Mistress

Chapter 44

When Anne Brennan comes out of her condo building the next morning, she catches my eye from across the street and does a double take. She points to herself as a question and I nod.

“Ben,” she says when she crosses the street. I can only imagine how I look to her. Another sleepless night at another hotel after I tried in vain to resurrect Jonathan Liu’s laptop.

She reacts badly when I give her the news about the Chinese lobbyist. Bad as in scared, which is the appropriate reaction. Everyone associated with Diana Hotchkiss seems to be falling on hard times these days.

“What in the world is going on?” she whispers to me, shading her eyes with a hand. She’s a nice midwestern girl, fun-loving and sweet-not cut out for this kind of thing.

“I don’t know, Anne. That’s what I’m trying to find out.” This isn’t exactly an ideal locale for a conversation, standing in the middle of a busy sidewalk in the U Street Corridor, but this whole affair is so bizarre that this rendezvous seems to fit right in.

I take her by the shoulders. “Listen, Anne. I thought I knew Diana. But I guess I didn’t. I didn’t know about Jonathan Liu or Alexander Kutuzov. And I didn’t know she was taking medication for depression.”

I can see from Anne’s reaction that she didn’t know that last part, either.

“What I’m saying is, I don’t know what I don’t know. But something was going on with Diana. And whether you’ve been holding back purposely or you don’t realize it, I think you know something you haven’t told me.”

She draws back, like she’s been accused. She places a hand at the nape of her neck. “I’m not holding back. I swear. Ask me anything.”

I struggle to even know what to ask. “The White House,” I say, recalling my conversation with Jonathan Liu. “Did Diana have any connection to the White House?”

“Well, c’mon, Ben. She was Craig Carney’s aide. Isn’t he one of President Francis’s best friends?”

I sigh. She’s right, of course. Craig Carney is deputy director of the CIA and one of the president’s closest allies. He probably calls the White House his second home. Diana probably did, too.

“Diana was there all the time,” Anne says. “She was on a first-name basis with Libby.”

The First Lady, she means. Back when Blake Francis was a member of Congress, before he was elected governor of New York, he married Libretta Rose, a socialite and heiress to a jewel company’s fortune. Libby Rose Francis bankrolled his successful gubernatorial race, and eight years later he was elected president.

“And you know how Diana talked about President Francis,” she adds. “It was like he walked on water.”

I do recall that. “What about Operation Delano?” I ask. “Does that ring a bell?”

Anne’s darting eyes freeze. Recognition. Her mouth parts and she looks at me, then thinks twice about responding.

“Tell me,” I plead.

“I know that word. Delano, I mean. Not Operation Delano, but-I heard Diana say it over the phone one time. She was on her cell phone. I don’t know who she was talking to. But I remember it because it’s not a name you hear often. It was FDR’s middle name, right?”

“Right.”

“I think what she was saying was, ‘I don’t care about Delano,’ or something like that. Like she was mad, arguing with someone. I remember asking her, when she got off the phone, if she was having an affair with FDR. Y’know, making a joke.”

“What did she say when you said that?”

The wind blows Anne’s bangs off her forehead. She looks younger than her years. Under different circumstances, I might-well, under different circumstances. “She changed the subject, that’s what she did. What do you think this means, Ben? What’s Operation Delano?”

“I don’t know,” I say. There’s no point in engaging in rank speculation, especially with Anne, who’s probably freaked out enough as it is. So I don’t tell her what I think.

I don’t tell her what I get when I add up Diana’s suspicious death, the involvement of the CIA, the Chinese government, and what appears to be a massive cover-up.

I don’t tell her that I think Diana Hotchkiss might be a spy for the US government.