Ghost Image (4 page)

The Franciscans were a mendicant order and took vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience symbolized by the three knots
on Kevin's cincture. They lived a simple life with few possessions. Kevin had given all of his royalties and any money he earned from the publication of his book to the Franciscans, supporting their mission in the Holy Land and helping charities that worked for the poor and the disabled.

Whatever Kevin had discovered, the money would go to those same causes, not his own personal wealth.

“Good God, what is it?”

“I've said enough. Like I told you, it's a huge long shot. I'm not sure I'm right.”

“Of course you are. Otherwise why would someone be stalking you?”

He gave me a long, steady look. “No one knows better than you, Sophie, because you're married to a guy who used to be a covert CIA officer, that a person can't talk about what he doesn't know. So can we just leave it at that?”

Nick Canning, my husband, had been with the CIA for years until his cover was blown last fall. The story had been in the press everywhere, and that ended his clandestine career. Kevin was right. You don't have to lie when you don't know the truth.

“At the party last night, Thea Stavros said she heard rumors about a project you were working on,” I said. “Do you think she knows?”

He traced more markings on the lantern before he answered, and he seemed uneasy. “I've had to ask a few people for some information, including Thea, but I'm sure she doesn't know or hasn't figured anything out. The project she was talking about last night was the history book on colonial gardening.”

“Does your missing puzzle piece have something to do with that book?”

He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “I've said enough.”

“That sounds like a yes. Come on, Kevin, you trusted me
enough to tell me someone's been following you.”

A long look passed between us, and I knew he needed to tell someone.

“All right,” he said at last, “but you can't say a word to anyone. I'm serious.”

I crossed my heart with a finger. “Hope to die.”

He took a deep breath. “If I'm right, I found something of historical importance that nobody seems to have realized is out there, even though it's probably been hiding in plain sight. Like I said, it could be worth a lot of money to the right people. I want to be the person who makes that discovery, solves the puzzle. And be the first to write about it.”

At least now I understood the thinking behind his idea for my garden book, since it mirrored his own project: photograph the city's jilted beauties, gardens that were overlooked and ignored. In other words, hiding in plain sight.

“So the reason for all the secrecy is that you don't want someone stealing your story?”

He nodded. “I don't own the information I uncovered. It's in the public domain, and anyone who figured out what I was doing could obtain the same documents. So far no one else has. Right now, it's my treasure hunt.”

“Was that why you were arguing with Edward Jaine?”

He gave me a severe look. “In a word; no. That was about something else.”

“What did you retrieve from the catacombs?”

He made a zipping motion across his lips.

“Kevin, someone knows something or he wouldn't be following you.”

“I know. That's what's bothering me. I don't know who it could be.”

“What are you going to do?”

He shrugged, but he still looked worried. “What can I do? Keep searching and watch my back.”

“You'd better be careful.”

“Whatever happens is in God's hands.” He glanced at his watch. “Sorry, Soph, but I ought to go. I promised Thea I'd stop by the library and take a look at those books she was telling me about last night.” He grimaced. “Then I'm meeting someone for coffee.”

“You don't look too happy about it.”

“I have to say something I wish I didn't have to say.”

“Then why are you doing it?”

“If I don't, more people are going to get hurt later. And I'll know I could have done something to prevent it. It's better to get this over with.” He sighed and pulled his car keys out of a pocket inside his robe. “Are you leaving now, too?”

“I think I'll stick around and take some more pictures. I have a meeting at the Smithsonian, but it's not for an hour.”

“Another job?”

I nodded. “An editor from Museum Press hired me to take the photographs for a history book on the National Mall. So I'll see her, and then at the end of the day I'm meeting Ursula and Yasmin at the monastery. She wants to walk through the church and the garden. Again.”

“I remember.” He made a face. “The kids from Brookland Elementary are coming over at two to clean up the beds in their vegetable garden. We'll be long gone when you do your walk-through with Ursula.”

“That school garden is such a great community project.”

“Especially when they get to eat what they've grown and realize food doesn't only come from a can or a package.” He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “If you ever want to take photographs, you're welcome to come by. We could put them on the garden website, get some publicity. You know we're always looking for donations.”

“I'd be happy to, but you'd need written permission from every parent,” I said. “A friend who works for the
Post
accidentally took a picture for a school story without knowing one of
the kids was in the witness protection program. It was a mess.”

His eyes widened. “I'll keep that in mind.”

“I can take garden pictures without the kids,” I said. “You can put those on your website. I'll come by early and check it out.”

“That would be great, though there's not much to check out right now. Too early in the season.” He gave me a swift hug and left, robes flying as he strode down the promenade. As he disappeared up the steps by the FDR Memorial, my foot kicked something on the ground. A key.

The head was dark gray molded plastic, the same color as the lantern. I picked it up. On one side, the number 58 was etched into the plastic. It was too small and oddly sized to be a house key or a key to a room at the monastery; it looked more like it belonged to a storage locker or a trunk.

Kevin must have dropped it when he pulled out his car keys, or maybe when he passed me the envelope, unless one of the two women who'd just been here had lost it. I shoved it in my jeans pocket. When I went over to the monastery later today, I'd ask him if it was his.

I took pictures for another half hour and thought about my conversation with Kevin. Had he moved whatever he'd hidden in the catacombs to a new, safe place? I hit the Unlock button for my car door and wondered what the little gray key might open.

More than that, I wondered what object could be so precious to a Franciscan friar that he went to such lengths to keep it hidden, especially when he lived in a house whose only other residents were religious men of God.

3

A
parking space opened up across the street from the old-­fashioned carousel on the Mall as I drove up. In two weeks, the flowering cherries, dogwoods, magnolias, and redbud would begin to bloom, and Washington would be at its loveliest, bringing tens of thousands of tourists in buses and cars that choked the Mall and overran the monuments and museums. But today the city still belonged to the locals. I liked it without the crowds, days when you could get a parking place practically in front of the Smithsonian Castle, and the museums and art galleries were so empty you might have an entire room filled with centuries of culture or the world's greatest paintings practically to yourself.

Nearly eight months ago, my husband and I moved here after living in London for twelve years. Nick's career as a covert operative with the CIA had ended after a nerve-racking, harrowing time when he had been on the run for three months and I had returned to Washington to be near family and friends. It hadn't been an easy decision to leave a city we both loved, but we knew if we
stayed in England any longer, we'd be expats forever and maybe strangers to each other because we were together so seldom.

Living with a spy is not easy. I had never been able to tell anyone this, not even my family, who had known Nick only as a geophysicist working for a British oil and gas exploration company that had been drilling for oil in Russia. I knew what Nick really did before the wedding, and I liked to think I wasn't naïve about what his clandestine life would mean for us. I'd grown up around Washington where everyone knew more spooks than they realized. What I didn't understand was how hard it would be to live with someone you could never truly know, who erected impenetrable walls and spun webs of fictitious truths without batting an eye, who could compartmentalize his life with what seemed like ruthless efficiency.

Then Nick's cover was blown and he was PNG'd—declared persona non grata—by the Russian government. But after being in the field for so long, he didn't want to return to a desk job in Langley. Three and a half months ago, after a couple of bottles of champagne on New Year's Eve and a discussion that lasted until dawn, Nick handed in his resignation to the CIA and I left the small photography studio where I'd worked for the past six months. I picked up freelance assignments right away—almost more work than I could handle—but it wasn't so easy for Nick, who got in touch with friends and started calling in favors for job leads at meetings or lunches or over drinks.

Anyone who has been recruited as an informant by a foreign country's intelligence agency can bend over and kiss his ass goodbye if he's ever outed, because professionally no one will trust you again. You're a snitch and you can be bought. It's different if you were hired by the CIA, as Nick was, and had gone through Agency training, because intelligence gathering is your job. You have a regular paycheck, a pension, health insurance, and an annual vacation, and you have sworn an oath of loyalty to your country. But it's still a complicated and fickle world when you
leave the life to start over again on the outside. Whatever Nick did next would have to be something unusual, almost certainly not advertised on any website or with a written, well-defined job description.

In the beginning of February, he came home one day and told me Quillen Russell was forming a consulting firm and had asked Nick if he wanted the position as his energy expert. Washington needs more consulting firms like the beach needs more sand, but Quill had been secretary of state in a previous administration and he was godfather to the oldest daughter of the current president. I doubted they would be advertising for clients, and the new office was going to be within walking distance of the White House.

“What will you do?” I asked Nick.

He gave me a dangerous half smile and said, “Whatever they ask me to do.”

“It'll be like the Agency again, won't it?”

“Not really. Quill sees it more as being fixers or facilitators for problems or situations that are . . . unconventional.”

“Your fee won't be a line item in someone's budget?”

He laughed and pulled me into his arms. “Do you mind if I go away for a while?”

“Yes, I do,” I said as he kissed my hair. “I was just getting used to having you home after all the time you spent in Russia.”

“Well, don't get unused to it.”

“When do you leave and where are you going?”

The Middle East and the former oil-producing Soviet republics for long enough to learn his way around, meet the players, and become familiar with the politics. At least I knew he wasn't going to Russia this time, or he'd end up in Lubyanka, the notorious KGB prison.

Ten days later he was gone. I knew a rough itinerary, and unlike his work with the CIA, we were in touch on e-mail almost daily. Occasionally we even managed a video call on Skype. At the moment he was in Saudi Arabia, and he'd told
me the last time we spoke that he figured he'd be home in another month.

Before I got out of the car, I checked my phone to see if he had written me today as he usually did, and for any other messages. Somehow I had missed a call in the last hour, a D.C. area code and a number with a 224 prefix. The U.S. Senate.

The message was from Ursula Gilberti's personal secretary asking me to call as soon as possible. Maybe Ursula had reconsidered today's meeting at the monastery because of the weather.

I hit Redial and the secretary answered right away. “The senator would like you to drop by her office in the Russell Building this afternoon,” she said. “She has something she wishes to discuss with you.”

“We're supposed to meet at the Franciscan Monastery at five o'clock. Perhaps we could talk about it then?”

“The senator was very specific that she wanted to see you in her office without her daughter present before your meeting at the monastery. I'm sorry, that's all I know. She did say it wouldn't take long.”

She was just the messenger, and knowing Ursula, her secretary obeyed without question. My meeting with Olivia Upshaw wasn't supposed to take long, either; I was just picking up a manuscript. But finding parking on the Hill and going through security would chew up at least half an hour.

“I have a meeting in a few minutes at the Smithsonian. I'll try to be there in an hour or so, maybe around one thirty or one forty-five, but don't hold me to it.”

“Senator Gilberti is working in her office in Russell all afternoon. I'll let her know.” Before she hung up she said, “Thank you.”

Now what did Ursula want?

I grabbed my camera bag and got out of the car. The sky threatened rain so I was about to head straight to the Castle when I caught sight of a scrolled wrought-iron bench wrapped around a
fountain in a sweet little courtyard. Behind the courtyard was one of the hidden gardens Kevin had written about in his article, a narrow serpentine walkway between the Mall and Independence Avenue known as the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden. But more important to me was the memory of the day I sat on that bench between Harry Wyatt and my mother, when Harry asked me if it was okay if he married Mom and me. A passerby had taken our photograph, the three of us beaming, a happy, soon-to-be new family. I still kept a dog-eared copy in my wallet. Afterward we'd walked through the pretty, sheltered pathway between the Hirshhorn Museum and the Arts and Industries Building, Harry's protective arm around my shoulders, as he talked about our future after Mom and I moved from our apartment in Queens, New York, to his sprawling horse farm in Middleburg, Virginia.

I walked into the courtyard to take a picture of that bench, remembering Harry explaining how the garden had been slated to become a parking lot until the wife of the secretary of the Smithsonian saved it. She'd turned it into a replica of a sensory garden she'd seen in San Francisco for the blind and disabled, an eclectic collection of plants, shrubs, and trees that filled beds, overflowed urns, and trailed from hanging baskets. Probably no surprise to Kevin, I had it to myself just now, my own secret garden.

Halfway down the path I had company. A man in a black leather jacket, jeans, and a black turtleneck with a leather messenger bag slung over one shoulder had entered the garden from the Mall, just as I had. It took a few seconds before I recognized David Arista from last night's party. I hadn't seen him when I parked my car, and that had been only a couple of minutes ago.

He came toward me, smiling as though we were old friends, and held out his hand. “We met last night. Or almost did. You're Sophie Medina. My name's David Arista.”

I'm not good at being coy. We shook hands. “I know who you are. I asked someone about you when we kept almost meeting.”

He laughed, and his eyes crinkled into tiny crow's-feet. This close I saw flecks of gray in his long dark hair. It was swept off his face to reveal a sharp widow's peak that made me think of actors who played the devil in old movies. Last night I guessed he was in his early thirties. Today I realized he was probably closer to my age, maybe late thirties or early forties.

“You could have asked anyone about me,” he was saying. “I know Yasmin's friends and everyone from her mother's office. Plus a few folks who work with Victor at Global Shield.”

“I understand you own a public relations company.”

“You really did ask about me, didn't you?” He seemed pleased, and for a moment it flustered me that he had misconstrued my curiosity for another type of interest.

He pulled a leather business card case out of an inside jacket pocket and handed me a card. “C-Cubed. Media, creative strategy, marketing, branding. PR is so twentieth century.” His smile was self-deprecating. “And you're the wedding photographer. I know a few people who would love to meet you. Do you have a card? Give me a couple. I'll pass them out.”

I had been expecting a fast-talking snake oil salesman, someone who kept looking over your shoulder as he spoke to you in case someone more important moved into view. David Arista was smart, disarming, and nobody's fool. The amused look I noticed last night seemed to be his default expression.

“I'm not a professional wedding photographer.” I slipped his card into my camera bag. “I'm just doing this as a favor.”

“For Yasmin or Victor?”

“Both, of course. But Victor's the one who asked me.”

He pointed to my Nikon and the long lens I had on it. “That camera body and that zoom lens are worth at least five or six grand. You're no amateur.”

“No, I'm not. I'm sorry, but I'm going to be late for a meeting. I should be going.”

He gave me a shrewd look. “Is your meeting in the Castle?”

“As a matter of fact, it is.”

“I'll walk you there. I'm heading over to the Smithsonian metro, so it's on my way.”

“Thanks, but I thought I'd take the long way around so I could see the garden in front of the Castle on Independence Avenue,” I said.

“No problem.” He fell into step beside me. “I'll take the long way, too. You must like gardens?”

“I . . . yes.”

“That was a great photo you took of Yasmin and Victor in the garden at the Franciscan Monastery,” he said. “I saw the announcement in the
Post
a few weeks ago.”

“Thank you.” I didn't know too many men who checked out the wedding and engagement announcements, but then, he was a friend of Yasmin's. And, presumably, Victor's. “You recognized the garden?”

He grinned and made the sign of the cross. “Are you kidding me? I grew up in a house with a Jack-and-Jesus wall in the living room. I'll bet I visited the Eternal Flame more than some relatives of the Kennedy family when I was a kid. My Irish mother worshipped Jack Kennedy and she loved Jesus. And the Franciscans. Some people have garden gnomes. We had Francis of Assisi in every corner of our yard like he was multiplying overnight.”

I laughed. “She sounds very devout.”

His smile turned rueful. “She was.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't realize you lost her.”

“Three years ago. Lung cancer. She was a smoker; all the radiation and drugs in the world couldn't stop it. And, God knows, my family had the resources to try everything.” He shook his head, remembering. “Let's talk about something else.”

“Okay . . . why don't you tell me about the Creativity Council? What does it do?”

He smiled. “So you heard about that, too? A creativity council shakes things up. At the meetings, we play games, do some
role-playing, come up with a lot of what-if stuff. You start by dismantling everything and then you rebuild it from scratch and see what you end up with.”

“Dismantling the Smithsonian?” We turned onto Independence Avenue by the Arts and Industries Building and walked the final block to the Castle.

“Why not?” He pointed to the elaborate designs in the brickwork of the beautiful old building. “That's the second-oldest Smithsonian museum after the Castle. Built in 1879, a terrific example of Victorian architecture. It's been closed for over a decade and it's going to stay closed. There's not enough money to maintain it and there's no plan for what to do with it.” He sounded disgusted. “So there it sits, right here on the National Mall in the nation's capital, covered in scaffolding and all boarded up. Tell me, what good is it doing anybody?”

The building looked forlorn and abandoned, the barricades in front of it crisscrossed with bright yellow
DO NOT ENTER
tape.

“I'm waiting for permission to get inside and take photographs for a book on the history of the Mall,” I said. “Apparently there are safety issues.”

“Call me. I can arrange it. Wear a hard hat and you'll be fine,” he said.

“Thanks. If I don't get anywhere with the calls I've made, I might do that.”

“You must be working with Olivia Upshaw,” he said, and I nodded. “I know her. We've worked together as well. She's good.”