Angels of Wrath

Corrine flushed. Even though she knew it was an act, she was furious with him, so mad that the emotion clouded her judgment.

“Drinks?” suggested Ferguson. “Lunch?”

“No, thank you,” she said stiffly. The police were now breaking into another room down the hall.

“Well, I’ll be there if you change your mind,” said Ferguson.

* * *

He wasn’t in the restaurant or the casino when Corrine went down to look for him a half hour later.

“Where the hell is he?” she demanded when she called the Cube from her room.

“Go swimming,” said Corrigan, who’d come back on duty.

“What?”

“Go swimming. Ferguson will meet you in the water.”

“We’ll be seen.”

“He’ll figure it out. Go swimming.”

Corrine didn’t have a bathing suit with her. “Tell him it will take a while. I don’t have a bathing suit. I’ll have to go buy one.”

Wait until the General Accounting Office saw that voucher, she thought to herself.

“He’s pissed, just to warn you,” said Corrigan. “He says you almost blew his cover.”

“Screw him.”

She snapped the phone off. Corrine leaned back in her chair and picked up the small white noise machine; she’d found two bugs with the scanner and used the screener just in case.

Ferguson was being difficult, but from his perspective, it might in fact look as if she had screwed up. It was just a coincidence that they’d chosen the same hotel. Actually, Corrigan should have told her he was at the Medici, and she could have made other arrangements. Although maybe that would have seemed suspicious.

It had been a bad decision to come here, that was the problem. But she couldn’t let Ferguson do what he wanted. She had to bring him to heel.

Parnelles had a point about giving a good officer room to do his job, but how much room was that? Her job was to make sure that the First Team didn’t just run amok. And if you considered the number of bodies that were falling…

That might not be a fair measure, but the Intelligence Committee and Congress weren’t necessarily known for being fair.

Corrine continued to wrestle with notions of what to do until she arrived at the dress shop from the hotel. There she turned her attention to an even knottier problem: finding a bathing suit that fit. The European-style suits came in two sizes: incredibly tiny and ridiculously infinitesimal. Finally she found a one-piece suit that didn’t make her look like a bimbo or an idiot. She got a modest wrap and some sandals, and took out her personal charge card to pay, wincing as she mentally worked out the exchange rate.

“I need at least two people on the detail with me on the beach,” Corrine told her escorts as they walked back to the car. “Volunteers?”

“Uh, we don’t have suits, ma’am,” said the sergeant in charge of the detail.

“That’s my point. There’s a men’s store right over there. Put it on this,” she said, tossing him her card. “And go easy. That’s my personal card.”

* * *

Corrine walked to the far end of the sand near the kids’ pool but didn’t see Ferguson. She spread one of the towels she’d rented — those she charged to the room — and waited for a while. Finally, she decided to go for a swim in the ocean.

The water relaxed her. Corrine had been on the swim team in high school, and she fell into an easy pace now, her muscles remembering the early morning routines. That had always been the way back then: dread for the first lap, then contentment as she fell into the exercise.

“Whoa,” said one of the marines, swimming near her. He stopped paddling and stared at the beach.

A bevy of rather attractive young women had come down from the hotel in ultra-skimpy two-piece suits and were fussing over their blankets. There were more than a dozen women between whom the material of their suits wouldn’t have filled a square foot.

She was a bit far to know for sure, but Corrine assumed among them were the two girls she’d seen in Ferguson’s room. She spun in the water, just in time to see one of the marines darting downward.

“It’s all right,” she hissed. “He’s with me. Let him go.”

Corrine had meant the warning for the Marine, but when Ferguson bobbed upward, it was the bodyguard who was in his grip, not the other way around. The second Marine made another lunge, but the CIA officer was too quick, releasing the other man and paddling backward.

“It’s Ferguson,” hissed Corrine. “Relax, Bob. They’re with me.”

“Nice work if you can get it,” said Ferguson. “Step into my office.” He paddled backward, using the marines to help screen them, though it was difficult to think anyone would look out to sea while the girls continued to preen on the beach.

“You’re lucky I was on the swim team,” said Corrine.

“So that’s why you’re in the shallow water. What was your event?”

“Butterfly.”

“I’m freestyle.”

“I never would have guessed.”

“So what the hell are you doing here?” asked Ferguson in his most cheerful voice. “Besides trying to get me killed.”

“The president is going to Baghdad next week.”

“Everybody and his brother knows that.”

“He’s also going to make a side trip, to Jerusalem to announce a new peace accord between Israel and Palestine. They’ve agreed on a shared security arrangement to keep the holy sites of Jerusalem safe for all faiths. The trip hasn’t been announced, and it won’t be until it happens.”

“It’ll be hard to keep that a secret.”

“You didn’t know it,” said Corrine. “How hard can it be?”

“Touche.” Ferguson took a few strokes, glancing back toward the beach to make sure his diversion was still in force. “So, are you going to answer my question or not? Why are you here?”

“Bob—”

“You can call me Ferg.”

“If Special Demands does anything to mess that up, the president will not be happy.”

Ferguson didn’t respond.

“Why did you go to Cairo without clearing it with me first?” said Corrine.

“My job is to make the operational decisions,” said Ferguson. “That hasn’t changed. Once we were on Seven Angels, it was my show.”

“The original plan called for you to follow Thatch in Jerusalem. You weren’t following Thatch, and you weren’t in Jerusalem.”

“What if he had gone to Tel Aviv?”

“He didn’t. He died.”

“See, the problem is, Corrine, we’re not arguing a legal case here. We’re doing a covert action that you can’t define beforehand. I went to Cairo because I thought I might have a chance at finding out who Seven Angels was connecting with, and from that getting more information about them and their plans, which would help us close them down. That’s my job. It’s a real pain to have to explain step by step what I’m doing.”

“You can’t just go off on your own. There are other considerations. Like the president’s peace plan and visit.”

“You want my opinion on that?”

“No.”

Ferguson smiled and took a few strokes away, checking on the beach show.