Стюарт Вудс - Wild Card

“I don’t think you understand how much reach the Thomases have,” Elise said. “They can get at anybody. I’ll never be safe again.”

“I understand your feelings, Elise, but I’ll see that Dino makes it his personal mission to keep you safe. Where does your family live?”

“There’s only my mother now, and she lives in Little Italy.”

“Elise,” Stone said, “it’s important that you not visit her in Little Italy.”

“But that’s where she lives.”

“You can invite her to lunch uptown as often as you like, but when you do that, don’t either of you speak in Sicilian.”

“I get your point,” she said. “Can I tell my mother what I’m doing?”

“It’s better that she doesn’t know until this is all over.”

“When will that be?” Elise asked.

“Maybe several months,” Stone replied.

“I’ll also give you a special cell phone, so you can contact us, if you need to,” Bob said.

Elise nodded, and went back to her dessert.

After dinner, Bob took Elise downstairs and explained the bugging equipment to her. Then he took her out of the building, where she could get a cab home.

Stone went upstairs, undressed for bed, and called Jamie.

“Hello?”

“How’d your talk go?” Stone asked.

“Very well. I’ve discovered that they all usually ask the same questions, so I can polish my answers.”

“What did you think of Elise?”

“I can’t believe it. Is she for real?”

“She certainly is.”

“I’ll file a new story tomorrow.”

“Wait a minute. You can’t use anything she told us tonight.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll blow her and get her killed. You’re going to have to be patient. Don’t even tell anybody at the Times about this.”

“I’ve already told Scott Berger,” she said, “but I didn’t tell him who she is.”

“Then call him back right now, tell him you can’t publish yet and why, and swear him to secrecy. Stress that she’s already a police informant, and you can’t blow her.”

“All right.”

“Good night, then.”

“What, no phone sex?” she asked.

“You’ve just frightened me and made me incapable.”

“I’ll try to be gentler next time.”

They both hung up.

Shortly after eight AM the following morning, in Atlanta, a florist’s delivery van pulled up to a trade entrance at the St. Regis Hotel, and the driver removed a box from the rear of the van and walked it inside to the front desk.

“May I help you?” a clerk asked.

The man set the box on the front desk. “Flower delivery for a Miss Jamie Cox,” he said, giving the clerk a clipboard so that he could sign for the flowers.

“It will go up with her breakfast,” the clerk said.

“What time will she have it in hand?” the driver asked.

The clerk checked a room service schedule. “She ordered breakfast for eight-thirty,” he replied.

“Thank you.” The driver returned to his van and made a phone call. “They’re going up with her breakfast at eight-thirty,” he said and then hung up.

Back at the front desk, the desk clerk supervisor came back from the men’s room and found the flower box. “Who are these for?” he asked.

“Jamie Cox,” the man replied. “Room service will pick them up and deliver them with her breakfast.”

“Too late,” the supervisor said. “Miss Cox checked out half an hour ago. She had a flight to make. Who delivered them?”

“I don’t know which shop,” the clerk said, “and I didn’t recognize the driver. What should I do with them?”

“Put them with the other flowers that are collected every morning. They’ll go to a hospital later today.”

The clerk opened a closet door and placed the box on a shelf.

Jamie boarded the Citation at PDK Airport, buckled herself in, and opened a fresh copy of the New York Times . The pilot closed and locked the cabin door, then went to the cockpit and started the engines. Fifteen minutes later, the airplane took off for Palm Beach.

At the St. Regis the desk clerk left his post for a moment and went into a back room. As he closed the door behind him, he heard a loud noise from the front desk. He opened the door to find a cloud of smoke and a closet door lying atop the desk. He looked around and found no corpses, then he picked up a phone from the floor and called security.

Elise followed Bob’s instructions: she turned up for work exactly when she did every day and did the things she always did. She distributed the mail, newspapers, and magazines, then went back to her desk and waited to be called in. She was not called in.

At lunchtime she ate half her sandwich and watched the Thomases and Damien leave, then she went into each office, starting with Henry’s. She peeled off the tape on the bottom of the bug and placed it under the center drawer of each desk, then followed suit in Hank’s and Damien’s offices.

She had one more device to plant: the master unit, which controlled the bugs, received their transmissions, and sent them to a secret website on the Internet. She placed it under a colleague’s desk, two desks away; then she went back, switched on her iPhone, and opened the new app Bob had installed. It was disguised as a calorie counter. She switched on the master and the three devices, and the app ran a check on each, confirming that they were operational.

Then she finished her sandwich.

Just after three PM Elise was called into Rance Damien’s office.

“Yes, sir?” she said.

“Why didn’t I get a Times this morning?” he asked.

Before she could answer, there was a knock on the door.

“Come in!” Damien shouted.

A man in coveralls, carrying a toolbox, walked in. “May I sweep now, Mr. Damien?”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“I’ll get you a Times ,” Elise said and fled the office. She went to her desk, opened her handbag, found her iPhone and went to the calorie app. As quickly as possible, she switched off the base unit and all three bugs, then she grabbed a Times and hurried back into Damien’s office. “Here you are, sir.”

But he was already reading a Times . “That’s all right, I found it on the floor.”

“I’m very sorry, sir.” As she closed the door she looked back to see the electronics man, wearing earphones and walking around the office, with some sort of wand in his hand.

“Any luck?” Damien asked the man.

“I got a single beep, but it didn’t recur. Probably some trash from a passing car or truck down on the street,” the man replied.

“Okay, wrap it up,” Damien said.

“Yes, sir.”

Elise went back to her desk and watched as the man went from office to office. No alarms were raised.

At her desk in New York, Viv Bacchetti took a call from Atlanta. “Yes?”

“We had a bomb delivered to Jamie Cox at the St. Regis this morning,” a man said.

“Good God! Was she hurt?”

“Lane and Ida got her out early. She had a noon thing in Palm Beach. No one was injured at the hotel. The bomb went off in a closet near the front desk.”

“Get hold of Lane,” Viv said. “Tell her what happened and to shake up all of the day’s plans. Go to plan B and, if necessary, plan C.”

“Right.”

Viv put down the phone and breathed deeply until her pulse returned to normal.

Stone said goodbye to Viv and put down the phone. He didn’t need to think long before calling Dino.

“Bacchetti.”

“It’s Stone. Have you spoken to Viv?”

“Not yet. I got a message, but I haven’t had time to return her call.”

“When you do, she’s going to tell you that somebody delivered a bomb in a box of flowers to Jamie in Atlanta.”