“It was his birthday, wasn’t it?” Dima said. It made sense that Lochan was the target. She didn’t know why or how, yet. Starting from there gave her something to grasp.
“Apparently, yeah. I’m going back to the birthday party, see if I can find any more presents. Some wrapping, bows, you know.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Dima said. “I’ll join—”
“You need sleep,” Scott said firmly. “Stay there.”
“So do you,” she pointed out.
“I’m fine,” he said crisply, and cut the call.
Dima closed her eyes, feeling the ache in her body and wishing she could go back to sleep.
Instead, she rolled to the edge of the bed, eased herself into a sitting position with a great many groans and curses, then shuffled over to the walk-in closet. Then, cursing with even greater pith, she got onto her hands and knees, pulled the rug out of the way, and lifted the lid on the lockbox built into the floor of the closet. The combination lock of the box gleamed dully in the moonlight filtering in from the bedroom window
Dima opened the box with slow, careful movements. She picked up the first phone she reached, propped her back against the bureau, and put her head against the drawer, while she recalled numbers she had memorized long ago.
She stabbed out messages with her thumbs, working fast.
US Embassy Building, Rabat, Morocco.
Lea didn’t need to see the images on the TV screens lining one wall of the bull pen to know something bad had gone down.
Admin assistants stood clumped in front of the screens, some chewing fingernails, all of them looking pensive. There was little work being done, despite it being well past eight in the morning.
He put his satchel on the almost bare desk he had been assigned, watching the screens. He could see the dateline at the bottom of the highest row of screens, above the heads of the assistants.
The Hamilton Hotel in Washington. Last night. Lots of dust and flashing lights, but the hotel looked whole.
Denny Dubeau, who was listed on the station’s roster as a third level clerk, but was actually the CIA Station chief, came out of his office, clapping his hands. “Come on, people! Come on! The circus is over. You’ve seen all the footage. It was a long way from here and we have our own concerns. Come on! Back to your desks!”
Reluctantly, the staff separated and moved back to their cubicles.
Dubeau crossed his arms. “Nice of you to join us, Dr. Zaman.”
Lea made himself smile. “The train was delayed.”
Dubeau nodded. “The train is delayed a lot when you use it.”
The phone buzzing in Lea’s pocket made him jump, because it was the wrong pocket. The hair on the back of his neck tried to stand up. “Excuse me,” he told Dubeau. “I have to take this.”
Dubeau sighed, then moved over to the TV screens where people were pooling once more, staring in fascination at the various news reports playing out on the screens.
Lea pulled out the burner phone which lived in his left-hand pocket and turned it on. The text message was on the front screen in tiny letters.
Hamilton hotel K’s doing. L was target. Watch your 6.
While Dubeau yelled at his staff about shirking their duties, Lea picked up his satchel, turned and left.
[4]
Zamalek District, Gezira Island, Central Cairo, Egypt. At the same time.
The Gourmet Egypt store was a treasure house of fresh food, including “exotic” imports like Ragu pasta sauce, which gave Ren shivers of amused recognition when she saw it among chutneys and pickled cabbage.
The local food was fresher, though. Ren picked a pair of apples and the lettuce she had really come for. The staff were already used to her. She had been coming here for a week. It helped to look and sound like a local, especially on Gezira amongst all the foreigners.
The room she was renting was only ten minutes walk from here, and the streets were civilized. It was a lovely Sunday morning. Ren tried to let herself enjoy the day and not let her thoughts shift back to the ranch house in Virginia.
Because she looked local, the gang of pick-pockets ignored her. She had spotted them on her first day here. They liked to zoom in on the tourists and rich diplomats scattered around the area. It was a target-rich environment for them. Business was so good, they could afford to dress like rich westerners, which helped tourists let down their guard.
Ren was amused to see they were stalking another dumb tourist. This one had just got off a plane. His shirt stuck to his back and was wrinkled from long hours of sitting. He pulled his rolling suitcase with his shoulders hunched in as he turned his head, trying to figure out building numbers, which were all in Arabic.
Ren picked up her speed. It wouldn’t do to warn the man and let the lads know she wasn’t local, but there were ways to interfere and make it not worth their time.
The man lifted his hand to the back of his head and scratched, puzzling out Arabic script.
Ren caught her breath, her heart giving a huge leap. No…it couldn’t be. She’d left Peter in Virginia. Or he had left her. She still wasn’t sure.
She hurried, until she was walking alongside the trailing thief, who would act as look-out for the pinch man—the one who did the lifting. The third and fourth men would be the distracters.
“I saw police coming, around the corner,” she said hurriedly, making herself sound scared. “They were Centrals.”
The man swallowed. Central Security Forces were the dregs of the national police force—recruited from poor Egyptian men fulfilling their national service requirements. Central was full of bribery and corruption. The police were worse than the citizens they were supposed to serve. They were untrained and uneducated thugs, who used violence as a matter of course, not as a last resort.
The man glanced at her, fear building in his eyes.
“A bus full of them,” Ren added and glanced fearfully over her shoulder.
At the same moment, tires squealed on asphalt, somewhere nearby. It was coincidental, yet it was enough to convince the thief. He gave a low whistle. The other three glanced at him. He waved his fingers across his throat.
The four melted away, gliding through parked cars, across the road and into the café on the other side, where they would wait until the Central forces had moved on.
Ren maintained her pace, keeping it just under the speed where she would have to break into a jog. She wasn’t wearing shoes which would let her run.
When she reached him, she put her hand on Peter’s arm and turned him.
He jerked around, startled. “What the…”
“Shh. Come with me. Pretend you don’t know me.”
“I don’t know you…” His eyes widened and his mouth popped open. “Ren?” His voice rose, sounding almost panicked.
She tugged at his arm. “Not here. Come on.” She pushed him into moving once more. The room was just along the street, and up two flights of stairs. She unlocked the grate door, then the inner door, and pushed him inside. Then re-locked the doors. She shepherded him along the narrow corridor, as Peter tried to twist around to peer at her. He protested. Single words. “But…” “Wait!” and more than once, “Ren…?”
She heard the confusion in his voice. There was nothing she could do about it until she reached the privacy of her room. She passed the landlord’s door, and sang out in Arabic, as she always did, “Good morning, Madam Haffir!”
Peter whirled, with one foot on the first step. “What the hell? What did you just say?”
“Nothing,” she said softly and quietly. “Up you go. Two flights, then I’ll make you some tea.” With encouraging pushes on his suitcase, she got him up the stairs to the top floor. Then along the creaking corridor. The corridor always smelled of spices and old cabbage.
Peter’s nose wrinkled.
Ren moved around him and unlocked the plain, unnumbered door and opened it. She stood aside to let him through.
Peter stepped through and looked around
the cramped room, at the deep steel sink in the corner, the folding card table beside it with the portable hotplate—her kitchen. The narrow bed on the other wall and the tiny table beside the window, with her computers and gear spread upon it.
For a second, Ren saw the room as Peter would see it. Small, old, dirty. Hot, too, for the afternoon sun blazed against the window.
He dropped the handle of the suitcase and turned to her, his face working hard. “What are you wearing?” he breathed, sounding distressed.
Ren unwound the hijab and tossed it on the chair beside the door. Then she pulled off the djellaba. Beneath, she wore jeans and a light sweater, for it was technically winter, even here in Cairo.
She unclipped her hair and scrubbed at her scalp and smiled at him. “Better?”
Peter pushed his hands into his pockets, his shoulders still hunched. “This…wearing that stuff…it’s work, right?”
Ren fought the sinking sensation in her belly. Any time Peter asked about her work, she had to shut him down and change the subject. Over the years, she had done it so often, both of them reached ignition point merely by referring to her work.
Only, Peter was here. He’d flown out from Virginia and it could only be to see her.
“Are you here because we have to talk, Peter?” she asked. “You get to have your say and head off into the sunset?”
His eyes widened. He had nice eyes. She had always liked them, from the time they had met. Clear gray and large. Back then, he’d worn a mullet. Now his hair was short and neat. The haircut of professionals.
Only his chin was dark with beard coming through, making a line around his lips, which were held straight. “I came to talk, yeah,” he said softly. “But not a ‘we have to talk’ thing.”
Her heart squeezed. She couldn’t figure if she was feeling fear or hope. Both, probably.
Peter looked around the room again. “This looks like something an Egyptian would live in.”
“Yes,” Ren said carefully.
Peter glanced at her. His expression was diffident. “I don’t think I really understood, until just now.”
“Understood what, Peter?” she asked carefully.
“About you. Your work. You always say you can’t talk about it.” He dug his fists deeper into his pockets. “Ren…are you…a spy?”
Ren made herself say it. “No, Peter. I’m just a clerk at the Embassy. I dress this way so I don’t get bothered on the way to and from the Embassy.”
Peter rubbed the back of his head. “I didn’t know you spoke Arabic. That was what you were speaking, out in the corridor, right?”
“I understand enough to get by,” Ren said carefully, which wasn’t a flat out lie, although it wasn’t close to the truth, either. “I pick up languages easily. Remember that time, in Wales?”
Peter grimaced. “I couldn’t even read names off the map. Three days and you sounded like a native. Yeah, I remember it. Is that why they keep posting you in strange places?”
“They post me in odd places because I’m good at my work.” Ren hesitated. “I really can’t tell you about it, Peter. It’s not that I don’t trust you. We’ve been married ten years. Don’t you think that if I could tell you, I would have, by now?”
He sighed. “Yeah. That’s what I figured out. Finally.” He rubbed the back of his neck once more. “I couldn’t stand it anymore, Ren. The house…it echoed. Which is flat dead stupid, because you’ve always been somewhere else most of my life, and the house never echoed any of those times. Only it did this time and it…well, it scared the shit out of me, Ren.” He pushed his hands in his pockets. “Only, being scared…well, that’s not a good reason to get on a plane and come get you, so I had to find a decent one.”
Ren clutched her hands together. “And you did, because you’re here…”
He nodded. “Only, coming here and seeing you like this, well, it kinda adds weight to it.” His smile was more of a grimace. “You’re smarter than me, Ren. I’ve always known that. And now I think I just caught a tiny glimpse, from the corner of my eye, about how smart you really are. Does that make me a chauvinist, because I didn’t understand it until now?”
“I think it makes you human,” Ren said softly.
“I don’t believe you’re a clerk at the Embassy,” Peter added.
Ren drew in a breath and let it out, her heart thudding and skipping. All she had to do was deny it. Pull out her Embassy ID, which showed her department as Accounting.
She couldn’t. Not anymore.
Peter held up his hand, even though she hadn’t said anything. “You don’t have to say yes or no. I get it now. I’ve been splitting you in two for ten years because I couldn’t stand the idea that you had some majestic career which was so secret you couldn’t tell even me about it. Now I get it, though.” He pushed his hands back in his pockets. “I’m not glowing glass brilliant like you, Ren, but I’m no slouch, either.”
“No, you’re not,” Ren admitted. She could say that much safely.
Peter nodded. “You’re not a clerk. You can’t tell me about your work. Your work happens in Embassies, everywhere but the States. It narrows down the list an awful lot, Ren.” His gaze was steady.
She gave him a small smile. “There are three hundred and twenty-five occupations listed with State. It doesn’t narrow down the list all that much.”
Peter tilted his head. “If I ask directly, you’ll lie. You already did. You have to. So I will retract my earlier question and ask another instead. Okay?”
Ren hesitated. “I’ll answer if I can.”
He nodded. “Okay. Fair enough. Here’s the question, then. Ready?”
She pressed her lips together. “Okay.”
“When you’re done with saving the world, Ren Johnson, will you come home and be my wife again?”
Ren threw her arms around him and let herself be feminine and weak and pathetic. She held him, as she shook and wept a few aching, hard tears. Peter shook just as badly.
But oh, their kiss was so sweet! And hot, and filled with frantic heat like the first years they’d been together.
Until the burner phone Ren had stashed behind the steel sink vibrated, rattling against the sink and making it ring with sour notes.
“What the fuck…?” Peter breathed, his chest heaving, as he looked around the room, his eyes wide.
Ren moved over to the sink and hooked the phone out from under the sink and flipped it over so she could read the screen.
“Oh, shit…” she breathed. If she had a target painted on her, if Kobra was coming after her, if he was already here, then was Peter now a target, too?
Washington D.C. Twenty hours later.
The tap on the door came only ten minutes after the appointed hour. Dima didn’t turn on the porch light. Instead, she peered through the glass at the side of the back door.
A nimbus of wild hair. Short stature. Arms crossed.
Satisfied, she opened the door. “Quickly.”
Benny Santiago slid into her darkened kitchen. “How do you know there are no eyes on this place?”
“Because I haven’t lived in it for months,” she said crisply. “I did a circuit of the neighborhood this morning, this afternoon and an hour ago. I know every car on the street.” She pulled out the bar stool and sat on it. “How is Fabiana?” she added softly.
Benny sighed and pulled out the other stool and sat on it heavily. “They’re still waiting to see if they…if they can save her leg.” He put his elbows on the counter, and his face in his hands. His shoulders shook.
Dima didn’t offer comfort or even a tissue. Benny wasn’t that sort of man.
He sniffed and ground the heels of his hands into his eye sockets and cleared his throat. “It will be hard to see what you’ve got, with all the lights turned off.”
“I’ve sent the documents to your email account. The third one, not the official one. You can look at them later,” Dima said. “I’m not turning a single light on, not even for you. The neighbors
know I’m in New York. So does the CIA. I’m keeping it that way for now.”
“It’s really the Kobra behind this?” Benny asked, his tone sharper. The professional had stirred and come to life. “The timing is awfully convenient.”
“I think my arriving in Washington might have triggered the Kobra. Lochan and I were in close proximity. Too close, like pieces of plutonium.” Dima had spent the day trying to figure out the Kobra’s thinking. “As usual, there’s little to go on but guesses and extrapolation.”
“What do you have?” Benny asked. His tone said he wasn’t being confrontational this time. He really wanted to know.
“Lochan woke twelve hours ago. A…friend was there when he did. Lochan indicated that the bomb-carrier was a waiter. The waiter had been moving through the room with a tray of drinks, and with Lochan’s picture taped to the tray. Lochan was targeted, Benny.”
“Lochan just happened to see his image on the tray before the waiter set off the bomb?” Benny asked, his disbelief strong.
Dima shook her head. “The waiter didn’t set off the bomb until Lochan was spotted. He didn’t hesitate. Lochan and Fabiana were beside the Christmas tree when the bomb exploded. My friend went back to the hotel, and…found his way inside the ball room. He turned over every silver tray he found.”
Benny let out his breath. “He found the picture?”
“A blackened sheet of paper, but it was taped to the tray.” Dima got up and pulled out two coffee mugs from the cupboard over the sink, and poured the coffee she had made only a few moments ago. “There’s no milk.”
“Sugar?” Santiago asked hopefully.
She felt around in the pantry cupboard and found the cannister of sugar. She handed it and a teaspoon to Benny.
“You had the sheet of paper chemically treated, then?” Benny asked, as he dropped three teaspoonfuls of sugar into his coffee and stirred.
“That’s what I sent to your inbox,” Dima said. “The image is fuzzy, but it is discernably Lochan. He was targeted, and the only possible reason is that the Kobra didn’t like me being back in Washington and near my team.” Dima leaned forward. “We know something, Benny. We don’t know what we know, yet, but whatever it is, it scares the crap out of the Kobra. He does not want us working together. Which means we must.”
Inside Man Page 4