Operation Proof of Life (4 page)

Chapter Six

Oval Office

7 a.m.

Still reeling from Ella’s kidnapping, Michael nodded to the Secret Service agents and presidential staff as he made his way through the West Wing on auto pilot. President Jeffries took his breakfast in the small dining room adjacent to his office every morning where he reviewed the PDB, or President’s Daily Brief, a Cliff Notes version of current intelligence situations around the world. This morning, instead of a junior director delivering the PDB, Michael was answering the president’s invitation to deliver it in person.

The president had been on the road campaigning to extend his squatting rights at the White House for another four years. Today, however, he’d suspended his public campaign in deference to his opponent’s family situation. The kidnapping was probably one of the only things that could possibly stop the politicking. Michael knew the president’s campaign advisors hadn’t stopped working behind the scenes, but no one wanted an unsympathetic president who would use such a tragedy to further his run for the Oval Office. The moment they found Ella, however, all bets were off. Even while Thad and Ruth went crazy with worry, Jeffries was sure to use the situation to his advantage. Before the day was over, the president would hold a press conference and make sure the world knew he and Thad were both strong family men.

On the first floor, Michael entered the dining room under the concerned eye of President Jeffries’ executive assistant. Helena asked about Ella, Thad and Ruth. Michael gave her the vague answer he’d been repeating to himself all night. “The FBI’s on top of things. They’ll break the case today.”

Helena got him seated and poured him a glass of orange juice from a nearby service cart. “Would you like breakfast?”

Michael sipped the juice and shook his head.

Jeffries always made him feel comfortable, even though his archrival, Michael’s brother-in-law, was a Republican. The president subscribed to the old adage of keeping his friends close and his enemies closer. To this day, Michael didn’t know where Jeffries had pigeonholed him.

To Michael, people were complex, and dividing them with labels like Democrat or Republican couldn’t encompass such complexity. However, that morning, he suspected the president had ulterior motives for the invitation.

The door to the private quarters opened and Jeffries entered. A balding man in his sixties, his massive bulk dwarfed his height. Even with the expensive jacket and tie he wore loose around his neck, he appeared more suited to a boxing ring than the Oval Office. “Michael, you look like hell.”

Rising from his seat, he accepted the president’s handshake. “Feel like it too.”

“That’s understandable.” Jeffries removed his jacket, tossing it on an empty chair while ordering breakfast from Helena. “Any news about Ella?”

This was the reason the president had asked Michael to deliver the PDB. A hard, rough pit of anxiety for his niece lodged in his stomach. When Ruth had called him at four a.m. to tell him about the second phone call, the pit had grown to a boulder. Now, explaining the latest to the president, the juice in Michael’s stomach turned to pure acid.

The president asked more questions and said a few words of sympathy before his breakfast arrived. “I’ve told the FBI and the local police to do whatever it takes to get Ella back safe and sound.”

He was generally a kind man, if still a politician to his core, and Michael respected sincere kindness. “Thank you, sir.”

“If you’d like some time off to spend with your family, Titus can arrange it.”

Titus Allen, the head of the CIA, had already made the same offer. Michael toyed with his half-empty glass of juice. “At this point, I’d prefer to keep working.”

Jeffries nodded. “When you get Ella back, I’m ordering you to take a long weekend, agreed? They’re only young for a little while, you know, and national security is always here.”

Michael forced a smile and hoped he’d get to take him up on his offer. In his mind, he pictured Ella at the park, laughing at his attempts to get a kite into the air. At the zoo, commanding him to make strange noises and wake up a sleeping polar bear so she could talk to it. “Yes, sir.”

While the president ate, Michael briefed him on the overnight workings of two terrorist groups causing trouble in China, a possible nuclear reactor the North Koreans had buried under a children’s hospital, and an ongoing conflict between Russia and one of its neighbors.

Jeffries pushed his plate away. He took the papers of the PDB and riffled through them. “That’s it?”

The briefing had truly been brief. The president wasn’t used to a short list. “Ripples from our domestic financial crisis have now reached the major terror networks.” Michael shrugged. “They’re as broke as everyone else.”

Jeffries frowned at the papers, but mimicked Michael’s shrug. “I guess that’s a good day for us, then?”

For the intelligence world, yes. Michael wasn’t sure when the last time was he’d had a good day, personally or professionally. However, it was never prudent to disagree with the president of the country to his face. “Yes, sir.”

A knock on the door interrupted them. Helena stuck her head inside. “Your eight o’clock has arrived, Mr. President.”

Michael gathered the loose papers hurriedly and returned them to the PDB pouch. At the end of the day, the papers would be shredded. It was an antiquated way of disseminating information, but sending the briefs via internet, fax or phone was still too dangerous.

“Keep me posted about Ella,” Jeffries said. “And tell Thad and Ruthie they’re in my prayers.”

“Why don’t you call them, sir?” The words were out before Michael could rein in his candid thought.

A slight flush rose in the president’s cheeks, and he chuckled. “I thought about it, but figured that rascal Thad would tell everyone I conceded the election ahead of time.”

Michael accepted the joke with a nod and shook the president’s hand. The political fight for the presidency had been ugly, as most usually were, but the president was off the mark to think Thad so underhanded. “I’ll convey your thoughts to them.”

“Remember what I said about taking some time off. As the PDB proves this morning, you’ve earned it. It’s a good day for you career-wise. Enjoy it.”

On his way to the door, Michael considered his chief and commander’s order. The results of hard work and dedication were paying off, but the work of securing a nation was an ongoing and ever-growing job. The moment you let your guard down—the moment you enjoyed your success—some unlikely and unforeseen enemy would blow it all away. Literally.

As he tucked the pouch with the PDB under his arm and stepped into the reception room, Helena spoke to the president’s next appointment. A woman in a gray suit and matching heels stood at the window, a trench coat draped over her arm.

She answered Helena over her shoulder, stopping in mid-sentence when her gaze landed on Michael.

Just like the night before, his instincts went on high alert. The change in her appearance sent a jolt of unease through his stomach. Brigit Kent was not who she claimed to be, he’d bet the PDB on it. “Good Morning, Dr. Kent.” He gave her a nod.

She looked him over from head to toe and returned a small, forced smile. Her lipstick was the color of good burgundy and emphasized the white of her teeth. “Deputy Director Stone. We meet again.”

He wondered how late she’d been out, and if Flynn had caught up with her. “You took off so suddenly last night, I didn’t have a chance to talk to you.”

She took a couple of careful steps toward him, as if she were tentative to get too close. “I believe you kicked me out.”

He had, but until he figured out the puzzle standing before him, it was better to befriend her than push her away again. “My apologies. You caught me at the end of a long and stressful day.” He gave her a smile that had charmed everyone from the Duchess of York to his mother. “The situation has me on edge. I’m sure you understand.”

She studied the smile, studied the sincerity he willed into his eyes. Relaxed a bit. “Of course. If I overstepped my boundaries with your family, forgive me. I’d like to help if I can.”

She didn’t realize it, but she’d just opened the door for him to keep an eye on her. “Ruthie could use someone to talk to. A friend.”

A faint quirk of her lips let him know she was pleased. “Ruth is a good person. I’ll call her when I’m done here and try to stop by this evening if she’s up to having company.”

As Helena ushered Dr. Kent into the dining room, Michael tapped the PDB under his arm. Unlikely enemies were everywhere, and apparently conspiring with the president.

Brigit entered the dining room, flushed from Michael’s apparent change of heart. She wasn’t fooled by his sudden friendliness, his smoldering Clooney eyes or the flashy smile, but, jeez he was hard to resist when he turned on the charm.

She greeted the president and turned down the coffee Helena offered her. Trying not to teeter on her heels, she snagged the first chair she reached at the table, even though it was enough distance from President Jeffries to cause him to raise an eyebrow. She motioned at the newspapers and files fanned out before him. “At it already, I see.”

He winked at her. “No rest for the wicked.”

Like most men in power, Jeffries probably had wickedness on tap, to be served up whenever necessary. His good-guy persona wasn’t completely false, but Brigit didn’t trust him any more than she would trust a cobra swaying stealthily in front of her.

However, as his personal consultant—a job even his wife didn’t realize Brigit held—Jeffries demanded her loyalty like a pet dog on a leash. “So what did you bring me on my enemies today, Doctor?”

Brigit pulled the BlackBerry from her jacket’s hip pocket and punched several buttons. As the file she wanted emerged on the screen, Michael Stone’s smile flashed across her mind. Blinking it away, she also tamped down the tiny flare of betrayal in her stomach. “Would you like to start with Thad Pennington,” she asked the president, “or Ruth?”

Chapter Seven

Maryland

Peter Donovan had known deep passion in his life. Cutting pain as well. He’d sold his soul as a young man for a cause people believed was past history. A bloody, pointless war buried in political correctness these days and discussed in university studies as a
conflict
.

Even back home in Belfast, the cause he’d prayed for, bled for and killed for had been reduced to the
Bombs and Bullets Tour
given by taxi drivers who escorted tourists from the Protestant side of town to the Catholic side and back again. They gawked and snapped photos of monuments and murals depicting the two most prevalent objects in most wars…crosses and guns.

Fingering the tiny gold cross in his right earlobe, Peter repeated the only prayer he ever said anymore.
Know thy enemy. Know thyself
. While he still fought for the Catholic tradition, he no longer believed in a merciful or just God. God had deserted him too many times. Left him to bleed and suffer the betrayals of his family, his friends and his conscience. After all the fighting, all the struggles, he now believed only in the truth.

Before exiting the delivery van he was driving, he slipped a pair of leather gloves on his hands and pulled the brim of his painter’s cap down until it touched the frame of his sunglasses.

The side of the van was labeled Conglomerate Painting Services. It claimed the company did interior and exterior painting. A toll-free number, long ago disconnected, was stenciled under the lettering.

Behind the sunglasses, Peter scanned the residential neighborhood as he walked around the van to the sidewalk. Pedestrian traffic was minimal, but starting to pick up. Car traffic was too, as people exited their townhouses and condos and jumped in high-end SUVs for work.

Dry leaves scattered around his feet, and he flipped the collar of his paint-splattered coveralls up against the cool wind rushing by. As he pushed a button on the key fob, the van’s side door opened to reveal a collection of tarps, paint cans and tools. Hoisting a rolled-up canvas onto his shoulder, he stepped back and hit the key fob button again. The side door slid shut.

Jogging up the front stairs of the duplex, he kept his head down and whistled softly under his breath. The door was unlocked. Stepping inside, the smell of freshly sawn wood and primer filled his nose. He knocked the brim of his cap up with his knuckles and lowered his sunglasses to glance around. The duplex was undergoing a complete remodel. One that had already taken months longer and thousands of dollars more than the owners had ever dreamed. After today, however, their ailing budget and mounting impatience would dissolve in a heartbeat when the pull of a trigger from the top floor of the duplex sent a message to the world.

Taking the inside stairs with a purposeful, if slower, gait, Peter mentally reviewed the day’s plan. Like a 3D topographer’s map, all the important physical details of the assassination rose in his mind. The location of ground zero, the obstructions, like cars, trees and nearby buildings, the placement of his sniper—he could zoom in on each quarter of the kill zone and then efficiently pull back a degree and again review the physical details.

Cormac O’Bern, a famous modern Irish poet and an American poet laureate, would be honored for his body of written work as well as his international peace-promoting propaganda in a library renaming a quarter mile northeast of the duplex. The ex-IRA member had always had the gift of leadership and a love of Hollywood. Now he traveled the world with an entourage worthy of a movie star and spoke the words rock stars to politicians wanted to believe about attaining worldwide peace. All they had to do, Cormac claimed, was believe.

Peter scoffed at such juvenile ideas. Peace was an imaginary friend to human beings, no matter their socioeconomic status, religion or nation. The figurative image of peace helped them sleep at night. Like the image of God, it gave them hope in the face of tragedy, illness and loss. But it would never materialize, no matter how badly they wanted it to because it only existed in their mind.

War was real. Struggle was real. Peter didn’t believe in peace any more than he believed in the leprechauns his mother had claimed lived in the woods behind his childhood home. His mother had believed in everything…God, peace, four-leaf clovers. She’d reached for hope in any element available. When Peter’s father died in a retaliation bombing outside a pub in Belfast, Roberta had blamed bad luck and unrepentant sin.

Peter had blamed peace.

Roberta then turned her back on Irish Nationalism, betraying her dead spouse and her son. Five years after burying Peter’s father, she married his archenemy, a parliament member with secretive ties to the British spy group MI5. She bore William Kent two daughters.

On the third floor, Peter entered a cramped room gutted to squeeze out floor space for a small home gym. As he moved toward a tall, skinny window where he could look across the neighborhood and nearby park, he caught sight of the barricades already erected near the library. Traffic was being diverted around the block. From this distance the black and white police cruisers lining the street looked like Matchbox cars and the large green sign over the library’s entrance was clearly visible but unreadable.

He unrolled the canvas, uncovering a tripod and rifle. Carefully, he spread the canvas flat and snapped the tripod into a standing position. As he anchored the rifle to the tripod, the leather gloves hindered his fingers, slowing down his usual efficiency. Even though they were snug-fitting stretch leather, he couldn’t get a good feel for the metal under them.

Grunting, he removed one of the gray gloves and threw it to the floor in frustration. The leather made a soft smacking sound, the glove landing palm up as if in defeat. Peter took a deep breath, yanked the ball cap off his head and ran his forearm over his sweating forehead.

The gloves were a necessity. A fingerprint was too easy to leave behind. No matter how carefully a person wiped off surfaces they knew they’d touched, the chance at leaving behind an errant fingerprint was high. Forcing patience into his fingers, he also forced it into his mind. He could not afford to leave behind such blatant evidence. He returned the cap to his bald head—there would be no hair fibers left behind either—and slid the glove back on his hand.

Once he attached the rifle to the tripod, he removed a scope from inside his overalls, fastening it to the top. He peered through the scope, adjusted the coordinates and read the library sign.
Cormac O’Bern. The Power of Peace.

Cormac and Peter had been inseparable during their teenage years. Cormac, a few years older and wiser, had drawn Peter in like a magnet to steel. While Cormac persuaded people to their cause with his smooth rhetoric and winning smile, Peter carried out guerilla war tactics to spotlight their continuing war.

But then Cormac betrayed him, just like his mother. Just like Brigit.

Love, like peace, was an illusion. An imaginary friend.

Adjusting the range of the scope, Peter again referred to the three-dimensional map in his mind. From memory, he pulled up Cormac’s handsome face, its long nose, dark hair and fair skin, and set the scope’s hairs on the spot between his bushy eyebrows. Peter pressed the trigger on the rifle and mentally heard the report, absorbed the kick of the gun, and watched in slow motion as Cormac slumped out of the scope’s range, crumpling to the ground of the stage.

Today, Cormac would be reminded, if only for the briefest of seconds, that his life, his promise of peace, was a joke.

A voice from behind him startled Peter from his daydream. The accent was thick with Palestinian genes. “You would like to do this job yourself?”

Peter removed his eye from the scope but didn’t turn to face her. Of course he wanted to pull the trigger himself, but he wasn’t stupid or careless. He was not the professional assassin like the woman standing behind him, and today, a professional was needed. That’s why he’d paid her ransom to the Israelis and sent Tory to pick her up.

He glanced at his watch. “In two hours fifty-three minutes, the dedication will take place. The FBI and local law enforcement are already strained to the breaking point by the kidnapping and the presence of a dozen rich and famous attending the event. Your escape after Cormac’s murder should be the smoothest you’ve ever encountered.”

“Ah, yes, the kidnapping. How is the girl doing?”

Peter turned to Moira Raphael. Her dark auburn hair was pulled tight in a high ponytail. Her brown eyes were rimmed with black and her lips shone with thick, red gloss. A bruise on her left cheek, provided by her captors, was still visible under the layers of her makeup. “The Pennington child is a sniveling runt but still an effective tool to help us.”

The right side of Moira’s mouth tilted up in a smirk. “There is no us, Peter, you know that.” She waited for him to contradict her. He didn’t and she shrugged. “I’ve recently been in the same predicament as the child. Cold, hungry, abused and alone in the dark. It’s quite terrifying, even for someone like me.”

“She hasn’t been abused.”

“But knowing you, she has been neglected. Perhaps if you fed her, she would stop crying.”

Peter tightened his hands into fists. The child was the least of their concerns. “I don’t tell you how to kill people.”

The left side of her mouth joined the right. She walked to the rifle, shouldered him out of the way so she could double check his work with her own gloved hands. “After this, my debt to you is paid.”

Removing a brown envelope from the inside pocket of his overalls, Peter watched her adjust the scope. “When the job is done, head to Canada. I’ll meet up with you as soon as I’m done here.”

She raised her gaze from the scope and studied his face. “There’s more at stake here than my usual jobs. No matter what measures you have taken, leaving the country will be difficult. This job is an even trade for the ransom.”

Peter handed her the envelope. “You won’t encounter trouble leaving the country unless you fail to follow my orders.”

Moira considered his words in silence. He could see caution warring with her independent nature in her eyes. “Canada it is then.”

Leaving her with the gun and envelope, Peter descended the stairs and returned to the van. He knew Moira would run when the job was done, just like she had before. If he hadn’t been in love with her, been in love with what she did so flawlessly, he’d have let her go years ago. But he
was
in love with her, as in love as he could ever be.

He told himself it was simply the amazing sex they had that kept him tracking her down, chasing her like a fox after a rabbit. Deep in his gut, though, he knew it was more. The sexy assassin meant far more to him than a good fuck. Her ability to take a human life without a moment’s regret matched his own. However, with Moira, there was no agenda, no mission, no loyalty to anyone or anything. He envied her that. His own mission was so ingrained in the cells of his body, he couldn’t imagine a life without such passion.

Possessing Moira had become as much his passion as his homeland’s nationalism. A part of him believed he could dissect her and when he did, he’d finally have the antidote to emotion. Only then, when he no longer felt anything for anyone, would he find the guts to pull the trigger on his friends as well as his enemies.

Back in the van, Peter pawed through a grocery sack and pulled out a Snickers candy bar. He’d give it to the Pennington girl when he got back to the room he’d rented. Contrary to what Moira thought, he was not a monster like the Israelis. The girl was warm and dry, and Tory had given her a doll she’d picked up at a nearby convenience store.

I even left a nightlight on for her so she wouldn’t be afraid of the dark.