Guilt By Silence

A round of applause accompanied Gus McCord to the front of the room. His face became flushed as he looked around and waited for the clapping to die down, but it went on and on. He grinned sheepishly and rubbed the bump on his nose, then looked over at his wife and shrugged. Turning back, he raised his hands and made a dampening wave.

“Thank you. Thank you all,” he called above the noise. But the group showed no sign of letting up. Gus passed his hand over his brush cut as the applause rolled on. Then he seemed to have an inspirational flash.

“Shh!” he whispered loudly, his finger to his lips. “You’ll wake the babies!”

The audience laughed, but the noise finally died down. There was a long silence as they waited expectantly for him to say something, but he seemed to be lost in thought, examining his shoes and shuffling awkwardly. One or two nervous throat-clearing sounds rose up from the room. His voice, when he spoke at last, was soft.

“I have a confession to make,” he said, eyes still on his toes. “It’s not an easy thing to say, for an old coot like me. But I’m here to tell you that I’ve fallen in love again.”

A few chuckles sprinkled the room.

“The lady in question,” McCord went on, stronger now, looking up at the crowd, “has the face of an angel and a form so exquisite it takes your breath away. Of course, there are those who will say she’s too young for me, that these May-December romances never work out. But I don’t care. Because when I look in her eyes, I know that she is the culmination of everything that is good and beautiful in this world. Her name is Jessica Boehm, ladies and gentlemen. She is five days old and she weighs just three and a half pounds. But she’s a spunky little lady, and I am the luckiest man in the world for having met her.”

McCord reached out a hand to the mother of the baby he had been caressing in the isolette. “And this is Mary Boehm, the mother of that wonderful young lady down the hall.” Mrs. Boehm, tears streaming down her smiling cheeks, held on tightly to Gus’s hand as the audience applauded warmly.

McCord’s other arm reached out to embrace his wife, who had been standing off to his left. “And this beautiful lady, for those of you who don’t already know her, is my wife, Nancy. We have been married for forty years. She is my courage, my inspiration and my best friend. She is also the mother of our four sons and the grandmother of five beautiful grandchildren. We have a good life. But like the parents of little Jessica, we have known the fear and pain of a baby’s illness.”

He and Nancy exchanged glances and squeezed hands.

“I believe,” McCord went on, “that the sheer force of Nancy’s mother-love saw our sick children through their darkest hours. But sometimes, when a baby is born too soon, or with special problems, even a mother’s love needs a little help. This clinic is dedicated in ensuring that even the littlest ones like Jessica will survive and grow and thrive.”

There was a round of applause.

“I would ask my wife, Nancy, and Mary Boehm—two of the finest and most determined mothers I know,” McCord said, “to jointly do the honors of cutting the ribbon to open the McCord Neonatal Clinic.”

Mary Boehm’s surprise showed through her tears, but she quickly wiped them away as Gus stepped back. Nancy McCord moved beside her, offering a smile and a hug, and then handed Mrs. Boehm a pair of large surgical shears and held up the ribbon. Mary Boehm’s hand was trembling as she reached out and snipped the wide red sash. It fell to a cheer and a hearty round of applause.

Dieter Pflanz looked around the room and noted that several full-grown men were conspicuously swallowing lumps in their throats. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place. For a fleeting second, he felt the instinctive bristle rise up his spine as the crowd rushed forward to surround McCord, but then he relaxed again. It was obvious that there was nothing but goodwill toward Gus McCord in that room.

Watching the milling crowd, scanning those who were approaching McCord from all sides, Pflanz paid little attention to Jerry Siddon, who had moved next to him.

“That was a neat trick, wasn’t it?” Siddon said.

Pflanz glanced down at him. “A neat trick?”

Siddon waved his hand toward McCord. “That performance,” he said, grinning. “And turning the ceremony over to the baby’s mother. Focusing the attention on himself by seeming to turn it on someone else. Very neatly done.”

Pflanz arched one eyebrow. “You’re very cynical today, young Siddon.”

“Not cynical, just overawed at the man’s skill.” He glanced up at Pflanz, who was watching him closely. “You know what I mean. This guy’s tough as nails. You know it, and so do I. That’s how he made his fortune and his name. But look at him now.”

They both turned back to McCord, who was guffawing with a group of old cronies, his hands buried deep in his pants pockets.

“He looks like he just drove in from the farm in the family pickup,” Siddon continued. “Yet this is the same man who, in a few hours, will be standing toe-to-toe with the sharks and vultures in Washington. The man who may have done more than any other American to throw the Reds out of the Kremlin. I tell you, Dieter, this is the one. This is the guy we’ve got to put in the White House. He’s the one who can make things happen.”

The corners of Pflanz’s mouth angled up ever so slightly. He doesn’t need to be elected, Jerry boy, he thought. Things are happening already.

When Frank’s secretary tapped on her door a few minutes after she had stormed out of his office, Mariah was standing at the window, staring down on Langley Woods situated beyond the high fence surrounding the Agency’s headquarters.

“Mariah?” Pat hesitated, her hand on the door. Finally, she stepped in and shut it behind her. “What happened? Frank’s in there bellowing on the phone and you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s going on around here?”

Mariah glanced at Pat and then stared back across the trees, denuded now of their leaves. It was a bleak landscape this time of year.

Tucker’s secretary was one of her closest friends, as was Frank himself. But Patty Bonelli and Frank were also an item—undeclared, discreet. It was a relationship that only Mariah and a few others in the office knew about. Mariah wasn’t altogether certain when Pat and Frank’s relationship outside the office had begun—for the first few years after his wife died, Frank had been too preoccupied with finishing the job of raising his kids to have time for anything else—but it had been going on for some time now. They seemed to be comfortable with it just as it was, neither one showing any sign of needing or wanting a more public commitment.

There was no way of knowing whether Pat was aware of the covert operation Frank had alluded to. As a senior secretary, she was privy to many of the compartmented cases that Frank and Mariah had worked on in the past, providing clerical support. But Frank had said that Operations was leading on this, and they always kept knowledge of their files to a minimum. If they had allowed Tucker in, it could only be because they had required his expertise. It was doubtful Pat knew anything, even if she were prepared to defy Frank and tell Mariah. On the other hand, Mariah thought, if Chaney had stumbled onto something, then it wasn’t as closely held a secret as Frank thought.

“Do you know if Frank has been working on any major cases with the Ops people over the past ten months?”

“He and George Neville have been working on a file,” Pat said. Neville was the CIA deputy director for operations—DDO. “I’m not cleared for it, though. I thought you were.”

“Why did you think that?”

“Because Neville was in Frank’s office the other day. Frank asked me to bring them coffee and when I opened the door, I heard Neville mention your name.”

“What was he saying?”

Pat shook her head. “He clammed up when I walked in. What’s this about, Mariah?”

“That’s what I’d like to know. I think it’s got something to do with the accident in Vienna.”

“What do you mean?”

“Apparently, it was no accident.”

“What?”

Mariah sighed and settled down on the edge of her desk. “Look, Patty, I don’t know what’s going on, but I shouldn’t be saying anything. You know Frank—he’d throw a fit if he knew I’d told you this much, so do me a favor and don’t mention it, okay?”

“I won’t say anything. But what do you plan to do?”

Mariah turned back to the window. “I don’t know. But I have to find out what really happened.”

With Frank or without him, she thought.

When Pat left her office, Mariah stood at the window a few minutes longer, struggling against the pain and black fury that were threatening to short-circuit her brain. Forcing herself to turn away from the window, she caught sight of the computer terminal next to her desk. She sat down and flicked it on, her mind racing as the monitor raised its greenish glow.

After a short delay, the screen prompted her to enter her password, the first line of defense against unauthorized access to the Agency’s data banks. All employees had a personal access code, known only to themselves and the computer. Security procedures required that the password be changed every month.

Mariah punched in her current personal code— “SIGMUND,” the name of her neighbor’s cat. After the mess she had found in her tiny garden, the feline had been on her mind the last time she had changed her password. The cursor moved across the screen as she entered the cat’s name, but only Xs appeared—another security measure.

After a brief delay, the monitor flashed a message: “PASSWORD VALID. FILE SEARCH MODE. ENTER FILE NAME.”

She returned her gaze to the keyboard and punched in “CHAUCER.”

There was another short delay. Her stomach flipped when she saw the reply: “RESTRICTED FILE. ACCESS DENIED. ENTER NEW FILE NAME.”

“Access denied, my foot!” she muttered. “That’s my file.”