by Dale Amidei
The InterLynk system, of course. Lyubov understood her reference. Thank God for her discretion. “Such attention is usual, madam.”
“Until next time, then, Dmitry, regardless of the pleasure.”
“The pleasure was mine, madam. I wish you well in your endeavors. A patriot of any affiliation is in my mind preferential company to a traitor.”
“I understand completely and agree. Have the best of evenings, Director.”
Lyubov stared at the phone for a moment after their discussion had ended, pondering how his last call of the week was also his most intriguing. Boone Hildebrandt, from her tone, seemed pleased. The conversation had not taken nearly the toll on him it might have, had she asked entirely different questions. I have been lucky this time. Stay well away from this one, Dmitry. She is dangerous in more ways than a married man should contemplate.
The remainder of the DNI’s Friday was devoted to more routine business. Bradley, always engaged, had left for his usual meeting of the Security Council, a trip which routinely entailed visits to Langley on the return circuit. In his absence, Boone had her own backlog of routine Level One paperwork to approve, spending the remainder of her own workday a prisoner of the ODNI document-management system. Nevertheless, the essential questions of the day did not seem to stray far from the forefront of the Senior Case Officer’s mind.
It was late afternoon when she looked up to a gentle knock at her door. Edna Reese stood there with a casual cup of coffee in hand. “Doctor? Do you have a moment?”
Surprised, Boone swiveled in her chair. “Of course, Ed. Come in.”
Edna, in an uncharacteristic move, closed the door of Boone’s small office behind her. The woman sat down, seeming pleased at Boone’s level of attention, however inevitable given the anomalous nature of the visit.
“Pardon the familiarity, Doctor. I just wanted to let you know how glad I am you’re back.”
Blinking involuntarily, Boone recovered as quickly as she could manage. “Well, thank you, Eddie,” she said.
Bradley’s office manager sipped, seemingly to fortify herself. “I noticed a marked difference in the Director midweek. He had been … withdrawn, really, when you were on your … assignment.”
To the SCO it did not seem Edna’s remark held any sarcasm—yet another surprise. He never told them. Boone found herself touched in a way which warmed her entirely.
“And then just two days ago, he was suddenly himself again. Now, here you are, out of the blue,” ODNI’s office matron continued. “I just wanted to let you know, Doctor … I appreciate the difference.”
Trap? Boone's tactical side fought any urge she might have had to display her feminine delight. This woman could bury us both. “That’s good to hear, Ed. Supporting the Director is what this place is all about.”
“I agree completely,” Reese said in accord. She paused. “I’ve watched the man work for years, in different situations, and with different support staffs. There’s a difference in him now, and it makes me glad. Your being here is good for him, Boone. I merely wanted to share my conclusion.”
What am I supposed to say to this? Boone came to her own conclusion; sometimes, life could still manage to produce the unexpected. “Well, thank you, ma’am.” It was her turn to pause. “I’ll do what I can … I promise.”
Apparently satisfied, Edna Reese rose and returned Boone’s door to its previous and usual state before sauntering back toward her own desk. The workday was nearly over, and the hourly duties were drawing to a close. Boone knew Ed had just made her former rival part of the casual routine of a normal person’s Friday afternoon, and it was a good feeling.
How the hell about that? Returned to normal from her state of guarded shock, Boone looked at the time display on her computer screen and reevaluated her workload. Nothing is here unable to wait for Monday. It could be time for a little taste of regular life myself.
Boone treated herself to a light dinner and a heavy workout, hitting both the weights and the treadmill available in the hotel spa. Afterward, her stretching and an early shower were the only obligations she allowed to intrude on her evening. The rest of her time was spent in contemplation and relaxation while lounging in a favorite robe, unwilling to put forth even the effort to dress for what remained of her peaceful Friday night.
The knock on her door seemed tailor-made to disrupt her indulgence. Of course, and here I stand naked under a thin layer of silk. She cautiously approached the peephole, determined to ignore whomever it was. Except him, she thought on seeing the identity of her visitor. She undid the locks and opened the door, peeking around it discreetly. “Terry—this is a surprise. Come in.”
To her the man appeared, judging from the expression on his face and the condition of his suit, as if his work day had just ended. You poor dear. They did it to you again, didn’t they?
“I’m sorry to be a bother, Boone. We never had a chance to talk after this morning.” He finally noticed her attire—or lack thereof—and seemed suddenly embarrassed. “Damn, sorry. I should have called.”
“Terry, you’re welcome any time. Come in.” She led the way into the suite and sat on the nearby love seat, curling her legs underneath her. He took his place on the nearby sofa as she asked, “What’s on your mind?”
Bradley’s visage darkened, reflecting his usual, tortured condition: one resulting from constant overwork. “Regarding our shared work ticket. We need to talk.”
Level Zero. “Of course.”
“Voice patterns I ran this morning put the subject’s complicity at one hundred percent, not that there ever was much doubt. Even what uncertainty I had is, at this point, no longer a comfort.”
“I’ve been living there, Terry,” she said in consoling him.
“Then I hoped you would have some advice for me.”
“I felt the same,” Boone admitted, “due to a conversation of my own with a friend in the FSB.”
“Regarding?” Bradley reacted with surprise.
“Possible contingencies available to the subject,” Boone informed him. “You anticipated my bolt-hole, Terry, when I split for Geneva. I wanted to confirm my intuition as to hers.”
“And?”
“Let’s just say I think I could anticipate her reaction. The only question is how to elicit the response. Overtly or through something more discreet?”
The DNI sighed. “Boone, there are no overt options. You weren’t at the Security Council meeting. She was. The woman absolutely dominated the room. The Big Guy gave her space, for God’s sake.”
“Terry … in her mind, she could consider herself the Big Guy. She’s a runaway train at this point.”
“And the only conductors are members of the same administration she is principally responsible for assembling.”
“Terry … this isn’t the office,” she cautioned him.
Lowering his voice, he muttered, “Ah, damn.” His fingertips went to his temples. “See how tired I am?” His head raised again, and his eyes regained some of their fire. “If we can’t talk about these things even here … classification sure as hell won’t allow them into the public record. If these people were not in my chain of command, I would have already written your operations order.”
“Like I said this morning, Terry: it’s cancer. It will claim healthy tissue until avulsed.”
“But how?”
The family business. “General McAllen has made quite a decent living from dilemmas such as yours, you know. Sensitive field operations comprise a significant portion of their gross.”
Caught off guard by her reference, Bradley quickly regained his businesslike demeanor. “Boone, I swear … sometimes I wonder if you’re becoming too close to that old man in Geneva.”
Ever since high school I’ve had to keep my secrets. Before ODNI, even before CIA. I’m so tired of lying to him. “Terry … some things will never change. He’s my father.”
Bradley merely stared at her as if her words had stunned him into immobility. Then she ob
served the cascade of implications break confinement. Yes. I kept it even from the deep-background investigators. They didn’t care about my elementary school records.
“Son of a—” he began out of shock.
“Daughter, Terrence. Of the best man I know.”
Sitting on her room’s sofa, Bradley took the time necessary to recover as she watched with her head propped up by her arm. Finally, his words returned. “So … you’ve told me, Boone. And now you have to kill me?”
She smiled, unfolding her legs and walking to the Tiffany lamp, the room's only source of illumination other than what filtered in through the sheers of her window. “I believe, Terrence, that I have other ways of enticing you to keep my secrets.” The light went off, and once their eyes adjusted, her robe was off as well.
He stood, meeting her in the middle of the space, as receptive to her kiss as she was to the gentle if strong attention from his hands. The time for talking was over. She took one of those hands and led him toward the sleeping area and her massive bed. Its luxurious, high-thread-count coverings were already turned down. He laid her back before he continued his undress, one her gentle fingers had begun.
Edna’s right, Boone thought. I’m good for him. And I promised to do what I can.
Chapter 22 - Conduits of Clarity
“Daddy, I need to talk. I’m on the portal.” The text message had arrived via his phone shortly after he made it to the kitchen for his first eye-opener, on the schedule he had kept for most of her life. And damn if my little girl doesn’t know it, McAllen thought.
Karla was still asleep upstairs, not even her culturally typified diligence able to provoke a Saturday wake-up early enough to match his own. He closed his morning papers—they were delivered to his iPad now, along with almost everything else—and fired up the tablet’s encrypted InterLynk application. Less than a minute later, he was on the grid and saw from his executive contact list she was there as well. A chat session opened before he could navigate to the button, and he swiveled his device to its landscape mode to facilitate the appearance of a more useable keyboard.
You’re up late, he tapped in.
“Lots on my mind,” was the response. “These executive chats are not logged, correct?”
You are correct.
Boone’s cursor did not move for a few moments. “Daddy, Terry has established full criminal culpability for VG. He and I are the only ones who know.”
McAllen snorted, his thick fingers going back to his virtual keys. Well, honey, hearing of the Queen B being bad is hardly the surprise of the morning. He paused before adding another line. Plan of action?
Her response came rather quickly. “Did you and Mom ever plan to raise yourselves an assassin?”
“Damn,” McAllen muttered. After a few seconds, he began to type again. I planned to be proud of whatever you became, darling girl. I haven’t been disappointed yet. A moment later he added, You all are gonna have whatever support I can provide.
“Nothing has ever been this black, Dad.”
McAllen did not doubt her. No contracts or transfers necessary on this one, honey. Not even out of the black budget. Promise me.
“It’s all vapor. Don’t worry.” Her cursor paused once more. “Are you really OK with this?”
McAllen thought about her query for a bit before entering his answer. Direct action seems to be the route to self-preservation. Self-defense, honey, justifies the response. I didn’t start this pissing match.
Another pause in the chat followed. “Limited support, then,” she finally responded. “From the people you trust most.”
Those would be R and S, was his reply. He keyed in an addendum. Don’t let unexpected help surprise you though.
“Never, Daddy. I’m going back to bed now. Hug Mom for me, OK?”
You got it, baby girl. McAllen watched her account log off, and afterward, he remained the only executive online. He, too, then signed himself out of his company’s Web portal and returned to his usual morning reading …as well as his damn coffee. And there’s something only she could make me forget.
His daughter’s tone had come across even in plain text. “I’m sorry, babe,” he muttered. The General thought back across the span of her years and how his own life had unavoidably affected the course of hers. It was what she wanted. I should'a warned her better. McAllen felt the pangs of a father who looked into the mirror of his daughter’s pain and saw his own reflection. He accepted it as being his responsibility, just as any military man with his years of experience would do with any other accounting. Peter Wallace McAllen knew his child would bear her burdens every bit as well as he had managed his own. She’s your daughter, through and through. The thought was a comfort for which he found himself paternally glad.
In her darkened hotel room, separated by a chunk of Virginia, the Atlantic Ocean and the entirety of her beloved France from the man who had raised her, Boone closed her MacBook. The glow of the LCD display disappeared, and the bedroom was again lit by only what illumination filtered in through her windows.
She looked at Bradley’s sleeping form, neither his position nor his breathing changed from when she had slipped out of the California King and back into her silk robe. I will, to the greatest extent possible, need to keep him separated from what is about to happen. Her life was returning to its dark and dangerous side, with its weighty and terrifying past haunting her now via memories and regrets. My life is a trap I built for myself. I can blame no one else. God help me.
Spying the suite’s second, smaller television positioned across from the bed, she leaned back in her seat, remembering an old yet quite germane appearance of Dr. Jon Anthony on Deborah Vosse’s News Hour. Realizing our personal responsibility is one of the greatest burdens of spiritual growth, she recalled he had said, and the abrogation of essential truth can only lead to disasters on a personal, spiritual or a national level. Keeping a level horizon while navigating our perspective is the greatest responsibility of all.
Biting the inside of her lip, she thought back almost as quickly to the speech of Pastor Lin Shun Lun to the assembly during the Weber Award presentation last spring. His good words, too, echoed through her mind. As we occupy the very middle of our own three realms—Heaven, Earth, and Man between—it is, therefore, our vital challenge to find the balance point of existence.
And an ongoing challenge it seemed to be. What are you, Boone? If Daniel Sean Ritter and Bernie Schuster were on their way over from Switzerland, she had a limited amount of time to decide. There was time to plan, yes … but there was time to think also. Boone knew the mental game well, what the process could do for an operation … or do to an operative. Clarity, she realized, sometimes arrived through conduits: resources like her father and other men whose voices carried the authority of years of deliberate thought. Daddy is so far away … and Pastor Lin as well. A small voice in the background of her thoughts chimed in a reminder: Doctor Jon is in Maryland … an hour or so away.
She reviewed the facts as she knew them. The academic was a near acquaintance, having been on the same sidewalk with Sean, Farrah and herself one evening in New York when bullets flew. The advice she needed now was not tactical, nor was the subject matter covered by classification. And Doctor Jon was a former InterLynk associate whose vital info, Boone was certain, would reside in the Executive Contacts on Daddy’s portal. You need to settle your questions, Boone honey, before you know what you can do.
The possibility of such a visit carried with it some comfort. Finally, the promise of the rest needed so badly by her tired mind arrived, and she rose. The silk slipped off her shoulders once again. She silently glided around the bed to slip under the covers next to the Director of National Intelligence, barely stirring in his own slumber. She moved close and touched him gently, luxuriating once more in the warmth of his body. I will find us the answers we both need, Terrence, dear. I promise.
Britteridge College
Sheffield, Maryland
The end of the sem
ester was approaching, and the deadline meant nothing but work for a college professor as Dr. Jon Anthony knew well. Term papers needed reviewing and grading, and any revisions to his final exams would need to be addressed before the end of next week. Even with such a workload facing him, he approached each task as a blessing.
His popularity with the student body was one of his greatest sources of satisfaction, even more than he had imagined while pursuing this life. The kindling of understanding he nurtured in them brought with it a warmth better than any hearth’s fire. The earthly kind will blaze only to eventually fade and die. These spiritual lights will burn forever. Let it be, Lord.
An hour into his Saturday morning—even he had not felt guilty about starting at ten—his desk phone rang. He briefly considered letting it slip past to the answering system before the oddity of a weekend call to his office prompted him to pick up the receiver. “Theological Studies … Doctor Anthony.”
The voice at the other end of the line seemed somewhat surprised. “Doctor … forgive me, I expected voice mail.” There was only a moment’s pause. “We’ve not been introduced, I’m afraid … my name is Doctor Rebecca Boone Hildebrandt—a colleague of Colonel Daniel Sean Ritter. I was hoping to arrange an appointment, or lunch if you can forgive the terribly short notice.”
One of Sean’s people? A tingle crept up his back. Everything happens for a reason, Anthony’s faith reminded him. “Of course, Doctor,” he managed. “My lunch break is accounted for already, I have to say, but I’m in the office now. Do you know Roberts Hall?”
“I believe I do. May I impose by stopping by for a visit this morning?” the voice on the phone asked.
His adult mind overrode the fear arising from the prospects of welcoming a visitor from the deep dark which Sean traversed regularly. Love one another. “Please do,” he answered. “Any friend of Sean’s is always welcome.”