Lady Liberty Read online

  “The waiter slipped. I was posted on point, sir. Before I could get to her, she had accepted the Band-Aid from the waiter. I couldn’t say anything without making a production out of it and embarrassing her.”

  “Next time, embarrass her.” She might take calculated risks with her life, but he wouldn’t. “If you have to physically get between them, then do it, but you intercede, Cramer.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you observe my intercept in the hallway?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Learn from it.” Jonathan frowned. “I realize you’re new to international and to me, but Vice President Stone can’t afford to be your training ground on this mission, and I won’t tolerate it. She’s trying to prevent a war that could destabilize an entire region, one vital to our interests—and she’s committed to succeeding. It’s our responsibility to see to it she survives to have the opportunity”

  “I know, sir.”

  He knew? Cramer had no idea she had been taking a calculated risk. “Right. And you also know she’s under heavy threat from Ballast and PUSH and there are no excuses for screwing up, so don’t insult either of us by making any.”

  Cramer blinked fast, swallowed hard. “No, sir.”

  Sweat beaded on the man’s forehead, and Jonathan was glad to see it. Obviously he needed the hell scared out of him to gain his edge. That edge was often the only thing that kept Special Detail Unit agents alive. Considering SDU didn’t overtly exist, the agents’ assignments typically didn’t officially exist, and Commander Conlee, who ruled Home Base’s highly specialized division of the Secret Service with an iron fist, didn’t exist, the sooner Cramer locked onto his edge, the better for all of them.

  “Listen, Liberty is carrying a lot on her shoulders, and she’s got even more on her mind. The welfare of millions around the globe rides on her decisions. That doesn’t leave her much time to think about mundane security matters like keeping herself out of the line of fire—and she damn well shouldn’t have to think about them. That’s my job as her mission chief and your job as a detail member assigned to protect her. You screwed up, which means we screwed up.” He narrowed his eyes, deepened his voice and, he hoped, Cramer’s fear. “We don’t screw up, Cramer. It’s not professional, and being unprofessional is not conducive to staying alive. I’m not ready to die. Are you?”

  “No, sir.” Unable to hold Jonathan’s gaze, Cramer focused on his tie.

  Well, that was something. “Did it occur to you that the waiter could be a plant?” He’d been briefed on the threats, for God’s sake. He’d been told they were credible. “Or that the wound isn’t consistent with a tray scrape?”

  “I didn’t see her wound, sir.”

  “No, you didn’t. If you had, you would have seen that it was a knife cut. And you would have suspected the knife that made the cut could have been laced with a biological or chemical contaminant.” Jonathan’s voice elevated an octave. “Has a warning signal started flashing in your head yet?” He tapped his temple twice, more to distract himself from the clenching in his gut than to cause clenching in Cramer’s. His next statement was one he didn’t even want to think about. “Liberty could already be dying.”

  The color drained from Cramer’s face.

  Jonathan shoved the evidence bags at him, again cursing Home Base for putting a rookie on a Level-Five SDU mission. “The mobile lab should be in place in five minutes.

  Get this to it. I want a full-screen toxicology done—the works. Take the north exit from the building and walk four blocks south. Lab is in a black van. It’ll be curbside, waiting for you.”

  He took the bag and started toward the door.

  “Cramer.” Jonathan frowned at the man. “Verify that you’ve got the right van before you hand over the evidence bags. And if you haven’t already, start praying the sample tests are clean.”

  Moonlight slanted through slices of shadows and blended with the amber glow the street lamps cast on the wet concrete. The smell of rain hung in the air and thin streams of water clung to the street at the curb. Cramer rushed down the sidewalk toward the mobile lab.

  Liberty could already be dying.

  Westford’s words haunted Cramer, and he blew out a breath heavy with fear.

  Harrison met him at the corner. “I warned you not to screw up. Not on Westford’s detail.”

  “I know. I blew it.” Under normal conditions, Westford wanted excellence. But when Lady Liberty was involved, mere excellence wasn’t good enough. You had to be God, or suffer Westford’s wrath. And everyone with the agency knew that God showed mercy; Westford did not. “He’ll definitely put me on report,” Cramer said. “Probably have me yanked off SDU details and dumped back into domestic grunt work, too.”

  “I hate to break it to you, kid, but odds are better than fifty-fifty he’ll get you canned.”

  Fired? He’d lose his job, his gun, and his credentials: the things he had wanted and worked for his entire life. Cramer’s insides hollowed.

  “That’s if Liberty survives this fiasco without injury. If she doesn’t… well, I’d say your long-range planning doesn’t look good.”

  Even a rookie understood the rage in Westford’s eyes. “If Liberty dies, he’ll see to it that I join her.”

  “That pretty much sums it up.” Harrison stuffed his hands in his pockets, tucked his chin against the misting rain. “I don’t mean to sound cold, but facts are facts. You’ve got to understand how things are between Westford and Liberty”

  “Are they involved?”

  “Yes.” Harrison looked torn. “No.”

  “Thanks for clearing that up.”

  “It’s complicated.” Harrison shoved out a sigh. “Do you remember when she won over the NRA?”

  The law she pushed through that forced prosecution on existing gun laws. “HR 855, right?”

  “Yeah. She was just a junior congresswoman back then, but she caught Westford’s eye. He’s walked a lot of miles with her since.”

  Then they had walked a lot of miles together. Through child welfare issues, laws to keep pedophiles locked up, and ones to keep deadbeat dads paying support. A lot of miles.

  “She wins, and he’s downright giddy”

  Shocked, Cramer did a double take at Harrison. “West-ford, giddy?” Cramer couldn’t imagine it. The man was as serious as a heart attack—and just as opinionated.

  “Amazing, huh?” Harrison smiled. “But true. When she walked through the bill reorganizing protective services for neglected and abused kids, you should have seen him. He was so proud, I thought he’d bust a gut.”

  Cramer had heard about that success in the unit. The operatives all sang her praises, though not for the legislation itself. Because she’d covered her ass so well that Senator Cap Marlowe and his cronies—who had reputations for spinning in fault on issues where Liberty had none— had tried and failed to trip her up. The guys at SDU were pro-anything that was anti-Marlowe, who tried to control them to the point of stifling them in doing their jobs. Even Sybil Stone.

  A light went on in Cramer’s mind. “Westford brought her to President Lance’s attention.”

  Harrison nodded. “He denies it, but I was there and saw it.”

  “So it’s like a proud-parent relationship between them?” Cramer asked.

  “Hell no, kid. It’s a lot more earthy than that.”

  Westford and Liberty weren’t twisting the sheets. Cramer might be the new kid on the block, but he wasn’t unconscious, and he hadn’t picked up on any romantic vibes between them. In his book, that was a good thing. Liberty made a fine vice president, but she had a history as a lousy wife. A year ago, she’d just walked out on a fifteen-year marriage to Dr. Austin Stone, shocking everyone on the Hill. Stone wasn’t some loser. He was an engineering genius—CEO of the kick-ass Secure Environet that had been tearing up Wall Street for the past two years—and he hadn’t wanted the divorce. She’d pushed for it. Westford might be a hard-ass, but he deserved a better wife than that.<
br />
  “Marlowe wanted her job,” Harrison said, recapturing Cramer’s attention. “He swears if he’d been a woman, Lance would have offered it to him.”

  “Would he?”

  “Liberty could have been the purple people eater, and Lance wouldn’t have given a damn. He chose her as a running mate so he wouldn’t have to compete against her. She’s that good.”

  “So she’s special to Lance and to Westford.”

  “Special enough that when she took office two years ago, Westford left covert ops to head up her guard detail.”

  “That’s a whale of a demotion.” Cramer couldn’t figure it. Westford was the hottest operative in SDU, the logical choice for plum covert operation assignments.

  “No demotion. The president handpicked him for the job. Officially, he had ‘special concerns’ for her safety, but if he had his way, he’d have Westford and Liberty joined at the hip.”

  “So why did Westford bail out?” Word around the unit was Westford had demanded reassignment.

  “Some say he fell in love with her—complicated because at the time she was his boss and she was married. Others say he couldn’t stomach working for a woman.”

  “What does he say?”

  Looking pleased that Cramer had asked, Harrison shrugged. “He doesn’t, and no one’s had the guts to ask him directly”

  Cramer thought through it all. President Lance could tag his “special concerns” any way he wanted, but underneath the politically correct facade, he was afraid she would be at greater risk than previous veeps because she was the first woman to hold the office. She did get at least a dozen death threats a week from hotheads, disgruntled citizens stuck in sixties’ mentalities, and hostile foreign entities— especially those actively engaged in oppressing women. “Harrison, do you think it’s true that some of the death threats are coming from her colleagues?”

  “No hard evidence, but it’s possible. There’s a lot of resentment against her on the Hill.”

  That frustrated Cramer. “Then I don’t get it.”

  “What?”

  “When her colleagues need credibility or clout to push their pet projects through the process, they come to her first. If she can, she supports them. Why does she do it?” Cramer couldn’t figure it. “She’s got to know that once the project’s a done deal, they’re going to slide right back into resenting her. Most of them act as if the White House is the last ‘For Men Only’ club in the country, and their main mission in life is to act as armor and shield to keep their sacred space safe from her.”

  “Damned pathetic, isn’t it?” Harrison grunted. “But it’s telling, too, kid.”

  Cramer wasn’t tracking, so he kept quiet and waited for Harrison to explain.

  “They feel confident she can take the White House. No one around here wastes energy defending something not at risk.”

  “Politics.” Cramer grunted. In the next block, a black van pulled up to the curb and killed its lights.

  “Politics.” Harrison clapped Cramer on the shoulder. “Verify the van, kid. I’ll see you back at the hotel. I need to walk off some steam. Westford’s going to be wired for sound and breathing down our necks for the rest of this mission.”

  Shivering with dread, Cramer hunched his shoulders and started watching the sidewalk, but he saw no sign of a U.S. penny. Panic set in. He couldn’t pass the evidence bag to the lab without it. Couldn’t he get one break on this damn mission?

  Finally he spotted the coin, glinting heads-up on the sidewalk. He stooped down, pretending to tie a shoe, scooped it up, and then rushed his steps. Odds looked slim, but he had to perform at optimum level from here on out to save his backside and, if possible, his job.

  A gust of cool wind tugged at the tail of his coat, and a fresh burst of rain blew in with it, soaking his suit. Cramer kept moving, pinning the coat with his arm to protect the evidence bags, though they were waterproof. He was in enough trouble already for screwing up after being warned Ballast and PUSH stood primed for attack with Lady Liberty fixed in their crosshairs. He couldn’t afford to botch this up, too.

  A bull of a man dressed all in black stepped out from behind the van. He was in his forties, and his most remarkable feature was having a face people would forget in ten seconds or less. Cramer envied him that. Average looks were a hell of an asset to an agent working in the field. The tip of his cigarette glowed red and, supposing smoking would be banned inside the van, Cramer nodded.

  “Only lab personnel allowed inside.” The man exhaled a stream of smoke that fogged the night air and opened his fist, palm up. A second penny gleamed in a streak of light.

  Verified. Their van, their man. Cramer showed the agent the penny he had lifted off the walk. “No problem.” He passed the evidence bags, and, as Westford had suggested, he prayed the Band-Aid tested clean.

  In her salon, Sybil dialed Gabby’s number and then glanced down at her freshly bandaged finger, hoping she hadn’t made a mistake that would cost her her life.

  Gabby answered with a gruff, “What is it, Lisa?”

  “It’s not Lisa, but if I had the misfortune to be your assistant, and you talked to me in that tone, I’d quit.”

  “She does. At least once a week. Usually on the days I haven’t fired her.”

  Sybil smiled. Those two would be going at it when they died of old age. “You sound riled.” That concerned Sybil. Gabby didn’t do riled. She always had been passionate about her work, but she usually kept exasperation private.

  “You on a secure line?”

  “Yes.” Not an uncommon question. Gabby had been a covert operative for years.

  “It’s this mission, Sybil. It’s making me crazy”

  “Do you need to pull out?”

  “I can’t. We have too much invested. It'd take a year to get back to where we are now.”

  Gabby’s “where” was deeply entrenched in a corporate espionage ring that had hooked into the judicial system and was suspected of selling reduced or suspended sentences to North Korean spies.

  “So what are you going to do?” Sybil asked.

  “The same thing you do when your work makes you nuts. Suck it up, and press on.” She heaved a sigh Sybil felt down to her bones. “But I swear it’ll be a cold day in hell before I go deep cover again.”

  “Of course.” Gabby had sworn that same thing on her last five missions.

  “I mean it. I’m burned out.”

  Sybil sat down on a lush sage-silk sofa and stared at a painting of magnolias hanging on the wall. “I know.” She did, and she resented that.

  “Is Jonathan behaving?”

  Here she goes again. The self-appointed matchmaker from hell. “Agent Westford always behaves.”

  “Too bad.” Gabby’s deep breath crackled static through the receiver. “You could fix that with a little encouragement. It wouldn’t take much.”

  “I’ll pass.” Sybil crossed an arm over her chest. “When it comes to men, my judgment leaves a lot to be desired.”

  “Austin doesn’t count.”

  At least Gabby hadn’t called him by her usual pet name. Sybil supposed she should be grateful for that small mercy. “I was married to the man for fifteen years. He counted.” She swiped an irritated hand over her forehead. “Is there anything else, or did you just call to bitch about work and butt into my love life?”

  “You don’t have a love life.”

  “And I’m happier than I’ve been in years.” She’d loved Austin, had given him everything she’d had to give, including the money to fund Secure Environet, and he had become her Achilles’ heel. The last thing she needed was another love in her life. “Leave it alone, Gabby. Please.”

  “All right, but you’re letting a winner slip through—”

  “I said please,” Sybil insisted. “If there’s nothing else, I’d better get back.” With no one running interference, the premiers were apt to kill each other.

  “There is one thing,” Gabby said, sounding hesitant. “It’s the
reason I called.”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful, okay? I woke up this morning with a really bad feeling about your whole peace-seeking mission.”

  “Have you had word from the commander?” Normally, Commander Conlee routed intelligence updates to West-ford. But he had used Gabby when he’d deemed regular channels less secure.

  “No, no. Nothing. It’s just a gut feeling.” Gabby paused a beat, and her voice took on a jagged edge. “Take no risks, Sybil. None.”

  Too late. Sybil looked down at the Band-Aid circling her finger, and an icy chill crept up her spine. She stiffened, determined not to give into fear, gave Gabby her promise, and then wondered. How was she going to keep Westford from telling Gabby about the Band-Aid incident?

  For the first time in her career, Sybil Stone considered offering a man a bribe.

  One should never underestimate the impact of a bribe.

  Alexander Renault had learned that lesson the night he had been dubbed “Patch.” It had been his ninth birthday, and to celebrate, his father had stabbed his mother to death. A patch of Alexander’s hair had turned albino-white—from the trauma, the doctor had said. But what had traumatized Patch most was his father bribing his way out of ever being arrested, tried, or convicted. The official consensus? His mother had fallen onto the knife.

  That night Patch had learned to hate: his father, for what he had done; his mother, for dying and leaving him; his government, for being corrupt. That night he had also sworn to do something about it. And he had done plenty.

  Sizing up the rookie agent, Patch surmised that West-ford had already done a fair amount of ass-chewing. Cramer looked pale and shaken. At least he’d remembered the penny and its significance: You’re among your own.

  Their SDU secure-system communications had been nearly impossible to breach—once. Amazing what a healthy contract could do to a designer’s sense of loyalty. But it made no difference now. Things had gone too far to do anything but play out. Millions would live or die, and their fate rested solely in the hands of Sybil Stone.

  From the moment she cut her finger, she must have known it hadn’t been an accident. But it was hoped that she would conclude it had been an attack rooted in the peace talks and not look beyond that. If she did, and she convinced Westford of it, yet another challenge for Ballast could be shifted to PUSH and avoided, and neither Lady Liberty nor Westford would be on the defensive for what lay ahead.