“Then why are all those pictures of Monihan plastered all over your bedroom?”
“They’re in my bedroom because it was the largest blank wall in my house to put them where I could see them all. I have the pictures in the first place because I’ve been investigating the attack against him in Chicago last October. Under official orders to do so, I might add.”
“Is that so? Care to share any details of this investigation?” the guy asked. Damned if he didn’t sound genuinely surprised.
“Obviously my superiors deemed that you don’t have the security clearances to hear the details of my work, or else you’d already know the details. Given that, I’m certainly not going to tell you what I’m working on.”
The guy stared at her, frustrated.
She sighed. “Look. I don’t know who put you on this assignment. But you’ve been given a bum steer. I’m no more a stalker than you are. Somebody’s got it in for me and is using you and your partner as patsies to harass me. Unless you guys have warrants and hard evidence to back you up, I’m not talking to anyone. And this is turning into a big waste of your time and mine. So, are you going to charge me with something or not?”
The guy shrugged. “That’s above my pay grade to decide.”
“Tell you what. You let me make a phone call and I’ll see if I can bring this Mexican standoff to an end.” She held her breath, praying the guy would take the offer.
“Who are you going to call?” he asked suspiciously.
She thought fast. Who had the clout to call these guys’ bluffs and spring her out of here fast? It had to be somebody who wasn’t in her chain of command. Somebody who wasn’t trying to sabotage her career. The perfect person came to mind. “I’m going to call my grandfather.”
“He some kind of lawyer or something?”
She managed to keep a straight face. “Yeah. Or something.”
The guy left the room. And came back in a minute later with a telephone in his hand. He plugged it into the wall socket and set it on the table in front of her. He pointedly did not leave the room. Whatever.
She dialed the Pentagon operator. “Would you mind ringing up Joseph Lockworth for me? That’s right. The former director of the CIA. You may need to patch the call through the operator at Langley. Tell him his granddaughter, Diana, urgently needs to speak with him.”
While the operator put the call through, her poor interrogator stared, slack jawed.
She put her hand over the receiver and said to him sympathetically, “I’m sorry, man. Like I said. Somebody’s using you to screw with my career. You’ve been caught in the middle of some political maneuver designed to mess with me. I just hope the fallout from this doesn’t take you down with it.”
While dismay blossomed on the guy’s face, a deep, familiar voice came on the line. “Diana! How are you, kiddo?”
“Hiya, Gramps. Actually I’ve been better. Something weird is going on. Army CID has picked me up and is detaining me. They’re making wild accusations about me stalking Gabe Monihan. Is there any chance you could look into this and get me out of here? They’ve got me locked up in the basement of the Pentagon.”
Her grandfather asked drolly, “Are you stalking Monihan?”
She burst out laughing. “Not hardly.”
“Glad to hear it, pumpkin. Put me on the line with whoever’s breathing over your shoulder. I assume they’ve got someone listening in to whatever you say?”
“Of course. Here he is.” She thrust the telephone receiver into the surprised hand of her interrogator. She watched in high amusement as the guy introduced himself as Captain Hammersmith and stammered out a series of names and Criminal Investigation Detachments. When he’d worked his way up the chain of command to four-star generals, he finally stopped speaking. A short pause and then a crisp, “Yes, sir.”
The guy hung up the phone. “Your grandfather asked me to tell you he’s sending a car and driver around front to pick you up. He said that by the time his driver can get here, he’ll have you ‘sprung from the pokey.’”
She sighed in immense relief.
“Uh, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make a couple calls to my superiors.”
“To warn them about the shit that’s about to roll downhill and land on their unsuspecting heads?” she asked helpfully.
“Yeah. Something like that.”
She grinned openly as the guy hastily exited the room.
True to his word, her grandfather had her out of there in under fifteen minutes. In fact, it was an impressive display of string pulling. But she wasn’t going to stick around long enough to rub it in. Gabe’s would-be killers were still out there, somewhere.
With a last admonishment to stay the hell away from Gabe Monihan, her two interrogators left her standing alone on the steps of the Pentagon. Dang, it was cold today! She pulled her leather duster more tightly around herself, huddling into its not-quite-warm-enough folds.
Before long, a black luxury sedan pulled up and a driver in a chauffeur’s uniform stepped out. “Miss Lockworth?” he asked.
She didn’t recognize the guy. Not her grandfather’s usual driver. But then, maybe the CIA had assigned Jens to a real job in the agency. She gave him grief about his plush assignment every time she saw him.
She stepped forward, smiling. “That’s me. I’m Diana Lockworth.” She held out a friendly hand. The driver looked surprised, but took the offered handshake. “Darryl,” he mumbled.
“Hi, Darryl. Let’s blow this Popsicle stand, shall we? I need to get downtown. Down near the Mall and the parade route for the inauguration,” she said, referring to the long grassy section of the city that stretched from the Lincoln Memorial all the way to the Capitol Building.
“Coming right up, ma’am,” he replied. He held the door for her as she climbed in and shut it firmly behind her. As he pulled away from the curb he asked, “Would you like some music, ma’am?”
“No thanks,” she replied. “I need to do a little thinking.”
The driver nodded silently. She was surprised when a blacked-out privacy glass came up out of the back of the front seat, closing her off from any further conversation with Darryl. Gramps must have a new car to go along with the new driver.
As they headed toward downtown Washington, D.C., she had no specific destination in mind. She just knew she had to head down to where Gabe was going to be in a few hours. For that’s surely where the Q-group would be, as well.
She replayed the interrogation by the Army Intelligence officers in her head. Who was the informant? Had the two intelligence officers revealed anything to her, said anything, that would give her a clue as to who’d set her up like that?
Was there a chance the incident was connected in some way to the Q-group and its assassination attempt on Gabe? The idea was ridiculous. Except the timing of it was just so blasted suspicious.
Who could be working against her like this? Or maybe the question was better stated, Who inside the government was working against Gabe Monihan like this? An image of a high, sloping forehead under black-and- silver hair and piercing, furious eyes popped into her head. Was it possible? Had Thomas Wolfe set her up? She wouldn’t put it past the man. He’d struck her as having nerves of ice and steel. And she had no doubt he was capable of arranging her arrest, or at least detention.
Of course, Wolfe undoubtedly hadn’t done the dirty work himself. He’d probably had a flunkie call CID and make the accusations against her. She could probably track down the phone records of the call and find out exactly who’d made the call. Where was Oracle when a girl really needed it?
She might not have Oracle here, but she could certainly try to think like Oracle. Okay. Her dislike of Wolfe aside, who else inside the government might have a reason to stop her from foiling an assassination attempt on Gabe? For whoever that person was, she’d lay down good money that he was behind, or at least involved in, the upcoming assassination attempt. Of course, the very idea of an assassination attempt from inside the government was outrageous. But that was her job. To imagine the outrageous and then plan for it.
Any person out to kill Gabe would have to be very high up in the government to benefit from Gabe’s death. They’d need to have passionate opinions about certain foreign policies that lay in direct opposition to Gabe’s. They’d have to have access to the intelligence community. How else would an old CIA scenario have turned up with a bunch of terrorists, and how else could Army Intel have been sicced on her so quickly?
She ticked off the list of requirements for the ringleader of any plot to kill Gabe. High-level government official.
