Washington Masquerade Read online

  “We understand,” the redhead said with diplomatic smoothness. Apparently these men had been handpicked. “It does sound strange. We are not the speech police. Get that out of your head. But think about this: Why was one of the most prominent critics of the President walking around in disguise? Where was he going? Who was he meeting? Did he have a relationship with someone within the government, someone who wanted to do us harm, someone who was feeding him inside information?”

  “About what?” Fiona asked.

  “Sounds like you’re looking for a media mole inside the bureaucracy,” Hodges said, almost as a toss-away line.

  He was smart enough not to get the government men riled, holding himself back. Fiona agreed with the approach, but wasn’t sure it was exactly applicable. In her view, the men were scouting the terrain for any embarrassing fissures within the government that could hurt the Administration. People might disagree with the President’s position, revile him, boil him in media oil, curse him, smother him with an onslaught of ugly accusations, but despite the conspiratorial theorists, no sane politician would take the risk of assassinating a critic. In her view, the Administration was counterpunching the growing idea spreading like molasses on a hot pan that the Burns murder was a government hit.

  “Look, folks,” Kinney said with ingratiating patience. “This is low key, no big deal. We are not Big Brother. We’re Americans just like you, and our agency is charged with the security of the nation. We’re not just jingoistic chauvinist pigs, and we don’t want to tell you how to run your shop. The man Adam Burns and the way he died are of profound interest.” He used his eyes to indicate “upstairs.”

  “Because of his writings?” the Chief probed.

  “No,” Wallinski said, using a hand gesture that was appropriate to the negative. “Absolutely not. We’ve checked this man out. There is nothing remotely in his background to suggest that he is an enemy of the United States in any manner or form. But, we believe the strange circumstances of his death deserve a deeper look. That is the opinion of the agency.”

  “And you’re the deeper-look guys,” Fiona said.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Kinney said. “All we ask is that you keep us in the loop.”

  “And we can be of help,” Wallinski said. “We do have resources. Above all, we don’t want this to look like we’re part of some great fascist conspiracy to root out critics. And we are very aware of the First Amendment. Please don’t put us in that category. We know how you might think of us. Beady-eyed government suits bent on breaking the heads of nonbelievers. Isn’t that the way Hollywood usually portrays government gumshoes? No comment needed. We understand. This is not a turf war, and we don’t in any way want to infringe on your prerogatives. We’ve done our homework and wouldn’t presume to interfere with your expertise.”

  “Checked us out, have you?”

  “Yes, we have,” Kinney said.

  “Be careful,” the Chief said, his manner softening. “We are wary of compliments.”

  Fiona was swiftly revising her opinion. Both men were articulate and obviously intelligent, warning signs that they were not ordinary agency robots but higher up than first thought. For this job they had sent their best, specialists. Fiona surmised that they had been more oblique in describing their mission. They were charged with plumbing depths, inside and outside the government, seeking the truth of the Adam Burns mystery. Chief Hodges looked toward Fiona and nodded, a signal for Fiona to lay out what they had come up with so far, which wasn’t really much. She summarized where they were in the investigation.

  “Smart lady,” Finney said with a glance toward Hodges, who winked in response. “We’re on nobody’s side. We’re authorized to dig, and if possible, come up with the real facts, let the chips fall where they may. We’re working independent of all the initials.”

  “And you want us to join your network?” Fiona asked.

  “You got it. We’re two. You’re three. That’s it for now.”

  “That said,” the redhead pressed, “where are we in this?”

  Chief Hodges exchanged glances with his two subordinates. She could tell he was not quite buying it, but he was at the very least willing to play the game.

  “You’re good. Very good,” he said, acknowledging his own surprise at their diplomatic skills. Not that he trusted them. It had taken Fiona years to interpret his shorthand.

  “We’re also wary of compliments, Chief,” Kinney said.

  Fiona felt the air clearing of animosity and tension.

  “Do we have to say it?” the redhead asked.

  “No. Loose lips sink ships,” Fiona said. “My dad was in World War II. A submariner.”

  “And a terrific Senator,” Finney said.

  “You must have a full book on us.” She looked at Izzy. “Him, too?”

  “Shalom,” the redhead said.

  Izzy laughed.

  “Shalom aleichem,” he replied.

  Fiona responded to their questions as best she could, complete with the universal prevailing opinion of everyone they had interviewed.

  “The central question is still the central question,” Fiona said. “Why the disguise? Except for that… no,” she corrected herself, “it would have raised questions no matter what. The disguise issue just put the frosting on the cake.”

  “So we have an understanding?” Wallinski asked.

  Although the men seemed ranked as equals, Wallinski appeared to be the more senior of the two in responsibility.

  “No secrets,” Kinney said. “You get something, tell us. We get something, we tell you. Are we on the same page?”

  “Are we being surveilled?” the Chief asked, deliberately avoiding an answer. In the end, he would decide what secrets to tell.

  “Not by us. We’re working this alone,” Wallinski said, winking. “Except for you guys.” He grew silent for a moment, looked around him as if checking to see if there were others present. “Think of us as wheels within wheels,” he muttered.

  “The fearless five,” Fiona chuckled. “The truth seekers.”

  “All we ask is your trust,” the redhead said.

  “Have we got a choice?” Fiona asked.

  “Yes, you have,” Kinney said. “You could drag your feet, keep us in the dark, work around us.”

  “Or try,” Wallinski said smiling, sugar coating the rebuke.

  Fiona grew thoughtful during a long silence as everyone exchanged glances. The message was clear. These men worked their own side of the street, outside regular channels, spawned by a paranoid bureaucracy. She was certain now that Homeland was their cover story and that their brief came directly from the bowels of the White House. They were the internal chameleons, independent, all-seeing. In this case, their little cop quintet was a temporary measure, like invisible ink.

  “We’ll behave,” Hodges said.

  Fiona could see he had taken the measure of these two men, understood the truth of the interaction, and had warily accepted the arrangement. Usually far more cautious in making fast judgments, Fiona was surprised. The men slid out of the booth, stood up, and they shook hands all around.

  “They’re the bird dogs,” the Chief said when they left.

  “Bird dogs are the servants of hunters?” Fiona added.

  “But only after the prey is dead,” Izzy said.

  The Chief smiled, nodded, and winked.

  “What was it Reagan said? ‘Trust, but verify.’ They’ll have to earn their bones.”

  Fiona and Izzy exchanged glances and nodded.

  Chapter 11

  Dolly Owens had eight for dinner at her lovely Colonial-style home in Spring Valley. She had, as usual, decorated her round antique table in the dining room with a centerpiece of a carefully designed floral arrangement in a cut-glass bowl. Her best Chinese porcelain was on display, and her patterned Tiffany silver was shined
and sparkling. The Wedgwood wine and water glasses and champagne flutes were in their appropriate place, and from the kitchen came tantalizing smells of roasting meat.

  A waiter in a tuxedo stood attentive in the den taking drink orders. Dolly was a stickler for the amenities and favored genuine antiques and Early American art for reasons of pride in her ancestry. Her father had been a member of The Society of the Cincinnati, which meant he could trace his lineage back to an officer in the Continental Army, and she was one of the officers of the very active Mount Vernon Ladies Auxiliary, which was restoring and enhancing George Washington’s home, and transforming it into a museum.

  Colonial paintings, particularly of Washington in regal poses, including two on horseback, were a feature of her and her husband’s art collection. There were also numerous valuable original prints of old Washington, D.C. Dolly was from an old Virginia family, a branch of the Fairfax family. She had met Philip and Fiona when they had all been students at Sidwell Friends, the famous Quaker school in Washington, D.C.

  Fiona had been a bridesmaid at Philip and Dolly’s lavish wedding, which was held at the Chevy Chase Country Club, and all remained close friends. Fiona never informed Dolly of her husband’s botched deflowering of her when they were seniors at Sidwell.

  Dolly took her role as aiding and abetting her husband’s career with furious passion. She had given up her public relations job and poured all her energy into caring for her two young children and devoting herself to her husband’s advancement. She entertained frequently, always eight for dinner at her round table, intimate dinner parties designed to widen the net of her husband’s power-player connections.

  She was careful to mix people from across the political divide. Like Fiona, she was very aware of the political game played after hours in Washington and tried to keep partisan bickering at bay in what was becoming an increasingly hostile atmosphere. Fiona played her part of absolute neutrality and had always forewarned her various friends and lovers who accompanied her to Dolly’s dinners to do likewise.

  Dolly had all the stuff required to help push her husband up the ladder of political ambition: good taste, intelligence, artful conversational skills, a wide network, and above all, fresh good looks. She was always beautifully dressed and groomed, wore her jet-black hair in cute bangs that curled around her cheeks. Fiona adored her and the feeling was mutual.

  Besides Fiona and Larry, she had invited an Assistant Secretary of State, Bob Newland, and his wife, and Harry McBride, a powerful Republican congressman from Texas, and his wife. Dolly took great care with her invitees. Her guests, above all, had to be good conversationalists, and it helped that they had great résumés and prestigious titles. Their political affiliations didn’t matter, and she liked varied points of view to keep the conversation going. Not that she was a snob—far from it—but she was determined that people walk away from her dinner parties with the notion that they had not wasted their time.

  Fiona knew that she was designated by Dolly as an “exotic,” someone in a unique occupational orbit, although she had the credentials of good ancestry, her late father being a New York senator and she, by birth and upbringing, a native Washingtonian qualified as a “cave dweller.” By day, she was a member of the down-and-dirty, nitty-gritty, mostly black Metropolitan Police Department, and by night a bona fide member of Washington’s social elite. She liked the idea of leading this double life.

  Dolly always introduced her guests to each other with a brief summary of their involvements and a cute light touch. Tonight was no exception.

  “This is my great friend, Fiona Fitzgerald, daughter of the late Senator from the great state of New York. She’s a homicide cop for the Washington Metropolitan Police Department and carries a piece in her purse. So please behave yourselves.”

  The introduction rarely made Fiona uncomfortable, knowing that in the course of the evening those who met her for the first time would go through the usual “how come a cop” routine. With Dolly’s guests, she was careful to react without the slightest hint of sarcasm or impatience.

  “I find the work challenging,” was her stock response in this environment. It was Dolly herself who, after the appropriate niceties and introductions, informed the group that Fiona was working on the Burns case. As the ringmaster of the evening, Dolly liked to set the agenda, and this one seemed perfect and timely to get the conversational ball rolling for the evening’s entertainment.

  “A real shocker,” Bob Newland said.

  As a consummate diplomat, he did not venture a firm opinion either way. His wife, a small woman with a fixed, dimpled smile, nodded. Fiona had her pegged as a wife who walked on eggshells and would always defer to her husband. The Congressman’s wife was a big blustery woman with a face as Irish as Dublin and an attitude that Fiona immediately sensed as confrontational. Fiona had experienced many such types in her work and knew how disruptive they could be, especially when inebriated. After three or four scotches, beware, she warned herself, sizing up the Congressman’s wife as a classic case. Philip Owens, as host, kept his remarks guarded, low-key, and like Fiona and Dolly herself, carefully neutral.

  “How is the Post playing it?” McBride asked Larry. “After all, Burns was one of your own.”

  “Cautiously,” Larry said exchanging a glance with Fiona. He took a big sip of Chardonnay. “Trying not to jump to conclusions.”

  “Really?” Mrs. McBride said.

  An opening gun, Fiona thought, sensing trouble ahead.

  “With all due respect,” Congressman McBride said pointedly to the man from the state department, a Democratic appointee, “it doesn’t look kosher.”

  “Maybe Fiona could comment,” Mrs. McBride said, upending her third drink. The young waiter, reading the gesture by the way she held her empty glass, quickly took it from her and replaced it.

  “We’re working on it,” Fiona answered demurely.

  “Looks like we have a tiger by the tail,” Dolly said. “In his columns, Burns was, to say the least, not exactly friendly,” she cut a glance at her husband, “to our side.”

  “I’ll buy that,” McBride said, laughing. “Of course, from where I sit, he was right on. No insult intended to present company.”

  “A rough game these days,” Philip said, turning to Fiona. “Not like in your dad’s day.”

  “Once the gloves were off at the end of the working day,” Fiona responded, reiterating what had become a cliché, “political enemies would meet in harmony and good fellowship like sportsmen after the game was over. It’s different these days. The game is brutal and played like a blood sport.” She turned to Dolly. “Although in this house, the old ways are still practiced.”

  “Thank the Lord,” Mrs. McBride said.

  The alcohol, Fiona noted, was beginning to have its effect. Fasten your seat belt, she told herself.

  “I can’t imagine the White House being involved in something so sordid,” Mrs. Newland said.

  “I can,” Mrs. McBride countered.

  It was clear that the clock was ticking on her bomb.

  “Too obvious,” Mrs. Newland said. “What would he have to gain?”

  “He’d shut up a critic. Best way to handle it.” She made a gesture with her hand that illustrated a beheading.

  “Which would make him the prime suspect,” Mrs. Newland countered, smiling sweetly.

  Passive-aggressive, Fiona thought, dangerous to outspoken drunks.

  “He wouldn’t be that stupid. He’d figure out a way. He may be a lousy President but he isn’t stupid.”

  “Hardly,” Mrs. Newland said, offering a dimpled smile. Her voice was small, but there was no mistaking the firmness behind her remark.

  Her husband shot her a look of rebuke, and Fiona knew she had made the wrong call about her. This woman was clearly not under her husband’s thumb.

  “Have you ever read his garbage?” Mrs. McBri
de asked. Quite obviously she had found her foil.

  “It was not my regular fare.”

  “You missed out on a real education,” Mrs. McBride snickered.

  “I doubt it,” Mrs. Newland shot back sweetly.

  The young waiter poured another round of drinks, filling wine glasses for everyone except Mrs. McBride, who stayed with scotch. Dolly liked to keep her guests well irrigated.

  Dolly, with her usual intuition, tried to steer the conversation in another direction by engaging Larry.

  “What do they think at the Post?”

  “From our perspective,” Larry said, “We have legitimate doubts as to the way Burns died, although we do recognize the possibility that there might have been some connection to his column.”

  “Which you must have hated,” Mrs. McBride sneered, “considering your biases.”

  “We call it as we see it,” Larry said, ignoring her accusation.

  “Tilting to the left,” Mrs. McBride countered, “hard left.”

  “We never mix our editorial positions with our news stories,” Larry said pleasantly. He had often been confronted with this question and always tried to keep his responses discreet.

  “Maybe so,” Mrs. Newland said. “But on the Burns story you certainly are keeping the accusation flame lit. You are deliberately making people hysterical. I mean, really, the President as Mafia don? What are we coming to?”

  Fiona noted a slight rosiness begin to discolor the back of Larry’s neck, a sign of his anger.

  “People are speculating, and we carry the speculation. It’s something you can’t keep under wraps.”

  “Anything to stir the pot,” Mrs. McBride said, oddly allied with Mrs. Newland now. “You people have no morals. Do you really believe such crap?”

  “When people speculate that this President may have something to do with Mr. Burns’ death, we can’t avoid covering it. Doesn’t that show fair-mindedness?”