Color Of Blood (3 page)

Dennis did not have much respect for the State Department and their employees, which he and his Agency cohorts derisively called “staties” in mixed company and “pussies” in private. He was sure that State Department employees were equally disapproving of Agency employees and had charming nicknames for them as well.

After twenty minutes, a door opened, and a group of men left the CG’s office. There were parting handshakes and cordial salutations delivered.

A tall, angular man stayed in the doorway after the group left and said finally, “Mr. Cunningham, please come in.”

At five feet ten inches, Dennis always felt disadvantaged by taller men. Dennis was a rugged, handsome man by most standards. His square jaw was complemented by short-cropped, brown hair at the top, a slightly dimpled chin at the bottom and penetrating ice-blue eyes in the middle. Dennis’s eyes were his single defining physical attribute; they were deeper and bluer than most. Some women found them mesmerizing and attractive; others found them penetrating and unnerving. A naturally muscular 175 pounds, with a short, thick neck, Dennis was not easily physically cowed. Still, the patrician bearing of someone like the consul general made Dennis feel inferior.

Dennis settled into a wooden chair in front of a huge mahogany desk. A name plate, angled severely, reported the desk belonged to “Wilson St. Regis.” The room was huge; several large windows looked down on parkland and a river a quarter-mile away.

“So, Mr. Cunningham,” the consul general said, “you’re here on official business. I see you’ve been sent to follow up on the disappearance of Geoffrey Jansen.” He stopped, adjusted his half-height reading glasses and looked down at a folder. “Ah, but that was probably not his real name, was it?

“Well,” he continued, “this is quite an unfortunate incident. To my knowledge we’ve never encountered something like this here. I mean, we’ve had an occasional AWOL, and you expect that, especially from the younger folk who might have partied a little too hard and got distracted, but never a tragedy like this.”

Dennis studied St. Regis closely. His file said he was sixty-one years old, but he looked older. He was tall and thin, with a remarkably sharp chin. His thinning gray hair was combed straight back, leaving a tuft at the center of his forehead between two expanding bald areas at the temples. His nose was long and hooked downward slightly, giving him a hawkish appearance.

As was Dennis’s custom at this stage, he said nothing. A little birdy—perhaps the tiniest bird known to mankind—tried desperately to get Dennis’s attention to remind him of his boss’s entreaty to play nice, but it was a very small bird fighting against a powerful headwind of old habits and a brooding anger.

“So, Mr. Cunningham, how may we help you?”

Dennis stared blankly at St. Regis.

“Mr. Cunningham?” St. Regis repeated.

“Are you the only one in the consulate who knew—his real name was Geoffrey Garder—worked for the CIA?” Dennis said.

“Yes,” St. Regis replied. “I believe so.”

“What do you mean by that?” Dennis asked.

“I mean that as far as I know, no one else was aware that Geoff’s employer was the CIA. No one ever raised the issue with me, nor did I have occasion to raise it with anyone else.”

“You were the only person in this office authorized to know Garder’s employment situation?” Dennis said.

“That is correct, but as I said, no one here questioned me about him so it was not an issue,” St. Regis said.

“Did you know what his assignment was? His Agency assignment, that is?”

“No, of course not,” St. Regis said. “You know I wasn’t authorized to know that. I’ve been in this business a long time, Mr. Cunningham. You grow accustomed to the secrecy. It’s the nature of the beast.”

“So what happened to Garder?” Dennis said.

“Frankly, I haven’t the faintest idea. You know he traveled a fair amount around the state. It was not unlike him to be absent from the office for two or three weeks at a time. I’m mystified. I met with two of your fellow CIA agents already and told them everything I know about the young fellow.”

“I’m not an agent,” Dennis said.

“You’re not? Well, what are you then?”

“I’m an investigator.”

“An investigator for whom?”

“For the inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency. You talked to two agents in a different department at the Agency. I’m an investigator in the OIG.”

“Well, the distinction is all yours,” St. Regis sat back stiffly in his chair, “because I seem to be answering the same questions.”

“So, was he a drug addict?” Dennis distractedly panned the room.

“Excuse me?” St. Regis rocked forward, turning his left ear toward Dennis.

“Which one of your gracious consulate employees was supplying him with drugs?” Dennis said.

“Good lord, Mr. Cunningham.” St. Regis stiffened. “We don’t have ‘suppliers’ here at the consulate. Who told you that? That’s preposterous.”

“So?” Dennis said.

“So what?” St. Regis’s cheeks displayed flushed red circles the size of silver dollars.

“Who was selling him drugs?”

St. Regis put both elbows on the mahogany table and leaned even farther toward Dennis, his face pinching tightly at the edges.

“I know about you, Cunningham,” he sneered in a near whisper. “I checked up on you. At first I couldn’t get anything, and then a very old friend at Foggy Bottom helped me out. Told me all about your reputation. Even your nicknames. About how foul it was to deal with you.”

“My nicknames?” Dennis said. “Really?”

“Yes. ‘Dennis the Menace’ was one.”

“Oh, I’ve heard that one before. That’s all? Just one?” Dennis said.

“I can’t repeat the other ones,” St. Regis said.

Dennis stood up. “I’m glad you checked up on me. You would have discovered that if I catch you hiding information from me, you’ll be in serious trouble. I apologize for my brashness, but I’m afraid over the years I’ve found that an inordinate amount of time in investigations is wasted on niceties and politeness. I think we understand each other well, and I hope to have my investigation completed as soon as possible.”

The drive back to the hotel was more challenging than he expected, as some of the streets were one-way. Twice he accidentally turned on the windshield wipers to signal a turn.

He valeted the car, went inside, and asked the concierge to point him in the direction of a bar.

“Wine bar or steakhouse bar?”

“Steakhouse.” He found the dark-paneled restaurant downstairs and grabbed a seat. On assignment he typically remained in his hotel and ventured out only to do interviews. Once he spent four weeks in Hong Kong with two Agency forensic accountants and only left the hotel twice for brief trips, one of them to a McDonald’s. Dennis did not like visiting other countries, experiencing their culture and cuisine. He was there to hunt, not sightsee.

“What’ll it be, mate?” the young bartender asked.

“Macallan 12?”

“Water?” the bartender asked.

“No. Just a little ice.” Dennis liked bartenders and tipped them lavishly based upon their degree of attentiveness.

Hunched over his drink, swirling the cheap plastic swizzle stick, he bit the inside of his lip nervously. Why did he have to go after St. Regis like that?
Jeeze, Cunningham
, he berated himself,
what is wrong with you? Didn’t Marty warn you about that stuff? Why do you let guys like that bother you?

Dennis made a storied career out of his successes on tough investigations for the IG. He had been thrown into some of the most complicated situations, and he nearly always returned with the prize: a cocaine-addicted station chief, an undercover agent stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars meant for his sources, even a station chief in Bangkok who had strangled a male prostitute. Dennis was convinced this last guy was a serial killer but could never prove it.

His success was based on an idiosyncratic investigative approach that, well, carried some risk. He had discovered years ago that he could get much more important information from an interviewee if he verbally shocked them. Dennis accomplished this by blatantly offending his subjects and sometimes even threatening them with charges he could not possibly bring against them. The shock treatment often disoriented his subjects, pried out character weaknesses and most interestingly, tended to betray a liar. It also helped him cut through all the clever manipulation by resourceful, bright, and motivated people.

One of Dennis’s friends in the IG’s office once termed his investigative approach “The Socrapic Method”—half Socratic inquiry, half total crap. Even Dennis thought that was pretty funny.

Each trophy Dennis brought back to the IG’s office emboldened him in this approach, but eventually there had been problems. Like London, and of course, Nicaragua.

His wife’s death and his meltdown had changed everything. Even Dr. Forrester’s observations about his behavior made him self-conscious and unsettled. It’s not that he took glee in baiting St. Regis, but he literally did not know any other way to extract as much information in as short a period.

The glory days of limitless investigative freelancing had given way to new politically correct processes and Dennis, for one, was not adept at patience.

Yet he knew he had to cut it out, for there was not much to Dennis’s life except work: chasing Agency miscreants to the corners of the Earth was a full-time job that kept him busy. He was afraid of what might happen if he lost interest in work.

Polishing off his drink, he raised the empty glass to the bartender and jiggled it, the universal sign for “more alcohol please.” He worried how in the hell was he going to do his job if he couldn’t use his old methods. They were the only tricks he knew. Any silly investigator could sit down and politely, respectfully ask questions of a conniving, lying subject. Hell, the entire IG’s office was full of those kinds of investigators.

What worried Dennis more, really, was Marty’s attitude about his old methods. His boss seemed unusually serious about his threat. In fact, Marty had stopped into his office right before he left on this assignment and gently warned Dennis, again, that he needed to follow the new protocols.

“I’m not kidding, Dennis,” Marty said. “Do you roger me on that?”

“I copy you,” Dennis said. “I’ll be Little Goody Two-shoes.”

Dennis swirled his drink for the twentieth time and looked around the mahogany paneled bar, its varnish reflecting the bright afternoon sun streaming through the windows. He flinched at the wattage of the Australian glare and took another sip.

***

It was hot and he looked at his watch. Today Dennis was going to visit Garder’s abandoned apartment. The Australian agent was late. The fact that he had to be observed by a friendly was bad enough, but now the guy was late.

A maroon Toyota sedan pulled up. A woman behind the wheel leaned forward in her seat and waved at Dennis. He approached the car, and she rolled the window down.

“Are you Dennis Cunningham?”

“Yep.”

“Righto, I’m here to pick you up,” she said.

Dennis settled into the passenger seat. The woman smiled and reached out her hand. “I’m Judy. Nice to meet you.”

“Thanks.” Dennis shook her hand. “We’ll meet your boss at the apartment?”

“My boss?”

“Yeah, your boss. Is he going to meet us there?”

“Were you expecting to meet my boss today? I wasn’t told that.”

“Yes,” Dennis said. “I’m supposed to be shadowed by an Agent White.”

“I’m Agent White, Judy White. I’m your Australian Federal Police contact here in Australia.”

Dennis looked at the woman for several seconds. “Oh. Sorry. I don’t know why I was expecting a man. My boss suggested it was a guy, but what does he know?”

“We have female agents in Australia. I presume the United States has plenty of female agents. In fact, I’ve met several in your FBI.”

“Yes, we’ve got plenty of women in law enforcement. I’m sorry if I was confused.”

Judy kept her eyes on the road and tried not to betray a sense of unease she felt toward the American. He had only been in her car five minutes and she could feel her jaw muscles tighten with tension.
Why do I always get these awful assignments?
she thought.

She tried small talk with the Yank, but it was useless; he simply grunted an affirmative or shook his head for a negative. Judy was thankful the apartment was in Subiaco, a suburb near Perth, so the ride was less than twenty minutes.

***

The apartment complex was modern with several two-story brick buildings arrayed around a small parking lot. Judy led him to a ground floor apartment that had a large band of yellow police tape across its door. A policeman sat smoking a cigarette on a white plastic garden chair.

“G’day,” he said, standing up.

Judy showed him her badge, and he pulled the tape back. She entered the musty, dark living room and turned to find Dennis had disappeared. She walked back outside and found him standing on the sidewalk near the complex’s small fenced swimming pool.

Dennis scanned the parking lot, the position of Garder’s ground-floor apartment in relation to other apartments, the sidewalks, the large hedges, and the main street forty feet away. Part of what he and the other inspectors did was simple police work and since this case involved a disappearance, he needed to at least go through the motions, if for no other reason than to occupy his increasingly agitated mind.

Looking up, he saw the Australian agent in the doorway.

“Sorry,” he muttered as he walked into the apartment. “Just needed to check the layout.”

Judy put her purse on the couch and pulled out a small, spiral-bound note pad.

“Um, let’s see.” She peered at her scribbled writing. “AFP was contacted on October 12 by the American Embassy in Canberra. The Yanks—excuse me, the Americans—reported a consular employee named Geoffrey Jansen was missing and requested local aid in finding him. The Americans feared foul play and were anxious to recover his body.”

Dennis stood in the middle of the living room and found himself looking sideways at Judy. He wondered how old she was. She was about five foot six or so, had medium-length sandy-blonde hair and seemed like a model for a health club advertisement, he thought. Dennis noticed the calves on her legs were sharply defined, as were the muscles on her arms that were exposed in her white sleeveless blouse. She had a slightly upturned nose that made her look vaguely like a schoolgirl.