Chapter 35

The hearing room was much larger than I thought it would be, but looked pretty much like they do on CSPAN and the news. Apart from the four of us, the place was empty. The aide showed us to the table that had been set up for us before the inverted U shaped formation of tables and leather upholstered swivel chairs that would be occupied by Senators and Congressmen. I got the distinct impression that we were supposed to be some kind of floor show.

Dr. Wills sat in the centermost chair and Mr. Jones sat on his left, opening the briefcase he'd been carrying and removing a rather thick set of folders and handing them to the Doctor.

I occupied myself by walking the inner circumference of the opposition's tables noting who was sitting where. I paid particular attention to two of the names on the little name plates before each microphone. I'd never seen Mortenson or Bustamante before, at least not that I was aware of, and I wanted to be sure I had the right folks in my sights before pulling the trigger... so to speak.

Two men came in, dressed in dark suits; one with a small hand held radar dish and the other with an electronic box and a set of Mickey Mouse earphones on his head. They moved around the room slowly, the one with the dish sweeping it around aiming at the walls and ceiling while the second tinkered with the dials and buttons on the box. Satisfied with what they had or hadn't found they left and we were alone again.

"What time will they begin arriving?" I asked, facing the empty seats.

"Shortly. The higher ranking and more important they are, the later they'll be. It may take a while in this case since we're dealing with two separate sub-committees from the two sides of the Congress. The Senate Investigations subcommittee is hosting, so they'll want to be the last to enter, but the House Intelligence Policy subcommittee won't want to be shown up, even though they'll have to give in. There are thirteen members on the Senate side, seven from the majority party and six from the minority. The House subcommittee has eight members, five majority and three minority members. At least that's how it stood the last time I met with them. It might have changed for all I know."

A somewhat hidden door opened behind the center stretch of table and a handful of men entered, talking to each other in animated fashion, followed by a pair of younger women and a cluster of much older men. They spread out slightly, each heading to their designated seat with little in the way of uncertainty or awkwardness. For them it was a dance they'd all performed many times before and not one failed to hit their mark at the proper time.

As each one sat down they began to take notice of who else was in the room with them, most especially they began to notice me. The muttering started and got louder when I unbuttoned my jacket and the twin shoulder holsters became more obvious. But it got quiet very quickly when the final two people entered and shut the door behind them.

She was a striking woman, probably in her early fifties but looking fifteen years younger thanks to money, makeup, a personal trainer and one of the finest plastic surgeons on the west coast. Senator Wilma Mortenson was an imposing figure, with her broad shoulders, long legs, small waist and the most natural looking silicone implants money could buy. Her dark hair, with its streaks of iron gray, did nothing to detract from her looks. In fact it enhanced them, but it was her penetrating green eyes that caught my attention. Hard and cold, unforgiving and hostile while giving every impression of humanity.

But as impressive as she was, it was the man who came in with her that drew most of my attention.

He was tall, a couple of inches shorter than myself, looked to be in excellent shape for a man in his late fifties, perhaps thirty pounds lighter than I, but he moved very well, almost athletically. His hair was thinning somewhat, but he still had a full head of silver shot dark brown curls that lay on his head like lamb's wool. He looked like a combination of Lou Diamond Phillips and a young Vincent Price. His face was familiar... he reminded me of someone and it began tormenting my mind.

The two of them stared at me while I stood staring at them. I backed up, never taking my eyes off them, and took up a position standing behind the Doctor and Mr. Jones.

The two late arrivals took their seats and Senator Mortenson immediately took control of things.

"Just a brief reminder to all members of this joint Senate/Congressional subcommittee that anything you may see or hear is highly classified and NOT to be discussed outside this chamber. Also, no recording devices are to be turned on. The only record of this meeting will be made by the stenographer. Dr. Wills... you have the joint meeting you wanted so badly. Would you mind telling us why you felt it was necessary?"

"Senator Mortenson, members of the Senate and House, as you well know the purview of my office within the Central Intelligence Agency has always been the detection and elimination of foreign agents, or moles as the movies like to call them, before they can do any significant damage to our national security. I have, within the past two months, come across evidence that points to, shall we say, more indigenous forms of espionage and corruption."

Congressman Bustamante leaned towards the microphone in front of him. "Would this have something to do with the recent death of the CIA Director and the acting Director's sudden coma?"

Damnit! I knew that voice too. It was deep, not quite a bass but pretty close. But where had I heard it before? I linked with Bustamante and Mortenson.

She was as cold in her emotions as her outward appearance suggested. Pompous, arrogant, self-important, heartless, conniving, conceited, egotistical, self-righteous and greedy... very, very greedy.

He had many of the same emotions and emotional states, but there was a level of aggressiveness in him that, while controlled, was straining to break free and run amok.

"Congressman, it might well have something to do with those two unfortunate events, however they lie outside my area of professional interest."

"Dr. Wills, do you mean to tell me you believe the Director's death to have been a natural one?" Senator Mortenson was politely snarling.

"As I said before, Senator, those events lie outside my area of professional interest. My department is charged with tracking down internal security problems. To the best of my knowledge, neither of the sad events you mentioned has been determined to be anything other than a natural occurrence. Unless of course you know something I don't."

"Doctor, there are a great many things I know that you do not." she smirked.

I began slipping strong feelings of guilt into them both, wrapping the new and somewhat foreign emotion around her greed and his aggressiveness, forging them into more powerful emotions.

"I'm sure you believe that, Senator." Dr. Wills said deadpan.

"This new espionage you spoke of Doctor, have you been able to trace its source?" one of the younger female committee members asked politely.

"No, I have not. However, my young protégé has."

"Protégé, Doctor?" the woman asked.

"I hope you will recall, it is a special prerogative of my unique position that I, and only I select and train my eventual successor. And just as I am only responsible to your two sub-committees and not to the politically appointed Director of the CIA, my protégé is responsible only to me and no one else."

"When can we meet this man? I assume he is a man?"

"Yes ma'am. He is a man. And I'll be more than happy to introduce him to you, in due course. But the problem is that while hunting down the sources of the espionage, there have been several attempts made on his life. There have also been illegal warrants issued for his arrest. Issued by, I should like to point out, the individuals we suspect to be our espionage agents."

I felt a slight increase in Mortenson's heart rate and a rapid fluttering from Bustamante. I amped up the guilt and continued to weld it to their individual feelings. But in addition to the guilt I started to add in low levels of lust to Bustamante's flow and early stage orgasm to the Senator's.

Both of them began looking more than a little flushed and beads of sweat broke out across both their foreheads as they shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

"The essential details of this case are all in my initial report, copies of which I will have distributed to each of you in a moment. I'll summarize the contents of that report. There was a mole placed within my own office, feeding information to an external source. The mole has been quarantined and a full confession extracted. With information from this source, one of the agents made no fewer than two attempts to kidnap my successor. The other agent, using resources garnered from within the CIA itself as well as former employees of the FBI and the Department of Defense, made no fewer than three attempts to kill him. All the particulars of our investigation are included in the report. If you would be so kind as to hand these out Marshall..."

Dr. Wills handed me a stack of files. I stood up and began passing them out to the committee members. When I reached Mortenson and Bustamante I handed them their files and upped the amplitude of the guilt I was sending. Looking into his eyes I saw something there that caused an image to flash across my mind for an instant. It might have been the arrogance in him, or the feelings of superiority he harbored, but I finally realized why he looked so familiar.

Taking a seat behind Mr. Jones I leaned forward and whispered to him.

"Is Congressman Bustamante married?"

He turned to look at me, puzzlement written large across his face. "No, divorced. His wife was a Columbian refugee... damn, what was her name? Cruz. That was it. Josephina Cruz-Bustamante. Mean something to you?"

"Yeah, I think so. Our buddy up there is the father of the man who was making my sister's life a living hell. And the son had ties to the Columbian drug cartels."

Jones' face went hard. "That makes things rather interesting."

"Yeah, doesn't it?"

I sat back in my chair, and Mr. Jones turned back to face the committee.

"Doctor, this is all quite disturbing. You fail, however, to name the individuals you suspect of being behind this... abuse of authority is the best way I can think to describe it." said one of the junior congressmen.

"Congressman, there is a valid reason for not naming those two individuals, which I'll get to momentarily. I would first like to offer up a hypothetical situatition for the members of your committees to consider."

Mr. Jones leaned towards the Doctor and whispered something in his ear. Wills nodded his understanding.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let's assume for the moment that there are two highly placed members of the U.S. government with rather ambitious plans for their own advancement. What do they require first and foremost to advance those ambitions? Large amounts of money, whose source cannot be traced. How else could they circumvent our rather complicated campaign finance laws and restrictions? Where would they come up with this kind of money? The simplest answer is from outside the country. Let's assume further that one of these government insiders has connections to say... the Columbian drug cartels. Using their connections these individuals arrange for large amounts of drug money to be laundered thru various legal businesses while skimming a small percentage off the top as recompense for their protection."

I began to increase the sexual level of the emotional flow I was sending to the Congressman and the Senator, and at the same time I started to create forged rings of the emotions, hard and unbreakable. And to make it even more interesting, I linked them with one another. Using Lilly's suggestion for Anya and Mr. Jones, I created a third ring that connected their individual rings, forming a short chain. The third one I built out of a combination of superiority, arrogance and passion, feeding it with strands of their own emotions.

Congressman Bustamante began tugging at his tie, loosening it and the top button of his shirt. Senator Mortenson undid the top two buttons of her silk blouse, exposing a considerable amount of cleavage.

Dr. Wills continued speaking. "Now let us consider something rather unpleasant. These hypothetical members of the U.S. government are protecting the Columbian drug trade, allowing untold numbers of American citizens to become addicts and criminals. Protecting this source of income requires that they be able to monitor internal investigations, by which I mean the DEA, the FBI and the ATF. But since their source is outside the country they also have to be able to monitor and control the CIA as well."