her computer screen. She had been assigned a cubicle in DO territory on the fourth floor, and a computer terminal with a designator that allowed her access to a broad range of files in the CIA’s vast database. She’d reported to a somewhat disinterested Tom Moore that she was making some progress, but that it might take longer than she thought to find her father. Background noise, her father called it. Like soft music to lull someone asleep while you did the real work.
This afternoon she had the Company’s travel section book her an evening flight for the next day to Paris under her Elizabeth Swanson identity. It gave her another twenty-four hours plus to finish up here in Washington. Meanwhile, on the way back to her apartment, she stopped at a pay phone and telephoned a travel agency booking a late shuttle flight to New York’s Kennedy Airport, where she would stay at the Airport Hilton, and take the Air France Concorde to Paris under her own name, but using her mother’s credit card. The simple subterfuge would give her an evening and a full day in Paris before she was missed. Hopefully it would be enough time to find her father.
She packed a bag which she locked in her trunk, and came back out to Langley. No one at the gate or upstairs in Operations thought anything of it. She was McGarvey’s kid on a special assignment for Ryan. She had a lot to prove so she was doing her homework after school.
Jacqueline Belleau’s photograph and brief file, marked confidential, were in the French section of identified SDECE agents. She was forty, born in Nice, educated at the Sorbonne in languages and modern political history, and was recruited by the SDECE ten years ago. She’d started her career in the secret service just as Elizabeth had, as a translator. She’d spent two years working from the French delegation at the United Nations in New York. No mention was made of her specific assignment, but she was recalled to France after her lover, who worked for the Canadian delegation, committed suicide by flinging himself into the East River one early winter evening. The young man was a nephew of the Canadian Prime Minister, who was pragmatic enough to understand that such things happen. Nevertheless everyone seemed to agree that it would be for the best if Mademoiselle Belleau returned to her side of the Atlantic without delay. Her continued presence was deemed too embarrassing for the Canadians.
The photograph was an official one, possibly her UN identification picture, and she looked stern. Nevertheless in-Elizabeth’s estimation she was beautiful. Just the kind of woman her father was attracted to.
Elizabeth smiled sadly. Her mother, Dominique Kilbourne, and this French woman could have been cut from the same cloth. Slender, narrow pretty faces, high cheekbones, expressive eyes. They all had a sensuousness to them that reminded Elizabeth of the photographs she’d seen of her grandmother, who’d been a beauty in her day. It gave Elizabeth another understanding of her father, and her heart ached a little for what could have been. Most of her life she’d dreamed that someday her mother and father would somehow get back together. Even now, she found she wished for such an impossible reunion. “Too much water under the bridge,” her father would say. She could hear his voice.
The file gave Mademoiselle Belleau’s address on the Avenue Felix Faure in the 15th Arrondissement, on the opposite side of Paris from her father’s apartment off the Rue La Fayette in the 19th.
Elizabeth thought about taking a printout with her, but decided against it. In the unlikely event that French customs searched her bags, it wouldn’t go for her to be carrying the dossier of a French secret intelligence officer. Too many questions would be asked, especially by Ryan and Moore. Specifically, why hadn’t she been traveling under her Elizabeth Swanson identity.
She canceled the file, backed out of the program, then shut down her terminal, and sat back in her chair. Her eyes burned from a lack of sleep and from staring at computer screens. Although she went out on dates she’d avoided becoming involved with anyone specific. A mistake? she wondered. Speaking to Dominique Kilbourne and seeing Jacqueline Belleau’s photograph brought her a sharp image of her father being caressed by them. She wished she had someone to caress. Someone she could share her inner fears with. Someone to love. Someone in her bed.
Elizabeth shut off the lights and went downstairs to the nearly deserted cafeteria for a cup of coffee and a smoke. Toivich was seated alone in a corner reading a newspaper. Elizabeth brought her coffee over to him.
“Mind some company, Mr. B?” she asked.
Toivich looked up. “My little devochka, it’s late.”
Elizabeth sat down across the table from him. “I wanted to apologize for not taking the time to let you know that I was transferred to Operations.”
“I was told. But I don’t think Mr. Ryan would approve of you sneaking back down to your old console for a little night work.”
“I have my own terminal in DO now.”
Toivich clucked. “I’m not talking about tonight. You know what I mean. But I can’t blame you. A daughter has the right to know about her father, especially when she’s been assigned to find him.”
Elizabeth looked sharply at him. “What have you heard?”
“Enough to know that you should take great care that you don’t try to be a wild west cowboy like your father.”
Elizabeth started to protest, but Toivich held her off. “Your father was the very best. Still is, I suspect. If he’s gone to ground for some reason there will be a great many people interested in him, and therefore you. Some of them very bad people you’ve not been trained to deal with.” Toivich looked into her eyes. “Genetics is important, but so is education and experience. And luck.”
“Why does Howard Ryan hate my father so badly?”
“Mr. Ryan is the quintessential corporate man. Your father on the other hand is a maverick. Each time he pulls off one of his coups, it makes Mr. Ryan look like the fool he is.”
“He’s jealous of my father, is that it?”
Toivich shrugged. “That and a little fear, perhaps. Ryan wants to become DCI, and he has an excellent chance of taking over when the general steps down. And maybe Ryan would be the right man for the job. It would keep Congress off our backs because Ryan is also the consummate politician. But so long as your father continues to do what he does best, he’s a thorn in Ryan’s side. He’s become Mr. Ryan’s cause celebre.”
“I see.”
“By sending you he means to flush your father out of hiding, which will happen because your father will drop everything to protect you from harm’s way.”
“But I’m not in any danger. My father is.”
“That’s just the point, Elizabeth, you probably are in grave danger. Especially if you start playing by your own rules. If you cut your support system before you reach your father, nobody might get to you in time if you get into trouble.”
Elizabeth said nothing. She’d not lost her determination to find her father and warn him, but she was frightened now.
“Think about it.”
“Am I being followed, Mr. B?”
Toivich shrugged again. “Probably.”
“What if I don’t want to be followed?”
“If you don’t do anything that you’re not supposed to do, it won’t matter.”
“I need to get to Dulles by eleven, and I don’t want anybody to know about it.”
“You just told me.”
Elizabeth flashed him a smile.
Toivich shook his head. “Where are you parked?”
“Out back in D.”
“They’ll be waiting at that door. I was just about to leave. We’ll go out the front and I’ll drive you around to your car. But it won’t take them long to figure that out, so you won’t have much of a head start.”
“It’s all I need. Thanks, Mr. B.”
Moscow
“How did it go?” Arkady Astimovich asked on the way over to the Leningrad Station.
“I think I’m going to be a rich man,” McGarvey replied. He sat in the front seat with the cabby. “But I’m going to need some help.”
“I told you that I’ve got some goddamned good connections in this city.”
