Silencing Eve

be there for her.”
    “You were on a mission. Which you completed very successfully, by the way.”
    “Screw it. I could have arranged to leave Colombia. You could have sent someone else to replace me.”
    “But not as efficiently. You’re remarkable, Catherine.”
    “Eve helped me when I needed her. She deserved the same from me.”
    He was silent for a long moment. “I know she did. But I couldn’t let that matter. Not this time, Catherine. I couldn’t bring you home.”
    “Why the hell not?”
    “For the same reason I didn’t want to send anyone to replace you in Colombia. You’re remarkable.” His lips twisted. “A little too remarkable. You would have dug deep. Turned the world upside down searching for Doane and Eve. I couldn’t afford to have you do that.”
    She stiffened. “Dirty business, Venable?”
    “Needful business, Catherine.”
    “Kendra said that she didn’t trust the way you behaved at that ghost town. She wasn’t sure it was in Eve’s best interests.”
    “She was probably right. Kendra’s very smart. I guess you found that out.”
    “Why the hell would you do something that wasn’t in Eve’s best interest? Did you want to get her killed?”
    “God, no. That’s the last thing I wanted to happen. I like Eve. I did everything within the boundaries that I was permitted to save her.”
    “What boundaries?”
    “I had to make my first priority to kill or capture James Doane. I had no choice.”
    “There’s always a choice.”
    “You see? That’s why I didn’t bring you back to hunt for Eve. I wouldn’t have been able to control you.”
    “Not if it meant letting her die because you wanted Doane’s scalp. Company business isn’t that important to me.” She added grimly, “I should have known that it would be to you. You’ve spent most of your life playing their games.”
    “Yes, I have. Because it’s worth doing. You believe that yourself, or you wouldn’t have become an agent or stayed with it this long. Does it get dirty? Hell, yes. But we’re lily-white compared to the other side.” He paused. “And this time it was so nasty that I had to make decisions I didn’t want to make.”
    “Eve’s life for Doane’s head?”
    He didn’t answer for a moment. “If necessary.”
    “You son of a bitch.”
    “Yes.”
    “Why? What was so important about getting Doane?”
    “I had to shut him down. One way or the other.”
    “It was that urgent? It was worth Eve’s life?”
    “One life, Catherine. I had to put it in the balance. There wasn’t any choice when I did that.”
    “What are you telling me, Venable?”
    “Two cities, two nuclear devices, Doane with the knowledge of where they are and how to activate them. Is that clear enough? I had to take him out one way or the other. I had a chance at that ghost town in Colorado. I didn’t do it. He got away and took Eve with him. The crazy bastard’s out there somewhere, probably trying to make contacts to destroy those cities.”
    “Which cities?”
    “Homeland Security wasn’t able to find out both the target cities. They determined that one was Chicago, but we have no idea about the other one.”
    Chicago was a huge population center, Catherine thought. If the second city was equally populated, it could hardly be worse. “How bad is this device?”
    “Powerful enough to take down a quarter of the city. And dirty. Our information isn’t good enough to judge how dirty. They were planted over five years ago.”
    “And Homeland Security hasn’t been able to locate them in all that time?”
    “No. Doane’s son supposedly hid them before he was murdered and evidently did a stellar job. But now we’re sure that Doane knows where those bombs were placed. All he has to do is get in touch with Kevin’s old al-Qaeda buddies who were in the cell in charge of setting those devices off and tell them where they are.”
    “Do we have any leads about who was in that cell?”
    “We have a few names. The investigation was going pretty well until the general hired Zander to kill Doane’s son. Then the panic started, and they all went underground. There was a Paul Berlitz, a George Cartland, who appeared to be in charge, and a Mohammed Nali. We were gathering other names, but—”
    “You haven’t been able to find any of those men you ID’d?”
    He shook his head. “Believe me, we’ve tried. For a while, we thought that they’d returned to Tehran. They might have done that, but we can’t take a