Chapter 5 - THE STRATAGEM OF THE CORRIDOR
The rain followed us all the way up through the Piedmont, turning the Virginia pines into a long, sodden blur along Route 29. Miles drove with both hands on the wheel, his eyes fixed on the spray coming off the back of the eighteen-wheelers. Jonah sat in the jump seat behind us, surrounded by two cardboard archive boxes smelling of sixty-year-old wood pulp and damp Goochland clay.
Every thirty miles, Jonah would clear his throat, reach into his pocket, and pull out a blister pack of antacids. “We’re committing a dozen administrative violations,” he murmured to the back of Miles’s head. “The Uniform Code of Military Justice forbids political demonstrations in uniform.”
“This isn't a demonstration, Uncle,” I said from the passenger seat, my dress blues hanging from the dry-cleaner hook behind me, wrapped in thin, translucent plastic that rustled every time the truck hit a seam in the asphalt. “It’s a deposition. There’s a difference.”
“The distinction will be entirely lost on the Provost Marshal,” Jonah muttered.
“The Provost Marshal is forty miles away at Fort Meade,” Miles said without looking back. “And the parking garage under the Hart building is operated by the Architect of the Capitol. Different jurisdiction. Uncle Thad was on the Capitol Police board in seventy-six. They don't look at the truck; they look at the dashboard pass.”
Miles pulled down the sun visor. Tucked into the cracked leather was an antique, brass-edged Congressional parking permit from nineteen-ninety-four—Thaddeus Vance’s old lifetime credential, issued back when senators still gave them out to their bagmen like pocketknives. It was expired by twenty-eight years, but the seal was gold, the laminate was heavy, and ninety percent of the twenty-year-old security guards at the barricades weren't born when the stamp was cut.
We hit the District at 0830.
The city was that greasy, yellow-grey color it gets when the Potomac humidity gets trapped between the limestone buildings and the clouds. The traffic on Constitution Avenue was a crawling, red-tailed beast.
We turned into the service alley behind the Russell Building. Miles didn't hesitate. He pulled the truck right up to the heavy iron gate where two Capitol Police officers were standing under a black umbrella, their thumbs hooked in their tactical vests.
Miles rolled the window down three inches. The smell of wet asphalt and bus exhaust rolled in.
He didn't say a word. He just tapped the old brass-edged pass against the glass.
The younger guard looked at the seal, then at Miles’s face—the flat, wide nose, the scar through the left eyebrow, the broad, immovable shoulders—and then at me sitting straight in the passenger seat with my hair pinned into a regulation bun so tight it pulled the corners of my eyes back.
“Deliveries are at the dock, sir,” the guard said, but his voice lacked the bark he usually gave the tourists.
“This isn't a delivery, son,” Miles said in that deep, slow Goochland rumble. “It’s the Vance estate documents for the Ethics Counsel. Room three-twenty-two. You want to tell Senator Warner’s office why the archive box was twenty minutes late through the metal detector, or you want to open the bar?”
The guard looked at the second officer. The older man, who had grey hair around his ears and a silver twenty-year pin on his lapel, took one look at the name *VANCE* on the brass plate, spat a brown stream of tobacco juice into the gutter, and tapped the gate release with his knuckle.
“Keep it under ten miles an hour,” the old one said. “And don't park in the whip’s slot.”
The gate swung open with a heavy, hydraulic sigh.
We parked in the sub-basement between two black Lincoln Navigators that smelled of hot catalytic converters and expensive tire dressing. The concrete down there was fifty years old, ribbed and stained with motor oil that had dripped from four generations of political fixers.
I changed in the back of the cab.
The plastic wrap came off. The blue coat went on. The gold buttons—the ones with the federal eagle stamped into the brass—clicked into their holes. I reached up and adjusted the collar, feeling the stiff canvas lining press against my throat like a dull blade. The paratrooper wings were level with the third button, dead center over the ribbons.
Jonah looked at me from the jump seat. His face was the color of skim milk. “You look like him, Morrison. When he was twenty-five. Before he stopped looking people in the eye.”
“I don't look like him, Jonah,” I said, pulling my white gloves out of the pocket and tucking them under my left epaulet. “He wore a three-piece suit to avoid the mud. I wear this because the mud doesn't wash out.”
Miles got out first. He had on the black suit from the funeral, the trousers slightly short, showing the heavy black leather of his work shoes that he had polished until they looked like wet coal. He reached into the truck bed, hauled the two cardboard archive boxes out with one arm each, and set them on the concrete bumper.
“Whitaker’s man is on the third floor,” I said. “Staff Director for the minority. His name is Miller. No relation to our Miller.”
“All these bastards are related,” Miles said, grabbing the boxes by the hand-holes. “They just change the name on the door when the party switches.”
We took the freight elevator. It didn't have wood paneling; it was corrugated steel, smelling of floor wax and wet overcoats. It groaned as it rose through the guts of the building, past the committee rooms where the fate of sixty-billion-dollar defense programs was decided by men who had never had the skin torn off their shins by a jump harness.
The doors opened on the third floor.
The marble up here was different from the Jefferson Hotel. It was older, wider, and worn hollow in the center of the slabs by eighty years of leather-soled shoes carrying bad news.
Standing outside Room 322 was not a staffer.
It was Helena.
She wasn't in ivory crepe today. She was wearing a charcoal wool dress that made her look thirty-five, her blonde hair pulled back into a severe French twist that didn't have a single loose strand. She had an iPad tucked under her left arm like a shield, and her right hand was holding a paper cup from the Senate carry-out.
She didn't drop the cup. She was too much Reid’s daughter for that. But her fingers squeezed the cardboard until the plastic lid popped off with a small, sharp *pfft*, sending a brown dribble of black coffee down the front of her charcoal wool.
“You’re supposed to be in Fairfax,” she said. Her voice wasn't a drawl anymore. It was the shrill, thin whistle of an artillery shell coming down through the trees.
“Reid’s not in Fairfax, Helena,” I said, stopping three paces from her. Miles stopped beside me, the two archive boxes resting against his thighs like blocks of granite. “Reid’s in the holding room behind the committee dias. He’s been there since seven-thirty, going over the opening statements with the counsel.”
Helena’s eyes flicked from me to Jonah, who was shrinking back toward the elevator alcove like an old dog that had seen the broom come out of the closet.
“Jonah,” she said, her voice dropping into a register of pure, concentrated venom. “You pathetic, drunken old parasite. Did you really think she was going to save you? Reid had your files delivered to the Department of Justice two hours ago. The indictment is being processed in Alexandria right now.”
Jonah didn't speak, but his chin came up half an inch. It was the first time I’d ever seen him hold his head up in the presence of an Archer woman.
“The Alexandria office doesn't handle German academic transcripts, Helena,” Jonah said, his voice stronger than it had been in the truck. “And they don't have jurisdiction over the Virginia timber trusts from nineteen-ninety-four. That’s state territory. And the state attorney general is Reid’s third cousin, who hates him more than I do.”
Helena’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. She looked at Miles, then back at me, her eyes dropping to the paratrooper wings on my chest.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” she hissed, stepping toward me until her face was six inches from my ear. The smell of her was different today—no tuberose, just cold perspiration and the dry, bitter tang of burnt coffee. “If you put those boxes on that table, the nomination is dead. The PAC money is dead. The firm in Alexandria will be closed by the end of the month. You’re destroying the name, Morrison. *Your* name.”
“It’s not my name,” I said.
I took one step forward, forcing her back until her shoulder blades hit the mahogany door of Room 322.
“My name is Sergeant Vance,” I told her, my voice dropping into that quiet, dead register they teach you at the jump school when you’re telling sixty men they’re about to drop into sixty-knot crosswinds. “And this isn't a family dispute, Helena. This is an inspection.”
May you like
I reached past her, turned the heavy brass handle, and kicked the door open with the heel of my Belleville boot.
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