Page 108 of One Minute Out

“Let me explain how this is all supposed to function. You work for this intelligence agency, Violator. This intelligence agency does not work for you.”

Yeah, I knew it was going to be like this, though I was hopeful it would be all unicorns and rainbows.

Hope is not a strategy, I tell myself yet again. Then I tell myself, Screw it. I turn off my faux charm and let her have it. “Just cut the shit and do this for me! Lives are at stake.”

“Lives are at stake all the time, with everything we do. Every single day you run off to go find yourself, or whatever the hell you do during your hiatuses, lives are threatened. The program you belong to needs you, and you are out there—”

“Please, Suzanne. Please get me something.”

She stops bitching, which is a first, and then she sighs, which happens all the time. Finally, she says, “I’ve never heard of the Consortium.”

“What about the pipeline?”

“What is that?”

“It’s kind of like an underground railroad for the trafficked women. A smuggling circuit the victims are put through by the Consortium.”

“No, I’ve never heard of that, either.”

She sounds credible, but again, she also sounded credible when she said she hadn’t been trying to shoot me in the head back in Scotland, and I retain doubts about that event.

I say, “Fine. But I bet you are sitting in front of a snazzy computer that has access to all sorts of supersecret files and databases, and you can query those terms in that context, and find out if the Agency has any intel I can use.”

“Yes, I do have just such a computer in front of me. But what do I get out of this?”

As I walk through the garden of the church in the cool morning, it occurs to me, and not for the first time, that everybody wants something from me.

“What do you get? How about my unwavering devotion?”

“I already have a cat, Violator.”

Of course you do. “Just tell me what you want from me.”

“If I give you this intel, you will come back to D.C.?”

“Not immediately; I need actionable intel so I can act. But as soon as I’m done with—”

She interrupts. “Sorry, Violator. I need you. Your country needs you.”

“I’ll kiss your ass and I’ll kiss the flag, probably not in that order, very soon. But for now I need to know about the Consortium. Seems to be run by an American male in his fifties. He used the name Tom, but that’s going to be a pseudonym. There’s an American female psychologist and a South African involved, as well. A rich Greek dude... he’s dead. Don’t know his name.”

“How did he die?” she asks, but the way she asks tells me she has a pretty good suspicion that I killed him.

“Would you believe natural causes?”

Brewer just sighs again.

I continue. “The organization either owns or has access to a megayacht called La Primarosa. Right now it’s in the northern Adriatic, heading to Venice, unless they changed their plans.”

Brewer sounds like she’s typing all this into her computer. Then she says, “Fine. Give me an hour and I’ll call you back.”

This went better than I thought. Momentarily stunned by my powers of persuasion, I can’t even speak.

“Violator?”

I do my best to recover. “Uh... yeah. That’s great. Let me call you, though. One hour.”

The line goes dead, and I stand there in the middle of the well-kept church grounds, staring up at the steeple. It’s a magnificent sight on this sunny, warm morning, but all I can think about is tonight and the twenty-three women and girls who have been on my mind since Bosnia.

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