Jeff finds himself in Washington DC on business trying to close a big deal for his company where he meets up with Nancy again, the FBI agent he had fallen in love with in Atlanta nearly two years ago. Jeff is separated from his wife because of Nancy
Chapter 13 of
Sunday 2:03 PM: Purpose
Jeff suddenly has three women swirling around him! He
loses patience with the team meeting, and helps them to get a purpose,
including who is the inside snitch! Next thing he knows, they are fitting him
with a wire!
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- Chris Lamela
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Author contact: Chris Lamela,
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K Street, Chapter 13
Sunday
2:03 PM: Purpose
They finished their breakfasts with light conversation about where each
came from, kids, etc. Jeff had the only fully populated life between them, Hank
telling about the same complaints Nancy expressed, how the job is so consuming
that it doesn’t have much room for relationships.
“So nobody at the agency has families?”
“There’s no time to start a family until you move up in the ranks when
you’re not actively involved in ops all the time.” He sipped his coffee,
setting the cup down, pushing it away. “I don’t know the statistics, but I’ll
bet the median age of those who are parents is easily ten years older than the
national average. It’s amazing to see all those old guys, men in their very
late fifties or early sixties with little kids, or if they’re lucky,
teenagers.” He looked off in a thoughtful gaze, back to Jeff, “It’s just part
of the job. I guess every job has its demands. That’s just one that comes with
the territory.”
The agent flipped a twenty onto the table, Jeff made to reach into his
pocket to pull out money, signaled to keep it. They stood, heading for the
door.
A few minutes later Jeff was back in his room. They agreed that he would
come out at one thirty so they could go to the meeting at the ops center.
Jeff walked into his room smiling that it had already been made up. He sat
on the bed noticing the message light blinking on his phone. He picked up the
card next to the phone looking for instructions about how to listen to
messages. Picking up the receiver he pressed in the codes.
He sat back listening, “You have one new message.” Jeff sat up
attentively, “Hi, Jeff. This is Kathy .
Kathy from last night who was going
to meet you for breakfast? Jeff, I am sooooo sorry! I’m not used to drinking
and well…well…well, I guess I drank too much last night. But it’s your fault!”
He could hear her recorded chuckle. “Anyway, I woke up. I forgot to set the
alarm and it was almost nine thirty! I ran down, the hostess said you had been
there, at least she thinks it was you, with another man. There was some man
with you last night, wasn’t there?” There was a pause as though she was trying
to piece something together in her head. “Anyway, I am so sorry. You probably
think I’m a flake, but I’m not. I just overslept.” He could hear her pause collecting
her thoughts. “Anyway, I wanted to call you to tell you that I’m sorry and I
hope you’ll give me a second chance. I’ll be in my room for a while, then I’m
going to do some touring. If you call me and I’m here maybe we can spend the
day together or something. Anyway, you know my room number, so please call me.”
There was a short pause then in a girly voice he heard, “Please, please? I
promise to make it up to you. Okay, talk to you later. Bye.”
Jeff hung up the phone, fluffed up a pillow sitting back against the
headboard. He tried to remember any time in his life when he had not two, but three women swirling around him. Nope,
never happened.
Not like this for sure!
He picked up the clicker turning on the TV, flicked the channels,
stopping on the image of the big Smithsonian room he had been in with Steve
yesterday, turned up the sound. He flicked back to the TV guide seeing that the
station he was watching was a special Smithsonian tourist channel the hotel
provided, flicked back to the Smithsonian channel. It was amazing that he had
seen all these things, just now getting to find out why they were so special.
After a while he put the TV on mute, reached for the napkin, pondering
the pen-scribbled numbers. He reached for the phone, pulling it onto the bed
next to him. He dialed 922. The phone rang four times, he heard the
introduction and invitation to leave a message.
“Hi, Kathy , this is Jeff.” He
paused realizing he hadn’t thought this through. “Uh, hey listen, not to worry,
to be honest I overslept, too, didn’t get down there until twenty after, no
maybe a little later. I thought that I had screwed up.” He laughed softly, “So
I guess that makes us both screw ups.” He grimaced that he was seriously blowing
this message, deciding to cut it off, “Anyway, I have a busy day today, so
sorry I missed you, but these people I work with are slave drivers so I
wouldn’t have had time to tour today anyway.” Okay, now wrap it up! “So anyway, not sure when we’ll get a chance
to see each other again, but I do look forward to it. Give me a call when you
have a minute.” He hung up glancing to the ceiling, good going there mister eloquence!
He realized he could have given her his cell phone number, but figured
that he didn’t want to call back with another rambly message.
Flopping back on the bed he looked up, the kissing faces instantly
appeared on the ceiling, the third frowny face looked more pronounced in this
light. He tried to imagine if he was one of the kissing faces, who was the
other? Nancy
He rolled over facing the TV, his head laid on his arm on the bed. He
pushed the mute button on the TV clicker, continued watching the Smithsonian
channel, soon he dozed off.
He awakened to the familiar four quick knocks at the door. Jeff looked
over to find that it was almost one thirty. Shaking his head he stood up
stretching, walked to the door.
Opening the door, he saw Steve again. “Where’s Hank?”
“It’s my shift,” Steve replied looking over Jeff’s shoulder, “grab your
coat, we need to go.”
“What about lunch?”
“They’ll have food there.”
“Come on in, I need a minute,” Jeff stood aside, Steve walked into the
room. Jeff disappeared into the bathroom, came back out, stepping to pick up
his sport coat weighted down by the Colt
pistol in the pocket, “Okay, let’s go.”
Soon they were in the hallway. Just as the door closed Jeff heard his
phone ringing in the room. “Excuse me,” he fumbled for his door card stepping
into the room picking up the phone, it quit ringing. He picked up the receiver
hearing only dial tone. “Oh well, too bad,” he hung it up going back out the
door, soon back downstairs in the lobby.
“I need you to wait right here while I go get my car,” Steve disappeared
through the front door. A minute later he drove up in front of the lobby, Jeff
could see Steve signaling to him from the car.
“Crown Vic,” Jeff smiled to Steve as he slid into the car.
“Yeah, I’m a Ford man.”
Jeff smiled to himself that there must be some kind of competition
between the FBI’s Chevy men and Ford men.
Twenty minutes later they were pulling up in front of the ops house in Cookes Park
There were two partially-consumed large pizzas in the middle of the
table, some people already had pizza-stained empty paper plates in front of
them. Jeff reached across to help himself grabbing a can of Coke.
The conversation started immediately. Jeff tried to pay close attention.
It went on for nearly an hour with more recaps of what had happened with the
Israelis on Friday night, the meeting yesterday at ODS, the event in the men’s
room at the Smithsonian, a general recap of the so-called arms deal. The
talking went on and on and on and on and soon Jeff found himself thinking about
the three pussies that were swirling around him wondering which of them wanted
to open their legs to Jeff first. He was trying to figure out if he would even
get any of them, which one it would
be and if he did get one or the other―or the other―or if it would mean that he wouldn’t
get any period! That would be too bad!
He tried to imagine Kathy naked. She
had a very trim body, her dark hair would mean dark pubes, her scant eyebrows
would mean scant pubes, scant pubes meant he could see…
“Jeff,” a voice interrupting his daydream, “Jeff!”
He swung his head toward the voice. There was the face attached to one
of the pussies he had just been dreaming about, Nancy
Jeff tried to snap into the here-and-now. “Attention to what?”
“To this, to this discussion,” Nancy
“What discussion? You guys haven’t said a thing worth listening to.”
An impatient murmur erupted at Jeff’s words.
Arnie looked like he was cluing into Jeff’s words, “Well maybe there,
Sherlock, you can provide us some insight?”
Jeff looked around the table, counting ten people, all now familiar
faces.
“Look, all I know is that in Atlanta
“That’s a bit sharp, isn’t it?” Arnie’s scowl only made Jeff mad.
“All I know is that nobody
seems to have a handle on anything!”
To his surprise, everyone leaned forward. Jeff suddenly realized that he had hit
on what everyone was already thinking. “We are looking at this all wrong. We
don’t even have a purpose. All we all know about the situation are facts.” Eyes
intent on him. “I mean, duh!” Jeff
didn’t know where that came from expecting anger, but was surprised that duh actually seemed to lighten the mood
in the room.
“We have no purpose to what we
are trying to do.” There were nods around the table. “Hand me a piece of paper,
a white sheet was slid across to him. Jeff reached into his pocket pulling out
his favorite pen, pulling off the cap, almost ceremoniously pushing the cap
onto back of the pen. “I can write in four lines what we know.”
With a certain pomp he wrote the lines:
“UAV DEAL GOING THROUGH XXX TO YYY WITH THE KNOWLEDGE AND APPROVAL OF ZZZ.”
Arnie smiled at his discretion.
Next line: “IRANIANS WANT DEAL STOPPED,
WILL KILL TO DO IT.”
Nods around the table.
“IRANIANS DON’T KNOW WHO TO KILL.”
More nods.
“IRANIANS WILL KILL EVERYONE IF THEY HAVE TO.”
Nods accompanied by worried grimaces all around.
“Now we need our purpose, that
will tell us our actions.”
Jeff put the pen to his chin in thought. “Assuming there is no way to
call off the Iranians…” he looked around the table hoping someone would chime
in with an idea about how to do that, but only looks of blank anticipation were
to be found, “then our purpose is quite simple.”
With pen to paper he wrote, “PROTECT ALL PLAYERS.”
“Assuming that we have to wait until Tuesday to do the deal,” again he
looked around hoping somebody would pop up to say no that they could do the
deal right now. Shaking his head at the silence, he wrote, “DO DEAL ON
TUESDAY.”
Followed underneath by, “GO HOME.”
“Like is said, duh.”
“Jeff, this is all pretty obvious, don’t you think?”
“Arnie, what else is there?”
Jeff looked over to see Nancy Nancy
Everyone stood up. Arnie stood
at the curtain, the congressmen filed out first followed by all the others
except for Yvonne who was writing in her classified notebook, Arnie pulling at
Jeff’s sleeve, “We need you still,” the drape fell back. Arnie sat back down.
“We need to wait for Nancy
The two sat down in silence.
“So what’s going on?” Jeff looked back and forth at the two seated on
each side of him, across the table to Yvonne.
“You did good here just now.”
“Thanks,” Jeff smiled. “What did I do?”
Arnie waved a wait, you’ll see motion,
“Now let’s get down to the real work. We need to lay a net to figure out what’s
going on here.”
“What do you mean?”
“You got us focused on purpose.
But here’s our real purpose,” she smiled with pen in hand.
She wrote four lines:
“IS THIS DEAL LEGIT?”
“ARE CONGRESSMEN OVERSTEPPING?”
“ARE CONGRESSMEN BEING PAID OFF?”
“ARE WEAPONS REALLY GOING WHERE WE THINK?”
She paused with pen to mouth then wrote two more lines:
“HOW INVOLVED ARE IRANIANS?”
“WHO’S DOING ALL THE SHOOTING?”
She laid down the pen on the paper with a satisfied grin.
Arnie pulled the paper and pen to him writing one more line:
“IS THERE AN INSIDE?”
Jeff looked at the last words knowing instantly the word inside remembering it from Atlanta, the inside man who turned out to be just
about everyone with information flowing like water back and forth between all
sorts of players. “Okay, yes, but am I involved in this?”
Arnie laid his hand on Jeff’s left shoulder, “Look, the congressmen
think you are a key player, that you have the ability to screw this up.”
“Why would I want to screw this up, there’s a lot of money in this for
my company.”
“Yes, they know that, but they also know that you know your gear is headed
for what some might call bad guys,” Jeff nodded that the gear was head for
Saddam in Iraq
“So what am I supposed to do about this?”
“Where else could be worse?”
“Lots of places. Syria
comes to mind,” Nancy
“And we have got to take the shooters out,” Jeff said softly. “So in the
meantime what am I supposed to do for this little meeting in an hour.”
Arnie stood up, turned toward the drape pulling it open motioning to
someone in the ops room turning back to the table. He pulled up the nylon case
in front of him, unzipping it, pulling out a small black plastic box about three
inches across, a half-inch thick with velcro straps, a wire about one-feet long
hanging out.
“I know that thing,” Jeff frowned, “that’s
a wire!”
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K STREET!
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