Gabrielle glanced at Carlos during that lie.
He wanted to say, See, sometimes a small lie is better than a complicated truth. Instead, he walked out to the living room while she finished talking to her sister.
“Now that the drama is over, let’s get back to the mission.” Rae poured a mug of coffee from the carafe that had been delivered earlier. She must be pretty spent. Drinking anything other than her standard tea was a sign of the strain she was functioning under.
“Gabrielle’s just worried about her sister and she’s not trained to do this,” Carlos defended.
“She’s a risk to you and this mission.” Laptop open and typing, Rae sipped on the coffee, twisting her mouth at the taste.
“I’ll worry about both of those.” Carlos added that to the list of everything else, including not putting his team at risk.
When Gabrielle walked into the room, Carlos gave Rae a let’s-drop-it look the female operative considered briefly, then shrugged.
“Babette’s fine and I made sure she would not break any rules or disappear for the next month.”
From where he stood at the window, gazing down, Korbin asked, “What did you have to promise to get that?”
“I said I’d visit soon,” Gabrielle murmured, then glanced at Carlos, who couldn’t give her the assurance she wanted.
“Okay, I’ve got Gotthard on-screen,” Rae muttered, then told everyone in a clear voice, “Line up behind me if you want to talk to Gotthard.”
Korbin stayed at the window. Carlos and Gabrielle stepped behind Rae within the range of the mounted video cam. Gotthard’s face appeared on the monitor.
“Retter says security has been filing into Columbia since late last night. Someone from the U.S. is definitely meeting with the oil minister on neutral grounds to assure him our government is not behind the attacks on his life and possibly offer assistance in hunting down the assassins. We may at least have a date, if not a time frame for whatever is going down.”
“How?” Rae and Carlos asked together.
Gotthard said, “We picked up Gabrielle’s mail from the satellite box she used in Peachtree City.”
“What?” Gabrielle shot eye-daggers at Carlos.
“I didn’t do it,” Carlos said out of reflex, though he wasn’t the least surprised. BAD would miss nothing.
“Your people did,” she countered.
“Gabrielle,” Gotthard interrupted.
“What?” She glared at the monitor now.
“It’s protocol, and you of all people should understand,” Gotthard went on, not the least apologetic.
“Why?” She had her arms crossed.
“If we hadn’t picked up your mail, we wouldn’t have known that you got another card from Linette.”
Her face lost color. “Another one? What did it say?”
Carlos lifted an arm to put around Gabrielle, then dropped it back to his side. Not knowing her friend’s situation was killing her, but comforting her in front of team members would not help him when it came time to plead her case to Joe.
“Linette indicated that at least one of the teens is key to something that will happen by the end of this week, and the only place she’s heard mentioned in separate conversations is Venezuela, but she’s not sure that’s related. She’s worried about the teens. She doesn’t know what will happen or how this fits into the plan, but a clinic in Zurich is involved. She apologized for not having more information but hoped you would pass it along to someone who could help since she believes the Fratelli are focused on the United States.”
“Did she say anything else?” Gabrielle asked.
Carlos cringed at the hope in her voice.
Gotthard looked down, then back up. “Only that…well, at the end she said not to look for another card from her. It was too dangerous. She wouldn’t put you at risk of the Fratelli finding out she’d contacted you.”
“No more cards?” Gabrielle’s voice broke.
Screw it. Carlos slipped an arm around her waist and hugged her. He figured Gabrielle had put some stock into this ending up with her locating Linette.
No more postcards shot that possibility to pieces.
“I’m working on finding Linette,” Gotthard consoled.
“How?” Gabrielle asked, hope rising again in her voice.
“I’ve been sending out posts to community boards with a few key words thrown into my signature from your code.”
“Oh.” Gabrielle slumped. “I’ve tried for ten years, thinking she’d be online somewhere, and never got a hit.”
“Did you try Web sites you thought would interest her?” Gotthard spoke to Gabrielle with a calm understanding Carlos rarely saw. The big guy was usually more abrupt.
“Oui,” Gabrielle answered.
Gotthard’s eyes twinkled. “I’m not. And I have access to computers that can do fifty times the load your system could do. I have over three hundred signatures being sent to a wide cross section of community boards and blogs every six hours. My chances of getting a hit are much better, and I have programs that will catch it if she responds in code.”
Gabrielle didn’t appear sold on his plan. “But even in this era that is like finding one fish in the sea.”
“True, but it’s more than we had to start with.” Gotthard’s face returned to its usual gruff expression when he said, “The school has three different groups leaving today on trips, over sixty kids.”
“That’s what Babette was complaining about when she called,” Gabrielle interjected. “She said Amelia and some others were part of a peaceful international rally, so Amelia must be traveling with Joshua and Evelyn.”
Gotthard’s eyes flicked in Rae’s direction. “Joe wants Rae and Korbin to go to Zurich and see what they can find out once I give you the name of the clinic.”
“Got it.” Rae scratched notes on a piece of paper she’d produced. “If Friday is still our target date, what do we think is going on tomorrow?”
Gotthard answered, “Retter’s contacts have learned that the Fuentes compound just doubled its security. The staff is being prepared for a very important visitor, but they haven’t been told who yet. Joe and Retter think that must be where the meeting will be in Columbia, and probably this Friday.”
“Who do they think the U.S. is sending?” Rae tapped a finger against the desk, but Carlos could almost hear the gears in her mind turning with the puzzle.
“We’re, uh, working on that.” Not a muscle in Gotthard’s face revealed his thoughts.
Carlos caught his hesitation to share something and figured his reticence had to do with a non-BAD agent being present. “Would you go get my phone,” Carlos asked Gabrielle.
“Sure.” She gave him an odd glance, then backed away. The minute she walked into the bedroom, Carlos turned back to the computer screen, “Who do we think is going to South America?”
“Maybe someone in the president’s cabinet.”
Gabrielle hurried back to stand behind Rae and handed Carlos his phone. He took it, punched a couple numbers, then stuck it in his pocket as if he’d found what he was looking for and hadn’t been pretending.
“Rae filled me in on the busted trip to Bergamo yesterday,” Gotthard continued. “I’m searching for Linette’s parents, but based on what Gabrielle shared, I wouldn’t bet on finding them. There’s a woman listed as having the power of attorney to manage the household expenses from a local account that is funded from an untraceable Swiss account.”
“How long has that been going on?” Gabrielle asked.
Gotthard gave her a date from ten years ago.
“That was a week after I stopped by to ask them about Linette and they told me she was dead,” Gabrielle whispered with the shock of that news.
“I’m still working on it,” Gotthard said, reading something in front of him. “Joe wants to know if”-he glanced up-“Gabrielle still has electronic contact with her people in South America. Retter could use more local intel.”
Gabrielle stood upright, then turned to Carlos. “Reaching them by Internet is a problem, because I included a
