Read The Senator: A Blake Jordan Thriller Online
Authors: Ken Fite
The Senator: A Blake Jordan Thriller
The Senator
A Blake Jordan Thriller
Ken Fite
April 2016
Copyright © 2016 Ken Fite
All rights reserved worldwide.
Senator Jim Keller flipped up the collar to his white dress shirt and adjusted his signature blue tie. While looking in the mirror, he felt the presence of someone behind him. The senator turned around and found his wife Margaret smiling as she watched him getting ready from the doorway to their bedroom.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Keller said, and walked over to his wife and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Margaret reached up from where she was sitting, grabbed his tie, and fixed the crooked knot and pulled it tight.
“Are you feeling any better?”
“About the same,” she whispered, finding it difficult to put words together. “I’m sorry I can’t…”
“Don’t be sorry,” Keller said and knelt down so he could look his wife in the eyes. “I understand.”
“Mrs. Keller?” a woman called out from the hallway and quickly approached the couple. Nurse Cheryl, as Margaret Keller called her, had been providing around-the-clock care to the senator’s wife for over a year. When the senator learned that she had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, he told his wife that he would leave the senate so he could spend more time with her. He wrote a letter of resignation that very night.
But, Margaret was adamant that her husband not leave just because of her. The couple, who had been married for thirty-two years, rarely fought, but the afternoon that they arrived at their home in the Chicago suburbs, confused and worried about the doctor’s diagnosis, emotions couldn’t be held back.
The senator woke up early the next morning and couldn’t find the resignation letter – or his wife. He found Margaret in the kitchen who poured two cups of coffee and the couple sat down to talk. She explained that she had taken the letter and promised to give it back when she needed him at her side.
That was two years ago. When Nurse Cheryl arrived at the doorway to their bedroom, she offered a smile.
“Mrs. Keller, dinner is ready and I have the TV all set for you – we can watch together.” The senator and his wife embraced while he was still knelt down next to her wheelchair which Nurse Cheryl held onto. The wheelchair was new. A precaution. Margaret’s illness was progressing and her nurse thought it could help.
“You look beautiful, sweetie,” Keller said as he stood and grabbed his black sports jacket and smiled a gentle smile to his wife. She reached into the pocket of a robe that she had draped over a blouse and slowly extended her hand to her husband. It shook, slightly, and Keller steadied it with his left hand and took what she was offering him with his right. It was a fading Polaroid of Margaret from their first date.
“What’s this?” the senator asked, understanding what she had given him but not why she had done it.
“I’m sorry I can’t be there for you tonight. But, put that in your jacket. Left side. Closest to your heart.” Senator Keller’s eyes teared up and he cleared his throat as he placed the picture inside his jacket.
Nurse Cheryl pulled the wheelchair back. “Let’s go eat, Mrs. Keller,” who thought that was a fine idea.
Keller left the bedroom and headed to the front of the house after he heard a knock at the door. He greeted the man and said goodbye to Margaret and Nurse Cheryl. “We’ll be watching you on TV,” the nurse said and Keller nodded and smiled after kissing his wife on the forehead and telling her that he loved her.
“Thank you,” Margaret said to her nurse as soon as her husband left, showing her appreciation for helping her appear stronger than she really was. “I can’t remember where he’s going, please tell me again.”
Nurse Cheryl smiled. “To accept the nomination for President of the United States.”
Forty-five minutes before midnight, Victor Perez left his apartment and walked out onto the streets of Chicago, determined to change the course of history. He boarded the Red Line and took it south to Jackson. He then took the Blue Line to the Medical District and walked the rest of the way to work.
It was a cooler than usual in late August with the temperature was in the upper fifties. At midnight, this was not an area where you’d want to find yourself walking the streets of Chicago alone. There were cars that drove the streets slowly like they were casing one of the houses on Jackson or Adams.
It wasn’t much further after the Blue Line. He walked his usual route, taking West Van Buren to Damen, where he hung a right at Malcolm X College. It was only three blocks north to get to West Monroe, where he worked as a janitor on the overnight crew at the United Center five nights a week.
He headed to the side entrance of the United Center, where the Bulls and Blackhawks would be playing in another month or so. Right now, the arena was being used for concerts and conventions.
With a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, Victor Perez walked up and shook hands with some of the men who were scheduled to work that night.
He only had to break into the building once, his first night on the job. He had watched the crew for a week from a building across the street and noticed that every night just before midnight, the men would gather at the side entrance for a smoke before starting their overnight shifts.
It was that first night after the men took their last drags and headed inside to start work that Perez broke into the United Center. He had schematics of the building, so he knew every room on every level before he ever stepped inside. Breaking in was the easy part – he’d been trained for this kind of thing.
He found a janitor’s uniform in the mechanical room and got to work. It didn’t take long for him to fit right in and make friends with the overnight crew. They all thought he was just
the new guy
.
At midnight, Perez and the other crewmembers headed inside and each went their separate ways.
Perez went back to the executive suite. He knew that in less than twenty-four hours, the now empty suite would be swarming with federal agents looking for him, or at least who the crew thought he was.
He opened the door to the suite and moved a leather couch that he had positioned against a wall opposite to the entrance, where he was hiding a large grate made to look like an air return. Perez tugged on the grate and as it detached, it revealed a large hole in the wall, big enough for him to crawl through with ease.
Perez placed a duffle bag inside the space in the wall, crawled in, and replaced the grate.
As he made himself comfortable, he thought through his plan one more time. He thought about the van parked behind the building. He saw that it was still there when he walked up. He checked his duffle bag and confirmed he had the chloroform, the duct tape, and his Beretta with plenty of ammunition. Then he thought about his escape route. Perez imagined himself driving the exact path he planned to take once he left the building. Everything was in order. He was set. Perez laid down, closed his eyes, and rested while he had the chance. In exactly twenty hours from now, he would be the most wanted man in America.
My name is Blake Jordan, special agent in charge of the DDC Chicago field office. I arrived at the United Center around seven o’clock with my partner Jami Davis. She was new to the Department of Domestic Counterterrorism. An FBI reject – that’s why I hired her. While I appreciated what the FBI did, DDC held a special role in counterterrorism that no other government agency could fill. As a spinoff from the CIA, which we refer to as Base, DDC was tasked with focusing only on preventing terrorist events domestically.
While I was new to the job, the work was old-hat to me. And tonight’s operation was no exception.
We had sent an advance team to The Center earlier in the day to secure the backstage, entrance, and exit areas for the convention. Secret Service protection hadn’t been requested by any of the presidential candidates over the last year. Each one had their own security team which mainly consisted of a few bodyguards. Even now, this late into the campaign, the party’s nominee didn’t want Secret Service protection. Instead, he asked for DDC protection. Mainly because I knew the man.
Around seven thirty in the evening, Senator Jim Keller arrived. I met him at the side entrance to The Center along with Jami who I had assigned to work security on behalf DDC.
“Blake, how are you?” the Senator asked as he walked into the small, understated lobby of The Center.
“Senator, great to see you, sir,” I said as we shook hands and put an arm around each other.
“How are you holding up?”
“Just fine,” I answered. But the truth was, I wasn’t fine. I still hadn’t gotten over the loss of my wife, Maria, over the summer. Living through that experience was the hardest thing I’d ever been through.
“You’re lying,” the senator said, pointing a finger at my chest before putting a hand on my shoulder.
“This is agent Jami Davis.” I introduced the two and explained, “We’ll be your protection tonight.”
“Good. Just don’t keep me from the people. That’s why I didn’t want the damn Secret Service involved yet. After tonight, they can do whatever they want.” I glanced at Jami and nodded.
“Yes, sir.”
I had two other agents stationed at the side entrance where we were talking. We left them and made our way to the service elevator and took it up to the third level. As we exited, I showed the senator to the executive suite where he could relax for a few minutes. “Nice view,” the senator said, as he admired the panoramic view of all of the delegates from his party at the convention from his own private green room.
Senator Keller lived in Chicago, in the same neighborhood as my father. He had watched the first three days of the convention from his home for a couple of reasons. For starters, he didn’t want to deal with the security BS. He also didn’t want to steal the thunder from the up-and-comers in his party who were scheduled to speak. His running mate, Congressman Mike Billings, had been in this same suite getting ready thirty minutes earlier. He was now on the floor speaking and was set to introduce the senator at eight o’clock.
“Do you need anything?” Jami asked. Keller looked at both of us and shook his head.
“Just need you to leave me alone for a few minutes so I can go over my speech one more time.” I opened the door and motioned for Jami to follow me out.
“Agent Davis will escort you out when you’re ready. See you downstairs. We shook hands one more time.
“You’ll make a fine president,” I said.
Keller smiled and said, “Now, go.”
I headed back to the service elevator but Jami stopped me. “You didn’t tell me you knew him.”
“He’s a family friend. I’ve known Jim Keller for over twenty years. Met him when my family moved here a year into high school. He worked with my dad.”
“Is that why you’re here? You don’t think I can do my job so you have to babysit me?”
“Look, I know you’re new and want to prove yourself. I needed to be here. My call,” I said. We tested our earpieces and made sure we could hear each other. I left and headed down to the convention floor.
Jami stood outside the senator’s suite. She left him alone to gather his thoughts before speaking to a crowd of just over twenty thousand delegates and supporters who had made their way to Chicago from around the country. There was a window to the floor just outside the door and she could hear Congressman Billings’ booming but muffled voice as he gave his speech.
She could feel her heart beating faster. It always did in the final few moments of any mission. In fifteen minutes, Senator Jim Keller would receive his party’s nomination for President of the United States.