Ripple Effect

Chapter Fifty-Seven: ...caught between a rock and a hard place.

Elizabeth

5:53 PM

Elizabeth pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes, whilst the plastic handset that she pressed to her cheek sweated into the imprint it left on her skin. So, the man who had poisoned her and Will belonged to some isolationist group centred in Moscow, and not only that, but US agents had seen members of the group meeting with known officers of the GRU. Kostov was still at large, likely within US borders, and their only hope was that the Russians would detain and question the members of the group, so that they could get a lead on Kostov's location and establish whether any of his co-conspirators had travelled to the US to assist him. But, of course, Salnikov had been about as cooperative as a vegan in a slaughterhouse, and instead of providing assistance, he had outright denied all knowledge of the group. Which went no way to disproving Conrad's theory that Salnikov was in fact the one behind the order and was using the group as a way to distance the assassination attempt from the Kremlin, so that in the off-chance that it failed and the US somehow traced it back to Kostov, Salnikov could place the blame squarely on the group and decry their actions. And had it been successful...? Well, then there would have been no witnesses. After all, it was only because she had remembered the car and the tattoo and had been able to ID the waiter from the photographs that the investigation had gotten this far. Had it been left to Will to remember anything, the only thing he'd recall would be how her arriving late at the restaurant had somehow inconvenienced him.

The information spun circles through Elizabeth's mind, but one thought rose up above the rest, voiced by Will and stained by the memory of the restaurant: Isn't it always problems the Russians? If only she could go back to that moment, carrying with her what she knew now; maybe then she could have stopped it, or at the very least she could have insisted that he stick to the salmon.

She opened her eyes, and the fluorescent light that hummed through the office pulsed like a migraine against the edge of her vision. Amy sat on the chair behind the desk, her gaze fixed to the blank page of the notepad in front of her whilst she twiddled a biro between her fingers, though she hadn't written a single word in the last ten minutes.

"Wait a second, Russell." Elizabeth lowered the phone from her ear and pressed the mouthpiece to her chest, just below her collarbone. "Amy—" She waited for Amy to look up and blink heavily behind the thick frames her glasses. "Do you think you could give me the room?"

Amy frowned, a slight purse to her lips as she sought understanding.

"Can you give me ten minutes? I need to discuss something. In private."

Amy turned her head from side to side, and her crop of dark hair shimmered with a flare of chestnut beneath the tube lights. "You know we have to monitor your calls, it's standard procedure, and you only have another five minutes left."

Elizabeth stared at her, hard, a look that ought to make any foreign official back down.

A blush crept into Amy's cheeks, and her gaze faltered, but she made no move to leave.

Still Elizabeth stared at her.

The blush deepened. "I'm sorry, it's standard procedure."

"I'll pay you a hundred dollars if you never use that phrase again."

Amy continued to worry the biro between her fingers. "You know that complying with the rules of the programme is one of the conditions of you being signed off. Dr Sherman said—"

"It's not like I'm trying to smuggle alcohol into the clinic, for Pete's sake." Elizabeth's voice strained. She took a breath, huffed it out, and then settled onto the seat opposite Amy. She slid one hand onto the desk, a bridge between them, and she fluttered her fingers against the oak veneer. "Just five minutes. That's all I'm asking."