In Search of the Dove (22 page)

But the need to help him pulled her forward. She had to reach out toward him. As she did, an invisible barrier gave way, and all at once she felt herself sucked forward with a rush. Her own face contorted as her consciousness merged with his. There was no thought in his mind—in her mind—except agony. And it swallowed her up as well. God, her whole body was on fire from the inside out. Acid was pumping through her veins. She felt herself drowning in it, consumed.

A piercing scream escaped from her throat and her hand clenched around the passport. Eden was on the other side of the desk in an instant. But as quickly as she moved, she didn’t get to Jessica before Michael had burst through the door.

He swore and grasped her by the shoulders. “Jess, what’s happening? Come back.”

She screamed again, spasms sweeping over her in giant waves. Her eyes were wide and staring, but she saw neither Michael nor Eden.

“Let go of the damned passport,” he ordered. She was incapable of obeying.

Steely fingers grasped her hand and pried the twisted document from her grasp. As he pulled it free, the pain stopped abruptly and she sagged in the chair. Reaching down, he scooped her up and took her to the couch, cradling her on his lap.

Even as he held her close against him and soothed his fingers across her back and shoulders, he was looking accusingly at Eden. “Can’t you see what this kind of thing does to her?” he rasped.

Jessica stirred against him.

“It’s all right. Relax. You’re safe now,” he murmured.

She closed her eyes and burrowed into his warmth, rubbed her face against his shirt, inhaled the familiar scent of his body.

“Michael.”

“What is it?”

“Thank you.”

For several more minutes he simply held her. Then he shifted her body so that he could search her face. He waited until her breathing had returned almost to normal.

“Can you tell me what happened?” he questioned softly.

“Jed. I found Jed. It was horrible.”

“What?”

“They injected him with something called tricarbotane.”

“Bastards!”

“Tricarbotane?” Eden questioned.

“A drug the Russians developed in the sixties,” Michael answered, his voice scathing. “The substance has no medical value. It puts victims in agony for hours but doesn’t leave any physical effects—except an urge to talk to prevent further treatments.”

Eden rubbed her forehead. “I didn’t know the name, but I’ve heard the experience described.” She knelt beside Jessica. “Are you all right?”

“I saw them give it to Jed. I wanted to help him, but I couldn’t do anything except feel his pain.”

“Your mind merged with his?” Eden asked.

“Yes. I couldn’t stop myself.”

Michael swore. “That’s all the more reason why you should stay out of this, Jessica.”

The woman he held cradled in his arms raised her flushed face so that she could meet his eyes. “It doesn’t matter whether or not I go down there with you, Michael. I’m already in it.”

* * *

T
HE TROPICAL EVENING
was rich with the fragrance of island flowers. Moonshadow had wandered out into the garden, sure that the guest of honor would follow.

He caught up with her beside a small pond where bronze pelicans dipped their large beaks between the lily pads.

“I’ve been intrigued by you all evening,” he murmured.

“I think the feeling is mutual.”

She leaned over to trail her graceful fingers in the water. When a large goldfish came up to investigate her ruby nails, she laughed softly, her voice like silver bells in the moonlight.

Gorlov sat down beside her on the low stone wall, inhaling her intoxicating scent.

Through long dark lashes, she gazed up at him. “But you’re such a man of mystery.”

“How so?”

“I sense that you have more power than you pretend, and I’m attracted to power.”

He didn’t deny her supposition. “And I am attracted to beauty. Yours matches that of any goddess.” He was surprised at the poetry she had inspired. But then he’d been thinking all evening that he’d like to slide the caftan off her bronze shoulders and find out if she were as beautiful all over as he suspected. “I’ve never met a woman quite like you,” he added.

“And you are beyond my experience too. Different. Very intellectual. Quite foreign, I think. You’re not really from Brazil, are you?”

He hesitated.

“I never make love to a man unless I know his real name.” As she spoke, she reached up to run a ruby nail down the ruffles of his dress shirt. She sensed the instant reaction of his body to both the words and the intimate gesture.

“Feliks,” he supplied.

“A Slavic name?” Her dark eyes held his gaze and her hands smoothed more firmly across the front of his shirt, a cellist tuning a new instrument.

“No. Russian.” His voice was thick and husky.

Russian. Now she could hear the accent that years of training had hidden. Very interesting, she thought. Through the ruffles, her fingers traced tiny circles on his bare chest. She could feel his level of sensual tension increasing.

“Feliks, I believe that you and I will become very good friends tonight.”

Impatiently he reached for her, his mouth descending to hers like a vulture. In that moment she knew that he was going to be a selfish lover. But her own pleasure was of little importance tonight. This man had some kind of hold over Talifero, and she was going to call upon all her powers to find out what it was.

“Shall we go back to your room?” he questioned huskily.

So he wasn’t aware of the TV cameras. She didn’t care who might be watching, but she didn’t want anyone to hear what they might say. “No,” she whispered, taking his hand. “Come down into the summer house where the magic of the night and the fragrance of the garden will be all around us.”

* * *

M
ICHAEL’S SHOULDERS
were rigid as he turned back to face Eden. “Don’t I get any say in who I work with on this rescue operation? I don’t want Jessica along.”

“Why not, Michael?” she whispered.

He didn’t answer.

“There’s more working here than your concern for her safety,” Eden interjected.

“Don’t push me,” he warned the psychologist.

Eden sighed. “Michael Rome, you’re one of Peregrine’s best operatives, but you’re not being very logical about this mission. I can see now that I made a mistake by not getting you to tell me more about what happened in Greece three years ago.”

Michael started toward the door.

Before he reached it, Jessica jumped up and put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “It has to do with Laura, doesn’t it?” she asked quietly.

He whirled to face her. “Damn it, stay out of my head.”

“Then tell us about it.”

His hands balled into fists, and he sucked air into his lungs. For several moments the room was silent. Then he looked from one woman to the other. “All right, if it will make you understand how crazy this idea is, I will.”

“Michael, I don’t want to just hear your filtered version,” Jessica said softly.

“What other kind of version is there? She’s dead. I don’t suppose you communicate with ghosts. Or shall we all hold hands and conduct a seance?”

She shook her head tightly. “No. I don’t do that sort of thing. But I’m getting better at projecting my mind. If you don’t put up a barrier against it, I think I can go back there with you and see for myself what happened.”

He closed his eyes. “Jessica, haven’t you had enough torture for one afternoon?”

“I want to help you.” She sat down on the couch again. “Come back here beside me.”

Wearily he obeyed. “I don’t think you’re going to get very far.” He gave Eden a quick glance. “You see, I don’t remember exactly what happened.”

“Michael, I suspected that. It’s not unusual. It’s a trick the mind uses to protect itself from trauma. But unfortunately, the pain comes out in other ways.”

He pressed his lips together.

Jessica took his hand. It was ice cold.

“Try to relax. Think about the mission—and how it ended.”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“That’s not important,” Eden interjected.

“I can’t fight both of you. If you two signed up as an interrogation team, you could break any Soviet agent alive.”

Jessica laughed hollowly. “I’m not trying to break you, Michael. I’m just trying to understand what makes working with me so threatening to you.”

“All right,” he snapped. “You can have what you asked for.” Squeezing his eyes closed, he forced himself to think about that day three years ago. He and Laura Atkins had been on a mission for the Falcon in Greece. She was a linguist, and this was her first time in the field. Michael hadn’t thought she was ready, but he’d enjoyed her company and rationalized that the assignment was really not all that dangerous.

They were meeting a defector named Balinski who had escaped from Bulgaria and was hiding in the hills around Elasson. Posing as a married couple on vacation, they took several days traveling from Athens. They stopped at little taverns to enjoy the spicy Greek food, walked hand in hand through historic villages, and enthusiastically continued the charade of being married in the bedrooms of charming country inns.

But as the rendezvous drew closer, Michael sensed Laura’s nervousness. They were to meet Balinski in the ruins west of town. Michael would have left her in Elasson, but she was the one who spoke the man’s language.

He forced his mind to picture the scene once again. The rocky hills. The dry grass. The gnarled olive trees. Balinski, dressed like a hiker emerging from behind the remains of a small temple and whistling two low notes.

Despite the innocence of the scene, it was a death trap. The man was more important than even the Falcon had suspected. He knew too much to be allowed to escape to the West, and the Bulgarian secret police were already closing in.

Armed men surrounded the defector. When one shouted a warning, he broke for cover. They cut him down in a hail of automatic fire. Michael remembered instinctively ducking behind the rocks. He had never been able to bring any more of it into focus. Yet some part of him remembered. Here in this quiet room at the Aviary, sweat broke out on his brow and his temples throbbed.

The grim images had come to Jessica very clearly, like a movie projected on the screen of her mind. She felt the tension in Michael’s body and squeezed his hand.

“Damn it,” he spat out. “I saved my own neck and let them kill her. She died, and it’s my fault.”

“That’s not what happened, Michael.”

“How the hell would you know?” His voice was harsh with self-accusation.

“Even if you can’t see the end of it, I can. It’s there in your subconscious.”

“I can’t face it, Jess. I never should have let them send her on that assignment. She was too green.” He turned his face and shoulders toward the wall. He needed to be alone with this, had always needed to be alone with it.

“Taking her on the assignment wasn’t your decision.” Eden interjected.

“Why couldn’t I save her?”

“You tried,” Jessica soothed, gently reaching over to bring him back toward her. “You pulled her down with you and held on to her. When one of the Bulgarians started in your direction you reached for your gun. Laura panicked and ran. That’s how she was shot. It wasn’t your fault.”

“So why didn’t they get
me?
”

“They must have assumed she was the only contact and didn’t come looking for you. She was already dead, and you did what you were supposed to do. You came back to report what had happened to the defector.”

Michael’s blue shirt was soaked with perspiration. His head felt as though an eighteen-wheeler were roaring through the middle of his skull. Yanking his hand away from Jessica’s, he covered his face.

“Don’t you believe me?” she questioned.

“I don’t know.”

“Michael, it wasn’t your fault.” Eden added her assurance to Jessica’s.

“It’s hard to accept what you’re telling me. But then, you already know that.”

“Guilt does strange things,” the psychologist added. If she only had the time to put Michael into six months of therapy, she could help him work through this properly. As it was, she felt like a front-line medic patching up a soldier and sending him back to the front. But with Jed’s life hanging in the balance, there was no time for extensive therapy. Despite their personal problems, Michael Rome and Jessica Duval were the best shot Gordon had at successfully pulling off the rescue. Whether she liked it or not, her job was to get them in shape to do it.

She came over and put her hand on Jessica’s shoulder. “I think we should leave him alone with this for now.”

Jessica didn’t want to go. But she deferred to the psychologist’s judgment. Before standing up, she leaned over and brushed her lips against Michael’s cheek. “It must have been terrible to carry that around with you.”

He didn’t answer. He was slumped on the sofa, wrung out and exhausted, his mind still struggling with the new information that he must have known all along but refused to acknowledge. They were right. He needed to be alone with his feelings about Laura. Whether he had been technically responsible for her death or not, it was hard to stop blaming himself. And the old guilt was mixed up with his current anxieties over Jessica.

He didn’t look up as the two women left the room.

Chapter Fifteen

J
essica put down the thick briefing folder and leaned her head back against the leather couch in the library. It was almost eleven o’clock and she knew she should be in bed, but she was still too unsettled to sleep.

She’d taken a sheaf of background material downstairs to read and made herself a cup of herb tea. But it was impossible to keep her mind on the Blackstone Clinic and Royale Verde. Michael had steered clear of her since the confrontation in Eden’s office. The raw emotions she’d last seen on his face continued to haunt her. When he hadn’t appeared at dinner, the psychologist had taken her aside for a few reassuring words.

“Michael has the facts now. But he still must deal with them in his own way, Jessica,” she’d explained.