The Agent's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

that
unbearable,” David said. “It will be a delightful change from all
that rain. Did you say Roberts? Do you have a daughter named
Melina?”
    “ Yes I do,” Evan said,
giving David a strange look. “Why do you ask?”
    “ My son Alex spoke
yesterday of a Melina Roberts that is in some of his classes. She
told him that her father worked here.”
    Evan laughed. “I don’t get those sorts of
updates. Melina could have someone from another planet in her
class, and she wouldn’t tell me. That’s her mother’s domain.”
    There was a silence in the room. The
reference to Laura left everyone unsure what to say.
    Evan didn’t notice and sat down next to
David. He looked over at Arthur and then at the giant projection
screen on the wall of the conference room. The image on the screen
was of the Oval Office in the White House, but the President was
not there.
    “ Where is the old gal?”
Evan said to Arthur as he pointed at the screen.
    “ You were late, so she
took a phone call,” Arthur said.
    Evan stood up and talked in the direction of
the screen. “Hey lady! Get off the phone and let’s start this
meeting.”
    “ Evan!” Arthur said. “She
is talking to the Russian Prime Minister!”
    A moment later, an image filled the video
screen. It was President Elizabeth Stone, still on the phone. She
lowered the phone from her ear. “Evan, dear. Don’t make me fly down
to Texas and kick your butt.” Then she winked.
    Evan smiled and sat back down. The agency
was a small operation, and there were only twenty field agents, but
he was her favorite. The President knew he would go to the ends of
the Earth and put himself in harm’s way on her orders without
question. In fact, he had. But what she appreciated the most was
his candor. As President, she encountered so many people that told
her only what she wanted to hear because they feared her. She found
it refreshing to talk with someone that just didn’t seem to have
any fear.
    President Stone finished her conversation,
hung up the phone and sat down. “All right, let’s get this meeting
started,” she said. “Gentleman, we have a new area of concern. Our
conventional intelligence sources have come across information that
the Republic of Malazistan may be attempting to build a nuclear
weapon. The government there is considered somewhat unstable, and
there is no telling what they would do with a nuclear bomb.”
    “ Malazistan?” Arthur
asked. “Do you mean the country in Central Asia that used to be a
part of the Soviet Union?”
    “ Yes,” she said. “That is
the problem. When the Soviet Union controlled that part of Asia,
they built an ultra-sophisticated facility for processing uranium
into a form that could be used in a bomb. They chose to build it in
that area because it was an uninhabitable high desert region of the
country. The remoteness of that area was seen as a plus because the
facility would be harder to spy on or attack.”
    “ Wasn’t the facility
dismantled when the country was given its independence?” David
asked.
    “ No,” said the President.
“When the Soviet Union dissolved into Russia and the breakaway
republics, the Russians took whatever had strategic value from the
countries that they abandoned. They could not take buildings with
them, so they left them intact but empty because it would have cost
too much to destroy them. According to the Russian Prime Minister,
in the case of the nuclear processing facility, it was thought that
it would be useless without the uranium. And the Russians took that
with them.”
    “ So you think that they
have gotten hold of some uranium?” Evan asked.
    “ We don’t know,” said the
President. “That part of Asia is extremely desolate, so we have
only been able to get information via satellite imagery. We have
been monitoring the facility for several years, and there has been
almost no activity. However, over the course of the last few weeks,
a steady stream of trucks has visited the