Veronika knew she had done everything correctly. Just as instructed. Nothing more, nothing less. She wasn’t in any trouble. She thought they were just bringing her in for consultations, to make certain she was comfortable with everything, or at least comfortable enough to keep her mouth shut and her head down.
And Veronika had no problem with that at all.
She was escorted into Wayne Sharps’s office by a secretary who Martel thought too young and attractive to have earned her position through merit alone, and once inside, she took in the view. The fifth-story corner office had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out to Columbus Avenue and 77th, presenting a stellar vista of the American Museum of Natural History across the street. Sharps himself sat behind his large desk with his feet up. He was on the phone, speaking Arabic — and speaking it well, Martel noted.
She sat down on a modern sectional sofa in a sunken seating area across the large office. Tea and coffee were placed in front of her, but she instead just looked at the sofa. Duke Sharps was known as particularly lecherous, and Veronika wondered how many women the sixty-year-old man had taken right here in his office.
She pushed the thought out of her mind. If he tried anything on her she’d send him headfirst out the window and down into Columbus Avenue traffic.
Finally he hung up the phone and spun the chair around, a little too dramatically, as far as Veronika was concerned. He crossed the room as she stood from the sofa. He was burly but not unattractive, though his face had leathered noticeably in the three years since she’d last seen him in person.
“My dear Ms. Martel,” he said with a wide grin.
“Lovely to see you, Mr. Sharps.”
“It’s Duke to you,” he said.
It’s Duke to everyone, she thought to herself.
“Veronika,” she replied, because she felt she had to, not because she liked the familiarity. She was European, after all, and normal Europeans rarely addressed business colleagues by their given names.
Moreover, Veronika Martel was not normal. She preferred keeping everyone at arm’s length.
They sat down, and Sharps poured coffee for Veronika without asking, even though she would have preferred tea. He asked her about her trip over, about the office back in Belgium she was based out of, and about a job she had done in Paris recently involving a city administrator and a problem with his daughter.
It was a small-time operation. Nothing that would be brought to Duke’s attention, since, at any one time, his company employed hundreds of operatives on dozens and dozens of missions. To Veronika it seemed as if he had just been brushing up on her file while she rode the elevator to his office.
After the small talk, Sharps got down to business. “Veronika, I read the reports. You were stellar on that job in Vietnam. You are one of my bright lights here in the corporation. I expect you to go far.”
She smiled dryly. She didn’t tell him about the blood on the passport. She didn’t have a clue if he already knew about it, but she wouldn’t bring it up, because she was, in fact, a bright light. She was an operative who did her job and kept her mouth shut.
She thought he would next show some contrition for the complications of the mission.
But instead Sharps said, “I was lucky to steal you away from DGSE.”
Veronika paused to regroup, then she responded with typical coyness. “You weren’t lucky. You were wealthy. That stole me away. Plus the fact that I’d been fired from DGSE and had few other options.”
He hesitated with a slightly open mouth, trying to decide how to take her comment. Apparently he took it as a joke, because he laughed boisterously. “Despite your problems in France, you didn’t come cheap, that’s for damn certain. But you are worth every last cent.”
“I do try to create value for myself.”
He nodded aggressively and repositioned himself on the sofa. Surprised by the movement, Veronika thought he was going to try and slide closer to her, but instead he just crossed his legs. She was uncertain if her surprised look had scared him off at the last second.
After a moment he said, “I have a new assignment for you. I expect it to last a few weeks in duration, though it might run over just a tad.”
“That is fine.”
“It’s a continuation of what you did in Vietnam.”
“Oh?”
“I’ll give you the background you didn’t have when you started this op. The North Koreans have discovered a huge deposit of rare earth minerals. I guess I should say the Chinese have discovered it, but that lunatic Choi has kicked out the Chinese, and now North Korea will continue operations on their own.”
Veronika said, “A nation that can’t feed their people or keep their lights on is entering into the high-tech mining sector alone?”
“If they really could do it alone they wouldn’t need us. No. They are not alone. Our client isn’t North Korea. That would be illegal, of course. Our client is New World Metals LLC. A completely aboveboard mining consortium from Mexico via a dozen shell companies. They have a wholly legitimate contract to partner in the mining concern as a third party.”
Veronika was bored, and she let Sharps know. “My assignment?”
“You are going to California.”
She sat up straighter on the sofa. That sounded nice. A hell of a lot better than Vietnam, anyway.
“The North Koreans don’t trust the Chinese to process the ore once they dig it out of the mountains. This presents a serious problem, because the processing of rare earth materials is particularly complicated, and special equipment and know-how is required. New World Metals has purchased the computers for the processing equipment from Europe and they will fly them into North Korea via Bulgaria, but without proprietary software they are useless. They have asked us to send someone to Valley Floor, a NewCorp rare earth mine in California, and obtain the proprietary software they are using on the computers in their processing plant there.”
California, to Veronika Martel, meant Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco or Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. Wayne Sharps seemed to be describing a strip mine somewhere far away from these locations. Still, she was a dutiful employee.
“Okay, Duke. What specifically do you need me to do?”
“We need the software, every last bit of it. You will get it.”
“Of course.”
He moved again on the sofa, and this time there was no question — he was coming closer.
She stood up quickly.
He just smiled. It was clear to Veronika that he had expected her reaction and it didn’t bother him at all. She took him for a man much more thrilled by the chase than the kill, and she knew she had just thrilled him greatly.
He did not miss a beat, continuing as if nothing had happened. He stood up as well. “Your contact will be Edward Riley. Know him?”
She raised an eyebrow. “The scandal in Italy?”
“Right. That’s in his past. He’s a good man. A Brit, but we won’t hold it against him. He’s running the entire New World Metals operation from stem to stern. We are positioning you as a quality-assurance officer from the Canadian company that manufactures some of the processing equipment. You will be there to run some diagnostics on the machines and to survey the operation. This will put you in contact with the software we need.”
“Fine,” she said.
Duke smiled at her. “It was nice to see you. Until we meet again.”
He shook her hand, then held it. He hesitated, and she knew what was coming. Some sort of verbal attempt to hit on her, since his physical approach had failed. She expected it to be overt and charmless.
She was right.
“Your coldness only enhances your sex appeal. Has anyone ever said that?”