Tony and Joe’s fish restaurant was in Washington Harbour, on the Potomac at 31st Street, in Georgetown. Formerly the site of a cement factory, it had been developed into a riverfront park in 1986 by Arthur Cotton Moore, who’d created the mixed-use development of shops, restaurants, offices, and apartments. Architectural critics termed the complex hideous; Washingtonians and tourists ignored any architectural shortcomings and enjoyed the open feeling, the boardwalk promenade, the computer-controlled central fountain, and whimsical sculptures scattered throughout the area.
Stripling arrived early and took an outdoor table with an umbrella, on the river side of the terrace. He’d just been served an iced tea when Jimmy Gale, wearing an open-necked white shirt and carrying a blue denim sport jacket over his arm, skirted other tables and took a chair across from the former CIA operative.
“Maybe we should eat inside,” Gale said. His face was blotchy; a film of perspiration testified to the heat.
Stripling smiled and took in the terrace with open hands. “It’s lovely out here, Jimmy. Liable to catch a cold in the AC.”
Gale, who was in his mid-forties, pulled a damp handkerchief from a pants pocket and dabbed at his face. “I don’t have much time,” he said. “We’re busy. Very busy.”
Stripling waved a waitress over. Gale had an iced tea, too. Both men ordered shrimp Caesar salads.
“What do you want, Tim?” Gale asked, downing a glass of ice water. “As I said, we’re very busy. I shouldn’t even be here.”
“The Widmer hearings,” Stripling said, not looking at him.
“What about them?”
Stripling now faced him. “It’s like Los Alamos. What’s all the secrecy?”
“I don’t know. It’s Senator Widmer’s hearings. Ask him.”
“Your boss is on the committee, Jimmy. Of course you know what’s going on.”
Gale looked about nervously. His tea came and he eagerly drank it. Stripling sat back, glass in hand, and took a certain quiet pleasure in Gale’s overt anxiety. Exerting power over others was something he’d come to enjoy after years of creating the conditions under which such power was possible. There had been so many Jimmy Gales, each having made a single human misstep in their lives, an isolated indiscretion, a drunken moment, a loss of control over their passions, a mistake in judgment experienced by every person at some point in their lives. The difference was that these very human beings worked for the U.S. government.
Stripling had first learned of Gale eight years ago, while still on the payroll of the agency. His success at identifying and turning government employees into informants for the agency had been beyond expectations. The stable of men and women he’d developed, willing to pass on information if asked, had grown to more than a hundred. Of course, there were those who left government service, and by extension lost their usefulness to Stripling and the CIA. But there were always others to take their place. Amazing, Stripling often thought, how vulnerable people were to having their private lives exposed, how willing they were to risk their professional and personal reputations in the pursuit of a vice or secret pleasure.
He’d found Washington ’s brothels, call girls, and escort services to be a particularly rich source of recruits. Married men who frequented such services were easy targets, although Stripling was judicious in his selection of which ones to pursue. If he’d elected to enlist every married man who visited one of the prostitutes on his payroll-some of whom agreed to install a tiny camera in the bedroom in return for easier money than plying their usual trade-the stable would have been too large and unwieldy to control.
Prostitutes providing other than conventional sexual experiences had been especially good to Stripling over the course of his career. That certainly was the case with Jimmy Gale. Married and with three children, Gale had come from Colorado to Washington with his family a dozen years ago to work for the senator from Colorado, and had quickly established himself as one of the most respected staffers on the Hill, a man fiercely loyal to his boss and mentor and someone whose word could be trusted. His reputation in his community of Rockville, Maryland, was equally positive. Gale was active in civic affairs, Little League, his church, his kids’ schools, and the local Republican club.
He was also a man who’d questioned his sexuality since he was a teenager. He’d kept that question under wraps well into his adult years, through his marriage and the birth of his children, submerged, stifled, but always there below the surface.
One night, after a party at a restaurant popular with Senate and House staffers, and after he’d consumed more alcohol than he was accustomed to, he dragged out a number he’d been given for a Capitol Hill brothel that offered male prostitutes. He didn’t remember much about the experience, whether it had been pleasurable or not or whether it had validated his questions about his true sexual orientation. All he knew was that it had been wrong to seek sexual gratification outside his marriage. He tore up the phone number and put the event behind him, to be forgotten and never repeated.
Until he was contacted by one Timothy Stripling, who made it known that he knew about the visit to the male whorehouse, and who thought Gale would be willing, even anxious, to keep it between them in exchange for occasionally passing along information from the Hill. “After all,” Stripling had said, returning the black-and-white photos of Gale at the brothel to their envelope, “I’m not asking for you to divulge state secrets, Jimmy. It’s all in the interest of national security. Look at it this way; you’ll be doing a service to your country and adding to your bank account. What could be better?”
Gale looked at Stripling across the table and felt what he always did when in Stripling’s company. He hated this man who’d intruded into his personal life and who’d used a single, solitary incident to blackmail him into submission.
Although few had expressed such feelings to Stripling over the years, he was well aware that those emotions existed. He waited until the waitress had delivered their salads, slowly buttered a roll, leaned his elbows on the table, and said, “Now, Jimmy, let’s start over. The Widmer hearings. I know that you know what they’re all about.” He took a forkful of shrimp. “Let’s eat while we talk. While you talk. Shrimp shouldn’t sit out in this heat.”