One Last Scent of Jasmine (Boone's File Book 3) (29 page)

“Boone, remind me to never, ever do anything to piss you off.” His serious, gray eyes locked on her a moment later. “So now what?”

“We wait a bit. If I’m not wrong, his motivation as well as his pulse rate will increase with the level of fluid in his bag. We’ll be able to tell by the timbre of his screaming. It should be somewhere past the one-liter mark.”

Ritter nodded. “Well, I’m going to hit the bathroom if we have some time then. Do you need a coffee or anything?”

Boone smiled. “No, I’m fine. Thanks, though, Sean.”

Her boss departed the range for the main corridor. Boone checked the digital clock above the range officer’s desk and sat down on the edge of the work surface, kicking her feet and waiting.
I bet they never have this much fun at the Red Cross.

How can I escape this? My God, what can I do?
Lambert's eyes returned to the filling bag at his feet, the flow faster than he had imagined, much faster than his donating experiences in the French military.

The red-haired bitch has implanted a larger line than she realizes. She has miscalculated
. Panic, in the absence of any applied resistance training, began to take hold. He felt his pulse rate rise and saw with horror the lively expansion of the collection bag was only quickening. An unsettled nausea began which defied his attempts to remain calm.
Is this the level of one liter already? Does she know? Will I die here before she returns?
The blood collection continued, and he felt a ripple in his cardiac rhythm only serving to exacerbate his perceived loss of control. Sweat was beading on his forehead. He became lightheaded and realized his visual field was constricting. Then, there arrived a rushing sound in his ears which only accelerated his alarmed reaction.

“
Boone!
” he screamed. When nothing happened at the door to the range, he wailed again, only louder … and afterward a third time with all the strength he possessed.

Finally, the door cracked open, and the petite redhead reappeared, carrying another folding chair and wheeling an IV stand in with her. Lambert, for the first time in minutes, felt some relief.
She will not let me die. I will live. I will yet live.

Boone picked his bag up carefully, rolling it so Lambert's blood stayed in contact with the line’s port. She hung it with just as much care and watched with satisfaction as the flow reversed. Lambert’s wide eyes were mesmerized by her every deliberate action.

She stepped to the small camera nearby to begin taping and then unfolded and sat on the second chair. Directly across from him but out of camera range, she began, “Go ahead, Camille. You wanted to tell us a story.” So the recording audio pickup would not capture her warning, Boone only mouthed,
Remember … no lies.

Geneva International Airport

Three hours later

Lambert, now seeming to be thoroughly cowed, marched dutifully between his former Director and Assistant Director. Between his fingers he pinched a ticket for the evening’s last departing flight to London Heathrow, his manner suggesting he did not want to lose the document. Unsurprisingly, the man had been carrying his French passport with him. Boone thought she had made herself clear enough before they left InterLynk in her opinion of there being no better time for him to use it.

The conversation—more of a prompted soliloquy than a dialogue, really—had gone quite well. Boone and Ritter now knew what the Frenchman could tell them of Benedek Jancsi Novak’s campaign of direct action against InterLynk, including the extraction of the Saudi Yameen Amjad al-Khobar from Champ-Dollon in an operation only four days ago.

True to her word, the Frenchman was not under arrest. Nor could she and Ritter now involve the authorities, considering the harsh interrogation they had just perpetrated.
No, this game will play itself out removed from the public eye. Novak will not let it end here, and neither will Daddy.

Her most aggressive questioning, complete with feigned outrage and the return of his collection bag to the floor, had failed to provoke Lambert to produce any link back to Virginia or Washington and Valka Gerard.
She’s there in the background of all this. It doesn’t take a Mensa member to see the connection.
Novak, for the time being, was the end of the line, at least as far as the direct evidence carried.

Boone, anticipating an accordance of opinion in her father, had decided on this action as the most prudent option—short of executing the InterLynk new hire/traitor. She allowed Ritter a few moments alone with the man before they all left the building, and she saw the Frenchman had come out physically only a little worse for wear afterward.
Psychologically,
she believed both her and Ritter’s victory to be complete.

The trio finally reached the security checkpoint. Boone turned, reaching out to straighten the dimple in Lambert’s restored tie. “Dear Camille … this is good-bye,” she murmured in a confidential tone. “Hopefully, we will not be seeing one another again. In the field, I will kill you. Should we hear from your attorney in a civil suit—which would be an easily extended legal proceeding, by the way—you probably know already necessary legal processes would make your location eminently discoverable.” She looked into his attentive eyes, not seeing any rage there. “My advice is to play out your part as assigned, Camille. Do please deliver our message to Mister Novak … which is
what?
”

“That InterLynk is now playing by his rules,” Lambert parroted perfectly.

“Exactly right!” Boone praised his recall. “Once you are finished, simply retire. I suggest Monaco, or Greece … somewhere lovely. Some place where I will never, ever encounter you again. Do we understand each other?”

“
Absolutely,
miss,” the Frenchman confirmed.

She gazed up at Ritter, who seemed determined to stare holes right through his former employee’s skull. “Colonel? Any last advice?”

“Remember everything I said, Mister Lambert,” Ritter encouraged him.

Boone looked back to their companion and smiled, patting Lambert on the chest. “
Bon voyage,
Camille, darling. Enjoy your flight.”

The dejected operative sighed, grimaced and then walked toward the flight screeners without another word. Boone and Ritter watched until they saw him through the process, continuing their surveillance until he disappeared into the terminal on the other side.

Boone and Ritter turned back toward the exits and the parking beyond. After only a few steps, Ritter seemed unwilling to call it a night. “What now?” the retired USAF officer asked.

“Well, Colonel, I don’t know about you, but I am simply
dying
for some dinner and a bath. Permission to clock out,
sir.
”

“Salaried privilege, Boone. Drop me back at my truck and enjoy your evening.”

“You got it.”
And in the morning, we can decide how much of this we will tell Dad.

Is this not interesting company?
Yameen al-Khobar had first picked up the little redhead from across the terminal and quickly indentified her companions as Ritter and Camille Lambert. The Saudi then watched as the Frenchman passed through security and turned toward the British Airways gates. The former GIP agent’s own ticket to Heathrow was secured already though his flight—the first for which he had been able to obtain a seat—was not scheduled to board for another twenty minutes. His watchfulness of the last few hours had been spent here with a carafe of wine. The seating of the concourse bar, serving apprehensive Swiss fliers inside the secured area of the terminal, provided just the vantage point for which he had hoped.

So he is alive, though doubtless a little worse for wear. Unless I am blind, the man was not at all happy with himself
. Al-Khobar considered and then rejected the idea of exchanging his ticket for one on the Frenchman’s flight.
No, better I get to London first. It will at least give me a chance to hear Lambert’s side of the story in private before we report back to Benedek Novak.

The reunion, al-Khobar was sure, would not be a meeting for which a sane man could muster any enthusiasm. The Saudi wondered if Lambert operated under the same restrictions as himself.
Run, and others will find you. Do your master’s will, and the odds you will live increase—if you are strong and smart and skilled enough.

Al-Khobar sipped his wine and made a mental note of the gate number where he saw Lambert choose a seat to wait for his call to boarding.
Willing or not, we are all slaves of the Hungarian while he lives.
The Saudi's mind, oriented toward the formulation of action plans, was determined to preserve the thought. To act upon the inspiration, however, he would need Camille’s help. It would not be secured until they had both landed in London.

Liberty Crossing

McLean, Virginia

Tuesday afternoon

The DNI’s day ended in much the same way as it began, with a call from abroad. Again, he picked up though on this occasion with more caution. “ODNI, Bradley.”

“Terrence,” a familiar voice answered him, sounding similarly wary in its tone.

“Doctor Hildebrandt. How is Geneva?”

A pause at the other end allowed his wayward Senior Case Officer time to evaluate her apparent trail of bread crumbs. “Well, I guess my behavior
was
entirely predictable.”

“We gravitate toward comfort in crises, Boone,” he observed. “From what I’ve been hearing from General McAllen, there’s been no shortage of those today.”

“Terry, are you trying to kill us all?” she asked.

He gave her points for straightforwardness ... and for expecting an honest answer. “Boone, as I told the General, neither I nor anyone under me has any involvement in what is happening right now.”

“We know you have an AMN directive in effect from the Executive branch.”

“Not anymore,” Bradley corrected her. “I was relieved of the responsibility by a member of the Senior Staff shortly after its issue.”

Her voice softened. “Oh, Terry ... I didn’t know.” To an insider like her, the little he had said apparently carried with it a full picture of the challenges inherent to his position.

“Yes. Well, it was and still is far from public knowledge.”
Though a prominent footnote in my file, I’m sure.

Her voice hardened. “There have been some developments I thought I should share. Being your InterLynk access is … um,
down
… let me send you a video conference link. You will want to see this.”

The missive from her InterLynk e-mail address hit his Inbox a moment later, with the hyperlink promised. Because it employed the same web-serving client as was often used by government agencies, Terry had only to double-click the highlighted text to access the conference connection in question. The video featured an unfamiliar though undeniably concerned face, one he guessed was well motivated to participate in the conversation which began to play back.

“Please tell us who you are and why you are here.” Bradley recognized Boone’s businesslike enunciation emanating from off camera.

“My name is Camille Verney Lambert. I was apprehended this afternoon following my complicity in an attack on InterLynk personnel.”

“And were you also complicit in the missile attack against the vehicle of our Vice President resulting in the death of an uninvolved civilian?”

“That operation was
entirely
undertaken by another, and likewise completely compartmentalized.”

“Camille,” Bradley heard Boone’s edgy voice clip. “Do not lie to me.”

“I do not lie! I do not! I had no idea of any operation except the one against Mister Ritter!”

“Then who, pray tell, took charge of the operation against Mister Schuster?”

“I do not know.”

“You are allowed to guess.”

An obviously terrified moment of reflection followed on the video.
He by this time was scared shitless,
Bradley realized.
Boone, you can be a very bad girl.

“I assume it to be the work of Yameen al-Khobar.”

“Recently freed from prison here in Switzerland?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have involvement in that operation as well?”

“I was made aware of his procurement after the fact.”

“By whom?”

“Mister Benedek Jancsi Novak.”

“Who is working at the behest of whom?
”

Lambert, on camera, looked crestfallen. “I do not know.”

The sound of a metal chair sliding across concrete came next. Boone’s infuriated voice shifted locations off camera as Lambert’s widening eyes appeared to follow her. “Camille, I warned you not to lie. Did I not warn you well enough?”

This is a man who knows his life is on the line. He is not lying,
Bradley concluded.

The expression of hopelessness in the Frenchman’s eyes told the story every bit as well as did his words. “I am not lying! I was hired to come here, and given my assignments once in place. I am an asset—nothing more!” Pleas from the man in French followed before Bradley heard Boone’s menacing voice return.

“Camille, do not ever speak to me in French again.”

The video faded to black. Boone’s webcam feed, showing her with earphone in place and apparently using her MacBook, replaced the recorded footage on the video conference.
This must be her office in Geneva. Nice.

Bradley leaned back, glad to see her again, even over a long-distance streaming connection.
I should tell her so.
“The man seemed sincere. Did he live?”

Boone’s mouth crooked. “He’s on a plane to London, delivering a message on behalf of InterLynk.”

With a snort, Bradley said, “To Benedek Novak.” The DNI watched those green eyes harden in response to match the tone of her voice on the telephone.

“Terrence, the Administration’s fingerprints are all over this one, regardless of my inability to produce a connection through Camille Lambert. Novak is more than a contributor. He’s an
investor.
”