Free Act of Terror by Marc Cameron

she’d been sent to Miami to live with an aunt. She’d taken her mother’s maiden name because it fit the darkness of her looks—and made her less of a target in south Florida than Veronica Dombrovski.
    When she was still in high school, she’d watched a plainclothes Metro Dade police officer arrest a couple of gangbangers at a shopping mall and decided that was something she could do. Later, a friend in college had suggested she look into the CIA because of her language skills and she thought, yes, that was definitely something she could do. The semester before she graduated with a degree in psychology Ronnie had gone to the Agency website and sent in an email stating her qualifications and interest in the Clandestine Service. By then, Arabic and Chinese had nudged Spanish and Russian off center stage as strategic languages. She received a polite but curt reply, suggesting she complete a master’s degree in economics or try the uniformed division and get her feet in the door. Her father had been right. Three languages were a good beginning. The uniformed security police weren’t the Clandestine Service—but she was still CIA.
    Ronnie rubbed her eyes, picking up the stapled document of forty-one pages from her nightstand. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well make a plan. She looked around the cluttered bedroom, littered with laundry and dry-cleaning bags. Boxes from takeout pizza and Chinese restaurants perched on stacks of books and magazines. Housekeeping definitely wasn’t her strong suit, but she was a hell of a planner.
    Palmer had set her priorities, beginning with the circle of employees closest to the president—and that put the United States Secret Service at the top of her list.
    Ronnie was instructed to pay attention to key personnel, particularly the protective details of the president and vice president. Between the special agents and the Secret Service Uniformed Division, the lists contained over two hundred names. At first, she’d suggested it would take her a week per background. Palmer had countered, kindly but firmly, that she needed to review two per day, clearing these to assist her in her efforts. If she came across something out of the ordinary, she was to call him—and him only.
    He stressed the fact, at least a half dozen times, that there were very few people she could trust.
    The special agents in charge of each protective detail had been cleared already by Palmer himself. They would conduct personnel reviews of their own. Ronnie would provide an independent analysis as an extra precaution.
    Scanning the entire document before she made a concrete plan, her eyes fell to a name at the bottom of the seventh page—Nadia Arbakova, a special agent in the Protective Intelligence Division at Secret Service Headquarters in D.C. Arbakova listed a Special Agent James Doyle as her emergency contact. Ronnie remembered the name and flipped back through the previous pages until she found it. Just as she suspected, Agent James Doyle was the whip on the vice presidential detail. An experienced agent, the whip wasn’t a supervisor but took charge when the shift leader wasn’t around. Doyle’s connection to Arbakova and his relatively powerful position made the two agents a natural place to begin. She could knock two investigations out in half the time and give herself a little breathing room.
    â€œYou just got yourself moved up to page one, Comrade Arbakova.” Ronnie did her best to imitate her father’s thick tones. A note beside Arbakova’s name indicated she was a second-generation American who spoke fluent Russian. Her home address was in Rockville. Ronnie would pass right by it on the way into the city.
    With a more concrete plan, Garcia gave a shuddering stretch, raising both arms high above her head. Maybe sleep wouldn’t prove so elusive. She’d stop off tomorrow morning and chat with Nadia Arbakova, catch her while