One Last Scent of Jasmine (Boone's File Book 3) (14 page)

One aspect of the current briefing remained unchanged:  it mentioned no leads as to the identity of the individual who had shot down two federal employees in cold blood.
Someone knew enough to get there in time to kill Dex and Zeke.
Del’s tech gurus had been proficient enough to eliminate any evidence of their own actions inside the facility.
Little did they know they would also prevent any identification of the person or persons who would end their lives.

Who? How? Why?
Valka Gerard needed to know the answers. This bombshell had hit too close to her President to ignore. As the sole-surviving Senior Advisor could now see, the shooter had obviously removed the identifying items from the scene. Later, the same party had either returned them or passed them along to the FBI.
What sort could do such a thing?
The answer seemed clear.
Invisible, dangerous people … with information. It described perfectly the intelligence types Del used to manage. One of them leaked his intentions, or sold him out to the entity whose asset marginalized his operators. Which?
Gerard picked up her telephone handset and hit the appropriate speed dial to Bobbi Wetzel’s office.

Almost immediately the Deputy Assistant and worker bee picked up. “Strategic Init—oh, hi, Val.”

Feeling her jaw muscle tense, Gerard’s thoughts never slowed. “Bobbi, how confident can we be in the integrity of our staff?”

At the other end, the question was obviously unexpected. “
Our
people?
God,
Val. Practically every one of them has been here since Chicago.”

She’s right
. “Help me think this through, Bobbi. Del’s intentions aside, how is it—barring any of his people betraying the others—his operators’ actions were so neatly interdicted on Friday night?”

Contemplative silence followed. “There
is
no way, Val. But that doesn’t mean it was one of us.”

“Who then?” She could hear Wetzel sigh, and waited through another pause for reflection before hearing her subordinate answer.

“Someone on the receiving end. It had to be.”

Wonderfully original thinking
. Gerard, however, found she had arrived at a logical impasse. “It seems incredulous to me a beneficiary would take any action to prevent such a significant strategic gain.”

“Everybody’s politics is all about who the winners and losers are, Val. Think about it. The other side was probably pretty incredulous Del was willing to give up the DARIUS platform, whatever his reasoning. Profit … diplomatic outreach … whatever. Someone didn’t like what was going on, and they squeaked Del out.”

Damn. This kid’s good
. It was the Senior Advisor’s turn to indulge in thoughtful silence. “Say you’re right. How does such information get from there to here?”

“The spooks are all connected now, Val. They’re all running through the same network. InterLynk.”

“Interlinked? How do you mean?”

“
L-y-n-k,
Val. It’s a private intelligence outfit out of Geneva. CIA started it a few years ago. They’re doing gangbusters business all around the world selling access to information. It’s becoming the social network of the shaken-not-stirred types. Any level of intel could pass spook-to-spook in a heartbeat.”

To Gerard it felt as if her blood suddenly ran cold. “We
allow
this?”

The other woman vocalized her affirmation before continuing. “From what I heard it kind of got out of control. It’s always like that with private enterprise. What can you do, you know?”

“I can goddamn well bring it
back
under control.” As Wetzel went silent even Gerard was shocked she allowed the thought to slip out from between her teeth. The Senior Advisor drew a calming breath. “Sorry, Roberta. My anger was not directed at you, dear.”

“I understand, Val. It’s been a bad day everywhere.”

“Thank you so much. I will let you get back on task.”

“Sure thing.”

Hanging up the phone, Gerard now saw her unanswered questions resolve themselves, one after another, in the foreground of her mind.
It certainly could have happened just such a way. If not, it’s a matter of time before we actually do get blindsided by an out-of-control intelligence network. Intolerable to an extreme.

Success in politics, as she knew from long experience, depended on contingency planning and risk management coupled with valid strategic thinking.
Reigning in the government’s child organizations will address each of those areas of concern.
Undirected action yielded unpredictable results, and some of those had just cost her colleague his life. It was time for a more organized mind to take charge. Valka Gerard sat quietly and thought as the web of a new organizational chart began to take shape in her mind.

Though not
officially
designated as essential personnel, Samantha Coffin was spending her Saturday afternoon in the East Wing catching up on her never-ending work. As the White House Social Secretary, her office managed every event involving the admission of a guest into the White House:  from State dinners for hundreds to the reception of a solitary official. Currently, she was mulling over the recommended changes to the invitation graphics and calligraphy for the upcoming Thanksgiving events. The invites absolutely
had
to go out before the end of the day. Consequently, if anyone other than Valka Gerard had called her desk phone just now, the attempt would have gone unanswered. “Val. So good to hear from you,” Coffin lied. “How can I help you?”

“Oh, Sam, I’m sorry to call,” the Senior Advisor apologized in a tone which, as usual, promised to brook no insubordination. “I was looking at the State Dining Room for the week after next. It looks like Monday is unscheduled. Is it still the case?”

“I am almost certain you’re correct,” Samantha replied, flipping to the appropriate tab of her planning software to make doubly certain.
If there’s any time I wouldn’t want to be wrong, it’s now.
She saw the same empty block of space Valka Gerard had spied.

“Fantastic. I have a group I’d like to bring in for an evening social.”

“Numbers?” Coffin asked, creating an entry for the date.

“Call it seventy. Drinks and heavy hors d'oeuvre.”

A few clicks of the keyboard and it was finished. “Done. When can we have the guest list?”

“A bit of research, dear, and I’ll have the names by the end of the day.”

“Perfect. Is electronic notification acceptable?”
Please, God, let her say it is.

“Quite.” Gerard’s voice held an odd inflection. “These people are
all
very wired.”

“Consider it done. Notifications will go out on Monday.”

“You are a treasure, Sam. Look for my e-mail.”

The call ended, and Samantha Coffin felt as if she could cry. Her workload said otherwise. Any breakdown, she thought in despair, would have to be scheduled months in advance, and her calendar was full.

Liberty Crossing

McLean, Virginia

Monday morning

Boone had arrived and settled in, as usual, before her boss or coworkers. This morning, however, some of the others followed close enough behind to be in the door before she had fully shed her coat. Likewise, Bradley arrived in a punctual fashion shortly afterward. Boone wondered if her habitual timeliness was beginning to diffuse to the rest of ODNI.

Her morning coffee had barely started its drizzling promise of rejuvenation when Bradley rang her line. She picked up the handset.
Using a speakerphone to take a call from the Director of National Intelligence should be a firing offense.
“Yes, sir,” she answered, just in case
he
had her on speakerphone. A moment later, she could hear he did.

“Boone, could you come in here? You’re not going to believe this.”

She hung up as did he. Fifteen seconds later, ODNI’s Senior Case Officer stood in the Director's open doorway. With his finger Bradley indicated she should flip up the doorstop he must have set only a few minutes previously.

“What do we have now?” she wondered aloud.

“An invitation. Look,” the DNI insisted.

Crossing behind his desk for a peek, she peered down at his monitor. The invite, though electronic, was every bit as well executed as an engraved missive could have been. It featured at the top the iconic blue-and-white representation of their Chief Executive’s mansion. “Nice,” Boone commented with a snicker. “Are you going to go?”

Bradley snorted. “This is a summons, not an invitation. Look at the fellow recipient addresses,” he said, extending a finger toward the top of the e-mail.

Her eyes flicked, scanning the list of addressees. “Lovely. They want the directors heading all of your sundry constituent organizations to attend. I’d say someone is planning an evening intelligence confab,” Boone observed, backing off to the appropriate side of his desk.

“Analysis?”

A grimace on her face, Boon replied, “The timing, Terrence,
cannot
be an accident coming so soon after an Executive Branch fumble of last week’s magnitude. But why?”

Reading between the invitation's lines, Bradley paused in thought before answering. “Damage control follows damage assessment. Someone in the West Wing isn’t content with pinning DARIUS on Givens. They are obviously playing Little Dutch Boy.”

It follows,
Boone thought. “Of course. Power politics is the reaction to a perceived loss of control. They’ve intuited it was an element of the Intelligence Community who interdicted the DARIUS appropriation, and they want to reassert dominance over the administration’s gaggle of wayward children in order to prevent recurrence.”

“As well as attempt to determine culpability, possibly.” Bradley agreed.

It was Boone’s turn to apply her intelligence professional’s mind to what was becoming a tactical planning session. “Terry, if we’re right, whoever is pushing this was responsible for killing a Senior Advisor to the President. A level of sociopath who would not hesitate to marginalize someone lower on the org chart.”

“Exactly,” Bradley agreed. Inexplicably, the thought seemed to bring a smile to his face. “Do you have anything to wear?” he asked.

Thank you for flying WTF Airlines
. Boone cocked her head, her hand going to her hip. “You
cannot
be serious.”

“I need a companion. Consider it an excuse to go shopping on company time.”

“
You
are not playing
fair,
” she objected.

Regaining most of his professional demeanor, Bradley countered her complaint. “Boone, it’s a chance to address a Level Zero case file. One doesn’t just waltz into the White House and start grilling random staffers. They’ve opened the door. Let’s walk in and see if the players on the opposing force are as good at these games as they imagine themselves to be.”

Boone discerned danger on every level of the DNI’s proposal. She also knew he was absolutely right. The perpetrators were likely to be politically insulated to the point of being unapproachable in any other fashion. After a gender-appropriate interval for consideration, she acceded. “
Possibly
something by Dior. I will try to be considerate of the office operating budget.”

“Excellent, Agent Hildebrandt. We’ve got a week.”

Lovely. In the meantime, I can spend my time thinking of anatomical targets vulnerable to the thrust of an hors d’oeuvre skewer, just in case.

Chapter 9 - Swords

The White House

Washington, D.C.

One week later

The State Dining Room had been designated as such since the time of Andrew Jackson’s administration. It had, of course, seen many renovations since then. More than one such project involved the fireplace, in use now with a cheery and expertly constructed blaze flickering. Boone was draped in a Dior rose evening dress with a bustier insert. Thanks to the expert alterations by the designer’s seamstress, the piece accentuated the effort the Senior Case Officer applied toward maintaining her physique. It was, however, an after-dark November soiree in D.C., and as a result, Boone was cold. The evening dress, no matter how stunning the redhead who wore it, was anything but winter-weather wear. A touch of gold and jade jewelry at her throat and wrist—as much as she ever cared to display—accentuated her ensemble perfectly.

The DNI sported a conservative cut by Armani.
Men. They invented the black-tie affair to make their wardrobe choices effortless.
Boone discreetly admired Bradley’s physique in the reflection of the mirrored frame of a nearby wall hanging.
Whatever else Janice did to him, at least she encouraged his investment in a proper tuxedo.

After enduring the prescribed ceremony of greeting by the President and First Lady—
both of whom will be retiring from the gathering early if Terry’s suspicions bear out
—the two ODNI representatives could position themselves to observe the remainder of the evening’s guests arrive. Boone stood beside her supervisor, her arm nestling in the crook of his elbow. They were near the fire … where her goose bumps had steered them.

Bradley sipped champagne. Boone held a similar flute filled with mineral water. Neither the bar nor the trays of hors d'oeuvre seemed subject to overindulgence by any of the invitees so far though some secondary guests had obviously come to feed. All of Terry’s people seemed to be taking as cautious a tack as their boss.
Everyone is waiting,
Boone observed.
For what?

Predictably, various familiar faces appeared:  the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency with his wife, and following closely the Deputy Director of Operations with a new significant other. Boone sipped her mineral water.
Interesting. Does this signify a rift between the head honcho and DD/Intel, I wonder?