chalet in Vail or the yacht in Antigua. Between her appetite for partying and his scant appetite for anything that didn’t concern the projects he lived and breathed, that tidbit of information had some pretty large cracks to slip through.
He pressed the phone to his ear without taking his eyes off the screen.
“Dad, are you watching this?”
“Yeah,” he replied, somewhat dazed. “We’re all standing here at the Garden watching it like zombies.”
“Same here,” his daughter laughed, somewhat nervously. “We were about to go out when a friend of mine in L.A. called to tell us about it.”
“Where are you anyway?”
“Mexico, Dad,” she half-groaned, with an undisguised you-should-know-this tone.
Just then, the initial shock veered to cheers and claps as the already charged fans let their emotions rip. The noise reverberated through the arena. “Wow,” Rebecca echoed, “it sounds wild.”
“It is,” he said with a curious smile. “How long have they been showing it?”
“I’m not sure, we just switched it on a few minutes ago.” She paused for a moment, then said, “Dad . . . what do you think it is?”
And, in what was probably a first for a man who was rightly feted around the world as nothing less than a genius, Larry Rydell had no answer for his daughter. At least, not one that he could share with her.
Not now.
Not ever.
Chapter 7
Washington, D.C .
A light rain peppered the nation’s capital as a black, chauffeur-driven Lexus slipped out of the underground garage and slunk onto Connecticut Avenue and into the sparse late-evening traffic. In the cosseted comfort of its heated backseat, Keenan Drucker stared out in silence, lost in a streaming light show of passing cars, contemplating the events of the momentous day.
The phone calls had begun about an hour ago, and in the days to come, there would be plenty more, of that he was certain.
They were only getting started.
He shut his eyes and leaned back against the richly padded headrest. His mind chewed over his plan, once again dissecting every layer of it, looking for the fatal flaw that he might have somehow missed. As with every previous run-through, he couldn’t find anything to worry about. There were a lot of unknowns, of course—there had to be, by definition. But that didn’t trouble him. Oversights and miscalculations—now those were different. Those he wouldn’t tolerate. A lot of effort had gone into making sure there wouldn’t be any. But unknowns were, well, unknowable. A lifetime of making questionable deals in smoke-filled rooms had taught him that unknowns weren’t worth worrying about until they materialized. If and when they did, his thoroughness, his focus, and his level of commitment would ensure that, if it pleased the Lord—he smiled inwardly at his little joke—they wouldn’t prove too hard to deal with.
His BlackBerry nudged him out of his reverie. The ring tag told him who it was, and a quick glance at the screen before picking up the call confirmed it.
The Bullet got straight to the point, as was his norm. They’d already spoken twice that evening.
“I got a call from our friend at Meade.”
“And?”
“He got a hit. A phone call, between two of the peripherals on the watch list.”
Drucker mulled the news for a beat. The Bullet, aka Brad Maddox, had initially suggested using one of his contacts inside the National Security Agency to—quietly—monitor for unexpected trouble. Although Drucker had thought the risk of exposure outweighed the unlikely benefits, it now looked like Maddox had made the right call. Which was why Maddox was in charge of the project’s security.
“You’ve heard the recording?” Drucker asked.
“Yes.”
“Is it anything to worry about?”
“I think it might be. The call itself was too brief to read either way, but its timing raises some concerns.”
Drucker winced. “Who are the peripherals?”
“One of them’s a techie, an engineer here in Boston. Vince Bellinger. He was Danny Sherwood’s college roommate. They were tight. Best buddies. The other’s Sherwood’s brother, Matt.”
A flash of concern flitted across Drucker’s eyes. “And there’s no history there?”
“Last communication we have between them goes back almost two years.”
Drucker thought about it for a moment. Two years ago, they had a natural reason to chat. The timing of this new call, though, was indeed troublesome. “I take it you’ve got it under control.”
Maddox couldn’t have sounded more detached if he’d been sedated. “Just bringing you up to speed.”
“Good. Let’s hope it’s a coincidence.”
“Not something I believe in,” Maddox affirmed.
“Me neither, sadly,” Drucker replied. Then, almost as an afterthought, he asked, “And the girl?”