He seemed shocked by the offer. “Yes.”
She excused the two guards, tapped in a number, handed Donnie her cell.
He waited for an answer, then said anxiously, “Hello? Ardis?”
Cassandra watched him closely. Getting the electronic voiceprint earlier in the week from his wife hadn’t been difficult. It simply meant stopping by their house to ask for directions and then recording Ardis’s reply and the short conversation that followed. With some of the software these days, you don’t need much audio at all to make a near-perfect match. To pull off the overlay, after you have the sample you just speak into a microphone hooked up to the computer, and the program does the rest.
However, there were always glitches in these types of operations, always “Is Lizzie there?” Donnie said into the phone. “Is she okay?”
Hmm… Good. Millicent Alman, one of the three people who’d met with Alexei Chekov in the basement of the Schoenberg Inn, was making it work.
“She’s okay.” Cassandra ran through the words in her mind, as if she herself were part of the conversation. “She’s right here, but she’s sleeping. They have guns. Oh, Donnie, please! Do what they say. They threatened to hurt Lizzie!”
“You’re going to be okay,” Donnie said, as if on cue. “Don’t worry.”
Cassandra had been careful to brief Millicent on what to say and what not to say. “If he tries to ask you anything personal, perhaps about where you met or went on your honeymoon, or if he mentions a specific name, location, secret item, don’t answer him. Stick to the threats you’re under: tell him they’re watching you. That they know everything. That they’re listening to every word. End by pleading for his help.”
Her operative had nodded. “I’ve done this before. I’ll be all right.”
After a few more moments of conversation, Cassandra took the phone from Donnie.
The look on his face made it clear that Millicent really did know what she was doing-he appeared convinced that he’d been speaking with his wife.
Now he looked at Cassandra. “And when this is over, you’ll let them go? Let us all go?”
Though she didn’t like to lie there were bigger things at stake here than her pointless sensibilities. She reassured him that he and his family would be fine.
“Okay,” he said at last.
She gestured toward the keyboard. “How long?”
“Two of the authorization codes won’t even be online until the sub leaves Bahrain tomorrow afternoon.” That made her think of another lie she’d told this man. She’d convinced him-as well as her Eco-Tech team-that they were going to take the nuclear weapons that were aboard an Ohio Class submarine offline to send a message to the world about the importance of nuclear disarmament.
However, in truth, that wasn’t quite the plan.
“And so,” she said, “give me a timeline.”
He glanced at the computer screen. “I’ll need several hours to hash the encryption and get past the authentication protocols, but I’ll need data from the station.”
“You’ll have it.”
“How?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll have it. You have a simple job: monitor the frequencies, access the deactivation codes, send the signal. And if we don’t get what we need, Ardis and Lizzie will die. I am not a woman who makes idle threats. Do you understand?”
For a moment he looked like he might challenge her, then said, “Yes.”
“No one needs to get hurt.”
He didn’t reply.
Mentally, she reviewed her schedule for tomorrow: after briefing her team at 11:30, three of her people would travel to the eastern entrance to the national forest to take out the telephone lines, then she and the rest of the team would head to the maintenance building that had been left at the site of the now-leveled ELF base.
And from there they would access the facility.
When she left the room, she found Becker waiting for her in the hall. “Well?” he said. “How long?”
“After he gets the data from the station, a couple hours.”
“But we have to have the uplink before 9:00-”
“I know. We will.”
Becker looked at his watch again.
“We’ll be in the base by 6:00,” she reassured him. “It’ll give us enough time. Don’t worry.”
“What did you tell him about his wife and daughter?”
She was tired of hearing about this. “You’re still upset about that.”
He was quiet.
“It was only two lives. There’ll likely be-”
“I know, Dana, but-”
“Don’t interrupt me, Becker.” He’d used the name he knew her by: Dana Murkowski. One of her aliases. “We needed the videos of them to make our threat credible when the time comes.”
“But you killed a little girl. Shot her mother in the-”
“It was necessary. Just like with Clifton.”
“Necessary? Couldn’t you have-”
“It was necessary.” She let each word fall like a stone: We are not going to discuss this anymore.
He didn’t reply, and she turned to leave but then felt his hand on her arm, gentle. An invitation. She paused.
“I’m sorry. I know you had to do it. Your conviction, your fearlessness, that’s one of the reasons I fell in love with you.” Well, his remorse over the death of the Pickrons must not have been as deep as he’d been letting on.
She faced him and said with a smile, “That’s two reasons.”
“Two reasons, then.” He seemed to have already put the Pickron slayings out of his mind. “Twenty minutes ago I had a conversation with Valkyrie. Everything is in place.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Alexei has the rest of the money. Picked it up from the dead drop.”
“That shouldn’t matter now.”
He was caressing her with his eyes and she didn’t discourage him.
He’d been an easy man to seduce.
One of her gifts was getting men to fall in love with her. And so, to solidify his loyalty, she had made sure that he was smitten; that he would do anything for her. She couldn’t help but think of him as a gullible little puppet. After all, he still believed they were going to be disarming the weapons on the sub to make a statement to the world.
She let him take her in his arms.
Oh yes, they were going to make a statement.
She said nothing as he bent toward her.
And when he kissed her she did not close her eyes.
Sean led Tessa into his living room and she froze. The tragic remains of two deer heads and a four-foot-long muskie hung on the wall.
All right, that was just plain troubling. She turned away. “Is Amber here?”
“Last I heard, she was at the hospital with Pat. She’s probably on her way home.”
Although Tessa didn’t know the details, from a few uncharacteristic moments of self-revelation from Patrick over the last year, she did know that before Patrick met her mom, he and Amber had had some sort of thing together.
Probably before she met Sean.
All ancient history.
Sean didn’t seem to give a second thought to Amber visiting with Patrick tonight.
As he was walking toward the kitchen, the house lights flickered briefly and he made a comment about how, this far in the country, the electricity goes out all the time. Now that she thought about it, she realized that on the
