“Babette sent me a text message.”
“Call her.” Carlos wasn’t so quick to accept a text message as being from her sister.
Worry swept across Gabrielle’s gaze when she caught his insinuation the text could be from anyone. She punched the keys and waited, then her eyes lit with happiness.
“Babette, are you okay?” Gabrielle’s face ran the gamut from relief to concerned to annoyed. “You cut class? No! Do not cut class or leave without permission again.” Pause. “Well, you deserve the penalty. You scared me. I didn’t know where you were.” Pause. “I was cross-checking something in the computer for their security and saw you listed as missing.”
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 poison pill in the last post I made about needing information on Mandy. I told them to close the IP server as soon as they posted and lie low since we were taking a big risk to communicate.”
“How were you going to hook up again?” Carlos asked.
“They would watch for me to post an IT article under a specific pseudonym on a board, and the first letter of each sentence would spell the new site for them to post on again in code. It takes a week normally to set that up.”
“Bloody hell,” Rae muttered. “So that’s a dead end.”
“Not necessarily,” Gabrielle corrected, frowning at the top of Rae’s head.
Carlos touched Gabrielle’s chin, drawing her gaze. “What are you saying?”
Gabrielle hesitated. “I know the identities and addresses of my contacts, but I’m not telling Retter.”
TWENTY-FOUR
VESTAVIA LIFTED A file from his desk for the first phase of the Renaissance.
No one country could be a superpower. Not forever.
The only way the United States would ever become manageable was by cracking the infrastructure first to determine the strongest areas within the country, then undermining each of those.
What better way to bait a trap than their insatiable thirst for crude oil?
“You’re sure all four of them are prepared?” he asked Josie, who was lounging on the oversize sofa he’d had the decorator put in his Miami office for late nights.
She stopped thumbing the touch-tone screen on her iPhone and brushed a length of deep-chestnut brown hair behind her shoulder when she lifted her head. Of all the exquisite international art in his south-Florida office, she was by far his finest acquisition.
“The teenagers are a little shaky, but we only need one for sure,” she answered him, tapping her index finger against the iPhone case. “Since the other two are just backup and won’t have to actually do anything, I think we’re fine. And Kathryn still thinks she’s working undercover to protect Evelyn, so she isn’t going to give us any problem.”
“Go on.” Vestavia came around the desk and leaned against the front edge with his arms crossed. He drank in every inch of Josie in her red skirt suit and white, low-cut silk blouse.
“All the teens believe the story we’ve given them. And this”-she lifted a cell phone into view that matched her personal iPhone-“is programmed to send out three different transmissions at the same time.”
Well aware of what made this electronic gadget special, Vestavia smiled. “You’ve done an excellent job, Josephine.”
She preened under his compliment. This woman kicked in doors with a weapon drawn, but she was liquid sugar in his hand.
“This will solidify my position as the one to listen to within the North American Fratelli,” he said. “No one should vote against the next plan I propose after this. It’s annoying to be handcuffed by this ridiculous decision-by-committee the Fratelli use, but we can maneuver around them.”
“We are all so fortunate to have you,” she said in a voice bursting with admiration.
“What did you get out of Turga’s pilot?”
A frown disturbed the smooth lines of her classic beauty. “Everything possible before his heart gave out. The pilot was midtwenties and looked very fit. The medic’s examination prior to interrogation did not pick up a heart murmur. As a side note, the medic has been relieved of duty.” Her gaze hardened. “Permanently. But the pilot did give us the name of the man Turga had captured once he stopped blubbering about his wife and new baby needing him and the baby was sick and on and on. I reminded him that if his wife and baby ended up living under an overpass, they would still be better off than him…unless I ran out of patience and brought them in. That loosened him up. That and a method of skin removal I find very persuasive.” Josie beamed a proud smile. “He said the man Turga captured was Carlos, but never heard a last name or a name for the woman that was Carlos’s girlfriend.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes. That and some very good sketches of Carlos and the woman I’ve inputted into our imaging program. The woman’s sketch is unremarkable, but we’ll know soon if there is a hit on their faces.” She tapped a scarlet fingernail on her lip. “I interrogated him myself.”
No question Turga’s pilot gave up everything.
“I’ll be watching the national news tomorrow morning.” Vestavia opened his arms to her when Josie stood. She glowed, flush with excitement, when she stepped into his embrace. He kissed her deeply. “Too bad you have to catch a plane or I’d lock the office door for a couple hours.”
Her lips curled with a wicked thought. She stretched around him to hit the remote on his desk that locked the door to his office, then reached down to unzip him. “I’ll use the helicopter instead of a cab…if you approve?” The whispered words followed her as she dropped down on her knees.