The Threat

He tried to focus. It felt as if he were still in the dream, or maybe in another one, a follow-on, the way dreams caboosed from one scene to another. “What? What’d you say?” He wasn’t sure if that was exactly what the guy had said. It wasn’t the hotel desk — the accent was American. “Check on her? Is that what you said?”

“Try the third floor.”

“The third floor … wait. Who is this?”

The rattle of a handset.

Squinting at his watch, he couldn’t tell whether it was 4 a.m. or 4 p.m. Anonymous calls … nightmares … But where was she? He called out, but got no answer from the loft. She wasn’t in the bathroom, either.

At last he pulled on pants and shoes and went out into the corridors. They were cold as meat lockers. When he saw his breath in the air he wished he’d put on a shirt too. But he kept going, though he wasn’t sure what he was looking for. The third-floor elevator was locked out. He got off on the fourth and walked down.

He was coming down the hall when he saw them waiting. For a moment he didn’t recognize them, or realize what they were there for. He wondered again if this was all part of the dream. The cold. The loneliness. The voice on the phone. The stocky men in sport coats, just standing around. Relaxed yet alert, heads cocked as they stared at him. As if listening to voices that whispered on and on through the wires that led to their ears.

10

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Back in counterdrug, two days later. Exhausted, jet-lagged, he gripped his skull in both hands as Meilhamer ladled out every item of minutiae that had gone through the office since he’d left. But he wasn’t listening. He was back again in that moment when he’d realized what the Secret Service agents meant. Whose suite Blair must be visiting. At four in the morning.

And, no, he hadn’t made the first motion toward that door. Not only because it would have been futile to try to force his way in. He didn’t want to face it, or her. Not feeling the way he did.

Because he wanted to kill them both, then himself. Tear her, and the man she was with in there, into bloody, palpitating fragments with his bare hands.

Instead he’d gone back to the room. Waiting, awake in the dark, for her to come back. But she hadn’t.

He’d watched Air Force One take off from the air lounge at Pulkovo, where White and Solas and the rest of the U.S. conference team were waiting for the other 747, the backup. The central Asians and their entourages had taken up so much space there wasn’t any left for lower-ranking staff. And then it was delayed. So he hadn’t seen her there, either, and had gotten in at five that morning eastern standard time, without a wink of sleep en route, and come straight to the Old Executive because he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

“… and you might want to sign this card. Ellie Ihlemann had her boy. Seven pounds eight ounces.” Dan stared at a Polaroid of a wizened, scarlet humanoid. Scribbled his signature. Added Get well soon, which he realized too late didn’t jibe with the sugary printed sentiment, or even make sense.

He cleared his throat and tried to concentrate. On anything … “Tell me about the Baptist, Bry. He popped up yet?”

“I try to stay clear of the operational side. You should too.”

He ignored that. “Who’s in?”

“Bloom and Ed Lynch. Oh, and Marty’s back from Burma. Alvarado’s down in Miami trying to help pick up the pieces. That boy’s a real hard worker. Always volunteering. Always the last to leave.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s always the one who locks up,” his assistant said. “Don’t know what he’s working on — it’s always in Spanish. But he’s always there, beavering away.”

Dan was asking him to send Miles Bloom in when the DEA agent poked his head around the jamb. Dan beckoned him in, saying to Meilhamer, “Okay, then what’s on my plate on the administrative side?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“You gave me signing authority when you left. Remember? Copies of everything that went out are in that blue folder. You’ve got a chance to catch up, next couple of days. Mrs. C’ll be out of town with the president. Manila this time. It’ll be quiet around here.”

Meilhamer smoothed his shirtfront, smiling and bobbing on his toes. Dan gave him the compliment he so obviously wanted and nodded to Bloom again to come in.

The DEA liaison brought him up to date on the fallout from what was looking more and more like a fiasco in Miami. The raid had netted lots of bodies, but either has-beens, blasts from the past, or with no discoverable connection to drugs at all. Local consuls, political donors, media figures whose arrests had embarrassed the cops who made the tags. “It was a setup,” Bloom said. “Same as with the shoot-down. The only single thing we did they didn’t expect was bust the Haiti meet.”

“Which we ad-hoced at the last minute, from Key West.” Dan eyed the door Bloom had closed. “What you’re saying is, we have a leaker.”

“Either that or they’re reading our comms.”

“Is that likely?”