Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination (25 page)

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“T
here’s something down there.”

 Scott Rich was in the navigator’s seat of the Black Hawk watching the heat-seeking monitor. The electronic chatter filling the cockpit was crazy-making, but Rich was entirely composed, leaning forward, focused, intent, listening to simultaneous feeds from the ground forces, four separate air patrols and Hackford Litvak’s Navy Seals.

“Sir, the ground patrol have found Agent Joules’s clothing at the end of the tunnel. No sign of the agent herself.”

“Anything else?” said Scott. “Signs of a struggle?”

“The clothing was torn and bloodstained, sir.”

Scott Rich flinched. “And your position now?”

“At the coastline, sir, a ten-foot drop to the Red Sea.”

“Anything else you can see there?”

“No. Only scuba equipment, sir.”

“Did you say scuba equipment?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then goddammit, get it on and get in the water.” He clicked off his microphone and turned to the pilot, pointing at the screen in front of them. “There. You see it? Let’s get down there. Now.”

Olivia screamed as Feramo burst up out of the water, forcing the dagger out of her grip with one hand, grabbing her round the
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throat with the other. She brought up her leg and kneed him hard in the balls, wriggling free the second he released her throat, swimming away and thinking fast. He had been under longer than she. He should be out of air—she had a good ten minutes’ worth left. She could drop thirty feet and lose him.

She started to descend, pulling on the mask, clearing the regulator as she went down, but Feramo lashed out and caught hold of her wrist. She screamed in agony as he twisted the joint. She felt herself blacking out, drifting into welcome unconsciousness. The air was escaping from her buoyancy jacket, the weights were pulling her down, the regulator was yanked out of her mouth. Then, suddenly, there was an almighty clattering and roaring overhead, and bright lights shone into the water. A figure plunged towards her, silhouetted through the ghostly green water. It took hold of her, releasing the weight belt, and pulled her up towards the light.

“Falcon, indeed,” Scott Rich whispered in her ear as they broke the surface, strong hands around her waist. “You look more like a baby frog.”

Then suddenly Feramo reared up again like a whale in a BBC special, lunging at them with the flimsy dagger.

“Float for a second, baby,” said Scott, as he grabbed Feramo’s wrist and knocked him out with a single blow.

Olivia leaned nervously out of the Black Hawk. Scott Rich was still in the water, trying to tie up Feramo, who was slumped in the winch basket, but the rotor wash kept flinging him away.

“Leave him,” Olivia yelled over the radio. “Come back up. He’s unconscious.”

“That’s what you thought last time,” came Scott’s reply.

Olivia gripped the edge of the open hatch, scanning the circle of light on the water for predators.

“Here, ma’am,” yelled Dan, the pilot, handing her a pistol. “If you see a shark, shoot it, but try to avoid Special Officer Rich.”

“Thanks for the tip,” she muttered into the radio.

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Suddenly, there was a dull boom back towards the shore and almost immediately a siren started blaring on the instrument panel.

“Jesus! Let’s get him up, get him up, up!” yelled Dan as a missile lit up the sky around them.

“Scott!” Olivia yelled, as the sea ahead seemed to explode into a huge fireball, throwing out a blast of air which sent the chopper reeling.

Olivia could hardly breathe, but seconds later Scott’s scowling face appeared over the edge of the hatch and the Black Hawk swung upwards, out of reach of the burning sea.

They were heading back to the aircraft carrier. It was steamily hot. Both Scott and Olivia were dripping wet. Neither of them looked at the other. Olivia was wearing only her underwear and a US Navy-issue T-shirt which the pilot had flung at her. She knew that if she leaned her cheek into the warm skin of Scott’s neck, or felt his rough, capable hand brush the soft skin of her thigh, she wouldn’t be able to control herself.

There was a burst of fire and a series of violent bangs against the airframe. “Hold on, baby,” said Scott. “We’ve taken a hit. Hold on tight.” The stricken helicopter shuddered and seemed to stop in its tracks. Then it lurched horrifyingly and plummeted straight down, throwing them onto the floor. There was a loud metallic bang and a jolt. Scott scrambled towards her, grabbing hold of her as the engine screamed and the pilot struggled to bring the aircraft under control. Ahead, Olivia saw dark water rushing towards them, then the lighter color of the sky, and then water again. The pilot was cursing and yelling, “We gotta eject, we gotta eject!” Scott held her tight, pressing her head into his chest, trying to get them back towards a seat, yelling into his radio above the din, “Okay there Dan, hold steady. We’re all right, bring her up, we’re going to be fine.” Then, to Olivia, above the roaring and clattering, “Hold onto me, baby. Whatever happens, just keep holding on as tight as you can.”

Yards from the water, suddenly, miraculously, Dan regained
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control. They hovered precariously for a few moments, stabilized, then swung upwards again.

“Phew, sorry about that, folks,” said Dan.

In the rush of adrenaline and relief, Olivia raised her head to see Scott Rich’s gray eyes looking down at her with immense tenderness. For an astonishing second she thought she saw a tear, then he pulled her to him passionately, his mouth searching for hers, gentle hands sliding up beneath the US Navy T-shirt.

“USS
Condor
at five hundred meters ahead, sir,” said Dan. “Shall we make the descent?”

“Give her another once around the block, will you?” murmured Scott into the radio.

As Olivia stood on the vast deck of the aircraft carrier, debriefed, showered and fed, taking a last look at the calm water and the star-filled night, Scott Rich appeared through the shadows.

“They found part of Feramo’s leg,” he said. “The sharks got him.”

Olivia said nothing, looking back towards the Suakin shore.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he said gruffly, allowing her the confusion of her feelings. After a few moments, he added, “Not as sorry as the administration are, though. And nowhere near as sorry as I am that I didn’t get to do the job myself, with my bare hands, or perhaps my teeth, after I’d extracted every last morsel of information from that smooth bastard in the most painful manner possible.”

“Scott!” said Olivia. “He was a human being too.”

“One day, I’ll tell you exactly what sort of human being he was. And what he might have done to you if—”

“Done to me? What do you mean? I wouldn’t have let him.”

Scott shook his head. “They want you to go back to LA, you know that? They need you to help look into his entourage.”

She nodded.

“You going to go or have you had enough?”

“Of course I’m going to go,” she said, adding, as if it were an afterthought, “are you?”

CIA Safe House, Los Angeles

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A
solitary hawk gliding silently over Hollywood—above the Kodak Theater, ringed by cables and TV vans; the blaring horns of Sunset; the pre-Oscar parties thronging the turquoise-lit pools of the Standard, the Mondrian and the Château Marmont—towards the darkness and coyote cries of the hills, might have spotted a single lighted window high on a promontory. Behind the glass wall, a slight, fair-haired girl and a man with close-cropped hair were lying in each other’s arms among rumpled sheets, lit by the flicker of firelight and CNN.

“
It was deadly, secret and would have brought the whole world to a standstill. Thwarted plans for a devastating al-Qaeda attack were revealed today by the White House
,” said a newscaster, who looked like a swimsuit model. “
The planned operation, on an unprecedented scale, was uncovered and foiled by the CIA
.”

Olivia sat straight up in bed. “It wasn’t the CIA. It was me!” she said indignantly.

The shot cut to a White House spokesman pointing at a map with a little stick:

“
Plans were well advanced for simultaneous attacks on key bridges in Manhattan, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, London, Sydney, Madrid and Barcelona. As bridges blew and panic spread throughout the major cities of the civilized world, a secondary operation to detonate explosives at key traffic intersections would have come into play
.”

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An excitable academic—captioned H
EAD OF
T
ERRORISM
S
TUDIES,
U
NIVERSITY OF
M
ARYLAND
—replaced the man with the map.

“
It had all the hallmarks of the al-Qaeda high command: simplicity of concept and audacious left-of-field thought. Within minutes of the news hitting the international media, panic would have spread, causing motorists in already traffic-choked cities to abandon their cars and flee the roadways, generating gridlock on an unprecedented global scale: a gridlock made up of abandoned vehicles which would have proved a logistical near-impossibility to clear
.”

Up popped the president.

“
Hour by hour, minute by minute, the men and women of our Intelligence services, step by step, are winning the war on terror. Make no mistake . . .
”

He paused with that odd look in his eye, which struck Olivia as that of a nervous stand-up pausing for a laugh.

“. . . 
the forces of evil who are conspiring in their holes against the mighty civilized world will not prevail
.”

“Oh, shut
up
!” Olivia yelled at the screen.

“Hey, baby, relax,” said Scott. “They all know it was you. But if they put your picture up on the news, there’d be an Olivia Joules jihad. And where would that leave us?”

“It’s not that. It’s that every time he says ‘civilized world,’ he converts another five thousand to the anti-arrogance jihad. It’s just downright dangerous. If—”

“I know, baby, I
know.
If only they’d listen to you. If only there were more women in charge in the Western and Arab nations then none of this would have happened, and the world would live in peace, joy and freedom. You should have taken bin Laden out in that cave. Then you could have launched your own presidential campaign with the twenty-five million.”

“I know you don’t believe me,” said Olivia darkly, “but Osama bin Laden was in that cave. Once they get the water out of the camera, you’ll see.”

“You will get something, you know, for Feramo and the other guys. You won’t get the full whack because you were an agent. But
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I think you’ll be able to buy as many insanely uncomfortable pairs of shoes as you like.”

She pulled the sheet around her and stared intently at the glittering Lurex blanket of the city below. “Scott?”

“What is it, my falcon, my desert frog?”

“Shut up. I still think they’re going to do something else. I think they’re going to do something in LA. Soon.”

“I know you do, but you’re not going to figure it out by staring strangely into the abyss. You need to sleep. Why don’t you rest your head right here and we’ll get back on the case tomorrow?”

“But . . . ,” she began, as he pulled her into the strong, manly muscles of his chest.
I don’t need men . . .
she told herself, feeling his strong arm drawing her closer, feeling warm and safe.
Oh fuck it,
she decided, as he rolled on top of her and started to kiss her again.

The safe-house Operations Room was a chaos of computers, wires, communications systems and men in shirtsleeves trying to look world-wearily cool. In the middle of it all Olivia Joules sat motionless, staring intently at her widescreen computer. Kimberley, Michael Monteroso, Melissa the PR, Carol the voice coach, Travis Brancato the out-of-work actor slash writer, Nicholas Kronkheit the unqualified director, Winston the divine black diving instructor, and as many of Feramo’s wannabe entourage as could be located had been rounded up and taken to a local CIA interrogation center, where they were all still in custody. Olivia had spent the last few hours going through the videotaped interrogations, cutting and pasting and scribbling notes. Sensing herself on the brink of a breakthrough, she paused, mind whirring.

“So I got the final take on Suraya.”

Dammit.
She looked up with an irritation which was overtaken by lust. Scott Rich was leaning against the doorframe, tie loosened, shirt collar undone. She felt like sliding up to him and removing the whole ensemble.

“What?” she said, catching his eye and looking away quickly.
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They were at that thrilling stage of early shagging when nobody else knows about it. Of course, it was hard to be sure in a CIA safe house, but then they
were
both established masters of subterfuge.

“Suraya Steele has been working for al-Qaeda for ten years.”

“No!” said Olivia. “Ten
years
!”

“Al-Qaeda enlisted her when she was nineteen. She was hanging out in Paris trying to find modeling work and/or rich men. We don’t know exactly who the contact was, but it was someone pretty high up. They gave her a lot of money, I mean a
lot
of money, up front.”

“That explains the Gucci and the Prada.”

“What? She was studying drama and media studies at Lampeter University. The deal was that she would switch her course to Arabic, then try to get into the Foreign Office with a view to MI6. It sounds like naïve bullshit, but evidently it worked. It’s sure put the wind up your security services, I can tell you. Every female operative under the age of seventy-five is going to be spending the next three months in intensive interrogation.”

“My God. Heads must be rolling. How could they not have spotted it?”

“Al-Qaeda are smart—no electronic communication, just whispers, winks, dead-drops, pen and paper—old-fashioned direct contact as advocated by Widgett.”

“How’s he taking it?”

“He’s fine. He was in retirement for most of her operational time. They rumbled her within months of him coming back on side.”

“So she was on a winner either way?”

“If she pulled off something big for al-Qaeda she’d get a new identity and a multimillion-dollar fortune. If she pulled one of them in for MI6, she’d be fêted and promoted. All the agencies were crying out for Arabic speakers. Once she was inside MI6 the cell kept feeding her enough to make her look like an ace spy. They set her up with enough inside info to swing her the Feramo case.”

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“Did Feramo know she was working for al-Qaeda?”

“Sure. That’s why he hated her.”

“He
did
?”

“They put her onto him because they were afraid he was a loose cannon. She was watching him for her superiors and watching him for his superiors.”

“So it was Suraya who bugged my room.”

“I told you it wasn’t me.”

“No wonder she hated my guts.”

“Well, aside from the way you look.”

“That’s not why girls hate each other.”

“And the fact that Feramo was hotter for you than her. If you had rumbled Feramo to MI6, it would have made her look incompetent. If you had got too close, Feramo might have rumbled her to you. Once you’d actually blown the whole thing for her by hooking up with Widgett, she couldn’t wait to get you out to the Sudan, grass on you and have them bump you off.”

“What will happen to her now?” said Olivia. “
Please
don’t tell me she’ll be sentenced to fifty years in prison in a badly cut orange jumpsuit with all her hair cut off?”

“Probably a number of hundred-and-fifty-year sentences to run concurrently, if she’s lucky and doesn’t get shipped off to sample some Cuban cigars. Oh, and by the way, your friend Kate said hello.”

“Kate? Who’s spoken to her?”

“Widgett did. He filled her in. She said to tell you she was very impressed and she wanted to know who the other one was.”

Olivia grinned. Kate meant the other snoggee.

“Excuse me, sir.” A slight, neatly dressed man was hovering in the doorway. Scott Rich was treated with near reverence in US Intelligence circles.

“Mr. Miller has requested that you see him in the lab immediately, sir, with Agent Joules.”

Olivia jumped to her feet. “They must have got the photos out,” she said. “Come on!”

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She steamed along the corridor towards the lab, with Scott following, saying, “Okay, baby. You gotta calm down here. Must be cool at all times.”

Olivia burst into the lab, to find it filled with solemn faces. Every senior agency member in the area was gathered to see the proof that bin Laden had been in the Suakin caves. The bodies of several senior al-Qaeda operatives had been recovered from the collapsed and waterlogged cave network. But not bin Laden.

“Well done for getting them out of the wet camera,” said Olivia. “Whoever did it.”

A small girl at the back with curly red hair broke into a grin. “It was me,” she said.

“Thanks and everything,” said Olivia. “Really clever.”

“Okay, so shall we take a look?” said Scott Rich. “May I?” He slid into the chair in front of the computer. The technician respectfully pointed out a couple of links, and Scott brought up the first photo.

“Okay, what have we here?” It was entirely gray. “Close-up of part of a whale?” murmured Scott.

“I hadn’t got the flash working yet.”

He flicked to the next shot. Half of it was burnt-out white, but you could make out the photograph and diagram of Sydney Harbour Bridge. Olivia tried to remember the sequence of events in the cave. She’d photographed the pictures and then attempted a nice group shot. Then she’d gone for bin Laden, then lit the fuse on the gas and bolted.

The CIA honchos crowded around the group shot. It was very hard to make anything out. All you could really see through the gloom were beards and turbans.

Scott glanced towards her. “They’ll be able to work on it,” he said encouragingly. “They’ll enhance it. Did you take a close-up of bin Laden?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m pretty sure it’s the next one.”

The chatter ceased. All eyes were on the screen. Olivia dug her
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fingernails into her palms. She had been sure, amidst the confusion and terror in the cave, that she was looking at bin Laden. It was the demeanor: the sense of latent malevolent power, the intensity behind the languid calm. But then, she remembered Kate laughing at her about Osama bin Feramo on the FBI’s Most Languid List, and thought she’d better keep her mouth shut.

Scott Rich leaned forward. She forced herself to breathe, watching Scott’s weatherworn hand reach for the mouse and click. At first the image was hard to make out. Then it became clear. It was grubby white fabric, stretched across a pair of knees.

“Right,” said Scott Rich. “It appears we have a shot of bin Laden’s crotch.”