Dangerous Deceptions: A Christian Romantic Suspense Boxed Set Collection

by Lisa Harris

  One of the workstations had a view of the outside of the Imam’s sprawling residence, a rustic-looking two-story building that hadn’t changed much since I’d seen it through a pair of field glasses during our CIA training exercise twenty years ago.

  “This used to be the main lodge at the Muslim youth camp,” Frank said, “I believe they called it Dar Al Salam or house of Islam back then, but now it’s the house of Faraji Hanim.”

  I estimated the residence was at least a 15,000-square-foot structure, and since I knew the Imam had several of his adult children living with him, I figured the lodge had been remodeled inside to accommodate his large family.

  Ben confirmed this a few minutes later when he pointed to a set of windows facing the driveway.

  “This is the formal dining room where we had dinner last Saturday night. Kamila told me her father is continually remodeling the place, because his married children keep giving him grandkids.”

  “Did you see any of the other rooms in the house when you were there?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, just the main living area and the formal dining room.”

  Frank said, “We have architectural drawings of the floor plans, but because of the Imam’s remodeling, they may not be that accurate. If you’re concerned about entrances and exits, I don’t imagine they’ve changed that much from the original plans.”

  “He’s always concerned about entrances and exits,” Ben said.

  Frank nodded. “I remember.”

  When Dwight motioned for Frank to come over to his workstation, Ben and I found ourselves alone for the first time since I followed him from Langley over to Great Falls.

  He immediately brought this up. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice you were shadowing me all the way over here from Langley,” he said. “I knew you were good; I just didn’t know I was that bad.”

  “You’re not that bad, Ben. I’m sure you just had a lot on your mind. It’s not like you’re in a hostile environment where you might be expecting someone to put a tail on you.”

  “You’re right. I do have a lot on my mind. I never imagined it would be this hard to pretend to have a romantic interest in someone.”

  Before I had a chance to joke with him about how we all had to make sacrifices when we were given tough assignments, he said, “Don’t get me wrong, Titus. I realize Kamila is a beautiful woman. She’s also very affectionate, but I’m telling you, I have to work really hard to keep up the pretense of being madly in love with her.”

  “I noticed you didn’t have trouble connecting with Jennifer at the debriefing today.”

  Ben smiled. “Jennifer’s a different story.”

  “I thought that might be the case.”

  “Since you mentioned Jennifer, let me run something by you before I bring it up with Douglas.”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “First of all, I want to thank you for offering to watch my back. You didn’t have to do that, and I really appreciate it.”

  “To be honest, I couldn’t tell whether or not you wanted me to be your backup when I brought it up with Douglas a few minutes ago.”

  “That’s because I was trying to figure out how to talk to Kamila about inviting you to come with us to her mother’s birthday party.”

  “Will that be a problem?”

  “I think she might be more receptive to the idea if I ask her about inviting another couple to come with us instead of just asking her if you can come.”

  I let out a short laugh. “Oh, I see. Is this what you wanted to ask Douglas about? I’ll just take a wild guess here and say you were thinking about asking him if Jennifer could pretend to be my date on Friday night.”

  He smiled. “Uh-huh. Since Jennifer is listed as a Public Affairs Specialist in the American Embassy in Baghdad, and you’re a Senior Fellow in Middle Eastern Programs at CIS, I don’t think Kamila would have any problem believing the two of you were dating.”

  “And I suppose it would seem natural if you told her we’d like to meet Imam Faraji Hanim.”

  He nodded. “She wouldn’t think it was a strange request; people are always eager to meet the Imam. She might even like the idea of having more people at the compound when the NTI attempts to kidnap her father.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you’re opposed to the idea.”

  I wasn’t opposed to the idea, but I suddenly realized if Carlton gave his approval to Ben’s scenario, it would mean I would need to pretend to be single when I was actually married, which would be a first for me and might seem a little weird.

  I couldn’t imagine how Nikki would feel about it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ben and I were still talking about Kamila when Carlton walked in and said he had confirmed with Legends that Titus Ray had only published one paper about Turkey while employed at the Consortium.

  Supposedly, I’d written an article about the nuclear weapons NATO had on-site at Incirlik Air Base in Adana, Turkey.

  Since the topic wasn’t political in nature, Carlton agreed to allow me to be part of the FBI/CIA joint operation. A few minutes later, when Ben offered his suggestion about Jennifer being my date on Friday night, Carlton agreed she could also join the operational team as long as Frank agreed, which he did.

  In order to bring me up to speed on the operation, Carlton and Frank took turns giving me a readout of the protocols for Operation Crescent Moon. However, in the middle of their presentation, when Frank got a phone call from his lead agent, the one monitoring Kamila’s activities, the protocols got tweaked a little.

  According to the agent, as Kamila was leaving the rehab center, she was approached by a man in the Benchmark’s parking lot. Although the agent didn’t know for sure, he said the man appeared to be from a Middle Eastern country, possibly Turkey. Once he handed her a note, Kamila got in her car and followed him down to a hamburger joint where the two of them spent thirty minutes together.

  One of Frank’s surveillance team members was able to get some pictures of the man, and Carlton immediately downloaded them and sent them to our Agency analysts to see if they could identify him.

  When Carlton showed Ben and me the photographs, we agreed the guy had some Middle Eastern features, but it was hard to say whether he looked Turkish or not. The general consensus was that he was a courier from the NTI cell, the one planning to kidnap the Imam, and when he managed to disappear into the crowd outside the restaurant after he left Kamila, everyone agreed he was a well-trained professional, no matter who he was.

  Just before I left the safe house to drive out to The Meadows, Carlton called Jennifer and gave her a brief overview of Crescent Moon, but he left it up to me to fill her in on the specific details.

  When Carlton got off the phone with her, I gestured at Ben and said, “Why don’t you come out to The Meadows tonight and help me brief Jennifer? I’m sure both of us could use some insight on how to deal with Kamila and the Imam.”

  His eyes lit up. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” A few seconds later, he shook his head. “No, I’ll have to wait and do it tomorrow. I promised Kamila I’d take her out to eat tonight and spend the evening with her.”

  I could tell by the expression on Frank’s face he didn’t think it was appropriate for me to be asking Ben to brief Jennifer—Frank tended to be somewhat territorial when he was in charge of an operation—so before I left the safe house, I asked him if he’d like to come out to The Meadows and talk to Jennifer as well.

  “I don’t know why I’d do that. It sounds like you and Ben have everything under control. Of course, if I get any new intel, I might drive out there tomorrow afternoon.”

  Even though Frank was obviously irritated with me, I was betting he’d drive out to The Meadows sometime on Thursday, if for no other reason than to see if Millie would invite him to stay for dinner.

  Frank had always had a thing about Millie’s cooking.

  I was actually looking forward to some of Millie�
�s cooking myself, and when I called her when I was on the outskirts of Fairfax and told her I was twenty minutes away, she said if I wasn’t there in fifteen minutes, they would start eating without me.

  Thirteen and a half minutes later, I was entering the circle drive in front of Carlton’s country estate.

  According to Carlton, when he and Gladys first saw the two-story house nestled in a grove of trees at the end of a long winding road, she grabbed his hand and started crying.

  When he asked her why she was crying, all she could say was, “It’s magnificent. Simply magnificent.”

  The first time I saw the exterior of the house, that wasn’t the word that immediately came to mind.

  However, my opinion changed after Gladys invited me inside and gave me a tour of the residence. Each of the rooms, from the living area to the den to the study, was lavishly furnished in an old-world style that gave the house a feeling of grandeur from the moment a visitor entered the foyer. At the end of the tour, I decided what made the manor-like house appear magnificent was mostly Gladys’s decorating skills and not its size.

  Nothing much had changed at The Meadows since Gladys was no longer around, except Millie was now in charge of Gladys’s kitchen, and Arkady was responsible for keeping up her rose garden.

  When I rang the doorbell, it was Arkady who came to the door.

  “Titus,” he said, grabbing my carry-on with one hand, while shaking my hand with the other, “you’re here just in time. You know my Millie doesn’t like it when guests show up late for dinner.”

  Arkady Orlov, the Soviet Union’s gold medalist in weightlifting at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea, was originally from Shakhty, Russia.

  He and Millie had met each other in Seoul when he’d walked over to the American Embassy from his hotel the day after he won his gold medal and announced he wished to defect to the United States.

  At the time, Millie was a Level 2 Agency employee at the embassy, and she was given the assignment of escorting Arkady Orlov back to the United States.

  They were married six months after Arkady’s defection.

  Since Millie and Gladys had been roommates in college, she and Arkady were frequent guests at The Meadows, so I wasn’t surprised when Carlton decided to ask them to come and live at the estate a few months after Gladys’s funeral.

  Arkady occasionally worked as a Russian translator for the Agency, and Millie continued to do contract work as a consultant on Korean politics, which meant Carlton didn’t have to explain anything about the guests he invited to stay out at his place.

  Besides that, both of them had top security clearances at the CIA, which came in handy one day when Ben and I had to interrogate a suspected terrorist for several hours in Carlton’s study, and Arkady and Millie had to give us a hand with the project.

  “Yes, I’m well aware Millie requires punctuality at her dinner table,” I said, “but I wasn’t even sure I was going to make it in time for dinner when I accepted Douglas’s invitation to stay out here.”

  Arkady shook his head. “Oh, you know my Millie, she had a feeling you’d be here in time for dinner.”

  He tapped the side of his head with two fingers. “She says she has this woman’s intuition thing.”

  After Arkady deposited my carry-on at the foot of the stairs, I followed him down the hallway to the dining room, where I found Jennifer placing water glasses on the table.

  Gladys loved to entertain, so the room had a dining table large enough to accommodate sixteen people. Today, however, there were only four place settings on the table, and they were at the far end of the room where a picture window overlooked the well-manicured grounds of the estate. I had no doubt Millie wanted us to sit there so we could admire her husband’s expertise as a groundskeeper.

  When we walked in, and I noticed Jennifer arranging the glasses on the table, I realized the last time I ate a meal at The Meadows was during the Christmas season last year when Nikki decided to surprise me by showing up unexpectedly after Carlton and I returned from a mission to Yemen.

  At the time, Carlton hadn’t met Nikki yet, and when I introduced them, he invited her to stay at The Meadows instead of getting a hotel room, an offer which surprised us both.

  As the memory popped in my head, I had a sudden urge to hear Nikki’s voice, and if Millie hadn’t walked in the dining room at that moment, I would have made an excuse to slip away and call her.

  “Yep. I knew you’d show up,” she said, placing a dish on the table. “You were thinking about my homemade rolls, weren’t you?”

  Even though Millie was barely five foot tall—less than half the size of her husband—her spunky attitude and ever-present smile tended to get everyone’s attention when she walked in a room.

  “Of course, I was thinking about your homemade rolls, Millie. That’s why I broke the speed limit getting here.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second. I know Douglas expects his people in the Ops Center to be law-abiding citizens.”

  Although I knew Carlton would never share my status at the Agency with either Millie or Arkady, I felt sure they both knew I was an intelligence officer and not someone who worked in the Ops Center with Carlton—a group of employees Millie collectively referred to as “Douglas’s people.”

  Even so, I never talked about the fact I was a covert operative, nor did I talk about any of my missions, past or present.

  In the same way, they never brought up their Agency business with me either.

  During the meal, the four of us discussed a variety of topics, including the latest Washington political gossip, but Jennifer and I never said a word to each other about Operation Crescent Moon.

  Once we finished dessert, though—chocolate fudge cake with mint chocolate chip ice cream—I told Millie there was a possibility a couple of friends of mine would be dropping by The Meadows tomorrow afternoon to visit with Jennifer and me.

  “Are they some of Douglas’s people?” she asked.

  “Well, more or less. I’m sure you remember Frank Benson. He’s with the FBI now.”

  Millie rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes, I remember Frank. The last time he was here he ate four of my chocolate chip cookies, and then he asked me if he could take two more home with him.”

  “That sounds like Frank all right.”

  “Who else is coming?” Jennifer asked.

  “Ben said he was planning to drop by.”

  Her smile said it all.

  At the end of the meal, Jennifer asked Millie if she could help her clean up the kitchen—an offer she immediately accepted—and when Arkady excused himself to run an errand in Fairfax, I decided to give Nikki a call while I had the chance.

  Before heading out to the patio to make my phone call, I told Jennifer we’d talk about our schedule for tomorrow once she was finished helping Millie.

  I was pretty sure she knew I really meant I would brief her on Operation Crescent Moon when she was done in the kitchen.

  “Sure,” she said, “I’ll come find you later.”

  I pointed outside. “I’ll be out on the patio.”

  The moment I sat down in one of the wicker patio chairs, Arkady’s dog, Frisco, a golden retriever, suddenly appeared from behind the garage and came racing towards me.

  “Hey, Frisco,” I said, hoping he’d recognize my voice before he took a bite out of me, “how’s it going, boy?”

  As soon as Frisco heard his name, he greeted me by licking my face and placing his paws in my lap. Seconds later, he began sniffing around the patio as if he’d gotten wind of an interesting scent.

  During one of my visits to The Meadows, I’d brought my dog, Stormy, with me, and Frisco’s actions made me wonder if he thought I had Stormy with me this time.

  When I got Nikki on the phone, Frisco finally gave up the search and sat down beside me, nuzzling my hand to get me to pet him.

  As long as I kept scratching behind his ears, he continued giving me his big doggie grin.

  He proba
bly thought I was returning his smile, but in reality, I was responding to the sound of Nikki’s voice.

  “Be sure and tell Millie and Arkady I said hello,” she said, when I told her I was staying at The Meadows. “Are you there by yourself or is Douglas there with you?”

  “No, Douglas isn’t here. It’s just me and another operative.”

  After Nikki updated me on what Eleanor was doing—hiking and swimming at her day camp—I asked her to give me a progress report on the murder investigation she was working on.

  Once she finished, she asked me about my debrief.

  “Has the committee run out of questions yet?” she asked.

  “It all got wrapped up this morning, but I’m going to stick around here a couple of days and check on the status of Eleanor’s adoption.”

  “Will it take you two days to do that?”

  “No, probably just one.”

  “So you’re flying home on Friday?”

  “No, I can’t leave Langley until Saturday.”

  “Is something happening at Langley on Friday?”

  “Well, sort of. On Friday night, I’ll be helping Ben with a problem he’s having with his new girlfriend.”

  “What sort of problem?”

  “I promise I’ll tell you all about it when I get home, Detective. I’m sure you’ll find the story quite interesting.”

  Jennifer walked out on the patio at that moment, and I suppose she didn’t realize I was on the phone, because she raised her voice and said, “Okay, Titus, I’m ready now.”

  “Who’s that?” Nikki asked.

  “That’s Jennifer. She’ll also be helping Ben with his problem.”

  “If it takes both of you to help Ben with his problem, he must have some problem.”

  “Believe me, he does.”

  “Is Jennifer the operative who’s staying at The Meadows with you?”