Taking the chair behind the desk, Sam went right to work. "I take it you've discovered the secret of the fifteenth stone." The look that passed between Randolph and Sandra told him he'd guessed right. "If you hadn't, there would be no need for you to call me," he explained. "I know you don't quite trust me." He let his gaze settle on Randolph, then move piercingly to Sandra. "I'm not the enemy. I want what you want. So let me help. It's why you came here."
Wyatt looked at Sandra. He'd looked around the grounds as they drove up the long driveway. If Sam had wanted to turn them in to the military, this was the perfect place. They had the stones with them, the iron gate had locked them in as if this country-club setting were a prison. The deserted place had no telephone lines to prevent anything, even helicopters, from landing right next to the house. There would be no escape if Sam was playing for the other side.
Sandra must have felt the same way. She returned Sam's stare without the trace of a flicker. She got up and walked around the desk. Standing close to Sam, she had the advantage with him seated.
"We don't have much time," she said. "We've got to end this running. If we don't, the government only has to wait for us to make a mistake, run out of money, or be identified by some good citizen who happens to see us in a convenience store."
Sam stared quietly at her.
"Wyatt has a plan and we need you to help execute it. When it's done there's no guarantee than any of us will get off scot-free, but at least we'll be alive and no longer a target for some unknown assassin."
Sam stood up. His demeanor portrayed him every bit the colonel, sure, confident and alert. "I have nothing to lose, Sandra," he said. "My career ended the moment I left the Pentagon and never returned. I never knew how much I wanted that menial job until it was no longer mine, but I would like my dignity intact. Whatever I can do, I'm willing."
Wyatt watched the two of them. The tension was almost palpable. He stood, but to them he wasn't even in the room. Sandra searched Sam's face for any sign of insincerity. She gave no indication that she agreed or disagreed with Sam, but a moment later she opened the backpack the was their constant companion and pulled out the jewelry case.
Sam gasped when she opened the velvet case and he saw the fifteen stones, brightly polished and connected by a delicate, braided gold chain. He recognized the configuration: two strands equal in length holding several stones. The others, including the one solitary and deadly fifteenth stone, was connected to a chain. He wondered how they'd found out so much in only a few days.
"Did Taylor tell you this?" He took the case from her hands and turned toward the lighted windows.
"He left us a disk. The configuration and information were on it."
"Sam," Wyatt began. "You worked with Chip on this system. Can you take that fifteenth stone and defuse it?"
Sam turned back to them. "This stone," he looked down at it. "This was the most important part of the configuration. The system cannot be activated without the stone. It was the fail-safe chip. If it were set in the wrong configuration, the program would execute the explosion routine. Conversely, the chip itself is expecting to find certain instructions. If these are not found, then the connector links will cause the explosion. It's a bit complicated, but the answer to your questions is, tampering with the chip will cause it to detonate."
A tremor ran through Wyatt. Thank God they hadn't let Brooke Richards try to do anything with it. He shuddered at the mental picture of her and her family being blown to bits before his very eyes. His knees weakened and he sat down.
"What about changing it?" Sandra suggested.
"What do you mean?" Sam asked.
"If we can't remove it, is it possible to have the chip issue an instruction other than detonation?"
Wyatt sat up. He hoped Sam was about to say yes, but he was already shaking his head.
"Jackson had been working on something like that. He'd only mentioned it to me the day before he died."
"Do you know how he planned to get it done?"
"He showed me the programs, but I didn't have time to study them before I had to go to a staff meeting. By the time I thought about it again, Jackson had been found dead and the stones were missing."
Sandra dropped down in a chair. "Well, I guess that's that."
"Not quite," Sam said, taking a seat himself. Wyatt and Sandra stared at him, waiting for him to continue. "Where are the disks you copied from Jackson's computer?"
"In the backpack." Wyatt looked at the navy-blue LL Bean bag they'd been carrying ever since they escaped the mountain in Pennsylvania. Sandra had had little time to work on her thesis, yet she kept the bag close to her.
"The plans are in there," Sam said.
"They're still encrypted," Sandra pointed out.
"Not to me," Sam smiled.
Wyatt and Sandra both came forward in their chairs as if they were puppets and someone had just pulled their strings. When he'd devised this plan, he didn't think it could possibly work, but as he got nearer and nearer to the end his confidence built. Now all they had to do was slip undetected into a government military installation, find Project Eagle, set the stones and activate the program, then locate the second machine, get access to it and deactivate it. Impossible. The word flashed in his mind like a danger sign. Large red pulsating capital letters.
***
"Good news or bad?" Casey asked Everett as soon as they were out of earshot of anyone near them. They walked through the White House toward the upstairs study. There he could have privacy and speak freely.
Everett smiled at her. "Didn't you see us shaking hands in front of the White House press corps? The President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Japan both smiled and said the negotiations were going well."
"Yes," she said drily, preceding her husband into the study. "I did see that, and I'll see it again and again on the nightly news and probably plastered on the front page of the Post in the morning."
"The truth is, I'm getting nowhere, Casey. The man is a rock. I have me impression that he doesn't have all his cards on the table, that there is something else they want and they're stalling for time until they get it."
"What could that be?"
"I don't know. Are there any other dignitaries due to arrive from Japan?"
"Not to my knowledge. I'll have it checked," she said.
"Any word from our wayward senator?" Everett asked with another sigh. He dropped down onto the sofa and slipped his feet out of his shoes.
"As a matter of feet, there is."
"There is." Everett stopped in me act of reaching for his shoes to place them out of the way. "Good news or bad?"
"He didn't say. Apparently, the junior senator wants to speak to the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces."
"Oh, God!" Everett said. "I'm not going to like this."
***
The number of miles they had driven in the last few days could rival the Daytona 500. Sandra and Wyatt were back in the car racing toward the capital. Sandra was glad they weren't in her home state where they'd have many toll roads to travel and more opportunities for people to recognize them.
Sam had the stones and was busy trying to accomplish- what Chip had begun. He'd ask them to leave the house. If anything went wrong and the bomb detonated, the beautiful stone building would be a small pile of rubble. They'd walked in the gardens, explored the stables, passed the tennis courts and pool, and set out along a jogging trail when they saw Sam waving them back toward the house. Sandra thought he'd finished, but when they arrived back it was to look at a file Sam had printed. It was a correspondence file with letters to Lance Desque and notes chronicling various meetings between Lance and Chip.
Lance knew everything about Project Eagle. He might be able to help them. He was the undersecretary. He had access to any military installation including the Pentagon. If she could get to him, convince him their plan was the best thing to do with the stones, he might help them.
It was worth a
try. Lance had been a friend of the family since she was a child. He'd want to help her and her father get out of this mess. She'd called his office only to be told he'd left for the day. Then Sandra knew she had to see him. If she was going to enlist his help she'd have to do it in person.
"I don't like this," Wyatt said as they headed back toward Washington. "That guy wants the stones only to further his own career. He'll never help us."
"Wyatt, I know Lance is ambitious, but after I explain how his helping us can net him the same results, why wouldn't he help?"
"It sounds good, but I . . ."
He left the sentence hanging. Sandra knew he just couldn't say his intuition told him. Men didn't say those kind of things. They avoided the words, even the existence of such a feeling. She knew he was concerned for her.
"Wyatt, you'll be close by," she reminded him. "If anything happens, I'll scream and you can come running; like my knight in shining armor." She laughed, hoping to lift the mood in the car. Wyatt smiled, but it did nothing to change the heavy atmosphere.
They reached Lance's house. Wyatt parked on the street. "Well, it looks as if he's home," Sandra said. His car, with a personalized Maryland plate reading DESQUE, was parked in the driveway.
"Wish me luck," Sandra said as she unlocked the door. Wyatt grabbed her arm.
"You've got fifteen minutes. If you're not out by then, I'm coming in."
She nodded. She wanted to laugh. He sounded like some TV cop who only gave his female partner a few minutes to handle the bad guys. Then he'd come barreling through the door, guns drawn and blazing. The credits would roll while the entire police department came and the hero and heroine kissed, having finally saved the day. She didn't think that would be her fate, but she'd go for the final kiss and the saving of the day bit.
Her heels clicked on the driveway, then on the inlaid brick walkway that led to the front door.
***
The day was finally over. It had been long and trying and Lance Desque couldn't wait to get to his gym and work the kinks out of his muscles. Later, he had an invitation to an embassy party. He had stacks of invitations. Someone always had something to celebrate. Lance attended as many as he could. Being known in the world community could only help him when it was his turn to shape world power.
Tonight he would be dining with the ambassador of Finland. Tomorrow it would be the Japanese, then the French and the Pakistanis.
He fingered the imperial jade carving of a dragon that sat on the foyer table in his hall. Green fire extended from the open mouth of the three-foot-tall piece of Japanese civilization. It had been a gift from the Prime Minister of Japan.
Most people thought the dragon represented evil, but evil and good were often misunderstood. To him it meant strength and power, a power that would soon be in his hands. All he had to do was find Senator Randolph and Sandra Rutledge.
Lance was thinking of the two people who could derail his plans for power when the doorbell rang. He went to it and peeped through the beveled glass. With a wide smile on his face, he swung it open.
"Sandra, what a surprise. Come in, come in." He greeted her like a friend he hadn't seen in years instead of the woman who had been uppermost in his thoughts. Sandra stepped across the threshold into the white colonial house on a quiet cul-de-sac in Chevy Chase. Lance glanced around outside, wondering if his luck was good enough to include the senator, too. He saw nothing, no cars parked at the curb or in driveways he didn't recognize.
Closing the door, he turned back to Sandra. He hadn't seen her in nearly a week and needed to know what she and Randolph had found out. They, neither of them, were the kind of people to sit around and twiddle their thumbs. They would have been busy trying to find out what they had and what it was used for. He needed to know what they had learned.
Wyatt Randolph was a Boy Scout, fine, upstanding, and honest. How he ever got elected to Congress was a mystery.
He was sure Chip Jackson had sent him the part because of his honesty. And that was what had caused him to lose control of the project. Jackson was livid when he discovered a second system had been built without his knowledge. Lance had managed to placate him on that, but he insisted on seeing it and being involved in its installation. It was Jackson who discovered the discrepancy in the inventory records.
It was up to Lance to recover the stones. He'd been working with Senator Rutledge, and everything appeared to be under control until the senator's daughter had joined forces with Randolph.
Then Everett Horton had stuck his hands into the pie and control was slipping. Lance had to get it back.
"What brings you up here?" he asked when she was seated in the living room. "I didn't expect to see you," he explained honestly.
Lance went to the bar and poured himself a drink. He took a gulp of it before offering to make her one. Sandra refused anything more than bottled water.
"I need your help, Lance," she began when he'd handed her the glass and seated himself across from her. "I know you have your hands in every aspect of Defense. That you know everything there is to know about what goes on in the DOD."
Lance waited. It was a technique he'd learned from Sandra's father. He'd wait a moment and see if she continued. He almost smiled when she did.
"Wyatt. . .Senator Randolph and I have been looking at some files we found on Chip Jackson's computer in the Pentagon."
Sandra scrutinized him. Not even an eyebrow lifted at her words. She was sure Wyatt's opinion of him was wrong. She'd known him since she was a child. If they needed his help he would give it. Wyatt had been right about her father. Sandra decided to be cautious. Before asking him to help them break in to the Pentagon and activate Project Eagle, she'd try a little test.
"What did you find?" he asked.
Sandra wondered if his voice wasn't a little tight. She dismissed it.
"According to the notes and letters Chip had on his-computer, you were the person who discovered he was working on the communications system and suggested he make it a Pentagon project."
"I may have been," Lance said without committing himself. "I suggest a lot of projects. It’s part of my job."
"Later, he suggested that you were behind the theft."
Lance was out of his chair. "What!"
"A piece of news like that getting around Washington could ruin a man's career."
"Where is this file? It doesn't exist. Why have you come here with these lies?"
Sandra stared at the man in front of her. The Lance Desque she knew had somehow disappeared. The man in front of her was different. Wyatt had been right. Thank God he was outside waiting for her.
"Where are the stones, Sandra?"
"I don't know." She stood up. Fear gathered around her heart. She checked the distance between herself and the door. A sofa stood between her and the exit. A table by the door had a Japanese pagoda on it. She looked at the lamps and knickknacks, seeing what she could throw or pull down if she needed to run. Could she make it? Would Lance let her go? She didn't think so. Lance was fit. She knew he worked out each day, knew he prided himself on how his body could rival that of a seventeen-year-old.
"Don't give me that I know you have them. I know you gave them to Jeff and you got him killed over them. Is the what you want to happen to everyone who comes in contact with them?"
Sandra's throat was so dry she didn't think she could speak. "The stones don't belong to you."
"They're more mine than yours. I worked for them. Week after week I had to find some story to keep that geek working. For three years I held his hand while he developed this system. I kept him in the dark, telling him we weren't going to do anything more than direct satellites with the system. Then he got together with Parker. They weren't even supposed to know their work had anything to do with the other, but Taylor knew. He knew the code. He was the one who linked them together. Of course he denied it, but I know he planted the code on Jackson's system and left the decoded system there."
Sandra loo
ked around the room. She felt trapped. Lance was no longer talking to her. He was ranting, angry with Chip and Jeff and Sam Parker. Sandra judged her distance again. She took a small step toward the door. She didn't want to call any attention to herself.
"Then you," he shouted, swinging around to stare at her. She jumped. "You gave him the stones. He had them on him that night, taunted me with them."
Fear skittered up her spine. "You killed Jeff." Sandra took another step toward freedom. She wondered how long it had been since she came in. Would Lance kill her? Would Wyatt come barging through the door like he'd said?
She took another step and looked for a clock. There was one on the mantel, next to a framed Japanese print. She suddenly noticed all the Oriental accents in the room. Was that going to be her last thought?
"Killed him?" Lance shouted. "I didn't touch him. But no matter. Tomorrow everything will be over. I'll have the stones and the. . ." He trailed off without completing the sentence.
"What about tomorrow?" she asked.
"No matter," he smiled She could see venom in that smile. "In a little more than twenty-four hours the stones and Senator Randolph's location will be known."
He was planning to activate the second system. How? Where was it? Twenty-four hours. What did he mean? Wyatt had the stones. They only worked with one system. Had Lance found a way to duplicate them or to make the system-work with a different set of stones? She knew it wasn't impossible. They worked on light beams. Refracted light beams. A good technician using computer optics could adjust light until it produced the correct angle. They'd had time. She'd only been involved for a few weeks, but the system had been stolen ages ago.
Sandra had to get out of here. She needed to let Wyatt and Sam know about this. She had to let the President know. Time had run out. They had to act and act now!
She dashed for the door. Lance anticipated her flight and blocked her before she made it past the sofa table.
Under the Sheets (Capitol Chronicles Book 1) Page 62