Читать книгу Code Name: Dove - Judith Leon - Страница 15

Langley, Virginia, 4:30 p.m.

May 16

After passing innumerable security checks with Agent Cardone beside her, Nova made it to the seventh floor of the modern white complex in Langley—the heart of the CIA. In a very few minutes she and Cardone would meet the Deputy Director of Operations.

“Price’s office is to the right,” Nova said.

“How’s your head?” Cardone asked with obvious concern. “Your hair does a great job of covering the staples.”

“Doing just fine, thanks.” Although her head still throbbed where the wound was, Nova felt sharp and focused.

Everyone knew Claiton Price’s secretary, Cleo Jackson, by sight—always a colorfully dressed black butterfly in a field of blue, black and gray moths. She swept around her desk and hugged Nova. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen you, girl.” She held Nova at arm’s length. “As lovely as ever.”

Nova hugged Cleo again. Their friendship had formed during six months when Nova had done her CIA training.

“I saw the photos you did for Maximum Extreme,” Cleo added. “The ones of the guy sky-surfing. Woman, it looks positively crazy. Skydiving is bad enough. Trying to surf the wind is just…”

“Just great fun.”

“Would you ever let that sweet niece of yours do it?”

“Maggie?” Nova envisioned Maggie leaping from a plane, her heart pounding, her imagination soaring at the enormous great fall ahead, her skyboard stuck to her boots. “Maggie’s a lot like me, Cleo. She’ll do what she wants to do, whether it would scare the daylights out of me to have her do it or not.”

“Well then, I just hope neither of you gets splattered onto some farmer’s field.”

Cleo finally seemed to notice Nova’s partner. “Agent Cardone?”

“Right,” he said. Nova could only imagine what Joe Cardone might be thinking. He’d probably never before been anywhere near the DDO’s office, and he must be wondering why a contract agent was close friends with the top dog’s secretary.

Cleo pulled her smiling lips into a serious line. “The Deputy Director is expecting you both. I’m sorry, my dear, that once again when we meet it’s over bad news. How long do you think they will keep you today after you leave here? Could we find time for coffee?”

Nova looked at Joe. “We should know our schedule pretty soon, shouldn’t we?”

Claiton M. Price sat in his chrome-and-black-leather swivel chair with his back to the office door.

Price stood, circled the desk and stuck out his hand to her.

Nova smiled, took the DDO’s hand, and shook it. It was a firm, cordial and hearty handshake.

“It’s a true delight and pleasure to see you again,” he said to her.

Price then shook hands with Cardone. “Good to meet you, Agent Cardone. I understand you prefer Joe rather than Joseph.”

“Yes, sir. A pleasure to meet you, sir.”

Price retraced his path and eased into his chair. She heard the leather creak. “Please, sit,” he said indicating the pair of chairs in front of his desk. “I understand you’ll be debriefed later about Fairbanks. What I want to do now is put you into the broad picture with respect to Operation Jacaranda. Our government is facing a formidable threat to our sovereignty. To be a bit more precise, four of the Big Five nations are being blackmailed.

“In general, here’s the situation,” Price continued. “Over a year ago, a Transoceanic jetliner crashed in the Pacific. You may have read that no cause was determined. What hasn’t been reported is that a madman—he’s thought to be part of a larger terrorist organization—somehow incapacitated the crew and the plane crashed because it ran out of fuel. We know because a fax the President received almost simultaneously said the plane was downed as an attention-getter.”

“How many people on board?” she asked.

“Three hundred and sixty.”

The number stamped itself into Nova’s brain as if delivered with a branding iron. Three hundred and sixty innocent people had perished. In every project she accepted for the Company, real people had been affected. Not some governmental agency or because of some theoretical governmental need.

Price leaned back and laced his fingers together. For a moment he studied her carefully. The man knew very well what it would take to involve her. She felt her new partner shift in his seat, as if impatient to get on to the details.

Finally, Price continued. “The author of the letter—he calls himself The Founder—has sent other faxes to the President stating irrational demands. The first was that the President must lobby Congress to pass a bill introduced by Senator Legnett to shift the country entirely from gas-driven to electricity-driven cars. You are familiar with the bill in question?”

She nodded. So did Cardone.

“The Founder threatened that if this bill didn’t pass, other planes would go down.”

Cardone leaned forward. “As I recall, the Transoceanic flight was lost last August. And in late September—or was it early October?—a spate of plane crashes occurred.”

“Quite correct. It was in September. Within two weeks, two good-size liners and nineteen smaller planes crashed. We believe all, except seven of the smaller crashes, were caused by The Founder.”

For a moment, Nova couldn’t breathe. The room had fallen deathly silent. She looked at Cardone and found him looking back at her. To her knowledge, the magnitude of this kind of devastation on a repeated basis was unprecedented.

Price continued. “This bastard informed the President that the air crashes were ‘just punishment.’ After its first defeat, Senator Legnett reintroduced the legislation and it also didn’t pass on a second vote.”

“I remember the vote,” she said.

“After that second negative vote, through an astonishing piece of luck, authorities at Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona found a bomb in time to prevent the dam from being blown all over the northern Arizona desert. The Founder—or as he is affectionately addressed by most agents tasked to stop him, The Fucker—claimed responsibility.”

“Is Senator Legnett implicated?” she asked.

“Not yet. Though you can be sure the intelligence community now knows more than God does about Senator Legnett.”

Price frowned, then added, “Britain, Germany and France are dealing with similar threats. To date the Japanese remain untouched. Most likely The Founder simply can’t place operatives in Japan. There seems to be no end to the demands. The most recent is that President McBride increase our donation to UN family planning programs from three hundred and thirty million to two billion dollars per year.”

“Extraordinary,” Cardone said, shaking his head. “This madman doesn’t want money. He doesn’t want his terrorist brethren released. He doesn’t want the government to give North Dakota and Utah back to the Native Americans or for all Protestants to leave Ireland. He wants Americans to drive fuel-conserving cars and promote birth control?”

“Quite so. To put it bluntly, The Founder states that he feels the world is woefully fucked up, and he is going to unfuck it. Which brings us to your assignment— Operation Jacaranda. There’s a young German politician, Jean Paul König. He’s riding the crest of the resurgent German ecology movement. He once belonged to the Greens, but he’s now the foremost proponent of his own aggressive brand of ecological politics. Six days ago, a Company contact in East Germany was found dead. Cause undetermined. But she had passed a message suggesting that König’s German Homeland Party was in some way involved in an ‘accident’ at one of the French nuclear plants. Need I say, one of The Founder’s faxes referred to this ‘accident.’

“There’s not a breath of serious scandal in König’s dossier and the man certainly isn’t alone in objecting to nuclear power, so a connection between König, the plant accident and The Founder must be considered unlikely. But since our asset’s report is presently the only real lead we have, we must pursue it full-throttle.

“Nova, we want you to get close to König. You and Joe can make contact as a team. A writer and photographer. You utilize your genuine, and may I say formidable, photographic skills. We’ve arranged for it to appear as if you two have been working together for several years. Joe works for you, Nova, as your assistant. He also writes articles built around your photos.”

“Isn’t it more usual that a writer would hire a photographer?” Cardone interjected, his tone stiff. “Shouldn’t she be working for me?”

Surprised that Cardone would dare to challenge Price himself, Nova stared at the agent. Apparently he had been so intent he hadn’t thought before speaking. Clearly a strong emotion had been running his mouth—most likely ambition. And then there was also that thing about her being a woman. Maybe that was it. Or just that her performance in Fairbanks had certainly left a whole lot to be desired.

“You need to keep in mind that our analysts believe the way to this man is through Nova,” Price said to Car-done, his voice having taken on a decidedly chilly tone.

She turned her attention back to Price. Cardone, she noted, had the good sense to remain silent.

“Wait, are you suggesting that I seduce him?” she asked, the steel in her voice leaving no doubt as to her feelings on the subject. “You know, I don’t do seduction.”

“Charm him, Nova. As only you can do,” Price said, capitulating. “This is your great gift. That way you have of winning trust. How far you take it will, of course, be up to you.”

Price shifted his gaze to Cardone and added, “We want König’s attention on Nova. Our psych analysts feel that if anything can disarm König, it’s a woman with genuine talent, such as her photography. And what Nova has in addition is a seeming fragility that disarms the susceptible male. And our psych profilers are convinced König is susceptible.”

Cardone turned to face her, giving her a thorough inspection, head to toe. She could almost feel him touching her—not undressing her, as men often did with their eyes when she took the time to dress up and look nice—but tracing her face and clothes as though trying to discover the magic she possessed that Price seemed to be talking about.

She was her usual self, the self that Penny said she wore to make herself invisible. Very little makeup and plain black slacks and a forest green shirt. But Penny was right. When she got dressed up, some strange chemistry happened between her and most men she met. And if getting next to this König was the assignment, dressing up would certainly be part of the strategy. She smiled. Her new partner was in for a big surprise.

Cardone, who couldn’t know her thoughts, smiled back in a way that said he was resolved to play his part in this charade whether he believed Price’s estimation of her or not.

Price continued his lecture to her partner. “While you may think it more natural for the journalist to hire a photographer, world-class photographers often work the other direction. That’s what we see here, Agent Car-done. Keep in mind also that you were selected in part because when you dress appropriately, you can pass as much younger than you are. We want this.

“And by the way, I’ve already had our research people check out that lead, Terratornis. It’s not a dinosaur. It’s an extinct giant vulture.”

Odd, she thought. Why in the world would a terrorist group be yelling the name of an extinct giant bird when they were blowing up the pipeline?

“Both of you will be worked hard for the next eight days to bring you on-line with Operation Jacaranda, at a place not far from here,” Price said, interrupting her thoughts. “Your contact in the field will be the chief of station in Berlin, Martin Davidson.”

Price informed them about their briefing later in the afternoon and then dismissed them.