Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [35]
“A week,” the agent replied in a pinched voice, leaning to his left to come closer to Harris. He was a small man with a narrow face and disproportionately large ears. “The Elephant Man,” they called him when comparing notes over a beer or on the golf course. He was a Bureau “handler,” responsible for training and maintaining special agents who worked underground, infiltrating groups of interest to the Bureau because of possible criminal activity. “He reports on a weekly basis.” He sounded defensive, as though Harris were challenging the reporting schedule.
“Tonight,” Harris said.
The Elephant Man nodded.
“When do we bring the other agencies into the loop on the missiles?” Harris asked.
“That’s not our call,” Templeton said. “I had a confirmation from the attorney general that we’re to release nothing about the missiles until directed to by her. She’ll get the word from the president.”
Harris turned to his right again. “Has Scope reported anything in previous contacts that indicates he might know something about these missiles and whose hands they fell into?”
“No.”
Harris didn’t believe him.
Templeton stood and stretched, straining the buttons on his blue button-down shirt. “I assume that by tomorrow, we’ll be getting together with the Company’s people and State. Naturally, we’ll cooperate fully with whatever agency the president dictates, but that doesn’t include Scope’s activities. Unless, of course, we’re ordered to from up top. We’ll meet here at seven tomorrow morning.”
A representative from public affairs said, “The press? They know it was missiles that brought down the planes. The more we stonewall on this aspect of the case, the more we—”
Templeton, who almost always spoke in soft, measured tones, snapped, “They think they know. Anyone leaks anything to that bunch of vultures will end up providing a human target for the firearms demonstration. See you at seven!”
Chapter 12
Early Evening the Next Day
Washington, DC
Joe Potamos was hotter than Sixteenth Street’s pavement as he entered the Carlton.
He’d come from the Post after an argument with his editor, Gil Gardello, over Potamos’s continuing assignment to develop human interest sidebars on the crash of the Washington-bound Dash 8. Of the thirty-six passengers aboard the plane, fourteen had been Washington-area residents.
He was crossing the elegant hotel’s lobby in the direction of the bar when a voice stopped him.
“Hey, Joe.”
The voice belonged to The Christian Science Monitor’s Godfrey Sperling, a familiar face at the Carlton, whose early-morning interviews with DC’s political bigwigs in the Crystal Room were known as “Sperling breakfasts.”
“How are you, Joe?” Sperling asked.
“I’ve been better. You?”
“Better than you, it seems. What are you chasing these days?”
“Grieving widows and fatherless kids. It’s inspiring. You?”
“The Speaker’s stonewalling of campaign reform legislation. I’m interviewing him here tomorrow.”
“Yeah, well, that’s great, Godfrey. That’s a… excuse me, I’m meeting somebody.”
The brief conversation only served to raise Potamos’s internal temperature, despite the air-conditioning. There was a time when he, Joe Potamos, Frank Potamos’s prodigal son, hotshot political reporter on the nation’s second-most-important newspaper, would have been sitting down with Speakers of the House and other DC politicos with the power to block good legislation, or to ram through pork that benefitted no one except their hometown voters.
But that was then.
He muttered a few choice scatological comments as he entered the bar, where homicide detective Peter Languth, a drink in his hand, was talking to Nathan Yu, the bartender.
“I was getting worried,” Languth said as Potamos took a stool next to him.
“Worried about what,” Potamos said, “that I wouldn’t show up and you’d have to pay for your own drinks?”
Languth leaned away from Potamos: “Oooh, the tiger is loose. What’s the matter, Joe, that piano-playing girlfriend of yours play ‘The Party’s Over’?”
“Hello, Nathan,” Potamos