Sleeping With the Enemy

by Adaire, Alexis

  I’m not sure why I felt compelled to include the snide comment at the end, but it felt right so I hit “send.”

  A week later he still hadn’t had the courtesy to reply. During my regular meeting with Morello we were discussing which of my fellow agents I had most enjoyed working with. Demarco popped into mind immediately, but I mentioned Musgrave and Archer instead. Then she asked who I had least liked.

  “Ryan Demarco,” I said without thinking. It wasn’t even remotely true, of course. My training mission in London had been spectacular until I returned home to realize I’d fucked a fellow agent, and in Moscow he and I had made an amazingly resourceful team.

  Morello smiled. “Yes, Ryan tends to rub people the wrong way. Women more than men, with his cockiness. Did it bother you, being put in a position in Moscow where you were forced to have sex with the target in front of him?”

  The question startled me for a second because I’d forgotten that Sills had classified the information about what had happened between Gurov and Demarco. Morello still thought I fucked the Russian while my partner sat and watched.

  “I’m a professional, Dr. Morello,” I said. “So no, it didn’t bother me.”

  “But you’re also a woman,” she countered. “And one who had previously been intimate with the agent who was now watching you have sex. I recall you being angry about what happened in London, even though you didn’t want to discuss the details. I always sensed there was more to the story than you were letting on.”

  I hesitated. Did I actually want to do this? Had Morello been serving the Agency in any other capacity, I would have bitten my tongue, but she was my shrink.

  “Demarco took advantage of me in London,” I blurted out.

  “But you understand why that had to happen,” Morello said. “You even told me…” She flipped a page in the chart on her desk. “‘The sex was great’ — your exact words, Anna.”

  “Dr. Morello, he made me suck him off in the elevator and came in my mouth, before we even got to his suite. And then after he’d done his job and made sure I would follow through and sleep with a target if necessary, he took me anally just for kicks.”

  The doctor tried to remain professional, but she was obviously bothered by what she had just heard. “Did you ever speak to him about it? Before Moscow?”

  “Briefly, when I spoke to him alone during the post-London debriefing,” I said. “He claimed the elevator blowjob was to ensure I’d do whatever I had to do in order to get into the target location and plant the bugs.”

  “And the anal sex?” she asked.

  “He admitted that was just for his enjoyment,” I replied.

  “If you feel Demarco made you do something against your will, we need to report that.”

  “It wasn’t against my will!” I nearly shouted. “I wanted him to!” I felt tears rising inside me. “I needed to extend the sex so I could plant the second bug, but when I sensed what he wanted to do, I realized I wanted it as well.”

  Morello stared at me as a solitary tear rolled down my cheek. I fought to keep the others at bay.

  “Did he know you still needed time to plant the second bug?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “He saw it in my hand.”

  The doctor set down her pen and sighed softly. “Anna, do you honestly feel like anything Ryan did that night fell outside the scope of his mission, which was to make sure you would commit totally to an operation of the type he knew you would be undertaking in your new job?”

  I gave it careful consideration. I had always thought Demarco had taken advantage of me, especially in the elevator and by pushing me into having anal with him. Was he just preparing me for what I might expect to find in this line of work? After all the weird situations I had found myself in during operations since then, that actually made sense. It also fit perfectly with his obvious view that our two sexual trysts had both been purely business.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess not.”

  “You and I have discussed the idea that sometimes you might find yourself enjoying the sex you’re forced to take part in during an operation, right?”

  I nodded and Morello continued. “Is it so hard to imagine that Ryan might have actually enjoyed the sex with you in London? Especially considering that he knew you were a fellow agent and posed no threat whatsoever? Certainly he would make sure to do the job he was tasked to do, but couldn’t it be possible that the two of you both appreciated each other’s skills as lovers? That, despite the situation, you had a certain chemistry that led to amazing sex?”

  I knew I had been extremely attracted to Demarco since the moment Lazarenko walked into the lounge at the hotel that night, even though I thought of him as an enemy.

  “Sure, it’s possible.”

  “Then don’t hate him for what he did that night,” Morello said. “And don’t hate yourself for enjoying it, Anna.”

  * * *

  My talk with Morello had me convinced more than ever that Demarco and I needed to have that long-delayed drink and talk things over. Perhaps I had him figured out wrong all this time, that his cocky attitude and my idiotic schoolgirl crush on him made him seem like more of a jerk than he actually was. Or maybe he would prove once and for all that he was, indeed, an irredeemable asshole. Regardless, it was time to find out.

  I had no idea where his office was, so I called Glen Musgrave and asked if he knew. As it turns out, Demarco’s office was in the Special Operations Group, part of the Special Activities Division that deals with high-threat military or intelligence operations. SAD agents were the true elite of the CIA’s covert agents, sometimes recruited directly from Delta Force, Green Berets, SEALs, Army Rangers, and other secretive special ops groups. I realized I might have to reassess my opinion of Demarco now that I knew he was one of these military studs.

  I found his office and knocked, but got no answer, so I stuck my head in the office next door. An attractive woman in her forties looked up.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Ryan Demarco’s not in his office,” I said. “Would you have any idea where I could find him?”

  “Ryan’s on assignment in Amman right now,” she replied.

  Demarco was in Jordan? That was the first I’d heard. “When is he expected back?” I asked.

  “It’s a month-long operation,” she said, “and he just left a few days ago.”

  “Dammit,” I said without thinking, then added, “I really wanted some time with him.”

  She smiled and said, “Don’t we all?”

  Twenty-Eight

  Two weeks passed with no word from Demarco. By then I had pretty much resolved my relationship with him, at least in my mind. I had decided he was an incredibly handsome man, a spectacular lover, and an exceptional and dependable agent. I was also convinced he viewed me as a co-worker he’d hooked up with twice in the line of work and maybe even had a good time with in bed. And I kept open the possibility that he and I could be friends.

  That being said, I still thought about the man way too much. So when Sills asked me if I thought I was ready for another operation, I jumped at the chance. “We were a little concerned about your mental state after you returned from the DRC,” Sills said, “but Dr. Morello has assured me that you were just exhausted from the ordeal, and that you also been dealing with personal relationship issues.”

  Morello said that? I thought. She had to be talking about Demarco. Why would she consider that a “personal relationship”?

  “I’m fine, sir,” I said. “In fact, I’ve had a little cabin fever lately and like the idea of a bit of excitement. What have you got for me?”

  “You’re going back to Syria,” he said. That had been the location of my first major operation, back when I was in the Office of Technical Service, before Sills had recruited me to work for Extracurricular Affairs.

  “On your previous operation there you participated in an exfiltration to get Firas Assadi out of the country before he was rolled up by the g
overnment there,” Sills said. I remembered Operation Ebola, in which we’d managed to sneak a high-ranking defense official out of the country after it had been discovered that he was spying for the Agency. The mission had its tense moments, but had ultimately been successful and, just as importantly, had gotten me noticed by Sills and Daniel Nguyen, the head of the entire National Clandestine Service.

  “Well, this time nothing high tech will be involved,” Sills said. “We need you to pass a verbal message to Abu Khalid al-Ansar, leader of Jabhat Alhurria, a revolutionary splinter group also known as the New Freedom Front.”

  It obviously wouldn’t be quite that clear-cut. I knew that if this operation didn’t involve sex in some way they would send a more seasoned agent.

  Sills went on. “We’ve been searching for a direct line to al-Ansar for months. The DOD wants to fund his group’s resurrection attempt. Such offers are commonplace these days, with the White House doing everything it can to overthrow President Assad’s government there. This one’s a little more complicated because al-Ansar has a foot in both the rebel camp and the ISIS camp; he’s likely waiting to see who ends up on top before he commits. However, he isn’t the religious zealot you normally associate with ISIS; he’s more of a power monger, and we believe we can use financial assistance from the American military to turn him away from ISIS. But this offer needs to be conveyed to him directly in private. One-on-one. That’s been our sticking point, because we can’t get close enough to al-Ansar to give him the message.”

  “Why send me then?” I asked. “Considering this is a Muslim country, why not an experienced male agent who speaks Arabic?”

  “That’s the catch,” Sills explained, dimming the lights and lowering his screen. “This is Abu Khalid al-Ansar.”

  Holy shit. The man in the picture was young and handsome, with a charismatic look about him that made perfect sense. It was easy to imagine him gathering a following. If I met him in a dive bar, I’d do anything I could to convince him to take me home.

  Sills hit his remote and a new picture popped up, this time of a decidedly unattractive man. His shallow-set eyes were too close together and combined with his long nose to give him a mousy look. He had a patchy semi-beard and bad teeth.

  My stomach squirmed when Sills said, “And this is your target, Malek Gorani. Gorani is al-Ansar’s right-hand man. We have an agent-in-place who knows Gorani but has been rebuffed on several attempts to gain access to al-Ansar for a few minutes. Apparently, Gorani is unmoved by money, probably because it would be difficult to hide any significant funds from his fellow rebels, and if he were caught accepting a financial bribe he would certainly be killed. However, our agent-in-place tells us Gorani is an online connoisseur of American pornography. That’s his thing.”

  It was time for Sills to bottom-line his little speech.

  “We have succeeded in bribing Gorani with sex,” he said. “Our agent-in-place told him an American woman he knows is willing to trade sex in return for a meeting with al-Ansar. Gorani immediately agreed to the deal.”

  Sills waited, looking at me expectantly. “As always, Agent Mercer, we wouldn’t send you unless it was vital to U.S. foreign policy. And you’ll be accompanied by a male covert agent, at least to the point where you’re introduced to Gorani. Again this time you will be provided with an L-pill, just as a precaution. These are difficult people to figure out, and al-Ansar is known to have ties with ISIS.”

  “I can leave as soon as you want me to, sir,” I said.

  Badass Agent Mercer wasn’t going to say no. Sex with a Syrian porn-creep sounded dreadful, but the rest seemed to be a cakewalk — no bugs to plant or repair, just a simple message delivered verbally. Also no worries about seducing my target, as this Gorani guy would apparently fuck anything American. It would be a relatively quick mission and I would have another critical operation under my belt.

  I was no longer content to be just another covert ops agent. I wanted to be the best.

  * * *

  I flew to Damascus two days later with Shabazz Abdul-Rauf, a support agent with fifteen years of experience. Abdul-Rauf was a serious man, a chain-smoker who had me smelling like cigarettes by the time we reached Dulles to board the plane. Still, I would happily endure the cigarette stench to be with a man who looked like he belonged in Syria, who had spent much time there and knew the language and customs like the back of his hand. We spoke quietly the entire flight, reviewing the details of the operation. Abdul-Rauf gave me a full rundown on the war that had been raging in Syria for several years, with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and of course the U.S. and Russia all getting their hands dirty. He ended the impromptu lesson on geopolitics by saying, “Basically, Syria is now one gigantic clusterfuck. Pardon my French.”

  Abdul-Rauf talked to me directly about how I felt regarding my specific role in the mission. In particular, what I thought about having to be intimate with a stranger in a potentially dangerous situation.

  “Your presence there, and my focus, are going to minimize that possible danger,” I said.

  He looked at me thoughtfully. “But at the moment of truth, what goes through your mind?” he asked. I laughed, surprised that he’d asked.

  “Are you actually asking me how I feel when I’m having sex with a target?” I asked in disbelief. No other support agent had asked me about that aspect of my job.

  “I just can’t imagine being in that situation,” he said. “It’s a level of involvement — of commitment — that exceeds my grasp.”

  Knowing he was Muslim, I assumed the idea of a woman willfully giving up her body bothered him. “Because of your religion?” I asked.

  “No,” he smiled. “Much about this job conflicts with my religion. But there is even more about our enemies in the Arab world that also conflicts with my religion, so I’ve made my peace with that. But I can’t imagine how you feel at that point because it’s truly scary shit that you’re doing. My job, and that of most support agents, is all mental. You EA agents must give up much more of yourself.”

  I began to realize how truly different the EA agents were, how much more of a sacrifice we were actually making, especially some of the female agents. Male EA agents likely had an easier time dealing with it, because… well, because they’re males.

  I thought back to Demarco being humiliated by Gurov and how it had affected him. As an SAD agent, he had never been asked to give up his body like that, to be required to have sex with a target like EA agents are. Until that night in Moscow, Demarco had never experienced the internal conflict inherent in that level of intimacy.

  Abdul-Rauf and I passed through customs with fake passports, both claiming us to be Canadian. We were met at the airport by our agent-in-place, an older man named Qasim Nasry. He was probably in his fifties, with a full graying beard and mustache. Nasry wore a loose, one-piece white robe called a didashah, with a red and white checked shumaq on his head and two thick black ogal bands to hold it in place. Abdul-Rauf had worked with Nasry before on three separate operations and the two men talked like old friends, happy to see each other again. It was just after noon local time when we began the drive to Daraa, a town near the southern Syrian border an hour from Damascus.

  The operation had been set up as a boomerang mission, meaning Abdul-Rauf and I wouldn’t be staying overnight in Syria unless we couldn’t get access to the target as quickly as planned. If all went well, we would proceed directly to Abu Khalid al-Ansar’s location in Daraa, take care of business, then head right back to the airport. The entire operation was slated to take no more than thirty-six hours, counting the two thirteen-hour flights from Washington to Damascus. With luck we’d get it done in thirty.

  The highway to Daraa was clean and well-maintained, with drab desert extending in every direction as far as the eye could see. Abdul-Rauf and Nasry sat in the front of the car and spoke in Arabic with Abdul-Rauf occasionally turning around to pass on a tidbit or translate a question posed to me. I felt ignored for the most part and couldn�
��t help but imagine that’s what life was like for many Syrian women. That feeling became more pronounced when I slipped the clothing Nasry had brought for me over my jeans and long-sleeve shirt. In a black abayah that covered me from head to feet, leaving only my eyes visible through a small slit in the niqāb hiding my face, I could easily blend in if nobody looked too closely.

  Daraa itself was fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time. A clean northern edge of the city rapidly gave way to a war-torn urban center. A rebel operation known as the Daraa Offensive that summer had left parts of the town in ruins, with bombed-out shells of buildings a common sight. Two different rebel factions had driven the Syrian military out of the city and al-Ansar had swiftly moved his Jabhat Alhurria revolutionary group into the resulting power vacuum, setting up headquarters in a nondescript office building near the city center. Every ruin we drove past made my anxiety level rise and, as usual, I was eager to get the job done and get the hell out.

  Nasry parked his car a few blocks away from al-Ansar’s headquarters and the three of us walked together through the cluttered streets. There was broken glass and scraps of metal and other building materials everywhere. Even with my head-to-toe disguise, I’d never felt so out of place.

  We arrived at a simple three-story white stucco building and were met by two armed guards standing on the sidewalk. Dressed in camo shirts and pants with red and white keffiyehs covering their heads and faces, leaving only their eyes visible, they clutched Russian-made Kalashnikov AK-47 automatic rifles. Nasry spoke to them, and they eyed both Abdul-Rauf and I suspiciously. The combination of male dominance I sensed was frightening in its intensity. One of them entered the building through the mirrored glass door and we waited outside, the minutes ticking by.

  My stomach was in knots and I felt a light sweat break out on my forehead, my foot tapping out of nervousness. Finally the door opened again and the guard returned, followed by a man I recognized immediately as Malek Gorani, the man who would grant me access to Abu Khalid al-Ansar. Gorani was dressed similarly to Nasry. He shook hands with my two male companions and smiled at me, then the three of us entered the building, me following the men.