I scheduled cookouts on the deck for July third and Independence Day, too, so I’m certainly grateful that the weather here in Great Falls, Virginia is cooperating. It’s sunny, it’s dry and the temperature’s perfect. At least it was today, and the forecast for tomorrow indicates more of the same. That’s about as close to a miracle you can get in Washington, because the typical Fourth of July here in the Nation’s Capital is so hot you can hardly think straight and so humid you might not get all your fireworks to light properly even if there isn’t a huge, drenching downpour that doesn’t cool things off in the least, but only turns what was a sweltering sauna into a truly hellish outdoor version of a Turkish steam bath.
The big blow-out barbecue is tomorrow, of course. That’s when my dear brother Rob Roy will bring his wife, Katje and their son Jason with him, and my dear sister Rose will bring her husband Hank, Hank’s brother, Hank’s sister-in-law, and two large Catholic families worth of children with them. Today, it was just me, my girlfriend Cerise, Veronica (a former college hookup, now an impromptu room mate, who’s been living here since her ex-husband’s uninsured mansion in Malibu burned down) and my cat, Twinkle.
Since tomorrow’s grill is scheduled to be heavy on Kansas City dry aged prime beef, Colorado antelope chops, grass-fed South Dakota bison burgers, and Minnesota border lake venison sausage, and because I was, after all, cooking for a couple of single women and a finicky feline, today’s fare comprised lighter items. There wasn’t a single piece of red meat to be seen – instead there was marinated, wild-caught Alaskan king salmon, Puerto Rican tropical rock lobster tails, jumbo Missouri cave-grown Portobelo mushroom caps, giant Maine deep sea scallops, North Carolina heirloom vegetable kabobs; and that great proletarian favorite, beer can chicken. Not that I did things like a proletarian. It was a locally raised, free-range chicken, and I cooked it on a can of Pennsylvania Yuengling with Hawaiian elephant garlic, fresh Texas cilantro, smoked New Mexican chipolte peppers and Florida key limes inside, and covered the chicken’s interior and exterior with my handmade Louisiana Arcadian grilling rub. Like everything else today, I used a mixture of Vermont maple, Arizona mesquite, Oregon red alder, Virginia apple and Maryland white oak wood chips, soaked overnight in Jack Daniels Tennessee whisky diluted with upstate New York spring water, which I spread on top of perfectly glowing piles of lump Georgia hickory charcoal.
At first blush, that may sound like quite bit of food for three people and a kitty cat, but as always, the aromas from my culinary efforts attracted a some of the neighbors. While the denizens of Great Falls are smart enough to generate a median income of over two hundred thousand dollars a year, few of them, apparently, know how to prepare anything more interesting than a bowl of cold cereal. They eat most of their meals in restaurants, I suppose. So, in fact, there was just about enough food for everyone, including Twinkle, who had some of the salmon and pronounced it “nice.” She thought the beer can chicken was “spicy” though; not that she didn’t finish every single bit of it I gave her.
But when I handed the grill over to Cerise in order to enjoy a well-earned break with a glass of cool California Viognier, Benson, a banker who lives on my side the street five houses away, sat down anxiously next to me.
“Collins,” he whispered, “I hear you know a lot about… international affairs and so forth.”
“Well,” I cautiously allowed, “my clientele does include a significant number of foreign diplomatic delegations.”
Benson’s eyes darted around warily as he leaned closer and murmured, “What do you know about… espionage?”
“That it’s illegal,” I responded, “and immoral. And also unpatriotic, wrong and sinful. Unless the United States of America does it. Then it’s okay.”
“Sure, sure,” Benson breathed rapidly in my ear. “But, you know about those Russian spies the FBI arrested this week, right?”
“No doubt about that,” I assured him. “A person would have to be living off the grid in a shack in the Montana wilderness not to have heard how the US Attorneys deposed an FBI investigator, who revealed that a network of deep-cover Russian ‘sleeper’ agents has been hiding in the United States for years, in most cases posing as ordinary Americans. They all had respectable, well-paying jobs, minivans, SUVs, major credit cards, suburban homes, the works. Some of them even had kids. Allegedly, the eleven people arrested have all been sent here by the Russian government intelligence apparatus. Their alleged mission was to befriend influential, well-connected and/or knowledgable Americans, subsequently pumping them for information and covertly transmitting it back to Moscow. The feds say these people even had short wave radios, and used classic spy methods like cold drops to move information and receive cash. One of them, Anna Chapman, is even supposed to be some kind of post-modern Mata Hari. She’s definitely a real looker, anyway, if the pictures on the Internet haven’t all been PhotoShopped.”
“So,” Benson panted excitedly, “what do you think?”
“I think the whole affair sounds pretty damn far-fetched,” I frankly answered. “But maybe that’s what the Russian spooks who dreamed it up thought – perhaps they figured the approach presented some real advantages, because nobody in the American counter-intelligence community could possibly take such an absurd cliché seriously. ‘Sleeper’ agents? I mean, really, that whole concept was a fantasy dreamed up by paranoid Americans during the Red Scare. The only place you will find ‘sleeper’ agents is in those cheesy spy novels for sale in the bookstores at Dulles Airport.”
“You’re not saying,” Benson protested, “that the FBI is full of beans about this thing, are you?”
“I’m saying,” I clarified, “that the feds had better be ready to prove beyond a reasonable doubt these people are actually guilty of failing to register as agents of a foreign power and engaging in money laundering.”
Benson’s face fell. “Not espionage?”
“That’s just the point,” I shot back. “On the one hand, the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ Office are ballyhooing to the media that they’ve broken up a spy ring, but on the other, none of the people arrested have been charged with espionage. Now, if the United States had a case against any one of these people for espionage, a case that could stand up in court…”
“Collins,” Benson snapped, “this is all very well and good, to talk about it theoretically! But I’m afraid I might be embroiled in… a very real situation here!”
“Huh?” That remark called for a rather stiff pull off my glass of white wine.
“It… she… I…” Benson stammered, finally untwisting his tongue with obvious effort, “my wife, God damn it! I’m afraid my wife is one of them!”
“In that case,” I advised, “why don’t you just wait for the FBI to come and arrest her?”
“What if they arrest me, too?” Benson blurted out. “Like you said, a lot of these Russian spies were posing as married couples!”
“Oh, I suppose that’s possible,” I admitted, “but as long as you are sure you can prove you’re a real American and you haven’t been using your bank to launder money…”
“I’m the chief executive officer, for Christ’s sake!” Benson interrupted. “How the hell should I know if my bank has been laundering money?”
“Actually,” I observed, “according to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, you’re supposed to.”
“I am?” Benson demanded. “What next? Am I supposed to know which of my real estate loans are going to default this month, too? Since when has Congress been able to legislate competence in the banking industry?”
“Good point,” I conceded. “Okay, so what makes you think your wife is a Russian spy?”
“I met her in England,” Benson fretted. “That Chapman woman – her ex-husband says he met her in England.”
“So she’s English?” I inquired.
“No,” Benson said, shaking his head vigorously, “she’s from Chillicothe, Ohio; or at least that’s what she says! She claims she’s a member of ‘an old Ross County family,’ the Tiffins. She told me that Chillicothe was the first capital of Ohio, and that Edward Tiffin was the first governor.”
“Well,” I remarked, “I guess somebody had to do it. Does her story check out?”
“That part does,” Benson nodded. “But when I looked into her story thoroughly, it turns out she said her ancestor was a Republican, and that part wasn’t correct. Edward Tiffin was really an Anti-Federalist!”
“There weren’t,” I sighed, “any Republicans in 1804, at least not the ones you and I think of when we use the term. That Republican party didn’t exist until shortly before the Civil War. But, at the time, Thomas Jefferson’s political party called itself the ‘Republican Party,’ and, what’s more, they were anti-federalists. But unless your wife has a degree in American history, you can’t blame her for repeating what she most probably heard about her family when the subject was discussed back in Ohio. Bottom line, Benson, it sounds to me like that’s basically correct, her story checks out, and you’re getting hung up on what amounts to nineteenth century semantics.”
“All right,” Benson pressed on, “how about this? When I looked inside our safe deposit box at my bank, her birth certificate was missing!”
“Do you know for sure,” I quizzed him, “that it was ever there in the first place?”
“Mine is!” Benson objected.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” I dryly responded.
“Then what about the pink bicycles?” Benson continued. “She rides pink bicycles!”
“And?” I raised my eyebrows expectantly.
“Richard and Cynthia Murphy,” Benson informed me excitedly, “rode pink bicycles! So did their kids! The whole family rode pink bicycles, like it was some kind of secret, undercover signal or something, okay? And my wife rides pink bicycles! She has two – a racing bike and a trail bike – and both of them are pink!”
“Is that all you got?” I smiled with a puckish air.
“No,” Benson insisted, “not by a long shot! The news reports say that every one of those spies had a Facebook page and a LinkedIn account. Guess what? So does my wife!”
“The alleged spies,” I noted, “had orders to infiltrate American society, didn’t they? What could be more mainstream and normal for upper middle class American professionals these days?”
“Oh yeah?” Benson challenged. “How about this, then? The spies all attended lots of parties at embassies and non-governmental organizations, and so does my wife!”
“She’s a young, attractive and reasonably wealthy woman in Washington, DC,” I reminded him. “That’s what they… hey, wait a minute. Exactly how much older are you than she is?”
Benson stared down at the deck sullenly. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“How much?” The question hung in the air for what seemed like quite a long time.
“She’s… my second wife,” Benson muttered. “About thirty years younger, I guess.”
“And she looks one hell of a lot better on your arm at the yacht basin, I imagine, than the woman who devoted her youth to you so you could have an impressive abode in Great Falls, Virginia.”
Benson nodded. “All right, I’m no saint. But I’ve got something else that’ll knock your socks off!”
Reaching into his pants pocket, he withdrew an e-mail printout. “I found this,” he softly spoke, handing it to me with gesture of certain finality. “It’s from one of the men she met at a charity ball this spring.”
I read the text:
e.e. cummings has always been one of my favorite poets; about fourth on the list after Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Byron. When I read this poem of his, I thought of you.
Beaming limelight is mere
melting stems of roses
and great nasturtiums
in the garnet ornithological
pronouncement of life.
Looking forward to receiving your contribution to Arts in the Parks!
Thanks so much,
Chad
“See?” Benson chortled, obviously satisfied with his sleuthing skills. “Her contact says Cummings is his fourth favorite poet. That’s kind of a strange thing to say, isn’t it? What’s more, I checked all over the Internet, and I couldn’t find that poem anywhere, and at this point, I’d be very, very surprised if Cummings ever even wrote it! No, instead, the number four is a hint! Look here…” Benson snatched the paper from my hands, produced a red pen and wrote on the printout, underling various letters in the text. “You see?” Benson asked as he waved the paper in my face. “It’s steganography! If you examine every fourth letter – in every word that has four letters, that is – there’s a hidden message that says “Meet me at nine” in here! And the Washington Post says the Russian spies communicated with steganography!”
“Yeah,” I told him, “that’s steganography, all right. But the FBI says the Russian spies used a type of steganography based on the alteration of bit values in digital photographs. There’s nothing that connects the alleged Russian spies to steganography like that. No, I think there’s another, simpler explanation. Benson, your wife’s not a Russian sleeper spy. She’s just having an affair behind your back – that’s the kind of sleeping she’s been up to – sleeping around.”
At that, Benson realized I was right and began to cry. Veronica, who had been standing behind Benson for the last five minutes, carefully listening to everything we said, adroitly pretended to have just arrived.
“Tom,” she cooed, “I was over there helping Cerise with the grill, but I couldn’t help notice you’re almost entirely out of wine. Can I get you a refill?”
“Sure,” I cooed back.
“How about you, Mr. Benson?” Veronica purred. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
Suddenly, Benson stopped bawling. Wiping his eyes, he gazed up at Veronica, who, I must say, while being older than Benson’s wife, can still stop traffic when she wants to.
“Yes,” he sniffed, “I think there is.”
A perfect cue if there ever was one, I’d say. Veronica tenderly took Benson by the arm and lead him away. Come to think of it, now that she’s got his attention, the poor devil might have been better off if his wife really was a Russian spy.