James Patterson - Truth or Die

Valerie grimaced, a twinge of guilt. “No, he really is going to the bathroom,” she said. “In fact, he’s going to be in there for a while.”

“How would you know?”

She nodded first at his champagne glass and then at her purse. “When he stood to shake your hand,” she said. “It’s like liquid Ex-Lax, only a hell of a lot stronger and quicker.”

“Why?” I asked. Why would she spike his drink?

“Technically, it’s our third date,” she said. “In Shahid’s mind, it doesn’t end with us playing Boggle. This way, he won’t even want a peck on the cheek.”

“I was wondering about that,” I said. “You know...”

Up shot one of her eyebrows. “Whether I’d ever have sex with a mark?”

“Do you guys really call them marks ?”

“Yeah, strange, right? Targets of an undercover sting operation never caught on.”

“So you really haven’t—”

“Is that really only your second whiskey?”

“Sorry, I was just curious.”

“For the record, the answer’s no,” she said. “Not to say he didn’t try on dates one and two. But love of my country only goes so far.”

The cocktail waitress returned to pour some more champagne. Valerie quickly placed her hand over Al Dossari’s glass. “I think he’s done for the night,” she said politely.

I glanced toward the back of the bar as the waitress walked away. “What happens now?” I asked. The plan she and Crespin had concocted only got me to the table.

“What happens now is that you tell me who your silent partner is,” she said.

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant. I also know that whoever this guy is, he’s CIA, or perhaps ex-CIA at this point. There’s no other way you could have those recordings.”

“No other way?”

“Prove me wrong.”

“If you know he’s CIA, what difference does his name make right now?”

Valerie eyed me for a moment. We’d known each other for less than a day, but it was hard to ignore a certain foxhole mentality. Like it or not, we were in this together.

“You want trust? I’ll give you trust,” she said. “Remember when Crespin and I looked at each other during one of your recordings?”

“Yes. You tried to pretend it was nothing—”

“But it was obviously something, you’re right,” she said. “Thing is, it was Karcher who initially tipped us off about our man on the toilet right now, that he was funding a known terrorist. So I became Beverly Sands to cozy up to Shahid Al Dossari, and — lo and behold — we just confirmed it. Shahid’s money has been moving in and out of an Al Qaeda operative’s account as recently as last week. Bingo, right? Except for one problem. According to one of your videos and the date stamped on the bottom of the screen, that operative has been dead for over a year.”

Sometimes you just say the first words that come to your mind no matter how trite. “Holy shit.”

“That’s right, holy shit,” she said. “Pretty goddamn brilliant, too. Developing that truth serum takes big bucks, and it’s not like the CIA can go to Congress for it. So what does Karcher do? He uses the hotshot lawyer, Brennan, to make it look like one of his clients is funding a terrorist with Saudi money. Instead, what Karcher’s really doing is funding himself.”

“But Al Dossari would have to know, right?”

“It would seem that way.”

“That’s the part I don’t get, then,” I said. “Wouldn’t Karcher be throwing Al Dossari under the bus? Without the recordings from the black site, you guys would still have Al Dossari on funding terrorism.”

“Yeah, that’s the brilliant part. All the NSA does is provide the proof. Then we hand everything — including Al Dossari — back over to Karcher,” she said. “ The CIA will take it from here , he’ll tell us, and then it’s out of our hands.”

“Then what, though?” I asked. “It’s not like Karcher can’t drop the ball.”

“No, of course not. A few months from now we’d probably hear that Al Dossari has flipped and is now Karcher’s newest mole in the Middle East, or something like that. And we’d believe it, too, because we’d have no reason not to.”

“But now you do.”

“Which brings me back to your friend,” she said. “As much as you need to trust me, I need to trust him. And I can’t do that if I don’t meet him. So tonight, literally... I need you to bring me back to your friend .”

“What about your date?” I asked. “We just can’t leave him.”

“Oh, no?” Already she was halfway out the booth. “When he’s finally able to leave the bathroom, the last thing he’ll want to do is explain what took him so long. Trust me,” she said. “We’re doing him a favor.”

In two minutes flat, we were in the backseat of a DC cab heading off the Beltway past Dulles Airport and out to Arcola. I really should’ve gotten a to-go cup for that Johnnie Walker Blue.

The driver, whose disposition most closely resembled an ingrown toenail, initially told us that Arcola was out of his territory, especially after midnight. A crisp Ben Franklin later, he suddenly had a brand-new territory. Money is the biggest button of them all.

“Inside or outside doors?” asked Valerie.

I turned to her. “Inside or outside?”

“My mother was afraid to fly when I was a kid, so we drove everywhere for vacation. She had this thing, though. We could never stay in a hotel with doors that faced outside,” she said. “Too dangerous.”

“By any chance, does your mother know what you currently do for a living?” I asked.

“If she were still alive, she wouldn’t like it.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”

“Cervical cancer. When I was in high school,” she explained. “And since we’re in the sympathy card aisle, my father then died of lung cancer during my senior year in college.”

“Jesus.”

“Tell me about it. Of course, if they were both still alive, it’s not like I could actually tell them what I do.”

“And what is that, exactly? I mean, of all the NSA secrets that Edward Snowden leaked, I didn’t hear anything about agents like you.”

“Yeah, little Eddie really complicated things, didn’t he?”

I waited for Valerie to keep talking and perhaps answer my question. She did neither.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

She smiled. “We have to keep some mystery between us, don’t we?”

I practically froze. That was exactly what Claire had said to me the night she was killed.

“What?” asked Valerie. “What did I say?”

“Nothing,” I finally answered.

But she, too, knew the sound of that nothing . The look she gave me. Still, she let it go. A touch of woman’s intuition, perhaps.

Regardless, the next few minutes for me were inevitable. Memories of Claire came like clicks on the meter in the taxi, one after another, especially from our last moments together.

It’s often asked, if you knew this was your last night on earth, what would you do? Had that night with Claire been my last night, though, there was nothing I would’ve changed. Well, almost nothing. I would’ve never let Claire go.

“Front or back?” asked the driver.

The question snapped me out of it as I looked up to see him pulling into the Comforter Motel. Staring at the nearly empty parking lot, it was easy to wonder if the NO in the NO VACANCY sign had ever been illuminated.

“The back,” I said.

As he pulled around, I went over the ground rules with Valerie again regarding Owen. We’d gotten pretty good at cutting deals on the fly.

“I go up and explain the situation, tell him you’re here waiting in the taxi,” I said. “Then I wave you up, okay?”