Beneath the Skin Savannah Russe

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.Unfortunately she attracted the wrong man over and over again.I guess she and I had that misfortune in common.Maybe Gorgeous Guy would be Mr.Right for her."Let's get down to business." The stern voice of J interrupted my thoughts."The information we have is time-sensitive.But first, for the benefit of Agent Urban, let me reintroduce our newest team member, Agent Tallmadge.""First name?" I asked, lifting an eyebrow."Just Tallmadge," the newcomer responded with a seductive smile that created deep dimples in his lean cheeks and must have melted many hearts.Benny might have dibs on him, but he was openly flirting with me."Daphne Urban," I said as I stood and extended my hand across the table.When he took it with his, which was warm, a tingling shot up my arm and lit a fire deep inside me.Tallmadge was hot, and I felt his heat.J cleared his throat, and I let go of Tallmadge's hand."Moving on," J said, his angular face hard and taut."Our mission is to stop an assassination." We all stared at him.Having gotten our attention, he paused."Whose?" I demanded impatiently."Joe Daniel's," he said.That was a shocker.I thought maybe the president was at risk, or someone as crucial to the government as the commander of the armed forces.But Joe Daniel? Most of the millions of people who had been following his antiwar campaign on television for the last six or seven months just loved him, no matter what their politics.Daniel was a decorated war veteran turned antiwar activist, a Congressman from Illinois.and, some suggested, a modern-day Gandhi—but a prankster Gandhi with a great sense of humor and a warm laugh.Last September Joe Daniel had become the most popular political figure in the United States almost overnight.He had broken into the national news when he and a dozen of his fellow veterans pitched tents and camped out outside the summer White House in Maine.They sang peace songs, skateboarded and hotdogged holding American flags, and paraded up and down the highway with a banner listing all the American dead in the current war.Within a week his miniprotest grew to a massive demonstration of over a hundred thousand people.Some of the crowds came to see the top music groups who showed up early on, such as Bono with U2, Pearl Jam, and Bon Jovi, turning the event into a spontaneous Woodstock for peace.Daniel's message of "Stop the fighting and start saving the planet" made sense to more and Americans.As for me, I was suspicious of do-gooders.I had seen so many heroes become demigods over the years that my natural dislike of politics had kicked in, and I had never become a Joe Daniel fan.Just then Cormac's tenor voice said, "And how is a threat to a minor politician a Code Red situation? Sorry to be cynical, but you'd think the current administration would be glad to get rid of him."I nodded, and as I did I saw Tallmadge watching me, appraising me with his eyes.J responded to Cormac, his voice low and serious."The information we have obtained concerning the assassination threat is so disturbing that it rises to a Code Red level." He paused, letting the gravity settle down on us hard then added, "You'll find all the details on the CD in the folder in front of each of you…"Like good little students in school, we all opened our folders to find an unlabeled CD and a single sheet of paper.I glanced up.Tallmadge's eyes were on me again."… but in brief, this is what we know.In the first place, there is the real possibility that Daniel's killing will make him a martyr and cause a groundswell of popular support for the peace movement, which is the last thing the current administration wants to happen.They would like to get rid of Daniel, Agent O'Reilly, but by discrediting him, not by killing him."Second, the reason this reaches a Code Red level is this: We have information and belief that Daniel's assassination might be the first of a carefully planned series of killings of prominent African Americans, Latinos, and anyone of any color who steps up to take Daniel's place.His killing might be the start of a long-range conspiracy to destabilize the American government and plunge the country into widespread rioting.You might remember what happened in 1967 when Detroit, Newark, and Los Angeles went up in flames.""Isn't your first scenario a bit far-fetched?" I asked."Sort of a new kind of domino theory?"J shot me a sour look and said, "Maybe.On the other hand, some analysts feel that killing Joe Daniel would quell any legitimate dissent to administration policy.That's a bad thing, because it would place a cork in the bottle of antiwar sentiment, letting the pressure of discontent swell until it exploded.The result, again, might be civil unrest."A third theory being tossed around is this: The ultimate goal of killing Joe Daniel might be to distract our security forces and so divert them by urban unrest so that a major terrorist offensive can be successfully launched before we know what hit us."But whatever the motive behind the assassination, the threat against Daniel is real and imminent.His death would, at the very least, cause the government embarrassment, and at worst cause a domestic crisis.That is why this is Code Red.""Who's behind this threat?" Benny jumped in."Do you have hard evidence that any of your doomsday scenarios are real?" Tallmadge asked, his voice unexpectedly belligerent."Hold it! Let me respond.Starting with the matter of hard evidence," J began, shaking his head as if Tallmadge had asked the dumbest question ever."In the spy business, Agent Tallmadge, the best information is humint—that's short for human intelligence—from double agents, informants, or drop-ins.And that's what we have."Tallmadge's face registered his total contempt for J."No documents? Electronic intercepts of conversations? Do we have anything like that?" he persisted."Quite frankly, no, we don't.Not at this time, anyway," J conceded."Well, it seems as if I've been 'recruited' to start tilting at windmills.I don't buy your theory that this is a terrorist plot; nor do I buy that it's the first in a series of assassinations.What seems obvious is that this guy has made enough enemies for somebody to want to kill him.But a matter of national security? Bullshit," Tallmadge said."Agent Tallmadge, you've been 'recruited' to be a spy in exchange for the opportunity to continue to walk on this earth.If you've changed your mind about your choice, just say the word," J said, glaring into the face of the newcomer.Tallmadge looked back at him just as steadily."I haven't changed my mind.This is just turning out to be more of a farce than I'd thought."The shadows of the dimly lit room seemed to close in on me.An uneasy silence fell as Benny, Cormac, and I grew still and watched the exchange.None of us had volunteered for this job.We all had been given the same terms after we had been captured by U.S.agents: become a member of a new spying operation or be exterminated.I was resentful at first.I assumed Benny and Cormac had been too, but we soon believed in the importance of Team Darkwing.We had come to feel part of something bigger than ourselves, that our lives could be more than feeding on blood and pursuing pleasure.For the first time I had a positive reason to get out of my coffin.I had given myself, heart and soul, to keeping innocent Americans safe from terrorists.I wasn't surprised that Tallmadge had not gone willingly into the good night of becoming a spy [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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