Sedition (A Political Conspiracy Book 1) (18 page)

The woman looked at them, momentarily directing her attention away from Edwards. She caught Thistlewood’s eye, and it seemed to him as though she recognized him. It was just for an instant. As quickly as the perceived recognition bloomed in her eyes, it vanished.

Thistlewood reached out with his right hand and put it on Edwards’s shoulder, still holding Laura’s hand with his left as Edwards spun around.

“George!” Thistlewood smiled. “This is wonderful.” He held out his hand to congratulate him.

“Art,” Edwards said. He reciprocated and shook his friend’s hand. “Thanks for coming.”

“George, I’m sure you remember Laura Harrowby.” Thistlewood looked at his girlfriend and grinned as he introduced her.

“Yes.” Edwards nodded. “Nice to see you.” There was an awkward moment as the two couples stood smiling at each other.

“I’m Matti Harrold.” She thought about waiting for George Edwards to introduce her, but then she realized she’d not yet told him her name.

“Oh! Sorry about that.” Edwards snapped to attention, suddenly realizing his faux pas. “I wasn’t trying to be rude. I just met Matti here and didn’t know her name until now.”

“I’m Art Thistlewood.” The professor offered his name but not his hand. “Matti, is it?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you do?” Thistlewood didn’t trust her. A beautiful woman sporting up Edwards on the eve of their plot just didn’t fall within his idea of normal.

It wasn’t that Edwards didn’t occasionally date attractive women. Edwards, Thistlewood had learned, could be particularly successful in carnal matters on the night of an opening. But it was always with the same women: hemp-wearing, patchouli-basted freethinkers.

This woman, this Matti, seemed too corporate. She seemed out of Edwards’s league. Something was off.

“She’s an art critic,” Edwards answered for her. “I’ve found in our very short time together here, that she has an eye. It’s a destructive, soul-crushing eye, but it’s an eye nonetheless.”

“I’m not a critic,” she admitted. “I just answered Mr. Edwards’s questions when asked.”

“So you’re not a critic.” The professor was not amused. “What do you do?”

“Art,” scolded Laura, “don’t be rude. You’ve just met her.” She squeezed his hand tightly.

“It’s fine.” Matti looked at Laura and then at Thistlewood. “I’m a translator. What do you do?”

“I’m a professor at American University.” He lifted his chin so that he could look down his nose at the translator.

“He teaches political science,” added Laura, who’d had too much wine. “He’s a brilliant teacher. Was tenured very young.”

“What are your politics, then?” Matti said, knowing she was pushing a button.

“Excuse me?”

“What do you think of the current state of affairs? What do you think of your friend’s work?”

Matti was feeling bold; she thought it might have been the high heels. Not only was she disobeying a direct order by talking to these men, but she was baiting them.

Thistlewood, for all of his suspicions about this woman, was not about to pass up an opportunity to preach. By the time he’d finished his first sentence, she was already tuning out.

*

Over Thistlewood’s shoulder, Matti noticed a woman with a large leopard-print handbag. She looked to be in her late thirties to early forties and was dressed in a taupe pantsuit. Her mouse brown hair was short and parted to the left. The woman was relatively unremarkable. What made Matti notice her was the way she held the handbag.

It was off her shoulder and cocked at an angle almost perpendicular to the woman’s side. To Matti, it appeared as though the woman was aiming the bag. And then it hit her.

“Excuse me, please,” she interrupted Thistlewood, who had already bashed both Presidents Bush and Obama. “I’ll be right back.”

Thistlewood was stunned, his mouth still forming the end of the word he’d last uttered when Matti crossed the room with purpose. As she neared the pantsuited woman, the woman saw her coming and began to walk away.

Matti caught her near the bar and lightly touched her arm. “Excuse me,” Matti began almost breathlessly, “I don’t mean to upset you, but could you tell me what kind of purse that is? I just love it.” She exacted a fake smile and lightly rubbed her fingers on the bag’s material.

“Uh,” the woman said, caught off guard, “I’m not sure. It was a gift.” The woman’s lips curled up, not quite forming a smile. She pulled away from Matti and quickly moved into the crowd, and Matti saw her leave the building.

Any minutiae of doubt that Matti had about her boss’s secretive intentions were evaporating. He was tailing her, watching her. That woman was snapping photographs or shooting video with that bag, and Matti was certain of it.

As fashion-challenged as Matti thought herself to be, she knew that bag. It was a large Coach brand Ocelot Haircalf Brooke bag. It cost fourteen hundred dollars. Matti loved Coach and had several of the brand’s briefcases. She knew any woman who spent that much money on a bag would know the designer.

Matti walked toward the floor-to-ceiling glass window that looked out onto the sidewalk. She saw the woman on a phone, standing next to two men in dark suits, who were also on phones. A black Chevy Suburban pulled up to the curb and the three got inside. It was NSA, no question. Her agency was spying on her.

She was watching the SUV speed off when George Edwards stepped up next to her. He looked out the window with her, though he didn’t know what she was watching.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine.” She stared outside before turning to look at Edwards. “I’m sorry for interrupting your friend like that.” She looked back to the spot in the room where they’d been talking and saw Thistlewood still standing there with his girlfriend. They were looking at the da Vinci knockoff on the wall.

“I should go back and apologize to him.” She started toward Thistlewood when Edwards stopped her.

“Don’t worry about it. I have someone else I’d like you to meet.”

There was something kind about Edwards. She didn’t understand what it was, but he was charming and chivalrous.

Underneath it all, however, she could sense that something was off. He was definitely angry. Whatever he repressed in conversation and personal interaction was evident in his art. She wasn’t kidding when she suggested that he had issues.

Thistlewood, she reasoned, was a poser, an academic who thought he was smarter than those around him. She could see it in the way he looked at her and the way he related to his girlfriend. His body language reeked of superiority.

Compensation for insecurity.
She recalled H. L. Mencken:
“Those who can—do. Those who can’t—teach.”
Matti thought that comic notion applied specifically to a man like Thistlewood. As attractive as she’d found him in the file, she found him repulsive in person.

She and Edwards reached the bar. Standing there, whiskey in hand, was a tall, impeccably dressed man. Matti recognized him from the file. It was Sir Spencer Thomas, the Daturans’ leader. She suddenly felt flush.

“Sir Spencer Thomas.” He genuflected and offered his hand as he bowed his head to the vision in front of him.

“Matti Harrold.” She took the knight’s hand. It was thick and cold.

“Lovely.” The knight brought her hand to his lips and gently kissed it. “Absolutely smashing.”

Matti studied his face as he looked up at her. His lips were thin and looked to her as though two worms were pushed together. His eyes were not warm. There was a distance in them, a darkness Matti could not reconcile.

“George,” he said, keeping his eyes on Matti, “who is this beautiful creature?”

“We just met, Sir Spencer,” Edwards said, sounding proud of himself. “I thought you’d like to meet her.”

Sir Spencer leaned on the bar and took a sip of his whiskey. Looking at Matti, he was pleased he’d decided to attend. He’d considered the potential consequences of the Daturans all appearing in public at the same place; then he’d reasonably convinced himself that they were invisible. There were no indications that the government even knew they existed, let alone that they were plotting something spectacular. He’d come to the conclusion that if the government did know about the group, and they were under any sort of surveillance, changing their habits would only bring more attention to them.

He’d told all of the Daturans to make an appearance. Edwards was there, of course. Thistlewood and his piece-du-jour were there. Sir Spencer had seen Jimmy Ings come and go. The only one he’d not seen was Bill Davidson.

Davidson’s misgivings about the plot were weighing on Sir Spencer. Having Matti Harrold standing in front of him in her well-fitting black dress was a nice distraction.

“Matti had some interesting things to say about my work,” continued Edwards. “She seems to think I have a lot of anger. She likes my take on politics but worries that I have ‘issues’.”

“I didn’t say I liked your politics,” Matti corrected. “I said that I thought you were talented. I essentially agreed that the iconography in your work is powerful. I didn’t say I agree with your point of view. There’s a difference between admiration and agreement.”

“Quite the spunky one, isn’t she?” the knight observed. She appeared genuine to Sir Spencer. He was oblivious to the fact that her beauty was clouding his judgment. A man of his experience and expertise should have seen what Thistlewood had. An alarm should have sounded. This woman was not the kind to like George Edwards.

*

Thistlewood saw the woman with the large purse before Matti noticed her. He could tell there was something odd about the way she held the bag. He’d also noticed two other men who seemed out of place.

They were wearing dark business suits and seemed disconnected from the party. They stood alone and were observing people more than they were admiring art. Thistlewood imagined they were government agents.

When the suspicious translator abruptly left their conversation to approach the woman with the bag, he was certain that something was afoot. This wasn’t paranoia, he assured himself. They were being watched.

“We need to go see Sir Spencer and George,” he told Laura. He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the bar. “I need to talk to them.”

When they joined the group, Laura let go of her boyfriend’s hand and got the bartender’s attention. She wanted to take advantage of the open bar.

“I am sorry for being rude a few minutes ago,” Matti said, reaching out to touch Thistlewood on the wrist. “I have been looking for that handbag everywhere! I am a huge Coach fan, and I can’t find that purse anywhere.”

“Was the woman helpful?” Thistlewood pulled his wrist away from her hand.

“No. She’d gotten it as a gift and didn’t know where it was purchased.”

“How unfortunate.” His tone was polite; the sarcasm was on his face. He looked up at the knight. “Sir Spencer, could I have a moment?”

“Of course.” Sir Spencer slapped Edwards’s shoulder and bowed to Matti as he moved toward Thistlewood. The two walked away, leaving Edwards, Matti, and Laura at the bar.

“What is it, Art?”

“I think we’re blown.”

“Really?” The knight was unmoved. “What makes you think that?” He knew that Thistlewood wanted his approval, but he didn’t think the man would try so hard.

“First”—Thistlewood was counting on his fingers—“I am sure I was being followed earlier. When I left the pub this morning, someone was tailing me. I think they were watching me in my office too.”

“Second?” The knight remained impassive.

“Second,” parroted the professor, “I think there were at least three people here tonight who were watching us. They may have been snapping photographs of us.”

The knight knew himself to be a perceptive man. He’d seen nothing. He said nothing.

“Third”—Thistlewood held up three fingers on his right hand—“there’s something unusual about that woman with George.”

“The only thing unusual about her is her beauty.”

“Look, Sir Spencer, I’m telling you there’s a leak. Someone in our group is playing both sides.”

The knight considered it and studied Thistlewood’s face. He saw desperation and fear. Even if the professor was paranoid, Sir Spencer could tell Thistlewood thoroughly believed what he was saying.

The knight looked over at the beauty and George Edwards. Edwards was talking to her and, at first blush, she appeared to be paying attention to him. However, the closer he paid attention, the more he could see she was disinterested. Her eyes darted around the room. She was surveying the crowd. She wasn’t looking
at
something in the crowds, Sir Spencer concluded, she was looking
for
something.

“What did she say she does for a living?” Sir Spencer kept his eyes across the room.

“Translator.”

“Hmm.”

“What does that mean?”

“Translator is a typical job for CIA or even FBI operatives. NSA sometimes,” Sir Spencer replied. He bit his lower lip. “They’ll generally tell you they work for the State Department or the Department of Defense. Did she say where she works?”

“No.” Thistlewood’s head was on a swivel as he looked at the translator and then looked at Sir Spencer watching her. Was he right? Was she really a spy?

“Which one of us do you think is responsible?” Sir Spencer shifted his weight from one foot to the other and clasped his hands behind his back. The button on his jacket pulled on the cashmere, stretching it unattractively against his gut.

“You mean the traitor?”

It was an interesting choice of words.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know.” He was hesitant to tell Sir Spencer who he thought might be the double agent. “It’s hard to say.”

“Take a guess.”

“Well, George was acting unusual this morning.” He winced, waiting for the knight to immediately, loudly refute his theory. Sir Spencer said nothing; he was watching Edwards interact with the translator.

Edwards seemed too comfortable, the knight thought. He was too relaxed around this gorgeous woman. Edwards usually didn’t have that sort of game.

The knight checked himself. Were his thoughts tainted by Thistlewood’s ideas? He wasn’t certain what to think. He needed more information.