Chasing the Night - Iris Johansen [90]
“It would be a lot easier if we could just snatch Luke from him and get him out of the equation.”
“What about the progress on the surveillance reports?”
“Kelly says that she may have found something promising. But it sounds pretty tentative to me. Of course, all of this pattern business sounds a little far-fetched to me. I don’t understand how it works.”
Joe chuckled. “And your own work is absolutely clear and not at all far-fetched or hard to understand.”
“That’s different…to me.” She suddenly grinned. “You’re right, of course. We always doubt what we don’t understand. Maybe Kelly is on the right track. I’ll talk to her and see if she’s come up with anything else.”
“Get back to me as soon as you hear from Rakovac.”
“I will.” She paused. She didn’t want to let him go yet, but she had to do it. He was busy. Now that the reconstruction was finished, she was feeling without purpose. That was very bad for her. Purpose guided her life.
But Joe made that life worth living.
“Eve?”
“Good-bye, Joe. Take care.”
“I love you.” He hung up.
And she loved him. She didn’t want him in Moscow wheeling and dealing with all those agencies. She wanted him here with her.
It didn’t matter what she wanted. They both had a job to do, and she should stop wishing for the moon.
She got to her feet and headed for the door to try to find Catherine.
I should be there with her, Joe thought, as he hung up the phone.
Yes, he thought she was safe, but who knew how the situation would change.
Everyone around Catherine was in danger. Rakovac had already threatened Eve.
Nine-eleven.
How the hell could he leave here until they had a fix on Rakovac?
Joe turned to Venable, who was sitting across the room, papers spread all over the desk in front of him. “Who directs that NSA satellite?”
“The man in charge of the program?”
“The man who pushes the buttons at the tech center.”
“That’s George Helder. Why?”
“I want to know everything about him.” He paused. “And when we set up the phone trace, I want to be in charge.”
“What? That’s my job.”
“I want to do it.” He met Venable’s eyes. “You want to save those thousands of people. I’m with you on that. But I have a hell of a lot more personal investment. Do you doubt that I’m the best man for the job?”
Venable studied him. “No.”
“Then let me do it.”
Venable shook his head. “You’re not even government. They won’t recognize that you have any authority. They wouldn’t listen to you.”
“They’ll listen to me.”
Venable smiled faintly. “They might at that. I’ll give you a dossier on Helder’s background. That’s all I’ll promise right now. And the question is moot until we have a call for the NSA to monitor. Has Catherine heard from him yet?”
“Not yet.”
But it would happen soon and the tension was beginning to tighten within him.
Damn, he wanted to be with Eve now.
“An NSA satellite,” Catherine repeated thoughtfully. “I remember that Venable’s used it before, but most of the time it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Those assholes are so uptight about their precious schedule that it’s a nightmare.”
“We don’t have any choice. Joe said he’d deal with it.”
She smiled faintly. “I’d like to be around when he does. Joe against the establishment. It would be interesting.”
“But it won’t do a damn bit of good if you don’t manage to find a way to manipulate Rakovac into calling you at a given time.”
“So that you can find those records.” Her smile faded. “I knew that was coming.”
“Look, I know you said that it was up to us to take care of finding a way to getting those files from Rakovac, that you wouldn’t do anything to compromise rescuing Luke. But this is our opportunity to grab those records and still give you a chance to save Luke. Rakovac’s probably not keeping Luke with him. He wouldn’t take the chance. We might be able to infiltrate wherever he’s hiding out and steal the plans for Dabala’s raid without his knowing. Then we can follow him to where he’s keeping Luke.” She paused. “Or if Luke is with Rakovac, we don’t have to rely on Kelly to find him. We can