Conrad
Thursday, 15th November, 2018
9:31 AM
The door to the Oval Office swung open before Conrad had time to register the rap-tap of knuckles against it, let alone beckon anyone to enter.
"Morning, sir." Russell strode inside, his gaze buried in his cell phone, a stone blue manila file pinned to his side beneath his elbow, whilst Mike B trailed less than half a step behind.
"Russell." Conrad's brow furrowed. He braced himself against the desk and pushed himself to standing. "What's going on? I'm meant to have a meeting with Gordon in five minutes."
"Sec Def can wait." Russell slipped his phone into his jacket pocket, and as the thunk of the door slotting into the frame echoed through the pause, he stopped in front of the desk and looked up at Conrad. Mouth open, he drew a breath. "There's been a development."
"What do you mean 'a development'?"
Russell opened the file, and balancing it in one hand, he pulled out a single sheet of glossy paper with a crisp swish and pushed it across the desk. His fingertips lingered at the edge of the sheet for a moment, as though he were hopeful that they might be able to soak up the ink and make the image fade to white. Then, when the seconds had passed and nothing had changed, he tapped the page, smearing the faint whorls of fingerprints that he left behind, and he withdrew his hand.
Conrad hesitated. He dragged the picture towards himself. The light from the chandelier that hung at the centre of the room cast yellow dapples across the surface of the paper, and the sheet scraped over the oak. He frowned down at the image, and then up at Russell. "What is this?"
"This—" Russell rubbed the trenches of his brow. "—is a photograph of Elizabeth taken in the early hours of Sunday morning." His hand fell back to his side, and his shoulders deflated. "Just as she was leaving for the clinic."
Conrad sank into his seat. He held the picture by its margins, so that the back of the sheet rested against the lip of the desk, and his frown both deepened and softened as he studied it.
Yes, it was Bess. Though not as he knew her, or at least not as he'd seen her in a long time. Huddled in a black woollen coat that could have been made for someone twice her size; her hair half falling across her face and fully dishevelled; whilst beneath the amber glare of street lights, her cheeks appeared a touch too hollowed; and her eyes...her eyes...well, gaunt didn't quite cut it.
His lips tensed, whilst he fought to still the currents that seethed like rapids beneath his surface. "Somebody's been watching their house."
A pause, weighed down by the gloom that seeped past the gauze curtains.
Russell's mouth hung open and his gaze flitted over Conrad. He gave a slow nod. "Yes, sir. I think it's safe to say that's a fair assessment."
"And I take it from the fact that you're presenting me with this, not to mention the sheepish looks on both your faces, that DS failed to notice."
Russell cast Mike a sideways glance, though Mike had found fascination in a spot on the carpet, not far beyond the ends of his shoes, and then he returned his gaze to Conrad. "Yes, sir, that's correct."
"Well, what if whoever took this—" Conrad gestured to the photograph. "—had put their camera down and tried to do something? Would DS have noticed then?"
"You'd certainly hope so. Though I'm beginning to have my doubts."
"And what about now? Have they tracked her to the clinic?"
"DS insist they weren't followed—"
Conrad drew his chin in. The sarcasm flowed thick. "Well, if DS insist."
Russell's voice strained, whilst one hand motioned as though to tamp down Conrad's response. "—and there's been no suspicious activity. But I've put her security on alert in any case."
Conrad glowered at the photograph. His tone softened, but his hand continued to open and clench in a fist where it hung over the edge of the armrest. "She's in a clear line of fire, for God's sake. We promised we'd keep her safe."
The air pulled taut with silence, like a hide being stretched over the shell of a drum, until it felt so tense that the trill of the phone from the office outside bounced off it. She should never have been put in this position in the first place, and they certainly shouldn't be three weeks on and still have her facing the same threat. Wasn't it enough that she thought—
Conrad shook his head to himself and let out a stream of breath, though the frown that had settled on his brow refused to budge. He looked from Russell to Mike and back again. "Where did the photograph come from anyway?"
Russell gave Mike a half-nod, as though to nudge him forward. After a moment's pause, Mike gripped the back of the chair that stood at the edge of the desk; he stepped around it, unbuttoned the front of his tweed jacket, and lowered himself onto the cushion. He leant forward, his eyes wide. "A few days ago, I received a tip from a contact of mine that the image was floating around the sewers of journalism with a fairly hefty price tag attached to it."
This time, Conrad's fist failed to open from its clench. "Tell me you've taken care of it."
Mike glanced over his shoulder at Russell, and then returned to Conrad. "Fortunately the price itself seems to have acted as enough of a deterrent."
"So we looped in the FBI and set up a purchase." Russell prised back the cover on the file and leafed through the pages. "That enabled us to get a hit on this guy."
The scrape of paper against paper cut through the office as he pulled out a second sheet. He slid the photograph across the desk, so that its edge aligned with the one of Elizabeth.
Conrad gave the image a cursory glance, and then looked back to Mike as Mike took over again. "Some lowlife blogger with an axe to grind against Bess. We've waded through the posts on his so-called news blog, and to cut a very long and very repetitive story short, he's not her number one fan and one of his favourite pastimes is griping about her policies."
"And do we think he could be connected to the assassination attempt?" Conrad said.
Russell shook his head. "Not directly. He doesn't like her very much, but not enough to want her dead. Plus, his alibi checks out."
Conrad rubbed his jaw, and his gaze slackened for a moment, until the photographs on the desk faded to a haze and the stripes of the wall merged into one another, a backdrop of beige. No matter how disconcerting it would be to learn that such a man, a lowlife, a nobody, could get to Elizabeth, somehow it would be reassuring to know that he was the one who wanted her dead. At least then this would be over. Or, at least, a part of it would. It wouldn't resolve what was happening to Bess now, but it would perhaps give her and her family some relief, and it would give her the privacy that she needed. Privacy...
His gaze darted up to Russell again, still stood in front of the desk. "What about other copies? If the press or anybody else get their hands on this—"
"We're keeping an eye out," Russell said, "but so far it doesn't look as though anyone's touched it."
Mike twisted back to Conrad and nodded. "Thanks to the tip off, we managed to get in there pretty quickly."
"Though perhaps not quick enough to stop Morejon getting a whiff, if his comments the other day are anything to go by."
"I'm surprised he didn't buy it himself and plaster it all over Twitter." Mike batted one hand.
"If he did that," Russell said, "he knows there'd be hell to pay."
Conrad arched his eyebrows. "Do I even want to ask?"
"Not if you want plausible deniability, sir."
Conrad's lips twitched, though the smile was a ghost before it had even formed. He ran his fingers along the edge of the photograph, the one of Elizabeth. "If this blogger's goal was to discredit Bess, then why not just post it? Why try and sell it?"
"It seems as though that was his initial intention," Russell said. "When the FBI searched his laptop, they found a draft post entitled 'Secretary of Unfit Mental State'."
Conrad let out a huff. "Catchy."
Mike shrugged. "It's no 'Madam Sexytary' or 'Secretary of Escape', but I suppose it does have a certain ring to it."
"So, what made him change his mind?" Conrad said.
"Apparently, being the so-called harbinger of truth doesn't pay that well, especially seeing as advertisers aren't too keen on supporting the blogs of DC gutter-dwellers and conspiracy theorists, and like the rest of us, he's got bills. So, he thought it would be more profitable to sell the image instead." Mike's nose wrinkled, and he tossed up one hand. "Plus his pet iguana got sick, and vets are ridiculously expensive."
Russell leant back against the arm of the couch, and with his arms folded across his chest, he gave a half-shrug. "Can't hurt that it would save him the damages in a libel case too."
Mike pivoted to face Russell, one finger raised. "Though, technically not libel if it's true."
"He didn't know that." Russell's voice soared. "All he's got is an image of her looking a hot mess—" He flung a gesture towards the photograph. "—and he's certainly not a psychiatrist, though he probably ought to be acquainted with one." He shook his head to himself, and added in a mutter, "Probably thinks the DSM is some kind of sexual fetish."
Mike smirked. "Throw in some handcuffs and a couple of ties, and it would be."
Conrad held his hand up— Stop. Now. Before they ventured down a path he really didn't want to go down. "But how did he know to watch her house? You can't tell me that he just happened to be passing by at the precise moment she was leaving for the clinic."
"After some quaint protest about his human rights—" Mike twisted around and wrinkled his nose at Russell. "Why do people always go there, by the way?" He turned back to Conrad. "—the FBI read him the list of charges he'd face, and that got him talking."
"He claims he didn't take the photo," Russell said. "Apparently it just appeared in his inbox one day, sent from an anonymous email address no less."
Conrad's brow crumpled, and he shook his head. "I'm not buying that."
"Nor did the FBI. But it turns out he has a history of delving into the murky depths of the dark net, so the FBI thought maybe he stumbled across some communications while trawling for God knows what else."
Conrad paused. His frown deepened. Dark net. Communications. His gaze sharpened on Russell. "So, they think the photograph is related to the poisoning after all?"
Russell nodded. "That's their working theory, and they suspect it's not the only image out there. It might be that they're drifting around the dark net—the FBI are looking into it—but that's not where it turns out this guy got the photo from."
Mike had been watching Russell, but he turned now to Conrad, and his face lit up with such delight that he might as well have been a child at Disneyland on Christmas Day beneath the pink glow of fireworks. "This is where the iguana comes in."
Conrad sent him a questioning look. "The iguana?"
Then his gaze shifted to Russell as Russell began to speak.
"While the FBI were digging into his online activity, they also searched his home. There's no trace of this mysterious email, as we suspected, and there's nothing incriminating at his flat."
Mike's gleeful look persisted. "But then one of the agents remembers the story about the sick iguana, and decides to go check on it."
"And...?" Conrad looked between them, his eyebrows raised.
"Turns out the iguana's twitching, so he's not lying about that."
Russell furrowed his brow and cast Mike a dark look. "But more to the point, they found a USB stick hidden in the terrarium."
"But not just any terrarium, but a terrarium that takes up half of his bedroom." Mike grinned at Russell. "Now that's got to be some kind of fetish."
"Let me guess." Conrad gave a wry smile. "The image was on the USB."
Mike nodded. "Along with pictures of Bess's shrink, taken the same night."
Russell balanced the manila folder on top of the couch and thumbed through the remaining pages. "When the FBI confronted him about it, he said someone had left it for him in a coffee shop. He went to relieve himself and there it was there, next to his coffee, when he got back."
"And CCTV?" Conrad said.
"Shows the drop off. Led us to this man." Russell pushed himself up from his perch and slid a third photograph across the desk.
"He styles himself as some kind of freelance photographer," Mike said, "but he has an impressive rap sheet and some pretty shady clientele."
Conrad looked to Russell. "And have the FBI questioned him?"
"Picking him up as we speak."
Conrad leant back in his chair. He studied the three images in turn, lingering longest on Bess, the photograph stuck in between. The tension in his brow grew, along with the niggle at the back of his mind. "But why give the image to a blogger? Surely the assassin wouldn't want this to get out."
Russell shrugged. "It's possible that the photographer went rogue."
"Or that they instructed him to release it in order to flush Bess out." Mike leant closer and arched his hand atop the desk. His eyes gleamed, alight with conspiracy. "Imagine if the blogger's iguana hadn't gotten sick and he'd decided that, rather than trying to make a quick buck, he'd go for the full exposé. Once the mainstream media got hold of it, the story would've blown up, and it wouldn't have taken long for someone to identify Bess's shrink and track Bess down at the clinic."
Conrad pursed his lips. "Use the story as bait." He arched his eyebrows at Russell. "Sounds like they've taken a leaf out of your book, Russell."
Mike nodded, and a smile lit his face. "Nefarious minds think alike."
"But why go to the hassle? Why not just track her down themselves?"
"I agree," Russell said. "It's too noisy. With the first attempt, they came and went unnoticed. Even with our top resources on it, we turned up nothing. It seems more likely that with Bess keeping a low profile and with the increase in her security, they decided a second attempt was too risky."
"So, we're back to discrediting her instead?"
"With jerks like Morejon champing at the bit to call her a junky or an alcoholic, it wouldn't take much to stir up a scandal. It wouldn't kill her, but it would still silence her." Russell's shoulders rose and then slumped. "Maybe that's all they ever wanted to achieve."
Conrad's lips tugged into a line. "And even if we did somehow trace it back to them, it would've been too late."
"Plenty of presidents have had their issues, but I can't see it going down well with the electorate, not after every commentator out there has put their own sordid spin on it."
"It's all about the optics." Conrad shook his head to himself. Why did he ever get into politics? He looked to Russell again. "I trust you're coming up with our own way to spin this, if and when the time comes."
Russell's gaze dipped to the floor. He scratched the back of his head and let out a terse sigh. "That won't be an issue, sir, if Bess doesn't start playing ball."
A frown descended on Conrad's brow, but before he could ask the question, Russell's cell phone buzzed and bleeped.
Russell patted down his trouser pockets before he fished the phone out of his suit jacket. His expression hardened as he stared down at the screen. "That's Doherty now." He jabbed the answer button, and then turned his back on Conrad and Mike, paced towards the grandfather clock by the door and raised the phone to his ear. "Talk to me."
He stopped and stood perfectly still.
The clink...clonk...clink...clonk...clink...clonk... of the clock engulfed the room.
Conrad waited. Each juddering strike spawned a fresh wave of unease. He had gotten away. The photographer had gotten away, hadn't he? And they were back to square one. The assassin still out there. God knows how many images waiting to be released. What would happen to Bess then? How much more would she be dragged through before—
Russell spun back to face him, and covering the mouthpiece, he gave a nod. "We've got him."
"We have?"
Russell nodded again. "They're bringing him in for questioning."
Conrad's eyes slipped shut, and he let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. His grip on the arm of the chair eased. "Thank God for sick iguanas."
Russell pocketed the phone. He snatched the folder from the back of the couch, and then darted forward and gathered up the photographs from the desk. "I'm going to head down there now, make sure they don't mess up this lead." He jostled the photographs together and stuffed them into the file. "I'll keep you posted."
"Tell them to lean on him," Conrad said as Russell strode towards the door. "Whatever their intentions, I want everyone connected to this brought into custody before they even have the chance to think about trying something like this again."
Russell tipped the file towards him. "Will do, sir."
"And don't be afraid to threaten him."
Russell cast a look over his shoulder as he tugged open the door. "Trust me, by the time I'm done with him, jail time will sound like a mercy."
The door clunked back into its frame, and a silence settled over the Oval Office, thick with the aroma of coffee that percolated through the air of the White House, a lifeblood of caffeine. Outside, the Secret Service agents paced along the stone walkway, and though their steps were soundless, it felt as though the pulse of their stride echoed through the room, as subtle as the tides of relief.
Mike turned to face Conrad, and as he clasped his knees, a smile spread across his face. "So, Bess has gone round the bend. Who'da thunk it?"
Tension radiated along Conrad's jaw, and he shook his head. "Don't go there, Mike."
"Come on. You must've had an inkling, what with all that CIA voodoo knowledge."
Conrad placed his palms flat against the desk, and he eased up from his seat. He towered over Mike, and shot him a look. "Sometimes I wonder why Bess tolerates you."
"I like to think she finds me refreshing."
Conrad let out a huff of a laugh. "Is that what you call it?"
Mike's smile lingered for a few seconds, and then faded, and his expression turned pensive. He looked up at Conrad, a sight nick in his brow. Perhaps the closest thing to concern Conrad had ever seen from him. Until—"Why do people keep pet iguanas anyway?"
Conrad jabbed the intercom button on the phone, and three seconds later, Lucy opened the door. Conrad swept his hand towards the exit. "Goodbye, Mike."