Operation Proof of Life (3 page)

Michael handed him a small jump drive fashioned like a Lego piece. “All the information in the file is contained on this. A few other items of information as well. Don’t lose it.”

Flynn slid the folder back to him, took the Lego brick and checked his watch, suddenly antsy to leave. “I’ll start on this when I get into the office.”

“Start now,” Michael said. “Brigit’s in your neck of the woods. I followed her to a bar just outside Arlington’s city limits, called Sail Away. It’s off the interstate past Perkins. She drives a green Ford rental car. On your way home, see if she’s still there and tail her. If she’s gone, her U.S. residence is listed in her file.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. The deputy director of the CIA did personal surveillance on a suspect. Why didn’t you hang around the bar and find out who she snuggled up to?”

“She knows me now after meeting me at Ruth’s. I can’t get too close. You can.”

“And I’m still the best field operator you’ve got.”

“I’m handing you this job because you owe me. Big time.”

Flynn tapped the desk with a finger. “I don’t owe you squat. Julia chose me.”

“Your debt has nothing to do with Julia. You betrayed my confidence in you as a spy when you faked your death two years ago.” He jammed the folder back into his briefcase. “Earn it back.”

Flynn rose, his hands clenched into fists. “You’re setting me up to take a risk that could end my career and embarrass me in front of the entire intelligence community. That has everything to do with Julia.”

In the past six months, Michael’s dislike of Flynn had mellowed, mostly because his feelings for Julia had done the same. She was happy with the asshole, and he cared about her enough to want that for her, even if it meant she was married to someone else.

Besides that, Flynn was a damn good head of Operations. Better than Michael had been. Even with the budget cutbacks and a gutted army of field operatives, Flynn had manipulated the European and Middle East playing field with the tenacity and patience of a chess master. He’d been quietly building his secret army of spies who put their Cold War predecessors to shame. Multiple terrorist cells in Germany had been picked apart, two different attacks in Italy and Spain had been derailed. All because of Conrad Flynn.

“I’m asking for your help,” Michael admitted, as much to himself as to Flynn, “because you’re the only person I trust with Ella’s life.”

The fists relaxed. Flynn took a deep breath and eyed the wall on his way out. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Chapter Four

Construction site southwest of Perkins

Dull yellow light from overhead construction lamps fell on dump trucks and piles of lumber, casting eerie shadows and turning the faces of three men in the open space sallow. Their low male voices bounced like a hum between the bricks and made it difficult for Brigit to hear what they were saying from the front seat of her rental car, but she didn’t need to. The exchange between two Israeli terrorists and two unknown subjects was nearing its conclusion. The terrorists had produced a woman, a cloth bag over her head and her hands bound behind her back, from their vehicle, while their redheaded counterpart yanked a gym bag from the backseat of his rusty Volvo.

As one of the Israelis rifled through the bag of money, the redheaded unsub assisted his ransomed friend toward the Volvo. Another player, smaller and wearing a knit hat, emerged from the driver side of the car and guided the woman into the backseat. The hair on Brigit’s arms rose at the sight.

Truman’s instincts about Tory were spot on. There was no good reason for her to be in the States even though she was a U.S. citizen. No good reason for her to be at this construction site exchanging money for a hostage. No good reason, except for one.

Both parties satisfied, the sound of slamming car doors echoed through the site. The deal was over. The Israelis pulled out first, never looking back.

Brigit threw her binoculars into the passenger seat and shifted her car into gear. The Volvo had gone less than thirty feet when she rounded the corner, rocks flying, and cut it off.

The Volvo’s front end dived as the driver hit the brakes. Brigit threw her rental into park and grabbed her gun, pointing it at the driver as she exited the car.

The cold night air smelled like upturned dirt, metal pipes and cooling concrete. Her voice carried, sounding calm and assertive even though her hands were shaking. “Get out.”

The passenger door opened instead and Tory stepped out. Under the weird light, Brigit made out the dark eyes, familiar nose and full lips identical to her own. The younger mirror image she hadn’t seen in years sent a wave of sadness flooding through her. It was her fault Tory was here, just like everything that had happened since the night their mother died in the fire.

Tory stayed behind the door, using it as a partial shield. “Brigit. Long time no see, sister of mine.”

In the now-silent construction area, the slight Irish brogue in her sister’s voice sounded soft and still childlike. Brigit’s heart contracted. In her chest of memories, she heard Tory’s cries as the kitchen burned, their mother trapped inside. If only she could rewind time and find a way to keep her family together.

But she and Tory weren’t kids anymore. Their innocence had been stripped away at a too-young age and there was no going back. Tamping down her emotions, Brigit kept her gun aimed on the car’s driver just in case he got any ideas. “What are you doing here making an exchange with Israeli terrorists?”

“‘By ballot or gun, our day will come.’”

“Quoting Peter now?” Brigit laughed, from nerves and false disbelief. Bottom line, she didn’t want to talk about revolutionaries. God help her, but she wanted to talk about what normal sisters talked about—reality TV, bad hair days, the shoe sale at Macy’s. Unfortunately, that language was foreign to Tory. “The Troubles are over, in case he didn’t tell you. Besides, this is America, not Ireland.”

“Ireland, America, Afghanistan, Palestine, it’s a global war.” Tory tilted her head at the backseat of the Volvo. “We are international brothers and sisters in arms now, fighting against governments who would press us under their heel.” She shut the door and took a step toward Brigit. “Our identity, the new nation we’re building, is about family, religion and tradition. Peter peeled away all the Protestant garbage you and Da filled my head with and showed me the truth.”

“Truth?” Brigit’s voice dropped a decibel and she shook her head in resignation, but she didn’t lower the gun. As much as she wanted to, she wasn’t that stupid. “Where’s Peter? Did he send you after that package you just put in the car?”

“You got close to him in London last week. Spooked him. He went underground.” Tory took another step and like a compass needle finding due north, Brigit shifted the gun to point it at her. Tory stared down the barrel and chuckled. “You won’t shoot me. I’m your sister.”

The sound of the gun cocking reverberated across the yard. “You’d be surprised at what I’ll do when it comes to Peter’s war.”

Without warning, Tory brushed the gun aside and embraced Brigit in a hug.

Stunned, Brigit held her breath. She’d dreamed of this moment, held it in her hand and examined it from all sides like a beautiful glass ball. Except in her dream, Tory was embracing her because she’d left Peter and returned to Brigit. In her world, dreams did not come true.

So instead of the relief and love she expected to feel spreading through her body, her skin itched, especially where Tory’s heavy weight pressed against her. Tory released her and patted one of her cheeks. “We mean you no harm. Let Peter be. Let us all be.”

Tory turned her back on Brigit and climbed into the car, and the glass ball fell and shattered at Brigit’s feet. A few seconds later, the driver wheeled around her, where she was still frozen in place, and the Volvo disappeared into the night.

The gun suddenly felt too heavy in Brigit’s hand. The cords of tension holding her together gave way and she slumped against the car, dropping her head and mentally kicking herself. For the first time in years, she’d been face-to-face with her younger sister and failed to tell her what was in her heart. Failed to make Tory see the light about Peter and his cause.

Failed to hug her back.

How could she be such a success with her career and such a miserable failure at everything else?

A noise from behind a pile of bricks brought Brigit’s head up. She scanned the area over her right shoulder and saw a woman emerge from the stack, flashing a badge at her.

“FBI,” she said, raising the hand with the gun. “Put your weapon down.”

Brigit drew in a deep breath and let out a heavy sigh. She tossed the gun into the car through the open window and raised both hands. Just her luck the FBI was here. She’d figured since the U.S. was in bed with the Israelis, the Feds might be focusing on groups that worried them more, and she hadn’t seen any evidence they were there.

Brigit pointedly scanned the woman’s pink jacket. “Who are you? Agent Barbie?”

The dark-haired, dark-eyed woman fought a smile. “Agent Julia Torrison actually.”

An FBI agent doing
Pretty in Pink
while keeping tabs on Israeli terrorists? If Truman had been with her, he would have been clapping. “I have a badge in my back pocket.”

“I figured you did.” Torrison drew closer. “Cop?”

Brigit caught sight of a second agent, this one blonde and every bit as Barbie-gorgeous, off to her side. She tucked what looked like a camera into her coat and held her stomach as she approached.

Torrison spoke to her without taking her eyes off Brigit. “I told you, I’ve got this, Zara. Go sit down before you get sick again.”

The blonde shook her head as she circled Brigit’s rental, and up close, Brigit could see she had circles under her eyes and a flush to her skin. “I’m fine.” She met Brigit’s gaze. “Who do we have here?”

Brigit played difficult because she didn’t feel like being nice. “Department of Homeland Security.”

The Barbie twosome exchanged a look, neither of them pleased. Torrison took one hand off the butt of her gun and rippled the ends of her fingers at Brigit. “Show us.”

Brigit eased her hand into her trench, removed her badge and handed it to Blonde Barbie.

The woman looked it over and nodded at Julia as she handed it back. “Dr. Brigit Kent, DHS.” She held out the badge. “Zara Morgan.”

Torrison lowered the gun. “Sorry about that. We didn’t know DHS was involved with this.”

Brigit snapped the badge out of Morgan’s hand and tossed it in the car on top of her gun before opening the door. Time to cover Tory’s backside. Again. “Are you investigating the Irish Women’s League?”

The blonde shook her head as she sidled up alongside Torrison. “Palestinian Sisters of Liberation. Those were Israeli terrorists handing over the hostage to your sister. Your sister affiliated with IWL as well?”

So they’d heard enough to uncover her link to a terrorist organization. Brigit glanced away. She wouldn’t tell an outright lie, but then usually she didn’t need to. “I would appreciate your discretion about what you saw here tonight, ladies. Neither the hostage exchange you witnessed nor my sister involves the FBI at this point. When it does, we’ll talk.”

She dropped into the car seat and gunned the motor. Morgan took a step forward to try and stop her, but Torrison grabbed her arm.

As Brigit backed up to turn her car around, Morgan suddenly grabbed her stomach and bent over. Brigit glanced in her rearview once and saw Torrison rubbing her partner’s back as the woman threw up.

From his vantage point a hundred yards away, Conrad swore under his breath and lowered his miniature, nonreflective night-vision binoculars as Julia walked Zara into the shadows. If there were two women in his life who could screw everything up, it was these two.

Zara, a counterespionage operative in his secret army of spies, had been tracking members of the SOL in London and must have followed one or all of them to the States.

As an operative working for the CIA, she had no jurisdiction within her home country, but if she turned her mission over to the overworked and underfunded FBI, it would get put on the back burner unless there was imminent danger to American citizens.

Zara wasn’t the type to work her ass off on a mission just to see it lost in the bureaucratic mess of homeland intelligence. Hence the reason, Conrad knew, she’d called in a favor from Julia the minute the SOL group set foot on U.S. soil.

Julia. She was supposed to be home, safe and sound, getting ready to tell him he was going to be a father.

He didn’t know where Kent should be, but his gut told him she didn’t belong at this construction site waving a Glock around any more than she belonged sniffing around the Pennington kidnapping. Add a wild card like her to the Julia-Zara mix and his career could easily be over before the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Dread knotted its fingers into his chest. He tapped his thumbs against the steering wheel of the Jeep and wondered which bomb he should trip first.

Chapter Five

D.C. suburbs

Brigit sipped a cup of Earl Grey and stared out the window of her apartment, watching the first pink rays of sun streak the gray sky. A garbage truck clanged and banged on the street below as it lumbered from one corner to the next. Pigeons pecked at crumbs, happy to own the sidewalk for a few more minutes before the morning rush convened.

Except for the pigeons, Washington D.C. was very different from New York City, where she’d lived for the past five years. Fashion and real estate were all anyone cared about there. Two hundred miles south, power was the name of the game.

Why does the kidnapper want power over the Penningtons
? She glanced at her watch. It had been more than ten hours since Ella’s kidnapping.
What was I thinking the morning after Peter tricked us into the bathroom
?
What was I feeling?

Scared. Abandoned. Still hungry.
We drank water from the sink, but Tory and I nearly starved to death before Mum came and rescued us
.

Tory. The thought of her sister sent a familiar wave of anger and grief washing over her.

During the seventy-two hours of their capture, Brigit had entertained Tory by playing games. Tory’s favorite had been a hand-squeezing game. Creating their own childlike version of Morse code, they assigned letters and common phrases different types of squeezes. One short squeeze meant yes, two, no. A long squeeze meant stop. Three short squeezes meant I love you. As the hours wore on and Tory became bored with the hand squeezing, Brigit had changed the code to taps. They tapped on the countertop, the wooden planks, the mirror and tub, creating musical notes as well as coded messages.

When Tory had hugged her at the construction site, she’d tapped Brigit’s back three short taps right between her shoulder blades.
I love you
.

Her sister was playing her again. All these years, all the heart-breaking betrayals, Tory still wanted Brigit to believe in—and look the other way because of—their blood bond.

After their mother’s death, Brigit traded in the carefree thoughts and dreams of childhood for gut-wrenching sorrow and overwhelming guilt. She tried to protect Tory and become a mother to her, but everything she did after the fire only made the situation with Tory worse. While her father reassured Brigit her mother’s death was Peter’s fault, Tory tortured her with her version of the truth.
You killed her. You caused the fire. She burned to death because of you.

Brigit drew into herself in order to deal with the grief and guilt, and Tory acted out in order to do the same.

Once their father accepted a new post with the British government and moved them to America, he insisted both girls see a psychotherapist. The woman’s impartial air and kind eyes breathed life back into Brigit’s soul, but when the therapist’s office burned to the ground by an arsonist, Brigit stopped going.
It was Peter. He did it.

She had no proof, and now, with the logic of an adult, Brigit could chastise herself for jumping to that sort of conclusion. Deep in her psyche though, she still believed the fire was Peter’s handiwork.

The same illogical but nevertheless deep conviction that Peter was behind the Pennington girl’s kidnapping drove her now. Finding Tory last night at the scene of the hostage exchange confirmed Brigit’s fears. Peter and his group would never let the war die. Some of his followers still craved the conflict between English and Irish, Protestant and Catholic, but most just wanted something to fight against, to fight for. They needed the drug of pride and patriotism to give their life meaning. They found it in Peter’s words.

His lies were monumental, but most of his followers didn’t care. Clear thinking went out the door when a man with Peter’s abilities to inspire spoke about blood and bullets, God and tradition.

The alarm on Brigit’s watch beeped softly. Twelve hours since Ella’s kidnapping.

She grabbed her mobile and rang up Truman. “What’s the latest?” she asked when he answered.

“Good morning to you too.” His impatience at the interruption of his morning routine rang clearly through the connection. “Another call from the kidnappers.” Brigit could see him standing in his bathroom, only a towel around his waist as he examined himself in the mirror, tousling his wet hair with one hand and holding his mobile with the other. “Only the kid again. She claims she’s not hurt, only hungry.”

“No demands?”

“Nope. No ransom either.”

But proof of life
. And proof to Brigit that Peter or one of his lieutenants was behind the kidnapping. Just like a hand squeeze or the tap of a fist between her shoulder blades, the two calls were a code. A code that could help her save Ella.

“I’m sending a car for you,” Truman said. “I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

“I can drive myself.”

“This is Washington, Gidget. Nobody who’s anybody drives themselves to the White House. Besides, I don’t want you to be late.”

“Stop calling me Gidget.”

“You’re right, you’re no Gidget. She was much nicer. See you in twenty.”

She hung up and thumbed through the files stored on her BlackBerry. Buckets of information existed about Thad and Ruth Pennington, and luckily Truman had cut out most of the common knowledge facts before sending her the rest.

On the surface, most of it was textbook, pre-politician type stuff. Law degrees, Rhodes scholarships, city government stepping stones. Combing through even the more unusual details had not caused Brigit’s mind to lift an eyebrow in question. It was all too neat, too pat, just like the supposed political motivation behind the kidnapping. But Ruth Pennington had shown up on Brigit’s radar screen when she was still Ruth Stone. Otherwise, Brigit would have missed the barest thread of a link to Peter.

Her watch alarm sounded again. Fifteen minutes until she had to leave. Setting the BlackBerry down, she went into her bedroom closet and pulled out her single dress suit. Powder gray, it was the only item in her closet she hated with a passion besides the matching sensible gray heels.

Suck it up
, she reprimanded herself.
You don’t meet the president of the United States dressed in chinos and a Green Day tee.