But if it were true…
Hilda Morrisey didn't spend much time thinking about her own death, and certainly not about some possible afterlife. If anything, she hoped there wouldn't be one. When Hilda thought about dying at all she thought of it as a sort of grant of executive clemency. Being dead meant you didn't have to face any more consequences of things you had done that someone, sometime, might want to hold you accountable for. She didn't want to think that she could have been quite wrong about that.
The next morning she woke early and with a great desire to get the taste of Daisy Fennell's quiche and ratatouille dinner and the chocolate-raspberry dessert that followed it out of her mouth. Her little apartment had a fully stocked kitchen, so Hilda was able to make herself some real oatmeal and pour herself some honest coffee, not flavored with Mexican chocolate or Florida limes. She had not expected so much domesticity from Daisy (though actually it had been Frank who did the cooking), and she especially had not expected the two teenage girls that Frank had brought to the marriage. Jesus, she thought, and put the dinner, and Frank's partner Richard, out of her mind.
Forintel sitrep NBI Eyes Only
The Spanish police have asked us to investigate possible Stateside activities by members or sympathizers of the Basque nationalist organization, the Euskadi ta Askatasuna. It is thought that such persons, particularly in Southern California, are active in supplying funds and possible weapons to the Basque separatists in the Atlantic seaport towns of northern Spain.
No other new alerts are reported at this time. All current surveillance operations will continue.
The first thing she did in the office was recheck all the arrangements for Dannerman's mission. He was in Kiev, he hadn't yet made contact, it was now up to the locals to get him to Artzybachova's hideaway. The second thing was to report to the deputy director, who scowled ferociously at what she had to say. "Pickets? Around Camp Smelly? Now how the hell did they know where to go?" And it wasn't a rhetorical question, either: "Find out," he ordered. "And why haven't you convened a team meeting today? Don't give me you didn't have time, you have to make time, Hilda. And your man Dannerman-the other one-is being a real pain in the ass. Deal with him."
He did not say just how the Dannerman who wasn't in Ukraine was being a pain, but Hilda had a pretty good idea. When she got back to her little office she half expected to find him waiting there. He wasn't but there were five messages from him in her mail, increasingly hostile in tone, demanding she call him back.
She didn't. She was perfectly sure there would be a sixth call, and she would decide how to deal with him then. Meanwhile she had other things on her mind. She dialed the locator service and instructed it to find Junior Agent Merla Tepp and have her report.
Then she gritted her teeth and dropped in on Daisy Fennell to thank her for the perfectly lovely time. Fortunately Daisy was busy. They had at last located the last of the gang that had kidnapped and killed the President's press secretary and she was assembling a team to bring the man in. "Don't go away," she ordered Hilda, and finished giving orders on her screen. Then she turned and smiled. "How did you like Richard? Frank says he was really interested in you. He'll probably call you."
"That would be nice," Hilda said dismally. "Daisy, can't we do better than this Captain Terman who's running Camp Smolley?"
"Oh, Terman," Daisy said. "Yes, I suppose you're right. He lost a leg in the field and the director gave him that job himself-knew the family, I think. I guess he thought it didn't matter, because Terman was basically just a caretaker-who needed Camp Smolley? But if he can't hack it- Anyway, what I wanted to say about Richard-"
But Hilda was reprieved when Daisy's screen buzzed at her again. It only took a moment, then she turned and looked blankly at Hilda.
"Funny thing," she said. "It's that Spanish business. The police got an anonymous phone tip, and when they checked it out they found a munitions dump-all kinds of stuff. Even mininukes. The funny part is, our assets in the Basque community in California? They think it was the Basques themselves that phoned it in." She shook her head. "Listen, Hilda, it's crazy around here today, but how about you and I having lunch one of these days? You know, girl talk. I want to tell you more about dear Richard…"
There wasn't going to be any way of avoiding a lunch and girl talk, but Hilda was firmly determined to avoid dear Richard. No friend of Daisy Fennell's would do, even for an occasional bed partner. But it would be nice to have somebody, Hilda thought…
Back in her office, Cadet Merla Tepp was waiting. She stood up as Hilda came in. "You called for me, Brigadier. If it's about my application to be your aide-"
Hilda waved that aside. "What it's about," she said, "is the fact that there were born-again pickets at Camp Smolley yesterday. Looks like they came from the kind of groups you were investigating. How did they know?"
Tepp said promptly, "There was a rumor when I was investigating them that they had a lead into the Bureau."
"Did they?"
"I don't think so, Brigadier. I think they were just bragging. The woman who claimed to have it was picked up in the raids, and I'm pretty sure she's still serving time-that was for the arsons in the California schoolbook warehouses. I didn't interrogate her myself, but I've seen the transcripts. What the interrogators concluded was that she was lying. There probably wasn't a real body in place here, but there might have been a leak in the electronics."
"Thanks," Hilda said. "You can go."
The woman tarried. "Ma'am? About being your aide-"
"Go," Hilda ordered. "We'll talk about it later."
And perhaps they would, she thought; she was certainly going to need more help here. But there were things that had to be done first. She put through a call to the electronics man, to tell him that someone seemed to be able to tap into Bureau business. She called Personnel to produce a list of candidates to replace Captain Terman. What she needed, she thought, was a field-grade officer who knew enough about biology and technology to shake up die teams at Camp Smolley-or at least knew enough to know who to requisition as his operations officers. She was studying the personnel files of the first three candidates when Agent Dannerman appeared at her door.
She turned to scowl at him, and he was scowling back at her. "What's happening with the other one?" he demanded.
She elected not to bother with reprimanding him for walking uninvited into her office. "He's on a classified mission, out of the country-"
"I know it's a classified mission, and I know it's out of the country. It's in goddam Ukraine, where Rosaleen Artzybachova is."
"And it's none of your business, Danno. How'd you even know about it?"
"Christ. Hilda, the Pats talk to each other, you know. He took one of them with him!"
She sighed and shook her head. "It's not your operation, and it's classified."
"Tell me one thing," he insisted. "What's he supposed to do with her when he finds her. Rescue her? Or cut her head off?"
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was the first time Pat Adcock had ever traveled on a passport- actually, on two different passports-that were not her own, and it was certainly the first time she had had to do any of that cloak-and-dagger hsst!-here-are-the-papers! stuff. It made her nervous. On the way to Frankfurt she slept as much as she could. She knew that, with the wig and a lot more makeup than she had ever worn before, she didn't really look a lot like herself; but she didn't want to test it by talking too much to her seatmates. She worried about making her connections, but when she walked into the lobby of the airport hotel there was Dannerman, smoking a large cigar and studying a German paper, just as he was supposed to be. "Liebchen!" he cried. "Ma cherie!" And as he flung his arms around her and gave her a surely unnecessarily big kiss-his stiff German beard scratched her cheek, and the son of a bitch tasted horribly of cigar smoke-he whispered in her ear, "Give me the passport and tickets."