CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One - No Good Options

Chapter One - Hidalgos

Chapter Two - The Appropriate Action

Chapter Three - Permanent Vacation

Chapter Four - The Angel of Death

Chapter Five - How Did She Look?

Chapter Six - Travel Physics

Chapter Seven - Skullduggery

Chapter Eight - Sexual Politics

Chapter Nine - Kill the Messenger

Chapter Ten - That Obscure Object of Desire

THE CATALONIAN CANDIDATE

Bruce Cantwell

Copyright © 2016 Bruce Cantwell

All rights reserved.

In memory of Alice and Thomas Cantwell

and the books, movies, plays, and operas they shared with me.

PART ONE

No Good Options

CHAPTER ONE

Hidalgos

You know that in Spain they call hidalgos the descendants of families who are free from any mixture of Moorish blood... They will not admit that during seven centuries Islam took root on Spanish soil. I have always thought it ungracious to deny such ancestors. We owe entirely to the Arabs those exceptional qualities which have drawn in history the great design of our past. They bequeathed to us their scorn for money, their disdain of lies, of death, their inexpressible pride. We inherit from them their rigid attitude against everything that is low, and likewise an unaccountable laziness toward manual labor. In truth we are their sons and it is not without reason that we continue to dance their Oriental dances to the tune of their “ferocious songs.”

Pierre Luoÿs, La Femme et le Pantin

CHAPTER TWO

The Appropriate Action

“The senator would like a word with you,” the executive protection agent said, just close enough to Walter Forbes’s ear, the one without the earpiece, and with just the right volume that his words would be understood but go unheard by nearby waitstaff.

It took the beefy, forty-eight-year-old P.I. a while to negotiate a route through the rows of tables to Senator Guy Morton. It seemed that the senator had eyes in the back of his head, for though Forbes approached from behind, he set down his wine glass and stood on cue. The agent Forbes had spoken with had signaled an agent in Morton’s sight line to cue him. He thought, these guys are good.

Morton glanced toward the podium set up on the Granite dance floor. Forbes followed him. The senator checked to see that the mike was off. It was, but he unplugged it anyway. He’d likely been burned a time or two by a live mike.

“Don’t look now,” said Morton, “but two of the busboys here tonight bear an uncanny resemblance to the men who kidnapped Michael Santore.”

“Okay,” said Forbes, unsure why Morton told him this.

“Look where I look.”

Forbes followed the senator’s gaze. There stood two Middle-Eastern looking men attired as busboys.

“Butterfield is watching them. All the employees passed through a metal detector and x-ray. They’re not carrying guns. They don’t have explosives strapped to their bodies. They’re not handling the food, but they are handling silverware. Butterfield has the men keeping an extra close eye on them for that. We don’t have a positive ID yet.”

Morton paused and looked into Forbes’s eyes.

Forbes said, “It sounds like he has things under control.”

“Keep it down.” Forbes thought he’d spoken softly, but he hadn’t matched Morton’s hushed tone. The senator continued. “If the ID is positive, Butterfield is authorized to take the appropriate action.”

“It all sounds to me like you know exactly what you’re doing.”

“Except we have a woman in FBI detention and a forensics team scouring her computer for links to terrorist networks.”

Forbes’s pulse quickened. He understood Morton’s thinking. He also thought it dead wrong. “That’s the first time anyone has used the T-word in all this. I don’t see it.”

“Okay. What if I use the T-word that has come up? Tehran. Would you accuse me of being too deferential to the men and women on this evening’s guest list? Sometimes they have difficulty drawing the distinction.”

“I’m not a politician.”

“I’m not asking you to be,” said Morton. “I’m asking you to work out a signal with Butterfield so that if you receive any late-breaking-news from our ongoing investigation that suggests that these two men are any more dangerous than the courteous, efficient busboys they appear to be, he can take the appropriate action.”

“Okay, that’s twice you’ve mentioned the appropriate action. What is the appropriate action?”

“That’s above your pay grade.”

“Is he going to detain them?”

Morton was silent.

“Is he going to perform enhanced interrogation?”

Silence.

Forbes leaned in to Morton’s ear. He really didn’t want this next part to be overheard. “He’s not just going to shoot them, is he?”

“Butterfield is authorized to take the appropriate action.”

Forbes’s face burned. “You can’t put that on me.”

Morton’s face didn’t change at all. “Wrong,” he said. He drove his fore and middle fingers into Forbes’s chest with each syllable. “I-just-did.”

Then his face assumed a grin, he turned and retraced his steps to his table. The Cabinet Minister must have been telling a funny story. Morton laughed without missing a beat. Forbes returned to his position and looked up at Butterfield, who held his right hand waist high with his five fingers extended, palm flat. The open hand turned so the thumb pointed up. It was an innocent enough gesture, not something you’d associate with an execution. Forbes wanted to give Butterfield a much simpler universally recognized hand signal but nodded that he understood.

What had begun as a routine information security assignment had placed Forbes on the front lines of the War on Terror. He took a closer look at “the terrorists.” They were two men of Arab descent. They were in the country illegally. And they were second class citizens waiting on the privileged delegation from Israel.

The occasion was innocent enough. A consortium of software developers had come to ink a deal with the industry behemoth. The size of the deal had captured the imagination of government officials from both nations. Forbes, Morton, and agent Butterfield looked at the same people in the same room, but what they saw couldn’t differ more.

Whether you viewed the atmosphere as benign or sinister depended on what you thought of that woman in FBI detention: the woman who’d pierced the senator’s armor, infecting his phone and his mind. She was a woman of many talents. When she sang, she could set your heart aflutter. When she danced the flamenco, another body part would stir, but chief among her talents, the skill that had captivated the cynical senator, was her innocence. There was no question that she’d wanted him. There was no question that he’d wanted her. The question was what else she wanted. That was for the men, and, hopefully, women of the FBI to discover.

Forbes didn’t believe for a moment that she wanted the death of any or all of the men and women in that room. He didn’t believe that the next voice in his earpiece would tell him otherwise. He glanced at the two busboys who patiently waited to collect empty plates and refill water glasses. He looked at the senator eating his salmon. He decided right then and there that he wasn’t going to vote for the guy. He wouldn’t necessarily vote for his opponent, but he wasn’t going to blacken the oval by Guy Morton’s name.

His earpiece crackled to life.

CHAPTER THREE

Permanent Vacation

Tuesday evening, one week earlier, over dinner in their Northeast Portland bungalow, Walter Forbes and his wife Anna discussed a new hiccup in the plans for their upcoming trip to Glacier National Park.

“Well, I’m not going to force you to go with me if you really don’t want to,” said Anna, “but I’m not going to cancel either. It took us three years to luck into getting a room.”

Walter knew that ever since Anna had watched the OPB-originated series “Great Lodges of the National Parks,” she’d dreamed of staying at the East Glacier Lodge. She’d convinced him to watch a repeat of the show, and it hadn’t been hard to sell him on the idea.

“I’m not saying I don’t want to go,” said Walter. “I’m just saying that this may not be the best time. Maybe if we wait we can book the train, too.”

They’d originally planned to take public transportation to the Portland Amtrak station for the jaunt up to Seattle, board the Empire Builder, arrive at the lodge’s doorstep, use the park’s shuttle service to whisk them to the trailheads, and just get away from it all. Unfortunately, the idea was so appealing to so many people that the train tickets were all gone well before the rooms.

Anna shook her head. “I’m fine with staying in Spokane the first night. That brewpub we like so much is still there. We have that hotel right by Riverfront Park. It will be fun. We can still use the shuttles once we get there.”

“I know it will be fun,” said Walter. “I’m just saying I can think of other things to do with the money right now.”

“So can I,” said Anna. “But I can’t think of anything better than getting away from the city, breathing in some fresh mountain air, getting out on the trails, enjoying some good meals, looking up at the stars.

“I’m not going to let all of that go for some temporary setback. I’m not even sure you should look at this as a setback. You know how hard it’s been for us to synch up our schedules lately and take time off together. You’ve been working hard. I’ve been working hard. We deserve this.”

“It’s not a question of what we deserve,” said Walter.

“Whatever you decide, I’m still going. I’d still like you to come with me. Think about it. Mountain goats, Walt. Mountain goats.”

Anna gave him a kiss, put the dishes in the dishwasher, and migrated to the rocking chair by the fireplace in the living room to continue knitting a pair of socks. Thanks to two phone calls Walter had received that day, he’d done little else but think about it. Still, he remained at the dining room table, staring down the sunset. On his mind were debts and doubts.

He had just completed a very lucrative job for which he wouldn’t be paid.

To complete the assignment, he had incurred expenses: both equipment and personnel. Those were bills he would have to pay even if the job did not. He told himself it was only a cash flow problem. More assignments would come along. Things would work themselves out. They always did, didn’t they?

That was the healthy perspective. The unhealthy perspective was that his career was over. The first phone call had come from Jimmy Castigliane. The Sternwood Auto Group would temporarily be discontinuing his IT security service. It was all quite amicable given the recent organizational upheaval the group had faced. Walter didn’t feel screwed. He had money in the bank. He had plenty of options.

His freelance career had once been varied, but the group of auto dealerships that had given him steady work had grown into something of a mid-sized corporation of its own. And whenever he began to feel that he had time on his hands, a matter at the auto group’s parent company, a holding company LLC, seemed to crop up to take up the slack.

He realized as he had less and less time to pursue smaller freelance clients that apart from paying his own benefits and reporting to one manager he had unintentionally joined the organization. If he hadn’t allowed his client base to erode over time, Castigliane’s service cancellation wouldn’t have seemed so much like a pink slip. He could have enjoyed his vacation without the nagging doubt that it might turn out to be permanent.

In mulling his options, he had to consider the pros and cons of rebuilding his freelance business versus going corporate. When it came to corporations, there wasn’t a larger, more bureaucratic one around than the United States government. Walter had always felt at home in the Pacific Northwest. His brother Harry had left for Washington, D.C. to join the NSA immediately after graduating from State. He’d never looked back. Harry had a pretty decent salary at this point and enough seniority that it would take an overthrow of the federal government by a foreign power for him to lose his job. Even then, he might be able to keep his job by assisting in the overthrow. The idea of going to work for his younger know-it-all brother didn’t sit well with Walter.

There was more to life than job security. It wasn’t the loss of autonomy that bothered him, though he enjoyed being his own boss. He saw how the job and the city had changed Harry. While Walter played defense on behalf of his clients, he didn’t think that everyone was out to get them. Since Harry’s client list included the United States and its allies, he came to see almost everyone as a potential threat. He had built his career on living in fear.

As the natural light’s mauve hue gave way to darkness, Henry the cat got up from the comfortable notch he’d formed in the back of the sofa, stretched, turned, and resumed his nap facing in the opposite direction. Anna moved from her rocker to the sofa and turned on the lamp so that she could continue to see her knitting.

And Walter left the dining room table to go downstairs and seek out some sports channel to distract him. During a Sternwood Auto Group commercial featuring a dancer and a local comedian, he realized what was really troubling him. It wasn’t Castigliane’s call or getting fired at all. Money wasn’t his real worry.

He had no idea how much time he’d spent unable to focus on the game, or games. It had been long enough for baseball to give way to soccer. He felt Anna’s hand on his shoulder.

“Are you coming to bed soon?” she asked.

Walter came to bed, but he could not sleep. He couldn’t get the second phone call, the one he hadn’t discussed with Anna, off his mind.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Angel of Death

Wednesday afternoon, at the appointed hour, the shadow of a woman’s face and upper body filled the frosted glass in the door lettered Walter T. Forbes Private Investigation & Information Security. She didn’t knock. She hesitated for a moment and abruptly turned as if to leave: was she having second thoughts? She’d changed her hair since last he’d seen her. The hallway’s circular ceiling light, obscured by clients even a few inches taller from this angle, gave her silhouette an angel’s halo. It was not lost on him that he had dreaded this meeting as much as some men feared the angel of death. He hoped for a moment that if he remained silent she would knock on someone else’s door.

But he mustered his courage and called, “It’s open!”

As the woman crossed his threshold, Walter Forbes left his inner sanctum, a virtual wall of computer monitors, and met her in his anteroom.

The woman who’d placed the second call, the one he hadn’t discussed with Anna, was dressed from head to toe in black. She wore an elegantly cut business suit, a skirt of appropriate length, well, maybe a little on the short side, and heels, maybe a little too high.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice,” she said.

She placed her hand in his. The moment when they stood there as she looked directly into his eyes, her hand in his, lasted longer than it should have. He couldn’t say that he had dreaded seeing her. Oddly, he no longer did. He couldn’t say it was his pleasure. That would have been wildly inappropriate. When the awkwardness of having no response grew too intense for him, he managed to say, “Have a seat.”

She sat across from him, not in the desk chair, but pulling up one of two chairs from along the wall that was usually only employed when there was more than one client. “Is it okay if I sit here? Chairs with wheels make me feel unstable.”

He nodded. No reason for them both to feel unbalanced.

The sun chose that moment to come out from behind the clouds.  A harsh shaft of light cut through the room like an interrogation lamp. It made her golden hair shimmer the way hair could only in TV commercials. She blinked a couple of times and eased the chair back a foot or two. Her hosiery shimmered as she crossed her legs. Yes, he thought, the skirt was a little too short.

“Should I get the blinds?” he asked.

“No, it’s okay. It’s not in my eyes.”

She was right. It wasn’t, but now the contrasting light in the room made her face impossible to read. She allowed the room to fill with silence forcing him to start filling it with words.

“First of all, I want to say just how sorry–”

“Thank you. Did Jimmy call you?”

That was quick.

“Yes.”

“Then, I hope you’ll accept my apology,” she said. “I know he doesn’t always handle these things with the greatest tact. I thought he’d have someone else call you.”

“He was pretty tactful.”

“It wasn’t his idea. It was my idea.”

He was concerned that his tension would show on his face, but she immediately cut through it. She put her hand to her heart.

“It was my idea, because I really need you,” she said.

She leaned forward now. The shaft of sunlight caught her eyes. He knew he should be paying very close attention to her words right now, that he was paying attention to all the wrong things. He knew she was in her forties because he’d once seen her date of birth on a piece of paper and noted it. And there was no mistaking her for a fresh-faced twenty-year-old. Fresh-faced twenty-year-olds looked like kids. This was no kid. This was a full-fledged woman, but beyond that, nothing about her face betrayed her age. If you had to gauge her age by her face, what would you guess? Mid-thirties? Early thirties? There was no trace that she’d had any work done.

“Yes,” he said.

She eased her face back from the sun and smiled.

“You know I’ve been doing some stumping for Guy Morton, right?”

“No,” he lied, stalling to let the thinking part of his brain catch up.

“Well, I am officially a member of the committee to reelect Guy Morton to the U.S. Senate from the State of Washington.”

“As in paid for by the committee to re-elect, yada yada yada?”

“Exactly,” she laughed. “How do you feel about that?”

He thought it over. “I’m not sure that I feel anything about that. What exactly am I supposed to feel?”

“That’s the answer I needed,” she said. “You didn’t say, ‘get out of my office!’” She pointed at the door for emphasis.

“Where would I get off telling you to get out of my office?”

“If you thought I was backing Satan, you might.”

“At least Satan stands on his platform. It’s an up or down vote with him.”

“Or her,” she said.

“Or her.”

“Guy Morton is a Democrat, but he does occasionally vote his conscience. I thought, given Anna’s stance on the environment, she may take issue with his voting record.”

“She may contribute to organizations that oppose him, but we’ve never discussed it. All I know about Senator Morton comes from the commercials he buys in the Portland market to reach voters in the ’Couv during football games.”

“Well, those of his opponents aren’t entirely true. He doesn’t drink the blood of babies or anything like that.”

“Who says that would put me off him?”

“Ooh. That’s harsh.” She smiled.

“Anyway, I can’t vote for or against the guy. So it doesn’t matter what I think.”

She leaned into the light again. “I won’t bore you with my reasons, but you understand that I feel strongly enough about his candidacy to put my time and money behind him, and you’re not appalled by that. What I need you to do for me is make me appalled.”

He’d played dumb before to adjust the pace of the conversation. Now he wasn’t playing. He waited for her to draw him a picture.

“You know what opposition research is?” she asked.

“I don’t want to give you the impression that I don’t pay attention to politics, but I don’t pay a lot of attention to poli–”

“–Every statewide and national political campaign employs a team of people to watch every move their opponents make and document every misstep for their campaign director to give him mud to sling at the appropriate time.”

“Those wobbly videotapes where a twenty-year-old racist remark magically finds its way onto the web?”

She nodded. “I’m afraid it’s going to be more sophisticated this election cycle.”

“Sad to hear it.”

“Yes, it is sad, but it’s a fact. This time it’s not going to be some speech at a private event recorded by a caterer with a smartphone that brings a candidate down. This time it’s going to be something more personal.”

He didn’t like where this was going.

“That’s why I need you.” She said it so sweetly. Had she read the sour expression on his face?

“I’m not that keen on the idea of hacking the computers of political candidates digging for dirt.”

“I knew you wouldn’t be. I only want you looking at one candidate’s computers. I want you to do for Guy Morton what you already do for me,” she said.

He didn’t want to make a misstep here. “Could you be a little more specific?”

“I want you to attend to his vulnerability.”

Forbes gave up and laughed. “Is that what I do for you?”

She smiled so seductively he had to look away.

“I know it’s not an easy decision,” she said. “That’s why we had Jimmy give you a call to relieve you of your present obligations. That’s why I came to see you myself.”

“You don’t think having Jimmy fire me was stacking the deck?”

“We’ll tell him to hire you back if you don’t want to do this. I just wanted to give you the freedom to choose. No strings.”

She drew a pen and paper from her purse and wrote something down. She pushed it across the desk to him.

“Here’s what I can offer you.”

She’d drawn him a figure that almost made his eyes pop out of his head. It was a figure that made his heart and mind race.

“Did you count those zeroes right?”

“Now do you see why he’s a little more vulnerable than I am?” Valentina Pontano Sternwood asked.

It all came into focus. She’d said we had Jimmy give you a call. She’d said we’ll tell him to hire you back. Now he understood what she’d meant by we. This wasn’t Sternwood Auto Group money. On her own, she didn’t have the clout with Jimmy to get him fired or rehired. That’s not how things worked. This wasn’t even reelect the senator money. He now understood why she hadn’t left him an easy out. If Giuseppe (Joe) Pontano had anything to do with it, Guy Morton was going to be the next president of the United States.

CHAPTER FIVE

How Did She Look?

“How did she look?” asked Anna.

Walter had shared the news about the job offer with Anna over dinner. Her initial response wasn’t what he’d expected. His fork full of green beans stopped halfway to his mouth.

“Did you hear the part about the job?” he asked.

“Of course. How did she look? I can’t remember the last time we saw her.” She took another bite of her slow-cooked barbecued chicken.

“She looked great,” he said.

She seemed to give his dismissive answer careful consideration.

“What?” he asked.

“Was she dressed up or casual?”

“She wore a black business suit. Professional. Jacket and skirt.” He didn’t mention the length of the skirt.

“Hair and makeup?”

“Yes.”

“Huh. You might think that she’d be a mess, considering–”

“You might, but she wasn’t. Should I go over the part about the job again?”

“I’m just trying to figure out what’s on offer.”

“She wasn’t trying to seduce me.”

“She didn’t give you the impression that she cared one way or another if you took the job?”

“Well, she was persuasive.”

“Don’t you wonder why? Why she went to the trouble of having Jimmy Castigliane cancel your service instead of asking him to make you the offer? Why she came to you personally?”

He shrugged. “I’m the wrong one to ask about politics. I try to vote for the candidate who looks less crazy, but you’d never catch me campaigning for one.”

“That’s the thing. For as long as we’ve known her, I can’t remember Val campaigning for one either. Makes you wonder what she sees in the guy.”

He took a bite of chicken and chewed as he thought about this. Their cat Henry jumped up on the table and immediately went for the chicken on Anna’s plate.

“No!”

Henry went for it again.

“No!” she repeated more sharply in the high-pitched voice that she reserved for the feline member of the household. She waved her hand in front of his face to block him.

Walter smiled. Henry was a gray plus white variation of a tuxedo cat. Visitors often commented on how handsome he was. Walter suspected that Henry relied too heavily on his looks as a kitten to get his way and had foregone many of the endearing qualities that other cats had adopted to charm what they wanted out of their caretakers. Henry sat down about a foot from Anna’s plate and looked out the window.

Walter said, “Given the money involved, I think it’s fair to assume that her father’s on board with Morton’s candidacy.”

“You think she’s just being a good daughter to Papa Pontano?”

He sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t call him Papa Pontano.”

“The family does.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know what the family calls him, but he’s a businessman, a CEO. I don’t know why that other thing keeps creeping in.”

“What other thing?” she asked. Henry was back at her chicken. “No!”

Walter grabbed Henry and unceremoniously dumped him off the table. Cats were like terrorists waiting for your guard to drop. You couldn’t negotiate with them.

He said, “That whole Godfather thing, the family thing.”

“Which way are you leaning on this?”

He thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t count on her promise that if I decline this work for Senator Morton the Sternwood Auto Group contract would come back. I told you how much they’re offering. I have no illusions about what they expect over the next two years in exchange for that money. On the other hand, it’s more than I’ve made in my best six, maybe seven years.”

She nodded and said, “Did she make you an offer you can’t refuse?”

He glared at her.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. My bad. Are you comfortable weighing her offer against going back to square one and rebuilding a client base from scratch? I know that may seem like a huge setback, but you wouldn’t have to face another decision like this any time soon. And apart from the long hours and constant travel, there’s something else to consider.”

“I’m listening.”

“I know you don’t think of yourself as being very political, and I haven’t paid close attention to Guy Morton’s voting record–”

“–I know zero about it–”

“But if it turns out that he’s a total scumbag, I don’t want you to be absolutely miserable for two years, and I think there’s a good chance that you will be.”

He got the impression that his wife was far more opposed to the offer than he was. “If I decided to do this, would it make you miserable for two years?”

She thought about this for a moment. Henry jumped back up on the table, and Walter immediately dumped him back on the floor. She took his hand and looked him in the eye. “We’ll be okay if this is something you really want to do.”

He nodded. “I think I need to at least meet with the guy.”

“Then you should meet with him.”

They were both close to finishing their dinner and ate a while in silence.

“There’s one other thing I was wondering,” Anna said. “And I don’t know if this will complicate your decision or not, but when you stop to think about it, people like Papa–like Mr. Pontano do just fine no matter who’s in office. Do you think Val has it in the back of her mind that she’d like to be First Lady?”

CHAPTER SIX

Travel Physics

Thursday morning, Walter Forbes sat in his living room trying not to feel decadent as he awaited the limo to take him to PDX.

It was one-hundred-eighty miles from his house in Portland to Senator Guy Morton’s campaign headquarters in Seattle. What that distance translated to in driving time was anybody’s guess. Driving time could vary by hours depending on traffic conditions. Commercial airline flights took forty-five minutes, but you had to arrive early to get through security, and just how early was anybody’s guess.

When a wealthy backer wanted you to meet with a U.S. senator whose sure-win re-election campaign was built to morph into a presidential bid, the ordinary laws of travel physics did not apply.

Forbes had worked at a flat day rate plus expenses when not under contract, so he understood the concept time is money, but he’d never taken an assignment where time was so much money. He felt it comforting that the limo, which arrived forty-three seconds early to pick him up, was a modest new Lincoln Town Car. At least it wasn’t a stretch. He grabbed his metal computer case and went outside to meet it.

“Ever fly in a private jet before?” he asked the lone passenger as he got in.

“Yes,” said Forbes’s assistant Jane Greer.

Forbes wasn’t surprised. What surprised him was that his part-time assistant, part-time personal trainer, full-time criminology student, looked more feminine than usual. Her head was still close shaved, but she wore a nice jacket and skirt instead of her customary tee-shirt and shorts. This concealed some of her muscle. She had applied a little makeup. That was something he’d never seen.

“But I only met Senator Morton once, when I was twelve,” she said.

If she’d tossed that off as consolation, she’d failed. Forbes had been in the same room as his U.S. senator before on a couple of occasions, but he’d never been introduced.

“You look nice,” he said.

She looked surprised by his comment.

“Thanks?” she said.

He realized how stupid he’d sounded. She’d merely dressed appropriately for the occasion.

“So what’s your take on him?” he asked.

“My dad really likes the guy. He’s not one of those chicken hawks who send men to war and then nickels and dimes them once they’re fighting.”

That wasn’t the answer Forbes wanted. Greer’s father was a Navy SEAL. Forbes agreed that if you voted to send the military to fight a war you were obliged to give them the tools they needed to fight it, but unlike the military, Forbes was free to ask whether fighting a given war was really that great an idea.

He rephrased the question. “What’s your take on his political vulnerabilities, research-wise? I don’t know if it’s a good idea to think about his politics.”

“Oh, I know. I’m just saying I probably agree with him more times than not. That’s about the best you can hope for with any of these guys.”

“A jaded realist at twenty-three,” said Forbes.

“Twenty-four,” said Greer.

“Sorry, I missed your birthday.”

“I didn’t miss yours.”

Forbes winced. “Yeah, thanks for that over-the-hill card.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“We’ll see how you like it when you reach middle-age.”

“Aw. You missed the whole point of the card,” she said. “You’re not middle-aged.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“You think you’re going to live to ninety-six? Two times forty-eight is ninety-six.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” he said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Skullduggery

Instead of dropping Walter Forbes and Jane Greer at the PDX terminal, the limo dropped them at the door of a Gulfstream G450. On the outside, it looked like a baby passenger jet. Maybe a little sportier.

“Welcome aboard,” said the pilot, closing the door after them. He gestured to the refrigerator and food table topped with a variety of healthy and unhealthy snack options. “Help yourself.”

“Thanks,” said Forbes.

The pilot went into the cabin and in a few minutes the plane started to roll.

On the inside it didn’t look much different from the first-class section of a passenger jet, except there were only two seats per row, one on each side, each with a window. Only eight seats in total. The aisle was wide enough that you wouldn’t have to squeeze through if someone came in the opposite direction. Leg room wasn’t an issue. In front of each leather seat, there was a large table. Plenty of room for a laptop and spreading out paperwork. Forbes and Greer took the only pair of side-by-side seats across from the food. All the single seats were filled by business men and women at work. This was all part of their day.

The idea of a private jet, something that had struck Forbes as slightly decadent, now seemed totally practical. He had no idea how much this jaunt to Seattle cost, definitely much more per person than an airline flight, but how much more? With no empty seats, you could look at it as a glorified ride share. It made sense to him. No wonder Greer had taken it in stride.

She opened a few pages in her tablet’s web browser.

“Anyway, here’s the dirt that’s out there on Morton for his reelection campaign.”

She showed him her tablet as she clicked through a series of internet searches on hot-button issues geared to alienate either the urban liberals or the conservative agriculturalists. Whether it related to a bill to deport illegal migrant workers, which would decimate the rural economy, or opinion pieces that declared even the poorest Americans should pay some income tax, whether or not they had a job, Morton’s picture would show up in a paid ad beside them. There were links to websites that looked like legitimate Morton campaign sites. All of them had plausible vague PAC names: variations on the theme of Citizens for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

Most ads carried the same focus-group approved photo. It was benign enough in the proper context, but when tied to a sinister message, it could come off as cold and unfeeling, completely out of touch, or in cahoots with right wing or left wing wackos.

“Oh boy,” said Forbes.

“What?” asked Greer. “These bother you?”

“No, I’d rather find out now before I sign us up for two years of putting out flash fires like these.”

She laughed. “Are you serious? These are nothing. These just show that the Republican takes Morton seriously. I found them all with this app.”

She showed him the app: “Skullduggery.” Its welcome screen animation showed a couple stereotypical thieves exchanging a swag bag in front of Abe Lincoln’s statue. Then, it zoomed in as Abe shook his head disapprovingly.

“Look, here’s the IP registrar lookup so you can start sending cease and desist letters to the service providers. They don’t have to take the ads or sites down, of course, but somehow they don’t seem so keen on putting up real money to defend fake pay-per-click messages.”

Forbes shook his head. “Wow. I spent all my time trying to figure out if Morton was the kind of candidate who was going to get caught with his fly open.”

“How come you didn’t tell me?” she asked, punching him in the shoulder. “I spent most of my day on that, too.”

“You came up with more than I did.”

“False policy attacks are a dime a dozen. Sex is the only thing that can really sink a politician.”

“What about Watergate?” asked Forbes.

“Before my time,” said Greer. “Dad said Nixon was chicken for not sticking it out like Clinton did. What did you find out?”

“Not much. When he moved from state politics to the national stage he traded up to a trophy wife, but that was thirty-one years ago. I was trying to figure out if he was thinking of trading up again.”

“He won’t,” she said. “And he’s not anti-gay rights, so he’s not going to get caught with some sixteen-year-old boy in an airport bathroom stall.”

“So you think he’s clean?”

She didn’t seem willing to go that far. “Let’s discuss that after the meeting.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sexual Politics

Walter Forbes and Jane Greer sat in the sales manager’s office of an auto dealership that had gone belly-up during the industry restructuring. On the converted sales floor, staffers were training volunteers for the upcoming get out the vote effort.

The former sales office where they waited had no desk. Two pairs of nice folding chairs with padded backs and seats were set up in the middle of the room, facing each other. The walls were lined with additional chairs, poster mock-ups, and flat screen TVs.

Forbes and Greer sat down at 12:58 P.M. according to the wall clock. At 1:04 P.M. they heard voices outside the door. First they heard the office manager say who was waiting. Next a man tried four variations of the same four-letter word with increasing intensity. Then a man with a familiar, reassuring voice said, “Calm down, George.”

The door opened. Forbes and Greer rose and faced it. Senator Guy Morton was six-foot-two, Forbes’s height. And if you were a Hollywood casting director looking to fill the role of a well-respected senator, or maybe a network news anchor, this guy would fit the bill: a handsome former leading man who had aged gracefully into character roles. As Forbes shook his hand, he remembered an interesting factoid that Anna had shared with him. Leaders in both politics and business tended to be taller than the general population. The only reason social scientists could find for this was that it had once been an evolutionary advantage to spot enemies or prey wading through the tall grass.

Greer surprised Forbes by taking the senator’s hand and gushing, “Sir, I can’t tell you how much of an honor it is to meet you. My father has nothing but good things to say about you and your work.”

“The honor is all mine,” said Morton. “Please pass along my gratitude to your father for his distinguished service. And forgive my clown makeup. We just taped a segment on gun control for News Hour. I didn’t have time to clean up on the drive over.”

It registered with Forbes that Morton had done his homework on them, but Greer’s unexpected fawning caught him so completely off guard that he forgot about the man who stood in his shadow.

“Shall we proceed?” asked George Kaplan, looking at his watch.

Kaplan was probably only a couple of inches shorter than Morton. His poor posture conceded an inch or two more of his potential height. His arms dangled at his sides. His short gray curls, probably much more natural than Morton’s eye-catching, perfectly coiffed silver-gray, reminded Forbes of those chia figures that sometimes sold during the holidays as last-minute gifts for people you didn’t particularly care about. Unlike the senator’s face, which was now freakishly orange, Kaplan’s skin was colorless. His breath seemed labored. He wasn’t smoking now, but you could smell it on his breath.

“We’re here to assess Senator Morton’s personal IT security,” said Forbes. “Ms. Greer is a forensic social media and website analyst. I specialize in hardware.”

“Interesting,” said Kaplan. “I don't know what changes you're envisioning for when we switch over to the presidential campaign, but do you see a lot of hardware around here? Oh, no, you don’t, do you? Gee, I wonder why that is. How can it be that we’re running a major political campaign without air conditioned rooms filled with servers. Ah! Maybe it’s not the nineteen-nineties any more. Maybe we’re using the cloud. Maybe we don’t need to keep an internal IT security team because we’re using managed servers.”

Forbes pegged Kaplan as a native New-Yorker, by accent if not by brand of sarcasm.

“Now if you’ll excuse us.” Kaplan turned toward the door.

Greer made her move. “Senator, I’m sure that you’ve put together a crack IT team. And you’re right to devote one-hundred-percent of your time to running your campaign. We’re here to help you do that without dealing with distractions like these.”

Greer maneuvered herself between Kaplan and Morton, her body almost touching the senator’s, and showed them what her Skullduggery had turned up.

“I take your point,” said Senator Morton, smiling at Greer. “Let’s all have a seat.”

Forbes noticed the senator gently touch Greer’s back by way of steering her toward the chairs. Morton, Greer, and Forbes sat. Kaplan more or less collapsed with the sigh of an unplugged beach ball. “George, you remember Mrs. Sternwood offered to set up this meeting last time we spoke.”

“Yes, I do. And I remember declining.”

“I accepted,” said Morton.

“Gee, thanks,” Kaplan said, turning to Forbes. “I don’t want to give you the wrong idea, Forbes. We think the world of your client. Really we do. She’s helped this campaign in so many ways she’s almost like family around here. Wouldn’t you agree, Guy? That’s what it’s like when Ms. Pontano is around, isn’t it? Like family? You might even call her our in-house consultant on family values.”

Forbes took an instant dislike to Kaplan.

“Just because a company is a family business doesn’t mean that it’s not well run,” he said. “I’m the first to admit that I know nothing about politics. I don’t contribute to one political party or the other. No offense, but if I were going to, I’d be cautious about backing a candidate who thought he knew all there was to know about IT security, especially outsourced cloud security. Why is that, you ask? I’ll tell you why. Because in less than half an hour of political research last night I found a U.S. congressman who had to resign because when he sent a picture of his package to a woman he’d met at a fundraiser in Las Vegas, he accidentally publicly tweeted instead of sending a direct message. That bonehead play cost him his career. Do I care if he flirts like a horny adolescent? No. Would I be pissed off if I’d donated to his campaign? You bet. You think that’s a mistake only a lowly congressman would make?”

Kaplan didn't seem impressed. Forbes shifted his gaze to Morton.

“Remember Senator Bill Jarmon? I say remember because he was a Democratic senator running in a red state. Turns out he and his mistress scheduled their hookups by posting draft emails to the same dummy account. When an internal security audit raised red flags about an unknown IP address logging into the same account as Jarmon, someone on his own campaign staff leaked the story. Bill Jarmon lost re-election by 2,743 votes. Should he have known better? He was second in seniority on national security oversight.”

Greer grabbed Forbes’s arm. He smiled. He’d said enough for now. Kaplan nervously picked at his thumb’s cuticle with his nicotine stained forefinger.

“Compared to those two gentlemen, I’m afraid you’ll find my sex life boring,” said Morton. “But I don’t see any harm in Mrs. Sternwood kicking the tires of our little campaign here before she buys. I’m afraid George and Mrs. Sternwood don’t always see eye to eye.”

“Do you?” Forbes asked Morton.

Morton’s expression didn’t change.

“Do you and Mrs. Sternwood see eye to eye?” Before he got in too deep, he wanted to see if there was anything to his wife’s theory about the senator and his client.

Nothing in the senator’s face betrayed discomfort with the question. “I wouldn’t say that Mrs. Sternwood and I always see things eye to eye, but I’m open to her suggestions.”

That didn’t help.

“We have to get back to the airport,” said Kaplan.

They all rose. Morton asked Forbes, “What do you need from us to convince George we can use you?”

“We need to read both of your smartphone software configurations and forty-eight hours.”

“Can you get that from us on the way to the airport?”

Forbes padded the steel case he’d brought with him. They headed back through the volunteer training on the sales floor toward the parked limos.

“I’m not giving them my phone,” said Kaplan.

“What’s wrong, George?” Morton laughed. “You have something to hide?”

CHAPTER NINE

Kill the Messenger

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Michael Santore, the Portland-based rainmaker who had arranged the evening’s fundraiser for Senator Morton and other Democratic candidates from both sides of the Columbia River who were running during the midterms. He shook the hand of the co-owner of the local sports franchise, stuffed the cocktail napkin with the hand-written note into his dinner jacket’s breast pocket, then slid his hand into his trouser pocket for protection as he once again ran the gauntlet.

He had successfully filled the fourth floor Governor Ballroom in the downtown Portland hotel and had shaken so many hands that his was now tender and swollen. Dozens of additional friends and business acquaintances had arrived since he’d been up front checking the stage. To avoid the mixed message of an involuntary grimace from the firm grasps of men seated closest the aisle, he walked as quickly as he could, smiling, and waving with his left hand to avoid coming off as aloof. The haste was justified. The senator would speak in sixteen minutes.

As he made his way through the ground floor lobby to gain access to the service elevator designated for the senator’s use, Santore noticed a man in an ill-fitting chauffeur’s uniform holding a sign that read “Kaplan.” He made a mental note of the chauffeur’s sloppiness and hoped it would not cast a negative impression on his event.

Santore got off the elevator. He showed his ID badge to the executive protection agent and approached the senator’s suite just as George Kaplan emerged from it. Santore didn’t immediately recognize him as Guy Morton’s campaign manager. Kaplan wasn’t abiding by the black tie dress-code that set millionaires and billionaires at ease. He strode toward the elevator looking surly in his rumpled tan suit.

Kaplan sidestepped Santore without looking up, but the organizer finally recognized him and spoke.

“Mr. Kaplan, Michael Santore.”

Santore offered his puffy red hand but was relieved that Kaplan stopped without shaking it.

“I don’t know who you are,” said Kaplan, proceeding toward the elevator.

“Chair of the organizing committee,” said Santore, following him. “We spoke earlier today.”

“Right,” said Kaplan, now paying him the courtesy to stand and listen.

“So I wonder if you could do me a favor. Actually, it’s more of a favor for the senator. I drafted some language, a little local color for the speech. It’s harmless, but there’s five-k riding on it.”

“Right,” Kaplan repeated.

Santore was familiar with the way that Kaplan sized him up. Santore was in his mid-forties, attractive, vaguely Hispanic, and financially and politically connected.

Kaplan asked, “Have you ever thought of running for a congressional seat?”

There it was. Santore smiled. “You’re not the first person to ask me that.”

“Am I the first person who asked who has three open seats with retiring Democratic incumbents in his pocket?”

This caught him off guard. “Yes.”

“Let’s talk after the speech.”

“I’d love to.” Santore drew the cocktail napkin from his breast pocket. “Which brings me to–”

“At the moment, unfortunately, the senator is speechless,” said Kaplan.

Alarm bells went off in Santore’s head. “He can’t talk?”

Kaplan shook his head. “Nothing like that. We arrived on different flights. I didn’t get a chance to give his speech a read through so he left it with his chauffeur in the lobby. I snuck in the back way so I missed him. We completely got our signals crossed.”

Santore recalled the man with the “Kaplan” sign. “I think I saw him.”

Kaplan’s face brightened. He grabbed Santore’s arms. “You saw him? Could you do me a huge favor?”

“I’m here to help.”

“I still need to change and get the senator downstairs in eleven minutes. Since you spotted the chauffeur, could you grab the speech from him and come right back up? I’ll be happy to make sure your words get read.”

Santore thought for a moment. “Sure.”

“Good man!” said Kaplan. He took out his smartphone and punched in a password to display an ID that the campaign used like an e-wallet for internal security. “Chauffeur’s name is Travis. Just have him scan this and he’ll give you the speech.”

“Okay,” said Santore. He exchanged the smartphone for the cocktail napkin.

“Who says birthday wishes don’t come true,” said Kaplan, patting Santore on the back.

Santore laughed at the non sequitur. “Happy birthday.”

“My room’s right next to the senator’s. Just knock twice,” said Kaplan. He headed back toward his room.

On the elevator ride down, Santore replayed the transaction in his mind, unsure how he felt about it. Had Kaplan seen him as a team player or a gofer? His thoughts shifted to the chauffeur in the ill-fitting suit. Now it bothered him that Travis the shabby chauffeur represented his candidate.

Santore returned to the lobby. He found Travis holding the “Kaplan” sign just where he’d been.

“Hello, Travis,” he said. “I’m here to pick up the senator’s speech.”

Santore showed him the ID on the smartphone. The chauffeur scanned the ID with the camera on his smartphone. It took him a couple tries to align the phones correctly. As he did, Santore noticed that the man looked a little like a young Robert De Niro. Maybe not so Italian but Mediterranean anyway.

“Okay,” said the chauffeur. He returned Kaplan’s phone. “Follow me.”

This caught Santore off guard. He’d assumed the chauffeur would have the speech with him. In the moment it took him to process this new wrinkle, the man strode off down the hallway through doors marked employees only. Santore followed at a brisk pace, almost breaking into a trot to keep up.

The event organizer had almost caught up with the chauffeur when he pushed through the doors leading to the kitchen. He was finally close enough to say, “I’ll wait here.”

But if Travis heard him, he pretended not to notice. The kitchen was an echoing racket. There was sizzling and chopping and mixing and metal and a head chef barking orders.

Santore wasn’t used to kitchens. Politicians, famous actors, celebrities of all stripes traversed the bowels of buildings and employee-only areas the hoi polloi never saw. The greater the celebrity, the less glamorous the entrance.

The chauffeur waited for a moment at the end of a dimly lit service corridor off the kitchen by a door marked “Do Not Exit, Alarm Will Sound.” When Santore caught up, he pushed it open. No alarm sounded. Santore no longer felt comfortable saying he’d wait, so he followed the man into the back alley.

He had been to this hotel perhaps a dozen times for functions like these, yet he didn’t know this back alley existed until now. And he was only aware of it now for a brief moment before he felt the blow to the back of his head and lost consciousness.

CHAPTER TEN

That Obscure Object of Desire

What didn’t kill Walter Forbes didn’t make him stronger, but after a time, he was strong enough to travel.

He finished reading the report that Jane Greer had filed for him and recounted the facts and fictions of the case with Anna over dinner in the dining car of Amtrak’s Empire Builder.

“Huh,” she said. She took a bite of her brook trout. He thought it was a doubting huh.

“What?” he asked.

“I suppose that makes sense. And I think it’s a healthy attitude on Jane’s part not to have such a suspicious mind.”

“But you have a different take on this?”

“Val never struck me as such a gracious loser.”

Walter thought about this for a second. “You don’t think that she might have had the teensiest bit of remorse about my getting shot and all?”

“That’s possible.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“I just think there’s another explanation.”

“And what would that be?”

“What if Val really wanted Senator Morton not to run?”

“Why would she campaign for him? Why would her father organize donors for him?”

“Isn’t there an old family saying that goes ‘Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer?’”

“Don’t start with that family stuff again,” he said.

“I’ll admit that I don’t know a lot about Pontano family politics. I don’t know if Guy Morton was too far to the right or to the left for them, but I do know that Val got close enough to him for her to tell which way his eye wandered.”

“So you think she unleashed Desiree Perez on him?”

“Where did you find Desiree Perez? She could count on you seeing the commercial and making the connection. Once you found her, Morton was bound to pursue her. Sounds like he couldn’t help himself.”

“That’s pretty far-fetched,” said Walter.

“I know. The senator’s chance meeting with Miss Pink Lady is far more plausible.”

“That’s a hell of a way to think about the woman who set us up with this train ticket.”

“I’m perfectly willing not to look this gift horse in the mouth. Just sayin’.”

Walter took a bite of his Amtrak Signature Steak. He and Anna continued to eat in silence, turning their attention to the sun setting on the approaching mountains.

For the Pontano family, for the super rich, many of the ordinary laws of travel physics did not apply. Unlike the robber barons a few generations their senior, the Pontanos didn’t keep a private car that they could hitch to whatever train they chose, but they did have the pull to tip the economic scales for Amtrak to add a car to an already full train for a price. It was the gravitational pull of the Pontano universe that found Walter and Anna a sleeping compartment on the Empire Builder, which would take them to the East Glacier Lodge.

They got ready for bed. Anna read a new piece of fiction by the light of her mini book lamp, and Walter got as close to fiction as he ever did. He wondered what might have happened if Senator Morton had never crossed paths with Desiree Perez at that harvest festival. He would have campaigned for president, he might have won, and after four or eight years of that ordeal, what next? Walter didn’t know what marriage had been like in the beginning for Guy and Selina Morton. Surely, there had been some passion, if only a shared passion to win that Senate seat. And once that passion had faded, what took its place had lasted far longer than any romance with Desiree Perez ever could. Would he have tired of her first? Would she have tired of him? If this little episode forced him to act his age and stop madly chasing that obscure object of desire wherever it led him, maybe it was all to the good.

Walter looked over at Anna lying beside him. He saw her as she looked today, and she definitely looked older than she had the day they’d met. But he remembered that day and the way they’d looked at each other. And he still remembered how he’d wanted her, and he still had no idea why she’d wanted him. What had changed in that face was entirely the result of the years they’d spent together. And he’d have to take her as she was because he couldn’t think of a single year that he’d be willing to give her back.

He leaned in and kissed her neck. She turned, and he kissed her lips. He put his hand on her breast.

She smiled. “What’s going on here?”

“It must be the movement of the train.”

She reached beneath the covers and felt what was going on. “Oh, I see.” She set her book and reading lamp aside.

In the moonlight, the train rolled on through the mountains and disappeared into the mouth of a tunnel.

Thank you for reading The Catalonian Candidate

What did you think?

Drop a line to bruce@brucecantwell.com

Do you know someone you'd like to share it with?  Share this link:

http://brucecantwell.com/mysterious-news/catalonian_sign-up.html

If you provide feedback, please let me know if you'd like to be included in the Acknowledgments in the published edition.