by Cate Dermody
“Adrenaline addicts, or whatever it is that makes you tick. Hero complex. The whole, ‘If I’m not right here right now doing this job the world as we know it cannot go on’ thing. Don’t get me wrong.” Erika clacked at a keyboard, typing out functions even as she spoke. “Obviously the world needs people like you, but thank God I’m just the support structure. And since you can reap the benefits of my support without understanding what I’m doing, how about I reap the benefits of yours and you go get that guy’s room number?”
“What,” Alisha said, “saving the world as we know it isn’t enough?”
“Not with shoulders like he’s got. Go on. I’ve got a file to corrupt.”
Alisha, bemused, went.
There was no German guy in the lobby, nor, in fact, any male of any other ethnicity. Two sleepily cheerful Nordic women nodded at Alisha as they passed through, one of them stopping to take her heels off and groaning in mingled agony and relief as she stepped on bare feet. Alisha smiled in return and poked around the lobby, resisting the impulse to go back upstairs. She rarely had to work with someone physically looking over her shoulder, and found it moderately annoying when it was necessary. Erika probably felt the same way, and she was right: Alisha wouldn’t be of any help.
Which left her with nothing to do. Alisha chuckled and avoided the TV, fully aware that anything on at four in the morning wouldn’t be worth watching. Instead she pushed one of the lobby chairs out of the corner, inspecting the floor for accumulated dirt. It was carpeted and meant to hide filth, but there was no build-up of grime along the trim, so she turned her back to the corner and settled into a meditation pose, her feet crossed onto her calves.
Time drifted, leaving her alone with slow thoughts. As soon as Erika was done with her work, Alisha would pack up and leave. She ought to have done it earlier; that Erika was there at all was proof that her cell could be traced by the CIA, and the posting she’d made to the Internet site could be traced by IP. There were certainly factions that would be more interested in acquiring the drone’s software for free rather than paying auction block prices.
“I don’t suppose you’d believe it was all a show?”
Alisha’s stomach knotted around a sharp spike of caution as she opened her eyes. Brandon Parker sat on the corner of a coffee table a few feet away, his hands dangling between his knees. He looked relaxed and casual: deceptive, Alisha thought, like a cat. There might have been regret in his voice, but if there was, she didn’t trust it. Watching him, all she could think was that every minute she kept him talking was another minute for Erika to finish her work.
“No,” she said, just as quietly. “I wouldn’t. Is that your story?”
“It’s the price of being a double, Alisha.” His voice was barely pitched to carry; no one farther away than she was would have heard him. “If you don’t trust me, you probably won’t kill me. If they don’t, they will. You saw what they wanted to do to that poor bastard.”
“Did they?” Alisha asked, ice in her voice. “Once I was gone, did they kill him?”
His gaze skittered away, answer enough. Alisha curled a lip. “You could’ve saved him.”
“At what cost?” He looked back at her, sharply. “Alisha, I’m begging you to trust me. Give me the software back.”
“Like hell,” she said mildly. “You’re fucked, aren’t you? I corrupted your backups and stole your originals. You must be pretty high on the Sicarii hit list right now. Why’d you bother stopping to talk?” She touched the back of her neck again, eyebrows rising a little. “Although I ought to say thanks, I guess. You wouldn’t have if this thing was bugged.”
Alarm creased Brandon’s face for one brief instant, gone so fast Alisha almost laughed. “Or you didn’t think about it.”
Brandon curled a lip, shaking his head. “It’s not. And I stopped to talk because I hoped this thing might get resolved easily. At the least, I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
“Resolved easily,” Alisha said in disbelief. “Did you not notice they put an explosive under my brain?”
“I can disable it.”
“I,” Alisha said with all the precision she could muster, “don’t believe you.”
Anger and tension flashed through Brandon’s eyes. It was the warning Alisha needed: she could almost see the motion beginning in the clench of his jaw and speeding its way through his nervous system, bunching his muscles for action.
They bolted for the hotel stairs at the same moment, Brandon’s advantage of a head start negated by Alisha’s facing the right direction. He grabbed her pajama waistband as she gained a step on him, hauling her back several inches and surging ahead as they reached the stairs. Alisha tackled his ankle, bringing him down, and put her full weight in the middle of his back, hoping to knock his breath away as she scrambled over him. He grunted and she surged forward, feeling the warmth of his fingers just missing her ankle as she took the stairs two and three at a time.
She burst through her hotel room door yelling, “Go go go go go!” and was left gasping in surprise to find the room empty but for the flash drive sitting on the bed. A sticky note with a smiley face was pasted to it, lit by the sun rising through the open curtains. More time had passed in meditation than Alisha had realized, and for an instant she gave in to a breathless, grateful laugh.
Brandon slammed through the door behind her and Alisha snatched her gun from the dresser, whipping to face him, the weapon lifted and cocked.
He came up short, shockingly pale in the warming gold light, and lifted his hands. “Back up,” Alisha snapped. “Other side of the hall. Now.”
“Bitch,” he said incredulously. Alisha grinned and gestured with the gun.
“Now.”
Brandon snarled with anger as he stepped back, hands still lifted. Alisha saw it before he moved: the quick glance down the hall that promised he’d run for it. There was nothing she was willing to do; a gun firing in a crowded hotel was unacceptable.
No, she corrected herself, there was one thing she was willing to do—get in the last word. Her grin grew even more edged, and she gave him one sharp nod. “I’ll see you in Moscow.”
Brandon gave her a look of scathing fury and ran down the hall, disappearing from sight.
Chapter 27
“Greg.” Alisha put relief into her voice, physically slumping in her train seat as she held the cell phone to her ear. “It’s me.”
“Alisha?” A combination of relief and anger made the soft edges of her name sound sharp. “Alisha, where the hell are you? I thought you were coming in.”
“I know. I know.” Alisha pressed her eyes closed, keeping her voice pitched low. No one else on the train even looked her way, the rumble of engines and the persistent snicker-snack of wheels against the tracks going far in drowning out her quiet conversation. “I tracked Brandon to another storage facility. I got the software, Greg.”
“What?” Her handler sounded dumbfounded. Alisha searched the solitary word for depth, wondering if she heard distress or merely surprise. “It’s you,” he said an instant later. “That software sale I saw on the boards. It’s you. My God, Alisha, what are you trying to do?”
I saw you in Beijing. I’m trying to learn whose side everyone is really on. Alisha bit the words off, hunching her shoulders up and pressing her chin to her chest. “A copy’s on its way to you,” she answered, avoiding the question he’d really asked. “I didn’t know what else to do, Greg. I couldn’t compromise Brandon, but we needed that software. If I make myself look rogue, we might be able to get a lot more information about the…” she took a deep breath, exchanging that for the word Sicarii. Even hidden by the noisy train, she didn’t want to voice it aloud. “…than we’ve got now.”
“And you didn’t go through me.” Ice filled Greg’s tone. Alisha winced, pulling her knees up toward her chest.
“You wouldn’t have let me, Greg. It’s a bad situation—I can feel it—and you wouldn’t have let me go into it.”
“I want
you to get off that train at the next stop and stay there,” Greg said harshly. Despite the turmoil in her stomach, Alisha found a little smile. There was nothing subtle about the sounds a train made, but Greg’s recognition of her travel mode still somehow amused her. “I’ll meet you in twelve hours. We’ll figure this out from there.”
“In twelve hours my auction time will have passed,” Alisha said with a shrug. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Greg.”
“Alisha.” The commanding note slipped from Greg’s voice, leaving concern behind. “You’re going blind into what you think is a bad situation. We’ve got the software, we’ve got the prototype. You’ve done your job. Leave it alone. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I haven’t finished it yet, sir.” Alisha pulled out the honorific deliberately, knowing it would blur the line she walked between truth and lies. “I still don’t know whether he’s a clear and present danger, and if he is it’s my responsibility to stop him. And, sir,” she added regretfully, “you told me yourself that this operation came from above you. You don’t have the authority to pull me.”
She heard the click of his teeth setting together, and could imagine his single short nod. “I’ll talk to Director Boyer,” he said after a few long seconds. “I do have the authority to instruct you to report in before you go charging into this hash. That’s an order, Cardinal.”
“Yes, sir.” Alisha folded her phone closed and leaned her head back against the rough tweed headrest. The fabric smelled faintly of old cleaning solution and older sweat, a sting that made her nose prickle. Two lines laid, she thought. It wasn’t just a dangerous game she played. It was an ugly one. The careers and even lives of people she cared about depended on what she learned and how she used that knowledge.
And the lives and well-being of hundreds, perhaps thousands or millions, of others she would never meet depended on her playing that ugly game, and making decisions she would have to live with, so that they could.
“It’s not about my ego, E,” she whispered, knowing her friend would never hear, and might not understand even if she could. “It’s about caring for something so much bigger than yourself you can hardly see it.”
Alisha closed her eyes, and let the rock of the train sway her to sleep.
Boyer was right. The safe house was derelict, unused for at least a decade, probably more. It’d been badly used, as well: someone, the KGB most likely, had discovered it and shredded it from the inside out, searching for cameras and listening devices. The walls were raw now, pipes and electrical wires laid bare, and the floor was weak in spots, subflooring swollen with water under the torn-up carpet.
But it would do. No one would be there for the decor, only for the software she promised to sell. Alisha wrapped her hand around the tiny flash drive, then slid it into her purse. There was already a weight in the handbag, suggesting a larger hard drive might be carried there. Brandon would know better, but no one else would.
Four hours. Alisha turned her wrist up, glancing at her watch unnecessarily. No one would be fashionably late; there was no such thing in a world of espionage and illegal sales. A few might be early, but not this early. She slung her purse with its heavy cargo over her shoulder, crosswise against her torso with her elbow pressing it to her ribs. It was almost impossible to steal something carried that way, she thought in satisfaction. She locked the door behind her, more form than function: if her bidders came early, a locked door certainly wouldn’t stop them from accessing the old safe house.
But if they came early, she’d have a chance to watch and study them. It took almost an hour to take a cab down to Moscow’s central square and then to work her way back to the safe house by subtler means. The entire block was full of similar homes, elegant swooping roofs providing more than adequate hiding spots. Alisha settled down with a pair of dully reflective binoculars held loosely in one hand, glad for the warmth of the summer afternoon. The same stakeout held in January would have been miserable, and footprints in the snow across the rooftops would have led any sky surveillance directly to her.
A sporty red Jetta came zipping around the corner, braking hard. Alisha leaned forward, watching it. It was too sexy for the neighborhood, though not too expensive: the vehicles on the street and those that had driven through that morning were more reserved, dark colors and bigger engines. She settled back again with a little smile. Decoy, she thought. Intended to get her attention while the real surveillance was done elsewhere.
There was no sound of footsteps to warn her. Just the hard roundness of a gun muzzle being pressed against the soft spot at the base of her skull, covering the chip implanted there perfectly, and Frank Reichart’s regretful voice: “I can’t let you sell that software, Leesh.”
The afternoon heat turned sticky, a prickle of sickness washing down Alisha’s spine and following every nerve to its end, tingling hard enough to make her just-healed soles ache with it. For an instant, she was tempted to bravado, to toss her head and say, You’re going to have to shoot me, Frank.
Good sense stilled the impulse. An inordinate percentage of shootings were pushed over the edge by the victim saying, “Go ahead, shoot me.” And those were acts of random passion, not performed by a man trained to kill. Alisha pressed her elbow harder against the weight in her purse and swallowed. Another chill swept through her, pushing warmth away and leaving cold sweat standing on her skin.
“Are you really going to shoot me again, Frank?” Her voice was surprisingly steady, given that her heart felt like it was forcing its way into her throat. Alisha took a slow breath, willing calmness into the frantic beat. Concentrating on the flow of oxygen into her muscles. She would need it.
Reichart breathed a laugh. “That won’t work, Leesh. I’m not here to argue about who shot you. Come on.” The gun muzzle didn’t move. “Hand it over.”
Damn. The word whispered through Alisha’s mind as she shook her head, barely a fraction of a movement. “I can’t get the purse over my head with you holding the gun to me,” she said. “I’m going to have to move.” He’d have clobbered her with the gun already, if he didn’t mind hurting her, Alisha thought. There was a chance she could fight, if she could get the gun away from her head.
“Unzip the damned purse, Alisha,” Reichart said dryly. “I don’t need the whole thing. Won’t go with my shoes.”
Alisha let herself set her teeth together and curl her upper lip, frustrated acknowledgement that he’d seen through the shallow plan. “It’s locked, Frank. You really think I’d be carrying this around with the bag open?”
Reichart hesitated, no more than a breath of uncertainty. It was all she needed. Alisha twisted to the left, knowing Reichart would subconsciously expect any attack to come from the right, most people’s dominant side. Her raised arm crashed into his wrists, lacking the force she needed to do damage: her seated position gave her none of the leverage or flexibility she could usually draw on. Still, it moved the weapon away from her skull and gave her an instant to get her legs under herself. She launched herself forward under the sound of Reichart’s curse. He skittered back and she hit the rooftop with a grunt, rolling onto her back.
Reichart brought the gun around again and she kicked up, connecting her booted toe with the nerve in the side of his wrist. His fingers went satisfyingly numb, clear from their sudden splay and the gun loosening in his hold. Alisha kicked the weapon again, sending it flying, and jumped to her feet. The weight banged against her hip, changing her balance, but Reichart only circled her warily, not pressing the attack as he shook the numbness from his hand.
“Alisha, I need you to trust me.”
“Is that why you had me followed?” Alisha demanded. “Is that why you had me attacked? Why you just attacked me? Because you need me to trust you? News flash, Reichart. Holding a gun to my head? Not a good way to earn my trust. You’re way too late.” Something popped inside her chest, like a bit of cartilage had been held tight and came unexpectedly loose. Alisha drew in a deep breath around it, feeling
like it was the first time in days she’d truly breathed deeply. There was a curious emptiness where the tightness had been, as if she’d held that knot inside her so long that she didn’t know what to do without it.
It took a surprisingly long time to recognize what she felt. Neutrality, she realized, finally. Built up until it broke through and spilled over her heart, a cool coating of protection that gave her at least a brief respite from caring, so ceaselessly, about Frank Reichart. There was no room for doubt or for regret in her now, just weariness that had grown for so long that it could no longer be contained.
It was hideous. Alisha suppressed a shudder, hardly recognizing herself through that Teflon barrier. This, she thought for the first time. This is how he does it. This is how Reichart answers to the paycheck and not to any kind of higher ideal. She had never thought it was in her, the cold and calculating ability to judge a job for its monetary value, and then accept it without care for its moral code.
She didn’t like at all to find she was wrong. It laid open questions about herself—and about Reichart—that she wasn’t prepared to face, much less answer. Anger splashed through her, bouncing off that inner cool so easily that it made her hands cold again, this time with uncertainty about herself.
And Reichart’s next words did nothing to alleviate that discomfort. “Alisha, that software can’t be allowed on the open market. It’s too dangerous.”
She barked a laugh. “Like you care. Who sent you, Frank? Don’t tell me you’re here out of the goodness of your heart. Somebody’s paying you. I want to know who.”
He fell back a step, lowering his hands, palms out. Neither of them had stopped moving until then, though training kept them both crouched low, refusing to make spectacles of themselves against the Moscow skyline. “The Russians. You know that.”
“I don’t know anything anymore,” Alisha spat. I’m not sure I even know myself.