As she dressed, a full-length mirror reflected her image. The dark clothes looked general and plain, but even with her skin hidden behind them, she respected her trim frame and athletic curves. But the senator had accomplished his goal of denying her the visual distraction of her sexuality.
Preparing for lunch, she mentally verified her goals. The top priority was her earning credit with the CIA for establishing a peaceful resolution to the conflict she helped ignite. Since she had supplied Renard with weapons, she could claim no middle ground. She either catapulted herself to the agency’s executive ranks by guiding it to a peaceful and stable outcome, or her career went down in flames if the Falkland Islands erupted in a military conflagration.
Her secondary objective was Ramirez. Assuming she succeeded in earning advancement within the agency, she wanted him as an ally for assuring future stability in South America.
Ramirez controlled everything, and she needed to be persuasive during lunch. She silently cursed herself for allowing her hangover to cloud her head.
She reached for her phone on a nightstand and saw that she had missed a call from Renard. She called him.
“What’s going on, Pierre?”
“I must speak to you urgently,” he said. “Are you in a place of privacy?”
“I’m in the senator’s guestroom. I’m not sure if I’m being bugged, but I’ll take my chances.”
“Jake found the Ambush. It was sprinting west, and the only logical conclusion to draw is that it intends to interdict the Argentine landing force.”
Hopes of a peaceful settlement vanished.
“Jake wasn’t able to stop it?” she asked.
“He chose not to. He tried to communicate with it to no avail, but he let it pass without hostility. Though it leaves you in a compromised position, I commend his judgment in sparing the Ambush.”
“No, I get it. He did the right thing.”
“No question.”
“So it’s the Ambush versus the escorted landing force. Hundreds, if not thousands of lives will be lost in the next six hours if I don’t stop it.”
“It gets worse,” Renard said.
“How could it possibly get worse?” she asked.
“I believe that Gomez has armed his landing force with naval mines,” Renard said. “The mines that I helped him acquire for blockading the islands will instead be used against the Ambush unless you can convince the British to call the submarine back. It’s heading into a trap.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s just a theory. But consider that Gomez has the mines in his possession and was willing to accept the risk of facing the Ambush with his landing forces.”
She tried to picture fishing ships rolling mines off their decks against a submarine shooting torpedoes at them, but the image made no sense.
“You’re losing me. How would this work?”
“Air dropped mines. Consider that the Argentine forces can see where their aircraft are laying mines, and they have the luxury of communicating among themselves. There may be accidents, but their aircraft could lay mines in front or aside of the landing force, and the landing force could maneuver around them. Not so for the Ambush, which has no knowledge of the mines’ locations and no idea where the aircraft are.”
“If this is true, I’m not sure that Ramirez knows about it or will reveal that he does,” she said.
“Assume that it’s true and that he knows. You must consider this in your discussions with him.”
“I’m already at a disadvantage,” she said. “He told me not to bother seducing him, and he made me shower away my perfume and put on subdued clothes. He also told me that he could’ve stopped the troop movement but didn’t so that he could maintain his credibility all around.”
“Damn. Then your immediate mission is clear. You must broker a peace before the Ambush reaches the landing force.”
A knock on the door disturbed her, and she lowered the phone.
“Come in!”
Her assistant stuck his head into her room.
“Lunch is ready. The senator and his staff are waiting.”
“Give me five minutes. Wait outside.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When the door closed, she answered Renard.
“That’s at best a long shot,” she said. “Neither side has motivation to back down. If the Ambush pulls back, the full landing force hits the beach. If the landing force delays, it gives the British time to send reinforcements.”
“Trust your abilities, young lady. My recent error with Gomez aside, history has proven me an excellent judge of people’s characters and capabilities. I know you can navigate this challenge.”
A waiter slid Olivia’s seat under her buttocks and then draped a napkin across her lap. He placed before her a garden salad with crisp lettuce and sliced tomatoes that appeared picked from the vine earlier in the day.
Since the senator had granted her the privileged guest seat at the table’s far end, she sat opposite the nation’s future president, seated at the head, and she held a clear view of the other guests’ profiles.
Her assistant, a recent graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, sat to her left. For his intellect, she had handpicked him to join her growing staff. She ran the faces of the remaining guests against memorized images of Ramirez’s staff as the senator made curt introductions.
To her right, sat Ramirez’s economic advisor. The next chairs held his foreign policy advisor and his military advisor. The final chairs, which flanked the senator, held his chief of staff and one person she didn’t recognize — his presidential campaign manager.
“You don’t recognize my campaign manager, do you?”
“No,” she said. “But that’s expected. You weren’t planning on announcing your campaign for president for another month, I assume. No need to have a publicly recognized campaign manager.”
“You’ve complicated his life by forcing my hand to take the presidency from Gomez via emergency succession. But you may have also made his job that much easier. Time will tell, and we have more immediate things to discuss.”
The senator stabbed his fork into his lettuce and took a bite.
“You mentioned the troop movement, senator,” she said. “I believe the landing force is our immediate topic of interest.”
“Like I said, I have no intention to turn back the landing force. I see no reason to do so. Do you?”
She hurried through a mouthful of salad and swallowed. Doubting her argument’s chances, she launched it out of obligation to establish her starting point.
“It would demonstrate to the British that you actually have control of your nation’s military.”
“I’ve been candid that I do not control every naval asset.”
“But you told me that you could stop the landing force.”
“I can. Enough of the ground troops aboard the landing ships are loyal enough to me to take control by force.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“I’ve shared this information with you,” he said. “I did not share it with the British prime minister.”
“You’re talking directly with him?”
“Of course I am. How else did you expect me to take credit for saving the Ambush from the aircraft attack? How else did you expect me to position myself as the future president in his eyes?”