Alicia Mortenson called Janice Gentry once Alicia and Craig were on their way. “I’m sorry, dear, that was inexcusable, the way we just walked out.”
“Thank you,” Janice agreed.
“The fact is, we didn’t want to announce exactly what we’re doing to everyone in the room, and to Craig and me it was obvious. You know too, don’t you?”
Back at headquarters, Janice stood with the landline phone to her ear. She was exhausted, but somehow Alicia’s voice conveyed energy. Janice stood up straighter. She let her mind go blank. A soft breeze seemed to blow across her face, pleasantly scented.
Eyes closed, she smiled. “Of course,” she said.
It was as if Alicia had projected an image into Janice’s mind, across miles of phone line. Because Janice was certain she knew what she meant, and where the couple had gone.
“There you go, dear,” Alicia said in that voice that would have made her the greatest kindergarten teacher of all time.
“All right, well, you two be careful.”
“We will. And don’t worry about the Chair, Janice. I think she may be all right. Maybe she just had to go put in an appearance at her day job. It is important to look normal.”
“Yes,” Janice said slowly, wondering if Alicia was conveying her another message and Janice wasn’t getting it. She wasn’t sure exactly what the eighty-seven year old Gladys Leaphorn’s “day job” was. She had worked at Langley for years, as an administrative assistant on whom a series of deputy CIA chiefs had come to rely. Shortly before her retirement she had transferred out west here, to North American Defense Command. But in this crisis could she just go pop in at NORAD and say, “Hi, I think I left something in the closet”?
Well, anyway. At least she knew Alicia and Craig were safe. And what they were doing.
The Mortensons set up shop at one of their old stands in Vienna, Virginia, a very upscale suburb of D.C. A million-dollar home in this neighborhood was mid-size. Nice but nothing fancy. They stayed in one such, the vacation home of an old friend who was staying huddled in California until someone explained what was happening now. Then the Mortensons started placing phone calls to friends and acquaintances, most of whom sounded glad to hear from them. The Mortensons were listening for the sound of someone who was not.
Craig managed to reach Don Trimble, but it took a while. “How are things in Salzburg?”
“Ominously quiet,” Trimble answered. “Huge security apparatus, of course, but not much trust among the various groups, so they’re overlapping and leaving gaps.”
“Seen anyone we know?” Craig meant other Circle members, perhaps of the European branches. They would seem inevitably drawn to the city that was soon to be the political center of Earth.
“A few acquaintances, no one who seems to have a clue.”
“Jack?”
“No. Have any of you heard from him?”
“I don’t think so. We’re temporarily away from headquarters.”
“You are?” Trimble said quickly. Craig frowned at Alicia. She frowned back as if she had heard not only the whole conversation but also what her husband was thinking. “Where are you?” Trimble asked.
Alicia shook her head at Craig, which was hardly necessary. “California,” Craig said. “Thinking about hopping to Malaysia. I think maybe Jack was up to more there than he let on.”
“Good idea,” Trimble said. “But everyone else is still at headquarters, aren’t they?”
“Most all.”
They ended the call a few minutes later without chitchat or farewells. Alicia said immediately, “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Next time you call him and listen to his voice. He just seemed a little too anxious to know where everyone is. And he had absolutely nothing useful to tell me even though he’s at ground zero on the scene.”
“Maybe he just hasn’t learned anything. I never did think Don was the fastest horse in the stable.”
Craig laughed. “Or maybe there’s nothing to learn there.” He looked at his dead cell phone. “Damn it, Don, that was badly played. You should have given me something, something to let me know you’re still on the team.”
Alicia said, without conviction, “Maybe he was being overheard.”
Craig took her hand and gave it a quick kiss. “I’m going to lunch with the Russian ambassador. You?”
“Just some shopping.”
He looked at her sharply. Alicia smiled. “With the Secretary of State’s mistress.”
They parted without goodbyes or backward glances. They were so close they didn’t even feel apart when they weren’t together. They almost thought with the same mind. But unfortunately they didn’t share eyes.
About 10 p.m. a porter came by and made the small train compartment into two beds, one above and one below. Jack and Arden stood in the narrow corridor looking at each other while he worked, neither of them speaking. They had had a hectic, exhilarating hour before boarding the train, but before that they had just sat in a cell for hours. Neither was physically tired. They were very keyed up, and not just from fear of pursuit. Jack’s eyes stayed on her face. Arden looked very young, only tracings of lines beginning around her eyes. Her blue eyes took him in, absorbed him, drew him in to her. He wondered what she was seeing. He felt so much older than he had a month ago. Old and suspicious. She looked at him with what he should have known was affection, but he didn’t trust her at all. Couldn’t. His body did, though. He found himself drawing closer to her.
The porter coughed discreetly, moving between them and out of the way. Jack tipped him a bill without looking at it, probably way too much, from the way the porter chuckled. Or maybe that was just from looking at the two of them.
Arden swallowed. He could see her throat move. “I’m going for a walk,” she said.
“Good idea.” He stopped swaying toward her.
She took off, moving briskly and swinging her arms. Jack got undressed, mostly. His overnight bag hadn’t contained pajamas for either of them. He turned on the small light at the head of the bed and tried to read the one paperback in English he’d found left on the train, a Danielle Steele novel. He had already read enough to understand why someone had left it behind, but there was nothing else to do. Soon he came to a love scene, put the book aside, turned off his light, put his hands behind his head, and looked out the window. France flashed by, dim and smeared by speed. Farmland, widely scattered houses. Like all lonely people, Jack imagined that the people inside those houses were happy. Tired from honest labor, ignorant of sinister forces at work in the world, unconcerned about anything larger than produce prices. So he imagined, and he envied them.
He wished he were back in school, so he could talk to Stevie or Rachel. Jack smiled wryly in the darkness. Sharing his dilemma over another woman with Rachel would be a complicated business, but that was part of the fun.
He wondered what time it was in his home town, what his parents and brother and sisters were doing. His mother would be worried about him, and rightfully so, but her voice wouldn’t show it when he called her first thing the next morning.
The door of their compartment slid open. Arden stood there, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. She didn’t speak. There was only a very narrow space between the door and the bunks, perhaps two feet. Arden stepped out of her flat shoes, slipped them to the side. She wore a pleated skirt and a thin sweater with three-quarter sleeves. After a moment she slipped off the skirt, opened the very narrow closet door, and hung it inside. Then she lifted off the sweater, slowly, standing there for a long moment with the sweater around her head while she pulled her arms out. Then she pulled her head free, folded the sweater, and put it on a shelf. The closet door closed with a click that was loud in the silent room.
Arden wore a bra and panties, and Jack couldn’t tell anything about their material in the dimness, but they looked filmy. Some moonlight came through the uncurtained window, enough for him to see well, but then he’d been lying in the darkness for a while. Arden must not be able to see at all. Maybe she thought he was already asleep.
He could swear she was looking at him, though. He saw her eyes.
She reached behind her and the bra fell to the floor. She cupped her breasts, which were not large but well-shaped and gravity-resistant. She moved her thumbs along their undersides. When she moved her hands away her nipples were alert.
Jack was sure then that she knew he was watching. He didn’t know whether to move or cough or applaud. Very deliberately, Arden hooked her thumbs in the panties, bent at the waist, and pulled them down her legs. As she straightened up she ran her hands up her thighs.
Then she stood for a long moment, palms on her thighs, very pale in the moonlight. He couldn’t see any tan lines. Jack sat up slightly, resting his head on his hand, and just stared. She apparently wanted to be seen, and he wanted to see. God, it was going to be hard to sleep after this.
Very deliberately then, Arden hooked her thumbs in her panties and snapped the waistband. Then she looked toward him in the darkness and said, “How long are you going to pretend to be asleep?”
“I’m not. I’m lying here watching you.”
He could have sworn she hesitated then. As she did, he moved out of bed and stood in front of her, inches apart. He reached out to the left, the length of his arm, and opened the shades. Moonlight flooded the compartment, seeming very bright. She wouldn’t look up until he lifted her chin, then her eyes shone.
They interrupted each other with his saying, “May I—?” and Arden saying, “Would you like—?” Then Jack just nodded, kept looking into her eyes, stepped forward, and put his mouth on hers.
“Hmmph,” she said some time later. By then her arms were around his neck, his around her waist.
“Yes,” he said. “Arden? Do you really—?” She stopped him with her mouth on his. Also by pulling down his briefs. “My,” she said, reaching down.
The train made it perfect. There was that steady rhythm under them. They joined it, first standing then in the bunk. By then they could both see clearly by the shifting moonlight through the window. Jack looked down at her and she covered herself modestly for a moment. Was it mocking? He didn’t know. But when he pulled her arms down she didn’t resist.
She pushed him back on the bunk, or possibly he pulled her, but in any event he was on his back, she on top of him, looking into each other’s eyes. This time he didn’t speak, just widened his eyes. She nodded.
Entry was slow, then quick. She made an intake of breath that seemed very loud in the cabin, except it was matched by his. Then they locked eyes again. Then they began moving.
“Oh God,” she said, some time later. Jack stroked her hair and just nodded against her bare shoulder, her nipple indenting his chest. “Are you—?” he began, then they both fell instantly asleep, but that kind of sleep where each was aware of the other all the time, their hands stroking each other. Some time in the night they half-woke at the same time and tried again. It was better, or just as good, which was just as good. They ended up staring into each other’s eyes until they began blinking and nodded off again.
The miles rolled by.
The library clerk in the American embassy in Munich said to the ambassador’s secretary, “I’ve got to go home, Alice. I’ve got a headache.”
The thin, efficient, middle-aged lady looked up sympathetically and said, “One of your bad ones?”
The clerk nodded. He was a heavy man, which, with his shaved head, made his age hard to determine.
“Well, it’s pretty dead here. All the activity is shifting to Salzburg. You take care of yourself, Bruno.”
“Thank you, Alice.” He liked her, which was one reason why he was leaving this place.
Bruno walked out of the embassy for the last time, walking almost on tiptoe, like a man trying to minimize pain, and didn’t stop the act even when he was outside. He eased into his car, a Volkswagen Jetta that was almost too small for him. Then Bruno Benjamin drove away, but only a few blocks.
A few minutes later the ambassador’s private cell phone rang. “Yes?” he said impatiently, expecting his wife.
“This is the man who called before. Do you recognize my voice?”
“Yes. Sounds garbled, though. Where are you?” No answer. “Look, I don’t have time today. You must know there’s a lot going on. You said before this was a security issue. Well, thanks for caring, but we’ve got plenty of security. You’ve never seen so much—”
“I’m talking about your personal security, Mr. Ambassador. Do I need to say her name?”
During a long pause, the ambassador looked across his office to the mirror on the wall, checking his hair, which was perfect, slightly wavy with a little gray at the temples. He had always been handsome, and now he was tending toward distinguished. “If you think I’m going to pay you—” he began.
“I’m calling on her behalf. This is just about separation terms. We’re not talking about money. She has a position to protect too. She wants to make sure you’re not going to—damage each other.”
“Of course not. Look. I don’t know what we can—”
“This will only take a few minutes of your time, sir. On your way to lunch. Across from the restaurant, there is an alley.”
“So?”
“Meet me there. One meeting. She wants me to return a couple of things that are very recognizably yours. And you have something of hers as well, don’t you?”
The ambassador thought quickly. He’d feared blackmail, but no longer did. The man’s calling him “sir” subconsciously convinced him of the superiority of his position. As a matter of fact he did have Suzanne’s day book, which had dropped from her purse at their last tryst. At least he had found it when he was leaving. She would want that back. The meeting made sense. And it was thoughtfully arranged, too.
“All right. Twelve-twenty-five. I’ll only have a minute.”
“Yes, sir.”
When the ambassador went into the alley he saw a man walking quickly down it away from him—a burly man whose shape seemed recognizable. He walked with a heavy walking stick. “Hello?” the ambassador called, but the man just kept walking, looking back fearfully over his shoulder as if the ambassador might be a mugger. That was amusing.
About halfway down the narrow alley the man stopped. When the ambassador walked up he turned. The ambassador stopped, then laughed.
“Bruno. You’re kidding. What are you doing here?”
“I’m the one who called.” Bruno was thinking what a dolt this man was, not to have recognized the voice of a subordinate who had worked in his building for as long as he had.
“You’re kidding,” the ambassador said again. “What a funny little guy. So you were calling for—her?”
“No, I was calling for myself—sir.”
He touched something, the end of the cane fell off, revealing a small, thin blade. Moving quickly, Bruno stabbed the ambassador in the kneecap, with enough force to break it. The ambassador screamed harshly, reaching down. Bruno slashed his hand.
Both wounds were painful but not life-threatening. The knee, especially, was agonizing. The ambassador remained bent over, staring up at his library clerk, the ambassador’s face twisted out of any semblance of handsomeness.
“What do you want?” he finally managed to gasp.
“This. To watch you in pain.” Bruno smiled. He had worked at the embassy for nearly two years. After so long an imposture as a subordinate, this felt wonderful. The ambassador, a smug rich man who’d gotten his position through campaign contributions, obviously didn’t understand at all. The man was a pig, who just happened to have been blessed with good looks and inherited money, which had turned him ugly. He treated everyone around him like a servant. Bruno hated him personally, but also for the way he treated his secretary, who was his superior in every way except wealth and status.
“Are you crazy?” The ambassador lifted his head to shout. Bruno stabbed him in the stomach, stopping his cry. The wound bled, too much, weakening him too fast. Bruno watched with interest. The ambassador tried to speak, beckoned with his right hand as if asking Bruno to lean over so he could whisper to him. But Bruno wasn’t interested in his last words. The ambassador doubled over in pain again, and Bruno pushed him with his foot so he fell over on his side, so he could see his face. The ambassador had a look of great curiosity, as if straining to understand not just this moment but his whole life.
“You’re too stupid to understand,” Bruno told him, staring down. Then he heard noises behind him, down near the mouth of the alley. He sighed. Couldn’t wait any longer. With the sword cane he slashed the ambassador’s throat. Blood gushed bright red, then darker, then slowed to a trickle. Bruno thought he could see the moment of the man’s death when the ambassador tried to shift his eyes toward him and they stopped, then glazed.
Bruno watched him for another few seconds. That hadn’t been as satisfying as he’d hoped. But that was okay, he had more satisfaction ahead. This had just been a last job that had to be done, his resignation from the embassy.
He didn’t expect anyone to notice his disappearance from the job. Soon there would be no more American embassies. Bruno smiled. He retrieved the concealing sheath of his cane, fixed it back in place, and walked out of the alley the other direction, strolling. He left the woman’s date book in the ambassador’s pocket. Bruno didn’t care for her either.
As Bruno strolled out his mind was already on his much more important plans. He didn’t give much thought to whether this murder would speed up or impede the American withdrawal from the world. It was just something he had promised himself he would do someday, since his first week on the job. It was what had kept him working in his imposture as an underling.
He chuckled as he walked out of the alley, smiling like a man who had read something amusing in the morning paper.
Now to Salzburg.
They overslept Salzburg, which turned out to be just as well. The station there was crawling with security. If Jack and Arden had done what they planned and exited there they almost surely would have been detained, American tourists in a place that didn’t draw many tourists, at an occasion that would have almost no public events. Everyone disembarking from the train in Salzburg had their ID’s examined and recorded. Jack would probably have been arrested.
As it was, the two of them slept peacefully through the stop in Salzburg, snuggling together. The train lurching out of the station woke them. Jack glanced out the window, saw a station, wondered idly where they were. Then Arden was awake too, moving kittenishly in his arms. She looked at him with clear eyes. His own eyes must have shown what he felt, guilt, because she reached over and touched his cheek and shook her head. “My idea, remember?”
She kissed him, slowly, starting with a mere brush of lips, but not doing anything else simultaneously. Putting some thought into it. Two minutes later she said, “Okay, you want me out of here. I know it.”
Over his denials she got up, pulled on her blouse and skirt, and went out the door into the tiny corridor, toward the bathroom. Jack sat on the bed, realized they’d missed their stop, and didn’t much care.
So they got off at the next station, thirty miles on, a sleepy little town that never drew tourists, and had drawn very little security attention this week, either. Jack and Arden, very lightly encumbered with luggage, hopped off the train and went quickly, and separately, to find places where they could use their cell phones.
At the end of the platform, Arden’s call was very brief. “We’re right on schedule. Goodbye.”
She walked back to find Jack just around the corner of the small station, his back to her. She stopped and listened, the corner separating them. From the tone of his voice she knew he was talking to his mother.
“No, she’s really nothing special. I’m trying to be nice. But she just is always coming up with something obnoxious. Like, well—no, I can’t tell you that one. Well, here’s one. She does this awful thing of always listening outside before she steps into a room or comes around a corner. I know, it’s irritating as hell. She has no concept of privacy. Probably because she was raised in a girls’ school. You know, girls—”
“You bastard.” She came around the corner and put her hands on her hips.
Barely glancing at her, Jack started laughing like a seventh-grade boy. Into the phone he said, “Listen, pretend we were talking about something else. Yeah, she is. No, she’s not mad. She’s a great sport about that kind of—ow! No, it’ll be okay. I think I still remember how to make a tourniquet. Does it work on a neck wound, though?”
She walked away, giving him a semblance of privacy. Arden put her arms around herself, feeling warmed by his voice, even warmer than she’d felt last night. The murmur of his voice was warm. She heard him click off. When she turned around he was looking at her funny, sort of smiling.
“Mom says she likes you.”
This was one of the most genuinely puzzling things anyone had ever said to her. “She hasn’t set eyes on me. Or heard my voice, for that matter.”
“She says she likes the way I sound when I’m with you.”
Jack looked embarrassed, fumbled putting away his phone, and pretended they had much more luggage to organize than the one small gym bag.
Arden just stood watching him, feeling something very strange, a hollowness at her center that was rapidly being filled by the churn of many emotions. She loved him. She was sure of it, even though she had never felt this before.
She only wished she could take back now the things she’d done, but there was no way to undo events that had been set in motion, or the fact that she had already betrayed him.
“Come on,” Jack said, regaining some of his gruffness. “I’ve got to find a PSP, and fast.”
Men are such boys. Arden followed him sadly.
Craig Mortenson strode along K Street into Georgetown. He liked striding in D.C. The city had an aura, as strong as any he’d ever known. D.C.’s aura was about power: having it, using it, the hunger for it. Craig breathed it in and it invigorated him like strong coffee.
He had spent several years here, as a bureaucrat then consultant, and frequent visitor as he’d worked to destroy the Soviet Union. Many people here were still loyal to him, or at least friendly, and some very few, mostly out of power now, knew what he’d accomplished.
He and Alicia had been fixtures on the dinner party circuit for a while, including giving their own. They were great places to pick up information, especially the kind that Alicia used best: who was interested in whom, who weren’t speaking, who felt slighted and was looking for revenge. Watching her quiet smile at such a party, he could see the pieces breaking apart and re-forming in her head, in that intuitive way that would have made her a great matchmaker. Make sure the Polish ambassador overhears that waiter over by the kitchen door. Craig wouldn’t know what she was talking about—they had just met the Polish ambassador this evening, and he’d never noticed that waiter before—but she was never wrong. A lever would be pushed down in a Georgetown dining room and a boulder would rise from a river half a world away.
But Craig wasn’t trying to lift boulders today, nothing so complicated. He and Alicia had just decided, simultaneously back at headquarters, that the action of the world’s stage was about to shift to D.C., and they wanted to be there for it. Establish contacts. Thus today’s lunch with his old friend the Russian ambassador— who had been a dissident history professor in and out of Moscow prisons before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Craig knew the heart of the problem was this National Security Adviser, the one nobody had heard of. The Circle’s attempts to get near him had been disastrous so far. Craig loved such a challenge. He felt sure he could reach the man. Go around this way, out of the city, out into academia, back through a family connection…. Craig shook his head. This D.C. air was heady, all right. Made a man feel as if he could do anything. Bourbon, not coffee. But Craig had better sense than that. He wasn’t going anywhere near this NSA.
He strolled on to his appointment, walking thoughtfully. No longer striding.
“He is so frustrated,” Elena Valenciana said. “He says it is like living through ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers.’ At first everyone in the cabinet and most of the staff were arguing against the president’s withdrawal policy, but now one and then another becomes a pod person. ‘Their eyes literally lose their light.’ Then he’ll grip me and say, ‘Elena, promise me that if you see me with dead eyes you’ll do something about it. Put a stiletto through my heart if nothing else.’” Elena laughed. “He has this fantasy that I am an international woman of mystery. An assassin, perhaps.”
Her blue eyes flashed at Alicia Mortenson. No one would ever accuse Elena Valenciana of having dead eyes. She was Spanish, with a gypsy mix. Her skin was pale, but its base color was not white. Pale copper. When she and Alicia had met at a spa years ago Alicia had wondered what Elena was doing there, because she was already a woman of incredible beauty. As they’d become friends she’d discovered that Elena had a spirit to match her looks. She was wild but resourceful. She will never be any man’s wife, Alicia had thought at the time, and so far she was right. Elena didn’t enter into marriages, she ruined them. She went through phases, and now liked men of power. The current Secretary of State had been the CEO of an international corporation, so already familiar with many heads of state when he’d gotten his appointment. And his travel schedule often left room for an extra passenger.
“Maybe he should give in himself,” Elena said. “Lead the charge the other way. If one is going to lose this battle anyway…”
Alicia’s expression was a little pained, enough to cause larger pain on her companion’s face. “No, if I do that I will be convincing him to join the herd. Also to do away with his own values. Even if I convinced him, he would hate me for it.”
Alicia smiled approvingly, as if liking an item she saw on the menu. The restaurant was one of those light, airy cafes Georgetown does so well, even on an out-of-the-way side street. Elena didn’t have to hide out from anyone. She was, within her own limits, very discreet. In her first days in Georgetown, years ago, Elena had learned that a particular woman was gossiping about her ferociously. Elena had taken the woman’s husband away for a wonderful weekend in the Shenandoah Valley. People didn’t gossip about her any more, except in an admiring way.
So they sat at a back table, but not hiding. A basket of fresh daisies hung near their table, not only giving off their pleasant scent but subtly affecting the light. Daisies, Alicia thought, how refreshing.
Alicia didn’t mind being seen with Elena. She had many friends, and was a funny conversationalist. Elena had too many contacts for anyone to think that lunch with her was aimed at any other particular person. This was much safer, for example, than having lunch with the First Lady, which Alicia had also considered.
“But just encouraging him in what he already thinks is boring,” Elena pouted. “And it doesn’t give me any credit.” She smiled at Alicia’s arched eyebrow. “Yes, it is all about me. You know, darling, if a giant asteroid were coming to smash the Earth into pieces, I would be quite sure it was coming to pick me up.”
“And I’m sure you’d be right, dear.” They clinked white wine glasses. “Outside events are shaped to your will, not the other way around.” Alicia looked up at the waiter. “Salad Nicoise, I think.”
She handed away her menu while Elena kept gripping hers. She finally felt the waiter’s stare on her and said, “Steak tartare,” as if it were an incriminating statement dragged out of her.
When the waiter had gone Elena muttered, “That’s it, of course. Everyone’s been thinking too small. It’s this damned District of Columbia, it reduces everything to personal pettiness. But out in the world—”
“I don’t follow.”
When Elena turned to her, her eyes were so bright that they could have been dead moments earlier by comparison. “Albert needs forces in the outside world. That riot in Korea the other day made a few people start questioning this withdrawal idea. Albert said he saw the President waver, but then the NSA and other pro-withdrawal forces swooped down and captured him again. If only something like that could happen again.” She gripped her friend’s hand. “If only he could predict something like that happening again.”
“Hmm,” Alicia said thoughtfully.
The two women talked of other things for a while, fashions and shows and the births of babies. Alicia introduced that last topic, which clearly bored Elena, so when their food came she switched back to the first. “You hear things sometimes, Alicia. I don’t know how, but you do. If you could give me an alert, even of just a day… Albert would look brilliant and he would want to reward me.” She smiled. “He does that very well, when he’s well motivated.”
Alicia shrugged. “If I hear of anything, of course, darling. Sometimes someone drops a word. Nothing on a schedule, of course. My other thought is—” She gazed off into a white corner of the restaurant, which looked cool. “—to discredit the source. If this National Security Adviser is made to look like a fool personally, wouldn’t that make the president question his advice? I’ve heard the man is quite a clod. Perhaps a dinner party—”
Elena was shaking her head. “Believe me, Albert has thought of that. But the President thinks of this Wilkerson man as sort of a backwoods prodigy, like Abraham Lincoln or Davy Crockett. Every time he uses the wrong fork or drinks from his water bowl, the President is more convinced that he is a genius. And he’s the President’s own genius, you know? He likes him more because he thinks he discovered him. The way I was with that tenor.” She gave a little shiver of disgust. “Believe me, those illusions have great power.”
“Oh well,” Alicia said, shrugging. “I should just give up trying to give my friends advice. It never works.”
“But you’re such pleasant company,” Elena said, squeezing her hand. “And somehow, I don’t know, I just seem to think better around you.”
Alicia dipped her eyes in gratitude. She waved off the dessert menu. Her work was done here, and for dessert she’d picked up a couple of tidbits of information she hadn’t had before.
Leaving the table, she said, quite without irony, “Say hello to Imogen for me.”
“Oh, I will. Thank you, darling.” Imogen was the Secretary of State’s wife—and Elena Valenciana’s sister.
Craig Mortenson liked stuffy old clubs. There were too few of them any more, except in recent years they were making a slight comeback. Aging baby boomers embraced some of the fantasies of their parents’ early lives, such as old men with cigars ruling the world from comfortable wingbacked chairs while a waiter brought brandy.
Craig, who was as often as not somewhere else in his mind, liked the comfort of noticing his surroundings and finding them so clichéd. The Russians did these things quite well. Sergei had found the perfect place, a short cab ride from his embassy. The two men sat in cozy isolation in a room full of heavy furniture, discreetly placed ferns, and tables of people who seemed equally disinclined to be overheard.
Alicia was the subtle member of the Mortenson family. Craig leaned back in his leather chair and said, “So, Sergei, will you people take over the world once we’ve withdrawn from it?”
Sergei Eisenstein looked pained. “Who wants it? Thank you for the headaches, no. You take it.”
“Can we palm the whole thing off on the Chinese?”
Sergei shook his head, taking the joke seriously. “Even they are no longer unsophisticated enough to want world domination. No, it would have to be some madman, the kind the middle east and Africa seem to produce so well.”
“Well, that won’t do anyone any good. Come on, we want reasonable people running the store. Japan?”
Both men broke into laughter. It was a very pleasant lunch.
Jack managed to find an electronics store, even in this out of the way place, and bought a new personal game player. He looked over their stock of games, bought one, but then slipped one of his own out of his gym bag and put it in the machine. To Arden he said, “I need a few minutes to configure this. Why don’t you see if you can scare up some transportation for us?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jack smiled down at his game, smiling for her without looking up. Arden went wandering. Jack watched her depart, wondering if she was aware of his gaze, wondering so many things. When she had come into the jail he had been sure she was on the other side, because there was no other way she could rescue him. But then she hadn’t rescued them; he had, more than she. It was very neatly managed, if it was, to let him think he’d pulled off the escape.
But there remained the fact that she had found him in the jail in the first place. That would not have been possible for a normal person, in normal ways.
Then Arden had ditched the French girl, an act of jealousy, humanizing her, then they had made love, which shouldn’t have made a difference but did. His head spun.
But he had work to do. While Arden was gone Jack made other calls, first to his old friend Ronald, a valued member of the Circle who had contributed much to their coffers with fortunes made in the dot com world. His first words were, “Ronnie, are you safe?”
“Well, safer than some of us, because I’m not trying to contact that damned National Security Advisor.”
“Yeah.” Jack glanced down at his game. They conferred hastily about what each was doing to dig the Circle out of its current hole. Ronald was unsurprised to hear that Jack was near Salzburg. Then Jack asked, “Ronald, where’s our money?”
“The Circle’s? The Hornet treasury? Here and there. Why?”
Jack told him what he had learned about the planes that passed through America that one night. “I’ve already passed this on to the Chair and the Mortensons, etc., and no one can find a connection to any country. I’ve thought of one other organization that could have afforded that kind of project.”
“Microsoft? Google?”
“Us, Ronald. We could afford it.” Because the Circle was, among other things, a multi-billion dollar non-organization. “So I repeat. Where’s our money?”
Three seconds’ silence on the line showed how hard this idea had gripped Ronald, because Ronald could think very deeply while talking at the same time. In three languages. “Let me check.”
“You do that, Warren.”
Ronald chuckled. “Warren” was Jack’s pet name for him, only Jack’s. It referred both to Warren Buffett and to Warren Worthington the III, who was the Angel in the X-Men, as well as the scion of a very wealthy family. It was a financial nickname.
Ronald would be on this quickly. Jack had given him what he liked best, a money angle to a huge puzzle.
Next Jack called Craig Mortenson, who answered the phone sounding jovial, which was odd. Oh, wait, no. Their world was coming to an end, America faced its worst crisis ever, villainy was both afoot and unknown. Yes, Craig would be having a high old time.
“Hello, Craig, it’s Jack.” Jack still had a hard time calling him by his first name, but “sir” would sound smarmy. “Quick question. Do we have a treasurer?”
“A treasurer? Do you need to send in your dues, Jack?”
“But seriously, folks.”
“Yes. Well, of course the Chair oversees everything, but you can’t reach her. I guess if we have anyone else who might hold that honorary title it would be Don Trimble.”
“Professor Trimble? I never knew. Where can I reach him?”
“He’s in Salzburg, dear boy.”
“Salzburg!”
“Yes. And he’s either learned everything by now or he’s bumbling around helplessly. Why don’t you look him up?”
“Maybe I will, if I get the chance. Anyone else I know on the scene?”
“Not that I know of. Alicia might know, especially by this time. Is that your phone beeping?”
Jack took the phone from his ear, glanced at the screen, and said, “That’s her calling now, Craig. I’ll—”
“Give her my love,” Craig Mortenson said, and clicked off just as Jack was saying, “Where—?” So he took the other call. “Alicia, hi! It’s so good to hear you. Are you calling from the White House?”
She chuckled, a mature woman’s acknowledgment of a compliment. “I never go near the center of power, dear. The periphery is much more fun.”
They talked for a minute of what sounded like idle chitchat but was actually a coded, densely-packed exchange of information. “Can I bring you anything from Europe?” Jack finally asked, prelude to ending the conversation.
“Yes, actually. You remember the trinket from Korea? The border stone? Do they have anything like that in Europe?”
“As a matter of fact…”
“Sooner would be much better than later, my dear. And can you give me a heads up when it’s coming? I’m planning a party, and I’d like to wear it.”
Jack thought quickly. He wasn’t sure where he would be in an hour, let alone three days from now, and it would be much better to cut out the middle man, anyway. In the next sentence he dropped a phrase, “Alps peddler,” which sounded perhaps like a reference to the Tour de France, but would actually put Alicia Mortenson in touch with his old friend Stevie, if— Jack laughed quietly to himself. He had almost thought, If Alicia caught the hint. As if Alicia Mortenson had ever missed a clue in her life.
Alicia’s voice colored like a slight blush. “Thank you, dear boy,” she said, accepting a compliment, as if she had heard his mental exchange with himself.
“I’ll try to stay in touch,” Jack said. “But don’t worry if I don’t. By the way, I was just talking to Craig. He sends his love.”
“Did he? That’s odd, I’m on my way to meet him now. He could tell me himself.”
“Does he?” Jack asked, his voice sounding childlike, unable to stop himself from asking for a little insight into the most intriguing couple he knew, the most complete marriage.
Alicia laughed again. “Oh, there may be a bit of blather about what a fascinating creature I am, especially if he had a brandy after lunch. That never hurts. Take care, Jack.”
Jack looked up into Arden’s eyes. She had returned sooner than he had expected. That next to last sentence of Alicia’s sounded like advice. Jack didn’t smile, nor did Arden. Their eyes held on each other’s. Jack’s lips began to curl upward. Hers didn’t.
Into the phone, he said. “‘Bye, Alicia. Be—” He’d planned to say Be careful, but that would be silly. Just in time he finished the sentence, “—happy.”
After he’d hung up, Arden said, “The Mortensons? What are they up to?”
“They didn’t say.” Jack put his phone away. “Couldn’t find a way to get to Salzburg?”
Alicia gave him a frowning smile, as if he’d told a joke that wasn’t funny. She gestured toward the curb, where a baby blue Mercedes 360 sat idling.
“That’s great,” Jack said, “except renting a car is going to leave a trail that might be prob—”
“Oh, thanks, Professor. Teach me more. And should I buy a pop-up ad on Yahoo saying ‘Arden and Jack ask any assassins in the vicinity of Salzburg, German, to contact them’?”
“Sorry. But then did—” He didn’t want to suggest she’d stolen the car, which would undoubtedly set her off again.
“A man loaned it to me. And no, Jack, I didn’t give him my real name. Or give him anything significant in exchange.” She frowned at him, and Jack spread his hands, apologizing for a remark he hadn’t made.
They climbed into the car. The padded seats accepted them like lovers who had stayed away too long. “But you were only gone, like, twenty-eight minutes,” Jack said.
“Do you want me to tell you all about how I got the car?”
“Sure, that would be entertaining,” Jack said, doubting her story would have many intersecting points with the truth. By this time he understood that Arden was quite aware of her air of mystery. She cultivated it. Of course, they all did, to different extents, but not with each other. That was one way she was different, outside the Circle, extraordinary.
Jack took her hand for a moment, raised it to his lips and kissed her knuckles. He smiled, out at the road, not at her, as if a lovely memory had just crossed his mind. From the corner of his eye he could see Arden smiling too, but still with that sadness in the heart of the smile. She was one of those women who started thinking about the end even while a relationship was still new, he thought.
“Salzburg?”
Jack nodded. “But first I need an Internet connection, and fast.”