Whispered Lies

“How?” Rae and Carlos asked together.

Gotthard said, “We picked up Gabrielle’s mail from the satellite box she used in Peachtree City.”

“What?” Gabrielle shot eye-daggers at Carlos.

“I didn’t do it,” Carlos said out of reflex, though he wasn’t the least surprised. BAD would miss nothing.

“Your people did,” she countered.

“Gabrielle,” Gotthard interrupted.

“What?” She glared at the monitor now.

“It’s protocol, and you of all people should understand,” Gotthard went on, not the least apologetic.

“Why?” She had her arms crossed.

“If we hadn’t picked up your mail, we wouldn’t have known that you got another card from Linette.”

Her face lost color. “Another one? What did it say?”

Carlos lifted an arm to put around Gabrielle, then dropped it back to his side. Not knowing her friend’s situation was killing her, but comforting her in front of team members would not help him when it came time to plead her case to Joe.

“Linette indicated that at least one of the teens is key to something that will happen by the end of this week, and the only place she’s heard mentioned in separate conversations is Venezuela, but she’s not sure that’s related. She’s worried about the teens. She doesn’t know what will happen or how this fits into the plan, but a clinic in Zurich is involved. She apologized for not having more information but hoped you would pass it along to someone who could help since she believes the Fratelli are focused on the United States.”

“Did she say anything else?” Gabrielle asked.

Carlos cringed at the hope in her voice.

Gotthard looked down, then back up. “Only that…well, at the end she said not to look for another card from her. It was too dangerous. She wouldn’t put you at risk of the Fratelli finding out she’d contacted you.”

“No more cards?” Gabrielle’s voice broke.

Screw it. Carlos slipped an arm around her waist and hugged her. He figured Gabrielle had put some stock into this ending up with her locating Linette.

No more postcards shot that possibility to pieces.

“I’m working on finding Linette,” Gotthard consoled.

“How?” Gabrielle asked, hope rising again in her voice.

“I’ve been sending out posts to community boards with a few key words thrown into my signature from your code.”

“Oh.” Gabrielle slumped. “I’ve tried for ten years, thinking she’d be online somewhere, and never got a hit.”

“Did you try Web sites you thought would interest her?” Gotthard spoke to Gabrielle with a calm understanding Carlos rarely saw. The big guy was usually more abrupt.

“Oui,” Gabrielle answered.

Gotthard’s eyes twinkled. “I’m not. And I have access to computers that can do fifty times the load your system could do. I have over three hundred signatures being sent to a wide cross section of community boards and blogs every six hours. My chances of getting a hit are much better, and I have programs that will catch it if she responds in code.”

Gabrielle didn’t appear sold on his plan. “But even in this era that is like finding one fish in the sea.”

“True, but it’s more than we had to start with.” Gotthard’s face returned to its usual gruff expression when he said, “The school has three different groups leaving today on trips, over sixty kids.”

“That’s what Babette was complaining about when she called,” Gabrielle interjected. “She said Amelia and some others were part of a peaceful international rally, so Amelia must be traveling with Joshua and Evelyn.”

Gotthard’s eyes flicked in Rae’s direction. “Joe wants Rae and Korbin to go to Zurich and see what they can find out once I give you the name of the clinic.”

“Got it.” Rae scratched notes on a piece of paper she’d produced. “If Friday is still our target date, what do we think is going on tomorrow?”

Gotthard answered, “Retter’s contacts have learned that the Fuentes compound just doubled its security. The staff is being prepared for a very important visitor, but they haven’t been told who yet. Joe and Retter think that must be where the meeting will be in Columbia, and probably this Friday.”

“Who do they think the U.S. is sending?” Rae tapped a finger against the desk, but Carlos could almost hear the gears in her mind turning with the puzzle.

“We’re, uh, working on that.” Not a muscle in Gotthard’s face revealed his thoughts.

Carlos caught his hesitation to share something and figured his reticence had to do with a non-BAD agent being present. “Would you go get my phone,” Carlos asked Gabrielle.

“Sure.” She gave him an odd glance, then backed away. The minute she walked into the bedroom, Carlos turned back to the computer screen, “Who do we think is going to South America?”

“Maybe someone in the president’s cabinet.”

Gabrielle hurried back to stand behind Rae and handed Carlos his phone. He took it, punched a couple numbers, then stuck it in his pocket as if he’d found what he was looking for and hadn’t been pretending.

“Rae filled me in on the busted trip to Bergamo yesterday,” Gotthard continued. “I’m searching for Linette’s parents, but based on what Gabrielle shared, I wouldn’t bet on finding them. There’s a woman listed as having the power of attorney to manage the household expenses from a local account that is funded from an untraceable Swiss account.”

“How long has that been going on?” Gabrielle asked.

Gotthard gave her a date from ten years ago.

“That was a week after I stopped by to ask them about Linette and they told me she was dead,” Gabrielle whispered with the shock of that news.

“I’m still working on it,” Gotthard said, reading something in front of him. “Joe wants to know if”-he glanced up-“Gabrielle still has electronic contact with her people in South America. Retter could use more local intel.”

Gabrielle stood upright, then turned to Carlos. “Reaching them by Internet is a problem, because I included a poison pill in the last post I made about needing information on Mandy. I told them to close the IP server as soon as they posted and lie low since we were taking a big risk to communicate.”

“How were you going to hook up again?” Carlos asked.

“They would watch for me to post an IT article under a specific pseudonym on a board, and the first letter of each sentence would spell the new site for them to post on again in code. It takes a week normally to set that up.”

“Bloody hell,” Rae muttered. “So that’s a dead end.”

“Not necessarily,” Gabrielle corrected, frowning at the top of Rae’s head.

Carlos touched Gabrielle’s chin, drawing her gaze. “What are you saying?”

Gabrielle hesitated. “I know the identities and addresses of my contacts, but I’m not telling Retter.”

TWENTY-FOUR

VESTAVIA LIFTED A file from his desk for the first phase of the Renaissance.

No one country could be a superpower. Not forever.

The only way the United States would ever become manageable was by cracking the infrastructure first to determine the strongest areas within the country, then undermining each of those.

What better way to bait a trap than their insatiable thirst for crude oil?

“You’re sure all four of them are prepared?” he asked Josie, who was lounging on the oversize sofa he’d had the decorator put in his Miami office for late nights.

She stopped thumbing the touch-tone screen on her iPhone and brushed a length of deep-chestnut brown hair behind her shoulder when she lifted her head. Of all the exquisite international art in his south-Florida office, she was by far his finest acquisition.

“The teenagers are a little shaky, but we only need one for sure,” she answered him, tapping her index finger against the iPhone case. “Since the other two are just backup and won’t have to actually do anything, I think we’re fine. And Kathryn still thinks she’s working undercover to protect Evelyn, so she isn’t going to give us any problem.”