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Chapter Two
They met atMimi’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 Iwill 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 wassomething 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.”
