The Perfect Candidate: A Lance Priest / Preacher Thriller (No. 1) Read online

  His smile broadened and he continued. “You should expect to be here until approximately 3 p.m. today. But don’t worry, we have drinks, snacks and Uncle Sam is picking up your boxed lunch today. Please be sure to let us know if you have special dietary needs.”

  Smiles and gentle laughs ensued. “Before we bring you back, are there any questions?” No reply. “Okay, then I’ll rephrase it, who wants to break the ice and ask the first question?”

  The group exchanged glances, but no one was willing to step up. Lance broke the awkward silence, “Bathrooms?”

  “Very good, thank you Mr. Priest for asking a very important, albeit short one-word question. Restrooms, lavatories, the lue or el bano in most of the countries south of where we now stand are located just down this hall we are about to walk through.”

  “Thanks.” Lance let it go that Seibel knew his name already though they had never met. He knew better now.

  “No, thank you for asking sir. You receive no prize, but you have earned my gratitude and that of your mates here for breaking the proverbial ice that is silence.” Seibel moved back to the open door. “Now then, please gather up your bags, briefs and paraphernalia and follow me through this first doorway to the rest of your lives. If you dare that is.” His smile even broader.

  They all traipsed down a hallway, indeed passing bathrooms approximately halfway, and walked to the end of the hall where they entered a large conference room with a number of tables pushed together forming a large “U.” An open space on one side allowed someone to walk into the middle of the space. Lance expected Seibel to be in there shortly.

  A group of three individuals stood to one side of the room where a pot of coffee and a tray of breakfast goodies waited. The three of them split up to welcome the members of the arriving group. By the looks of them, they had done this gig dozens, maybe hundreds of times. In turn, the three made their way around to introduce themselves to the group.

  The first to approach Lance was a small woman who appeared to have a good bit of Native American Indian in her. Lance, living in Oklahoma for several years now, had spent a lot of time with people of Native American descent. The trail of tears brought their ancestors to Indian Territory, now the Sooner State. She extended a hand to him and smiled. “Good morning, I’m Isabel Russell with the Department of State.”

  “Good morning, I’m Lance Priest, department of state of denial.”

  She smiled and laughed at that, “Oh really. And how long have you been with them.”

  “Permanent assignment.”

  “I like that. Might have to see about a transfer there myself.” She squeezed his hand and released.

  “We accept all types. No real requirements that I know of, at least none based in reality.” Lance added.

  “Very interesting Mr. Priest. I look forward to getting to know you today.” She smiled wider.

  “You too, thanks for letting me come.” He returned the smile.

  “You’re very welcome.”

  And she moved on with a wink. She liked him. One down.

  Lance turned to face number two approaching. He was a black man in his mid-fifties. Lance glanced up and down and immediately knew the gentleman drove an older model foreign make; probably a BMW 528i. Maybe 1976 or 77; just old enough to be considered a classic.

  “Hi there. I’m Brad Renfro.”

  “Morning. Lance Priest.” He replied.

  “From Oklahoma, right?” Renfro asked.

  “Tulsa.” Lance nodded.

  “I was there maybe 15 years ago for a couple of days. Very pretty as I recall. Green Country.”

  “Right. I like it. Place has changed with the oil bust and all. But where are you from?”

  “All around I guess. Grew up on a bunch of military bases around the world. Dad was in the Army.” Renfro added.

  “So now you still get to travel round the world in the Foreign Service.”

  “Used to. I’m stuck in D.C. most of the time. I’d love to get back out there in the field doing embassy work, but they say I’m more valuable as a trainer.”

  “Very good. Can’t beat a good teacher.”

  “Don’t know if I’m any good or not.”

  “I’m sure you are. If they have you teaching others, that means they trust you with the future right?” Lance nodded.

  “I like that. Trust me with the future. Think I might find a way to use that.” Renfro patted Lance’s arm above the elbow and moved on to meet and greet the others. Number three approached him and did an even worse job lying than Renfro had.

  “Good morning Lance. I’m Pete Grisham.”

  Lance paused the playback in his head. From above, he looked down at Grisham. In particular, he looked at the man’s right side. He was sure there was no gun. Thank goodness, he hadn’t missed that detail. Grisham, or whatever his name is, had added the gun to his wardrobe sometime after this point. Looking at him from this vantage point, Lance could see there was a lot more going on with Grisham than meets the eye. He was serious.

  “Hi Pete,” he put emphasis on the name during the handshake. “I’m Lance Priest but I guess you know that already.”

  “Indeed I do. Been looking forward to meeting you. Excellent work on the written exam.”

  “Thanks. They didn’t send me a score just told me I passed and to show up here. Don’t know if I did good or not.”

  Grisham nodded. “You did very well. High marks; excellent writing skills. We don’t discuss particulars with candidates at this stage, but I think I’m safe in saying you nailed it.”

  “What do you do for the State Department?” Lance asked.

  “Personnel mainly. I recruit and train.”

  “Like Brad?” And that was all it took to confirm the lie. In the next 10th of a second, Grisham had to process the question and fabricate a response. Lance had seen it more often than not in his conversations on the car lot. It was in the eyes.

  “Yes, like Brad.” But there was no conviction. The response was a cover-up; a delay tactic before a more refined reply. “He and I cross paths quite a bit.”

  “I’ll bet.” Lance meant it. He didn’t know why, but he was sure of the truth behind Grisham’s lie.

  “Very nice to meet you. I’m looking forward to today.”

  “Me too. Thanks.”

  Grisham moved aside to allow Lance and the others to find their seats at the conjoined conference tables. Lance sat beside Sarah. She welcomed his presence with a nervous smile. He smiled back.

  Seibel, as if on command, walked into the center of the conference tables. But if it was possible, he was not the same man from minutes earlier. His shoulders, so broad moments ago, were slouched. His smile had given way to a furrowed brow and his suit even looked different. It looked oversized, like he had lost 40 pounds in five minutes. And the multiple gold rings and bracelet were gone. Only a wedding ring remained.

  Lance paused the playback and looked around the table to see if anyone else noticed. On the seven faces, he saw no signs of worry but did catch one smile that was anything but natural. It was Sarah and it was forced. He had missed this on Tuesday. She gave herself away with the look. She was in on this thing. He restarted Seibel’s performance.

  “Okay then,” Seibel started in. But instead of jovial, he was serene, weary. He looked beaten down. Lance had been stunned by the transformation at the time. Replaying it now in his head, he was simply impressed. “Again, thank you all for coming. We have a very full day ahead of us.” Peter Falk. That was it. Seibel was doing the tired investigator, Peter Falk-style. He even had a different accent than he did in the lobby. The only thing missing was the trench coat. Damn. He was good, really good.

  “We will begin in a moment with the group exercise. I hope you all met your prompters for today’s session. I will have them each introduce themselves to you officially in a moment. I'll be stepping in and out throughout the day and participating in various capacities during your sessions. So don’t be surprised if I jump in and ask
you a question on the fly.”

  With that, Seibel asked each of the prompters to reintroduce themselves. Isabel was first followed by Pete and Brad. When they were done, Isabel asked everyone to introduce themselves to the group. As each individual gave a short introduction, Lance took his usual mental notes. He also had the hair on the back of his neck prick up several times as people lied. He kept his face in check with a stone smile that didn’t change for the five minutes it took to work around the table.

  When it was his turn, he looked everyone in the eye and gave the standard name, rank and serial number. He purposefully turned up the Oklahoma accent. Couldn’t be positive if he caught a smile flash across Seibel’s face, but he was pretty sure.

  After the introductions, they jumped into the group exercise involving several scenarios presented for discussion and group member interaction. The scenarios dealt with situations embassy and state department personnel may be faced with during their time overseas. They included plane crashes, crimes, missing persons, government coups and more. The prompters silently watched the action after setting up the scenarios and only spoke when things got really off track.

  Lance kept score in his head throughout and contributed a fair share of insight and humor. The session lasted an hour and a half.

  Chapter 12

  After a short bathroom break, the eight individuals were broken into two groups of three and one group of two. Lance was paired with Sarah and Carl, the 32-year-old gold-rimmed glasses guy from Albuquerque. Grisham escorted the group down the hall to a small conference room.

  Waiting in the room was the liar Marsco. Lance wasn’t supposed to recognize him. His hair was lighter, almost blond and he had a mustache and tortoise shell glasses. Lance paused the playback and looked at Marsco again from above. It was a lousy disguise. Too easy.

  “Hello, I’m Drew Marsco,” Stuart Braden lied.

  Without skipping a beat and with nothing but a boyish smile, Lance shook his hand and shot right back. “Hi, I’m Lance Priest.”

  “Nice to meet you Lance.” Braden then turned to Sarah and Carl to introduce himself. Lance gave Braden a complete look over. The suit was expensive and looked radically different than the jeans and flannel shirt he wore during the exam in Tulsa. Lance turned away to take in the room. Grisham was right behind him with a smile.

  “Okay guys. We’ve been joined for this portion by Drew. He is with the Department of State and is a veteran of many of these sessions.

  “Too many.” Marsco/Braden joked. “I should probably get a real job.”

  “And miss all this?” Grisham replied.

  The group took a seat around the table. Grisham stayed on his feet and walked around the room as he read a scenario he pulled from an envelope. After reading the document, he smiled at the three candidates. “You’ve got a good one guys. I’m to read you this scenario and then let you three work out an initial response. Then Drew and I will prompt you with a series of questions to evaluate your reasoning, understanding, response and strategy.”

  He stepped back over to the door and closed it. “For this session, you are all U.S. embassy staff in Harare, Zimbabwe. You have just received word via telephone that a tour bus loaded with international passengers, including 14 U.S. citizens, has been involved in an accident on the outskirts of town. The area is particularly impoverished with no infrastructure or government resources. The bus collided with a vehicle carrying a family with three small children. All passengers in the car were killed. Several of the tourists have been injured but more importantly, and certainly more dangerous, a crowd, or better yet a mob, has surrounded the bus and is attempting to remove passengers to gain a certain amount of monetary retribution for the loss of the local family.”

  Grisham moved to the other side of the room. “Local authorities are slow to arrive on scene. By the time they show up, several of the passengers, including US citizens, have been dragged from the bus and taken away into the surrounding village. This information has just been phoned into the embassy by a local resident whose wife works in the embassy as a housekeeper.”

  “There you have it. You now have your scenario and you are to discuss the situation and develop a response plan for 30 minutes. At that time Mr. Marsco and I will begin asking you questions.”

  Lance, Sarah and Carl looked at each other for a few moments and then each turned to their notes just jotted down. Sarah had the best notes; Carl’s covered three quarters of a page and Lance had a few bullet points.

  “Can we have that sheet?” Sarah asked Grisham.

  “Afraid not. You are to respond to this situation as if the brief phone call is your sole source at this point,” Grisham answered and pulled back a chair across from Braden to watch the action around the table.

  Preacher jumped right in with what he knew and what he saw as the best course of action. “First of all, we know that we don’t know much.”

  “Right,” Carl added.

  “And we probably won’t have any more information for awhile so we need to confirm what we do know.” He added.

  Sarah recited the facts as she had recorded them. It took about two minutes. Lance became acutely aware of the time crunch. Only 27 minutes left.

  “Okay, first things first, who do we need to call and bring into this?” He asked.

  Carl and Sarah looked at one another and back to Preacher. In a matter of minutes, he had become the leader of the small group as the other two’s brief exchange transferred leadership to the youngest candidate at the table. “I imagine there is a shitload of protocol we have been trained to put in place in this type of event.” Lance looked to Grisham and Braden. No reply. They were playing their roles of unobtrusive observers. “But since we don’t have all that background, let’s quickly write a list of who we should call.”

  “The embassy director first.” Sarah followed his lead.

  “And then we would call back to Washington right?” Carl tacked on.

  “Don’t know if that would be our job or not,” Preacher surmised. “Who would we call outside the embassy? Where would we start?” The question was to no one in particular and with it Lance’s wheels started turning. He stood up. The stratified layers of the situation started coming into focus. In the next two minutes, he dictated calls to local government officials, law enforcement, the tour bus company and most importantly, to the embassy security detail to arrange for protection for one of them to be taken to the scene. His research of embassy operations came into play.

  He continued, “It would probably be best for the Marines in the embassy to be accompanied by local police or army in a little convoy out to the accident site. We should get eyeballs at the scene as quickly as possible.”

  In the next seven minutes, the three of them decided on roles, responsibilities, a communication plan and timeline to follow. Preacher peppered the other two with questions throughout, but half of them were really rhetorical in nature as he processed information out loud.

  Grisham stood up at 29 minutes and announced one minute remaining to get notes and assignments in order. Sarah feverishly wrapped up a ninth page of notes. Carl nailed down his roles and Lance returned to his initial bullet points to add three more on his single page.

  “Okay, time.” Grisham stepped back from the table and looked to Braden. “Drew, please go right ahead.”

  For the next hour, Grisham and Marsco/Braden asked the group dozens of questions. The quick-hit nature was purposeful in that its aim was to shoot holes and enlighten dark spots. On several occasions, the two prompters exchanged looks that confirmed what Braden knew already and Grisham had read in a file. This Priest kid had it. The rapid-fire approach he had employed with the others had sewn up loose ends that usually dangled for others in this drill. The plan he had led the others in developing covered nearly every angle.

  “What about search and rescue once onsite at the accident?” Grisham asked no one in particular.

  “We would be limited to relying on local police and m
ilitary,” Lance responded. “Our Marines could show up and use some force, but five or six of them against a crowd in the hundreds and then hundreds of houses the tourists could have been taken to. No good. We would have to rely on local cops who knew the area.”

  Sarah and Carl smiled at his response. He made them look good.

  “Very good,” Grisham concluded the session by standing. “Very good work by all of you. We are now finished with the small group portion of your day. You are going to head back down the hall and join the others for lunch and then it will be individual exams to wrap up the day. We will join you down there shortly.”

  The three candidates stood up from the table and were surprised to see Seibel leaning against the wall by the door. He had silently entered the room at some point and neither Grisham nor Marsco/Braden had given any indication he had joined them. Lance watched from above as Seibel moved, performed.

  “Very impressive, very solid analysis,” Seibel said to everyone and no one in particular. “I especially enjoyed the decision making on several levels in a time crunch. I could see this scenario unfolding pretty much as discussed here.” He stepped from the wall and moved to the other side of the room. The way Grisham and Marsco remained motionless told the other three that their session was actually not quite over. Seibel turned back to the group and his smile was replaced with something of a sneer; not menacing, but certainly a changed point of view from a few seconds earlier.

  “I wonder though,” he let it trail off as he looked from each of the three and settled on Lance. “What if you didn’t have time to wait for local authorities? What if you had arrived on the scene and it was obvious which home a hostage had been taken to because of the crowd gathered around it? And that property was just across the street from the accident, only seconds to get there for the Marines. What would you do if you were giving the orders?”

  Lance was probably expected to think about this for a few seconds, to contemplate options and reply with something less than an assured outcome. But he didn’t take a second to reply.