Page 46 of Casualties of War
Chapter Ten
“Why do we always seem to talk in the afternoon?” Olivia asked Daniel’s image on the screen. “I don’t remember planning any phone call yet we never chat at night or in the morning. I always end up watching you swelter in the hottest part of the day.”
Daniel’s smile was heated. “If I must be sweaty, I would rather be so in your company, my lovely wife.”
“My company and two phones,”she pointed out briskly.
“Youliketools,” Daniel replied.
Olivia gave up and laughed. “I just thank heaven for the cloaking software, or we couldn’t do this at all. It looks as if there’s a solid wall behind you, Daniel. Not canvas. Are you somewhere civilized?”
“We’re in a village a day’s walk from the city,” Daniel said. “New assignment.”
“I presume you won’t talk about the assignment?”
“I’m waiting for the assignment. Duardo said to get settled in the city, set up personas and wait for orders. I suspect he’s anticipating future needs. It’s what I would do.” His tone was approving.
“They’re getting ready to launch onto the main island,” Olivia said, a knot forming in her chest. “Nick will move without the States’ help.”
“How is your father?” Daniel asked.
It sounded like asubject change, yet Olivia could track the association that had promoted Daniel to ask. The lack of American commitment, to Nick’s meeting with the President, who had given the vocal agreement, to her father, who had helped set up the meeting…her father, who now laid in a hospital bed on the other side of the wall she was leaning against.
“There’s no change,” she told Daniel. “He hasn’t woken.”She swallowed. “I talk to him, anyway. Talking is supposed to help coma patients.”
She spoke about her life between the day she had stopped talking to him and her ex-husband, to the day she had seen her father again, only this month. Olivia knew she was trying to breach the gap with her descriptions of the countries she had been posted to and the work she had done there. It was her version ofprayer. If she filled in the blanks for him then her father might choose to wake and speak to her.
Daniel shook his head. “You shouldn’t feel guilty, Olivia. You didn’t set off the bomb.”
“They say it was a boiler blowing up.”
Daniel laughed. “It was a bomb,” he said. “No boiler, not even an industrial sized one, could destroy a concrete and steel wing. I saw the wreckage. It was a shaped charge,designed to weaken the structure of the building and drill through concrete.”
Olivia stared at him, her heart thudding for different reasons. “Bombs can be directed that way?”
“C4 wasmadefor it,” Daniel replied. “Engineers believed they were creating a better demolition tool, and they were. Then the military and terrorists got hold of it.” He shrugged.
“The White House didn’t say anyone wastrying to claim responsibility,” Olivia said, her mind working. “Although they wouldn’t, if they want the world to believe it was a boiler. Only, who will swallow such a lie, if someone like you can see through it so easily?”
“The lie doesn’t have to be water-tight. It only has to be plausible enough to make the world hesitate and reconsider. It gives them breathing room,” Daniel said.
“Breathingroom to do what?” Olivia asked.
Daniel shook his head. “You’re the politician,” he replied. “I just work around here.”
“You’re sneaky. This is right up your alley,” she pointed out. “Why would you manipulate the truth like that?”
“If it was me?” He blew out a breath. “Well, it stopped everyone from looking for terrorists under every bed. Maybe they know who it is and want to deal with themwithout everyone watching. Or they need time to deal with them.”
“Time and a distraction,” Olivia summarized. “That sounds like someone fighting a rear-guard action, doesn’t it?”
Daniel snorted. “No one has the power to put the United States on a defensive footing. Even when they went down for the count after 9-11, they still popped right back up and came gunning for the bad guys.”
“If theywere being proactive, they would return my calls,” Olivia replied. “They would reach out and suck up whatever help we could give them.”
Daniel hesitated. “Then I have no idea what’s going on.”
Olivia shook her head. “Neither do I and I don’t like it. Not one bit. It feels…” She scrunched up her nose. “This will sound stupid.”
