Burned (Vanessa Pierson series Book 2)

by Plame, Valerie

  “Sorry to interrupt—” It was Chris, his face and torso wavering into focus on the second large monitor. He did look a bit rumpled, and his silver-framed glasses gave off a glint of light. “I’m waiting to fly out of Athens, should be in Paris by late this afternoon or early evening.”

  Vanessa exhaled, extremely grateful to see him—and almost instantly she could feel his dark eyes assessing, evaluating.

  “Have you both received medical treatment?” he asked.

  “We didn’t need it,” Jack answered. “But the French got a dosimeter reading on both of us, checking for exposure, and we’re clean.”

  “Good.” Chris nodded. Although his response was understated, his relief was evident. “I know it’s too soon to ask, but do we have any analysis yet on the RDD?”

  Out of camera range, Hays shook his head and Jack said, “Nothing yet, except that the danger of contamination is nil because the bomb failed to detonate.”

  Chris asked, “You have any idea what happened out there today?”

  Vanessa knew that was her question to answer. She set her laptop aside and stood; the only woman in the room, she couldn’t afford to let her guard down or be accused of being “too emotional.” She needed to exude confidence she didn’t feel. “We’re running images of the suicide bomber through facial-recognition software to see if we can ID him.” The image of the young bomber flashed in front of her eyes: the walk, the clothes, the look—almost but not quite Farid.

  “Whoever he was, he was not my asset.” She took a quick breath.

  Chris frowned. “We all know what that means: Your asset may be in the hands of whoever sent the suicide bomber.”

  For a moment no one spoke. Vanessa’s stomach lurched. Again? Another asset?

  Swallowing hard, she said, “Farid’s always given me solid intel, it’s always been corroborated. He was meeting me today at great risk to himself. He works as a courier in Bhoot’s network—specifically, as part of the link from western Europe, through Dubai, to Tehran. Two years ago he ferried transactions between Bhoot and Dieter Schoeman, the South African proliferator who is currently serving fifteen years at London’s super-max, Belmarsh.”

  She shifted weight from foot to foot restlessly. “He was going to give me something to substantiate what our analysts have been piecing together—that Bhoot had a miniaturized nuclear prototype smuggled out of his secret facility in Iran just weeks before the bombing.”

  The DDO spoke up sharply: “So we have no idea what kind of damage this nuclear prototype is capable of?”

  “No,” Vanessa said. “Except Farid was willing to risk his life to get me the intel. And now I need to—we need to do everything we can to find him and to find out who’s behind this and exactly what we’re dealing with.”

  “Do we know why Bhoot smuggled a weapon out of a facility that he’d funded in cooperation with the Iranians?” The DDO’s frustration turned his voice raw.

  It was Chris who responded first: “Was he double-crossing the Iranians, or did they move the weapon because they had a buyer?” He shrugged. “We don’t know the answers to those questions, but Vanessa has been lead on tracking them down.” His eyes met hers now and he said, “Obviously, Vanessa, much has happened, but it’s clear we need you on this response team.”

  She nodded, grateful for his support. She’d been half afraid that her NOC status would preclude her participation on the team. Typically, the CIA dreaded sharing a NOC with any foreign service.

  “Was today the work of Bhoot?” the DDO asked.

  “Yes . . .” Vanessa said. But she heard the hesitation in her voice. Even as focused as she was on capturing Bhoot, as much as she wanted to say absolutely that he was behind the attack, she couldn’t ignore her doubts. She knew her tendency toward obsession when it came to Bhoot—she couldn’t let that throw her off track. “But I don’t know for certain.”

  “Yes or you don’t know?”

  “If this is Bhoot’s work, if he’s willing to risk this exposure in order to avenge our attack on Iran, I don’t understand why he didn’t inflict more damage. What’s the payoff for him? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

  Vanessa tapped her bare feet against the Persian rug. She rubbed her palms restlessly against the hips of her jeans. She said, “What can you tell me about their chief of ops—you said his name is Fournier? He’ll head up the team?”

  The DDO straightened his tie; it was already perfect. “Marcel and I brushed shoulders during my time in Paris. He made his way up through the ranks, against the odds. He’s not the usual Sciences Po elite type. He’s tough and he’s smart—and a bit of a cowboy. But when you meet him, don’t let that give you the idea he’ll tolerate free-thinkers on his team—he will not.”

  Vanessa nodded—no way she would let on that she’d already had her first introduction to Marcel Fournier and that it hadn’t gone so well. If the DDO found out, he could pull her from the team.

  A sharp cough from Hays, his signal to interrupt: “Sorry, we have a new link coming in on this call.”

  A face materialized on screen and Vanessa found herself staring at an extremely displeased Allen Jeffreys, deputy national security advisor, his square features and clenched jaw hardened, while the corners of his oddly soft mouth pulled down sharply. Given his position, she wondered how he had ended up on this call, especially at this very early stage of the response . . . it struck her as odd.

  “Sorry to come in late,” he said. “But I’ve been in meetings with the president, who considers this top priority for our resources. But first, I’m sure Phillip has expressed our relief that you’re safe.”

  “Yes, sir, we are,” Jack said. “Thank you.”

  “The president has asked for a briefing from me after this call. How much do we already know?” he asked, and Vanessa could almost swear he was singling her out. He said, “To me, this is probably the doing of your so-called Bhoot. And it seems he went to a hell of a lot of trouble to mess with your operation—and to create Sturm und Drang. Why the hell haven’t we killed that son of a bitch yet?”

  Vanessa stifled her first impulse to take a step back because it almost felt as if Jeffreys had entered the room physically. She could not completely suppress her instinctive dislike of the man. “Is that a question?” Vanessa knew she was overstepping boundaries, but she didn’t care.

  Someone inhaled sharply—it might have been Jack.

  Jeffreys’s lower lip on the left side of his mouth curled under and Vanessa actually saw his pupils contract. “I am asking you if you believe Bhoot ordered this attack. You were there, it was your operation, I assume you have an opinion that may carry some modicum of substance.”

  She took a deep breath, weighing her next words carefully and stalling—praying Chris or the DDO would interrupt. “My sense is that Bhoot is—could be involved but—”

  “Don’t worry, Jeffreys.”

  It was the DDO interjecting, and Vanessa was grateful, relieved even, that he had cut her off.

  She knew as well as anyone that it was highly unusual for someone of Jeffreys’s stature—such an overtly political player—to insert himself into the specifics of an active intelligence operation. Was the White House driving this hands-on oversight? The National Security Council? Who wanted Jeffreys so involved, and why?

  “We will give you a complete briefing,” the DDO continued briskly, “when we gather enough of the threads together so we’re not wasting your valuable time.”

  The DDO ended the call smoothly. “Thank you for this quick update. Now we all have responsibilities, places to be.”

  Translation: Find Farid Hasser and the missing nuclear device—and do it yesterday.

  Everyone’s screen went black.

  9

  Just then Hays, staring at his open laptop, uttered a sharp expletive. The color drained from his face.

  He picked up the computer and carried it with him the few meters to the coffee table, where he almost dropped it in front of Vanessa. “
This just came up on Twitter and YouTube—they’re calling themselves True Jihad.”

  Hays darted back to his other computer to make certain Headquarters knew about the new development and to link them in. In Washington, Athens, and Paris they were all watching the same video unfold.

  Both Jack and Vanessa stared at the screen, horrified. She struggled to make sense of the images: a young man on his knees facing the video camera. His arms appeared to be tied behind his shirtless back. His head was bowed, but the bruises and bloody contusions on his face and chest were visible enough. And after a few seconds, he raised his head slightly to look at the camera, and Vanessa saw it was Farid Hasser.

  God, no . . .

  She could barely breathe.

  Someone else—unidentifiable behind a black hood and a heavy oversized flak jacket—stepped into partial view. The camera pulled back just enough to show a crude banner on a bare wall: The writing was Arabic.

  When the hooded person raised a gun in one gloved hand and pressed the muzzle to Farid’s head, Vanessa did stop breathing. A male voice speaking Arabic came muffled through the hood.

  Farid flinched and his gaze found the camera for just a few seconds, long enough for Vanessa to see the flat stare of a man stripped of his spirit. A man who knew his fate.

  A low moan escaped her throat, but she was only conscious of the crude sound coming from the video. She recoiled but forced herself not to look away when the hooded man fired point-blank into Farid’s left temple.

  She stared vacantly at the spray of blood, Farid slumping forward—the horror registering silently, internally.

  Every phone in the safe house began to ring, and the noise hurtled Vanessa from stupefying shock to the present. Next to her, Jack had buried his face in his hands. Sweat slicked Vanessa’s palms, her heart was beginning to race, thoughts accelerating, too—she recognized the symptoms—she couldn’t afford to panic—

  “Merde . . .”

  Vanessa’s head jerked up at the sound of the new voice.

  Marcel Fournier stood in the arch of the foyer, his expression grim and his dark, heavy-lidded eyes narrowed on Vanessa. He shrugged as if remembering something inconsequential and pulled a badge from his pocket.

  “Marcel Fournier, DCRI,” he said curtly, lines etched deeply across his forehead. He jerked his chin toward the final frozen images of the video on the screen.

  “The Arabic words you heard right before the execution . . .” he said. “I can give you a crude translation: ‘Payback for U.S. bombs in Iran.’”

  10

  Fournier held out the jacket he’d pulled from the rack in the foyer. “Put this on.”

  Vanessa shook her head. “That’s not mine.”

  Her heartbeat finally was slowing and she could breathe again.

  “Then find yours, because you’re coming with me,” he said tersely. “If you want a prayer of working with Team Viper, don’t slow me down.”

  Same asshole delivery he’d used when she boarded the jet boat—only now she didn’t want to punch him. Somehow he’d jolted her from the beginnings of a panic attack. He’d never know it, but she owed him one. So now she was just pissed off at him.

  Minutes later, inside the back of the same black Mercedes that had waited for Vanessa and Jack at the Quai Voltaire hours ago, Fournier rapped twice on the open glass divider. The driver accelerated so quickly Vanessa’s spine pushed into the seat leather. They were heading back toward the Louvre.

  She was deciding how she wanted to break the silence when Fournier tossed a manila envelope onto her lap. With a glance at him she unwound the thread that held it closed. When she opened the flap a photograph edged out. She pulled it free, studying the image: a surveillance photograph, time-stamped and dated six weeks earlier, and the subject was a dark-haired man of about twenty, possibly of Middle Eastern heritage.

  “Recognize him?”

  “No.”

  “What about any of the others?”

  She examined each of the remaining eight photographs. The subjects were similar—young men who appeared to be Middle Eastern. “Are these your candidates for the suicide bomber?”

  “The most obvious. They’re all known militants in the area, connected to several mosques that we’ve had under watch.”

  “I don’t recognize any of them.”

  “And you got a good look at the bomber?”

  “Yes.” Even if she wanted to, there was no way to block the mental image she knew would stay with her forever.

  She slid the photographs back into the envelope, even as she observed DCRI’s head of operations. For the first time since their initial encounter, she could begin to absorb and assess what she had only reacted to earlier. She placed him in his mid-forties, fit, intelligent, with a restless edge that struck her as feral. His classic Latin features told her his roots reached south to the Midi or perhaps as far as Corsica. She hadn’t had time to use the easiest open source for background checks—Google—but she would soon.

  She braced herself as the Mercedes took a hard turn at Pont Neuf.

  The driver signaled Fournier with the fingers of one hand. Detour.

  Fournier extended his left arm quickly to glance at his watch. Even with the brief exposure beyond the cuff, Vanessa recognized the vintage timepiece as a Vacheron Constantin, a watchmaker whose elite customers included Pope Pius XI, the Duke of Windsor, and Napoléon Bonaparte.

  Nice watch for an intel officer.

  As if he’d heard her thought, Fournier adjusted the cuff of his jacket, covering the Vacheron.

  Vanessa shifted her gaze and found herself staring into deep-set eyes that widened as he raised his thick, dark eyebrows—challenging her to comment. She could smell a not unpleasant mix of coffee and citrus. A small muscle twitched on the left side of his jaw, as if he habitually locked down that side.

  She flashed back to Jack’s quip that Fournier would appeal to his wife’s taste for “bad-boy actors”—and her own thought that Fournier looked more like a cop than an actor.

  She would amend that judgment now because after a few minutes in close proximity to him, Vanessa thought Marcel Fournier might be a very skilled actor indeed. The man gave no clue to his thoughts. A good poker player—but Vanessa sensed his natural intensity, and that made her wonder about his ability to mask complex emotions.

  His voice held a low, smoky tone when he asked, “Croyez-vous me connaître?”

  “Do I think I know you?” She shrugged; she could play poker, too. Her brother Marshall had taught his little sis how to win at poker and pool and some other important games of life . . .

  “Pas encore. Mais . . .” She shifted back to English intentionally. “But you’re right, I am curious about you. I want to know who I’m working with.”

  “You’re not working with me, yet.”

  “Actually, the Agency has okayed my place on Team Viper.”

  He clicked his tongue once against his very white teeth. “Your Agency is not lead on this op—not now that it’s cleanup to your fuckup.”

  Obviously his colloquial English was just fine.

  She felt the bore of his gaze. She found him repellent in many ways, but his confidence was so powerful and politic, she had to admit she felt some respect and a hint of admiration for him, too. Her self-confidence still vied too often with self-doubt.

  “Just so you know,” he said, speaking deliberately, “I handpick my team—et je pense que—your value to me is the fact you’ve been working for the CIA pursuing Bhoot. You think we don’t know about your operations? We want him, too. After today, maybe more than your government.”

  “Not more than me,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “What do Americans say, you have true grit? But what’s bothering me most at this moment is the question of why Bhoot—or whoever these terrorists are—wanted you in the middle of le tas de merde.”

  A pile of shit—Vanessa scowled—but she couldn’t dismiss Fournier’s question. She shared it.
>
  Their shoulders pressed together as the driver guided the Mercedes into a second sharp turn, accelerating markedly. She contracted away from him again.

  But he leaned even closer, his breath warm against her ear as he said, “Les ennuis vous suivent partout.”

  As Vanessa watched the bridge and Seine below blurring together, she said nothing. At this moment she thought Fournier might be right—trouble did seem to follow her around.

  11

  Once again Vanessa stood in the courtyard of the Louvre, surrounded by devastation in the aftermath of the bombing; the museum and the Glass Pyramid seemed diminished to mere human scale, left vulnerable in a way they had not been hours earlier. The deepening gloom of winter’s early dusk did nothing to dispel her dark mood, and neither did Fournier’s questions. She’d answered a dozen during the walk-through inside the museum, where she shared a chronology of her actions preceding the bombing.

  “Why plan a meeting in such a public place?” Fournier made no effort to mask his censure. “Our people would never do that.”

  “I was concerned about it,” she said sharply; she hated being quizzed and she knew it showed on her face. “But Farid had a narrow window for the meet and he was taking a huge risk to get his information to us, so when he named this spot, we felt his information was of such value, and time was of the essence, so, ultimately, we felt we had no choice but to agree.”

  Fournier’s response was a grunt as he strode directly beyond barriers and into the restricted area.

  Vanessa followed, ducking beneath thick yellow tape to where investigators and dozens of emergency personnel sifted through debris. Only a few wore yellow hazmat suits. Except for a large zone cordoned off in the Tuileries—where the bomb squad under the cover of tents was dealing with the dud RDD—surrounding areas had been tested for radiation contamination and declared clean.

  Fournier jabbed a finger her way. “Show me exactly where you were standing when the bomb exploded.”