Mistress

Chapter 100

I pace the room another half hour. My legs are unsteady and my limbs are tingling with dread.

Give me your account number, Kutuzov said.

So this time, I guessed right about the video. The clues were there for me all along. Operation Delano. I was right that the original Operation Delano was a plan to blackmail President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But I was wrong about the reason.

I forgot about his wife, Eleanor. The rumors, to this day, are unconfirmed, but in many circles it’s accepted as fact that Eleanor Roosevelt was a lesbian. Stalin must have heard those rumors, too. He was trying to dig up proof that FDR’s wife was gay so he could use it as leverage at the Yalta summit-as blackmail.

In the 1940s, that would probably be damaging information.

(For the record, this doesn’t count against my moratorium on presidential trivia.)

Anyway, fast-forward almost seventy years, and it’s Operation Delano 2.0. The Russians get proof that Libby Rose Francis has a girlfriend named Diana Hotchkiss. In this day, would it be a damaging political scandal for the president to admit that his wife is a lesbian? Haven’t we come further than that as a nation?

Apparently, President Francis doesn’t want to be the test case.

And who knows what’s on that video? If it’s graphic sex-I pause here to recall all Diana’s sex toys in her bedroom closet-it would be enough to scare any politician. That, I assume, is the straw that broke the camel’s back from the president’s point of view. He couldn’t survive a video making its way around the Internet of his wife doing kinky things with another woman.

I jump at the sound of a loud rap on my door. My pulse explodes into a pounding throb. Who even knows I’m here? I search for a means of escape-

Suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

There isn’t a window in this place, nowhere to hide-

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door; only this, and nothing more”-

“It’s Sean!” he calls out. “It’s Sean, Ben.”

I put my hands on my knees and wait for my breathing to resume. Deep breaths, Ben. Deep breaths.

“Hey,” he says when I let him in. He takes a moment to appraise me. “What were you saying just now?”

“I wasn’t saying anything.”

“Something-it sounded like that Edgar Allan Poe poem. ‘The Raven.’”

I take a breath. “I said that out loud?”

“You did.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Did you sleep last night?”

“Not a wink.” I close and lock the door behind him. “You’ve got an untraceable phone to make your call?”

“Yes. For God’s sake, how many times are you going to ask me?”

“That’s a big help to me, Sean. Really.”

“Think nothing of it.” Sean takes a look around my fleabag hotel room and probably thinks, well, nothing of it.

“So?” he asks. “Did you guess right about the video?”

“Yep.”

“Jesus. A sex video of Diana Hotchkiss and the First Lady?”

I nod my head.

“And you figured it out just by what you saw last night in that car?”

“I should have figured it out long ago,” I say. “But yeah, last night did it for me. And your photos from your zoom lens are even better than the view I had.”

He nods with pride. “Yeah, I got a nice, tight shot of that kiss. That was no friends’ kiss, either.”

He pulls a copy of that photo out of his bag. He showed it to me on his camera last night, but it’s the first time I’ve seen a printout of the photo.

A close-up photo of Anne Brennan, sitting inside the black sedan, planting a passionate, urgent kiss on Diana Hotchkiss.

He’s right-it’s no kiss between friends. It’s a kiss of two women who desperately miss each other. A kiss of two women in love.

Oh, Diana. I guess you’ll never stop surprising me.

The photo is enough of a close-up that you can’t see a whole lot more than their faces, but I saw a flash of orange when I peeked into the car last night, and Sean’s photo shows a bit of Diana’s clothing as well. And what seals the deal is the glint of steel on her wrist as her hand tenderly caresses Anne’s face during the kiss.

Diana was in handcuffs and an orange prison jumpsuit.

Diana wasn’t a spy working for the United States. Diana was a traitor. She secretly recorded a sexual romp with the First Lady and was selling it to the highest bidder. My guess is she was working with the Russians initially, but then got greedy and invited the Chinese in, too. Or maybe she was working with both all along, but didn’t tell one about the other. Who knows?

The details don’t really matter. What matters now is that I have to deal with it, and if I don’t do it right, I’ll either go to prison for life or be fitted for a coffin.

“What do you need from me now?” Sean asks.

I snap out of my funk. “I just want you to make that phone call.”

“Nothing else?”

“Only this and nothing more,” I say.

He doesn’t know whether to laugh or frown. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I don’t want you anywhere near the National Mall today, Sean. If this doesn’t work out, I’m either dead or under arrest. And you’ll be charged as an accessory.”

He makes a face. Telling him to stay away from excitement is like telling Kim Kardashian to stay away from a camera.

“All you’ve done so far is investigate the disappearance of Nina Jacobs,” I say. “Nobody can prosecute you for that. If you help me now, you could spend the rest of your life in prison. Or get killed in the crossfire.”

I walk over to the door and open it. Enough innocent people have died. If I’m next, so be it. But not Sean.

“Go,” I say.

He finally relents. As he passes me on his way out, he flicks the back of his wrist against my chest. “Hey,” he says.

“I know,” I respond. “Don’t get dead.”