Georgetown
Washington, DC
Senator Catherine De Haven, member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sat at her desk in her townhouse in Georgetown, mulling over the previous day’s events. A long, long day that had tried everyone’s patience, a day in which she’d had to change her blouse twice. It had been like swimming in shark-infested waters but in the end, the biggest shark of all had been bloodied.
A goodly chunk of taxpayer money was supposed to have flowed into the hands of a powerful but unethical, perhaps even criminal, man. Those contracts were no more. She’d planned her revenge for years and now she had it. And it felt good, very good.
The hearing was supposed to be a lovefest between the chairman and Stanley Offutt, CEO of Blackvale, a controversial security company. Besides the multimillion-dollar contracts for physical infrastructure, Blackvale was supposed to be given a contract for intelligence gathering worth billions.
Instead, there had been a parade of witnesses testifying to cost overruns, to unpaid debts, to gross ineptitude. All of it orchestrated by Catherine. Yesterday had been day one. By the time the three-day parade of witnesses was over, Stanley Offutt’s reputation would be in tatters and no one would dream of offering him government security contract work ever again.
Catherine couldn’t wait for Monday and Wednesday, day two and day three. She’d enjoy every single second of a process that wiped Stanley Offutt out.
So. Several billion dollars’ worth of Blackvale contracts, gone.
There was justice in the world, and Stanley Offutt was on his way to being a destroyed man, just as he had destroyed her husband, Nathan De Haven. Nathan had unofficially gone into business with Offutt ten years before and had lost everything. Nothing could convince Catherine that Nathan’s car plunging down a cliff side had been an accident, and not him taking his despair and bankruptcy off a cliff.
It had taken her ten years of hard work to salvage the company while retaining her Senate seat. Ten years of waiting for an opportunity to destroy the man who had destroyed her family.
Payback is a bitch, she thought, and smiled.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way, she knew full well. No, when scheduled, the committee was supposed to reach a definitive finding whereby Stanley Offutt would leave the premises several billion dollars richer via a number of no-bid contracts. The chairman of the committee had gone to Annapolis with Offutt and was the type of politician who had never met a cost overrun by a corrupt contractor he didn’t like. Catherine would bet her children’s trust funds that some of that vast lake of money would stream right into the chairman’s Panamanian bank account.
She could just picture the two of them on Offutt’s superyacht, the 200-foot Bellariva, basking in the sun in the Caribbean, laughing at the poor suckers who weren’t as smart as they were.
Think again, boys.
Catherine had only been one of the members of the subcommittee, but she’d walked in with a briefcase full of documents, which she’d handed out and carefully explained. They’d listened to the first couple of witnesses she’d called. The chairman was unmovable, of course. A vote against Offutt was a vote against another six figures in his account.
But the other members…they’d listened. Oh yes. They’d listened and taken notes and had undoubtedly had their staffs make inquiries. Monday they would come back, more aggressive and more quietly angry.
Each day was supposed to end with Offutt entertaining them with whiskey and strippers. Instead, the first day had seen three veterans testifying to the damage caused by Offutt’s company, Blackvale. The corporal who’d sustained third-degree burns over forty percent of her body because the water heating system Blackvale installed didn’t have a regulator. The private who’d lost both legs to a faulty steering system in a truck. The very nervous accountant who gave a list of materials that had undergone a thousand percent markup.
On and on. She had tons of this stuff.
Catherine had spent years accumulating the evidence while Stanley Offutt grew rich. She’d bided her time and worked hard to get on to the committee.
Offutt had smiled and nodded when he saw her yesterday morning. The fool.
After all, it had been years since they’d last seen each other at Nathan’s funeral. He’d even—the bastard—offered her a loan because he knew she’d been left in “straitened circumstances”, as he’d so gently put it.
She’d refused and thanked him for coming while vowing in her heart that however long it took, she’d get even.
In the end, it took ten years, but it was worth every second of time she’d spent, every sleepless night, every tear she’d shed for Nathan.
Watching the chairman’s jaw drop, watching Offutt sweat, watching the tide of opinion in the august wood-paneled room turn against him… it was as the ad said—priceless.
The chairman was as wily and slimy as they came, and it was possible that he would adjourn “for further consideration” but as long as she was alive, Stanley Offutt would never get another penny from the US government. She had more information in her computer and her aides were following an anonymous tip that Blackvale had been involved in a sex trafficking operation in 2016.
Catherine had plenty of ammo left.
As a matter of fact, why stop with government contracts?
Catherine sipped her tea, blinking. Why indeed? She put her cup down, staring at the photos on her desk. She and Nathan grinning into the camera on their first trip together as a couple, in Hawaii all those years ago. Their wedding day, madly smiling, crazy in love, so happy it had been a thing of weight and heft in their midst that day. Happiness so intense you could almost feel it.
Aaron and Emma, blinking against the sun on a family hiking trip, grinning because Nathan had forgotten to take the lens cap off for the first pictures. Catherine had reached over and gently removed it and they had all laughed their heads off, Nathan more than anyone. It was the year Nathan died, and it would be two years before she and the kids could laugh again.
Stanley had done that. He had taken Nathan out of their lives with his greed and corruption.
She’d schemed and worked to cut off government contracts, but Stanley had connections everywhere.
Why should he prosper? Why should he be allowed to live like the Sun King while Nathan’s bleached bones lay in the cold ground?
Her heart cried for revenge.
Oh God, yes. Catherine had ruined government for Offutt, but maybe she could do more than that. One dossier, the one where four Blackvale employees were accused of sex trafficking, was ready to go. The Washington Post had a section dedicated to anonymous whistleblowers. She could send the dossier to them. To The Intercept. To WikiLeaks. Send it wide. He would go to jail. She would sit front row center every single fucking day of his trial. And when he was sentenced to a long jail term, she would—
What was that annoying sound? She frowned, cocking her head. A faint buzzing, like a faraway insect, only a big faraway insect. Coming from the window.
Catherine got up and pushed away the curtains fluttering in the warm breeze. The old-fashioned window was open to the wind, something she loved in warm weather. So unlike the sealed-tight windows with constant recycled air she worked in all day.
The sound was louder and it took her a couple of seconds to trace it to a big insect floating in front of the window about two feet above her head. She was about to pull back when something strange about the insect caught her notice. It didn’t move, was stock still in the air, and it had a funny shape. Like a wasp, only not a wasp. Bigger. A central body with eight…legs. Not legs, really.
What was it?
With a shocking suddenness, the…thing dropped until it was right in front of her face. She recoiled, stepped back, but the thing followed her, so close to her face she had trouble focusing her eyes.
Suddenly, her face was wet. Something wet had come out of nowhere.
Had the thing spat at her? How could that even be possible? Ewww.
Disgusted, Catherine walked to her desk for a handkerchief. She sniffed. Whatever was on her face didn’t have an odor. She touched it. Drops. Drops of something on her face.
Ack.
She went to grab a Kleenex to wipe herself with but grabbed the edge of her desk instead. Her knees couldn’t hold her up. She fell into her chair more than sat in it, opening her mouth to call her assistant.
No breath. No breath to call, no breath to pull into her lungs. No breath at all. She brought a hand to her throat, not understanding what was happening to her. It wasn’t a heart attack. Nothing hurt in her chest, it wasn’t a stroke, she didn’t feel anything in her brain.
But she couldn’t breathe. Her chest expanded but no air came in, it was like being choked but there was no one there to choke her.
Every muscle in her body trembled, spasmed. She fell out of her chair, sprawling on the carpet, putting a palm on the floor to push herself back up, but nothing happened. Her chest was burning as she tried to draw in air and failed. Heat and pain seared her chest up to her throat as she gasped for air that wouldn’t come.
Spots appeared before her eyes, growing larger and larger, the chair, the desk disappearing from view into the blackness.
One last futile kick of her legs, and she was gone.
The insect-like thing buzzed into her study, dropped down and hovered in front of her bright red frozen face, waiting for further instructions.
Portland, Oregon
Back in the warehouse serving as HQ, Baker froze the video on the senator’s old face, mottled hand clutching her throat. Her brown eyes were still, her body limp in the unmistakable stillness of death.
“I want her deader’n shit,” is how Offutt had described the service.
Baker picked up his encrypted satphone and called.
“Yes.” How glad Baker was that this was the last time he would have to hear Offutt’s nasal voice.
“It’s done,” Baker said.
“How do I know it’s done?” Offutt whined. “I haven’t heard anything in the media.”
Because she died minutes ago, you dipshit, Baker wanted to say but didn’t. The hit had been an absolute scramble to get some DNA, get it down to Atlanta and have it spliced to the engineered virus. It had been so fast there had been the risk of violating opsec. Baker had made Offutt pay through the nose.
Instead of answering, he sent four stills to Offutt’s secure phone. From the spray to when she fell to the floor.
“For all I know this could be staged. How do I know she’s dead?”
Again Baker didn’t answer, but switched on the video feed and patched it through to Offutt. Minute after minute went by in silence, the time elapse scrolling by on the bottom of the screen. In case Offutt might think the time elapse was fake, De Haven had been kind enough to keep a big desk clock in the line of sight of the video camera. The clock showed five full minutes elapsing while her chest didn’t move and her open eyes didn’t blink.
Most people blinked 20 times a minute. Five minutes without blinking was almost beyond human capability.
“She’s dead,” Offutt finally said. “Good.”
“Yes.” Baker always said as little as possible over the phone. In his head, this conversation was already over.
“In a way that will not raise suspicion.”
“A natural death. Yes.” The red would fade soon. She would look like any heart attack victim or stroke victim when a member of her staff found her. The longer she lay undetected, the better.
“Check your account,” Offutt said.
Seven and a half million had already been deposited in an account Baker had in Panama. He checked now. Another seven and a half million had just been deposited. It had been made very clear to Offutt that De Haven would die an untraceable death that would come for Offutt without fail if he didn’t make that second deposit.
Baker hadn’t thought Offutt would try to cheat him out of the second payment. First, he’d be looking over his shoulder the rest of his life, as well he should. Baker’s drones could reach him anywhere, anytime. And second, seven and a half million dollars was, after all, a drop in the ocean for Offutt. The running costs for his yacht for a year.
“Got it,” Baker said and disconnected.
He switched back to the video feed of the police swarming over the site here in Portland, having already forgotten Offutt.
The CSU was wrapping it up. The handle was gone—they’d recovered the suitcase. They could study that crime scene site until the galaxy died and they would never be able to pin it on him.
Time to find the woman.