Moscow, Russia: (Time Zone Shift) Thursday Night
From a dirty, ink dark alcove that not even the light of day ever illuminated, he watched with savage delight as the two men - one American and the other Russian - cornered one more informant and hit yet another wall in their fruitless search. They would find out nothing. Nobody who knew him would dare. They knew the consequences. Chuckling softly, safe in the cocoon of his superiority, he basked in the knowledge of his power. Power over them, their leaders, and through them, the world.
It was an interesting thought. Certainly, while he was the goal and always had been, there were… benefits undreamed of in the course that his stalker had forced from destiny. Even faceless Fate could not stand up to his power, his supreme skill and purpose.
He'd been following them all day, unafraid of discovery, playing his games and hovering as close as he dared. There was always the chance the two hunters would find something, someone willing to risk his vengeance and tell all. But he doubted it. The fate of those who betrayed him was legend on the streets. The risk was minimal, and only added to the heady rush of the game.
And risk was always part of the game.
They would learn nothing that he did not want them to know. Their frustration only proved his superiority. The best both their countries had to offer, and he played them for the fools he knew they were. It wasn't arrogance, just simple fact.
Let them hunt. Their prey had other plans. His hand slipped into his pocket, feeling the envelope he'd been carrying all day. The address had been ridiculously easy to acquire. A confident smile pulled at the corners of his mouth as he gloried in the promise the words within contained. A simple text fax that would leave no trail for them to find, and then delivery. He still had pieces to play they knew nothing of. They would learn soon enough. The world would learn.
He would learn.
The watcher turned away, leaving the hunters to their empty efforts. There was nothing to fear from them, or from him.
Oh, yes. The prey did indeed have plans of its own. This canvas, this work of art, was far from finished.
ooOoo
The White House, Secret Service Interview Room: (Time Zone Shift) Saturday, 7:13 AM
Click… click… click…
Dale Carlyle drew in a deep breath that just stopped short of a sigh – 'Why was it everyone seemed to be doing that of late around here?' he couldn't help but wonder - and turned over a new page of the report he was reading. For a few seconds, he read in blessed silence…
Click…click…
"Sorry." Donnatella Moss caught her companion's exasperated glance and flushed, putting the pen she had been fidgeting with down on the desk table and folding her arms. It didn't seem to help, so she put her hands on her knees to still their fidgety jumping. That didn't help either. Back to folded arms.
Still didn't help. She sighed heavily, mourning the lost battle.
One eyebrow quirked and Carlyle finally gave in to a deep sigh of his own. Yep. Everybody was doing that around here. "Go figure," he muttered, glancing away from the report in his hand to the obviously uncomfortable West Wing staffer doing her level best not to melt or fidget her way through her chair into the floor. Sitting there with shoulders hunched and head slightly bowed, she caught his gaze and returned it somewhat defensively. Carlyle's expression softened slightly as he regarded her.
"Nervous?" he asked her gently, in a very real sense reminding her that she wasn't the one about to be skewered here.
"I think I'm going to be sick." Anxiety or apprehension always tended to lend an even deeper frankness to Donna's conversational style.
"You won't be."
"I wish I could believe that." Josh Lyman's assistant regarded her somewhat sterile surroundings miserably. The fixtures of the Secret Service interview room could kindly be described as functional, forbidding even. "I'm not even sure why I'm here."
"Because you came to us."
"In that case, shouldn't Margaret be here too? I mean, she's senior to me."
"Nah." Carlyle shook his head reassuringly.
"Why not?"
"Because Margaret would be sick." Carlyle looked up and grinned. "Lovely lady, but not my first choice to play good cop to my bad cop."
Donna couldn't suppress a rueful smile of acknowledgment. Margaret had many excellent qualities, but her nervous, quirky manner was not exactly conducive to the projection of an air of open, relaxing friendliness. Still, Leo McGarry's assistant was as devoted to her boss as anyone could wish, and as good in her own way at handling the Chief of Staff as Donna was in handling Josh Lyman. If most of Donna's work arose from the need to exactly organize every second of Josh's day, in order to keep the Deputy Chief of Staff from reducing his own schedule to a hopeless muddle, Margaret's work suffered the complication of a boss who was rather too inclined to make his own arrangements. A fact that tended to drive his obsessively precise assistant crazy.
Speaking of driving a person crazy. "Agent Carlyle?"
"Dale."
"Dale." Donna flashed the agent one of her wide, bright smiles. "Seriously, why am I here? Isn't this something that should be undertaken by you and your colleagues?"
"It is, and we are undertaking it. But we're working on a deadline here, Donna, as I'm sure you can imagine. I wanted an extra edge, and I think you may be it."
"Are you sure it's him?" Donna's face was creased with anxiety. "I mean, if we - the assistants, I mean - were wrong… it's a terrible thing to accuse anyone of."
"We're sure." Carlyle briskly gathered together the loose pages of the report. "We've checked movements, phone records, recent associations. We were very thorough. We'd started inquiring into him even before you came to us. We know it was him. And so do you," he added. "You'd never have come to us otherwise."
"We didn't want to." Donna still looked troubled. "But all the scuttlebutt, the gossip… everyone knew there had to have been someone on the inside, to get inside the Oval Office like that. And he changed after that. Everyone noticed." She looked up miserably. "No one wanted to believe it at first, not one of our own. But we didn't feel we had the luxury of keeping silent. Not when it involved the President."
"Nor does Thompson," Carlyle said grimly. "We need him to talk, and fast. We need any information he may have. He's already close to the edge, from what you've said. You know him, Donna. I'm hoping he may be prepared to talk to you, if not to me."
"It's just so hard to believe," Donna sighed, wondering briefly why everybody around here seemed to be doing that of late. "I don't know him very well, but something like this… I mean, Greg could be a bit of an ass at times, but I can't understand how he could have gotten involved in anything like this. I'd have described him as a little weak, if I were asked, but not malicious."
"Who says that malice was required? All that Volkov might have needed was weakness, as long as he could play on it."
"Volkov." Donna sounded the name out curiously, feeling her mouth give shape and sound to the shadow that had dogged them all for so long now. "From what I read in Ron's report, he doesn't seem like a very nice man." Too late she realized that she wasn't supposed to have known about that report, let alone read it.
Carlyle almost laughed aloud. The poor woman had given over the fidgeting completely to guiltily melting her way through her chair. Given what he already knew about the relationship between Josh Lyman and his assistant, the conclusion that she'd read the report was an easy one. Even when. "The morning of the press conference?"
Donna nodded her head a fraction.
"Uh huh," Carlyle shuffled the pages in his hand, smothering a grin. "You were with Josh?"
Down went Donna's head again, the meekest gesture of affirmation she could manage.
"He wasn't happy, I take it?"
Something in his tone of voice bolstered her courage. "Josh was… rabid." Perhaps she wasn't in trouble after all. Her hopes of not spending the rest of her life in a federal lock-up rose considerably. "I suggested we bury it in the Rose Garden."
This time Carlyle did grin. "Donna," he regarded her affectionately, "you are an extraordinary woman."
"I am?" It didn't help that she squeaked the question.
"We trust you."
"You do?"
"Most of the time." No sense in letting her get too carried away.
Donna blushed at the compliment. Considering the many faux paux she'd managed over the last few years, it was a wonder she was even allowed into the building, in her opinion at any rate. Apparently not one the Secret Service shared. Her blush deepened at the thought. Then she turned worried eyes on Carlyle, asking the question she'd been holding in for so long. "Are you going to catch him? Will the President be safe from him now?"
In the end, that was the only thing that mattered.
The amusement faded from Carlyle's features, and he regarded her silently.
Donna dropped her gaze first. "I see." The whisper was despondent, and the two of them simply sat there for a moment.
Eventually, Donna broke the silence. "Does Greg know why he's being brought here?"
"He knows," Carlyle said wryly. "He hasn't been formally charged yet, but he knows. Just as his whole department knows."
"They feel he's betrayed them," Donna said softly. "All of us in this building, we all work together, in one way or another. Maybe those of us who came in with the new administration feel more strongly invested than those who simply work here. But we're all proud of where we work, and what we do. The bottom line is that we all work to support each other, and to support him. That… you just don't betray that."
"No. No, you don't." The uncomfortable silence was threatening to fall again, and Carlyle made a conscious effort to head it off. "So, the assistants twigged Thompson by themselves? That's quite a network you people have going there."
Donna smiled. "Josh lives in terror of it. Seriously, though, the White House is like any other office environment; word gets around. The senior assistants don't encourage it, but if we can sometimes use it to help our bosses, we will. Or possibly torment them," she added mischievously, a somewhat evil glint appearing in her eyes.
Carlyle blinked at that, making a mental note to never get the White House senior assistants really mad at him. Mildly put out would do, thank you very much. "Well, Josh may live in terror of it, but at least he has the sense to know when to use it." He tapped the report. "We were really glad when Josh sent you and Margaret to us. We were certain we were on the right track, but you guys may have given us the extra lever we need. Say," he added curiously, "how come you and Margaret took this to Josh, not Leo?"
"We talked about it. After all, Leo is Margaret's boss." Donna grimaced. "But we decided that Josh would be better. We were still half-afraid of being wrong, and we didn't want to start any fires. We felt this was one matter that Josh might actually handle more calmly and quietly than Leo could." She paused to consider this. "Wow, I never thought the day would come when I'd find myself picking Josh over Leo while seeking a cool, collected response."
Carlyle laughed. "I guess Josh usually keeps you on your toes?"
She grinned. "You have no idea what it's like to have a boss you almost need to keep on a leash."
Carlyle almost winced at that. It would appear that more than one White House boss needed a leash. At least Donna's was still within shouting distance. Or was that strangling distance? "Yeah, you'd think that, wouldn't you?"
He was saved from having to explain that comment by the door of the interview room opening to admit two distinctly unfriendly-looking specimens of the United States Secret Service. Escorted between them, expression a mixture of terror and defiance, was a thin, dark-haired man in his mid-twenties.
"Sit down, Mr. Thompson." Carlyle nodded to his colleagues, who quietly withdrew.
Thompson slid into the unoccupied seat across the table, eyeing Carlyle apprehensively. His eyes slid across to Donna, and his expression shifted towards open surprise.
Donna smiled awkwardly. "Hello, Greg."
Carlyle clicked on the recording machine. "Interview commencing at 7:18 AM, Special Agent Dale Carlyle conducting. Also present, assistant to the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Donnatella Moss." He regarded the young man across from him, noting the jittery movements of the hands, the flash of bravado in the eyes, the hair that, despite the evident agitation, was carefully combed and gelled, and the clothes that were just a little too expensive for the job he held. "You are Gregory Thompson?"
"Yes."
"You are employed in the mail room of the White House? Specifically, part of your job description is to distribute incoming mail to the appropriate offices in the White House, particularly in the West Wing?"
"Yeah. But I don't deliver mail to the Oval Office." Thompson's jaw thrust out truculently. "Nothing gets sent in there unexamined. Everyone knows that."
"And yet something did, just over a week ago." Carlyle leaned back and studied him thoughtfully. Good cop, bad cop, time to get to the point. "You know what this is about, don't you?"
"I know. And you can't pin anything on me." Thompson remained belligerent, though he had begun to sweat. "I don't deliver to the Oval Office."
"But you do deliver to reception, right outside the Oval Office." Carlyle's tone hardened. "And your first delivery is nice and early, first mail of the day. Delivered before Charlie Young or anyone else is in reception yet, and the Oval Office is often unoccupied, too. So," he leaned forward, pinning the man to his seat with a steel hard gaze, "there you are, alone in reception, the few people that are in the hallways at that hour paying you no mind because they see you at the same time every single day. Nothing but one door between you and the Oval Office, and the President's desk just a few steps inside. It would be just the work of a moment to slip inside and place something on the desk. Then back out and on with your round, and no one the wiser."
"No!" Thompson's response was explosive. "You're making it up. You haven't got a damn thing, nothing. That's all you've got? That I deliver the mail to the next room? Why not accuse Charlie Young? Or Leo McGarry? Or one of your own guys. Yeah, one of your own. There are no cameras in the Oval Office, everybody knows that. The truth is, you screwed up and now you're looking for a fall guy. Well, it won't be me. I'm not taking the fall just because you dropped the ball and high-and-mighty Bartlet got himself…"
"Greg!" Donna's soft, shocked exclamation caused Thompson to break and falter, realizing too late he'd gone too far.
Carlyle eyed him coldly for a minute, then flipped open his folder and removed a photograph. "Do you recognize this man, Mr. Thompson?" He slid it across the table.
Thompson looked down at it and stiffened. "No," he said eventually.
Donna craned forward and caught an upside down glimpse of a youngish man in Russian military uniform, with close-cropped dark hair, severely handsome features and - she couldn't repress a shiver - the coldest eyes she had ever seen.
"Are you sure, sir? Look again," Carlyle invited gently.
"I'm sure!"
Carlyle silently slid another photograph across the table.
Thompson glanced at it - and suddenly slumped back in his chair, burying his face in his hands.
"Now, Mr. Thompson." The agent's voice was cold as winter. "Perhaps you'd like to reconsider your answer? Do you know this man?"