I’m not buying it, but I wonder if the team listening in is.
“Sleep on it,” Dristol says. “I’ll be in touch to coordinate a follow up. And in terms of what we can give you…a shield. No inquiries into the past. If there’s a database you want access to, we can make it happen.”
For the thousandth time, that’s not how ARGUS works.
“We work to quiet the national security drumbeat, interest in legislation and state ownership. Seems to me you get a lot out of working with us.”
He thinks he’s luring me into a trap. Yet he’s the one under surveillance.
“How can you eliminate AI legislation?” I ask, playing along.
“I’m not working alone. I’ve been playing the D.C. game for decades. Long before Crawford. That’s why he hired me. I can be persuasive.”
He’s not saying it, but I’m betting he means blackmail. Extortion. Which would further explain his interest in ARGUS.
“Query access. That’s what you really want.”
He smiles his affirmative answer. “After you buy that database.”
“You kill the AI bill that just passed the House, and we may have a deal.”
Thanks to that arrogant, cocky attitude, I know I’ve got him.
He grins, becoming all teeth. “I hope to work together,” Dristol says, extending his hand.
I take it, forcing a smile. “Same here.”
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
Sydney
“Sooo...” Jake removes his headset with deliberate slowness, the gesture loaded with skepticism. He spins in his chair to face me directly, the cramped surveillance van suddenly feeling even smaller. “What’s your take on lover boy?”
“Come again?” He heard everything I heard.
“Any chance he’s playing us? Cause it certainly sounded to me like his tune changed when killing AI legislation got placed on the table.”
“He carried the listening device into the room and activated it himself.” The evidence of Rhodes’ transparency is literally recorded in our system, which makes Jake’s insinuations odd.
We didn’t have a visual on the room, but we heard and recorded everything.
“We know he did at least one illegal deal. He’s not crispy clean. Who’s to say he’s not stringing us along now?”
“Me. You’re grasping at straws.”
Although, I have to admit. He engaged—came across as genuinely intrigued—when, as Jake put it, the AI legislation nugget dropped.
“Do you think Crawford’s the one selling state secrets?”
I chew on a pen cap, considering Jake’s question. “It’s conceivable. But the way Dristol and that Reid guy showed up… My hunch is Dristol’s been making money on the side. Crawford probably has no idea.”
Crawford’s reputation on the Hill, one I learned about too late, is that he has an insatiable thirst for sex, a weakness for women, if you will. But adultery aside, for a politician, he’s decent.
“And Reid?”
“Not sure. He doesn’t dress like someone who’s loaded, although that could be for costume effect. If he’s a hired hand, Quinn will find a financial trail. Another possibility…maybe he left the CIA on bad terms, and he’s jaded.”
