Smoke and Mirrors (17 page)

“That’s why I approved her transferal.”
And why Milton would have under normal circumstances.

“Let’s view it from another vantage.” Monroe looked toward one of the wall monitors. A satellite image of Colombia still gleamed beneath the room’s LED lighting. “Was her work there satisfactory?”

“Outstanding.”

“But he would have seen it for himself.” Monroe paused. “Why was Agent Milton there?”

“Agent Brothers was captured along with two civilians – one of them a young diabetic. She sent him an SOS.”

“An overreaction on her part?”

“Not really. We had it covered, though she wasn’t to know that.”
I should have informed her of CIA’s presence.

Monroe digested the news. “Then I think it’s not Forsythe’s death which is eating at him, but Samantha’s. You do know she dated Milton first?”

“What of it?”

“Did you know he introduced them?”

It didn’t sound like Milton’s MO.

“After the incident in Western Sahara. She was ‘the most important therapy’ Milton was goading us about.”

C recalled the conversation vividly. Nigel had been shot. And Brad had dragged him, half-dead, back to London. “Christ, he blames himself for her death.” It was clear as the Millennium Wheel, now that he gave it some consideration.

“And he’s likely transferred that fear onto another woman he’s come to care for.”

“So not a latent chauvinist, like I just accused him of.”

“It’s not among the top ten irritating traits that come to mind when discussing him.” Monroe drummed his fingers against his armrest. “But if your allegation gets him thinking straight where she’s concerned, I can’t see what use it would be telling him differently.” Monroe pushed away from the table. “Who knows, by the time they’re off the injured list, their attraction might be a thing of the past.”

Or
, C thought with a vague sense of doom,
she might kill him before someone beats her to it.

I
was back in my flat for the first time in several months:
The London Times
spread in drifts across my bed, a cup of steaming tea percolated in my palm. I scanned the International Section’s columns and, at last, found what I was looking for.

Bogotá, Colombia

It was with quiet dignity that Alberto Jesus Sanchez was laid to rest. The private funeral service was held at the Church of San Ignacío, where attendees included his former wife, Isabella Lauretti, and their daughter, Francesca Isabella Sanchez.

A most respected civic patron, Mr. Sanchez was killed while attempting to free his daughter and her physician from their left-wing kidnappers. Believed to be led by Raul Fernandez, the EPIC terrorist who broke out of prison the same night Sanchez’s family was abducted, the anti-government extremist organization has issued no statement at this time.

Isabella and Francesca had visited me at the hospital, where we said our goodbyes over real ice cream. Neither of them ever knew that I was anyone other than a doctor, and the police findings all indicated that Alberto’s bravery had saved her.

I sipped my tea.
And what of Raul?

Brad’s micro-chipped boot, the one he’d wedged in the plane before dropping to the ground, led SIS on a wild goose chase. Eventually, it ran out of gas and crashed into the rain forest. We could only guess that Raul parachuted out at some point. To date, he was still at large.

I swished the tea into the hole in my gum, wondering if I should bother getting an implant. I rather liked the feeling of my tongue escaping through clenched teeth. It was an escape hatch, and I wanted to think I had those in my life.

My shoulder still throbbed, but everything had healed nicely, and I was already signed off of the injured list at HQ. The question was, to which job should I return?

The sheets shifted, rustling the papers and baring my far ankle. I looked down at my sleeping companion. “It’s still early; go back to sleep.”

Bunching the pillow under his head, Brad propped himself upright. “Not really tired. Anything in the paper?”

I read him the article and felt a soft squeeze of comfort against my leg. We hadn’t discussed him comparing Alberto to my rapist, but he’d gone out of his way to bring up the Colombian’s best traits. Which was apology enough, though I still wondered who had told him.

He let go and lifted his bandaged foot out from under my comforter. “Bloody annoying how paper cuts hurt worse than proper injuries.”

“You have thirty stitches and a mess of hardware in there.”

“Same principle.” He tossed back the quilt, baring his beautiful body to the early morning light, and hauled himself off the bed.

“Is this what you’re going to look like in forty years?”

He flashed a smile of sorts over his shoulder. “I keep telling you, Ms. Brothers, this job’s gonna kill me.”
Me. Not us.

I didn’t want to think about the possible truth behind his statement. Half the time I didn’t know which I wanted more: his respect as a colleague or his protective lover mode. I could only guess when our holiday from that particular topic concluded, his answer would be along the lines of, ‘The hell you will.’

Maybe it was my reaction to Alberto’s death – to Brad’s almost death – that left me unsure of an answer myself. I’d never forget the unmitigated rage that blazed through Brad when he discovered what Juan had done. Worse, I was beginning to feel similarly – that I’d rather Brad was tucked away in a bland office cubicle, armed with only a stapler and his mobile.

Unfortunately, I figured boredom might kill him faster.

Ignoring the depressing jumble of thoughts, I murmured, “You won’t live to be an old man because you’re going to kill yourself fucking me.”

He lowered his smiling mouth to mine, understanding me well enough to allow me humor as armor, and whispered, “Today’s as good a day as any.”

•   •   •

Our work helped SIS discover the whereabouts of several enormous poppy and coca fields. And because there was no way to link Francesca and my rescues to SIS, they seized control of bank accounts held by Sanchez and funneled the money into De Torres’s accounts for the duration of the operation. Grateful for her daughter’s rescue, Isabella agreed to a private sale of Alberto’s oil stock holdings to BP, giving the British company sole rights to the massive oil reserve south of Raul’s land.

The freshly funded plan, set forth by C and Alasdair, was for Brad and me to resume life in Sardinia, hoping De Torres’s connections would yield information on the whereabouts of Raul. Little had changed on its outer face, but the internal organs of the many-armed monster that was this particular drug network had been dealt a fatal blow. As soon as the two criminals were found, their monies would be seized, the fields destroyed and EPIC would be a terrorist group of the past.

“That’s the plan anyway.” Alasdair leaned back in the conference room chair.

Jack, on his way through with forms, tapped my bruised cheek with his sheaf of papers. “Looking gorgeous.”

Brad snorted when I flipped our friend the middle finger.

The door was ajar and C’s Administrative Assistant broke our momentary silliness. “There’s a visitor at the main entrance asking to speak with Agent Milton.”

“Elizabeth Jones,” I blurted.

“In one,” Ms. Ganapathy said, before stepping away.

Everyone else had the ‘poor thing’s gone mad’ expression.

In actuality, the day’s events were still hazy, and I’d only just remembered her. “She was the one who threw the grenade at the guard shack, wasn’t she?”

Brad managed quite well to keep relief out of his affirmation.

Honestly, it had been a guess. Being drugged wasn’t great for the memory and I grumbled something along those lines.

“Didn’t give us much of a choice,” Alasdair shot back, refraining from mentioning my hysterics, which was quite chivalrous of him.

C cut in. “Why do you think she’s here?”

“Our Colombian office has one of my aliases on record for questions dealing with BFN’s there. I don’t think she’ll recognize me without a cap, camo and piss-poor version of English. As for why she’s here, I’m not certain.” He paused momentarily, his fingers brushing me again. “What demands were made of her husband?”

C eyed one of the papers in the yellow folder beside him. “They wanted BP to pay its workers three times their current hourly wage and taxes on the pipelines crossing their land.”

“How did her husband react to the demands?”

“Said he wouldn’t fold to terrorism, even if it cost him his wife.”

Jack blinked in surprise and muttered, “Bloody fool,” as he exited with the stack of signed forms.

“Either the man has cajones the size of China or he doesn’t care overmuch for Ms. Jones.”

•   •   •

Another hour passed before Brad rejoined me. Straddling my extra chair backward, he had an air of distraction about him. I looked up from my lunch. “Care for a carrot? Or should I just stab you with it?” I asked, trying to resurrect the humor surrounding our first encounter.

“No thanks,” he said, taking the carrot and popping it into his mouth anyway.

I waited for him to fill me in. It took two more unwanted carrots to do the trick. “Did she recognize you?”

He shook his head, as if the idea were preposterous. “She came to thank SIS for helping to save her.”

I shoved my tongue against a piece of carrot that had wedged itself in the spot vacated by my molar. “Nice of her.”

Brad rotated his foot, eyeing the pristine white bandages. Bandages changed with a frequency that led me to believe Giovanni’s OCD was filtering into Brad’s DNA. “She wanted to know if her husband had made those public comments from one side of his mouth, while reaching out to SIS for help with the other.”

“What did you tell her?”

He stared at something miles away from our workplace. “I told her he had done everything he could, but SIS couldn’t give details.”

It was a lie of course. “How did she react?”

“She smiled and told me, if nothing else, my words had made her smile for the first time in a long while.”

“What a jackass.” I took a sip of sparkling water, and then offered it to him.

“I think he wanted her killed. Whether it was a convenient way to rid himself of a wife he no longer loved or for another reason, I don’t believe we’ve heard the last of Stephen Jones.” The glimmer in Brad's chestnut orbs grew into a smolder.

“Do you suppose he’s the Russian?”

Brad cracked a smile. “Not really
.
Do you
?
”

“I was thinking about Alberto’s last words.”
And the fact you’re including me.

“You think he might be the other partner?”

I reigned in my hidden thoughts. “What could he gain if his wife didn’t return?”

“Besides freedom to date?”

“Besides that.”

The crackle of Brad’s hands on my box of crackers filled the small space. “He’d have the world believing he could go head to head with EPIC and hold his own.”

“What would that do for him, for his business?”

“He might be promoted to work in more hostile territories such as the Middle East. Maybe he could demand a higher salary for keeping the company’s employee wages from rising or keep a portion of the tax money EPIC claims.”

We brainstormed for a few more hours, and then put in a request for any information SIS had on Stephen to be compiled and set aside for us. The next morning we left for Italy.

We.

•   •   •

Staring out at the first of the daffodils, C waited until his words sunk in.

Jack raised an eyebrow. “So you don’t want them privy to this information either?”

C glared down the length of his nose. “The less people that know, the better.”

“I see.” Jack kept his face deliberately schooled as he took the request form and file back into the bowels of HQ, wondering all the while if he should tell the truth before someone he loved paid the price.

“G
ood morning, Dottoressa. The weather is fine today, no?”

There seemed little point in pretending Brad and I were not an item after all that had happened in Colombia, and so Giovanni’s maid had bestowed an occasional smile on me as she went about her business. To her, I was Signor De Torres’s, belle du jour, and I’d be gone soon enough.

“Very fine.”

“Can I get you anything, Dottoressa?”

“Thank you, but no. You are always so kind to ask.”

She drifted off, leaving me to work on what she believed was medical research. To date, nothing we had found on Jones pointed at him being the Russian. And nothing we could find linked him to either Alberto or Raul.

A ring from my mobile interrupted my research. It was De Torres, and I grinned like a kid. He had been in Croatia for two days, and already I missed him.

“How’s your trip?”

We exchanged pleasantries along with coded information. When I hung up, it was with renewed vigor. An anonymous associate of Alberto’s had waited until the waters cooled to make contact with Giovanni.

And Giovanni had agreed, provided his Alex was included.

His
Alex.

•   •   •

Ten days later, plan in place, Brad and I were seated at a secluded table in a street-side bistro beside the Piazza Campdiogio. Our anonymous associate had insisted that we meet on Capitoline Hill.

It was a gorgeous place: orange hued buildings lining the immense courtyard and a warm light offset by the sky’s brilliant blue. We’d walked up to the highest of Rome’s seven hills by its southern side, marveling at its bird’s eye view of both the Forum and Colosseum.

When we passed the Tarpeian Rock on the hill’s cliff-laden western side, Brad mentioned that if our meeting didn’t go well, we could always toss our associate off the rocks like the ancient Romans had done to their enemies.

I argued in favor of Romulus and Remus’s mother.
The She-Wolf
, a huge 5
th
Century Etruscan bronze statue that had snarled down at us, warning her enemies with baleful eyes and wicked teeth.