Collateral Damage (Stone Barrington 25)

Kelli held up a hand. “Be quiet,” she said. “We’re being listened to, and this time it’s not that tabloid rag.”

“You mean the CIA has wired our apartment?”

Kelli nodded. “It just hit me, when I was showing her the bedroom. She was looking up at the corners of the room. That guy who came and took out the old bugs? He wasn’t sent by Herb Fisher’s girlfriend—he was sent by Holly Barker.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do. I figured it out. I’m not stupid, although it was stupid of me to tell you anything.”

“I haven’t mentioned it to anybody,” he protested.

“No, and that’s how I know we’re wired, because neither of us has ever discussed it with anybody but each other, and in our bedroom. And yet Holly knows we did that.”

Jim went and poured two stiff drinks, then return

ed and gave Kelli one. “Then let’s stop talking about it right now and never bring it up again, just like the court order says.” He took a swig of his whiskey. “This never happened, any of it, do you understand? Not L.A., not our conversation, not Holly’s visit. None of it. Agreed?”

Kelli took a gulp of her own drink. “Agreed. It never happened.”

—

Holly got home and found Stone in his study. He poured them a drink. “How was your day?”

“Satisfying,” Holly replied.

“How so?”

“I took care of the Kelli Keane problem.”

“Did you get the court order?”

“No, that turned out to be too complicated, before Congress changes our charter.”

“Then how did you handle it?”

“It probably won’t surprise you to learn that the Agency has people at work who can create all sorts of documents.”

“Wait a minute: Are you telling me that you produced a fake court order?”

“All I’m telling you is that the Agency is capable of doing so, and we may have an acquaintance with a friendly judge who will give the correct answers if he receives an inquiry about such a thing.”

“God, I wish I had a judge like that—and a forger, too. It would be so much easier to get court orders!”

They were on their second drink when Holly said, “Turn on the TV.”

Stone reached for the remote. “What channel?”

“Any channel with an evening news.”

Stone picked CBS. As the set came to light, the anchorman gazed into the camera. “In just about a minute, the president of the United States will address the nation. We don’t know the subject of the address, but we have assembled a panel that includes our White House correspondent, our military adviser, and a former member of the administration to discuss what he has to say.” He pressed a finger to his earpiece. “Are we ready? Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.”

Will Lee appeared on-screen from the Oval Office, not sitting behind his desk as in the usual presidential address, but standing and leaning on it, facing the camera. “Good evening,” he said. “I want to take a brief moment to pass along some information to the nation. What I’m about to tell you will be all I will have to say on the subject. I ask for your understanding on that, because we must preserve our posture on national security without telling our enemies too much.

“Recently, an attempt was made by al Qaeda to place and detonate a nuclear device in our country. The location will remain classified, but I’m glad to tell you that, because of cooperation among our intelligence services, agents of the Secret Service and others were able to learn of the plot, find the device, and disable it. The plot was attempted by a small cell of al Qaeda operatives, which included a foreign expert in the design of bombs. You should know that al Qaeda no longer has the capability of carrying out such an attack, because all the people who were a part of the plot, including the designer and builder of the device, were killed while resisting arrest—all but one.”

A passport photo appeared on-screen. “This woman is Jasmine Shazaz. She is of Middle Eastern origin and was educated in Britain, and she is the chief suspect in a series of recent bombing attacks in London and New York. She has no capability of building a nuclear device, but she does have access to powerful explosives, and she is being sought by the CIA, the FBI, and the New York City Police Department as we speak. A five-million-dollar reward has been offered for information leading to her capture, and anyone with information concerning her whereabouts may telephone the toll-free number displayed on the screen and offer that information with the assurance of anonymity.

“Besides New York, she may have contacts in the following cities: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, so citizens in those cities should be watchful. She is certain to be carrying false identification papers, and it is possible that she has taken steps to change her appearance.