Free The Garden of Betrayal by Lee Vance Page B

rises and falls in pitch with the level of tension, like the sound of the wind in the rigging of a ship. There wasn’t enough urgency for whatever storm was looming to have hit yet, but the clipped expectancy in the voices suggested that everyone was fixed on the horizon. I turned toward the noise automatically and then reversed myself. The iPod was burning a hole in my jacket, and I had only an hour before lunch with Senator Simpson. Whatever was happening—or about to happen—in the market would have to wait.
    Amy hung up the phone as I approached, looking harried.
    “Did Alex call you?”
    “No. Did you speak to him?”
    “No. But he sent Lynn a text confirming that he’d be at lunch.”
    I pulled my phone from my jacket pocket and checked it, thinking maybe he’d contacted me directly. Another two dozen e-mails and a single text, but from Kate, not Alex:
library freezing chaucer boring buy me sushi and hot green tea?
    Kate had been spending a few hours a week at the main midtown library, on Forty-second and Fifth, working on her senior English project.
    “Nothing yet,” I said, simultaneously thumb-typing
sorry can’t today stay warm love xox
to Kate. “Is there some kind of news out?”
    “The French and the Russians issued a joint statement announcing that they’re going to work together to catch the terrorists. Your phone’s been ringing off the hook. Everybody wants to know what you think.”
    It figured. The NATO allies, led by the United States, had issued a communiqué overnight, condemning the Nord Stream attack but urging Russia to exercise restraint. The Russians had responded predictably, suggesting that NATO piss up a rope and pointing out that the United States hadn’t exercised restraint when it invaded Afghanistan after 9/11, or when it mustered up a transparently flimsy “coalition of the willing” to take out Saddam. Confronted with an opportunity to knife the United States and suck up to Russia—where French companies were bidding on a number of enormous oil and gas construction projects—the Palais de l’Élysée had also responded predictably. The irritating thing was that Bush had so tainted us internationally that we’d ceded the moral high ground. It hurt not to feel superior to the French.
    “All right. I’ll read through the news and then try to get something out ASAP. Do me a favor and get in touch with Rashid, please. Tell him I’d like to meet with him in person—tomorrow morning, if possible.” I turned toward my door and then spun on my heel. “You don’t know how to get data off an iPod, do you?”
    “An iPod?” Amy asked, looking confused.
    “Yeah.” I took it out of my pocket and showed it to her.
    “No idea. You want me to call Frick and Frack?”
    Frick and Frack were tech support for the floor, a pair of chubby, balding fifty-year-olds with identical ratty ponytails who’d worked for the National Security Agency before joining Cobra. Walter had been a demon on security ever since a guerrilla financial Web site hacked his positions and published them. He’d been short a bunch of illiquid biotechs, and his competitors had squeezed him mercilessly. Frick and Frack—actually Fred Ricker and Frank Ackerman—had been hired shortly after the debacle to implement new security protocols.
    “I don’t think so,” I said. “Theresa” had made me a little paranoid about security myself. I didn’t want anyone to see the data she’d given to me until I’d decided when—and whether—to release it. I thought for a moment, trying to figure out who else might be able to help.
    “Do me a favor?” I said to Amy.
    “What’s that?”
    “Find a Japanese take-out menu and order in a bunch of tuna rolls and some green tea.”
    •  •  •
    I’d just finished an e-mail suggesting that my clients buy French oil services companies and short the German and English when Kate showed up. She was wearing blue jeans and a navy peacoat over an ivory Shetland