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He chuckled. “I’m not going to look.”
“That woman’s crazy.”
Which was why Vincenti had changed his mind with the Florentine. The Council of Ten had collectively ordered some preliminary investigative work on the possibility that Zovastina might have to be eliminated, and the Florentine had been contracted to perform that reco
Then a better idea blossomed.
If he revealed the pla
“She also visited the house again,” O’Co
“Do we know her former lover’s current condition?”
“Holding her own. We listened to their conversation with a parabolic monitor from a nearby house. A strange pair. Love/hate thing going on.”
He’d found it interesting that a woman who’d managed to govern with unfettered ruthlessness harbored such an obsession. She’d been married for a few years, the man a midlevel diplomat in the former Kazakhstan ’s foreign service. Surely a marriage for appearance’s sake. A way to mask her questionable sexuality. Yet the reports he’d amassed noted an amicable husband/wife relationship. He died suddenly in a car crash seventeen years ago, just after she became Kazakhstan ’s president, and a couple of years before she managed to forge the Federation. Karyn Walde came along a few years later and remained Zovastina’s only long-lasting interpersonal relationship, which ended badly. Yet a year ago, when the woman reappeared, Zovastina had immediately taken her in and arranged, through Vincenti, for needed HIV medications.
“Should we act?” he asked.
O’Co
“Arrange it. I’ll be in the Federation by week’s end.”
“Could get messy.”
“Whatever. Just no fingerprints. Nothing that links anything to me.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
AMSTERDAM
9:20 P.M.
STEPHANIE HAD EXPERIENCED THE INSIDE OF A DANISH JAIL LAST summer when she and Malone were arrested. Now she’d visited a Dutch cell. Not much different. Wisely, she’d kept her mouth shut as the police rushed onto the bridge and spotted the dead man. Both Secret Service agents had managed to escape, and she hoped the one in the water had retrieved the medallion. Her suspicions, though, were now confirmed. Cassiopeia and Thorvaldsen were into something, and it wasn’t ancient coin collecting.
The door to the holding cell opened and a thin man in his early sixties, with a long, sharp face and bushy silver hair, entered. Edwin Davis. Deputy national security adviser to the president. The man who replaced the late Larry Daley. And what a change. Davis had been brought over from State, a career man, possessed of two doctorates-one in American history, the other international relations-along with superb organizational skills and an i
“I was having di
She opened her mouth to speak and he held up a halting hand.
“It gets better.”
She sat quietly in her wet clothes.
“As I was deciding how I could actually leave you here, since I was reasonably sure I did not want to know why you came to Amsterdam, the president himself took me aside and told me to get over here. Seems two Secret Service agents were also involved, but they weren’t in custody. One of them was soaking wet from swimming in a canal to retrieve this.”
She caught what he tossed her and saw again the medallion with elephants, snug in its plastic sleeve.
“The president intervened with the Dutch. You’re free to go.”
She stood. “Before we leave I need to know about those dead men.”
“Since I already knew you’d say that, I found out that they both carried Central Asian Federation passports. We checked. Part of Supreme Minister Irina Zovastina’s personal security force.”
She caught something in his eye. Davis was much easier to read than Daley had been. “That doesn’t shock you.”
“Few things do anymore.” His voice had lowered to a whisper. “We have a problem, Stephanie, and now, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, you’re part of it.”
She followed Davis into the hotel suite. President Da
“There’s not a damn thing on this TV to watch that isn’t subtitled or in a language I don’t understand. And I can’t bear that BBC News or CNN International any longer. They show the same stories over and over.” Daniels blackened the screen and tossed the remote aside. He sipped from his drink, then said to her, “I hear you’ve had another career-ending night.”
She caught the twinkle in his eye. “Seems to be my path to success.”
He motioned and she sat. Davis stood off to the side.
“I’ve got some more bad news,” Daniels said. “Your agent in Venice is missing. She’s not been heard from in twelve hours. Neighbors in the building where she was stationed reported a disturbance early this morning. Four men. A door kicked in. Of course, no one now officially saw anything. Typical Italians.” He raised one arm in a flurry. “For God’s sake don’t involve me.” The president paused, his face darkened. “Nothing about this sounds good.”
Stephanie had loaned Naomi Johns to the White House, which needed some field reco
Now she might be dead.
“When I loaned her out, your people said this was simply information gathering.”
No one answered and her gaze shifted between the two men.
Daniels pointed. “Where’s the medallion?”
She handed it to him.
“You want to tell me about this?”
She felt grimy. What she wanted was a shower and sleep, but she realized that wasn’t going to happen. She resented being interrogated, but he was the president of the United States and had saved her hide, so she explained about Cassiopeia, Thorvaldsen, and the favor. The president listened with an unusual attentiveness, then said, “Tell her, Edwin.”