Stone - 25 - Collateral Damage

a lie. “How about you? Do you and Jim live together?”
    Kelli didn’t blink. “Yes, we do.”
    “Uptown or down?”
    “Downtown. Jim has a loft, and I’m lucky having a man who is a brilliant designer. You must come down for dinner one night soon.”
    “That would be very nice,” Holly said, though she had a very, very good idea what the apartment looked like.
    “I hear today from an acquaintance at the FBI that they’re looking for a woman in connection with the bombing.”
    “That’s perfectly true,” Holly said.
    “Who is she?”
    Now Holly had to decide whether to toss a grenade into the conversation. It didn’t take her long. “Her name is Jasmine Shazaz. Does that ring a bell?”
    “No, it doesn’t.”
    “She is the sister of a man named Ari Shazaz. How about that name?”
    “No, I’ve never heard it.”
    “Perhaps you knew him as McCallister. He was in L.A., too.”
    That stopped Kelli in her tracks. “Ah, yes,” she managed to say.
    “He and his brother were killed while trying to escape the country after the L.A. incident.”
    “So Jasmine is out for revenge?”
    “That appears to be the case. She has been connected to two recent bombings in London—one that killed the British foreign minister, the other at the American Embassy.”
    “Of course, I knew about that,” Kelli said.
    “But you didn’t know the backstory?”
    “No, I didn’t. May I write about this?”
    “Yes, if you refer to me as a confidential source.”
    “Are there other people I can talk to?”
    “You can try the police commissioner and the head of the New York office of the FBI, but I don’t know how much they’ll have to say.”
    “Why haven’t I seen anything about Jasmine Shazaz in the papers or on TV?”
    “That would be a good question for the commissioner and the FBI,” Holly replied, “but don’t tell them you talked to me.”
    “I’m a magazine writer, not a daily journalist,” Kelli said. “I’d need a lot more than this to get a piece into, say, Vanity Fair .”
    “I’m afraid there isn’t a lot more I can tell you. You can also try the British Foreign Office and New Scotland Yard’s Special Branch.”
    “They’re not going to tell me much either, are they?” Kelli asked.
    “Perhaps not. Perhaps you should hold your piece until there is a successful conclusion to the case. I’m sure a lot of people would be more interested in talking at that time.”
    “Would you be?”
    “I’m afraid not. I’m sure you know that we don’t operate domestically.”
    The waiter returned, and they placed their orders. Kelli did not return to the subject of Jasmine.

Back at Stone’s house Holly took her laptop into her dressing room, logged onto the Agency mainframe, and accessed the surveillance at James Rutledge’s apartment. She got the two just as they came through the front door.
    “Well, that was fun,” Jim was saying. “You seemed to enjoy Holly Barker’s company.”
    “It wasn’t the first time we met,” Kelli replied, hanging her coat in the hall closet.
    “That’s right, you met in L.A.”
    “Only in passing.”
    “You’ve met her since?”
    “Yes. She and I had a rather scary conversation.”
    “About what?”
    They moved into the bedroom, but Holly still caught the audio.
    “About something she doesn’t want me to talk about.”
    “We’re back to that, are we? You know something I don’t know. All right, if you don’t want to tell me, don’t, but please stop bringing it up.”
    “I didn’t bring it up, you did,” she said, unzipping her dress and stepping out of it.
    “No, you… Oh, never mind.”
    They got undressed in silence and got into bed. There was enough light in the room for the high-definition cameras to register their images. Jim made a move for a breast, kissing her on a nipple. Kelli responded, and soon they were at it.
    Holly used the interval to get undressed herself, then she went back to the computer. The two were lying in bed, breathing hard, spent.
    “All right, I’ll tell you,” Kelli said. She rolled over and put her lips close to his ear.
    This Holly couldn’t hear.
    “You’re shitting me,” Jim said.
    “I shit you not.”
    “Christ, no wonder the CIA doesn’t want that out. Do you think the cameras we had taken out were put there by the Agency?”
    “I did at first, but now I think it might be somebody at a rival publication, a tabloid called The Instigator. They’ve done this before—tapped phones, et