“Want to tell me what that was all about, Maggie?” Ed said, hands on his hips. His stomach hung over his belt in a bulge of blue Oxford shirt.
The last attendee had filed out of the conference room. What little was left of Maggie’s cake sat dejected on the cart, all the edge and corner pieces gone. The conference table was littered with half-empty champagne flutes.
“Director Walder basically parroted what Senator Brahms told me, to—ah—‘be patient’ on Operation Abraqa.”
“Crap.” Ed rubbed his hand through his unruly hair. “And here I thought Brahms was going to ask you for a photo op.”
“Not today. Nice try on the cake and speech, Ed, and inviting Brahms, but she used it as an opportunity to shut us down.”
“It must be the Incognito connection,” Ed said.
“Brahms knew about that when we requested funding.”
“That was before you turned into six-gun Maggie. The plan was always to have Abraqa be low-key. That’s why Incognito was tolerated. Once bullets flew, Brahms and her lily-livered companions do what they do best—scatter like chickens.”
“I think it’s more than that, Ed.”
Ed found a half-empty bottle of champagne on the conference table, refilled his flute, held out the bottle for Maggie. She shook her head no. She needed her wits about her.
“Don’t go paranoid on me, Maggs.” Ed drained his glass, went over to the cart where he cut himself a doorstop of cake and proceeded to attack it, standing over the cart.
“So now what?” she said.
Ed spoke with his mouth full. “You’re back on the Acorn probe.”
“Oh, come on,” Maggie said. “Acorn is nothing but a keep-busy project. A yoyo.”
“Well, based on the way you sweet-talked my boss, you’re lucky to have that. It’s going to take some serious finessing to get Walder to ever listen to one of our proposals again.”
“So what does that mean for Dara’s keep-alive in the American Hospital of Paris?”
“It runs out. In about forty hours.”
“Ed, once Dara’s death is official, our advantage over Kafka dies with her. I can still string him along for the time being. It’s too good to waste.” She wasn’t giving up. She had to ping Kafka soon.
“Walder needs to cool off. Thanks for pissing him off, by the way.”
“Can’t you push for another forty-eight hours, just as protocol for winding down Abraqa? To safeguard Dara’s family?”
Ed shook his head. “Not with Brahms calling the shots.”
“Maybe you could talk to Houseman?” Houseman was Deputy Director of Field Ops.
Ed frowned. “Tell you what might work, Maggs . . .”
“I’m all ears.”
He drew a breath. “Your father . . . ”
She heard the brakes screech inside her head. “No,” she said. “And hell, no.”
“Hear me out, Maggs. Your old man is with the State Department, right? And everyone knows he’s worked pretty closely with Brahms.” Ed gave a sly smile.
Maggie started. The way in which Ed said pretty closely made her realize just how far her father’s womanizing had progressed over the years. Wasn’t it enough that he’d knocked up Maggie’s mother, a poor Indian woman he met while stationed in Quito? Left her and Mami standing barefoot when he took off back to the US?
“Now he’s sleeping with elder stateswomen senators,” Maggie said, taking an angry swig. “I’m just so proud of him.”
“Sorry, Maggs,” Ed whispered. “I thought you knew.”
“What a piece of work,” she said through her teeth, trying to stifle her humiliation. “How long did that go on for?”
“They worked together on the Lebanon desk, Maggie. Years ago.”
Maggie hadn’t spoken to her father in years. He hadn’t even made her graduation from Stanford when she received her MBA in finance and computer science. He sent sporadic checks when she was a girl and brought Maggie to the US when her mother died back in the nineties, when Maggie was seven. But that was his guilt at work. He was a Poncho, a white Latino who went native when he was abroad and his hormones were raging but came scurrying back home to his Wonder Bread wife, who produced a white-skinned son he lavished goodies on while he distanced himself from his half-Indian daughter. If Maggie had detested the man before she even knew about Senator Brahms, she certainly had no plans to ever talk to the son of a bitch again now. Except on his deathbed where she could tell him exactly what she really thought about him. How he broke her mami’s heart.
Hers too.
“I think I’d rather ask Jack the Ripper for a back rub, Ed.”
Ed raised his eyebrows. “What if Jack could save Abraqa?”
Maggie let air flutter out between her lips. Calm down. “I guess the pendejo does owe me.”
“Bingo.”
“But to tell you the truth, Ed, I’m not sure my old man will cave. I haven’t exactly been very gracious to him over the years.”
“Dinner at Moshi’s when we get back to SF says he will. So suck it up and play the nice card. You call him and I’ll see Dara’s keep-alive gets approved for another forty-eight hours. That gives us almost four days. How’s that?”
“What the hell.” She remembered the day she found her mother dead in their hut up in the Andes.
“It’s a ‘what the hell’ kind of operation, Maggie.”
“I guess it always was.”
“Those are the best kind,” Ed said, picking up a plastic knife, sizing up another wedge of cake.
“No wonder you can’t snag a dinner date,” Maggie said. “If I’m calling my old man, you’re calling it quits on the death cake for a while.”
“Deal.” Ed set the knife down on the frosting-smeared cardboard platter. He picked up a napkin from a stack and wiped his hands. “Let me know what your old man says.”