TWENTY-ONE

Washington, DC

 

 

 

 

 

“I KNOW A GUY, WHO KNOWS A GUY, who knows a guy,” said Dabney Berkshire seated across the table from FBI Deputy Director Gloria Resnick. Berkshire sucked at the cubes of a second Jack Daniels Manhattan. “Supposedly, a guy with crosses to bear.”

“I’m not looking for a guy out to make amends, Berk.”

With Congress in recess, it had been easy to secure a table at The Capitol’s most popular restaurant. The Monocle is just a stone’s throw from the rear entrances to the Hart and Dirksen Senate Office buildings on D St. N.E. in Washington DC. The Monocle opened on Capitol Hill in October nineteen sixty just as two young senators, who were friends and regular customers, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, were battling it out for the presidency. A photo of every President since Kennedy lines the walls, though the owner once discovered Nixon’s picture in the Ladies Room taken out of its frame and ripped to shreds.

Resnick had arrived at the restaurant on foot from the J. Edgar Hoover Building a mile away. Berkshire, Assistant Deputy Director of the Counter Terrorism Center of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, had been delivered by private car from the George Bush Center for Intelligence. A crash-up on the George Washington Memorial Parkway had caused him a twenty-minute delay on the twelve-mile journey from CIA Headquarters in Langley.

“Your shooter is no Stephen Paddock, Rez,” said Berkshire, referring to the Las Vegas country music mass shooting in which fifty-nine died. “He’s not a one-off whack-job intent on killing as many as he can as fast as he can and committing suicide by cop. He isn’t using a bump stock, he’s using a precision instrument. You need to respond in kind.”

“In-kind? I have no idea what you even mean by that, Berk.”

“You want a guy who thinks like he does, moves like he does. A guy who can put down a target from twenty-five hundred yards out.”

Resnick scoffed. “I don’t need one lunatic chasing another lunatic across the country with a high power weapon. I was thinking a sharing of information, not handing the bloody investigation over to you.”

Berkshire grinned. “Why? You think he’s one of ours?”

With a gesture, Resnick waved him off.

Resnick and Berkshire were friends from their time as graduate students at Stanford University. There, Berk had earned a Ph.D. in mathematics specializing in advanced predictive analytics and Rez her doctorate in behavioral science, followed in short order by her J.D., LL.M., and S.J.D. Over the years, they’d remained in touch.

“Join me in a cocktail, Gloria.” When Resnick declined, he said, “When did you become such a bloody nun?” He raised his own glass, tinkled the ice to summon a waiter from across the room. Tapping the tumbler with a forefinger, he indicated Another!

“Listen, Rez, your shooter is picking-off citizens randomly with remarkable ease and efficiency. You won’t put him down using standard law enforcement operating procedure. You need a guy who’s been there, done that. No disrespect to you and your people, but you’re Boy Scouts.”

As a former Los Angeles County Prosecutor, Resnick resented Berkshire his tone. At thirty-three years of age, she’d left her position to join the Bureau’s LA field office as a Special Agent. After almost a decade successfully investigating high-profile organized crime, child pornography, and sex trade cases, she was promoted to Special Agent in Charge of the San Diego Field Office. Three years later, she returned to the much larger LA office as Assistant Director in Charge.

Seven years later, Resnick arrived in Washington, age fifty-two, as the Bureau’s first-ever female Deputy Director.

As DD, Resnick had privately rooted for a Clinton Presidential victory over Trump, thinking it her best chance to replace the Bureau’s then embattled Director. Now, the best she could hope for was a grand political gesture from a man who thought it was okay to grab a woman’s crotch.

“This isn’t a military exercise, Dabney. Or a clandestine operation.”

“With a lifetime in law enforcement, Gloria, you can be forgiven thinking so. Don’t be naive.”

“So, you’re saying the shooter is ex-military?” Then, on second thought, “Or claiming him as one of yours?”

Berkshire’s drink arrived. Steepling his fingers as if to protect it from an unwanted advance, he said “I won’t speculate, Gloria. But consider this.” He gulped his drink. “The shooter is selective and—notwithstanding the body-count—remarkably restrained. He doesn’t want to create a public panic or attract media attention. If he did, he’d be shooting up schoolyards, shopping malls, or country music concerts in Vegas.

“He’s happy for you to know he’s operating, but careful to avoid publicity hence no claim to responsibility, taking no credit. He operates both strategically and tactically, which says a lot about his capabilities. His actions, to date, are contrary to the established norm of either a domestic terrorist or an Islamic extremist. Those whack-jobs want to inflict maximum casualties in the shortest amount of time to get their dirty mugs on FOX News at Eleven.”

Resnick frowned. “He’s using the public as target practice?”

“Not target practice. To the shooter, each kill has meaning, each body a stepping stone to accomplishing some greater cause.”

“Which is what, do you think?”

Summoning the waiter to place the order for food, Berkshire said, “No idea. But I know a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy who might.”