who came prepared. All his resistance to U.S. overtures of assistance with Berzhaan’s counterterrorism program hadn’t been because of his denial that the problem existed. Rather that after years of having his country pulled this way and that, sovereignty lost, he wanted to maintain Berzhaan’s independence in all aspects of administration.
Selena couldn’t really blame him. But she wished he’d been a little more receptive. Maybe they’d have prevented this day’s events.
You still don’t know what’s going on.
Well, then, she told herself. Let’s find out.
Selena laid her briefcase on the desk, thumbed the token combination lock and flipped the leather flap open. She’d left her laptop behind in favor of her tablet PC, and the briefcase looked a little forlorn…a little empty.
Not much to work with. No Beretta, no extra clip, no knives…
Maybe she wouldn’t need them. Maybe by the time she discovered what had happened, it would actually be over.
Nonetheless, she took a quick survey: cell phone, battery iffy; she turned it off and left it behind. A handful of pens, mostly fine point. She tucked several into her back pocket. A new pad of sticky notes. A nail file, also worthy of pocket space. Her Buck pocketknife, three blades of discreet mayhem, yet not big enough to alarm the security guards. It earned a grim smile and a spot in her front pocket. A spare AC unit for her laptop, which garnered a thoughtful look and ended up stuffed into the big side pocket of her leather duster. A small roll of black electrician’s tape. A package of cheese crackers—
Selena closed her eyes, aiming willpower at her rebellious stomach. I don’t have time for you, she told it. Without looking, she set the crinkly package aside, and then surveyed the remaining contents of the briefcase. A legal pad and a folder full of confidential documents. She supposed she could inflict some pretty powerful paper cuts. A few mints and some emergency personal supplies she wasn’t likely to need if she was actually pregnant.
No flak vest, no Rambo knife, not even a convenient flare pistol.
Then again, there was no telling what she might find with a good look around the capitol. Almost anything was a weapon if you used it right.
Selena jammed the rejected items back in her briefcase, automatically locking it. She tucked it inside the foot well of Razidae’s desk and checked to see that she’d left no sign of her presence—except there were those crackers….
She made a dive for the spiffy executive wastebasket beside the desk, hunched over with dry heaves. Mercifully, they didn’t last long. And afterward, as she rose on once-again shaky legs and poured herself a glass of the ice water tucked away on a marble-topped stand in the corner, she tried to convince herself that it was over. That she could go out and assess the situation without facing the heaves during an inopportune moment. That it was over, because over meant she’d eaten something that didn’t suit her and not that she’d added pregnancy to this volatile mix of Cole’s infidelity and Berzhaan’s turmoil.
She dumped the rest of the water into a lush potted plant that probably didn’t need the attention, wiped out the glass and returned it to its spot. She very much hoped that she’d creep out to find an embarrassed guard and an accidentally discharged tear gas gun. Then she could stroll up with her pens and her pocketknife tucked away, as calm and cool as though she hadn’t been heaving in Razidae’s wastebasket moments before.
A stutter of muted automatic gunfire broke the silence.
So much for that idea. Selena’s heart, already pounding from her illness, kicked into a brief stutter of overtime that matched the rhythm of the gunfire. “All right, baby,” she said to her potential little passenger, pulling her fine wool scarf from her coat pocket and soaking it in the pitcher. “Get ready to rock and roll.”
But as she reached for the doorknob, she hesitated. She could be risking more than her own life if she ran out into the thick of things now. As far as she knew, whoever had pulled the trigger of that rifle didn’t even know she existed. She could ride things out here with her lint-filled water and her cheese crackers.
Or she could be found and killed, or the building could indeed blow up around her, or whoever’d fired those shots could succeed in their disruptive goal, and Selena and her theoretical little one could be trapped in a rioting, war-torn Berzhaan. She closed her eyes, her mind suddenly full of images of frightened students and dead capitol workers and a dead Allori. She closed her eyes hard.
It really wasn’t any choice at all.
Chapter 4
T he smoke settled toward the floor in the long hallway. Selena’s eyes watered above the damp scarf, but not so much that she couldn’t see. The hallway was all hers. She hoped it stayed that way.
If she did this right, she’d complete her prowling unseen; she’d have an idea where Ambassador Allori had ended up and how Prime Minister Razidae had fared. She’d find the college students and even the arrogant Berzhaani businessman from the lobby.
And she’d find the Kemeni rebels.
Steady there. She didn’t know the Kemenis were behind this.
Yes. I do.
On this side of the five-story capitol, the prime minister and his cabinet members generally went about their business, addressing the problems of a nation with a tumultuous past. On the other side, ceremonies and social functions filled a dining-ballroom so grandly exotic it would have suited a Russian czar—and, given the country’s past annexation, might have once done just that. The kitchens, the maintenance, even a detention area…all on that side of the building. Somewhere.
With some fervency, Selena wished that just once, she’d had a chance to glimpse a blueprint of the capitol. The CIA probably had one…but they hadn’t shared, and though she had a request in with Oracle, Delphi hadn’t yet come through. For now, Selena was on her own.
All too literally.
She decided to start with the lobby. Moving carefully through the halls, silently over the carpet on her rubber-soled lightweight hikers…she spent long moments listening before she turned corners, stifling the constant impulse to cough and keeping a firm mental control over her unhappy but quiescent stomach. She found signs of struggle—pictures knocked askew, a coffee cup shattered against the wall, stains splashed across creamy paint…even a smudge or two of blood, a hand-print where someone had reached out for support. As an undertone to the tear gas, the equally acrid smell of gunpowder grew stronger.
When she peered around the final corner and into the unfolding delta of the lobby, she winced. The faint haze of remaining tear gas couldn’t hide the aftermath of the struggle, wasn’t strong enough to cover the visceral smell of blood and death. One guard sprawled before the security arch, his face missing. Selena couldn’t see the other, though she heard noises from behind the standing desk where he’d been. Still alive?
Behind the desk…that’s where her gun had been stored, in its own lockbox. She took a step around the corner, exposing herself. She might as well be as naked as she felt; she was just as vulnerable. She eyed the semiautomatic pistol in the dead guard’s hand. Any thoughts she had of going for the weapon vanished as she saw the slide jutting back. He’d emptied it at someone.
Or maybe just at the bullet-riddled wall on his way down.
She could still
