Ibrahim Fayyad knew the opposite sex. He knew their bodies, but that was simply a matter of mechanics. A woman’s heart was captured with more than good looks, charm, and bedroom skills. What a woman wants more than anything is to have her soul laid bare before her lover and have him cherish her without reservation. You must know a woman’s heart, her dreams, her fears. Once you understand these, you play them in concert; need and hope and fear all swirling together until they blossomed into love.
Those with low self-esteem were the most vulnerable, as were abuse sufferers, whose need for validation was immense. This would be the case with Judith Smith. The challenge would be to overcome her resistance. She had probably gotten good at quashing her feelings, and Fayyad would have to break through that wall. Behind it, he knew, would be a torrent of emotion.
He walked upstairs. At the top of the landing, he stopped and closed his eyes. He could smell her perfume. He turned right, used his foot to push open the door, and stepped into to the master bedroom. It was decorated in country-style powder blue. The bedspread was adorned with tiny yellow daisies. He grazed his fingertips over it
He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and went to work.
He examined everything of hers, from her dressed and her jewelry to her undergarments. Judith was full-figured, he saw, only slightly plump, her hips still trim from not having given birth. Her bras and panties were white cotton. No lace, no color. Nor did she own any lingerie. Her robe was a simple white terry cloth; it smelled of soap and sandlewood lotion. Fayyad wondered if the Smiths still had sex. Probably, he decided, but only when the senator needed release or when he felt the need to reassert his ownership of her.
In her nightstand drawer he found a small cedar box. He picked the lock. Inside was a cloth-bound diary filled with Judith’s neat, flowing script. The last entry was two days ago. He pocketed the diary, closed the box, and broke the lock. The senator would be blamed.
Also in the drawer was a scrapbook containing newspaper clippings and brochures about the Washington art community: gallery openings, shows, reviews, fundraisers. Judith sat on several committees, one of the articles reported. Fayyad quickly scanned the rest, including one that included a short biography of her interests and tastes.
Next to the scrapbook was a day planner. She was meticulous. Every lunch date, appointment and social event was noted. He examined every page for the past three months, as well as the upcoming three, taking careful notes as he went.
He returned the scrapbook to the drawer, scanned the bedroom for anything out of place, then smoothed the bedspread and pulled the bathroom door closed to its original position. He was turning to leave, but he stopped.
He walked to the senator’s side of the bed and opened his nightstand drawer. Inside were a pair of bifocals, a pulp detective novel, and a bottle of nasal spray. Near the back he found a neatly folded handkerchief. Fayyad opened it.
What he found surprised him. He slipped the item in his jacket pocket and then headed downstairs.
Judith was excited. She’d never been to CIA headquarters and, like most civilians, she expected an aura of intrigue to be wafting through its corridors. She was slightly disappointed to find the glass-enclosed lobby fairly ordinary except for the memorial wall and an imposing bronze statue of Wild Bill Donovan.
According to Herb, this dinner was given every year by the CIA for select members of the intelligence community and Senate IOC. As chairman, Smith was the guest of honor. Having listened to enough of her husband’s anti-CIA diatribes, however, Judith suspected Dick Mason would rather punch Herb than socialize with him.
With practiced ease, Judith followed the senator through the crowd, exchanging greetings and smiling. She knew most of the faces, and she disliked half of them. Even so, she laughed and mingled, the perfect actress. Sometimes she hated that part of herself, wondering if her own act made her as two-faced as the rest.
“Judith!”
She turned. “Bonnie! Oh, I’m so glad you’re here.” Bonnie Latham was one of her few genuine friends. They had met a year ago at a gallery opening. “Is Charlie here?”
“Yes, somewhere… There he is.” Bonnie pointed across the room to where Herb Smith and the FBI agent were talking. “He hates these things.”
“I don’t blame him. Herb’s probably grilling him about the Delta bombing.”
“He’s going to have to get in line.”
“That bad?” Judith asked, accepting a glass of wine from a waiter.
“You didn’t read the story in the Post? Congressman Hostetler’s daughter was on the plane.”
“Oh, my God. Is she okay?”
“From what I understand, she’ll recover. So, how are you?”
“Wonderful. How’re your kids—”
“You don’t sound wonderful.”
Judith shrugged. “Just the usual. Nothing to worry—”
Bonnie placed her hand on Judith’s forearm. “Do you want to talk?”
“No, I’m fine, really.”
“That’s what you always say. We’re having lunch this week, no arguments.”
“Okay,” Judith agreed gratefully. “Thank you, Bon.”
“Sure. Now let’s go find a quiet corner.”
Across the room, Dick Mason, George Coates, and their wives stood at the head of the receiving line. “Judith Smith looks lovely,” said Mason’s wife.
“Too lovely,” Coates’s wife replied good-naturedly.
“I concur,” Coates added and got a poke in the ribs.
“Hard to believe he won her,” said Mrs. Mason.
“Harder still to believe he kept her,” Mrs. Coates muttered.
Herb Smith’s unsavory lifestyle was one of the best kept non-secrets in Washington. If not for his power, Smith would long ago have been railroaded out of town. Mason would have gladly shoveled coal into the firebox. Ironically, the widespread animus for Smith was countered by a widespread fondness for his wife. Depending on who you asked, Judith’s devotion marked her as either a saint or an idiot.
“Ladies, no gossiping,” said Mason.
“Richard, this is not gossiping,” replied his wife. “We like Judith.”
An aide approached. “Mr. Coates, the item you were expecting has arrived.”
“Thank you.”
“Kolokov’s mystery package?” asked Mason.
“Yep.”
“Let’s go take a look. Ladies, if you’ll excuse us—”
“Dick, you promised no shop talk.”
“Ten minutes, no more.”
In the elevator, Mason asked Coates, “Any word on DORSAL?”
“Last report I got, Dutch’s people were—”
“People? I thought it was just Tanner.”
“Dutch sent him some help. Cahil, Ian Cahil,” Coates said, then noticed Mason’s smile. “You know him?”
“You remember the Tromaka Islands thing last year?”
“Yeah…. That was them?” Coates asked, astonished. He’d read the postmortem on SAILMAKER. If not for Tanner and Cahil, the defection of Yurgani Pakov would have never come off, 300 sailors would be dead, and a billion-dollar destroyer would be lying at the bottom of the ocean. “No kidding.”
“No kidding,” said Mason. “You were saying…”
“Depending on what they find in the locker, they’ll service the drops and see if they get any response. If not, they’ll have to go hunting for this engineer of Ohira’s,” Coates said. “By the way, how was it with the boss yesterday?”
The day before, Mason, General Cathermeier, and National Security Adviser Talbot had briefed the president on the Mideast situation.