Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2 — The Danbury Delusion
Danbury Federal Correctional Institution was technically a minimum-security camp for female offenders.
But to Eleanor Vance, it was a medieval dungeon.
She despised the scratchy khaki uniform that clung uncomfortably to her aging frame.
She despised the steel toilets, the communal showers, and the sheer, unadulterated indignity of being told when to wake, when to eat, and when to sleep.
Most of all, she despised the food.
She sat at a metal cafeteria table, pushing a scoop of gray, watery oatmeal around her plastic tray with a plastic spoon.
For a woman who had spent forty years lunching on caviar and champagne at the Colony Club, this was a daily, torturous humiliation.
"You're not going to eat that?"
The woman sitting across from Eleanor was named Brenda.
Brenda was serving three years for embezzlement and had a crude tattoo of a butterfly on her neck.
Eleanor looked at her with pure, unfiltered disgust.
"I am not hungry," Eleanor said, her voice dripping with condescension.
"Suit yourself, Princess," Brenda laughed, reaching across the table and taking Eleanor's tray.
Eleanor gripped the edge of the metal table, her knuckles white.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to transport herself back to her Fifth Avenue life.
She tried to remember the smell of fresh lilies in her foyer.
She tried to remember the feeling of Italian silk against her skin.
But all she could smell was floor wax and boiled cabbage.
"Vance," a corrections officer barked from the cafeteria doorway.
"You have a visitor."
Eleanor’s eyes snapped open.
A visitor?
Her friends had abandoned her. Her son was in Allenwood.
She hadn't had a single visitor in the six months she had been incarcerated.
She stood up, smoothing her wrinkled khaki uniform in a desperate attempt to maintain some semblance of dignity.
She followed the guard down the long, linoleum-tiled hallway to the visitor center.
She was seated in a hard plastic chair behind a thick pane of reinforced glass.
A moment later, a woman walked into the booth on the other side.
She was striking. Tall, blonde, dressed in an immaculate, tailored charcoal suit that screamed old money.
She carried a sleek leather briefcase and wore a pair of designer glasses.
Eleanor immediately recognized the aura of wealth.
She leaned forward eagerly, picking up the heavy black telephone receiver attached to the wall.
"Who are you?" Eleanor asked, her voice trembling with sudden hope.
The woman on the other side smiled, picking up her receiver.
"My name is Elena," she said, her voice smooth, carrying the faintest trace of an Eastern European accent.
"I am an investigative journalist for an independent media syndicate."
Eleanor’s heart leaped in her chest.
A journalist.
Someone was finally listening.
"I knew it," Eleanor gasped, tears welling in her eyes.
"I knew someone would realize this was a miscarriage of justice!"
"I am a political prisoner! My daughter-in-law is a monster!"
Elena nodded sympathetically, opening her briefcase and pulling out a notepad.
"That is exactly why I am here, Mrs. Vance."
"I am writing an exposé on the abuse of military authority."
"Colonel Marissa Vance has destroyed your family."
"She used her federal power to unlawfully seize your assets and silence you."
Eleanor nodded frantically, her diamond-free hands pressing against the glass.
"Yes! Yes, she did!"
"She humiliated me in public! She forged those documents!"
"She is a ruthless, ungrateful gold digger in a uniform!"
Elena smiled warmly, a predator masquerading as a savior.
"I want to help you clear your name, Eleanor."
"I want to publish the truth and humiliate her on a national stage."
"But to do that, I need details."
"I need to know everything about her."
"Her schedule when she lived in New York."
"The names of the civilian contractors she met with."
"Her private email passwords, if you know them."
"The layout of her home office."
Eleanor didn't hesitate.
The desperate, burning desire for revenge overrode any basic common sense.
She spent the next hour pouring out every single detail she could remember about my life.
She told Elena about my security badges.
She told her about the encrypted laptop I used to leave locked in the study.
She told her the names of the defense executives who had attended our wedding.
She gave up every piece of personal and professional intelligence she had absorbed during five years of exploiting me.
When the visiting hour was over, Eleanor felt a triumphant surge of vindication.
She watched Elena walk away, believing she had just fired the bullet that would end my career.
She had absolutely no idea she had just handed classified proximity intelligence to a known operative of a hostile foreign intelligence service.
Back at Fort Belvoir.
I sat at my glass desk in my private command office, watching the live feed of the visitor room at Danbury on my secure monitor.
Captain Miller stood at attention beside me, holding a fresh file.
"Facial recognition confirms the visitor, Colonel," Miller reported.
"Elena Rostova."
"A senior operative for the same foreign syndicate funding Victor Aris at Allenwood."
I took a sip of black coffee, my eyes locked on Eleanor's pathetic, eager face on the screen.
"They are running a coordinated intelligence-gathering operation using my ex-family as unwitting assets," I said smoothly.
"They believe the Vances hold the key to breaching the Strategic Intelligence Directorate."
"Eleanor just gave her the model and serial number of the home router I used in Manhattan."
"Should we dispatch federal marshals to intercept Rostova, ma'am?" Miller asked.
"No," I replied, leaning back in my leather chair.
"If we arrest her now, we only catch one operative."
"I want the entire network."
"And to get the network, we have to give them exactly what they are looking for."
"We are going to feed them a ghost."
Miller frowned slightly, though his discipline held firm.
"A ghost, Colonel?"
"Yes," I smiled, the cold, calculating thrill of the hunt rushing through my veins.
May you like
"We are going to let Anthony and Eleanor believe they are destroying me."
"And they are going to lead the wolves directly into our trap."
