Under Deepest Cover

Chapter 9

They were ten minutes late for the party in the private dining room on the floor below the restaurant, but no one seemed to notice or care. The first appetizers were being passed around, wine was flowing and conversation hummed.

Bryan noticed that someone had put place cards on the table. “Was this your idea?” he said, picking up his own and showing it to Lucy.

She nodded. “I thought it might be better if everyone from the same magazine didn’t sit together. So we don’t have conversational cliques.”

And Lucy had done something else rather bold: instead of putting together two long tables, she’d arranged the copper-top tables into a big square.

“Is it okay?” she asked uncertainly. “I thought everyone would be able to see and talk to everyone else this way.”

“You think my family needs to talk more?”

“They talk a lot. Just sometimes not in the most productive ways. And some of them could do with more listening.”

Bryan laughed. “I hope you’re not fantasizing you can be a peacemaker. The bitching and moaning and yelling isn’t going to stop until someone is named CEO.”

“I can try.”

Stash appeared to take drink orders, but everyone seemed content with the wine.

“Do you want to check the menu?” he whispered to Bryan.

“I’m sure it’s fine. But I don’t see any garlic butter.”

“I’ll send someone down.”

“I’ll come up and get it. I want to make the rounds in the dining room.”

Upstairs, he did some glad-handing. He sent a bottle of wine to a man he recognized as a competing restaurateur, comped a plate of hors d’oeuvres to several cast members from a soap, paid his respects to an opera diva.

Then he spotted someone he hadn’t seen in his rounds, a woman dining alone at a small table, nursing a glass of red wine. Her eyes darted around the dining room until finally her gaze found him, and she smiled uncertainly.

He walked briskly to her table, and she stood to greet him.

“Mom. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? How come no one told me you were here?”

Amanda Elliott hugged her son, then straightened her neat suit jacket. “I’m not sure your new hostess recognized me. And if you’re busy, it’s okay.”

“Never too busy for you. Mom, there’s someone I’d like you to meet. She’s downstairs.” He hesitated, knowing his mother was no longer comfortable around the Elliott clan. “We’re having a party to celebrate EPH profits.”

“Then you’re busy. I’ll come back-”

“No, Mom, I think you should join us. Karen’s here.” His aunt Karen was the one Elliott Amanda had remained close to, other than her sons.

“Is Patrick here?” she asked warily.

“He meant to be, so he could whip everyone into a frenzy of competition. But he canceled. Gram’s not feeling well, and he didn’t want to leave her home alone.”

Amanda immediately showed her concern. “Maeve’s all right, isn’t she?”

“Just her arthritis acting up. Come on, bring your wineglass. Everyone will be happy to see you.”

“Everyone? Then your father’s not here?”

“Everyone, and he is here. His divorce from Sharon is final, you know.”

“I heard. I also heard about your new girlfriend, and I am curious.”

Bryan took his mother’s arm, giving her no chance to protest further. He forgot about the garlic butter that had sent him upstairs in the first place.

“Everyone, look who I found.”

Amanda looked embarrassed, but Bryan wasn’t disappointed in his family. Several of his cousins popped out of their chairs to greet Amanda with a hug. They were all fond of her, and her absence at family gatherings was always commented on, except by Patrick.

Then there was Daniel, Bryan’s father, who never said anything about Amanda. But Bryan knew his parents still had lingering feelings for each other.

“Mom,” Bryan said, “I want you to meet Lindsay Morgan.”

“Lindsay.” Amanda took both of Lucy’s hands in hers. Bryan was alarmed by the sheen of tears in his mother’s eyes. What was that about? Surely the mere sight of Lucy didn’t fill Amanda with despair. She’d never been like some moms, thinking no girl was good enough for her boys.

They exchanged a few pleasantries, and Lucy said, “Oh, Mrs. Elliott, won’t you join us?” Without even realizing it, Lucy had slipped into the role of hostess.

It seemed a natural for her. What was more, it felt somehow…right.

“Call me Amanda, please. And I can see you all are in the middle of something.

Bryan insisted I come down and say hi, but I’ll be on my way now.” But her turndown lacked conviction. Bryan could tell she wanted to stay. Though she often claimed she’d been much happier away from the big, noisy Elliott clan, Bryan knew she sometimes missed being a part of something larger than herself.

“Oh, nonsense,” said Karen, and Bryan could have kissed his aunt. “You come join us.”

“You can take Finola’s chair,” said Bryan’s uncle Shane. “Obviously she can’t tear herself away from work, not even to gloat that she’s in first place.”

This comment started a round of arguments, as it had been intended to do. Amanda shrugged and took the last empty chair where Finola’s place card sat. Bryan watched his father’s face to gauge his reaction. Daniel’s gaze hadn’t left Amanda since she’d entered the room, and any fool could tell he was anything but indifferent. But he was guarded enough that Bryan, even with all his training in body language, couldn’t tell whether Daniel was pleased or angry to have his ex-wife-his first ex-wife-thrust into his company. They sat only two chairs away from each other, with a table corner between them, so they could easily converse if they wanted.

More appetizers appeared, followed by the soup and salad choices Lucy had made.

It would have been hard for her to go wrong-everything on the Une Nuit menu was designed to be mixed and matched. But Bryan was nonetheless pleased with and, yes, proud of the menu Lucy had put together. He told himself it was because he wanted her to appear to be a good match for him, as befitted their cover. But he knew it went deeper than that, which troubled him. He had no business getting so attached to her. Given the progress they were making on the Alliance Trust case, she wouldn’t be with him for long.

As various members of his family got up to stretch their legs between courses, a certain amount of musical chairs took place at the table. Bryan found himself seated next to his cousin Liam, one of Uncle Michael and Aunt Karen’s sons. Liam was the chief financial officer at EPH, and just before the main course, he’d made a brief speech detailing the profits at each of the four EPH magazines.

He’d also read a prepared speech from Patrick congratulating all of his children and grandchildren for rising to the occasion and making the competition a real horse race.

That had produced a few snide comments about what, exactly, Patrick had intended besides increasing profits, but Lucy, of all people, managed to smooth over the outbursts of acrimony and keep the evening on a pleasant note.

“So, Liam, how close is the race?” Bryan asked his cousin confidentially. “You gave us the raw numbers, but I understand the winner is the magazine that grows the most, percentagewise.”

“It’s closer than you can imagine,” Liam said in a low voice. “But I chose to underplay that. Other than to say that Charisma is in first place, I don’t want the other editors to know just how close they are. It’ll only make them crazier.”

“Things are kind of tense, huh?”

“You have no idea. Everyone’s on their best behavior tonight, maybe out of consideration for you and Lindsay and some of the others here who aren’t directly involved with the magazines. But I’m afraid-really afraid-that this crazy competition of Granddad’s is going to create rifts in the family that can never be healed.”

“You’re talking about Finola?”

“She was already on shaky ground with Granddad. Frankly I was relieved she didn’t show tonight. I’m not sure she could have buried the hatchet, even for one evening.”

“In one of her brothers’ heads, maybe. Well, she’s always had something to prove.”

Stash and three waiters chose that moment to appear with several of Une Nuit’s famously decadent desserts as well as some pistachio sorbet for those with more modest appetites. When serving was completed, he leaned down to whisper something to Bryan.

“Oh. I’ll be right up.”

He excused himself from the table, but before he went upstairs, he stopped by Lucy’s chair. “Any interest in meeting Britney Spears?”

“Really?” Lucy squeaked. “She’s here?”

“Having drinks.”

Lucy didn’t have to be asked twice. He thought it was charming that she was so starstruck, that her unfortunate experience with Cruz Tabor hadn’t made her bitter.

Upstairs the bar was packed, but the crowd seemed to part for Bryan. Many of the regulars knew him and nodded, giving curious glances to Lucy, but he didn’t want to take time for introductions now.

He found the Britney Spears party at the very epicenter of the crowd. The star stopped midconversation to greet him. He welcomed her warmly to Une Nuit, introduced her to Lucy, who managed to squeak out a nervous greeting. He ordered a bottle of Cristal on the house, handed Britney a card and told her to call him or Stash if she ever needed anything. He was about to leave when the flash of a camera caught his attention.

The first thing Bryan did was step between Lucy and the camera, which he couldn’t see, but he knew the direction it had come from. He didn’t relish having his own picture taken and usually managed to avoid it, since celebrity wasn’t exactly good for the anonymity required of an undercover operative. But better his face in a tabloid’s than Lucy’s.

With the second flash, he saw the perpetrator, a tall, skinny kid with frizzy hair and a pocket camera.

Bryan reached him in an instant, grabbed his arm and prevented him from taking another shot. “That’s not allowed in here.” He walked the kid to the front door.

“You’re throwing me out?” he said in a loud enough voice to garner attention.

“No. You give your camera to our hostess for safekeeping. She’ll give it back when you’re ready to leave.”

“Forget it, man,” the guy said, jerking his arm out of Bryan’s grasp and huffing out the door.

Bryan made a quick apology to Britney, who was gracious about it, and he and Lucy returned to the private party downstairs.

“That was cool,” Lucy said. “Thanks. You must think I’m silly.”

“No,” he said, but he was too preoccupied to say more. Should he have followed that kid, taken the camera away? He wasn’t one of the known paparazzi. Probably just a Britney fan. Still, fans sometimes sold their pictures to the tabloids.

Well, nothing he could do about it now.

The next morning, on the way home from their morning run, Bryan stopped at a newsstand and bought the latest issue of Global News Roundup, one of the tackiest tabloids on the market. Rather than celebrity news, the Roundup sported doctored photos of the president with his supposed alien baby, a giant squid the size of the Queen Mary, and stories about how the government was practicing mind control through chlorinated tap water.

“Not your usual reading material,” Lucy commented as Bryan paid the vendor a couple of bucks.

“I have my reasons.”

“Surely no paparazzi would stoop to publishing Britney’s picture in that rag.”

Bryan laughed. “No, I’m not worried about that.”

He didn’t explain further until they were home, showered, and had shared a breakfast of yogurt and whole-wheat bagels. She’d been pleased to discover Bryan didn’t always indulge in the high-fat fare from Une Nuit.

When the dishes were washed and put away, Bryan opened the briefcase he’d taken with him yesterday and produced a thick stack of Global News Roundup, to which he added the current issue.

“I have to leave again today.”

Lucy groaned. “I know your work is important, but I’m getting a little stir-crazy, stuck in your apartment all day by myself.”

“Our surveillance of Vargov has produced some results. He made contact yesterday with a known terrorist sympathizer. Their conversation was encrypted, but the lab is working on it. We think it might lead us to Stungun. If it does, we’ll have all the evidence we need to make arrests.”

Lucy knew she should be excited to hear that news. She would be out of danger; she could resume her normal life-whatever that was. She could call her parents, who by now might have started to wonder where she was, if they’d tried to call her.

But Bryan’s news brought her no joy. “So is this supposed to keep me entertained while you’re away?” she asked, ruffling the stack of tabloids. If he thought stories of mutant three-headed dogs and monkey colonies on Mars would be her choice of entertainment, he didn’t know her very well.

“In a way, yes. You’re good at puzzles, and I’ve got one for you.”

Lucy’s interest ratcheted up a notch. “Yeah?”

“The publisher of this rag is a suspected spy. We believe he’s supplying information to-oh, let’s just say governments unfriendly to the United States-through secret drop sites. And the locations for those drop sites are encoded and published somewhere in his magazine. Our code breakers are working on it and I thought you might like to take a crack.”

Lucy was unabashedly thrilled at the idea. “How could I possibly do better than professional code breakers?”

“They’re good at encryption, but their training puts limits on them, too.

Because you aren’t trained, you can think outside the box. Just have a go.”

“Okay. But I’ll still miss you.”

“I’ll try and get back soon.” He gave her a kiss that ensured she would think of him often during the day, and then he was gone.

Lucy spread the tabloids out on the living room floor-there were eight weeks’ worth. She had to figure out what was common to all the issues. For instance, could the encoded information always be hidden in an alien story? Or a story by a certain reporter?

None of her initial ideas worked out, but she kept trying, reading every story, hoping something would jump out at her.

Bryan couldn’t have chosen a better way to distract her. She really did love puzzles. She’d invented her own secret code in sixth grade, which she and some of her friends used as the basis for an exclusive club.

She filled legal pads with scribbles, combining and recombining words and phrases. She’d briefly thought maybe the Lucky Lotto numbers were the key, making references to page numbers, column numbers, column inches, but nothing panned out.

Finally she got the idea to look at the ads. There was one ad for a weight-loss product that caught her attention. It ran in all eight issues, and though the graphics looked similar each time, the text in each one was radically different.

The advertising copy seemed odd to her-and not totally persuasive. No pseudoscientific jargon, no claims of pounds melting away while you sleep.

She did a web search for the product. She found a badly designed Web site and some discussions on a dieting listserve in which people were puzzled because the product was always out of stock. Yet the ads kept running…

Positive she was onto something, Lucy kept at it. When Bryan returned later that afternoon, she had covered every surface of his living room with yellow paper and sticky notes.

“Bryan!” She jumped to her feet, then almost fell over as her legs cramped from too many hours of sitting on the floor. She realized she was starving too, and was shocked to see the time. She’d forgotten to eat.

“Did you make any arrests?” she asked, not too sure she wanted to hear the answer.

“Not yet. Vargov knows we’ve got him, though. He went on the run.”

“Oh, no.”

“We know where he is, but he thinks he’s slipped the noose. We’re just waiting to see where he goes for help, who he contacts. It shouldn’t be much longer.” He took his first good look at his living room. “What in the world have you been doing?”

“Breaking a code.”

“Any progress?”

“I know this sounds crazy, but I think I’ve figured it out.”

“Ha! I knew you could do it.”

Unable to contain her excitement, she showed Bryan how the coded copy referred to a URL connected to the product Web site. On a page of customer testimonials, a matrix of numbers and letters specified streets and block numbers in and around New York.

“You take my breath away,” Bryan said. “This is brilliant.”

But suddenly all Lucy could think about was taking Bryan’s breath away by another method, one that involved a lot less clothing.

Bryan obviously had the same idea, and they didn’t even make it to the bedroom.

They didn’t make it past the living room floor. They rolled naked on the soft, lamb’s wool rug, and when their fevered lovemaking was concluded, they both had multicolored Post-it notes stuck to their bodies and in their hair.

A few days later Bryan came home in a foul mood from another of his mysterious errands. It was the first time Lucy had seen him anything but perfectly controlled-well, except for when they were making love-and her heart just about stopped when he rebuffed her normally affectionate greeting.

He was getting tired of her already, she realized. They’d spent too much time together.

He did not volunteer any information about his day, and she didn’t ask. She wasn’t entitled to the details of his investigation, after all, and she was frankly surprised he’d told her as much as he had over the past few days.

“Scarlet has tickets to a play,” she ventured, thinking he might need a diversion. “She invited us to come along with her and John.”

“You go ahead if you want. I’m waiting for phone calls.”

Lucy knew perfectly well he could receive phone calls anywhere. He didn’t need to stay home for that. But she let it pass.

“Then I won’t go, either,” she declared. “It wouldn’t be any fun without-Bryan, what’s wrong? Has something happened?”

“Stungun’s dead. They found him in the Potomac River.”

“That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

“He’s been dead for at least a week.”

“Which means he didn’t disappear because he was on the run. He was murdered.”

“Someone killed him, yes. His body wasn’t meant to be found. They wanted me to believe he was the betrayer. Now I have no idea who it is. But the list of suspects is shrinking.”

He didn’t seem to want comforting, so Lucy didn’t try to touch him. “I’m so sorry,” she said again. “Were you close to him?”

“We don’t make friends at the agency. But he was a good man. I didn’t want to believe he was dirty. Part of me is relieved that he probably wasn’t. But that doesn’t do him much good in his condition.”

“His family will know he died a hero. Does he have a family?”

“I have no idea. We never exchange personal information.”

Lucy wondered whether poor Stungun had a mother, a wife, kids who would mourn him or maybe think he’d run out on them. Would they ever know what happened? Or would he just never come home?

“What if something happened to you?” Lucy asked in a quiet voice. “Would your family know?”

“I have a safety deposit box that will be opened in the event I disappear or die, explaining everything to my family. Well, as much as I can explain.”

“I’m not sure I want to talk about this anymore. It’s too depressing.” A few days ago she’d been so excited about solving the code in the tabloid. She’d been giddy at the idea that her information might help catch a spy and prevent sensitive information from getting into the wrong hands. Now the whole spy thing left her sick to her stomach. It wasn’t glamorous. It was dangerous and ultimately tragic.

“There’s more bad news,” Bryan said. “Vargov got away. He went into a crowd and lost his tail.”

Lucy hadn’t believed she could feel any lower, but now she did. Even the realization that she wouldn’t be leaving Bryan’s protective custody anytime soon didn’t cheer her. This was no way to live, scared to go out in public, feeling powerless, no job, no home of her own.

They had to catch Vargov and his accomplice. “Do you have a plan?”

“I’m working on it.” He took a deep breath, then looked at Lucy and managed a smile. “I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve really messed things up for you.”

“I don’t know what you could have done. Who was tailing Vargov?”

“What?”

“Isn’t it possible someone let him go on purpose?”

He shook his head. “We recruited some FBI agents on that detail. They couldn’t possibly be involved.”

Lucy didn’t know what else to say on the subject. “Are you hungry?” she asked.

He seemed to have to think about that. “Yeah. I don’t think I’ve eaten all day.

Let’s go downstairs. The restaurant is quiet this time of day.”

Lucy wasn’t hungry, but she wanted to keep him company.

Stash put them in the booth reserved for the Elliotts, the most private spot in the whole restaurant. Bryan requested a bowl of Irish stew, though it was hot as blazes outside.

“Surely that’s not on the menu,” she said, since Irish stew was neither French nor Asian.

“Comfort food. Chef Chin can make anything. Gram used to make that for me.”

Poor Bryan. She’d never seen him in such a state. She wanted to make it better, but she couldn’t. So she remained silent, sipping on a cup of coffee. She’d be there for him if he wanted to talk.

He ate his meal in silence, too. She doubted he even tasted it-his thoughts seemed to be far, far away.

Stash wandered by and, seeing that Bryan’s bowl was empty, asked, “You want some dessert? Chef Chin was experimenting with some lemon-butter fortune cookies this afternoon. I thought they were magnifique.”

“Sure,” Bryan said absently. Stash headed for the kitchen, but his cell phone rang and he stopped midstride to answer. Bryan watched him, and the ghost of a smile crossed his face. “Ah, I know that look. Stash has a new girlfriend. Those cookies are long forgotten.”

“I’ll get them,” Lucy said, scooting out of the booth.

“Lucy, you don’t have to wait on me.”

“I don’t mind. Sit tight.”

Lucy wandered into the kitchen, which was strangely deserted. Now, she thought, where would Chef Chin have stored those cookies? There was a hallway lined with custom shelving where staples were stored in clear plastic storage bins of various sizes. She found something that looked like fortune cookies, opened the container and took a whiff. Lemon. These had to be the ones.

She picked up the container, turned and ran into the chest of a young man wearing the apron of a busboy.

“Oh, excuse-” A hand over her mouth cut off her apology, and the plastic container fell to the floor, cookies spilling and breaking everywhere.

“Shut up,” came the urgent voice of the man behind her. “Cooperate, and you won’t be hurt.”

Oh, right! He wrenched her arms behind her, attempting to handcuff her. Lucy screamed and kicked out viciously at the busboy in front of her. She got in one good blow to the guy’s stomach before he captured her legs and quickly wrapped duct tape around her ankles. He performed this task with amazing efficiency, giving the impression that Lucy wasn’t his first kidnapping. In seconds flat she was immobilized, gagged and being carried toward the back door.