Shadows of the Past (SEAL Brotherhood: Shadow Team #1)

Chapter Two

T hey met at Mimi’s, a little breakfast bar that was only open until noon. It was three blocks from his apartment and about eight blocks to the Capitol Building, so the restaurant was usually packed with staffers, reporters, and others in supportive rules in the government. Today, like every other day, it was a scramble to get a table. But they got one, and luckily in a corner.

Dimitri shook the man’s hand. Jordan’s oily hair desperately needed a trim, but it matched his scrubby beard and his wrinkled button-down shirt, smudged dark glasses, and dirty trench coat with a coffee stain down the front. Overall, he didn’t leave a very good impression on Dimitri. But he did look the part. He was a reporter, not some wealthy journalist doing a hit piece, hired by some super fund or billionaire somewhere. Dimitri had learned to be discerning in his two years in Washington.

“Nice to meet you. I see you’ve got your notebook and your recorder.” Dimitri noted his hand felt sticky.

Jodan shrugged. “My phone really. But yes, if I may, I’d like to record our interview.”

Dimitri folded his hands on the table and leaned toward the reporter. “No can-do. If you know anything about me, you know everything I say is off the record, and I try not to get recorded. So I will say right now if you are recording this conversation on any other device anywhere on your person, it’s against the law, and I will protest. I will make sure you get nailed to the cross for it, do you understand?”

Dimitri wasn’t about to lose his $200,000-plus a year job just because some reporter wanted to make a headline or cause a sensation.

“No problem. I understand. In your position, I’d probably be the same. My fault for asking. And for your information, there are no recording devices on me. I don’t even have an Apple Watch, as you can see,” he said, holding up his wrist.

It was an old-fashioned dial watch with a faded brown leather strap that appeared to glow in the dark at night, a Mickey Mouse vintage piece any fifty-year-old would covet. Not very expensive but extremely rare.

“That’s cool. I get that. I’d have a hard time seeing how they could make that into a listening device, but damn, some of our adversaries are good at that.”

“Oh, you got that right. I once ran across a story where an ambassador’s daughter was given a jewelry box by somebody, and the jewelry box was wired, not only wired for sound and recording, but if they wanted to, they could set off a small flash fire. Luckily, it got caught before it went too far.”

“So who got into that one? Who was the lead agency?”

“CIA, maybe State, as he was an ambassador, but I think it was CIA. It was a spying operation they were looking into.”

“You work those fields too? Who do you work for, then?”

“Almost exclusively myself. I’m an investigative journalist, as I said. I make myself useful because I get information and trade it. I stay away from the spy stuff, of course, but you’d be surprised what you can do with information, how many doors it unlocks when you don’t have a badge or subpoena to help you out. Works miracles.”

Dimitri was more impressed than he thought he would be. He actually liked the guy, and he trusted him. Which was something he never did. Maybe it was because what Dimitri wanted to hear.

“So we’re here now. Let’s get to work now that we understand what we do and do not do, shall we?”

“Good. As you know, Moira was looking into corruption, especially in the seven families of Europe. Particularly, she concentrated on Italy and the Italian-American link—the people who own everything, not the ones you read about.”

This was news to Dimitri.

“Go on.”

“She was really good digging up stuff like that. And she was very close on several big, huge stories. Allies who were dirty, dirty people in our own government too.”

This was not news. He knew she was known for this, for not backing down, but she never told him the specifics. Dimitri shook his head, “I can’t recall much of her conversations about that. It never came up. Are you sure you have the right Moira?”

“She texted me on the day she was taken hostage.”

Jordan held his phone out so Dimitri could see her signature, the monarch butterfly, her favorite animal, other than every stray dog she happened to come across. The butterfly seemed to open and close its wings as he read the statement beside it.

‘Disappearing for a bit. Anything happens to me, don’t believe any of it. I’ll surface when I can, and then we’ll celebrate.’

“Celebrate? You two having a fling?” Dimitri said, knowing that she’d never have an affair with a greasy reporter who didn’t know how to properly dress in front of the most beautiful, well-put together woman in the whole world. She expected him to know all the best things to eat or drink, how to open a door for her, and cherish her body from her lips to the tips of her red-painted toes—all from a man who lived for watching her shatter beneath him.

“N-No, of course not. She used me. Well, we used each other. She could get into some places I couldn’t. With her background—”

“Her background?”

“Yes, Dimitri. Did she ever talk much about her background?”

“Not a lot to know. No parents, no family. Grew up in California. Sort of a rolling stone in her younger years.”

“Yes, I see,” the reporter said, as if checking a box on an intake form.

“What’s all this about? You going to beat around the bush or tell me about your crazy idea she’s still alive?”

“I’m getting to that. A couple more questions first. She ever talk much about her work?”

“Not much. Nor did I talk about mine. At the time, I was a SEAL. Maybe I was around to be the bodyguard. I’ve thought that from time to time.”

“Her protection detail, like what you do now.”

“Correct. But I’m joking with you a little. I don’t really think that way.”

“I got that. And you left right after you got the news of her assassination, that correct?”

“Yeah. I was getting ready to leave anyway. I was considering changing careers. Moira and I were gonna get married. Do something that was a little more safe, if you know what I mean. Having both people worried for their lives, turning around looking behind them all the time, not sure who is real friend or foe? After a few years, it does get old, unless you like being alone. We were planning a life together.”

He didn’t think he revealed more than he should. He still had the trust going on.

“She talked about you a lot. She told me how much she loved you. I sincerely believe that.”

“Okay, so show me this picture you say you have, and tell me why you think she’s still alive. I doubt what you’re saying, because she got the full honors treatment, the certificates of commendation, an award from several publisher groups, burial expenses paid for by the US—the whole nine yards. I got communications from the State Department, which surprised me a little, but I was told later she did some research for them. I even got a letter—a handwritten letter from the president.”

“Yes, impressive.”

“Why are you asking me questions? You’ve done your research. You probably know that if you know anything about me.”

“And you’d be correct.”

The rush of people in the restaurant distracted Dimitri. He observed the oddness of the different personalities there as if he should recognize somebody. There were young staffers in suits, briefcases over their shoulders, on their cell phones or tablets constantly while they ordered and while they talked with each other. There were older more casually dressed gentlemen, probably lobbyists or advisors of one kind. There were truck delivery drivers and uber drivers showing up to pick up orders or deliver an early lunch. Traffic cops, men with orange vests blocking or barricading construction sites, hardhat workers without the hardhats, plumbers and electricians, and tree trimmers crowded the tables. Always needed lots of tree trimmers. Dimitri had often wondered how much the city spent on trimming just the trees in DC.

The reporter drew out a picture that was grainy but still easy to determine. There were two people walking side-by-side down a rocky shore. He scanned his phone and pulled up a video of the same two people and played the clip.

It looked like Italy to Dimitri. He examined the two people, both women. They were thin and well-tanned, one more so than the other. One of the women in the video was definitely Moira.

He wasn’t going to get very excited because this picture could’ve been taken at any time during the last three to four years since she’d spent quite a bit of time on beaches in Greece and Italy. Even Turkey.

“So when was this taken?” he asked.

“Three weeks ago.”

Dimitri’s stomach fell all the way to his ankles. At the same time, the barista brought over his cappuccino and the vanilla latte for Jordan. Blueberry muffins and bagels and cream cheese waited in a little basket left between the two of them, along with a neat little pile of napkins.

He swallowed. Hard. “Who took this, you?”

“And that has to stay my confidential source, Dimitri. I did obtain it from the photographer though, and I know him to be an honorable person. He does research for me from time to time.”

“U.S. citizen?”

“No.” He shook his head. “He’s someone I use, someone who is very good at what he does because nobody notices him.”

Dimitri was thinking he could use someone like that sometimes, since it was often hard with his busy schedule to find people outside the system he could rely on for back up information. That back up sometimes saved his life or the lives of the people he was protecting.

“Okay, so how did all this happen. You hired this person to find her?”

“Sort of. I was actually looking for the person she is with. Do you know that lady?”

Dimitri looked at it carefully, thought he saw something in her face that he recognized, but at last, he came up blank.

“Nope. She might be familiar, but I just can’t place her.”

Jordan searched the room, looking behind him and scanning the crowd before answering.

“She’s her sister.”

Dimitri felt like he’d been transported to another planet or was having a bad dream he couldn’t wake up from. Everything he’d known of her was in direct opposition to the facts he was being presented with.

“But she never had any relatives. She never had parents. She never had any family. She said they were all dead. They’d all been killed in an auto accident.”

“I don’t think Moira told you about her past or her family. She had a family. Still does. And that’s who she’s with now.”