Secret Agent Santa

by Carol Ericson

His eyes widened and his nostrils flared as if he was getting ready to take flight. “Have I been going on and on about my pathetic childhood?”

  She laughed and took another chug of her beer. “I’d hardly say you over-shared. It’s good. I’m glad I got to take a little peek behind the curtain.”

  “I’ll have to watch that curtain thing, but you know I had it better than some and worse than others. That’s the way it goes. At least I had Coach to guide me through a lot of stuff, or I probably would’ve ended up on the wrong side of the law.”

  “I’m grateful you didn’t, but I apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “This was supposed to be a relaxing interlude between stops in Crazytown, and I had to dredge up stuff you’re clearly not comfortable discussing.”

  “You know what?” He took the bottle from her hand and rose from the cushion. “It wasn’t so bad telling you about it.”

  “Anytime. God knows my life could fill a couple of volumes.” She wiped her damp fingers on her new jeans and pulled the computer into her lap. “Time to check on Hamid. Was there anything in that paper about him?”

  “Just that they had no leads on his whereabouts.”

  “That makes all of us.” The screen displayed a prompt for a password. “You need to reenter your password. I guess happy hour lasted too long.”

  He returned from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel. He bent his long frame over at the waist and entered his password while covering her eyes with one hand.

  He was serious about his security.

  “While you do that, I’ll put together some lunch. I’m glad you insisted on stopping at a grocery store to pick up some fresh food.”

  “I couldn’t handle any more of that frozen stuff.” She entered the address for the message board and held her breath as she scanned the page. She squealed.

  “He responded?”

  “Yes, I got a message from Einstein. He wrote that he is in the same boat and he needs backup.” She looked up. “We’ve got to help him, Mike.”

  “We can bring him in.”

  “By bring him in, you mean what? Not take him into custody?”

  “Protective custody, not an arrest. Prospero can protect him on an unofficial basis, but we’ll want some intel from him.” He ducked into the fridge, so she couldn’t see his face.

  Hopefully, he was telling the truth. “I honestly don’t think Hamid has any intel.”

  “He was set up somehow and he may have noticed something leading up to it, talked to someone, had an encounter. We’ll want to know all that.”

  “So, should I suggest a meeting? He’s not going to agree to meet with anyone but me.”

  “He’s not going to have a choice. You’re not meeting him alone.” He reappeared hugging an armload of veggies. “Is he still online?”

  “I don’t think so, but I’m sure he’ll be monitoring this board.”

  “Set it up.”

  “I don’t even know where he is.”

  “Find out, Claire.”

  She drummed her fingers on the computer. “He’s not going to want to meet in Boston, too close for comfort.”

  “DC’s out.”

  “Would we be safe in New York? We could drive down in about five hours, park and take a subway into the city.”

  “Crowds aren’t necessarily a bad thing. It should be a public place for everyone’s safety.”

  “A club with noise and music.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Mike waved his knife in the air. “Do it.”

  She followed the rules of their cryptic communication, suggesting they meet at a jazz club in Chelsea, a place she’d told him about before.

  She posted the message. “That’s it. Now we wait. If he can’t get to Manhattan, we’ll move to plan B.”

  “It’s always good to have multiple plans.” He began chopping on a cutting board.

  She carried the laptop with her to the kitchen counter and set it down. “Do you want some help?”

  “When the water boils, dump in the pasta.” He jumped back as the oil sizzled in the pan on the stove top. “Where are we meeting him?”

  “We? I still think I should meet him alone. He might not agree to see me if I’m with someone, and if I don’t tell him, he might bolt when he sees you.”

  “Like I said before, he doesn’t have a choice.” He shoved the contents of his cutting board into the olive oil in the pan and stirred, the aromatic scent of garlic filling the kitchen. “You just happened to know of a club in Manhattan where we could meet?”

  She dumped the fettuccine into the roiling water and added a pinch of salt. “The kid likes jazz, of all things. He was visiting the city on a break and asked me for a few recommendations. He went to the 629 Club in Chelsea, so I thought he’d feel comfortable in a place he’d been to before.”

  “You like jazz?” He tapped the pot of boiling pasta with his knife. “Stir that so it doesn’t clump.”

  “Who are you, Emeril Lagasse?” But she dutifully dipped the long plastic fork into the bubbling pot. “Yeah, I like jazz. You?”

  “Jazz? Most of it sounds like weird, disjointed noises to me.”

  She rolled her eyes to the ceiling as she stirred. “Let’s see...tough guy from the streets...my guess is rock and roll.”

  “Easy guess.”

  “I like that, too. I like all kinds of music.” She held up the fork with a few strands of pasta dangling from it. “What do you think? Al dente?”

  “Hasn’t been long enough.” He pinched the steaming pasta between his fingers anyway and dropped it into his mouth. “Too chewy. You can rip up that lettuce and dump the rest of these vegetables in there, though.”

  She made the salad while he hovered over the stove. “I suppose longtime bachelors learn how to cook, learn how to use the microwave or go out to eat a lot.”

  “My mom taught me how to cook a few things, but I definitely know my way around a microwave and I have every take-out menu from every restaurant within a five-mile radius of my apartment.”

  “Your apartment.” She plunged a pair of tongs into the salad. “My God, I don’t even know where you live. Where do you hang your hat when you’re not gallivanting around the world or pretending to be someone’s fiancé?”

  “Chicago.” He bumped her hip with his in the small space of the kitchen to get to the pasta.

  “But that’s where you grew up, right?”

  “Is that a surprise? Wouldn’t you have stayed in Florida where you grew up if your mother hadn’t married Correll?” He grabbed the handles of the pot and lifted the boiling pasta from the stove. “Watch out.”

  She scooted over and he dumped the water into a colander in the sink. “Yeah, but my childhood wasn’t...” She put two fingers to her lips.

  “A nightmare?” He shrugged. “The one person who made it a nightmare is in prison...again, so Chicago isn’t so bad. I’m not sure about retiring there, but I’ll go back once this is over.”

  Once this is over. Maybe once this was over, she’d return to Florida with Ethan. Maybe Mike would want to flee to a warm climate to escape the Chicago winters once in a while.

  Reaching around him, she opened the fridge and took out the Italian salad dressing they’d bought earlier.

  Mike put the finishing touches on the pasta, adding a couple of sprigs of fresh basil, and they sat side by side at the counter to eat their lunch.

  “Mmm.” She twirled her fork in the fettuccine. “This smells good and it looks almost too pretty to eat.”

  “Maybe I’ll open a restaurant when I retire.”

  She stabbed a tomato. “You’re too young to retire completely. Would you want to work as a security contractor?”

  “I’m done, Claire.”

  “You thought you were done when you took this job, didn’t you? You figured you’d be reassuring some woman with an overactive imagination and then you’d be going home to Chicago.”

  “That about sums it up, but now that I
’m here, now that I’m in this with you, I’m in it all the way.”

  They finished their meal and both reached for the plates at the same time. “I’ll do this. Check the message board.”

  She poured herself a glass of water and sat back down on the stool, pulling the laptop toward her. “It went to sleep. I need you to log in again.”

  He leaned over and punched several keys. “It’s all yours.”

  She sucked in a breath when she saw a response from Einstein. “It’s here. He’s good with it. He’s already in Queens and he remembers where the 629 Club is. Ten o’clock okay?”

  “That’ll give us plenty of time to drive down and then catch a subway into the city. He knows enough to watch for a tail, doesn’t he?”

  Raising one eyebrow, she said, “His uncle is Tamar Aziz. He’s been watching his back his whole life.”

  Mike turned from the sink, the dish towel wrapped around his hands. “And you know for sure Hamid has nothing to do with his uncle’s activities.”

  “I’m positive. I told you, Hamid is the one who told me to look closely at the right eye of the man who murdered Shane.”

  “Wait. You never told me that before. How’d he know about the coloboma?”

  “He wouldn’t say directly, but I’m pretty sure he got that particular bit of information from his uncle.”

  “All right, then.” He smacked the towel against the counter. “Looks like we have a date to listen to some jazz.”

  * * *

  MIKE DIDN’T LIKE IT—not at all.

  Their journey south through the snowy landscape couldn’t have gone any better. The white flakes coating the fields and decorating the trees had plunged them into their own personal and interactive Christmas card. With the heat blasting and music playing on an oldies station, Mike felt like he was exactly where he should be in retirement.

  Except he wasn’t retired. He had one more job to do, and because this job had gotten personal, it was proving to be more stressful than all the assignments he’d had over the life of his career. Even more stressful than the previous one that he’d bungled.

  Coming into the city, dressed in its holiday finest, had made it worse. The closer they got to the club, the more resentment he’d felt toward the Christmas shoppers with their normal lives and their normal families.

  He used to feel that resentment because that normalcy was something he feared he’d never have. Now the resentment burned even brighter because he felt as if he were closer to it than he’d ever been in his life.

  He’d found a woman, in Claire, who gave him hope that he could have a family without the expectations of perfection. He couldn’t do perfection, but he knew he’d never hurt Claire the way his father had hurt his mother.

  The dissonant sounds of a saxophone in distress assaulted his ears, and he peered into the bowels of the dark club. “That sounds like an elephant in distress...or in love. I haven’t decided yet.”

  Claire jabbed him in the ribs. “Have a little respect.”

  “Do you see him yet?”

  A pretty African-American girl with a hippie vibe approached them, the beads braided in her hair clicking. “Are you looking for a seat? There are a couple of tables near the bar.”

  Mike shouted over the noise from the stage, “We’re meeting someone.”

  Claire tugged on his sleeve. “I see him. Thanks.”

  The hostess bowed her head and slipped through the black curtain that separated the front door from the interior of the club.

  “This way.” Claire grabbed his hand and led him through the small tables where all the patrons sat facing the stage.

  As they neared a table in the corner by a hallway, a young man half stood up, the whites of his wide eyes glowing in the darkness.

  “Claire?” Hamid’s gaze darted toward Mike’s face.

  “He’s helping us.” She pulled out her own chair and hunched over the table toward Hamid. “This is Mike. Mike, Hamid.”

  Mike shook Hamid’s hand, damp with sweat or the beads of moisture from the drink he was nursing.

  “You look good, Hamid. How’s school?”

  “Are you serious?” Hamid glanced to his left and then his right, looking exactly like a fugitive on the run. “It was fine until a friend told me the FBI was looking for me.”

  A waitress, balancing a tray of drinks on her hand, dipped next to the table. “What can I get you?”

  The club had a two-drink minimum, but Mike had already discussed the importance of sobriety with Claire. His gaze dropped to Hamid’s glass, empty except for a few half-melted ice cubes. Obviously, the kid hadn’t gotten the memo.

  “We’ll have a couple of beers, whatever you have on draft.”

  She slapped down two cocktail napkins and melted back into the gloom.

  Mike rapped his knuckles on the table in front of Hamid. “Someone gave you a heads-up about the FBI?”

  “A couple of friends in Boston. I was already on my way to visit another friend in Queens.”

  “Why’d you immediately take off, think the worst?” Mike folded over a corner of the napkin.

  “I’m at MIT, not living under a rock. When that car bomb went off and killed the director of the CIA and then two FBI agents came looking for me, it gave me a bad feeling.”

  “Had anyone been following you?”

  “Following me?” He swallowed. “Why would they follow me? Wouldn’t they just arrest me?”

  “Not sure.” Mike smoothed out the napkin. “Not if they wanted to see if you were meeting with anyone.”

  The waitress returned and put two beers on the table, along with another cocktail for Hamid.

  He folded both hands around the short glass and took a long drink.

  When he put the glass down, Claire reached over and squeezed his hand. “Take it easy, Hamid. We’re going to help you. Mike’s...agency can bring you in.”

  “Oh, no.” Hamid held up his hands. “I’m not going with anyone, not the CIA.”

  “Mike’s not CIA, and you can’t be out here on your own.” She grabbed Mike’s hand so that she was forming a human chain with the two of them. “I’m not.”

  With his other hand, Hamid snatched up his cocktail napkin and wiped his forehead. “When I saw that message from you, I really got spooked, Claire.” He licked his lips. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re being set up. That’s all I can tell you.”

  Mike broke Claire’s grip on his hand. Kumbaya time was over. He asked him in Punjabi, “What can you tell us, Hamid?”

  Hamid’s eye twitched, and he spoke to him in English. “Are you CIA? Claire, is he CIA?”

  Claire glared at him, her eyes pools of liquid violets. “He’s not. Why would I be with a CIA agent when I’m under suspicion myself?”

  Hamid licked his lips. “Are you? Are you really? Because I haven’t seen your name and picture in the papers like mine.”

  “Tell us what you know, Hamid. Did anyone contact you before the bombing? Did you hear anything from your uncle? Why did you tell Claire to zero in on that assassin’s eye? What do you know about him?”

  A bead of sweat rolled down Hamid’s face and he rubbed his glassy eyes. Either the kid couldn’t handle his booze or he was coming down with something.

  “That man,” he said, then coughed and continued, “they called that man the Oxford Don.”

  Claire gasped. “Why didn’t you tell me that before, Hamid? You told me nobody knew who he was.”

  Hamid took another gulp of his drink. “C-couldn’t tell you. They used him for propaganda, for high-profile executions.”

  “Where is he?” Claire had curled her fingers around the edge of the table. “Where is he now?”

  Hamid choked and a trace of saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth.

  Mike started from his seat. “Do you need some water?”

  Claire leaned in close to Hamid and whispered, “Where is he?”

  Hamid pitched forward on the table and murmured some
thing Mike couldn’t hear above the din coming from the stage, and then his hand jerked and his breath rattled.

  “Hamid.” Claire nudged him and then turned to Mike. “Is he okay?”

  Mike reached over and felt the young man’s pulse. “He’s dead.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Claire shook Hamid’s lifeless arm. “Hamid, wake up.”

  Every fiber in Mike’s body quivered on high alert as his gaze darted around the dim, crowded club. She obviously hadn’t processed what he’d just said. “He’s not asleep, Claire. He’s dead.”

  “What?” The face she turned to him was drained of all color, and the perfect oval stood out in stark relief against the murky backdrop. “How?”

  “Poison would be my first guess.”

  “What?” She patted Hamid’s black hair. “Who?”

  “Claire, we need to get out of here—right now.”

  Her head jerked up and her hair fell over one eye. “Here? Someone here killed him?”

  “Shh.” He shifted his body in front of Hamid’s slack form as he glanced toward the hallway leading to the bathrooms. “I’m hoping there’s an exit that way.”

  “W-we can’t leave him here.”

  “Do you suggest we carry him out? Call 9-1-1?” He took a breath and trailed his fingers down her arm. “I’m sorry, Claire. We have to leave him here, and we have to leave now.”

  As if on cue, the drummer launched into a solo. Mike stood up and slipped his hand beneath Claire’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  She followed his order as if sleepwalking, throwing one backward glance at Hamid’s inert form.

  Mike led her toward the hallway in the back of the club with his heart pounding. His step quickened when he spied the green exit sign above a metal door.

  Nobody had followed them down the hallway, but Claire’s body was now trembling more and more with each step. He whispered in her ear, “It’s okay. We’re almost there.”

  When they reached the door, he pushed on the horizontal release bar. He held his breath, waiting for the alarm. If there was one, he couldn’t hear it above the drummer.

  The cold air blasted his face, and he ducked his head against it, pulling Claire close to his body. She matched him stride for stride down the alley, although he could tell she was on autopilot.