Free High Treason by John Gilstrap Page B

branch of the service.
    Once at the top, he paused before entering to cast a suspicious glance to the two homeless men who flanked the doors. Paranoia was a survival skill in Jonathan’s world, and he wondered why they would choose to hunker down outside on a night like this when they could be inside instead. Or even camped on a steam grate.
    For that matter, why didn’t the chronically homeless spend their summers hiking to Florida where it was perpetually warm, and they wouldn’t have to worry about freezing at all? He’d never walked in their shoes, so he wasn’t passing judgment, exactly, but he had to wonder.
    The sanctuary looked even more enormous than usual in the dim nighttime lighting. Off to the right, the glimmer of candles attracted him to the Our Lady Chapel, where he knew he’d find Irene Rivers waiting, but was surprised to see that Boxers had beaten him here. Just outside the chapel’s entrance, her two-man security detail stood with their backs to their boss, their arms folded across their chests. In their matching suits, Jonathan thought that they resembled living chess pieces.
    Only a handful of people in the intelligence community—none of them with the CIA—knew that the Our Lady Chapel was one of the most acoustically dead spots on the planet. Designed to absorb sound without echo and swept multiple times a day for listening devices, the Chapel—designated Bravo Four Three for reasons Jonathan didn’t know—was one of only a handful of spots in the United States, apart from secure government facilities, where anyone could speak in complete candor without the remotest chance of being overheard or recorded.
    Jonathan approached from behind Irene and Boxers, who sat next to each other with a chair separating them. Boxers made the chairs look like they were sized for elementary school students.
    “Have I missed anything important?” Jonathan asked as he approached.
    Irene stood to greet him. What would normally have been a peck on the cheek turned out to be a hearty handshake in front of witnesses. “I wish I could say I was glad to meet you here,” she said.
    “Haven’t missed a thing, Boss. She wouldn’t talk without you here.”
    Jonathan sat sideways in his seat, with his left leg folded under his right, his left arm slung over the seat back. “This must be big,” Jonathan said.
    “It is,” Irene said. “At least, I think it is. I couldn’t mention it before, because of the company in the room. I don’t know who knows what, and under the circumstances, I’m paranoid about what I say to anyone.”
    Jonathan waited, knowing that the silence would eventually fill itself.
    “The public record on Mrs. Darmond is inaccurate,” she said. “In fact, it’s elaborate fiction that was created with the full cooperation of my predecessor at the Bureau.”
    Boxers’ jaw went slack at the news.
    “How elaborate a fiction are we talking about?” Jonathan asked.
    “The most. All of it.”
    “How can that be?”
    Irene scowled. “Of all people, how can you ask that question?”
    “We were unit operators,” Jonathan said, feeling oddly defensive. “We’re black out of necessity. And we’re not part of the president’s family.”
    “If it makes you feel any better, neither was she when it happened.”
    “You’re going to get to the story, right?” Boxers said. Mr. Patience.
    “I want to start by emphasizing that this might have nothing to do with the current circumstances,” Irene said.
    Jonathan cocked his head. “Which I interpret as meaning that it probably has everything to do with it.”
    Irene acknowledged the sentiment with a smirk. “The lady we know as Anna Darmond was actually born Yelena Poltanov.” She spelled it. “Her father was a big-time apparatchik during the last years of the Soviet Union. Yuri Poltanov. Along about the time the Poles started making trouble, Yuri read the handwriting on the walls, and found a way to send his daughter to the United States