Read Online High Treason by John Gilstrap - Free Book Online Page B

Jonathan said.
    “Can we grow up, please?” Venice chided. “Those years marked the last desperate breaths of the Soviet Union. Her baby was a natural-born citizen, and her ticket to stay in the US of A. There’s not a lot else on the record until she met Tony Darmond on a blind date in 2002. Apparently, it was a whirlwind romance, and yada, yada, yada, she’s FLOTUS.”
    Jonathan recognized the acronym for First Lady of the United States. Something in the way Venice said the yada, yada, yada rang a warning bell. “You’ve got a suspicion,” he said.
    “Not a suspicion, really. Okay, yes, a suspicion. It was hard to come to the United States back in the eighties. You had to be somebody over there, but when I search her family name, I don’t really get much. She held menial jobs, but never really made an impact anywhere. Here’s a woman who sleeps with the most powerful man in the world, and all we’ve got on a major chunk of her life is generalities. That makes me suspicious.”
    “Be less mysterious,” Jonathan said. “Say what’s on your mind.”
    “Really, that’s it. I don’t have a larger theory. It just seems incongruous to me that the First Lady would go so . . . unexamined.”
    “Well, her husband does belong to the news media’s favorite political party,” Boxers said. In the Big Guy’s mind, being a member of the media put you very close to being an enemy of the state.
    “But what about the bloggers?” Venice pressed. “And the networks of the opposition? Nobody’s given this chick a hard look.”
    Jonathan grinned. “But I sense that someone’s about to.”
    “I’ve tried,” Venice said. “I mean, I’ve really tried. She sort of disappears.” She drilled Jonathan with her eyes. “Remind you of anyone you know?”
    Because of his covert work, Jonathan and Boxers had both disappeared off the grid a long time ago. Jonathan laughed. “What, you think she was an operator?”
    “I don’t know what I think. I really mean that. But everybody leaves a footprint. Emigrés leave a big footprint. Mrs. Darmond, not so much. Just seems odd to me. I don’t know if she’s a Special Forces operator or part of witness protection, but it seems very, very weird to me.”
    Jonathan thought about that. These were the days of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. CNN reported on zits that appeared on celebrities’ noses. First Ladies should have complete pasts. “Are you telling me that she’s invisible for those years between having her kid and marrying the future president?”
    “Essentially, yes. I can’t even find a driver’s license application.”
    “How about tax returns?” Boxers asked.
    “Yes. There’s a tax return for every year. Not surprisingly, I suppose, they show a geometric growth in charitable contributions after she met Darmond.”
    “Feeding the poor through pure ambition,” Boxers said. “A noble and long-standing American tradition.”
    Jonathan smiled. No one did cynicism better than Big Guy.
    Venice continued, “I even looked for good works. Maybe she worked for a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter. There’s nothing.”
    Jonathan weighed the meaning in his mind, forcing himself to assume the worst, if only because years of experience had shown him that the worst was the norm. When people disappeared from view, it was either by their own choice, or by the choice of others. In Jonathan’s case, he was a cipher in official records because of the good—and occasionally bad—works he’d performed in service to Uncle Sam. Others disappeared because of testimony they’d provided for the US attorney, and still others—think the Unabomber—disappeared because they wanted to be anonymous. Nobody— nobody —disappeared accidentally.
    “Plus, there’s one other big thing that bothers me. The first three digits of her Social Security number are one two eight. That’s a New York series.”
    Jonathan leaned closer. “And?”
    “There’s no record of Mrs. Darmond