by Tinnean
My cell phone rang, a seriously welcome diversion. “Vincent.”
“Hi.” It was Quinn.
Well, well, well, speak of the devil. The corner of my mouth kicked up in a grin. “Hi, yourself.” I leaned back in my chair. “What’s up? We still on for tonight?” We’d made plans to try this French restaurant in Chevy Chase. I wasn’t thrilled about it; it might awaken memories of that French boy, who was probably now a fat old—no, he was only a couple of years older than Quinn. So, okay, not old, but he was still probably fat.
“No. That’s why I’m calling. I have to go out of town, and I’ll be away for a few days.” Well, fuck. I almost missed his teasing, “Will you miss me?”
“Hell, no!” I snapped, irritated to realize I would miss him. “I have to move my stuff out of your place anyway. This will be as good a time as any to get it done.”
The silence on the other end of the line was deafening, and I kept my breathing shallow, waiting to hear what he would have to say.
“Does… does that mean it’s over between us?” he finally asked.
Was he looking for an excuse to end it? That would be the fucking day. “It’s over when I say it’s over!” I snapped again, then wanted to kick myself for revealing my feelings. Well, at least I hadn’t used his name.
“Yes? All right.” He sounded happy, and suddenly I didn’t feel so stupid. After all, he was the one who had jumped to the conclusion that I was ending our affair. I relaxed back in my chair and let the sound of his voice wash over me. “I’ll be looking forward to seeing your new place. I have a housewarming gift for you. And don’t go looking for it.”
He laughed at my growled, “As if I’d do something like that!”
“Of course. I don’t know who I was thinking of. Must have been someone else who kept breaking into my house. But just so you don’t wear yourself out, I gave it to Mother to keep for me.”
Well, hell! “Spoilsport.”
“That’s me.” I could hear an announcement from a PA in the background, and he became serious. “That’s my flight; I have to go. Get some help moving. I don’t want you to hurt yourself. I should be home by Wednesday, Thursday at the latest, and I have some serious plans for you.”
Plans. Yeah. My mouth went dry thinking of some of the things we’d done. I licked my lips. “I’ll see you then.”
I flipped my phone shut.
The apartment that was going to be my home until I could find something more permanent may have been considered ready for occupancy by the average person, but I was WBIS. Its security needed to come up to my standards. Video and audio, like nothing the CIA had even dreamed of. And of course the door needed to be wired to explode if the proper sequence to enter wasn’t used.
Just because I was involved with Mann didn’t mean I’d suddenly gotten stupid.
Although this time I’d have to make sure the results weren’t quite so disastrous, not to whoever tried to break into my apartment, because they’d fucking deserve whatever they got, but to the apartment itself. I liked my landlords, and I didn’t want their property unduly damaged. Maybe I’d talk to Theo about having a sprinkler system installed, on my dime, of course. Yeah. That sounded like a plan.
It should spare the building the wrath of the DCFD, at any rate.
With Quinn off wherever he was doing CIA stuff, this would be the ideal time for me to move. By the time he came home, I’d be out of his house and settled into mine.
I made arrangements to have some of the furniture I’d ordered dropped at the apartment on Friday. And what the hell, since I was running my department, I’d delegate everything and take that afternoon off as well.
A week. Seven days, eight at the most. I thought about Quinn in that big, king-size bed that I’d bought, with the headboard just made for handcuffs.
A week. It should pass pretty quickly.
IX
THERE was a quiet spell, not only in my life, but at the WBIS as well. Nobody was getting dead, Stanley’s people still seemed to be chasing their tails, Matheson wasn’t due back for another week, and the senior directors were all giving me a wide berth.
I remembered Uncle Steve talking about my father and how he’d died in an accident in Germany. I began digging into it, deeper than I had when I’d first come to the WBIS. At first it felt like I was chasing my tail. And then the path in the maze became decipherable.
Yeah, he’d been killed in Germany. He’d been trying to make it to Checkpoint Charlie from East Berlin and he’d taken a bullet that shattered his C2 cervical vertebra.
And what the fuck was he doing in East Berlin? Apparently, after he’d been discharged from the army, he’d been recruited by the CIA.
Jesus, Dad, say it wasn’t so!
Depressed beyond belief—my own father a fucking spook!—I shut the file and wished I could wash my brain with bleach.
X
THE intercom buzzed, jolting me out of a daydream of Quinn wearing nothing but a smile and a pair of handcuffs, reminding me I was at work. “Yes?”
“Mr. Matheson’s back, sir.”
“Send him in.” I studied him as he entered and crossed to the chair I’d indicated.
“Job’s done; Fitzwilliam’s dead.” He dropped down into the chair and gave me the bare bones of the operation, too tired to wrap it with a pretty bow.
“You look like shit, Matheson.”
“Thank you, sir.” He’d been doing heavy manual labor twelve hours a day, seven days a week for the past three weeks, and had been on the go for twenty-four hours making his connecting flights. He didn’t piss and moan about the number of connections he’d had to make, the last of which had been rerouted through the Florida Suncoast, and involved a nine-hour layover.
I nodded, waited until he blew out a breath of relief, then hit him with, “Now, about your connecting flights.”
He turned pale, but didn’t offer any excuses or explanations.
I approved, but still, he had to learn he couldn’t go on his own quest on the WBIS’s dime. “One of them was to Florida, and you spent nine hours there.”
“Yes, sir. There was a layover in St. Petersburg. I took that opportunity to rent a car and drive up to Tarpon Springs.”
“Why?”
He met my eyes steadily. “Tarpon Springs has the largest Greek community in Florida, Mr. Vincent. Theo came from Tarpon Springs. Did you know he used to sing the chants in St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral? He’s been afraid to go home because he thought he killed the man who whored him.”
“He didn’t?” Of course I knew all this. I’d known it for a long time. I hadn’t felt the need to do anything; for the most part, the chicken hawk’s colleagues had kept him in check. And Sweetcheeks seemed to be dealing okay.
Matheson actually looked impatient. “Mr. Vincent, Theo was fifteen. He was small for his age, scared out of his mind, and he had no clue how to use a knife. It glanced off the scumsucker’s ribs, and the wound bled like a son of a bitch, but it didn’t kill him. When the asshole fell, he hit his head and knocked himself unconscious. Theo panicked and ran. Now on the other hand, I am an adult. And I was taught by a master how to handle a knife.”
“Mmm hmm.” His file mentioned something about an uncle who was a Marine. “I take it the world now boasts one less scumsucker?” He nodded. “In that case, I approve, Matheson.”
“Thank you, sir. I wasn’t sure you would, considering it was strictly personal.”
“But you killed him anyway.”
“He was pimping for another boy. Mr. Vincent, I have a younger brother that kid’s age.”
“Half brother.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but the fact that JR’s mother isn’t my mother is immaterial. He’s my brother.” He wasn’t going to back down. Interesting to know.
“All right, Matheson. I understand why you acted as you did. Just this once I’m going to overlook it. If you had gotten caught, the WBIS would not have bailed you out, you know.”
“I�
�m aware of that, sir. It won’t happen again.” He said that with the utmost confidence.
“See that it doesn’t. By the way, Miss Jones is still your secretary, but not for much longer. I have someone else in mind, who I think will suit you much better.” I thought about Ms. DiNois. My own secretary had suggested her, and when I’d approached her about working on seven, her expression had remained mildly interested; she’d given a serene smile and said she’d look forward to it. But just for a second, her eyes had lit up. Apparently there was someone on seven she wanted to be close to. “Okay, you may as well take the rest of the day off.” I wanted my quarry to twist in the wind a little longer.
“May I have tomorrow as well? I—I really could use the time in bed.” He flushed. He probably meant time in bed with Theo. They were still new enough that the razzle hadn’t worn off the dazzle.
“All right. Take a personal day.” He’d done a good job, and he deserved the time off. “I’ll see you here on Thursday. It’s going to be… busy.”
“Yes, sir. I have no plans, though, and I can come in if you need me.”
“No. I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“Thank you.” He was grinning as he left. Yeah, he’d probably spend the weekend in bed with Theo.
And now I thought of it, spending the weekend in bed with my own lover sounded like a damn good idea. Too bad it wasn’t going to happen.
My secretary buzzed me. “Mr. Vincent, I’m just calling to remind you of that meeting you have with Mr. Davies.”
“Reschedule it, would you please?” That would seriously piss off the senior director of Public Relations. “Let’s make it for Thursday.”
“Yes, sir. There’s also the meeting with the senior directors of In-house Security, Human Resources, and Finance.”
“Thank you, Ms. Parker.” Normally, meetings like these were The Boss’s province, but he’d been called out of town. Before he left, he’d delegated me to represent him. The senior directors were going to be so unhappy to see me.
That really broke my heart.
I grinned as I gathered up Matheson’s notes, and the notes I had made from them. Oh, yeah, that really broke my heart.
Interlude
Separate Lives
THE Administrator picked up the water globe from his desk and studied it pensively. It had been his gift to Her, so many years ago, and it contained a pair of figures sitting on a bench in a garden.
She had loved to garden.
Such a lovely little woman. To look at Her, one would never imagine how very deadly She could be.
Of course, he had appreciated Her from the first moment he’d seen Her. They had both been so young. So deadly.
He was growing older, he knew, his once-blond hair now faded to gray, but his mind was as keen as ever, and he would do whatever was necessary to achieve the goal he had sworn to attain for Her.
At one time he had been part of a pair, and together they had created the most covert antiterrorist organization on the planet. She was gone now—alive, but better off dead, betrayed by those they had trusted, and it was left to him to recreate what they had once controlled.
She had decreed, back when they had started out, that they would need three years to train an operative to the level of competence that would be required, but he didn’t have three years.
He decided to “recruit” this new wave of operatives from the various agencies of the world: CIA, the Mossad, the Foreign Intelligence Service which had once been the KGB, MI6, Bundesnachrichtendienst representing Germany, Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica on behalf of Italy, and France’s Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure. The ones he kept had enough experience to reduce the requisite three years to train them to a year, perhaps less.
Four WBIS agents had been taken before he realized that the factors that made them excellent operatives for the Washington Bureau of Intelligence and Security made them useless for Prinzip. Still, nothing went to waste; they were good for providing examples to the others, who were smart enough to realize the benefits to being a live member of the new organization.
The woman, Solange, had been good for that, he’d wanted someone trained by Femme, but then Solange had overstepped her bounds, thought she could replace Her. He’d had no choice but to have Solange put down like a rabid dog. Bitch. He smiled grimly at the simile.
“We have another for you, sir.” Gaston and Etienne dragged the young man before him, and he set the globe down some distance from them. He wouldn’t chance their being so careless that they broke it with negligent disregard.
Mutt and Jeff, the pair of them, the disparity in their heights and personalities had amused Her when they’d first recruited this pair. It might have amused him now, but with Her no longer there at his side, there was very little that amused him.
He rose and walked around the young man, studying him and testing the muscles of his upper arms.
“Excellent. A very fine specimen.” The Administrator gazed into the young man’s eyes, pleased when he turned pale. “Yes, very fine!”
The young man straightened and began to swear at him in Russian. Oh, dear. Was he one who would have to be broken to be remade?
“M. l’Administrateur?” Gaston waited expectantly, and when he gave a nod, backhanded the Russian with casual disregard.
The young man fought back, but in the end his struggles proved to be as futile as the Administrator had had no doubt they would be.
The Administrator smiled. “He will soon learn.”
“Can I—” Gaston leered at the Russian.
“No.” The Administrator knew what the short man wanted, and he was having none of it. He would not permit his operatives to be abused in any way, least of all sexually. “Have Dr. Futé examine him, and then put him with the others.”
“Oui, M. l’Administrateur.” There was resentment there, but he ignored it. Gaston would follow his orders because to do otherwise would result in his cancellation.
They hurried to obey him, as he had known they would, and he was left alone. He picked up the water globe.
Soon, he mused as he stroked the globe. Soon he would have the exact number he needed, their training would begin in earnest, and he would have an organization that would be everything that the original one had failed to be.
And She would look at him with eyes once more filled with awareness and with pride.
He shook the globe and watched as flower petals rained down on the pair.
Slipping Through My Fingers
I
“LEONARD BURROUGHS” was the most recent agent who had been instructed to meet with a representative of an organization with ties to the CIA. He, or rather I, was to go to the Montgeron district of Paris, to a certain building on Rue Fourier. It was like any other office building in the City of Light, an unremarkable pile of concrete and glass that was undergoing renovation.
Hide in plain sight. That was the old adage. Mark would have approved. He always said, “People are idiots, Quinn. They only see what they expect to see.”
I took the modern elevator up to the sixth floor and stepped out into the dim corridor, to the chaos of construction. It appeared to be deserted. Plaster dust covered everything that wasn’t buried under sawdust. Open containers of concrete cement were scattered around, their contents drying from exposure to the air. I walked around plastic sheeting that separated offices being worked on from those where the work had been completed. The carpeting had been torn up and had yet to be replaced, and my footsteps echoed hollowly on the cement floor.
“M. Burroughs?” A large, swarthy Frenchman appeared in the corridor. Not only tall, but broad as well, he looked as if he could have successfully competed for the Mr. Universe title. “We ’ave been expecting you. If you will come this way?”
I followed him, aware of the shorter man who had come up behind me. The nape of my neck started tingling, never a good sign, and I was glad I had taken the time to strap the .45 subco
mpact pistol that was my backup piece to my ankle. It was a Llama Mini-max, and Mark would have creamed his pants over it: with a cartridge up the pipe, it carried eleven rounds of fire power.
His Beretta only had a capacity of eight.
The room I was led to was harshly lit; work lights dangled from the rafters, and I squinted against the glare. A white-haired man who gave all appearances of being the one in charge sat behind a large metal desk that looked like a relic of the Second World War. A frisson of unease ran up my spine. His eyes weren’t quite right.
The shorter man frisked me, giving a grunt of triumph as he found and removed the Smith and Wesson from its shoulder holster. He resumed searching me, and his fingers lingered as he groped between my legs.
I raised a bored eyebrow and addressed the man behind the desk. “Is he searching me, or does he want to date me?”
“Gaston!”
The shorter man snarled but moved his hands down my legs, although not before giving my balls a vicious squeeze. My vision grayed out for a moment, and by the time I’d breathed through the pain, he was holding up my clutch piece in triumph.
Fortunately, Gaston didn’t think to look in my shoe, where earlier I’d concealed the pocketknife I always carried. It wasn’t a comfortable hiding place, but it was generally secure, and it seemed it would be my only means of defense.
A younger man had joined the one behind the desk and was whispering in his ear. I was close enough to hear the panic in his voice, even if I couldn’t make out his words. The white-haired man’s eyes narrowed.
“You are not who you say you are!”
“I’m not?” I smiled at him easily. “My mother might be surprised to learn of this.”