“I’m sorry. No. I don’t think so. Could you write a message for me instead?”
“Of course.”
“I find myself in a life-or-death situation,” Kennedy said, speaking deliberately. “But it’s not my life or death that’s in play. And as such, this is the last time I’m going to contact you.” She used her free hand to reach for her wine. “Did you get that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please read it back to me.”
She did. Hesitantly, but word for word.
“Thank you, Susan.”
Kennedy disconnected the call as Ward put their dinner back in the oven and set a timer on his phone. It’d be interesting to see Catherine’s reaction to the message. Not just the wording, but the fact that it hadn’t come by way of private voice mail. Now her assistant was aware that the former director of the CIA was issuing dire warnings. Not something that would be easy to keep quiet.
Ward sat just as she was putting the phone back in her pocket. “Did you get her?”
“Who?”
“Catherine.”
“No, I wasn’t calling the White House. Things don’t look like they’re going well in there and I was ordering Chinese.”
He laughed. “In about half an hour, you’re going to eat those words along with the best spanakopita you’ve ever had.”
“Well?”
It really was the best spanakopita she’d ever had.
“I don’t want you to get overconfident.”
He grinned. “It’s fun, isn’t it?”
She stabbed her fork into some greens that he’d picked himself only an hour ago. “What?”
“Having dinner. Making small talk. Pretending we’re normal.”
“Just two average people having a bite to eat on a private mountaintop compound in Uganda.”
“It requires a little suspension of disbelief,” he conceded. “And a few glasses of wine don’t hurt, either.”
She was about to respond when her phone started to ring. Probably her son, who had postponed their weekly call because of a girl he’d become obsessed with. When she looked at the screen, though, an unknown number was flashing on it.
“Catherine?” Ward said.
“I think it might be. Would you excuse me for a moment?”
“Don’t be long. It gets soggy on the bottom when it sits.”
“Less than five minutes,” she promised as she crossed the deck toward a set of stairs.
“Hello?”
“What do you want, Irene?”
“Your husband’s made some errors lately. But I don’t think you had anything to do with them.”
“And?”
“Payment for those errors is coming due.”
“That’s all very dramatic and cryptic, Irene. But what do you want me to do with it?”
“I want you to meet with me face-to-face to see if we can fix this before it gets out of control.”
“So, I’m supposed to believe that you want to help us. That you suddenly have Tony’s best interests at heart.”
“Let’s just say that right now I see him as the lesser of the evils.”
There was a short silence over the line. “If we’re going to do this, we need to do it quietly. Next week, I’m reading to some kids at a kindergarten in Maryland. You can meet me there and we can drive back to DC together. Coordinate with Susan.”
The line went dead, and Kennedy started back toward the house.
CHAPTER 45
SOUTH OF SWAKOPMUND
NAMIBIA
“QUIT it.”
Rapp decided to ignore the advice and used his index finger to poke Anna in the back again.
“Quit it!”
They were halfway up a massive sand dune outside of Swakopmund, climbing in the glare of the relentless African sun. Like him, Anna was carrying a snowboard on her back and squinting through dark sunglasses. The scent of the coconut sunscreen she was bathed in mixed pleasantly with the more familiar dust and sweat.
He glanced back downslope and saw Claudia in the distance. She was sitting in a beach chair set up alongside the Land Cruiser. A cooler rested next to her and he could see the glint of a water bottle perched on it. She gave a brief wave and then went back to the book in her lap.
They’d made it out of Uganda two weeks ago on Latvian passports provided by friends of Scott Coleman. After crossing the border into Tanzania, they’d taken a leisurely route through Zambia before dipping down into Botswana and heading west. Now they were staying in a nice two-bedroom Airbnb that they were seriously considering extending. Namibia was a beautiful country and one not yet bristling with artificially intelligent cameras.