Chapter 13
R idge texted Maggie at 5 AM on Saturday telling her to come to the office but first swing by and bring him a new suit and some food.
“Anything else, your majesty?” she muttered to herself. She hadn’t slept well, and the imperious text made her feel even crankier. She wondered if he was being terse because of their confusing encounter the night before, but her arrival at work dispelled that notion. The boss was there, the big boss, her boss, Ridge’s boss, everybody’s boss.
“What’s happening?” Maggie asked as she stood in Ridge’s office with him and fed him bites of a granola bar while he changed out of one suit and into a fresh one.
“We got some intel on a new cell that’s threatening mass casualties in the US. It’s cropped up in the last few hours, and it’s high priority because they’re already in the country.”
“What?” Maggie hissed. “How did it get this far?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “They slipped under the radar. Everyone missed them, and now everyone is on them. This is bad, Maggie. This is very, very bad.” He slipped the final leg into his pants and stood upright to zip them.
“Wait, you have granola on your face,” she said, standing on her toes to brush it off. He stood patiently by while she wiped his lips.
“You look especially amazing today,” he said. “I notice you wore your hair down.”
“My neck was cold,” she replied.
“Temptress,” he accused. “Let’s go. ”
“You want me to come with you?” she squeaked. She had never been in a meeting with the highest of the higher ups before, and this would be a meeting with all of them.
“I want my own translator, and I want you to get a read on the situation. You don’t have to talk, just use that famous intuition of yours.”
“Okay,” she said, taking a steadying breath. It was a bad day to wear her hair down. The bun made her feel more grownup and professional. “Hold on.” She wound her hair into a chignon at the base of her neck and secured it with a rubber band from his desk. “Does that look okay?”
“There’s this one hair,” he said, touching one long strand that had escaped the knot. “But I kind of like it, it’s a hint of sexy, sort of our little secret.” His fingers were still holding the strand of hair, but his eyes fell to her lips.
“Now is so not the time,” she said.
“I know,” he said. He let her hair go and took a deep breath. “Here we go.” They headed out of his office and up three floors to the secure conference room. It was soundproof, checked for bugs daily and unable to be penetrated with any outside infrared technology. Even the windows had been specially installed to not only be bulletproof but lacking in vibrations that would have given way to high-tech outside listening devices.
“You’ve got this,” Maggie said, squeezing Ridge’s hand before they stepped off the elevator.
“Thanks,” he said, returning the squeeze. It was his first time in the big leagues, too. Previously he had been a field agent, doing the daunting work of gathering intel. It was a whole new learning curve on the other side of the desk. They entered the conference room and sat down. Their boss’s boss, Admiral Hagan, gave the rundown of the situation, making it sound even direr than Ridge had. Based on his language, that of a first-year sailor and not an esteemed admiral, he was irate and maybe a little bit panicked. Though, having never met him before, Maggie supposed it was possible he always talked that way.
The next higher up, marine General Briggs, was no less angry or articulate. Basically it was feared that someone in the intelligence line had messed up. Fingers were ready to point, but no one could figure out where. Who had dropped the ball and how?
“We have three Saudi nationals in the country, ready to carry out the next 9-11. We have no idea who they are, how they got here, or exactly what they’re planning. This is unacceptable, people.” He yelled so forcefully that some of his spittle landed on the table in front of Maggie. She refused to look at it, let alone wipe it away. With the current mood of the room, they might toss her out the window for blinking.
“How did this happen?” The next to scream at them was Ridge and Maggie’s direct boss, a Colonel Caruthers, an old army man. Previously Maggie had seen him as being grandfatherly. Not after today. Right now he looked like a bulldog in search of a jugular to rip.
Ridge spoke up. Maggie thought it was brave of him. She was too petrified to so much as turn her head to watch him talk. “What do we actually know? Can we go over it again?”
The Colonel huffed but pushed a button. People popped onto the screen, along with some audio that had been laid overtop of the photos. There were two older men talking. Maggie closed her eyes for a second to hone in on their voices. One said the plans were nearly finished while the other said there could be up to ten thousand casualties. And then the tape stopped .
“That’s it,” the Colonel said. Maggie opened her eyes and froze as all air was sucked from the room. She legitimately couldn’t breathe and thought she might pass out. Ridge somehow noticed. His glance turned into a stare of alarm. He leaned closer and whispered.
“Maggie, are you okay?”
She pointed to the man now on the screen, his superimposed face seeming to dominate the room. “That man.”
“You know him?” Ridge asked, leaning in. “Have you come across his picture before?”
She shook her head and turned to face him. Everything felt surreal, and the room seemed to be tipping. “He’s my fiancé.”
Everyone was ordered out of the room. The only ones who remained were Maggie, Ridge, and the three top brass.
“How could you have hired a woman with a terrorist for a boyfriend?” The General screamed in Ridge’s face.
“I’m not the one who did her background,” Ridge replied.
“It never came up?” The General yelled.
Maggie couldn’t take it anymore. “Please, stop yelling at Ridge. It’s not his fault.”
“Then whose fault is it? Yours?” The General screamed. “Did you purposely mislead the government of the United States, Missy? Because that’s a felony.”
“Maggie would never,” Ridge began, but Maggie shook her head at him and took a breath.
“He’s dead,” she said.
“He’s apparently very much alive,” the Admiral said quietly .
“I thought he was dead. I went to his funeral. I have the program, if you’d like me to show you. It was so long ago, my first year out of college. It never occurred to me to mention it,” she said. “To anyone,” she added, with an apologetic glance at Ridge.
“You work for an anti-terrorism unit, and it never occurred to you to tell the US government your ex-boyfriend was a Saudi national?”
“He’s not Saudi,” she insisted.
“What’s his name?” the General barked.
“Sam, although that’s his preferred nickname.”
“Where’s he from?” the Colonel yelled.
“He’s from…I can’t…if you could give me a minute to…”
“We don’t have a minute,” the General shouted.
“Leave her be and let her get a breath,” the Admiral said. “You can see the girl’s had a shock, and she’s not a marine. Stop berating her. Take a breath, Maggie. Pull yourself together and tell us what you know.”
Maggie nodded and took a shaky breath. “Thank you, sir. His name is Din Chatti, but he’s gone by Sam since he was a boy. His mother is a US citizen with Saudi ancestry. His father was Saudi, but the family moved to Jordan when Sam was born. He has dual citizenship, and he attended college with me. We met freshman year, became serious right away, and dated all four years. We were engaged our senior year and planned to marry immediately after. He died in a car accident two months before our wedding. Or at least I thought he did.”
“You visited Jordan with him,” Ridge said.
Maggie nodded. “I spent a semester abroad, studying the language and living with his parents, and I visited several times with him over the four years we were together. ”
“Was there ever any talk of anything you would consider suspicious?” Ridge asked. With him asking the questions in his gentle, probing, and familiar way, it was easier to think.
“He had uncles, Saudi uncles, who were estranged. They were talked about in whispers, so I assumed it was something nefarious.”
“What were their names?” the General barked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I ever heard their names.”
“Anything else,” Ridge prompted.
“His father also died right before Sam did. The uncles in question were his brothers.”
“Anything else?” the Admiral asked.
“Not that I can think of, sir, but I’ll try my hardest to come up with more.”
The Admiral nodded at her and turned to face the other two, disregarding Ridge from their circle. “Are you gentlemen thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yes, sir,” the Colonel and General agreed.
“With all due respect, sirs, what are you thinking?” Ridge asked.
“Bait, Lieutenant,” the General said.
Ridge dashed to his feet. “Absolutely not.”
“Pardon me, Lieutenant?” the Admiral said.
“Sir, she is a librarian,” Ridge said.
“Has she not had the same training as everyone else in this building?” the Admiral asked.
“Yes sir, but…”
“There are no buts, Lieutenant,” the Admiral said.
“Look at her,” Ridge said, pointing. “It would be like sending a lamb to slaughter. She’s a civilian in every sense of the word.”
“She looks okay to me,” the General said .
“I’ve seen worse,” the Colonel agreed.
The Admiral remained focused on Ridge. “You’re coming within a hairsbreadth of insubordination, Lieutenant.”
“All due respect, sir, but I’m a civilian now, too,” Ridge said.
“And an employee under my command. Sit down, son.”
Years of military training kicked in and Ridge sat.
“She’s doing it,” the Admiral said.
Ridge opened his mouth to speak again, but Maggie preempted him. “I’ll do it,” she said, and all the men turned to look at her in surprise as if, during their power play, they had forgotten she was there and able to speak for herself.
“Maggie,” Ridge started, but she held up a hand.
“What’s the alternative, Cameron? That ten thousand people die because I’m better with research than combat? I can’t live with that, and I know you can’t, either. What’s the plan, sirs?”
“There’s a party where we strongly suspect some kind of handoff or meeting will take place. You’ll go to the party with a handler and try to make contact with this Sam person.”
Maggie nodded.
Ridge stood again. The other three men regarded him warily. “I’m going with her.”
“We have field agents for that,” the Colonel said.
“I brought her into this company, and I’m not going to hand her off to some cowboy out to make a name for himself. I’m a qualified field agent, more than qualified, if I say so myself, and I will be her handler,” he said.
“I see no problem with that,” the Colonel said. He turned to the other men. “Gentlemen?”
“It’s a go, we’ll get it set up. In the meantime, debrief your agent, Lieutenant. Thoroughly.”
“Yes, sir,” Ridge said, and he and Maggie were dismissed.