Free Whitewash by Alex Kava Page B

against the desk and crossed her arms, getting serious again. “Listen, if the senior senator from the great state of Florida screws up the energy summit I will personally kick your ass.”
    “My ass? Not his?”
    “I can’t control his. I can control yours.”
    She didn’t expect him to flinch even if she hoped he would. She reminded herself that she wouldn’t trust him if he did flinch easily. What a wicked circle politics had become.
    A knock at the door interrupted them.
    “Come on in!” Natalie yelled.
    Her assistant opened the door. “Excuse me, Ms. Richards.” Then she stood back to let in a young man dressed in black jeans, leather boots and leather jacket, a laminated ID badge swinging from a cord around his neck. His tangle of hair was matted down from the helmet he now carried tucked under one arm. Had it not been for the leather messenger pouch he handed across the desk, Natalie would never have allowed him in her office dressed this way. As soon as she took it, he turned and was gone without a word. Her assistant smiled, nodded and closed the door gently behind her.
    “You’re back to using messengers?”
    “We never stopped. Let all those other idiots use e-mail and then be shocked when someone accesses all their precious messages they thought they deleted. This—” she opened the pouch and pulled out the single envelope fastened with a wax seal “—can’t be traced. And even if someone hijacked it and opened it, they’d never know what it meant.”
    “Seems a bit archaic in this vast technological world, doesn’t it?”
    She raised an eyebrow at him. “Not like your methods aren’t a bit archaic?” She grabbed the TV remote from the corner of her desk and shot it at the TV screen, clicking it off. “So tell me, what went wrong?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Not acceptable,” she said, shaking her head slowly. She had learned long ago that her gestures garnered more authority than her words ever would.
    “Forgive the pun, but maybe Dr. Lansik simply chickened out.”
    She stared at him, raising her eyebrow and giving him a frown that indicated she wasn’t in the mood for puns or sarcasm or any more of his usual dry humor.
    “You’d have me believe this is all some coincidence? The senator’s tour not even twenty-four hours after a botched meeting? A coincidence,” she repeated, enunciating the word syllable by syllable.
    “I don’t believe in coincidences.” He said it with no apology, but he shifted in his chair slightly, just enough for her to recognize she had him on the edge. She had him exactly where she wanted him.
    “It’s getting too late to wait around for another opportunity like this. You hear what I’m saying?” But she didn’t expect him to respond. “You know we have to have this all taken care of before the energy summit?”
    “Dr. Lansik decides not to talk, then disappears. I can’t get blood from a turnip,” he said, but at least he wasn’t smiling.
    “What about one of the other scientists?”
    “It doesn’t look hopeful. This close to the summit? I wouldn’t count on it.”
    Natalie Richards tapped the envelope she had pulled out of the leather pouch and without opening it, she handed it to him.
    “Then we need to move on to plan B.” She hoped he had come up with something—anything else. She didn’t like plan B. “Your next assignment,” she told him, folding her arms across her chest. “William Sidel can get oil from chicken guts. I’d rather you bring me back blood from that turnip.”

7
    Washington, D.C.
    Natalie Richards shook her head while she watched the small TV in her office.
    “Do you believe this guy?” She pointed at the TV screen, only glancing at the man sitting in her guest chair. Ordinarily she’d be equally frustrated with his sitting back, all relaxed with his legs crossed as though he really were a guest. She kept her eyes on the TV. Her hands rested on her ample hips when she really wanted to strangle