Kiss Me While I sleep (25 page)

“Yes?”

The tone was wary, but Swain recognized the voice. “Hi there,” he said cheerfully, in English. “I didn’t disturb anyone, did I? Don’t hang up, now. Play along and all you’ll get is a phone call. Hang up on me and you’ll get a visit.”

There was a pause. “What do you want?” Unlike Swain, the guy on the other end spoke in French; Swain was glad he knew enough of the language to get by.

“Nothing much. I just want to know everything you know.”

“One moment, please.” Swain heard the man speaking quietly to someone, a woman. Though it was difficult to tell what he was saying with the phone away from his mouth, Swain thought he caught something about “taking the call downstairs.”

Ah. So he was at home.

Then the man returned to the phone, saying briskly, “Yes, what may I do for you?”

Smoke screen for the wife’s sake, Swain thought. “You can give me a name, for starters.”

“The mole’s?” He must be out of earshot of his wife, because the guy had switched to English.

“Definitely, but I was thinking of yours.”

The man paused again. “It would be better if you do not know.”

“Better for you, yes, but I’m not worried about making things better for you.”

“But I am, monsieur.” Firmness there now; the man wasn’t a milquetoast. “I am risking my life and the lives of my family. Rodrigo Nervi is not one to take betrayal lightly.”

“You work for him?”

“No. Not in that sense.”

“I’m feeling a little dense, here. Either he pays you or he doesn’t. Which is it?”

“If I give him certain information, monsieur, he does not kill my family. Yes, he pays me; the money further incriminates me, yes?” Bitterness entered the quiet voice. “It is an insurance that I will not talk.”

“I see.” Swain eased off on the smart-ass tough-guy act-or at least he racheted down his behavior-though, it came so naturally to him, it probably wasn’t an act. “Something puzzles me. How did Nervi even know I was here, that he would be asking about me? I assume that’s how my name came up, and how you got my phone number.”

“He was searching for the identity of one of your contract agents. I believe it was a facial-recognition computer program that identified her. The mole accessed her file, and there was a notation that you had been dispatched to handle the problem she caused.”

“How did he know she was a contract agent?”

“He did not. He was exploring several different means of identifying her.”

So that was how Rodrigo had acquired a photo of Lily without the disguise she had used when she was with Salvatore. He knew what Lily looked like, and he knew her real name. Swain asked, “Does Nervi know my name?”

“I cannot say. I am the conduit between the CIA and Nervi, but I haven’t given your name to him. He did ask for a way to contact you.”

“In God’s name, why?”

“To offer you a deal, I believe. A lot of money in exchange for any information you have about the whereabouts of the woman he is seeking.”

“What made him think I would take the deal?”

“You are for hire, yes?”

“No,” Swain said briefly.

“You are not a contract agent?”

“No.” He didn’t say more. If the CIA had sent him, and he wasn’t a contract agent, then there was only one other category for him: field officer. He suspected this guy was bright enough to figure it out.

“Ah.” There was the sound of a sharply drawn breath. “Then I have made the correct decision.”

“Which is?”

“I did not give him your phone number.”

“Even though your family is in danger?”

“I have a cover. There is another Nervi, a younger brother, Damone, who is… not quite in the family mold. He is intelligent, and reasonable. When I pointed out the inherent dangers in contacting someone who worked for the CIA, that this person would realize the only way Rodrigo could have his telephone number was if someone with the CIA had given it to him-moreover, this person could be very loyal to his country-Damone saw the wisdom of what I was saying. He said he would report to Rodrigo that the CIA person-that is yourself, of course-had rented a mobile here and had not yet contacted headquarters, so there was no current number available.”

That made sense, even though the explanation was a tad convoluted. Rodrigo likely didn’t know that field officers, when outside their own country, would use either secure international cell phones or satellite phones.

Another piece also fit neatly into this little piece. For information to be routed from the CIA through this man to Rodrigo Nervi, then the man Swain was talking to had to be in a position to request such sensitive information-and have quite a lot to lose if anyone found out. “What are you?” he asked. “Interpol?”

He heard a quick intake of breath and triumphantly thought,
Bingo!
Got it in one. Looked as if Salvatore Nervi had poked his fingers into a lot of pies that he shouldn’t have.

“So what you’re doing,” he said, “is getting back at Nervi without endangering your family. You can’t overtly refuse to do anything he asks, can you?“

“I have children, monsieur. Perhaps you don’t understand-”

“I have two of my own, so, yes, I understand perfectly.”

“He would kill them without hesitation if I don’t cooperate. In this matter with his brother, I did not refuse a request; his brother made a decision concerning it”

“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
soupgon
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.”

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 pre-cell 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 Dimitri. 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?”