Blowback (21 page)

Dr. Wright inclined her body forward, a gesture of connection. “You can't talk to friends and family like most people. Ours is a closed world, and you don't have many options when it comes to being able to confide in others.” Dr. Wright's voice took on a new energy. “So use me.
Here, now
—what you say stays between us. You don't need to keep everything secret.”

Nice offer, but Vanessa knew better—whatever she said would be on the record and used against her if necessary.

The damn clock kept ticking.

Vanessa forced her body to stillness—not even breathing—punishment until she regained control. When she knew she could speak half-normally, she said, “Are we done?”

Dr. Wright drew her mouth taut. “We're almost finished, yes. Because the reality is, you are not viable for field operations—not at this time. I'm going to recommend that you be called back for consultations at Headquarters for an indefinite period of time.”

The words slammed into Vanessa, even though she'd known this was coming and thought she was prepared. She could hardly breathe.

“The life of an ops officer is based on secrecy, we both know that. I know there's more here, and it's really your choice to share it or not.” Dr. Wright leaned forward, speaking too quietly now. “But the cost of that secrecy can be acute. I can't count the number of officers who've come through this door with tales of substance abuse, depression, and adultery. Don't let yourself become one of them, Vanessa. My door is always open.”

She stood
in the carpeted hallway in front of the elevator, disoriented for a moment. But just as the elevator doors opened and a man and two women stepped out, Vanessa felt someone grip her arm. She swung around to find herself inches from Chris, his dark eyes shining with a manic gleam. “I've been looking for you. I just got a phone call that it's good intel. The analysts are on it, and it looks viable.”

“I
knew
it.” She felt lifted by momentary excitement. “We need all eyes on this ASAP, we need a briefing now, today—”

“Get in,” he said, nudging her toward the elevator. When they were both inside and alone, he said, “Slow down, Vanessa, you're not in on this briefing. You have another job right now, and that's to go back to Nicosia and close up shop.”

He pressed the button for the basement quarters of CPD, and the elevator began its descent. Focusing fully on Vanessa now, he said, “Listen, I owe you this because you got us the coordinates. But you should know there's been unusually intense pressure from the ‘bomb Iran lobby' to proceed with a military strike.”

“That can't happen,” Vanessa said. “There would be civilian casualties, and even though the odds of Bhoot showing up may be thin, the whole point of this mission is capture or kill—it's worth the risk, and the SAD team will set back operations at the facility long enough for us to figure out their nuclear capabilities—this is our chance for so much—”

“And because you gave us the coordinates, it looks like we have time to get in and get out and take what we want—including Bhoot.” For an instant, Chris's expression softened and Vanessa thought she read regret.

But now the elevator slowed to stop at the fifth floor. A green badger—private contract worker—stepped on.

“Milk run,” Chris muttered. Vanessa nodded, but she couldn't stop her thoughts from racing through the million details still to be completed on Operation Ghost Hunt, now that she'd delivered the coordinates. A mission she'd made possible, and Chris wasn't allowing her on the team.

The elevator had barely started to descend before it stopped again at the third floor. The doors whished open, and Vanessa found herself staring at David Khoury. Unshaven, hollow-eyed—looking like he'd been through hell.

Standing too close to him, a wiry man in a white short-sleeved shirt and black suit trousers.
Khoury's handler?

Vanessa felt absolutely still inside. Something was really off.

Khoury met her eyes, and she saw resignation and apology—as if he had said,
Sorry, but it is what
it is
—and then he shut down.

She let out her breath, recognizing again in that moment how very deeply she cared for him . . .

Almost unconsciously she looked to Chris. He was watching her. She looked away again quickly.

She felt Chris take a step back. Heard the ominous chill in his voice as he asked, “Going down?”

Khoury hesitated, but the wiry man stepped toward the elevator. Vanessa couldn't tell if Khoury resisted because he didn't want to involve her in this moment—or if he was resisting his fate.

What the hell was happening?

But David finally stepped forward, too, almost mechanically. This time, as he turned to face the elevator doors, he avoided her eyes.

No one spoke as the doors closed and the elevator descended.

When it stopped again, Chris said, “Our floor.”

Vanessa moved first, brushing the lightest touch of her hand against Khoury as she stepped out into the basement hallway. There was only one more floor that could be their destination—the underground parking level. So they were transporting Khoury?
Where?

The elevator doors closed again and, feeling suddenly helpless, Vanessa looked to Chris. “That guy with David is from security?”

But Chris was already walking, and she hurried to catch up with him. Three steps, and he took her arm, pushing her forward with momentum.

“What the hell, Vanessa? I saw the way he looked at you; I get it now. When were you going to tell me?”

“Chris—”

Still moving, she looked at him, but he shook his head, silent now. Her stomach clenched. Several groups of people hurried past, one or two eyeing them curiously.

A young targeteer, Paula, hurried up, ready to hand off a file to Chris, but he snapped,
“Later,”
and the woman backed away.

As they passed the men's bathroom, Chris pivoted abruptly, pushing Vanessa with him through the door.

A man zipping his pants at the urinal froze. He looked vaguely familiar to Vanessa, but she couldn't keep her eyes off Chris—she'd never seen him this angry before, not like this.

“Get the fuck out,” Chris ordered, and the man forgot about the zipper and hurried out.

Chris moved with Vanessa, and she backed toward the door. He pushed his fist hard against it, blocking her exit and anyone who tried to enter.

“Here's what I think,” he said, his face close to hers. “You're having an affair with David Khoury. And you are putting everything you care about—your op, your career, him—in jeopardy in a million fucking ways.”

The door jerked as someone tried to enter, but Chris pushed back hard. “Use another bathroom,” he snarled. “This one's out of order.”

He hadn't taken his eyes from Vanessa, and now he pressed even closer. “You're having an affair with David. I asked you to tell me. You didn't. You lied to my face.”

“It just happened, Chris, I didn't mean to—it just—”

“I fucking hoped I was wrong.” He pushed past her, opening the door.

She blurted out, “Do they know upstairs?”

He froze in his tracks. “Jesus, Christ, Vanessa, you've put us all in jeopardy and that's all you're worried about?”

“I care about the mission, about Operation Ghost Hunt and everything at stake.”

He eyed her, cold and silent. “As far as I'm aware, right now, this is between you and me.”

He opened the door, starting out. But he stopped, letting the door swing shut. “I've got an operation to carry out, I don't have time for your screwups, but you need to understand that David Khoury is under internal investigation.”

“Investigation for
what
?” Shaking her head, Vanessa stared at Chris. “David would never do anything to hurt this Agency or his country.”

“That's not how it looks in some people's eyes,” Chris said. “All I know, there are concerns about his loyalty, his ties to Hezbollah.”

“He's Lebanese American,” Vanessa said. “Of course he's got ties to Hezbollah—you and I both know that's part of the reason he was recruited so heavily to join the Agency!”

“Jesus, Vanessa, I don't even want to be in the same room with you right now,” Chris said sharply. “Just so you're warned, internal security is all over him and sooner or later they will find the thread to you.” And then he brushed past her into the hallway.

For a while she stood, unable to move. Then she walked slowly to the sink. The water ran cold. She washed her hands with soap, splashed her face.

She was reaching for a paper towel when the door opened and a man walked in. He stared at her, startled.

Vanessa didn't react. She couldn't. Inside, she'd gone numb.

She finished drying her face and hands, and then she dropped the used towel in the trash. She stepped out into a hallway bustling with activity, but all she heard was the internal cacophony punctuated by shame and remorse.

As Vanessa stood restlessly,
awaiting the announcement to board her flight from Dulles to Cyprus via Frankfurt, her cell phone buzzed. She almost jumped, thinking it might be Khoury. She'd dared send him only two text messages after their encounter at Headquarters. She used their long-standing trigger phrase—
need to chat
—which meant “urgent that you contact me.” She was terrified by his silence. Did he want to ignore her messages? Or did he have no choice?

But now, when she recognized the number as belonging to Chris from his unsecure line, her pulse quickened and she walked away from the boarding gate to find a more private spot to speak. Surely he would call if he had news of Khoury.

“Yes.”

“Change of plans,” a voice said. But it was Zoe, not Chris. “You're reserved on the 8:50 Swissair flight to Prague. We've notified them you'll be in country.”

“Right.”
Them
meaning the COS, the Station Chief. Already scanning the nearest display for the new gate. Nervously energized by a small surge of adrenaline. Ignoring the deep pang of disappointment that it wasn't Khoury or Chris on the other end of the call. She was cut off from two of the most important men in her life, and the third, her brother, Marshall, was stationed in one of the most dangerous corners of a very dangerous world.

“We've had news from Prague police—an unusual John Doe,” Zoe said. “We need positive confirmation.”

“Check,” Vanessa said sharply, her attention abruptly refocused. She couldn't ask questions on an unsecured line. As she clicked off, she steadied herself. The CIA's Prague Station tracked police bulletins closely, and they would be alert to an unidentified, unclaimed body. Her very recent cable to the Prague Station had been timely. The John Doe could mean only that her missing asset from Prague, Jost Penders, had finally turned up.

The man traveling as Michel D'Arc,
sporting a trim dark mustache and goatee, Alain Mikli titanium-frame eyeglasses, and a dark blue Kangol trilby limped noticeably through the Chunnel terminal at Paris Nord. He steadied himself with an expensive and stylish walking cane. He'd dressed the gunshot wound with fresh bandages this morning, and then he'd taken as much codeine as he dared, needing all his senses to be on high alert. Still, pain from the wound throbbed through him.

With his custom boot insoles, he'd gained just about four centimeters in height. At the security checkpoints, the agent focused on the blue canvas satchel he carried over his shoulder. He set it on the stainless-steel table. The agent gestured for him to open it.

Pauk did. The agent rifled through his wardrobe: two pairs of pants, two shirts, a sweater, pajamas, slippers, boots, and a bag of toiletries, all expensive-looking. He confiscated the new and oversized tube of Elgydium toothpaste. He gestured for Pauk to open the slender document zip case containing renderings and drawings. “For my work,” Pauk explained quietly, “as an architectural location scout for a small documentary film company.” The agent then asked him to remove his eyeglasses and trilby. He complied, revealing strikingly dark brown eyes and his newly shaved head, always aware that the display was for the security cameras. The agent nodded him through.

And finally he reached the first-class passengers already boarding the Eurostar. But Pauk kept walking until he reached the second-class coach, where the number and economic status of the travelers made them less likely to be memorable to Chunnel personnel.

As he stepped around the food cart and then settled into a seat between an elderly man and a middle-aged woman, he remembered Madame Desmarais's reading last night—she'd insisted on carefully removing her Tarot deck from its velvet bag.

As he stared through the young couple settling into the opposite seats, he once again heard Madame Desmarais suck in a little puff of air, her signal of a confounding card—the Moon. “Deception, fear and conflict, and clouded vision,” she'd said, waving her hands.

But next, the Chariot—victory and hard control and bravery, and Madame Desmarais relaxed a bit as she told him the card also signaled a journey.

Appropriate,
Pauk thought, as the Eurostar began to roll out of the terminal.

It was the final card—Death—that troubled and disturbed him: the skeletal, armored specter of Death riding a white horse surrounded by the dead and the dying. Madame Desmarais clucked but reassured Pauk that this merely meant transformation of the psyche. Regeneration, she told him. Beneficial.

But Pauk couldn't stop staring at the maiden on the Death card, who, according to Madame Desmarais, represented grief and mourning because the King had fallen in some great catastrophe. Just superstition, he chided himself sharply. There was no way the King represented his mentor fallen in defeat. His mentor stood at the height of his power. His empire grew stronger by the day.

Just a little more than two hours later, Pauk exited the train at Saint Pancras International station in London. His leg ached intensely again by now, and he moved with an even more noticeable hitch. His eyes burned slightly from the dark brown contact lenses. He kept his blue trilby pulled low, aware of the UK's predilection for CCTV. He still had to pass through passport control before he entered the UK.

•   •   •

Minutes later
at passport control, a watchful agent observed a tall, fashionably dressed man—the trendy type, with styled facial hair and a shaved head and a fancy cane, because he had some kind of deformity—pass through and continue toward the escalators that led up to the streets of London. Although the agent doubted he had a match, his attention kept returning to one face on the Interpol watch list, the most recent additions posted on the wall of the closet-size office used by passport control officers. Could it be the same man? The photo was poor quality, obviously taken off CCTV, and the man wore a hat and overcoat and appeared much stockier and younger than the French film scout who had passed through his station minutes ago. The descriptors mentioned a partial tattoo and possible nationality, Chechen. He hadn't noticed any tattoo, and the man's pronunciation and mannerisms were definitely Parisian.

Beneath the photo of the Chechen ran a warning:
Under no circumstances arouse this person's suspicion. Do not engage. Suspected of multiple murders. Considered extremely dangerous. Notify Interpol immediately.