“Peter—could she succeed?”
“No,” he said, a shade too quickly. “I mean—OK, I saw the vice president at the test site, so he might go back and shemightbe able to persuade him to take her along. But I can’t see how she could smuggle the weapon out of the complex.”
She raised her eyebrows. He’d managed it. He’d left a seemingly identical copy, true, but surely the security there was less than perfect?
“I knew the system,” he said, clearly seeing where her thoughts tended. “She doesn’t. Also, I got them to tighten things up afterward.”
“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.”
He laughed—a clipped sound. “I would never in a million years have thought she could do what she’s already done, that’s why.”
They lay there for a somber moment.
“Peter,” she said, feeling thethud-thudof blood rushing too fast through her veins, “I just remembered something. Ella and I saw her brother in Baltimore in January. He was ordering a dangerous abortifacient. And she said…”
He turned his head, staring at her. “Yes?”
“I took it as perfectly normal hyperbole at the time, you understand, but—” She bit her lip. “She said she wanted to kill him.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “We need to figure out if it’s her. As quickly as possible.”
Lookingthrough old newspapers in the college’s archive the next morning didn’t give them definitive proof that Marbella Draden—he refused to think of her as Ella Knight—was now playing the role of her brother. But it hardly dispelled their worries.
TheWashington Herald’sgossip columnist had written about Frederick Draden with some regularity. The librarian brought them dozens of clippings about his appearances at soirées and less-than-reputable locations. The last such reference(Freddie Draden Leaves Bar in Uproar)was just a day after their run-in with him in Baltimore. The next time he appeared in the column was the item about him moving into the vice-presidential house—the one with the headline that now seemed chilling:Veep’s Son ‘a New Man.’ The columnist had written just one item on him since, relayingthat Draden wasn’t going out with his buddies anymore—or even returning their calls.
“What do we do?” Beatrix said.
All they could think of was to get another close-up look at Draden and see if appearance or demeanor could offer categorical evidence about whether they were dealing with the son or the daughter. It was a task they would have found far easier when Draden was staggering from club to club in Baltimore every night. Their only option now seemed to be showing up at events where the vice president was scheduled to appear and hoping Frederick tagged along.
That was easier said than done. They waited outside a conference where the vice president was speaking Wednesday night—there were no tickets left to get inside—but they didn’t pick the right doors to babysit in order to see him arrive or leave. They managed to get a seat in the audience when he addressed Congress the following afternoon about grave threats to national security from foreign powers, but he had no offspring in tow. They even showed up at the Friday evening premiere of an opera he was said to be attending but, it became clear, was not.
“Let’s call it a night,” Peter murmured to Beatrix during intermission. They’d been up since 5:30 to get their brewing in, and she was leaning on him, eyes closed—though perhaps she simply wanted to block out the stares from other patrons, some quite hostile. “He’s not going to arrive halfway through?—”
“Omnimancer Blackwell?” A woman in an ornate dress that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a royal weddingsailed over to them. “Oh, itisyou! How charming! And Mrs. Blackwell, too—enchanté, I’m sure! It’s been so long since you attended one of my gatherings, Omnimancer, that I’m certain you don’t evenrememberme!”
She said this in a way that suggested she was certain he did remember her, that no one who met her would ever do anything as absurd as not remember her, and it was this that brought her back to mind. Violet Kendrick, wife of a senator on the Armed Services Committee. She’d thrown one of the last semi-official dinners he’d attended in Washington, more than two years ago now. Martinelli had dragged him along.
He swallowed and faked a smile. “Mrs. Kendrick—how very good to see you again.”
“It’s positivelyprovidentialthat we should run into each other,” she said. “I would so love to have you both at a little ’do I’m throwing tomorrow night.”
If he hadn’t wanted to go when he was on good terms with the Pentagram, he especially didn’t want to go now. “I’m afraid we’re already engaged?—”
“No,no, none ofthat,” she exclaimed, playfully rapping his knuckles with her folded-up fan. “I defy you to find a better way to spend your evening! My gatherings are the talk of the town! Why, I even prevailed upon dear FreddieDradento come”—Beatrix stiffened against him—“and you know what a coupthatis these days! Put off whomsoever it is you were going to see tomorrow—do say you’ll be there.”
He did, hardly believing their luck.
But two hours into her party the next evening, “luck” was not the word that came to mind. They were surrounded bywizards and Pentagram officials—who alternated between glaring at him and making passive-aggressive small talk—but “dear Freddie Draden” had not shown up.
“Why did she invite us?” Beatrix whispered. “Did she not realize we’d be persona non grata here?”
“Probably wanted her party to make the gossip columns. I’ll be right back.”
As he left in search of a bathroom, he heard a woman exclaim, “Mrs. Blackwell, what an … intriguing dress! So veryantediluvian,” and he kicked himself for bringing Beatrix without recommending she buy something new to arm herself against this sort of insult. How he hated these horrible D.C. parties.
He found the library and a sunroom but not what he was looking for, so he rounded the corner to the main hallway?—
The collision was so sudden it took him a few seconds to realize the man who’d literally bowled him over was their target.
