She opened her mouth to speak and he held up a halting hand.
“It gets better.”
She sat quietly in her wet clothes.
“As I was deciding how I could actually leave you here, since I was reasonably sure I did not want to know why you came to Amsterdam, the president himself took me aside and told me to get over here. Seems two Secret Service agents were also involved, but they weren’t in custody. One of them was soaking wet from swimming in a canal to retrieve this.”
She caught what he tossed her and saw again the medallion with elephants, snug in its plastic sleeve.
“The president intervened with the Dutch. You’re free to go.”
She stood. “Before we leave I need to know about those dead men.”
“Since I already knew you’d say that, I found out that they both carried Central Asian Federation passports. We checked. Part of Supreme Minister Irina Zovastina’s personal security force.”
She caught something in his eye. Davis was much easier to read than Daley had been. “That doesn’t shock you.”
“Few things do anymore.” His voice had lowered to a whisper. “We have a problem, Stephanie, and now, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, you’re part of it.”
She followed Davis into the hotel suite. President Danny Daniels sat sprawled on a sofa, wrapped in a bathrobe, his bare feet propped on a gilded glass-topped table. He was a tall stretch of a man with piles of blond hair, a booming voice, and a disarming manner. Though she’d worked for him for five years, she’d only come to really know him last fall with the treachery surrounding the lost library of Alexandria. He’d then both fired and rehired her. Daniels held a drink of something in one hand and a remote control in the other.
“There’s not a damn thing on this TV to watch that isn’t subtitled or in a language I don’t understand. And I can’t bear that BBC News or CNN International any longer. They show the same stories over and over.” Daniels blackened the screen and tossed the remote aside. He sipped from his drink, then said to her, “I hear you’ve had another career-ending night.”
She caught the twinkle in his eye. “Seems to be my path to success.”
He motioned and she sat. Davis stood off to the side.
“I’ve got some more bad news,” Daniels said. “Your agent in Venice is missing. She’s not been heard from in twelve hours. Neighbors in the building where she was stationed reported a disturbance early this morning. Four men. A door kicked in. Of course, no one now officially saw anything. Typical Italians.” He raised one arm in a flurry. “For God’s sake don’t involve me.” The president paused, his face darkened. “Nothing about this sounds good.”
Stephanie had loaned Naomi Johns to the White House, which needed some field reconnaissance on a person-of-interest-Enrico Vincenti, an international financier with ties to an organization called the Venetian League. She knew the group. Another of the countless cartels from around the world. Naomi worked for Stephanie for many years, and had been the agent who’d investigated Larry Daley. She’d left the Billet last year, only to return, and Stephanie had been glad. Naomi was good. The recon job should have been low risk. Just record meets and greets. Stephanie had even told her to take a couple of days off in Italy when she finished.
Now she might be dead.
“When I loaned her out, your people said this was simply information gathering.”
No one answered and her gaze shifted between the two men.
Daniels pointed. “Where’s the medallion?”
She handed it to him.
“You want to tell me about this?”
She felt grimy. What she wanted was a shower and sleep, but she realized that wasn’t going to happen. She resented being interrogated, but he was the president of the United States and had saved her hide, so she explained about Cassiopeia, Thorvaldsen, and the favor. The president listened with an unusual attentiveness, then said, “Tell her, Edwin.”
“How much do you know about Supreme Minister Zovastina?”
“Enough to know that she’s no friend of ours.”
Her tired mind retrieved Zovastina’s pertinent history. Born to a working-class family in northern Kazakhstan, her father died fighting the Nazis for Stalin, then an earthquake, just after the war, killed her mother and the rest of her immediate relatives. She grew up in an orphanage, until one of her mother’s distant cousins took her in. She eventually became an economist, trained at the Leningrad Institute, then joined the Communist Party in her twenties and worked her way to head of the local Committee of the Representatives of the Workers. She then snagged a spot on the Central Committee of Kazakhstan and quickly rose to the Supreme Soviet. She first promoted land and other economic reforms, then became a critic of Moscow. After independence from Russia, she was one of six Party members who ran for president of Kazakhstan. When the two front-runners failed to receive a majority, under the national constitution both were disqualified from the second round of voting, which she won.
“I learned a long time ago,” Daniels said, “that if you have to tell someone you’re their friend, the relationship’s got big problems. This woman thinks we’re a bunch of idiots. Friends like her we don’t need.”
“But you still have to kiss her ass.”
Daniels enjoyed more of his drink. “Unfortunately.”
“The Central Asian Federation is not something to take lightly,” Davis made clear. “Land of hardy people and long memories. Twenty-eight million men and women available for military conscription. Twenty-two million of those fit and ready for service. About one and a half million new conscripts available each year. That’s quite a fighting force. Currently, the Federation spends one point two billion dollars a year on defense, but that doesn’t count what we pour in there, which is twice that.
“And the real crap,” Daniels continued, “is that the people love her. The standard of living has improved a thousandfold. Before her, sixty-four percent lived in poverty. Now it’s less than fifteen percent. That’s as good as we do. She’s investing everywhere. Hydroelectric power, cotton, gold-she’s loaded with surpluses. That Federation is perched in a superb geoeconomic position. Russia, China, India. Smack between them all. Smart lady, too. She’s sitting on some of the world’s largest oil and natural gas reserves, which the Russians once totally controlled. They’re still pissed about independence, so she made a deal and sells them oil and gas at below-market prices, which keeps Moscow off her tail.”
She was impressed with Daniels’ command of the region.
“Then,” the president said, “a few years ago she entered into a long-term lease with Russia on the Baykonur Cosmodrome. The Russian spaceport sits in the middle of the old Kazakhstan. Six thousand square miles, which Russia now has exclusive use of until 2050. In return, of course, she got some debt cancellation. After that, she stroked the Chinese by settling a centuries-old border dispute. Not bad for an economist who grew up in an orphanage.”
“Do we have problems with Zovastina?” she asked. Again neither man answered her question, so she switched gears. “What does Enrico Vincenti have to do with this?”
“Zovastina and Vincenti are connected,” Daniels said, “through the Venetian League. Both are members. Four hundred and some people. Lots of money, time, and ambition, but the League isn’t interested in changing the world-only being left alone. They hate government, restrictive laws, tariffs, taxes, me, anything that keeps them in line. They have their hands in lots of countries-”
She saw that Daniels had read her thoughts.