So Much for Too Easy

136.

I decide to heed Julie’s advice and take a rare off day. It’ll be good to spend the day at the cabin, I rationalize, after all it is just an hour outside of DC. I rent a car and head south with the events of the day swirling around my mind like a lost dog looking for home. With the rented mid-sized Chevy on cruise control, I put the phone on speaker and call the S&L manager for an update on his progress with the surveillance tape review.

“Well, you were right, there was some suspicious activity taking place out front during those hours,” he informs me, his voice think with faux fatigue, “A white van with tinted windows, a satellite dish on top and no one getting in or out was parked in front of our facility nearly the entire time.”

I pose the million dollar question, “Any logo or identification on the van that you could see, or a license plate maybe?”

“Couldn’t read the plates because it was a broadside view, but in really cheap black and white lettering it said MBI Industries.”

“Can you get me a screen grab of the van showing the logo?” I ask.

“Sure, I’ll send it to this number in five minutes, is there anything else I can do?”

“No, that will be plenty for now, thanks for your assistance and cooperation, if we need anything additional I will call you. Thanks again.”

I am watching the last sliver of natural light morph into blinding oncoming headlights thinking that this is all too easy. First I get a positive ID from a waitress in a coffee joint and then video surveillance tape from a bank across the street potentially proving my hunch about our lunch conversation being illegally captured by whomever is considering us to be legitimate threats to their operation? Way too easy.

I am merging right to make my exit when my cell sounds a familiar ring tone.

“Hi.”

Julie returns my one-word salutation and says that her brief with TOM went as expected - he is cancelling his vacation and heading back to the office, and, adding indignity to insult, she tells me that we have a meeting scheduled for Friday at 1000 for a strategy session.

“He knows that we have a new front door to the office?” I risk.

“He knows everything. Including the dozen or so protocols we abandoned in the last five hours.” She confides.

“Does he know that I have a trap baited for Bartowsky’s handler? Does he know that I have video ID on the van that was monitoring our lunch conversation from across the street? Does he know…..” She cuts me off with a terse cease and desist.

“The Senator called him threatening to end our funding, eliminate our charter and file legal proceedings,” She tells me.

“Is there an ‘unless we’ condition coming next?”

“Unless we immediately terminate our dead-end, conspiracy theory, fake-news investigation into the hand that feeds.” She paraphrases.

“That is so incriminating, it basically admits to illegal surveillance,” I snort, “Anything else?”

“Yes, and the same with MBI.”

I exit the Interstate and open the rental up on the windy back-roads leading to the cabin.

So much for too easy.