“So it is,” Hall acknowledged. She took a long breath. “The directive to move Dieter Schoeman came from someone high in your own government.”
“What? From Washington?” Dumb questions, but Vanessa was gobsmacked, as the British like to say. Her heartbeat zipped ahead; the internal gnawing started up again. “Who? Why?”
“I hate to be guilty of spouting clichés, but there truly are some doors that cannot be closed once they are opened,” Hall said.
Vanessa, her back straight, leaned forward intently. Her mind raced with possibilities. A traitor? “Who ordered Schoeman’s transfer?”
“This was a top-secret directive. I have no reason to share a name with you.”
“You said you owe me a favor because of my father and for saving your life. So I’m calling in the chit,” Vanessa said quietly. “I doubt that surprises you. You’re here, you came.”
“Almost nothing surprises me at this stage of my life, Vanessa.”
It did not escape Vanessa’s attention that Hall used her name for the first time since she’d taken her seat on the bench. Feeling uncomfortably like a pleading child, she pushed a strand of hair from her face and then she clasped her hands together in her lap. “Please.”
“The order to transfer Schoeman out of Belmarsh to a CIA black prison in Slovakia came from your very own deputy national security advisor.”
Allen Jeffreys—holy Jesus.
She pictured his face on the cover of Time just weeks ago. In the portrait, one corner of his mouth was turned down in what Vanessa had always thought was an arrogant sneer. She whispered, “Jeffreys.”
Hall rose to standing but didn’t take a step. “I’ve loved it here since I was a very little girl and my parents brought me to fly kites. I believe the view opens the mind: Canary Wharf, the Gherkin, Saint Paul’s, and the Houses of Parliament used to be much more visible.”
She turned now to look intently at Vanessa, who had the sense Hall might be seeing some younger part of herself.
“I’m sure it won’t be any more effective cautioning you to be very, very careful moving forward.” Hall clasped her gloved hands behind her back. The sky had darkened, and almost everyone had gone home for the evening. Vanessa felt abruptly lonely.
Hall took one step, pausing to say, “However, I will indulge myself the luxury of wasted breath. So I repeat: When you play with men like Bhoot and Allen Jeffreys, however differently they exercise their power, you play with fire.”
She did not look back as she said, “Try not to get burned alive, Vanessa.”
45
Allen Jeffreys sat behind his desk in his office at the Old Executive Office Building, watching with some amusement as the CIA analyst exited hurriedly without once glancing back.
After the pointed click of the door closing, he smiled at his own image reflected in one of the half-dozen family portraits adorning his desk. He had made her sweat. She had been cranky and uncooperative and Asian to boot. His father would have called her a wannabe inscrutable Oriental and would have said watch out for the Chinks—they’ll own America someday if we don’t teach them about Jesus.
Jeffreys made a very small adjustment to the photograph of Eileen, his wife of twenty-eight years, and the mother of his two sons and four daughters. Coiffed and wearing full makeup in this photo, Eileen looked almost like her younger self. She was still pretty enough, although nothing like the radiant bride he’d married.
He frowned as he pictured Eileen in contrast to the recent visitor to his office. She could only be described as irritatingly unfeminine, but industrious, he’d give her that. And she had shared information with him—even when she tried so hard to hold back to protect her friend.
More than one man had referred to him as the King at His Throne, Jeffreys thought.
His musings were interrupted by the discreet, familiar tap on the door. Jeffreys looked through the tortoiseshell frames of his glasses at his secretary, who also happened to be his eldest son, Francis Warren, who had poked his head into the office.
“I’ve updated your schedule. You are due at the White House in fifteen to meet with POTUS and Senator Blaine on the upcoming negotiations in Istanbul. Then you go to the Circle for the prayer meeting at five-thirty. I can have your car brought around at five.” Pause. Eyebrows peaked. “Was she helpful?”
“Yes, but she doesn’t know it.” Jeffreys paused. “We haven’t heard from our friend in Yemen?”
“Anytime now. He is waiting for the right opportunity to deal with loose ends.”
46
Sitting cross-legged in her boxers and T-shirt on her bed in the safe house, Vanessa drummed the side of her laptop as the FaceTime link connected one continent to the other—1830 hours in Virginia, 0030 in Paris. She had returned from London four hours ago, and since then, unable to sleep, she’d kept busy researching Jeffreys using open source.
No way could she run her suspicions through official channels. So she had rehearsed different ways to do this. She would be asking yet another colleague to ignore SOP, something she’d become too good at lately. She didn’t enjoy feeling like she was using Zoe, but there was no denying the analyst was a whiz at connecting the dots.
Zoe appeared suddenly on the screen, and her eyes widened after a blink. “Oh, no,” she said, dread pulling down her face. “How did you get my personal FaceTime username?”
“I’m sorry,” Vanessa said, pushing a loose strand of hair from her eye. Contacting Zoe this way allowed for very minimal security, she knew, but she saw no other way than to take the risk. If her instincts were right, they were all in far bigger trouble than they had thought.
“But this was the only way. I need to know this exchange is absolutely between us. It goes no further, and if you’re not comfortable with that, you need to tell me now.”
“Fine. I’m not comfortable.” Zoe met Vanessa’s gaze, unblinking.
And she stayed silent until Vanessa’s palms broke a sweat.
Zoe inhaled, frowning so deeply her mouth puckered. “Fuck, of course I’m not comfortable. Just stop.”
“Hey, I—”
Zoe pushed her palms to the screen. “Really, stop.” She stood and walked away from the screen and out the door of what Vanessa could now see looked like her bedroom, judging from the neatly made bed and the dog curled up on the spread.
Okay, that was a fast refusal, Vanessa thought. She sat at a loss for a moment. Her pride in what she considered her unusual skills of persuasion hadn’t gone very far in this case. Disconnect or wait?
She stared at what she could see of Zoe’s room, her gaze flicking from the small quilt mounted on the wall, each square a slightly varied pattern of a panda, to the carefully mounted topography maps to the family photo on the dresser: an Asian man, Caucasian woman, Eurasian boy, and Zoe, when she was about twelve or thirteen, all of them smiling except Zoe, who seemed to be scrutinizing the camera warily. Vanessa knew that expression because it pretty much summed up Zoe’s MO: Proceed with extreme skepticism.
Vanessa knew Zoe would admit they had raised each other’s hackles when they first met. And for the next months, their interactions could only have been categorized as prickly: a rivalry, except Zoe was an analyst while Vanessa was ops. You almost couldn’t find two more different animals.
Furry lopsided ears and big buttery eyes appeared suddenly in front of Vanessa: the dog had raised its shaggy head and now it stood up on very short legs to peer into the laptop screen. Vanessa was staring back at the dog’s damp nose when the animal suddenly rose into the air and Zoe sat down again. The analyst set the dog firmly down in her lap.
Zoe moved her face closer to the screen, her expression even more somber than usual. She sighed. “Meet Ludwig van B., who happens to adore FaceTime.” Zoe held her hands up to the screen: Her phone and a loose battery rested in her palm.
“Call me paranoid, I call myself prudent because I usually take the battery out of my phone when I get home,” Zoe said quietly. Her voice v
olume was lowering sentence by sentence, no doubt moving into conspiratorial mode. Almost to a whisper, she continued, “But I had just walked in when I heard your beep. Okay, so now where were we? Oh, my first question: Does this have to do with the ultra-ultra-secret, high-security investigation I’m part of at, um, the office?”
Trying her best to be cryptic, Zoe was referring to the special counterintelligence team put together to discover the identity of the mole.
Vanessa nodded.
A huff of air escaped Zoe’s lips, as if she were blowing an irritating hair from her face. “Of course I feel totally uncomfortable, but I will give you five minutes just between us and the NSA.”
Vanessa smiled weakly, grateful that Zoe was sitting across from her. This was a time she desperately needed support and expertise, and Zoe seemed willing to offer those, at least for five minutes.
“I need you to look into someone on the QT.”
“I hate to tell you,” Zoe said, her voice rising now. “But that’s nothing new for me.”
Vanessa looked down at her lap, then back at Zoe. “It’s different this time, believe me.”
Zoe swallowed, and her forehead creased again. “God, you’re giving me premature wrinkles. Exactly whom are we talking about?”
“He had a major profile in Time last month,” Vanessa said. She pictured Jeffreys’s face as it appeared in the magazine: quarter-profile, a dramatically shadowed sharp-eyed stare, military bearing and the haircut to go with that bearing; a pose crafted to communicate power, patriotism, and a ruthless zeal for security, not to mention his barely concealed political ambitions.
Zoe had taken a second to process the reference and her eyes were wide again. “That’s crazy . . .” She shook her head so hard her shiny blunt-cut blue-black hair waved.
“Okay, I know it sounds crazy.” Vanessa felt a kind of tightness behind her solar plexus, in the spot where she often registered stress. “Think about it. He has the access. He inserts himself into our ops way beyond what’s usual. He asks a lot of questions that are not normal. And he has the power to act with global reach: He also oversaw the secret transfer of Dieter Schoeman three days before the bombing at the Louvre. Dieter is Bhoot’s most trusted colleague in the network, and Jeffreys had access to him. Mr. Time could have been passing our intel to Bhoot through Dieter.”
Zoe stared at the screen but her eyes were lifted, as if she were calculating a data set. “Okay . . . then why? Not the money. And he’s already powerful. And he’s got everything to lose if it was true and he was found out.” Her volume dropped again. “What possible gain would make a man like that betray his country?”
“Maybe he’s paranoid? Maybe he wants more and more power? He’s a megalomaniac?” Vanessa shook her head. “I don’t know. Not yet. But I’m going to find out, even if it’s just to eliminate him from suspicion, right?”
“Okay, yes, it sounds crazy,” Zoe said at last. She wasn’t making her usual ate-something-rank face like she did when she’d had enough of Vanessa. “But who knows . . . I don’t know about the motives, but on other fronts, you might just be onto something,” Zoe said at last. “It fits . . . with some of our findings . . . it makes sense in some ways. Damn . . . this is the kind of information that gets people killed.” She wrapped her arms around Ludwig van B. “You need to know this: The SOB called me into his office.”
Vanessa’s eyes widened. “When? Why?”
“This afternoon. To pump me about the investigation. His office sent over an official car and driver to pick me up and deliver me and take me back. It was really, really odd.” Zoe’s eyes rolled right and then they refocused on the monitor and Vanessa. “Listen . . . he asked me about you, too, about what you are doing. His questions were actually pretty subtle. He’s extremely smart and obviously capable of being crafty, as if everything really falls under his domain and he should be asking these things about the investigation.” Zoe paused for a moment before she said, “This isn’t good.”
“Agreed,” Vanessa said softly. “Really not good . . .” She heard a worried whine coming from Ludwig.
“So let me get back to you on this stuff,” Zoe said slowly. “I’ll see what I can find, but I can’t be looking, if you get my drift . . .”
Vanessa nodded; the tightness behind her solar plexus had hardened into a knot. She contracted her hands into fists, frustrated by how few words, how little information they could exchange. “I won’t say more now.”
“Oh, hallelujah for that!” For an instant Zoe was almost smiling.
Vanessa felt a surge of gratitude for the show of support from someone she respected. She thought Zoe might feel the same way about her. But even more, she felt afraid for both of them, Zoe and herself, and for everyone at CPD.
Vanessa took a quick breath, nodding. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Zoe said. “And don’t contact me like this again. I’ll contact you.”
With a small, twisted bleep the screen went blank.
47
From where he squatted in the shade of the UH-60 Black Hawk, he squinted east, where he had once come across the pillars of a ruined temple jutting up through the sand. He believed, like many, that the temple had belonged to the Queen of Sheba.
The helicopter refueled at a makeshift outpost in the desert in Ma’rib Province, where the crews took on and dropped off supplies for various missions.
He admired the Ma’rib for her stark beauty and for her history. In ancient times, Sheba, spoken of in the Qur’an, and even in the Bible, might have walked here, in this very spot, where he waited.
He glanced over at three Quonset huts. Inside the farthest was a battered jeep with a full tank of gas. On the other side of the UH-60, about seventy-five meters from where he worked, members of his three-man team kicked a battered soccer ball back and forth. As the wind shifted, so did their voices, carrying intermittently to him—teasing and mock anger minus the heat of real conflict.
He stood now, strong and athletic at twenty-six years, dusting off his hands and wiping sweat from his sun-browned face with a rag that smelled of engine oil. He walked toward the others, his mouth splitting into a grin so white and wide it seemed to break his face in half. He held out his hands and the others nodded, reaching out in return, until the four of them had intertwined their arms in a circle, bowing their heads.
“Brothers . . .” He had memorized the words they needed to hear, the words that would ease this sacrifice. His voice was deep, resonating as he intoned: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord Jesus, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Jesus Christ you are serving. Anyone who does wrong will be punished for their wrongs, and there is no favoritism.”
They finished the prayer with “Amen” all around.
He high-fived each of the others as they broke off one by one to head for the helicopter, while he stayed where he was.
Minutes later, the pilot lifted the bird into the air and he raised his hand in salute. He watched as it rose swiftly upward into the overcast sky and toward the heavens. When the helicopter appeared as small as his fist, he hefted the metal suitcase and walked to the farthest Quonset hut and the Jeep. He had a long drive ahead of him and only half a day to complete it.
He was guiding the Jeep carefully along the provisional road scratched into hard earth, when the UH-60 Black Hawk exploded into a fiery ball. He kept his eyes forward, staring west toward his destination, the capital city of Sana’a. But his mouth moved in silent prayer.
48
At least this morning Vanessa was awake, seated at the kitchen table, and working on her second cup of very strong coffee, the kind her dad used to say put hair on your chest, when Chris showed up at 0643 hours. His pale skin, heavy-lidded eyes, and shaved-but-nicked beard betrayed his lack of sleep.
Shrugging off his overcoat, he said, “I have good news and bad news.”
She was getting a little bit used to being woken up with bad news, but she rolled her eyes at the ancient saw. “Does anyone ever really want the bad news?”
“You’re cleared to talk to Dieter Schoeman.”
She raised her free arm and made a loose fist. “Finally.” Her mind was already working, flicking through questions she needed to ask Bhoot’s closest ally.
“The Agency’s G-IV flies out of Le Bourget tonight between midnight and 0400 hours.”
She sucked in more coffee as Chris said, “You’re welcome.”
“Thank you,” she said. She was thinking about Jeffreys and the fact that clearance had to go through his office, but she couldn’t confide in Chris about her dark suspicions about him, not yet. Before she even whispered an accusation aloud, she needed at least a shred of concrete evidence of actions on his part to betray his country.
Jesus, the whole thing sounds crazy this morning, even to my own ears.
She felt a pang of fear. If she were wrong about Jeffreys, it would mean she’d missed the real traitor. But she shook off the uncertainty for now; it wouldn’t help her move forward.
She faced Chris with a forced smile. “Okay, so, the bad news, right?”
“Your friend Fournier got wind of your trip and he’s going with you.”
Vanessa screwed up her face. “No effing way.”
“Way,” Chris said flatly. “If you want to be on that jet tonight, Fournier will be sitting beside you.” He scratched his chin where the tiny shaving nick was oozing blood. “Remember, Vanessa, this is a joint team effort. You don’t have the final say.”
Vanessa simply shrugged. Talking freely about the French in the safe house was making her increasingly nervous.
“That’s it?” Chris asked. “You’re not going to kick and scream?”
Burned (Vanessa Pierson series Book 2) Page 19