.

"I know it's not usually my thing, but I need to clear my mind."

"Is it that bad?" Sally worked at the Department of Energy and had a good sense of just how nasty office politics could get in the big bureaucracy of Washington.

I'm about to find out, Wilson thought to himself. "It's pretty bad, but it's not over by a long shot. Just because crazy old Hargrave is mad at me doesn't mean he's right."

She came down the hall and kissed him on the cheek. "You'll figure it out. You always do. You're the smartest, best man I know."

Wilson blushed. He loved her dearly. Most marriages that couldn't produce children ended up in the ditch. Theirs had grown stronger. They were a great team. "Thank you, honey. I love you."

"Love you, too."

Their two-story brownstone was in a new development sandwiched between Reagan National Airport and the Pentagon. An old industrial park had been bulldozed and the developer had created a neighborhood that was supposed to give the feel of historic Georgetown. This had been accomplished by building four different types of brownstones that were basically the same in terms of the foundation and mechanicals, but slightly different in floor plans and the color of shutters and front doors. It was a nice neighborhood filled with lobbyists and upper-middle government types.

Wilson let the cocker spaniel take the lead. To say that he was a little down would have been an understatement. The long flight back from Afghanistan had given him way too much time to think. Even the members of his own team avoided talking to him. It was almost as if they all realized he'd become toxic. He'd tried to come up with an excuse for why they had to pack up all their stuff after having landed two days earlier. They had been operating under the assumption that they were going to be in the country for at least a week and that then the bulk of the team would return to Washington, leaving a few agents behind to follow up on things. But in the mad dash to get everyone up and packed, there was no way for him to massage what was going on. Before the flight was off the ground the entire team had heard about Cal Patterson's alarming phone call from Executive Assistant Director Hargrave.

None of the team knew Hargrave the way Wilson did. They saw him as a serious man with an important title who could banish them to whatever post he liked. Wilson knew the man for the phony he was, but trying to convince his team would only make things worse.

Two blocks away from the house, under a streetlight, he stopped and looked for the car. The dog turned around, gave him a What are you doing? look, and then tried to get him to keep moving. "Stay put, you stupid mutt," Wilson hissed.

A block away a pair of headlights snapped on and the vehicle started moving Wilson's way. When the black Lincoln Town Car stopped, the only thing Wilson could see was his reflection in the tinted windows. A click announced that the power locks had been tripped. Wilson opened the rear passenger door and looked into the dark back seat.

"Get in."

Wilson picked up the dog and climbed into the backseat. He set Rose on his lap and closed the door. The vehicle started moving and the privacy glass between the front and back seats was raised.

"Good-looking dog. What's his name?"

"Rose, and he's a she."

Senator Carl Ferris reached out and allowed the dog to lick his liver-spotted hand. "I love dogs. Did you know that?"

"Nope." Wilson couldn't give a shit.

"I've had them my whole life. Three of them right now. Two of them stay at the big house up in Connecticut. The other one travels with us. A little cockapoo. Cutest thing you've ever seen."

Wilson watched as the senator went to work scratching Rose's neck and talking to her in that stupid baby-talk voice that his wife used when she thought she and the dog were carrying on a conversation.

"I'm really glad you're so interested in my dog, but I've got bigger problems right now."

Ferris kept scratching the dog. "Yes, you do. Very unfortunate, the way Samuel behaved. The man is extremely petulant."

"The word I would use is a*shole."

Ferris pulled the dog onto his lap. "Just how serious are things?"

"Pretty bad. I'm supposed to be in the director's office at 11:00 a.m. sharp tomorrow morning. I have no idea who is going to be there, but you can bet Hargrave has the deck stacked against me. I've kept him out of the loop, just as you advised me, and now he's going to use that against me, and trust me, it isn't going to be good. They take this shit very seriously at the FBI. I wish I had just let him in on what I was doing."

"That would have been a huge mistake." Ferris was a portly man with a slight comb-over. "He would have run to Kennedy and you would have never gotten your investigation off the ground."

"What does it matter? They're going to pull the rug out from under me tomorrow. They're going to transfer my ass to the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity or some other BS post. Shit, I'll be lucky if I have a job when they're done."

"Now . . . now," Ferris said in a caring voice. "You need to gather yourself and remember that while you may have stepped on a few toes, you're still right. You have uncovered a massive fraud. Millions of dollars in funds that have been stolen by a corrupt and out-of-control CIA."

"You don't need to convince me, it's them - my bosses."

"Hargrave, really. Director Miller would stand behind you if things weren't already so muddied."

"So you think I'm screwed."

"I didn't say that. I think you're in a tough spot, but I've seen worse." Ferris shifted the dog and said, "The key is for you to state your case tomorrow. You have the affidavit from the banker. You have the bank records. I don't know how they can ignore that kind of information."

"For starters, they're going to want to know how I came by all of this evidence, and they are not going to like my answers. This is the CIA we're talking about."

"I understand that," Ferris said with a trace of impatience. "Evidence is evidence. It will simply have to see the light of day. People will understand just how serious things are then."

Wilson cocked his head to the side and said, "Are you suggesting that I leak this information to the press, because if you are, I'll be the one to have my ass thrown in jail."

"Calm down," Ferris said sternly. "I said no such thing. I know you have certain rules you must follow. The key is for you to get them to see that by not letting you proceed, it will open the FBI up to allegations of a cover-up."

Wilson liked the sound of that. That was the kind of thing that could scare the crap out of any high-level bureaucrat. "You know if I dropped your name and mentioned that the Judiciary Committee was keeping an eye on this it might be enough to get them to back off."

The senator's expression soured. "For now you need to minimize our relationship. Trust me on this. We haven't reached the point yet where I'm ready to get involved, but I promise you, when the time is right, I will jump on them like an eight-hundred-pound gorilla."

"And until then I'm just going to get my ass kicked."

Ferris sighed. "Don't be so melodramatic. It's very unbecoming in a man who carries a badge and a gun."