“Okay,” Landon said. “Tell him I’m aware.”
Which didn’t sound promising. Nor did it reveal what the ex-operative intended to do. If anything.
Dalton suspected his boss wasn’t going to be satisfied if he brought back that enigmatic answer. He knew Griff well enough to know that if James didn’t accept the task, Cabot would find someone who would.
His loyalty toward those he considered the good guys within the CIA extended beyond the agents who had worked for him. Apparently, it covered Grace Chancellor, as well. And Griff would damn well want to know if the rescue mission he’d been hoping for was going to take place.
“Are you going to find her?” Dalton asked.
“If she’s still alive.”
“We have no reason to believe she isn’t.”
And none to believe she is.
“Anybody had an offer?”
“For ransom, you mean?”
“Someone in that region is holding a senior CIA analyst, an American colonel and an American pilot, and they aren’t trying to negotiate a deal for their release? Doesn’t that strike you as strange?”
“It’s a pretty remote area. A lot of tribesmen—”
“You just made the same kind of mistake our former employer so frequently makes,” Landon interrupted. “Don’t judge sophistication by lifestyle. Just because someone lives in a cave doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what’s going on in the outside world. That should have been one lesson we all learned from 9/11.”
“Then…why wouldn’t anyone have been approached for ransom?”
“I don’t know, but I can tell you that single fact bothers me more than anything else you’ve told me.”
Dalton swallowed his own misgivings over the way the capture of the three Americans had played out reinforced by Landon’s certainty that something was wrong with the entire scenario.
“Someone mentioned the possibility that this has been organized by the drug lords,” he said. “Something designed to show that no matter how many people Washington sends out, they’re still in control.”
“If there’s to be any chance of Grace Chancellor being returned alive, you better hope whoever told you that is wrong.”
Dalton had no idea what to say to that. It sounded ominous. And absolutely assured.
“I still don’t know what you want me to tell Griff.”
“Tell him I don’t work for him anymore.”
“Believe me, he knows that, Landon.”
“Does he?” James asked, the hint of amusement Dalton had heard at the beginning of the conversation back in his voice. “And yet, strangely enough, this conversation sounds exactly like those he used to employ to get me interested in whatever he wanted me interested in during the External Security Team days.”
“Are you? Interested, I mean?”
“I’m a few years older and light-years wiser than I was when I worked for the CIA.”
“I don’t believe you’ve changed that much.”
Although Dalton had probably been the closest thing to a friend Landon James had had on the EST, he hadn’t seen his fellow operative in years. At Cabot’s request, he’d made the occasional contact to try to recruit him on the Phoenix’s behalf, only to be turned down each time.
He had no idea what Landon was doing right now. Griff probably knew, but he hadn’t passed on that information along with James’s phone number.
“Apparently not enough that Griff can’t manage to hit all the right buttons.”
“I don’t think that’s what he’s trying to do. I think he just hoped that since this is your area of expertise…”
“I’d ride to the rescue.”
“With all your expenses paid by the Phoenix, of course.”
“Paid on whose behalf?”
The Phoenix was very much a “for-hire” operation, although their charges were usually dependent on the client’s ability to pay. More than a few missions were undertaken on a pro bono basis, however, especially if Cabot felt that justice could be achieved only through their intervention.
“I don’t believe Grace has any family—” Dalton began, only to be cut off in midsentence.
“She doesn’t. I suspect our illustrious leader will be footing the bill himself. Not that he can’t afford it.”
Griff Cabot came from very old money. A lot of it. And James was right. He could afford to mount any quixotic rescue he believed should be undertaken.
“I don’t think he’s counting the cost on this one.”
“No, Griff always did have a penchant for lost causes.”
“Then… You think they’re dead?”
“Actually, that wasn’t what I meant at all.”
The amusement was back, but Dalton had no idea what had caused it. Nor did he have a clue as to what James was talking about.
“I don’t understand—” he began.
“It doesn’t matter,” Landon said briskly. “Tell Griff he pushed the right buttons this time. Obviously he hasn’t lost the fine art of leadership.”
“Then you’re going after them?” Dalton couldn’t keep the relief out of his voice.
“I’m going after Gracie. If the others are there, I’ll try my best to get them out, too.
Gracie? In all the years Dalton had known Grace Chancellor, he had never heard anyone ever refer to her as Gracie. The nickname was totally foreign to the cool, collected persona the intelligence analyst exuded.
Or maybe, Dalton thought, as a click and then the dial tone reverberated in his ear, it was just that he didn’t know Grace Chancellor nearly so well as Landon James did.
Something else Cabot had apparently failed to tell him.
LANDON JAMES PUT DOWN the phone and swiveled his desk chair around until he was looking out over the tops of some of the tallest buildings in New York. He’d been able to lease this office space high above the city for a song in the days immediately after the terrorist attack. No one, it seemed, had wanted to work in the clouds anymore.
After a moment he stood up and walked across the huge room to a wall of windows, thinking instead about the phone call he’d just concluded. Despite his attempt to block them, images of Grace Chancellor had flooded his brain since Dalton had mentioned her name. Memories of the woman he had
