Authors: Keith Yocum
At some point, Judy realized she was a little tipsy and had talked too much. A little embarrassed, she got up and said she needed to leave.
They hugged each other, and to Judy’s surprise, Dennis held her awkwardly with his arms partially extended and brushed her cheek with his.
Judy pushed Dennis back. “Was that a good-bye hug? My God, you act like I have typhus.”
Dennis frowned and pulled her back into his grasp, unexpectedly pressing his lips against hers, kissing her hard at first and then parting gently at the end. Judy was startled and then thrilled. At the end of the kiss, she hung on for a millisecond, feeling his lips.
“You’re always surprising me, Dennis,” she said in a slightly husky voice.
“I’m, um, sorry about that. It just happened.”
They stared at each other.
“I really must go,” she said again.
“Good-bye, Judy.” He pressed her two hands in his. “Take care. Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”
“Not likely,” Judy said. “We only live about fourteen thousand miles apart.”
“Well, that’s true,” he said.
She left Dennis at the bar and stood inside, waiting for her car. Outside, vehicles whizzed by in silence, muffled by the plate glass. Two gardeners plucked and trimmed a strand of flowers, talking and gesturing animatedly, but she could hear nothing except the silly beating of her heart.
The house had a musty odor, as if it had not been inhabited for years. Dennis chose to continue living in the small, two-story Cape Cod–style house because it meant that nothing changed.
He and Martha had lived in the ordinary white house with blue shutters in Arlington, Virginia, for almost eighteen years, and it had suited him just fine. Why should he think about moving now? There was nothing to be gained, really. The commute to Langley was not bad. The constantly changing neighbors—slick, young professional couples driving Audis and BMWs, or rootless military families on Pentagon rotation—were simply a backdrop to Dennis’s plodding life.
Yet, returning home from this latest mission left him forlorn. The house smelled stale; the modest front yard was littered with small branches and a child’s empty, flattened juice box. It took him a while to feel comfortable again.
Back at work, Dennis kept a low profile. Mercifully, Marty had not made a fuss about the complaint from the State Department, and Dennis hoped it was a dead issue.
He had just finished brushing his teeth one evening when his home phone rang. He went into the bedroom and glanced at the clock radio—it was 10:56 p.m., and he wondered whether his daughter was calling.
“Yes?”
“Is this Dennis Cunningham?”
“Yes it is. Who is this?”
“Matthew Clancy, sir. I’m the shift supervisor at Warehouse B in Silver Spring.”
“Warehouse B? What’d you say your name was?”
“Clancy, sir. Matthew Clancy.”
“Well, Clancy, could you make it quick?”
“Are we on a landline, sir?”
“Yes we are,” Dennis said.
“We need to go to a secure line. Can I give you a phone number to call back?”
Dennis had never received a call from anyone at Warehouse B, the huge storage facility run by the Agency in suburban Maryland.
“Clancy, are you sure you got the right guy? I don’t have anything in the warehouse. I think your wires got crossed somewhere.”
“No, sir, I don’t think so,” he said with the kind of clipped precision Dennis had learned to expect from the Agency’s administrative employees. It was easier for the Agency to hire former military personnel from Smalltown, USA, that already had a security clearance and an appreciation for lines of authority than it was to place a Help Wanted ad in the
Washington Post
for a snot-nosed twenty-one-year-old kid fresh out of George Washington University.
Dennis took down the number, found his encrypted cell phone, and returned the call.
“Clancy, can we make this quick?”
“Absolutely, sir. We have a shipment that’s a Level 2 hazmat, and we had to quarantine it. Your name’s listed on the intake form.”
“Clancy, you’re not listening to me,” Dennis said, feeling his face flush with anger. “I just told you that I don’t have anything in Warehouse B. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had anything stored in Warehouse B.”
“Sir, we have two crates that were received yesterday for storage and processing. You were listed on the shipment authorization. It says here,”—he rustled some papers—“we have two hundred-pound plastic storage crates originating from the US Consulate in Perth, Western Australia. You’re Dennis Cunningham, correct? Inspector general’s office?”
“Oh,” Dennis said. “Maybe I know about these. Do you know what’s inside?”
“Sir, the form says ‘Personal effects of G. Garder. Store until cleared for release to family.’ That’s all.”
“Why’d my name get stuck on those forms?” Dennis said. “He’s an Operations employee. That’s not how it’s done.”
“Sir, I cannot answer that question for you, but I’m required to alert the person on this form, which I’m doing right now. You’ll need to come down to sign some disclosure forms. Tomorrow morning first thing would be preferable. We don’t get a lot of these hazmats, so the sooner we get the forms filled out, the better it’ll be for everyone.”
“Wait, I’m trying to catch up here. What’s this about contamination? Who’s contaminated?”
“The crates,” he said. “Or what’s inside.”
“How do you know they’re contaminated?” Dennis said.
“Oh, that’s easy, sir,” Clancy said. “We run all incoming material through several scans. Your two crates lit up one of the scanners like a Christmas tree.”
“They did?”
“Roger that, sir. Radiation contamination: both crates.”
“Jesus Christ, Clancy, are you sure your scanner’s calibrated properly? I just can’t believe that’s correct.”
“No, sir; we ran it through twice. Stuff’s hot. No doubt about it.”
“You’re shitting me,” Dennis said, almost to himself.
“Negative. I’m not shitting you, sir.”
***
The room was barren except for a small, fake wood laminate table and two chairs. The walls were cinderblock and painted high-gloss white. A bank of fluorescent lights hummed from the dropped ceiling. A video camera peered down from the corner of the ceiling like a lone crow on a telephone pole.
Dennis looked at his watch again; it had been twenty minutes since the woman had left him there.
“Are you claustrophobic?” the woman had asked when she led him to the room. She warned him that both doors on the small room were locked from the outside and that he would not be allowed to leave the room.
Dennis had lied and said he was not worried about confined spaces, but a low-grade feeling of anxiety was starting to creep into his consciousness; the room seemed too small, the white walls too bright. He kept staring at the brushed-steel doorknobs, hoping someone would open them soon.
“Shit,” he said out loud. “Let’s get going! I don’t have all damn day.”
He stood, arched his back a little to release some tension, and gave a derisive glance at the video camera.
“Boo!” he said.
The door to the right opened; two men walked in and closed the door behind them. While Dennis was glad to see some action, he was also aware that there were now three people in the very small room.
One of the men—a small, freckly guy with reddish-brown hair—looked at a clipboard and said, “Mr. Cunningham, we just have a couple of questions to ask you about your shipment.”
“It’s not my shipment,” Dennis said. “I already told you guys about it. It’s a mistake. They put my name on it by mistake.”
“Yes, but your name is still on the shipment. And you seem to know about its contents.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Then we have no other choice but to ask you some questions.”
“Are you guys robots?” Dennis said, stepping closer to the man. “I told you it’s a mistake. These are the personal belongings of someone in Operations. I’m in IG’s office.”
The freckly-faced man took a quick sideways glance at his partner, a tall, lanky black man. Dennis noticed the look of alarm on the man’s face and it was the visual cue he needed.
“OK, look, I’m sorry,” Dennis said. “It’s just a little tight in here—and hot.”
“Of course,” the freckly-faced man said.
“So what do you want to know?” Dennis tried to slow his breathing.
“OK.” The man consulted his clipboard again. “Were you aware that the materials in the containers were contaminated or were suspected of being contaminated?”
“No,” Dennis said.
“Do you know how the materials got contaminated?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure what you guys are talking about. I got a call last night from someone in your office saying the crates were radioactive, or something like that. These are the personal belongings of a guy I never met. He died unexpectedly while on assignment. I did a follow-up investigation. That’s all I know.”
It didn’t stop the questions, which went on for nearly twenty minutes. Dennis did his best to remain calm, but toward the end, he began to get flustered.
The questions stopped. Dennis stared at the two men; the two men stared at Dennis.
“So?” Dennis finally said.
“So?” the freckly-faced man said.
“Can you tell me anything more about the contamination—the radiation?” Dennis said. “Where it came from?”
“We finished some tests just a few minutes ago.” The black man spoke for the first time. “It appears to be uranium.”
“Uranium?”
“Uranium,” the black man said.
“How did it get all over his belongings?” Dennis asked.
“That’s a good question,” the man said. “Our guess is that it had collected on the soles of his shoes and perhaps on some of his clothes, and when all the items were packed up together, the particles just spread around.”
“What kind of uranium are you talking about? I mean would it kill someone?”
“No, not this stuff. This is mined uranium, not enriched: sort of mild stuff, really.”
“Mined uranium?”
“From a mine, yes.”
“Like, from a hole in the ground? That kind of mine?”
“That is correct. From a hole in the ground.”
***
Dennis had requested but never looked at some of the reports available on Garder’s activities. Sitting in his office for the first time in a while, well-wishers kept stopping by to say hello.
“How ya feeling?”
“Dennis, good to see you back in the office.”
“Glad to see you back, Dennis.”
“Ready to get back into the shit again, Dennis?”
He finally closed his door to keep people at bay while he pored through more than thirty digitized documents. He finally found a list of Garder’s travels that were reported back to his handler. They were listed chronologically by date and destination.
“Aug. 13, Ningaloo: Red Hat Mining Co.
“Sept. 4, Pandera: 3M Mine.
“Sept. 29, McClure’s Gap: Austral Mining Co.
The list had seventeen entries. The document was print-protected and all the department’s computer screen-copy utilities were disabled, so Dennis painstakingly copied each entry in longhand. Afterward he rechecked each item.
The phone rang.
“You bastard,” Marty said, laughing. “Thought you could sneak in without telling me?”
“I was just coming down to see you,” Dennis said. “Got something I need to talk to you about.”
“I hope it’s about the hazmat thing.”
“Yep.”
***
“I need to look into this a little more,” Dennis said. “Seems odd to me that none of Garder’s reports mention uranium. I’m going to map his trips to mining companies to see if he visited any uranium mines. If he did, well, that would explain it. If not, well, Houston, I think we’ve got a problem.”
Marty leaned far back in his chair, his traditional judicial-like stance when listening to one of Dennis’s pitches. It was the same dance the two men had practiced all these many years: Dennis would explain why he needed to do something, and Marty, at six feet two inches tall, would lean back like a Supreme Court justice and weigh the evidence, his naturally curly hair bobbing slightly as he rocked in concentration. Just before passing judgment, Marty would lean forward for effect and say something perfunctory like: “Forget it, Dennis, it’s not happening,” or “Fine, do it.”
Today Marty seemed to lean farther back than normal, and Dennis found himself leaning forward in an attempt to get his attention.
After Dennis finished, several moments passed before Marty bent forward, his ancient chair creaking as it sprang ahead.
“What are you trying to do with this case? I thought it was over,” Marty said.
“Something doesn’t fit; the uranium thing is strange,” Dennis said. “I’ll find out soon enough if he reported visiting a uranium mine. Hell, I don’t even know if there are uranium mines in Western Australia. But you’ve got to let me take one more pass at it.”
Marty stared at Dennis for some time, and Dennis took that for a good omen; typically, if Marty had reservations about something, he’d just come out and say it. The more he equivocated, the more likely Dennis would get his way.
But, uncharacteristically, Marty kept staring at Dennis.
“OK, what?” Dennis finally said.
“I don’t like this entire thing,” Marty said.
“What thing?” Dennis said.
“This Garder thing. Don’t like it. Stinks.”
“Why do you say that?” Dennis said. “What do you know that you’re not telling me?”
Dennis knew Marty’s nuanced vocabulary by now, and the term ‘stink’ meant the case was nonlinear, complicated, and had the potential for political trouble.
“So you don’t believe the ‘big-fucking-shark’ theory?” Dennis said.
“No.”
“Neither do I,” Dennis said, “but we have no body, no motive: just an empty car and an empty swimming flipper.”
“I think we walk away from this one,” Marty said, grabbing a pen and opening a manila folder on his desk. “In fact, I’m ordering you to drop it.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“Just drop it, Dennis. I don’t like this one.”
“We’ve been working together a long time, Marty, and this is maybe the first time you’ve talked like this. Walk away? That doesn’t sound like you.”