The Seven Year Itch

Dedicated to

William Jr.

William Jr.

And in loving
memory of

Francine Vanetta

Acknowledgments

Thank you God. Thank you God. Thank you God. Through
whatever challenges I endure, and there have been many, You keep giving me
another story to tell and another day to write it. I will be forever grateful
for this gift You’ve given me, and I will tell every story You put in my heart
as long as I have breath to breathe.

Thank you to the men and women of the FBI who lay their
lives on the line for this country every day. The United States is safer today
than ever because of what you do.

Thanks to my beautiful son, William, who is always so
supportive on the days I’m stuck in the writing cave. He’s the reason I live.
He’s the reason I breathe. He’s the reason I am.

To my Dad, William, who brought me through one of the
most difficult years of my life. Without his love and support, I couldn’t have
brought J.J. McCall this far.

To my dear friends and beta readers Lisa, Carey, Becky,
and Jos-Renee, thank you for suffering through my early drafts. It’s because of
you that this is finally ready for prime time.

Thanks to my cousin and graphic designer RheQuan Robinson
for the fantastic book cover. He nailed it on the first try. Thank you to my cousin
Kim for having the good sense to marry him.

Thanks to my Facebook readers who helped name one of
series’ characters—Grayson “Six” Chance—Keleigh Crigler Hadley (Grayson), Anya
Rhamnusia Guillino (Six), Jounay Thomas-Ross (Chance).
 

And to anyone I’ve forgotten, my apologies, but my heart
says thanks.

Prologue

T
housands of ants marched
mercilessly beneath unreachable layers of her skin. The sensation of the slow
and steady crawl permeated her. Every hair. Every pore. So deep inside her
flesh that no ointment or salve could bring relief.

These were the markings of her “gift.” The phenomenon, her
blessing, her curse.

She discovered “the gift” at age seven, moments after her
mother suggested she ask Santa for her favorite doll—a lie Naomi had told a
thousand times before. But, for the first time in J.J.’s life, the tall tale
sparked an unexpected reaction.

It started as a modest sensation, an irritation, just on the
tip of her nose. Nothing a few scratches couldn’t cure.

They didn’t.

Instead, the prickly tingles rushed through J.J, her
earlobes, the back of her neck. They escalated from a mild discomfort to a
full-on itch fest, up and down both arms and into her kneecaps. J.J.’s arms
couldn’t reach the nooks and crannies where her skin crawled. She shimmied and
shook, dug her nails deep into her hide. Whelped skin blanketed her body, and
Naomi’s guilt swelled. Her lie had triggered it, the physiological meltdown
that sent her poor daughter into a scratching frenzy.

 
The “Itch” stemmed
from a spiteful con artist’s generational curse. Great-grandmother called it
the Evil Eye. It had been cast upon Naomi’s mother Genevieve as a child by a
dusty old Creole Jadoo magic worker, Delia Doucette. She was a bronze-skinned
out-of-towner, the wife of a Spanish prisoner jailed a few miles away in Baton
Rouge on trumped up Jim Crow charges. At least that’s how the scam went—the
same scam that bilked hundreds of African Americans out of scarce financial
resources in the early 1900s. The prisoner promised them Spanish gold, riches
beyond belief, for the equivalent of bail. Two days’ wages. Ten dollars. A
small price to pay for wealth, freedom. After an hour of Delia’s begging and
pleading and crying, Genevieve’s mother pulled the crumpled money from her
bosom despite her misgivings.

Then Genevieve unleashed a cry, a shrieking wail. She
instantly became inconsolable.

And her mother took her baby’s sobs as a sign to hold tight
the ten dollars she’d nearly thrown away.

Changed her mind on intuition and a cry.

The swindle failed and Delia grew incensed. The nerve of
Genevieve’s mother to suggest, on a child’s tears, that this downright
upstanding woman had lied. When ordered from the house, Delia slithered to the
door, but not before glancing at the baby girl, the spoiler, with a cold,
contempt-filled, shadowy gaze—the Evil Eye.

She hissed, “He does not leave the guilty unpunished; he
punishes the children and their children for the sins of the fathers to the
third and fourth generation. May you and your children always know the truth!”

Genevieve’s mother had been told about it. The Eye. She’d
never seen it before, didn’t really believe it existed, not until that moment. But
she acted quickly, spitting on Genevieve’s face to ward off the curse’s effect.
It was too little or too late. And evil’s intent was soon evident, as the truth
did not show itself as the pleasantness of tickle or a smile rather the
irritation of an itch. The deed had been done.

And four generations later...

“Ma! It won’t stop. What’s wrong with me?” J.J. whined.
Her
 
mother’s gentle hand soothed her,
smoothed cream into her inflamed cocoa-colored limbs. J.J. twisted and turned,
and searched for bug bites, anything that would explain the source of her
affliction. She found none. Before long she grew panicked, hyperventilated
until her mother offered the long awaited explanation.

“You can stop looking because you won’t find the source of
your problem by checking your arms,” Naomi said to her dear Jasmine. “The
problem is not on your skin it’s in your genes!”

Naomi hoped J.J. would be different than she and her sister,
older when the time came to reveal the truth. The task of explaining might be
easier. How would she tell her seven-year-old daughter such a fantastical tale?
That she’s a lie detector, like her mother, aunt, and grandmother before her?

The concept was difficult for J.J. to understand at that age.
At any age, really. And for the first few, she refused it—her gift. Wouldn’t
acknowledge it. Thought it made her strange, different, weird, and abnormal at
a time when she wanted to be the same, like everyone else. The older she grew,
the more defiant she became. She later attributed the revelation to a new
source…her mother. Naomi was, in J.J.’s mind, a few marbles short of a full
bag.

Whatever she believed or denied, the truth was indisputable.
The burrowing beneath her skin occurred regularly, without fail, each and every
time someone lied to her. Her off-putting verbal outbursts in reaction to the
intense and sudden onsets were such that she could not control her response,
and no one within a ten-mile radius could ignore them. So, for her entire adult
life, she pawned her strange behavior on a condition, a “thing,” sometimes even
Tourette’s Syndrome, anything to get her through the moment.

Naomi offered many nuggets of wisdom regarding her gift
before she died. The most important was never to reveal it to anyone, not even
her father. She reasoned that if people knew J.J. could detect lies, they would
never be themselves, always designing their own personal truths rather than
revealing the one that existed within. Some may even try to manipulate her gift
for their own selfish, less-than-righteous ends. By keeping “the itch” a secret
she would always know friend from foe.

But no advice was more valuable than her final words.

“Jasmine, baby,” she said, her voice frail and wispy, moments
before she succumbed to a fatal gunshot wound. “Your gift can tell you a lot
about other people. But it can’t tell you when you’re lying to yourself. I pray
God grants you the serenity and the wisdom to know the difference.”

J.J. heard her mother final words. Whether she listened was
another question indeed.
 

Chapter 1

“[Swine
traitors] can take their 30 pieces of silver, but it will stick in their
throats.” ~ Vladimir Putin

Monday
Morning in Moscow…

M
ikhail Polyakov was
murdered in a Solntsevskaya-owned cottage located in Lobnya, a small village
just outside Moscow. It was a Russian organized crime death chamber. A hulking
Mafioso known only as Maskov hovered over his mangled corpse. The ax in his
massive hand dripped with the blood of a traitor. He would not live to betray
his country another day. In the safe house basement, he lay on the concrete
floor. A pool of crimson surrounded him, and his flesh had been gashed and
hacked beyond visual recognition; death’s stench thickened the air. In order to
serve its only noble purpose, his right hand, which bore a crescent-shaped
birthmark, was left untouched.

A sliver of light shone through an undersized window
revealing the wicked grin that parted the executioner’s cigarette blackened
lips. Colonel Anatoliy Golikov. A Russian intelligence officer, he was a member
of a cadre of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service—SVR officers—from the First
Department. His professional mission had been recruiting people who sold U.S.
secrets, but his personal mission was to kill anyone who betrayed the
Motherland.

His skinny eyes, slight frame, and borderline gaunt face
colored him weak, but his iron-fisted will and suffocating persona made him a
man few crossed. Even fewer had lived to brag about it if they had. The son of
a former hardline KGB General who executed Russians spying for the West, he’d
filled his father’s sadistic shoes well. Left nothing in his wake except a
trail of dead American sins against Russia.

Golikov compelled his two most reliable henchmen to observe
the murder of their comrade. The gruesome killing would serve as a message to
them and make them more effective purveyors of the one they’d soon deliver to
their colleagues posted to Russian Embassies in the United States—spy for the
Americans and your life will come to an abrupt and grim end.

Golikov circled the body at a measured pace, rage ebbing
beneath his nerveless exterior. He teetered on the edge of insanity. “We should
feed him to the sharks, Maskov. A fitting end for traitorous pig, wouldn’t you
say?”

Maskov nodded as Golikov eyed his cohorts, his unnerving
intensity intended to strike fear and warn. “Comrade Vasiliy, your passports
are up-to-date, yes?”

Vasiliy nodded. “Mine and that of Comrade Igor.” Of the SVR
counterintelligence officers working under Golikov, he’d achieved the higher
rank—Captain.

“Good. Both of you are traveling to Washington. The Center
has authorized funding for two temporary assignments and they have given me the
authority to recall Comrade Viktor Plotnikov.”

“Comrade Plotnikov?” Vasiliy said, his surprise obvious.

“Yes, we suspect Viktor may be providing our communications
codes to the Americans. Aleksandr Dmitriyev, chief of the counterintelligence
operations line, will see him to the airport and my friend here and I will interrogate
him accordingly when he returns,” Golikov said, nodding to gesture Maskov.
“While I hope we’ve found the last of J.J. McCall’s traitors, I must take
active measures to neutralize any who may remain. You are my most reliable
officers. I trust you to carry out this mission.” His gaze shifted between the
two.

Vasiliy and Igor both nodded, their respect for Golikov borne
from fear rather than admiration. “For how long? My wife, she—”

“180 days minimum. But I’ll extend it as long as necessary to
clean out the riff-raff,” Golikov replied, his expression affirming there would
be no negotiation. “I would go myself but Washington is not the only residency
with this problem.”

“Yes,” Vasiliy said. He and Igor both appeared anxious to
leave. “Will that be all, Comrade Golikov? We should be getting back to the
Center.”

“Not quite,” Golikov said, his every move, every expression,
spilled with evil. “Please, have a seat. I need you to pay a visit to the U.S.
Embassy. We have a gift for the new Chief of Station.” He turned to the
murderer for hire. “Maskov? Will you do the honor?”

Maskov lifted the ax blade above his head and slammed it to
the ground, slashing through the wrist bone like butter, his force strong
enough to sever the appendage with one blow. Igor and Vasiliy cringed, and
pressed their eyelids together. They turned away as Maskov lifted the hand from
the unforgiving concrete floor. He placed the appendage in a steel ice-filled
box specially designed to leave its contents undetected by embassy security
measures. After sealing the lid, he put the container inside slightly larger
cardboard box, sealed it, and addressed it to the Moscow station chief care of
the security officer.
 

“Deliver this to Agent McCall’s boyfriend. I’m certain he
will convey the sad news of that pig Polyakov’s death. Perhaps next time she’ll
think twice about recruiting our people.
Suka
!”
Golikov cursed.

•
 
•
 
•

Telephone rings cut through a brief silence
as a herd of suit-clad diplomats shuffled through the consulate section. It was
lunch time at the American Embassy in Moscow. The station security officer,
Grayson “Six” Chance, glanced at his watch as his stomach rumbled. His gut told
him he’d miss lunch again, and the phone rang in just time to confirm Grayson’s
suspicions.

“Siiiiix,” the duty officer said, the tone in his voice
teasing. Grayson’s nickname was the source of several running jokes. His IQ.
The number of times it took him to pass his last lifestyle polygraph exam. The
number of women he bedded the night before. But his skin was thick and his
temperament easy. “We’ve got an ID on the hand. You might want to get up here,”
the officer continued.

The light at the end of the tunnel dimmed. He’d planned to
serve out the final two days of his sentence hunkered down in a corner and
working in solitude until time to hop his flight to Dulles Airport. Golikov’s
thugs had decimated his hopes.

“Give me two minutes.” Six typed the last two sentences of
his final after action report. When the meeting ended, he’d let the administrative
officer clean it up. After grabbing a pen and notebook, he made his way to the
stairwell, preferred to take the steps up to the secure area.

His anxiety swelled with each step. He needed to tie up the
last of his administrative loose ends in order to return stateside. For months,
his every thought centered on J.J McCall. Why hadn’t he realized sooner? She
meant more to him than he knew. Six had grown to appreciate her uncanny knack
for calling him on his BS. And he knew he was full of it. Unlike the others,
she never let him get away with his tricks and posed an irresistible challenge.
Now she’d severed him from her life.

No woman had ever made him feel that way, simultaneous
apprehension and lust. He’d built barriers to maintain his cover and conceal
his heart. But J.J. cut through it all, straight to his core, his truth. She’d
slipped beneath his cloak and dagger to see him for whom he really was. And she
loved him in spite of it. He’d become a man on a mission. He wanted it back
again, the life he’d lost, the love he’d sacrificed to advance his career and
serve too many years overseas. He’d served his country as a clandestine case
officer, then a security officer in his latter tours. Now he was just one
flight away. For the first time in over a decade, he looked forward to
returning to Langley.

Fifteen years of service to his country, twenty years of
bachelorhood and Six’s life still had no real meaning. His thick, well-toned,
six-three frame helped keep his sex tank full, but he had no wife, no kids,
nothing to show for his near forty years on Earth, nothing except an over-sized
house, fast car, and a couple dozen commendations for jobs exceptionally well
done. The bumper-to-bumper beltway traffic, Starbuck-induced morning highs,
meetings in tight conference rooms filled with dull academics, and a daily
grind filled with writing cable after cable would consume his days. But what a
small price to pay for nights with J.J.

Granted, getting her to reinvest trust in him wouldn’t be an
easy feat. The debacle, his sloppy exit from her life, had left a wide gulf
between them. But nothing worth having ever was easy and Six was up for the
challenge.

Four flights of steps and a few paces through the main
corridor, the one connecting the State Department’s political and economic
sections to the “Company’s” section, and he had arrived at his destination. He
badged into the secure space and headed for the conference room. Upon entering,
his eyes locked on two reports sitting on the table in front of the seat left
open for him. He turned to the duty officer, whose face wrenched in knowing
discomfort. Six knew from his expression the stakes were higher than
anticipated. Even the new boss had stopped by to check on the progress of the
investigation.

“Six, come in and have a seat,” said Mark Levin, the new CIA
Station Chief. He’d arrived three months prior and had been in crisis mode from
day one.

Six gripped the chair back, pulled it from beneath the table.
He positioned himself beside the station chief. The sound of shuffling papers
disrupted the silence. On edge, he waited for one of them to break the bad
news.

“The
legat
had NCIC run the prints
for us,” Mark said to Six, referring to the embassy’s FBI legal attaché. “The
hand belonged to Mikhail Polyakov. We’d been handling him on behalf of the
Bureau since he left Washington and returned to Moscow Center last year. He was
valuable, gave us information that’s still saving our asses on a number of
critical operations. This is a significant loss.”

“Indeed,” Six said. He hesitated a moment before asking, “Who
was the FBI case agent?”

Mark dropped his chin to his chest. “I’ll give you two
guesses.”

“J. and J.”

Mark nodded.

“Do we have any idea who gave him up?”

“Same bastard who gave up her last source, I imagine,” the
duty officer said to Six. “It’s clear at least one agency in the Community has
a mole problem. We think he’s in the Bureau and the Bureau thinks he’s in the
CIA.”

“What else is new?” Six replied, shaking his head at the
silent war. It had endured between the FBI and CIA for more than six decades,
and intensified with each passing day. “Any possibility this is
ICE Phantom
?” Six asked, referring to a
top secret multi-agency operation to find a rumored a mole in the Intelligence
Community.

Mark’s eyebrows rose. “That operation’s dead—the Russians
succeeded in making us chase our tails. Ten years, millions of dollars in
wasted resources. Langley hasn’t expended this much effort on a mole hunt since
Angleton,” he said, referring to the CIA’s decade-long Cold War mole hunt that
destroyed the careers of dozens of case officers and never yielded an insider
spy.

The duty officer chimed in, “There’s no proof that
ICE Phantom
even exists.”

“Except two dead sources,” Six replied.

“
FBI
sources,” Mark
injected.

“Yeah, one of which we ran on their behalf until his hand
arrived in the mail yesterday,” Six countered. “
ICE Phantom
or not, we better figure who the hell is responsible
before Golikov sends another—and the next one could belong to the source we
can’t afford
to lose.”

Mark nodded again. Six had made his point. The most
high-placed recruitment they’d ever had within the SVR ranks was in danger. At
least until the FBI apprehended
ICE
Phantom
. Losing him would cripple their operations, not only in Moscow
but around the world.

“Agreed. Time to get Langley involved. And someone will need
to report this to J.J.,” Mark said as he turned to his colleague. “Six?”

He agreed to deliver the dreaded news.
Damn!
Six thought to himself. J.J. would conceal her devastation
well but he knew another depression loomed. Losing her second source in as many
years, her unbearable guilt for leaving another family without a father, might
propel her over the edge this time. He’d warned J.J. a thousand times that her
job wasn’t to care. Her job was to recruit and exploit. J.J. cared too much.
Emotions drove her business—a fatal flaw for an FBI agent. Her steadfast
concern both annoyed and endeared her to him. J.J. would succumb to the
sadness; she always did. But her consolation was just days away. He’d resume
his rightful place in her life, help her pick up the pieces—and then make J.J.
his wife.