“With all due respect, sir, and please understand that it’s him speaking—”
“Yes?”
“He says you’re stupid for asking the question. He says you’re careless for letting your phone be hacked. He says you sent him on a mission that’s compromised from the get-go.”
“He’s not going to do it?”
“He’ll still do it, but he says you owe him double.”
Lance smiled. “Typical.”
“What are you paying him?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s what I figured. Anyway, he says you can talk to me. You’re sending him to Paris to ferret out a mole. He’s not going to be able to call you for obvious reasons. He doesn’t want this going though Agency channels. I’ll be your go-between. He says he’s going out on a limb, and he wants you to have his back. It may be crucial for him to get in touch with you at once. If I call your office, put me though immediately. I’m not going to talk on the phone. I’ll tell you where to meet me, and you drop everything and go.”
“That’s going to be damn annoying.”
“If you can’t do it, let me know, and he’ll come home.”
“What?”
“He’ll bail on the operation. He’s says this is either important to you or it isn’t. If it’s important enough for him to pull up stakes and rush off to Paris, it’s important enough for you to take a phone call. Immediately. No red tape. If I call your office, your secretary puts me through. You have to make that clear. I’m a high-priority confidential source, and my calls take precedence over anything. You can be in the middle of a meeting with your station chiefs, and you don’t say take a number I’ll call back, you pick up the phone. And when I give you a location you say something’s come up I’ve got to go, and you head there. The first time that doesn’t happen, our friend will be booking his airfare home.”
“I can’t believe you’re talking to me like this.”
“I’m not talking to you like this. He’s talking to you like this. It’s not going to do you any good to get angry at me. If you fail to comply with his wishes, I will merely relay the information and he’ll take it from there. But I suggest that you don’t put him in that position. I’m merely telling you what will happen if you do.
“If all that is agreeable to you—bad choice of words, I’m sure it isn’t—but if not, tell me now and you can start grooming someone else for the job. Are we agreed?”
“I guess we have to be.”
“Good.” Millie smiled. “Our friend has no messages this time. When you get back to the office, check out your phones.”
Millie turned and walked away.
Lance didn’t go back to his office. He walked down by the river, sat on a secluded bench, and took his cell phone apart.
It didn’t take long to find it. A small microchip hidden by the battery. He pried it out, and looked around to see that no one was watching. He smashed his cell phone on a rock, and threw it in the Potomac.
Lance was pretty angry.
He got a lot on the throw.
15.
JORAM GLANCED UP from the computer. “A line went dead.”
“Which one?” Fahd said.
“Lance Cabot.”
“Shit! When you say dead, you don’t mean the phone’s just been turned off?”
“No, sir. Either the battery has been removed or the line has been disconnected. It could come on again, but we have no way of knowing if or when.”
“What about the other one?”
“Billy Barnett? That line is still open, but inactive. There have been no calls on it since yesterday.”
Fahd was frustrated—it seemed as if his primary sources of vital information might be drying up.
“Did you get anything else on Stone Barrington?”
“Yes, sir. The man has so many interests that more information is coming in all the time. He is a lawyer with many irons in the fire. He is a partner with Woodman & Weld, yet he operates alone out of his own town house. He is also a member of a five-man group of lawyers who handle a few elite clients, including the President of the United States.”
“Really?”
“He owns several houses, including an English country manor, and is the owner or co-owner of a string of high-end hotels. He also owns and flies his own jet plane.”
“What kind?”
“I’m researching that now. But he keeps it at the airfield in Teterboro, New Jersey.”
Fahd snatched up the phone and called his contact in New York. “Is your man staking out Stone Barrington’s house?”
“Yes, he is. So far there’s been no movement.”
“Stone Barrington owns a jet. It’s at Teterboro airport. Keep monitoring flight reservations, but be advised our quarry may head for Teterboro.”
“Do you want him stopped there?”
“No, just confirm the takeoff. We’ll pick him up in Paris.”
Fahd slammed down the phone and turned to the techie at the computer. “Still dead?”
Joram, wearing headphones, wasn’t sure what he’d been asked. It barely registered that Fahd was talking to him. “Sir?”
“Lance Cabot’s line. Is it still dead?”
“Yes, sir.”
Fahd snatched up the phone again and called his contact in D.C. “We have a problem with your agent.”
“What about her?”
“I think her cover may be blown.”
16.
LANCE LIKED WENDY. They’d met at a fund-raiser for Congressman Wilkerson, and she’d been so casual. Not pushing an agenda, like everyone else in Washington. Not impressed by his position, but not scared off. Her response, “Oh, is that an interesting job?” had been so beautifully understated they both wound up laughing at it.
He’d walked her home. Her apartment wasn’t that far from the party. She told him about her job, as a secretary, as if it wasn’t something to apologize for, or merely a rung up the corporate ladder. She was happy being a secretary, she found it a perfectly meaningful line of work.
He’d been seeing her for six months.
He didn’t call her now, probably wouldn’t have, even if he’d had a phone. Instead he walked to her apartment, just as he’d done so many times before, though not usually during the day.