Sweat (37 page)

The long main hall of the Russell Senate Building felt like a tunnel, tightening with every step. The walls breathed. Senator Day couldn't. His life was slipping through his hands. He picked up the already breakneck pace as if jogging away from the committee chamber was going to put distance between himself and his freefall from grace.

Senator Day needed air. He turned right towards the main entrance and descended down the marble stairs to the foyer, past the security booth on the left. The four guards on duty stopped their search-and-question routine and stared at the senator with disdain and disbelief. Good gossip traveled fast.

Senator Day pushed on the wooden doors, hoping to leave the madness behind him. He needed time to regroup, time to think. He needed air. With a single stride forward, the senator stepped from controlled unpleasantness into mass chaos.

The senator froze on the top stair of the Russell Senate Building and looked down into a hornet's nest. Hundreds of protestors, signs waving and bullhorns screaming, assaulted the senator's senses as he stumbled to the side of the granite staircase. The AWARE group's numbers had tripled overnight, their presence buoyed by over two hundred reinforcements from the city's finest homeless establishments. Standing at the bottom of the staircase, waving a large sign with one hand and yelling into a bullhorn with the other, was Kazu Ito's father. A look of fury on his face, he cheered the crowd on, screaming in the memory of his dead son and looking for an apology.

The noon sun combined forces with the multitude of lights from the news crews who were there en masse in response to an anonymous tip. A sea of microphones were shoved into the senator's personal space, and he stepped back, one hand covering his eyes, the other hand helplessly trying to protect his body from intrusion. Behind him, the audience from the Senate subcommittee squeezed through the doors onto the packed staircase.

The questions came in a flood of babble, a dozen at a time, and the senator tried to push forward past the first wave of cameras and lights. He reached the first landing of the stairs, his path blocked, bodies everywhere. “Shit,” was the first comment caught on tape.

The crowd filled the street, reaching thirty yards in either direction. The AWARE group, led by Kazu Ito's father and joined in delirious celebration by several hundred of Al's closest friends, was extending their cause to support their suppressed Asian sisters toiling away in sweatshops around the world.

Stuck like a herd of cattle in a slaughter chute, Senator Day knew silence wasn't the answer. It didn't matter what he said, but he knew he had to say something. He had lied on far less appropriate occasions than this. He shoved his way to the granite walls that encased the massive stairs of the Russell Building, pushed his way up two steps and floundered for his footing. He waved his hands to hush the media and the growing rebellion below.

Peter came out the door as Senator Day tried to quiet the crowd. Al stepped from the building next, Wei Ling sandwiched safely between himself and Jake, who brought up the rear. Detectives Wallace and Nguyen were in pursuit, flashing their badges at anything that moved as they forced their way to the exit. Through the door, Wallace pointed down the stairs at Jake and Wei Ling. Nguyen moved in.

The crowd quieted slowly, Senator Day's hands waving up and down, begging for silence. His lips moved first, his mouth opened in slow motion, and then he doubled over as blood sprayed from two new holes in his chest.

The echo of three rapid-fire gunshots was the start to a full scale riot. The media scattered, cameras rolling in every direction. Trees, the sun, stairs, and legs caught in shaky frames on film. Senator Day's body tumbled down half a flight of stairs before coming to rest on his right side, shoulder and head below his feet. The AWARE group and their homeless friends lost their urge to protest, bodies running in every direction. Among the madness, running with a pronounced limp, was a six-four Asian in a business suit.

Nguyen caught Jake from behind and pulled him to the side as Wallace pushed through. “Get inside,” Wallace said, pulling Jake and Wei Ling by the arms as the Capitol Police poured from the Russell Building.

Al looked at Jake, who had Wei Ling in his grasp, and nodded. “You got her?”

“Yeah, Al. I got her.”

Al jumped over two crouching reporters and joined the Capitol Police at the senator's side. Blood stained the white marble, a trail moving down the staircase like a broken Slinky.

The screams for 911 mixed with the overall hysteria in the air. Twenty seconds after the gunshots, the 911 emergency switchboard lit up like the Vegas Strip.

Chow Ying got on the Metro at Union Station and rode until New Carrollton, Maryland. He got off the train and took the pedestrian bridge over the subway tracks. He waited ten minutes and boarded the northbound Amtrak Metroliner. He found a seat in the back row next to the toilets and bought a ticket from the conductor as the train picked up speed leaving the station. He peeked inside his jacket pocket to check on his passport and his money. New York City was next on his list. After that, it was anyone's guess. Maybe San Francisco. Chow Ying pulled the phone from his pocket and checked for messages. Six in the last half hour. Chow Ying knew he was dead already. He had known it for weeks. When the gentle Mr. Wu had asked for his passport in New York, Chow Ying knew his time was short. He knew too much. C.F. Chang would never let him live. And if he wasn't going to live, then he was going to his grave knowing that he had taken away the one thing that C.F. Chang wanted. C.F. Chang had made the kill easy. Instructions, timeline, transportation, identity cover. All the authorities had to do now was find the car.

Jake squinted as he came out of FBI headquarters. He rubbed his temples and the bridge of his nose before putting his hand up to shade his eyes from the sun. He looked at the trees that lined the street, and turned away from the sun's western position to admire a light blue sky. He inhaled deeply and took in a dose of smog and thick humidity. After forty hours of interrogation in dimly lit rooms without windows, nature's canvass was a pleasant shock to his system.

The white Dodge Caravan was parked at the corner, beyond the steel barrier that lifted vertically from its position flush with the pavement of the street. Al was leaning against the grill of the van, the seat of his jeans cleaning off a thin layer of dead bugs plastered to the flat front of the vehicle.

“Thanks for coming,” Jake said, walking slowly, taking in the sights.

“I guess I was your one allotted phone call,” Al said smiling.

“Yeah. When did you get out?”

“They questioned me for a few hours and let me go pretty quickly. The privilege of professional courtesy. That and the fact I still have a few friends around town. I tried to get you out sooner, Jake. I pulled every string I had and promised a few things I would have never been able to deliver.”

“Thanks for trying.”

“You okay?”

“I will be,” Jake said confidently.

“Didn't know it was going to turn out the way it did.”

“No shit. Neither did I.”

“Senator Day getting shot wasn't in the plan.”

“How is he? They mentioned inside that he was hanging in there.”

“Well at least they didn't keep you completely in the dark.”

“There were a couple of good guys in there. A lot of assholes, but a few nice people.”

“Looks like Senator Day is going to make it. Chalk it up to the good doctors in D.C. having a lot of practice with gunshot wounds. He caught two shots in the chest. A third shot missed and hit a reporter in the leg. The senator is still in Intensive Care, but he's going to survive. Politically, he may not.”

“I don't think either of us is sad about that.”

Both men looked down the street toward the Mall.

“So what did they grill you on?” Al asked.

“Everything. Things about the Asian guy, my father, about Senator Day, about Wei Ling. They grilled me on Marilyn's death.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told the truth.”

“The whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

“Most of it. Given that the senator had just been shot, they were most interested in what I knew about him. They wanted to know about the girl. What my father knew. They wanted to know why I turned my father over to the FBI for illegal exports, and how he thwarted their raid. They actually started accusing me of trying to blackmail the senator. Then they dropped that threat and moved on.”

“There is a reason for that.”

“They didn't give me one.”

“The guy who shot the senator left a note in his car implicating the head of Chang Industries, a guy by the name of C.F. Chang. The note implicated him in the attempted murder of Senator Day with the intention of influencing the Overseas Labor Special Committee. The note also implicated him for the murder of an American doctor in Saipan. This C.F. Chang is a big fish, Jake.”

“And the guy who fired the gun?”

“They haven't found him yet. They have him on tape getting on the Metro at Union Station. Whoever he is, he's got big balls. The guy admitted to being hired by a well-connected Chinese family to assassinate a U.S. senator. He won't get far. But he obviously didn't want to go down alone.”

“I don't get it, Al.”

“What's that?”

“If this guy came to the U.S. to kill the senator, then why did they keep Wei Ling captive? What's the point? Seems like a contradiction.”

“I'm sure the FBI is asking that same question. Or if they aren't, they will be shortly.”

“Where is Wei Ling?”

“She's fine. Kate is with her. Amnesty International is giving her the velvet glove treatment. She is staying at the Mayflower. We can stop by and see her anytime. Amnesty International is planning to make you their official Hero-of-the-Month.”

“What about our sleight of hand in the charter terminal in Saipan?”

“Technically, we didn't break the law,” Al said.

“We bent the hell out of it.”

“Is that what you told them?”

“I told the truth. I told them I went to Saipan to see the girl and couldn't get into the sweatshop facilities. I told them that when I arrived at the general aviation terminal the girl was there. I asked her if she wanted to come to Washington and she made the decision to come to D.C. voluntarily. I told them I consulted with a State Department representative who happened to be at the airport at the time and that he told me I wasn't breaking any laws by bringing the girl back to D.C.”

“That's pretty close to the truth.”

“That is the truth. How could I have known any better? I'm just a student who wants to be an English teacher.”

“Did you use that? It sounds rehearsed…”

Jake looked around. “You better believe I used it.”

“That's not bad.”

“Thanks. What do you think is going to happen to your friend in Saipan?”

“Technically he didn't break the law either. He lied, but he followed the letter of the law. Besides, it looks like he will come out of this smelling like a rose. He was on hand to pick up C.F Chang in Saipan. Our friend Tom may even end up with a medal pinned to his chest. Responsible for grabbing a suspect in the attempted assassination of a senator. And the beautiful thing is that we got him on U.S. soil. No red tape with extradition.”

“We got lucky.”

“Yes, we did.”

Jake had beaten around the bush for as long as he could.

“And my father?”

“He's still in there. But he's not alone. He's got the A-Team of lawyers playing hardball. His political connections are rattling cages.”

“What do you think is going to happen to him?”

“I don't know, Jake. I'm sure they are up his ass with a microscope as we speak. Travel history, phone calls, emails. They are probably still investigating you too.”

“I didn't do anything. I told them everything I know.”

“There may be some lingering questions about Marilyn. Those two detectives you met when the senator was shot know you were with her the night she died. They have you and the guy who shot the senator on the same tape near the scene where Marilyn died. They are still trying to put the pieces together. And they are under a lot of pressure. They are the only law enforcement officers in the city who were pursuing the guy who tried to kill a senator. They are going to need a good explanation for letting him slip by.”

“Can't be guilty of something you didn't do. If they had a case against me, I would still be inside. Regardless.”

“Yes, you would be.”

“So where to?”

“I need something to eat. Been on orange crackers from the vending machine for over a day. Orange crackers and Coke. I need real food. Then we can check on Wei Ling.”

“And Kate?” Al asked.

“What about her?”

“You plan on keeping that promise you made to her father?”

“Not sure yet, Al. But you know how I do like to keep my promises.”

Al smiled as he got behind the wheel. “You've kept every one since I've met you.”

Mark Gilleo holds a graduate degree in international business from the University of South Carolina and an undergraduate degree in business from George Mason University. He enjoys traveling, hiking and biking. He speaks Japanese. A fourth-generation Washingtonian, he currently resides in the D.C. area. His first two novels were recognized as finalist and semifinalist, respectively, in the William Faulkner-Wisdom creative writing competition.

Clark Hayden is a graduate student trying to help his mother navigate through the loss of his father while she continues to live in their house near Washington DC. With his mother's diminishing mental capacity becoming the norm, Clark expects a certain amount of craziness as he heads home for the holidays. What he couldn't possibly anticipate, though, is that he would find himself catapulted into the middle of a terrorist operation. As the holiday festivities reach a crescendo, a terrorist cell––which happens to be across the street––is activated. Suddenly Clark is discovering things he never knew about deadly chemicals, secret government operations, suspiciously missing neighbors, and the intentions of a gorgeous IRS auditor. Clark's quiet suburban neighborhood is about to become one of the most deadly places on the planet, and it's up to Clark to prevent the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in the nation's capital.

Here's an excerpt from
Love Thy Neighbor
.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

(This part is true.)

In late 1999 a woman from Vienna, Virginia, a suburb ten miles from the White House as the crow flies, called the CIA. The woman, a fifty-something mother of three, phoned to report what she referred to as potential terrorists living across the street from her middle-class home. She went on to explain what she had been seeing in her otherwise quiet neighborhood: Strange men of seemingly Middle-Eastern descent using their cell phones in the yard. Meetings in the middle of the night with bumper-to-bumper curbside parking, expensive cars rubbing ends with vans and common Japanese imports. A constant flow of young men, some who seemed to stay for long periods of time without introducing themselves to anyone in the neighborhood. The construction of a six-foot wooden fence to hide the backyard from the street only made the property more suspicious.

Upon hearing a layperson's description of suspicious behavior, the CIA promptly dismissed the woman and her phone call. (Ironically, the woman lived less than a quarter of a mile from a CIA installation, though it was not CIA headquarters as was later reported.)

In the days and weeks following 9/11, the intelligence community in the U.S. began to learn the identities of the nineteen hijackers who had flown the planes into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. In the process of their investigation they discovered that two of the hijackers, one on each of the planes that hit the World Trade Towers, had listed a particular house in Vienna, Virginia as a place of residence.

The FBI and various other agencies swooped in on the unassuming neighborhood and began knocking on doors. When they reached the house of a certain mother of three, she stopped them dead in their tracks. She was purported to have said, “I called the CIA two years ago to report that terrorists were living across the street and no one did anything.”

The CIA claimed to have no record of a phone call.

The news networks set up cameras and began broadcasting from the residential street. ABC, NBC, FOX. The FBI followed up with further inquiries. The woman's story was later bounced around the various post 9/11 committees and intelligence hearings on Capitol Hill. (Incidentally, after 9/11, the CIA closed its multi-story facility in the neighborhood where the terrorist reportedly lived. In 2006 the empty building was finally torn down and, as of early 2011, was being replaced with another office building).

There has been much speculation about what the government should have or could have known prior to 9/11. The answer is not simple. There have been anecdotal stories of people in Florida and elsewhere who claimed to have reported similar “terrorist” type activities by suspicious people prior to 9/11. None of these stories have been proven.

What we do know is that with the exception of the flight school instructor in Minnesota who questioned the motive of a student who was interested in flying an aircraft without learning how to land, and an unheeded warning from actor James Woods who was on a plane from Boston with several of the purported terrorists while they were doing a trial run, the woman from Vienna, Virginia was the country's best chance to prevent 9/11. To date, there has been no verification of any other pre-9/11 warnings from the general public so far in advance of that fateful day in September.

For me, there is no doubt as to the validity of the claims of the woman in Vienna.

She lived in the house where I grew up. She is my mother.

Mark Gilleo. October, 2011.

Washington DC.

* * *

Ariana turned on the nightlight and closed the door to her daughter's room. She walked down the carpeted hall towards the light stretching out from the plastic chandelier over the dining room table. Her husband's chair was empty and she quietly called out his name. No response. As Ariana turned the corner to the kitchen and reached for the knob on the cabinet over the counter, eight hundred pages of advertising crashed into her rib cage, sucking the wind from her lungs. As his wife doubled over, Nazim raised the thick Yellow Book with both hands and hit her on her back, driving her body to the floor.

“Don't you ever disobey me in front of others again.”

Ariana coughed. There was no blood. This time. She tried to speak but her lips only quivered. Her thick-framed glasses rested on the floor, out of reach. Her brain fought to make sense of what happened, what had set her husband off. It could have been anything. But every curse had its blessing, and for Ariana the blessing was the fact that Nazim didn't hit her in front of Liana. A blessing that the child didn't see her mother being punched. The reason was simple. Nazim was afraid of his daughter. Afraid of what she could say now that she could speak.

The curse was that Ariana never knew when she had crossed the line. She never knew when the next blow was coming. She merely had to wait until they were alone to learn her fate for past indiscretions.

Ariana gasped slowly for air. She didn't cry. The pain she felt in her side wasn't bad enough to give her husband the satisfaction.

“When I say it is time to leave, it is time to leave. There is no room for negotiation in this marriage.”

Ariana panted as her mind flashed back to the Christmas party. She immediately realized her faux pas. “I didn't want to be rude to Maria. She spent days making dessert. She is old. Do we not respect our elders anymore?”

Nazim pushed his wife onto the floor with his knee, a reaction Ariana fully expected. “You are my wife. This is about you and me. Our neighbor has nothing to do with it.” Nazim looked down at Ariana sprawled on the linoleum and spit on her with more mock than saliva.

“Maria is my friend.”

“Well, her son is coming home and she doesn't need you.”

Nazim dropped the yellow book on the counter with a thud and went to the basement. Ariana gathered herself, pushing her body onto all fours and then pulling herself up by the front of the oven. She looked at the Yellow Book and her blood boiled. It was like getting hit by a cinderblock with soft edges. When it hit flush, it left very little bruising. As her husband intended. For a man of slight build, Nazim could generate power when a beating was needed.

Ariana took inventory of herself, one hand propping herself up on the counter. She had been beaten worse. Far worse. By other men before she met her husband. Her eyes moved beyond the Yellow Pages and settled on the knife set on the counter, the shiny German steel resting in its wooden block holder. She grabbed the fillet knife, caressed the blade with her eyes, and then pushed the thought from her mind.

Her husband called her from the basement and she snapped out of her momentary daze. “Coming,” she answered, putting the knife back in its designated slot in the wood. She knew what was coming next. It was always the same. A physical assault followed by a sexual one. She reached up her skirt and removed her panties. There was no sense in having another pair ripped, even if robbing Nazim of the joy would cost her a punch or two.

Christmas,
the season of giving
, she thought as she made her way down the stairs into the chilly basement.