“No thanks.”
Dr. Hennigan watched from her seat as Cleo pulled out a bottle of vodka she hadn’t seen before. “What brand is that?”
“It’s called CLIX and is produced by Buffalo Trace Distillery. They only make two thousand bottles of this ever. They distill it almost one-hundred-sixty different times before it’s bottled. As a native Kentucky girl, they sent me a couple of bottles from their distillery for the inauguration. We keep one bottle in the residence kitchen and the other here.”
Cleo walked back over and handed the glass to Dr. Hennigan. “Let’s toast to another four years,” Dr. Hennigan said as she raised her glass and clinked it with Cleo’s. “I’ve been looking at the internal polling data, and your husband’s a shoo-in for another four years.”
“Well, he’s been good for the economy and good on social justice. It’s almost amazing, because members of both sides of the aisle have come out to support him. That never happens anymore.”
“Very true. But then, having a unified force behind a specific presidential candidate has never been in The Foundation’s best interest.”
“I know. The Foundation worked for years to get me here. So many things fell into place to get me to this point.”
“Well, you were one of our top picks,” Dr. Hennigan noted. A measured look of surprise crossed Cleo’s face. “You didn’t think we’d put all our eggs in one basket, did you?”
Cleo’s face returned to the masked, tight-lipped smile she was known for on the campaign trail. Cleo was a former lawyer who worked in the Department of Justice. The Foundation had recruited her in law school. They had gotten her a clerkship with one of the Supreme Court justices, then she took the job at the Department of Justice.
Dr. Hennigan’s mother had recognized the potential in a low-level military officer named Jeffry Barnes. After a few moves, The Foundation had arranged an ‘accidental’ encounter between Cleo and Jeffry at a cocktail party in the district. The two were engaged in six months and married in eleven. From there, The Foundation pulled strings behind the scenes to get Jeffrey elected to the Maryland State Legislature, then Governor. When he ran for President five years earlier, he was the longshot on the ticket. Of course, the longshot won easily as people were manipulated or paid off behind the scenes to show their full support of Governor Barnes.
The staff opened the door and wheeled in dinner. “What are we eating tonight?” Dr. Hennigan asked.
“Honey-roasted duck, grilled asparagus with light butter and crispy roasted rosemary sweet potatoes, ma’am,” the server said as she put the plate in front of her and removed the metal lid.
“It smells divine,” Cleo replied. “Give my compliments to the chef. She outdid herself tonight.”
Dr. Hennigan stabbed one of the asparagus and put it into her mouth. The tiny tree had the combination of crispy and chewy you get when correctly prepared. And just like the server said, she noticed the hints of the butter without it being drowned by the yellow stuff.
When the door shut, Cleo let her facade drop. “We’re clear to talk in here. This room is swept daily.”
“Good to know. Where are you with our priority situation?” Dr. Hennigan asked.
“I’ve reached out through back channels to someone I know at the Department of Homeland Security—DHS. Ethan Bond is staying with some guy he met online, a Blayne Dickenson.”
“We knew he was in Houston but hadn’t located him yet. What do you know about their relationship?”
“We intercepted their messages on a gay dating app. Until Ethan left New Orleans, the men had never met. Heck, they’d never even talked on the phone until earlier this week.”
“What do you know about this Mr. Dickenson?”
“DHS doesn’t have much on him. We know he’s a graduate student at Pennington University. I can tell you his grades going back to elementary school, but nothing in his background should worry The Foundation.”
“Your assessment?”
“Mr. Dickenson is a bystander, and liquidating him could probably cause more problems. As for Mr. Bond, we have no way of knowing what he does or doesn’t know,” Cleo said as she cut a sliver of duck and placed it in her mouth.
Dr. Hennigan thought for a moment. “What do we know about the file?”
“We know little. Here’s what we’ve found out. When Mr. Hawthorne’s phone received the message, it immediately sent two emails. One email is a complete dead-end, and the other was sent to Ethan Bond. When the email was sent to Ethan Bond’s cell, two separate actions simultaneously occurred. One made it look like an email was sent then deleted, which is a complete red herring. The email is piggybacked by a data burst. Honestly, if you didn’t know what you were looking for, you’d waste years trying to go after the emails and learn nothing. We know the data burst buries itself in the receiver’s cell phone and can only be located and decrypted by someone with the passkey. We think the file is being automatically transmitted to the person listed as ICE.”
“So, the file is sent automatically. That’s how it went from Cynthia to Daniel to Ethan?”
“That’s our analysis, ma’am, yes.”
“And when Ethan accessed his cell today, who did it get forwarded to?”
Cleo reached down and picked up her own secure device and looked for the file in question. “A Ms. Stephanie Anne Mitchell. When we hacked into Bond’s phone, we saw the file was transmitted to her today.”
“And the ICE thing?” Hennigan questioned.
