by Alan Elsner
“Ah, but you’ll be wearing a body wire. We’ll have vehicles trailing you every mile of the way recording every word she utters.”
“What makes you think she’ll show up for the ceremony after last night?
“Does she know for sure you overheard her conversation with Webb?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think she’ll be there,” said Jason. “She needs to act natural, go about her business and stick to her schedule.”
“What if she tries to hug me? Won’t she feel the device?”
“We’ll use a very small device but perhaps you should avoid any hugging just to be sure,” the Director said.
“You solemnly promise I’ll be in no danger?”
“I promise.”
“Your cars will be close behind all the time?”
“Absolutely. You have my word.”
Delphine didn’t want to agree. She didn’t want to spend another moment alone with that woman. But she couldn’t think of a good reason to refuse after coming this far.
“OK, I’ll do it.”
Chapter 23
Ambassador Simone de Courcy, accompanied by two security men, walked into the District of Columbia judicial building on Indiana Ave., a few blocks west of the U.S. Capitol, where family court was located. At this hour, the building was fast emptying. As directed in a message from Secretary Dayton’s assistant, they took the elevator to the third floor and quickly found Courtroom 315. The chamber was empty so she took a seat near the back and gestured to her guards to wait outside.
Five minutes later, an elderly, white-haired African American judge clad in a black robe appeared and took his place behind the bench; two aides sat in front of small desks to one side. “Here for the adoption?” the judge asked.
“Yes.”
“So where’s everyone, the prospective mother, the daughter?”
At that moment, the door opened and Delphine slipped quietly into the room accompanied by another young woman. They approached the bench.
“Your Honor, I am Delphine Roget,” she said softly.
“Ah, the lucky daughter.”
Delphine glanced back for a moment, nodding nervously as she recognized the ambassador. “Yes, that is me,” in a quavering voice.
“You have a witness?” the judge inquired.
“This is my friend Monica Williams.”
“And Madam Secretary? You’re sure she’ll come on a day like this?”
“She assured me she would be here.”
“Seeing as who we’re dealing with and what kind of day this has been, I guess we’ll wait a while,” the judge said, allowing himself a little chuckle.
A minute later, a security man, not Mitchell Webb, opened the door.
“Everyone here for the adoption?” he asked. “Y’all have IDs?”
“I’m the judge and these are officers of the court.”
“I am the Ambassador of the Republic of France,” said Simone de Courcy.
“And I’m Delphine Roget. This is my witness, Monica Williams.”
The security man took a look at the friend’s ID and nodded, apparently satisfied. “Y’all wait up, don’t go anywhere.”
Moments later, Secretary Dayton made her stately entrance like the Queen of Sheba, still clad in the crimson suit she’d worn for the peace signing ceremony. Bridget Daly sidled in behind her.
“Hello everyone, thanks for waiting, so sorry I’m late,” she boomed, instantly commanding the room so that everyone else seemed less than life-sized.
“We thought perhaps you weren’t coming,” the judge said.
“And miss this, your honor? Wouldn’t dream of it. Thanks for being so patient. Ah, there you are my darling Delphine. Punctual as always and looking so radiant. Are you happy?” She bent and bestowed two air kisses on Delphine’s ashen cheeks.
“As you may imagine,” Delphine responded. “This is my friend Monica Williams who’ll be acting as my witness.”
“Splendid. Any friend of Delphine is a friend of the family.”
“Let’s get to it then shall we?” said the judge.
Five minutes and several signatures later, the deed was done. There was another round of kisses and Bridget produced a bottle of lukewarm bubbly.
The ambassador turned to Secretary Dayton. “Many felicitations. This is a great honor you have bestowed, not only on Delphine, but on all of France. What a day for you, for Delphine, for France, for the whole world!”
“Thank you Ambassador and thank you for coming.” Secretary Dayton raised her voice very slightly. “I’m not going to make a speech right now. Enough speeches for one day. We’ll have a proper celebration soon when we make this public. I just want to thank everyone for being here. And now my new daughter and I have a date at a very fancy restaurant in Virginia where a bottle of the Widow Clicquot’s finest is on ice. If you’ll all excuse us …” She linked arms with Delphine and half-pulled her from the room.
Chapter 24
The limo was waiting on the street with the engine running. A security man closed the door and tapped twice on the roof. And then it was just the two of them. Julia Dayton and Delphine Roget sat side-by-side on the leather seat without speaking for a couple of minutes, cut off from the driver by a partition and from the rest of the world by the tinted windows. Delphine’s hands were clammy, her heart beating so loud she was sure it was audible; she could feel the square box of the listening device digging into her back. She knew she was supposed to get Dayton talking but she couldn’t think how to start. In the end, the Secretary was the one to speak.
“What on earth were you up to yesterday?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t be coy with me young lady. I’m your mother now.” She emitted a mirthless laugh. “Let me ask again, what were you and your dreadful boyfriend doing cavorting around rural Maryland impersonating FBI agents? Don’t look so surprised. I told once before, I know everything. Did King put you up to it?”
“Closure, I wanted closure,” Delphine blurted out.
“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?”
“That man Cooter killed my friends, Andrew and Stewart. I wanted to be sure it really was an accident.”
“And did you get what you were looking for?” Dayton asked contemptuously. “Did you get your closure?”
“Not at all. He was shifty and evasive, a dreadful man. He expressed no remorse, the way one would have expected if it really was an accident. If anything, he made me even more suspicious.”
By now, they’d left Washington and were racing down the interstate. Delphine hoped the FBI was keeping up.
“Suspicious of what?”
“I want the truth. That’s all I’m looking for. You needn’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. As you just said, you’re my mother now. I just want us to be honest with each other, you and I.”
“That’s so sweet.” Dayton turned to face Delphine and flashed her most predatory, wolfish grin. A shudder of dread made its way down Delphine’s spine. But she pressed on, desperate to capture the words the FBI needed to hear.
“I want, no I need to know why they all had to die – Andrew, Stewart, Todd, Erik – all of them,” Delphine said.
“Oh grow up. You know very well why. And it was worth it. Today, I Julia Dayton, brought peace to the Middle East. I succeeded where Kissinger and Baker and all the others failed. Do I have to justify my actions to you?”
“Of course not. I’m with you now whatever happens, unconditionally, all the way to the White House. You can trust me – but I have to know what happened.”
“So I can trust you, can I? After everything you’ve done?”
“Absolutely,” Delphine said, summoning all the sincerity she could muster, ignoring the prickles of anxiety she was feeling.
The car slow
ed abruptly and left the highway. Now Delphine was truly scared. They hadn’t been traveling long enough. The Inn at Little Washington was at least 50 or 60 miles from the city. Why had they turned off now?
Dayton said. “By the way, do you have your passport with you?”
“It should be.” Delphine rummaged in her bag, feeling all the familiar objects she always carried. “Why do you ask?”
“You’ll be going on a trip tonight. Call it a surprise gift—from me to you with maternal love.”
They turned again on to a small country lane, then again and then a third time, hurtling around corners with tires squealing, going faster and faster. Something was very wrong. Where the hell was the FBI? Delphine risked a glimpse behind and saw only open road. She said, “I thought we were going to the Inn at Little Washington.”
“Alas no.” They sped up even more, took a fourth turn and drove on to a gravel track and through an empty gate into what appeared to be an abandoned farmyard. The car pulled around the back of a half-collapsed barn and stopped.
“I’m afraid this is the end of the line for you Delphine. You’re going to disappear,” Dayton said. “Nobody will miss you for quite a while. If there are questions, I’ll say you decided to take an extended vacation. Later, we’ll issue a statement saying you changed your mind about the adoption and left to build a new life somewhere else. We’ll ask everyone to please respect your privacy.”
“But how…?”
“The record will show you caught the 10 p.m. Air France flight to Paris. She’s not an exact match, the girl we found, but close enough. She’ll go through all the security checks easily enough with your passport. Nice of you to bring it. Merci beaucoup. Saved us the trouble of searching your home.”
The car door opened and Delphine found herself staring at the unsmiling face of Mitchell A. Webb III. She noticed how the bruise under his band aid had turned livid but her attention soon turned to the large black gun pointing straight at her.
“Out!”
“What’s going on? Why the gun?”
“Why do you think?”
“This is a joke?” Their faces told her no. “But I thought we were family?”
Secretary Dayton leaned over and released Delphine’s seatbelt. “Remember, I once told you that loyalty was everything to me and that when a person lost my trust they lost it forever?”
“I remember but…”
“Delphine, you lost my trust. Nothing was ever good enough for you. I offered you fame, a million dollar book contract, my love, my name, my fortune – but still you kept digging and digging and digging until you dug your own grave. And now it’s time to lie in it. I can’t say this gives me pleasure. I genuinely liked you. But you left me no choice. Make it quick Mitchell. I have places to be and things to do.”
He pulled Delphine roughly out of the car and Secretary Dayton shut the door behind her. Delphine struggled to get away from him but he was too strong. He dragged her a few yards from the car and backhanded her around the mouth so that she fell to the ground.
“That’s for last night, bitch!”
Delphine tasted blood.
Now, too late, she thought she heard the sound of a distant siren. Her rescuers would probably arrive fairly eventually – just not soon enough. Mitchell raised his weapon.
“Wait! Don’t do this,” Delphine said, her mouth still numb from his blow. The world had narrowed to the two of them – and the cold, dark eye of his weapon staring at her heart.
“That’s right, beg. I want to hear you beg, Delphane.”
Delphine scrambled to her feet, trying to think of something else to say, anything to slow him down. She didn’t want to die; the world was too sweet, the feel of sunshine on her face, the golden light of early evening, the buzzing cicadas ...
“It’s not too late. We could start over.” Delphine’s voice was trembling; she still couldn’t believe these were her last moments on earth. How can a person be—and then not be? The siren was a bit louder now.
“That’s good. Go on Delphane, beg some more.”
“For God’s sake…”
“He won’t help you now.”
“Then let me at least say a prayer first.”
A window in the limo slid down. “Enough of the chatter. Get it over with. I’m a busy woman.” The window closed again.
Mitchell lowered his weapon. “You’ve got 20 seconds and that’s only because I’m a being generous. But as a Christian I believe you can still be received in heaven if you sincerely repent now. Just make it quick.”
Delphine turned her back and tried to think of some prayers from her mixed-up youth while she rummaged in her bag. Should she say something Christian? Mother Mary full of grace? There was something she’d felt a few minutes before when she’d looked for her passport. Where the hell was it? Or maybe a Jewish prayer – the Kaddish? Except they said that after you died, not before. Who would say it for her? There was no-one. She still couldn’t find what she was looking for. Say something, make him think you’re praying! She mumbled some words that could have been Latin or Hebrew or something in between. Yes, here it was. Grab it, pull it out! It was her final card, not a very good one but it was all she had.
“Amen,” Delphine said and turned to face her executioner.
Chapter 25
“Won’t you come in. Please, have a seat,” Ambassador Simone de Courcy said ushering her guest into the office. “May I call you Jason?”
Much had happened in the two weeks since the signing ceremony. Like the rest of the world, Ambassador de Courcy had reacted with a mixture of fascination and disbelief to the stunning news of Secretary Dayton’s arrest. The pictures of her being led in shackles to her arraignment still played constantly on TV. She’d been charged with murder and conspiracy and had resigned as Secretary of State Her young co-defendant, Mitchell Webb, had pleaded guilty and was cooperating with the authorities. Elton Schuyler was still fighting extradition from Japan.
Two days after Secretary Dayton’s arrest, Palestinian President al-Bakr was killed by a car bomb in Ramallah. Suspicion instantly fell on Abdul Muqtadir’s Palestinian Martyrs Brigade. Israel closed the territories and launched an air strike on Muqtadir’s Gaza headquarters. His fighters responded by firing rockets at Israeli towns and villages. Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon joined the conflict, sending missiles against cities across northern Israel, forcing thousands of people into shelters. Now, Israel was massing troops on the border and Iran was threatening to get involved. Secretary Dayton’s peace agreement was dead even before the ink had dried. The new Secretary of State was struggling to avoid a regional bloodbath.
“So what happens now?” the ambassador asked Jason.
“I don’t know. I miss her so much. I keep thinking about what she must have gone through in those final moments,” Jason said.
“Poor child, she must have been terrified.”
“To know that the FBI was coming…” He choked up. “To know they were coming but would arrive too late.”
“It’s not my place to criticize but I find it hard to believe they would fail so miserably at such a simple task,” the ambassador said.
“To stare at a man and know he’s about to kill you.”
“Terrifying.”
“Nobody should have had to suffer what she suffered.”
They sat in silence for a minute.
“So it was the pepper spray that saved her” the ambassador said at last.
“She pulled it out of the bag and squirted it straight into Webb’s eyes.”
“But he was still holding the gun …”
“He got off one shot more by instinct than anything else; fortunately Delphine had dived to one side. But that was it for him. Once the spray took effect, he was disabled, couldn’t see a thing. Next thing, Dayton was jumping out of the limo to finish the job herself. Can y
ou imagine? Delphine scrambled to her feet and took off across a field running faster than she’d ever run. Two minutes later, the FBI showed up. And that was that.”
“Amazing. So where’s Delphine now?” de Courcy asked.
Jason shook his head. ‘I haven’t heard a word. She said she needed to get away and she’d contact me when she was ready. Left that night using the same ticket Dayton had booked. You haven’t heard anything have you?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you at least know if she went back to France?”
“I believe so, but whether she’s still there or not, I don’t know.”
“The prosecutor wants her back to testify at Dayton’s trial. They keep asking me if I know where she is. And book agents are after her. She could make a fortune if she wanted.”
“Perhaps she feels guilty about what’s happening now in the Middle East. She’s experienced a tremendous trauma.”
“I hate to think of her dealing with it alone. If only she’d let me help her.”
“Ah but Delphine is tough. You weren’t there to help her in her moment of truth. Nobody was. She had to help herself.”
They fell silent.
“So what will you do now?” the ambassador asked.
“Wait. As long as it takes, until she’s ready to return.”
“Do you think she’ll come back?”
“I hope so. But you never know with Delphine, do you?”
EDITOR’S AFTERWORD
Since the first edition of this book appeared, there have been several developments. A flurry of postings on social media claimed Delphine sightings in various different countries and locations. None of these have been verified. However some photographs that emerged from the funeral of Ira Milstein, fifteen years after the events described in this narrative, showed a slight, heavily veiled woman accompanied by a taller blond man paying their respects. Could they have been Delphine and Jason, come to honor their old friend and colleague? Another sighting occurred at the retirement party of Ambassador de Courcy from the French Foreign Ministry in Paris several years ago. Two figures were captured in grainy photos – one a petite woman and the other a blond man. Finally, a photo was submitted of a young woman graduating from the Sorbonne some two years ago being embraced by her parents – again a small, dark-haired woman and her tall, slim male companion. All these seem to suggest that Delphine and Jason did indeed build a new life for themselves possibly in France. One would like to hope so but of course, we can’t be certain.