One Last Scent of Jasmine (Boone's File Book 3) (38 page)

Inside his suit jacket his cell vibrated with an incoming call. He plucked it out before the device could disturb his guests with its chiming.
From America,
he thought, rising with a nod to his companions while touching the screen to answer the call. He walked a short distance away from the table out of both courtesy to the others and to escape the buzz of multiple conversations. “This is Benedek Novak,” he answered in a businesslike voice.

“Benedek! This is
Boone,
” the caller replied.

A sensation of panic flared within him.
Good God
.
What does this woman want with me so quickly?
“Yes, how good to hear from you once more,” he said, drumming up a false enthusiasm from his reserves. “How can I help you?”

“
This,
” her voice purred, “depends entirely on your mind-set, Benedek. Is it still of the timbre you displayed on the street this Wednesday past?”

His anger, fueled by the discovery of his people dead in his suite and fanned back to life by her inquiry, seemed to fortify his response. “
Entirely,
miss.”

“I have a proposal, then,” the American woman informed him, “one which will allow us to balance the accounts under discussion at the time.”

“One I would be
most
anxious to hear,” he assured her, no longer needing to conjure the impression of interest in her call.

“I hope so, Benedek … my needs are beyond any which can fit into an operations budget on a whim, even one as far ‘in the black’ as my Director’s.”

Only money? How tiresome.
Novak chuckled into the phone. “You need only assure me, dear lady, that my satisfaction will be equal to the expense.”

“Benedek, I can absolutely guarantee it.” The redhead on the other side of the Atlantic paused. “I will forward the details to your panel—the one for your account in Geneva unrelated to banking.”

InterLynk will be in the middle.
“So long as they do not harbor resentment, dear.”

“Everyone there embraces the power of redemption, Benedek, I assure you,” the Hildebrandt woman responded to his fears with a confident tone. “Besides, once you see my proposal, you will realize the full extent to which we will all appreciate your effort.”

Novak drew himself up to his full height. “Some transgressions demand additional offset, Doctor. As I said, please let me know what I can do.”

The dangerous little woman in Virginia made an intriguing and most satisfied sound. “So I shall, sir. Look for it tonight. It will give you something to mull over in your dreams.”

“Something to which I may now look forward,” he replied in an earnest voice. “And I promise an expedited response will surely follow.”

“Then, sir, I will bid you a wonderful evening.”

“And a pleasant day to you, Doctor.” The call ended. Novak, thoroughly intrigued, stared at his phone for a moment before pocketing the device. His more overt business could occupy the remainder of his evening. He would apparently need to make an extra effort toward offsetting an anticipated outlay.
It matters little.
These figures are but waves in a never-ending stream. What we do to generate them comprises the true pleasure in our lives.

Thirty-seven hundred miles and six time zones away, Boone pocketed her own phone, sitting in the sunlit warmth of her USIC Escalade now parked in a designated visitor’s space on the Britteridge campus.
How correct I was to expect my life should supply an endless parade of moral conundrums to provision the remainder of my days.
Her mind corrected herself a moment later.
Or, at least, that of my career.

Her business finished, she eschewed the pleasures of an Ivy League lunch in favor of an earlier start on the road back to McLean.
Pleasures will come later, when I encourage Benedek Novak in his penance.
She grinned to herself and turned the key to fire up the Caddy’s powerful engine.
Who should have thought I would someday have any nun in me?

Chapter 23 - Spontaneous Combustion

The White House West Wing

Washington, D.C.

Five days later

The day's entries in Valka Gerard’s calendar were blocked off. Her self-imposed cloister allowed her to devote every effort toward her considerations in advising the President on his next and increasingly necessary choice of a senior staffer to replace Del Givens. The junior SA would then be assigned the more mundane line items and projects from her own task list.
And a delegate will leave me enough time to devote my full attention to bringing the intelligence community back into line.
Gerard looked forward to a day in which the work of the second term could truly begin in earnest.

By midmorning, she had narrowed the candidates down to a manageable group of five and was beginning to think she had earned a break. As if to confirm her intuition, the chime of her smartphone announced an incoming connection. Grabbing the device from her desk and looking at the screen, she saw it was from one of her personal contacts in the Democratic National Committee, calling through a Skype video conference.
Business before pleasure.
“Well! How are—”
Wait … this is not who it's supposed to be,
she realized. Rather, the same petite, redheaded woman who had accompanied Terry Bradley to the event next door appeared on her phone instead.
What was her name?

“Madam Gerard, good morning.” Her expression, being unapologetic, came across as quite chilling and professional. “I see I’ve caught you in your office as your calendar suggested I would,” the woman obviously observed through the phone’s front-facing camera.

“What is the meaning of this?” Gerard demanded in a properly outraged tone.

“Forgive the subterfuge … and the hacking of your e-mail and cell phone. We have matters we need to discuss,
madam,
and this seemed the most straightforward way to arrange a conversation.”

“Very well, Doctor … forgive me my lack of total recall.”

“It’s just as well, Madam Senior Advisor. My name will be familiar soon enough, I can assure you. I wanted to call, being yesterday marked a full week following your attempt on the life of Benedek Novak.”

This is a trap, and an amateurish one.
“How outrageous an accusation! Benedek is one of our—”

“—biggest mistakes, with all due respect, ma’am,” the redhead finished for her. On the video conference, she for the first time seemed to display contempt. “
This
is the Information Age. Communication by any means exists now as data … bits and bytes susceptible to intercept and interpretation … as well as dissemination.”

The woman at the far end of the conversation seemed to wish her point to settle before she continued. “Do you and your kind in Washington think technology would only aid your operating in an environment of deceit instead of also revealing your actions? Did you
particularly
think such when you were targeting players who understand the science so much better than do any of your own people?”

“I can only assume there is a
point
to all of this,” Gerard said with a snarl.

“There is most certainly a point, ma’am. I want to give you a preview of next week’s news cycle, one guaranteed to feature your many culpabilities.”

“If this is some second-rate attempt to obtain an unintentional confession, I would suggest you’ve been watching too much commercial television,” the Senior Advisor said in a voice which now
dripped
disdain.

“Your
confession
is nonessential,” the woman assured her in a confident enough tone to raise goose bumps on the skin of Gerard’s arms. “Voice-pattern matching—regardless of decoded electronic alterations, by the way—shows your involvement in arranging the break-in and attempted treasonous corporate espionage at DARIUS. The contracted killing of your colleague Delmar Givens followed, as did the extraction of a criminal from prison whose freedom resulted afterward in the murder of a Swiss citizen and the attempted murder of Benedek Novak.”

She knows it all. But can she truly prove anything?
Gerard’s mind grasped for a reply, but the only result was the opportunity for the petite woman to draw a breath.

“
Voice-pattern masking,
Madam Gerard. It can be undone by the NSA mainframe in a matter of minutes. Camille Lambert, in any of your conversations, was not even taking the precaution. Perhaps he better grasped the futility in this day and age.”

“So you say. All I see is a silly attempt at validating the product of a rogue operative’s rampant imagination.”

“Brought on by too much television?” Bradley’s pet implied. Her visage turned grim. “Let me show you how
I
use television, honey.”

The frame split, continuing to show the redhead glancing off camera to manipulate the computer she was using. The right-hand display suddenly showed a series of poorly lit video stills of a disheveled—though completely recognizable—Camille Lambert, each of them highlighting his apparent alarm at the subject of conversation.

“The background is the shooting range in the basement of the InterLynk building, and the occasion was the confession which saved his life. The evening—before we sent him back to London—featured a most enlightening conversation for all of us.” The USIC operative seemed to be gloating. “Did he never tell you?”

By now Gerard’s blood was running cold.
That pathetic frog. I should never have trusted a goddamned mercenary.
“I have never before seen this man in my life.”

“Liar,” the Doctor responded. “All of our corroborating evidence is being assembled over the course of the weekend,
Miz
Gerard. On Monday, we will release it in a press conference which will be the beginning of your end, once Congress and the courts finish their work. I hope you are looking forward to the public reaction as much as I and the executive staff at InterLynk.”

Think, Valka! This is only another political challenge!

“In the meantime, Madam Senior Advisor, I encourage you to reconsider who the amateurs in this contest
actually
are. Enjoy the interim, and have a restful weekend. Come Monday, you will most surely need it.”

Valka Gerard saw the most wretchedly infuriating, self-satisfied look on her opponent’s face as the little bitch reached to end the video call. The effect on her nerves, with the confrontation now over, was intolerable.
They know. They intercepted it all. Now I have only until Monday before I watch it all burn.

Her mind refused to give up, pushing aside the prospect of her ruination.
There is always something to be done … always an option.
I am not going to prison.
Valka Gerard clicked on her e-mail client’s calendar, and from there to a full-month display of December.
I can be in Estonia by Monday … and in the countryside by Monday night.

The thought of giving up the power and the influence she had accumulated in America, with such now being hers, shocked her nearly into paralysis.
Fifteen years with this man … making him what he would become … preserving what he is … that I should lose all the fruits of my labor,
Gerard’s bitter and furious mind mourned.

No. You still have Estonia. You still have Moscow. Your role will diminish, but you will have what you need to endure, just as you used to as a child.
She had until Monday, the redhead had warned.

I need to make a clean exit, and it means without the accompaniment of my Treasury detail. And I need to eliminate the Frenchman … he is now more of a liability than an asset. But how will I do any of this?

Gerard stared at her phone, and a last line of escape seemed to percolate up from the device so recently the instrument of her torture. She flipped to her photos, to the campaign snapshots taken earlier in the year.
There … I had just flown into San Francisco in this shot.
In the background was a supporter’s Bombardier Learjet, her use of which had yet to gain the attention of the Federal Election Commission. The jet, never recalled by its owner, remained at her disposal in its hangar on the general aviation tarmac at Washington Dulles International after last month’s election victory.

Flipping to her texting app, Gerard hurriedly began composing the message which would call her retainers out of the shadows and back to her service.
The Frenchman is a jet pilot. He said it would make him a more attractive candidate in Geneva.
It is also the only attribute keeping him alive … for the moment.
Valka looked at the dwindling span of hours remaining until her calendar would no longer provide her the cover sufficient to evade her Secret Service detail.
There is enough time … so long as these hireling idiot foreigners do not fail me again.

General Aviation

Washington Dulles International

Sterling, VA

It is a most regrettable situation and, as far as I can tell, now is unavoidable.

“Then perhaps the time has come to retire from the field. Come in. All of the way.”

The North American half of the silent exchange was taking place in the car's backseat via Gerard’s smartphone browser. She was on the Web portal for the Office of the President of Russia though the man himself had never allowed her any direct contact. Not even in Seoul had he done so when the two of them were in such close proximity. She was not insulted.
If my security had been as layered, perhaps I would not be in this pathetic situation.

Beginning to decelerate, Camille Lambert’s car approached the private aviation hangars on the northeast side of Dulles International. There, according to the flight service’s customer-service desk—staffed 24/7 for the convenience of some of the most discriminating customers on the planet—Gerard's aircraft was fueled and waiting to roll.