The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [125]
“Palmer’s daughter?”
Nikola peered into Odelle’s dark irises, appalled at the hope lurking in their depths. To witness the most powerful woman in the country clutching at straws filled him with aesthetic horror. “No. Eliot Russo and Araceli Goldberg’s.”
For a long time neither spoke. Nikola reached for a chair and toyed with the idea of pouring a drink of water from the carafe on a tray in the center of the table, but he thought better of it after inspecting the fine bubbles festooning the liquid. Stale, probably from the morning or even the day before. Were he inclined to show off, Nikola could have written down what was to follow. Odelle would probably pick up the gauntlet and deal with Palmer herself. Blood feuds had to be squared within the family, and Nikola was an outsider. But such battles had a momentum of their own and, probably for the first time in her life, Odelle was in a defensive position. To stage a successful counterattack, a commander needed a cool head and warriors, not mercenaries. Machiavelli had argued the same point in The Prince. Sun Tzu, in his Art of War—the finest collection of strategy insights humanity had ever known—had made the same observation. Granted, mercenaries were fine soldiers, probably the best, but they couldn’t be trusted to forgo their lives to defend ideals. Mercenaries demanded payment and a fair chance to enjoy their plunder. To take the next hill and face certain death so a remote commander could eventually claim his laurels needed honor, king, or country. Certainly stronger lures than money.
“You have evidence?” she asked.
A sensation of unbearable fatigue nibbled at the edge of Nikola’s consciousness. “Family lines are easy to plot from the DNA database. Of Palmer’s involvement, no. There isn’t a scrap of evidence, and I doubt any could ever be found. He’s an old fox, and a damn clever one. To flush out a wily fox, the final recourse is to torch the woods, and you can’t do that. Before you attempt to grapple with a senator, you’d need the President’s sanction. A sanction you will not get without hard evidence, and, again, there isn’t any.”
“Do I detect a certain admiration for the man?”
Overestimating an enemy meant wasted time and resources, and underestimating it could be suicidal. Nikola believed wisdom resided in correctly assessing situations or the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. The mean: the middle ground Aristotle referred to as virtue. “No. No admiration. Respect.”
chapter 41
22:18
“Pet. No calls.” A thin bar on her communications console flickered from green to red. Odelle peered into the retinal scan atop her computer screen until it locked. Then she ran her fingers over a laser keyboard embedded in her glass desktop and called up the building’s security center records, entered the date and the time span she wanted, and waited until a menu scrolled across with a list of available recent digital recordings. First she selected the garage cameras, and the screen split into four smaller rectangles: two general views, the access ramp, and the area before the elevator bank.
Once she located the section she wanted, Odelle followed Ritter’s car as it entered the garage at 05:16. She noted the choreography of his security detail. The man adjusted his ridiculous beret and stood by the bank of elevators, unmoving, without fidgeting or glancing at his watch. She zoomed in on his face and caught a slight puckering of his lips, as if he was weighing a thorny issue. After a few minutes, three cars slipping down the ramp appeared on the top left quadrant of the screen. The motorcade maneuvered through a wide corridor to stop at an open area before the elevators, where Genia Warren alighted from the middle car. When Ritter leaned over to adjust the neck of her blouse, Odelle froze the image before advancing the scene in slow motion. She zoomed on his lips, moving like dragonfly wings. Clever. Ritter had likely warned Genia about the probable reason for the impromptu meeting. Odelle closed the views, returned to the menu, and selected