Linda Howard - Kiss Me While I Sleep

“But since you had my number anyway, you thought you’d put it to good use by making an anonymous call to warn me of the mole.”

“ Oui. An investigation prompted by an internal suspicion is far different from one instigated from outside, no?”

“Agreed.” This guy wanted the mole caught; he wanted that contact closed off. He must be feeling guilty about the information he’d passed along over the years and was trying to somewhat atone. “How much damage have you done?”

“To national security, very little, monsieur. When asked I must provide at least a soupçon of reliable information, but always I have removed more sensitive items.”

Swain accepted that. After all, the guy had a conscience or he wouldn’t have called him with a warning. “Do you know the mole’s name?”

“No, we have never used names. He does not know mine, either. By that I mean our real names. We have identifiers, of course.”

“Then how does he get information to you? I assume he sends it through channels, so anything that is faxed or scanned would have to be sent to your attention.”

“I set up a fictitious identity on my home computer for those things that must be sent electronically, which is most things. Only rarely is anything faxed. Such a thing could be traced, of course—assuming one knew what to look for. I can access the account from my . . . the word escapes me. The small hand-computer in which one puts one’s appointments—”

“PDA,” Swain said.

“ Oui. The PDA.” Said with a French accent, it was pei d’ay.

“The number you use to contact him—”

“It is a mobile number, I believe, as I am always able to reach him on it.”

“Have you had the number traced?”

“We do not investigate, monsieur; we coordinate.”

Swain was well aware that Interpol’s constitution directly prohibited the organization from conducting its own investigations. His guy had just confirmed that he was indeed Interpol, not that Swain had doubted it.

“I am certain the mobile phone would be registered under a false name,” the Frenchman continued. “That would be easy for him to do, I think.”

“A snap of the fingers,” Swain agreed, pinching the bridge of his nose. A fake driver’s license was easy to come by, especially for people in their line of work. Lily had used three sets of identification running from Rodrigo. For someone who worked at Langley, how hard could it be?

He tried to think of the various means available for nabbing this guy. “How often are you in contact?”

“Sometimes not for months. Twice in the past few days.”

“So a third contact so soon would be unusual?”

“Very unusual. But would he be suspicious? Perhaps, perhaps not. What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking, monsieur, that you’re between a rock and a hard place and would like to get out. Am I right?”

“A rock and a—? Ah, I understand. I would like that very much.”

“What I need is a recording of your next conversation with him. Turn off the recorder while you’re talking, if you want. The content of the conversation isn’t important, just his voice.”

“You will get a voiceprint.”

“Yeah. I’ll also need the recorder you use. Then all I have to do is find a match.” Voiceprint analysis was fairly exact; that and facial-recognition programs had been used to differentiate Saddam Hussein from his doubles. A voice was a product of the structure of each individual’s throat, nasal passages, and mouth, and hard to fake. Even impressionists couldn’t exactly match a voice. Variables came in with the differences between microphones, recorders, audio feed, and so on. By having the same recorder, he took that variable out of the equation.

“I am willing to do this,” the Frenchman said. “It is a danger to me and my loved ones, but I think the risk is manageable, with your cooperation.”

“Thank you,” Swain said sincerely. “Are you willing to go a step further, and perhaps remove the threat from existence?”

There was a very long pause; then he said, “How would you do this?”

“You have contacts you trust?”

“But of course.”

“Someone who could maybe find out the specs of the security system at a certain complex?”

“Specs . . . ?”

“Blueprint. Technical details.”

“I assume this complex belongs to the Nervi organization?”

“It does.” Swain gave him the name of the laboratory, and the address.

“I will see what I can do.”

22

Lily smiled when her cell phone rang the next morning. Expecting another half-humorous half-serious obscene call from Swain, she didn’t check the number of the incoming call before she answered. Just to jerk his chain, she changed her voice to a deep, almost masculine tone, and barked an impatient, “Hello!” into the phone.

“Mademoiselle Mansfield?” The voice she heard wasn’t Swain’s; it was one that had been electronically altered so the voice was distorted, and the words sounded as if they were coming out of a drum.

Lily went cold with shock and without thinking she started to disconnect the call, but calm reason reasserted itself. Just because someone had her cell phone number didn’t mean he knew where to locate her. The phone was registered in her real name; the apartment and everything connected to it was in Claudia Weber’s name. It was, in fact, reassuring that the caller had referred to her as “Mansfield”; her Claudia persona was still secure.

Who had access to this phone number? It was her private cell phone, one she used only for personal business. Tina and Averill had had the number, of course, and Zia; Swain had it. Who else? Once she’d had a large circle of acquaintances, but that had practically been pre­cell phone; since the day she’d found Zia, the circle had grown smaller and smaller as she devoted herself to the baby, and smaller still after the debacle with Dmitri. She couldn’t think of anyone now who had this number other than Swain.

“Mademoiselle Mansfield?” the distorted voice asked again.

“Yes?” Lily replied, forcing herself to sound calm. “How did you get this number?”

He didn’t answer, instead saying in French, “You do not know me, but I knew your friends, the Joubrans.”

The words sounded strange, above and beyond the distortion that disguised the voice, as if the speaker had difficulty talking. She tensed even more at the mention of her friends. “Who are you?”

“Forgive me, but that must remain private.”

“Why?”

“It is safer.”

“Safer for whom?” she asked drily.

“Both of us.”

Okay, she could go with that. “Why did you call?”

“It is I who hired your friends to destroy the laboratory. I never intended for what happened, to happen. No one was supposed to die.”

Shocked once more, Lily groped behind her for a chair, sank down onto it. She had wanted answers, and without warning they were dropping into her lap. The phrase “never look a gift horse in the mouth” warred with “beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” So which was the caller, figuratively, a horse or a Greek?

“Why did you hire them?” she finally asked. “More to the point, why are you calling me?”

“Your friends succeeded in their mission—temporarily. Unfortunately, research has resumed, and it must be stopped. You have reason to want to succeed: revenge. That is why you killed Salvatore Nervi. Therefore, I would like to hire you to complete the mission.”

A cold sweat trickled down her spine. How did he know she’d killed Salvatore? She licked suddenly dry lips, but didn’t explore that avenue. Instead she focused on the rest of his statement. This man wanted to hire her to do what she planned to do anyway. The irony of it almost made her laugh, except she felt more bitter than amused. “What exactly is this mission?”