Collateral Damage (18 page)

“Is Holly in town?”

“She is.”

“Will the two of you have dinner with Harp and me this evening?”

“Let me check with Holly—hang on.” Stone pressed the hold button, rang Holly and got an affirmative reply.

“Sure, where and when?”

“La Grenouille at eight?”

“Nice choice. We’ll be there.” They both hung up. Stone reflected that he was unable to keep up with Herbie’s progress as a sophisticate. A year before he would never have heard of La Grenouille.

—

Stone and Holly arrived at the restaurant a little late, and Stone was surprised to find James Rutledge and Kelli Keane at the table with Herbie and Harp. He introduced Holly, and they sat down.

A waiter appeared with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Grande Dame champagne and presented it to Herbie, who nodded. “Would anyone prefer something else to drink? Stone, I’m sure they have Knob Creek.”

“My favorite champagne is always good enough for me,” Stone said, as the waiter made his rounds, then brought them menus.

“When is your book out, Kelli?” Stone asked.

“Very soon,” she replied.

“I hope I’m not going to get a raft of calls from the media.”

“I think all their questions will be answered in the book,” she said, cryptically.

“It’s too late for ‘no comment,’ then?”

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Stone.” She turned to Holly. “I remember you from the opening of The Arrington in L.A. You’re CIA, aren’t you?” Asked as if they had never met.

“That’s right.”

“Congratulations on your promotion,” Kelli said. “I saw the mention in the
Times
.”

“Thank you,” Holly replied.

“I believe you had some sort of bombing incident on the East Side, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Any significant damage?”

“It rattled a few coffee cups—that was about it.”

“I’ll bet that’s what you would say if the building were just a hole in the ground,” Kelli said, laughing.

“Probably.”

“Have you been with the Agency a long time?”

“A fairly long time.”

“Did you do something else before that?”

“I was a police officer in Florida. Before that I was in the army, where I was a police officer, too.”

“I didn’t know the Agency drew on former police as recruits.”

“The Agency recruits from all over the place,” Holly replied. She was being careful; she didn’t often have conversations about her work with civilians, and this woman was a journalist and the subject of an investigation she herself had initiated.

“Do you enjoy the work?”

“It’s very gratifying, when things go well. When they don’t, less so.”

“How did you and Stone meet?”

“We first met when I was still working in Florida. Some years ago.”

“Are you staying with Stone while you’re here?”

“I have an apartment in the city,” Holly replied, offering half a lie. “How about you? Do you and Jim live together?”

Kelli didn’t blink. “Yes, we do.”

“Uptown or down?”

“Downtown. Jim has a loft, and I’m lucky having a man who is a brilliant designer. You must come down for dinner one night soon.”

“That would be very nice,” Holly said, though she had a very, very good idea what the apartment looked like.

“I hear today from an acquaintance at the FBI that they’re looking for a woman in connection with the bombing.”

“That’s perfectly true,” Holly said.

“Who is she?”

Now Holly had to decide whether to toss a grenade into the conversation. It didn’t take her long. “Her name is Jasmine Shazaz. Does that ring a bell?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“She is the sister of a man named Ari Shazaz. How about that name?”

“No, I’ve never heard it.”

“Perhaps you knew him as McCallister. He was in L.A., too.”

That stopped Kelli in her tracks. “Ah, yes,” she managed to say.

“He and his brother were killed while trying to escape the country after the L.A. incident.”

“So Jasmine is out for revenge?”

“That appears to be the case. She has been connected to two recent bombings in London—one that killed the British foreign minister, the other at the American Embassy.”

“Of course, I knew about that,” Kelli said.

“But you didn’t know the backstory?”

“No, I didn’t. May I write about this?”

“Yes, if you refer to me as a confidential source.”

“Are there other people I can talk to?”

“You can try the police commissioner and the head of the New York office of the FBI, but I don’t know how much they’ll have to say.”

“Why haven’t I seen anything about Jasmine Shazaz in the papers or on TV?”

“That would be a good question for the commissioner and the FBI,” Holly replied, “but don’t tell them you talked to me.”

“I’m a magazine writer, not a daily journalist,” Kelli said. “I’d need a lot more than this to get a piece into, say,
Vanity Fair
.”

“I’m afraid there isn’t a lot more I can tell you. You can also try the British Foreign Office and New Scotland Yard’s Special Branch.”

“They’re not going to tell me much either, are they?” Kelli asked.

“Perhaps not. Perhaps you should hold your piece until there is a successful conclusion to the case. I’m sure a lot of people would be more interested in talking at that time.”

“Would you be?”

“I’m afraid not. I’m sure you know that we don’t operate domestically.”

The waiter returned, and they placed their orders. Kelli did not return to the subject of Jasmine.

Back at Stone’s house Holly took her laptop into her dressing room, logged onto the Agency mainframe, and accessed the surveillance at James Rutledge’s apartment. She got the two just as they came through the front door.

“Well, that was fun,” Jim was saying. “You seemed to enjoy Holly Barker’s company.”

“It wasn’t the first time we met,” Kelli replied, hanging her coat in the hall closet.

“That’s right, you met in L.A.”

“Only in passing.”

“You’ve met her since?”

“Yes. She and I had a rather scary conversation.”

“About what?”

They moved into the bedroom, but Holly still caught the audio.

“About something she doesn’t want me to talk about.”

“We’re back to that, are we? You know something I don’t know. All right, if you don’t want to tell me, don’t, but please stop bringing it up.”

“I didn’t bring it up, you did,” she said, unzipping her dress and stepping out of it.

“No, you . . . Oh, never mind.”

They got undressed in silence and got into bed. There was enough light in the room for the high-definition cameras to register their images. Jim made a move for a breast, kissing her on a nipple. Kelli responded, and soon they were at it.

Holly used the interval to get undressed herself, then she went back to the computer. The two were lying in bed, breathing hard, spent.

“All right, I’ll tell you,” Kelli said. She rolled over and put her lips close to his ear.

This Holly couldn’t hear.

“You’re shitting me,” Jim said.

“I shit you not.”

“Christ, no wonder the CIA doesn’t want that out. Do you think the cameras we had taken out were put there by the Agency?”

“I did at first, but now I think it might be somebody at a rival publication, a tabloid called
The Instigator.
They’ve done this before—tapped phones, et cetera.”

“Why would they try to listen in on us?”

“Because they’re out to subvert
Vanity Fair
, and they desperately want to know what the magazine is going to publish. They have a shorter lead time, and if they find out what other writers and I are writing for
VF
, they can get something in their rag first.”

“Do you think they tried to run you down, too?”

“No, I’m beginning to think that was just an accident.”

“You mean, you’re admitting I’m right?” he asked, laughing.

“Don’t let it go to your head, buster,” Kelli said.

They got quiet, and Holly switched off her computer and went into the bedroom, naked as usual.

“What were you doing in there for so long?” Stone asked.

“Girl stuff,” Holly replied, climbing into bed. “You want to talk, or you want to fuck?”

Stone switched off the light.

—

Later, when they were lying in each other’s arms, half asleep, Stone said, “You and Kelli Keane were kind of into it tonight. What was that about?”

“Like any good journalist, she was pumping me for information about the explosion at our station.”

“Did you tell her anything?”

“Actually, I did—just enough to get her calling the police commissioner and the FBI. Maybe that will get their asses in gear.”

“Getting their asses in gear would be a major achievement,” Stone said.

“Tell me about it. This job is more fun when I don’t have to deal with people outside the Agency. I haven’t really learned yet how to push the buttons of people like the commissioner and the AIC at the Bureau.”

“Sounds like you’re doing pretty well, getting Kelli in on the action. She can be a bulldog.”

“Are you worried about her book coming out?”

“I’m a little anxious,” Stone admitted. “Not because there’ll be anything terrible in it, but because a lot of people will read it, and I’ll get a lot of calls, and so will Peter. It will probably haunt me for years to come.”

“Are you worried about what Peter will think?”

“Not so much. There’s a lot he doesn’t know, and some of it will be in Kelli’s book, saving me from having to tell him about it.”

“I’m lucky I didn’t have kids,” Holly said. “I’d be in the position of having them ask about what I do all the time.”

“And eventually, they’d find out.”

“Maybe more than I’d want them to know.”

Holly slipped into sleep on Stone’s shoulder, and Stone followed shortly.

Holly was working at her desk when a security guard rapped on her door. “You ordered a sandwich delivery?” He held up a paper bag.

“Yes, thanks. What do I owe you?”

He looked at the receipt stapled to the bag. “Twelve-fifty. I gave him fifteen.”

Holly got the money from her handbag and handed it to him. “Thanks for not making me look like a cheapskate.”

He waved and went back to his post in the downstairs lobby, where he was one of four these days, two of them posing as people waiting to see people upstairs.

Holly unwrapped the sandwich and set it on her desk, then opened the can of diet soda that had come with it. She was extremely hungry and was about to bite into it when she heard a muffled explosion from the direction of the avenue. The reinforced walls and armored triple glazing in her building kept out nearly all noise; something she could hear at all would have to be big.

Holly went to the window and looked outside. Down the block a few doors and at street level she could see the facade of a building blown away and twisted cars in the street, lying in disarray. A few people were picking themselves up from the rubble, and they were all bloody.

Holly picked up the phone and pressed the paging button. “Security, this is Assistant Director Barker: call nine-one-one, ask for every available policeman and ambulance. Everybody who’s armed, on the street, but stay away from the site of the explosion. Whoever did this is in a car or a cab nearby. Look for a woman in the rear seat. Compare to the flyer on the downstairs reception desk. Move!”

She slung her bag on her shoulder and ran down the hallway, skipped the elevator, and ran down the stairs. The four security men in the reception room were looking out the small window in the door. “One of you man the phones, the rest of you follow me!” she yelled at them. She stuck her hand in her bag, held her hand on her pistol, and stepped into the street, looking both ways. “You and you,” she yelled to two of them, “go down the block that way. You,” she said to the other one, “follow me.”

Holly ran up the block in the street, her hand still in her bag, looking into every vehicle as she went. At the next corner she looked both ways, then ran across the street and into a subway station, waving for her man to follow her.

She leaped the stile and headed down the escalator, holding one position and looking at every person ahead of her.