The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer [16]
For eight years, his death has been the one wound that would never mend, festering over time with my own isolation. The guilt . . . everything I caused . . . Oh, Lord, if he’s actually back . . .
I open my eyes and realize they’re filled with tears. Quickly wiping them away, I can’t even look at Manning.
Whatever Boyle was doing there, I need to figure out what the hell is going on. In the White House, we had access to the entire military. We don’t have the military anymore. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have my own personal reserves.
I pull out my satellite phone and dial the number from memory. The sun should just be coming up in Washington.
Accustomed to emergencies, he picks up on the first ring. Caller ID tells him who it is.
“Let me guess, you’re in trouble,” Dreidel answers.
“This one’s serious,” I tell him.
“It involve your boss?”
“Doesn’t everything?” Dreidel’s my closest friend from the White House, and more important, knows Manning better than anyone. By his silence, it’s clear he understands. “Now you got a second? I need some help.”
“For you, my friend, anything . . .”
5
Paris, France
With mayonnaise?” the thin woman with the red bifocals asked in a heavy French accent.
“Oui,” Terrence O’Shea replied, nodding respectfully, but disappointed that she even asked. He thought his French was flawless—or as flawless as FBI training could make it—but the fact she asked the question in English and referred to the garlicky aïoli as “mayonnaise” . . . “Excusez-moi, madame,” O’Shea added, “pourquoi m’avez vous demandé cela en anglais?” Why did you ask me in English?
The woman pursed her lips and smiled at his largely Swiss features. His thin blond hair, pink skin, and hazel eyes came from his mother’s family in Denmark, but his fat, buckled nose was straight from his father’s Scottish side—made only worse by a botched hostage rescue back from his days doing fieldwork. As the woman handed O’Shea the small container of french fries drenched with mayo, she explained, “Je parle très mal le danois.” My Danish is terrible. Reading O’Shea’s thin grin, she added, “Vous venez de Danemark, n’est-ce pas?” You are from Denmark, yes?
“Oui,” O’Shea lied, taking a strange joy in the fact she didn’t spot him as American. Then again, blending in was part of the job.
“J’ai l’oeiul pour les choses,” the woman added.
“J’ai l’oeiul pour les choses,” O’Shea repeated, dropping a few coins into the glass tip jar on the edge of the woman’s sausage-and-french-fry pushcart. Sometimes you just know.
Heading further up Rue Vavin, O’Shea felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket for the third time. He’d already convinced the pushcart woman that he wasn’t American, and even though it didn’t matter, he wasn’t going to reveal himself by interrupting their conversation and picking up on the first ring.
“This is O’Shea,” he finally answered.
“What’re you doing in France?” the voice on the other line asked.
“Interpol conference. Some nonsense on trends in intelligence. Four whole days away from the pit.”
“Plus all the mayo you can eat.”
Just as he was about to bite his first mayo-dipped fry, O’Shea paused. Without another word, he pitched the basket of fries into a nearby trash can and crossed the street. As a Legat—a Legal Attaché—for the FBI, O’Shea had spent almost a decade working with law enforcement officials in seven foreign countries to help deter crime and terrorism that could harm the United States. In his line of work, the surest way to get yourself killed was being obvious and predictable. Priding himself on being neither, he buttoned his long black coat, which waved out behind him like a magician’s cape.
“Tell me what’s going on,