Fear freezes me on the spot. My too-hasty resignation still hangs between me and Crystal, but I doubt that’s why he’s swallowing hard and avoiding my gaze.
They want Danny — they want Danny — they want Danny.
Too bad. “You said it was an assignment for me. You said, ‘You two.’”
“I said I wanted to talk to you two.”
“Meaning you wanted to talk to him,” I correct Crystal. “When did Danny supposedly accept this? We’ve been in here for five minutes, and he’s still out—”
“He’s talking to Jim Alison.”
(Alison and Crystal? These guys lucked out in the operational name department.)
I back up until my foot hits those stupid blue chairs. “How could you possibly know he said yes?”
Crystal holds up his cell phone. Text message from Jim Alison: He said yes. Where is the wife? (“The wife”?)
I look down at my resignation. Thirty seconds ago, I was ready to give up everything, but if Noah’s right, Danny’s two steps ahead of me. I fold the paper in thirds, deliberate.
“Still want to give me that?” Crystal asks.
I shake my head slowly. I can fix this. I have to. Somehow. “I want to see him.”
“But—”
“I want to see him right now, unless you’ve already packed him off to Russia.” My voice is harder than steel.
“By all means.” Crystal rounds me to open the door.
“Have you considered the logistics?” I ask in the hall. “He doesn’t speak Russian. Rostov-na-Donu is no Paris.”
“There’s more planning in this than you might think,” Crystal mutters.
“Yeah, I really get the impression of foresight when you spring this on me by stalking me on my honeymoon.” Am I the only person who thinks this is a serious breach of human decency? I may have signed up to give my life if necessary, but that doesn’t mean I have to give up any semblance of living one in the meantime.
“Look, I’m not the one you should be mad at. I told Jim we should talk to you first. I didn’t realize you’d bring your husband with you.”
“It’s our honeymoon. And I’m not about to leave him alone with your goons tailing innocent old ladies to track me down.”
Crystal grimaces. “Knew I should’ve been more specific when I told them to find you. I didn’t have time to explain before Jim came in this morning. He insisted we should talk to Danny without you — I was trying to extend a professional courtesy here.”
Okay, maybe Noah Crystal isn’t the big bad guy. Still don’t have to like this situation.
We stop at another office and Noah knocks. I can’t miss the grim glance he exchanges with the white-haired man who answers the door. If I had to guess which was the Chief of Station, I was shunted off with a subordinate while Danny was left to backstroke with the Big Shark.
Speaking of Danny, he’s sitting at the conference table behind Jim, staring at the door. He offers me a reassuring little grin, and I can’t stop the answering rise of hope in my heart. Maybe they haven’t gotten to the assignment part yet. Maybe he didn’t really accept. I keep my expression neutral.
“I’d like to speak to my husband.” I’m definitely pulling marital rank. “Alone.”
Jim steps aside, allowing me in. I make sure the door closes behind him. Before I dare to speak, I check the room. The well-stocked bookshelves seem mostly decorative, but I’ll bet they’re hiding a camera or two. I join Danny at the conference table, maneuvering my back to the shelves, shielding my hands to signal the walls have ears — and eyes. I pick my tone carefully. “They said you accepted.”
“Yeah,” he says, the of course ringing through his words. “Wouldn’t you have?”
I don’t answer. I did nearly quit, but that was to protect Danny. Meanwhile he was agreeing to this scheme. “You didn’t even think about talking to me first?”
His little grin falls, and then he swallows. His gaze slides away from me and grows distant. “Probably should’ve thought about that.”
“That whole ‘marriage’ thing.” I shoot for a hint of humor, but I think I miss.
The old me would freak out over this whole situation. With my family history of less-than-successful marriages, I might’ve been more paranoid about marrying Danny — well, ruining our marriage — than anything I’ve ever done.
But twelve days ago, I made a choice to take relationship freak-outs off the table. Even when Danny turns around and makes a Hail Mary free throw from left field for the wrong team. (I know that’s three different sports. That’s how discombobulating this is.)
I need to talk to him, for real, to understand what’s going on. (Why, why, why would he say yes?) I lower my voice for the thinnest veil of privacy. “We just had the ‘I don’t want to work for the CIA’ conversation a month ago. What’s up with the one-eighty?”
Danny rubs each fingertip against his thumb in turn, as if he’s rolling over his answer in his fingers as well as his mind. Weighing out what to tell me. “It’s what you’d do.”
Would I have accepted without talking to him? I’m not phoning him to consult every time a case or a target crosses my desk back home, but on my honeymoon? I’d like to think I’m smart enough to confer with Danny first.
“I thought that’s what you were doing,” he continues, still focused on the high-shine conference table. “I take it you didn’t accept.”
“I wasn’t invited.”
Danny scowls at the door. “Sure know how to spin a sales pitch, don’t they?”
“It’s our job.” I lay my hands and my (metaphorical) cards on the table. “You want to do this?”
He finally meets my line of sight. “Do you not want me to?”
The reality underneath shines through his all-too-honest eyes. He wants to do this, and there’s something more he isn’t telling me. He’s seen how badly ops can end. Firsthand. Recently. But it isn’t the enthusiasm and excitement of a new adventure haunting him.
It’s desperation. Easy to spot when my frame is vibrating with that same fear.
Whatever the reason, he needs this. I finger the folded paper in my lap. Danny’s the most important thing in my life, and this means so much to him. How could I make him go back on his word?
But sending him out alone to do the things I do — without my training and experience? It’s sending him to his death.
Palpable panic floods into my rib cage like sand filling an hourglass. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. The deeper the sand, the deeper Danny’s desperation grows, and I see that my choices are dwindling to A. killing his spirit or B. killing him.
He needs this. I give him as much as I can. “I — I have to see their strategy.”
Danny smiles, but for the first time in the year and a half I’ve known him, there’s something . . . false about his smile. Not forced or fake, but something in his expression absolutely doesn’t match.
They’re taking him from me already.
I’ve got to change this somehow without compelling Danny to go back on his word. There has to be a middle ground, right? “Hang on.”
I pretend like I don’t know they’re probably observing the whole exchange and move for the door. Jim and Noah are chatting in the reception area on the other side. They stop and Noah shifts from leaning against the sleek receptionist’s desk to standing.
I ignore their expectant eyebrows and ready my demands. “I get final approval on all plans.”
Noah glances up at his boss. Jim shakes his head, his distinguished white hair barely ruffling with the movement. “No go. You don’t have the right compartment.”
“Seriously?” Perfect timing for politics to pop up. As if Top Secret isn’t enough, we go adding “compartments,” segmenting off the really secret secrets. “Read me in.”
Noah shrugs in fake apology. “No more slots.”
“But Danny gets one? Don’t try this crap with me. Walk me through the entire plan now or
we’re walking out of here.”
Noah checks with Jim. The Chief of Station gives me a frown, a very clear correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t you already volunteered for all this?
I step into the waiting area and close the door behind me. “I signed up for this.” I jerk my chin to indicate the door and Danny beyond. “He didn’t. You can’t drag civilians—”
“CIA spouses help with missions all the time.”
“Is this my mission?” I challenge. Noah specifically said it wasn’t, so I’ve got Jim there.
He sighs, resentfully capitulating, and turns to Noah. “Get Lori.”
Noah marches to the back hallway. Jim turns to me again. “Heard good things,” he says.
“So good that you’re cutting me out of an op centering around my husband?”
“We’re not cutting you out. You know you can’t possibly go to Russia together, not while maintaining your cover. All it takes is one Google hit on your wedding photos and you’re both dead.”
Yes, my cover’s delicate. That one Google hit would betray the whole setup and then some. Any foreign power associating my face and my name with my real job would destroy my cover. My real name and my real credentials — a Canadian law degree earned on the CIA’s dime — are among the few things preserving cover for half a dozen CIA officers in Ottawa.
I could go to Russia as someone else, but all my current fake identities are thinner than October ice and twice as precarious, too closely associated with my activities in Ottawa. Generating new ones in, what, nine hours, with all the backstopping and paperwork and lies? Not feasible unless this is a much higher priority than they’re letting on.
I hate him for it, but Jim’s right. Danny’s got to do this alone, because I can’t help.
I hope this isn’t the beginning of a terrible trend: Jim being right, and me having every reason to hate it.
Noah returns with an iPad — sure, Paris gets budget and we get bupkis — and settles on the black leather couch. I shoot a pointed look at the door behind me. Danny’s got to hear, too, and soon. (While we’re at it, a timeline would be good.) Noah stands and starts for Danny.
As Noah passes, I eye his tablet. “Is the iPad ‘Lori’?”
“She’s on her way.” Noah opens the door, revealing Danny, now standing. “If we go into this, of course, it’s a commitment.”
Danny clears his throat, and Noah turns to include him in the conversation. “Meaning I can’t back out once you show me the plan,” Danny says.
Noah nods, then looks from Danny to me and back again. I can’t hide the attitude seeping out through my pursed lips and stance. It wouldn’t do to fully brief a civilian only to have him balk, but does Noah think I’m stupid? “You don’t have to sign his name in blood to give him the ten-thousand-foot view,” I say, automatically slipping into the idiotic Agency jargon that we usually avoid in our office. “We’re entitled to that much.”
Noah studies his iPad and pages through a couple screens. He sits at the table and turns the iPad to Danny, showing a sad, cement, Soviet building. We take seats and Noah begins. “Shcherbakov.”
The company Fyodor worked for, headquartered close to the military establishment in Rostov-on-Don (i.e. where I lived as a missionary years ago). Shcherbakov’s struggled to compete against the Russian government’s conglomerate in their not-communist-but-still-command economy. Hence Fyodor stealing the spy drone plans from Danny’s office, most likely with the intent to sell them, most likely to the highest bidder, most likely one of our enemies.
Until today, I thought we’d gotten to Fyodor and the plans before they got any farther.
I nod at the depressing factory on Noah’s screen. “Why do we think the plans are there?”
He chews his lip and flips through a couple other screens on his iPad, clearly debating telling us the whole truth. He settles on the picture of Shcherbakov again. “Tech got something off his computer.”
The laptop that ended up in the charred wreckage? No wonder it’s taken them three months to process.
I have to admit, their case for going in sounds better.
I wave for Noah to continue, and he does. “We’re in the process of finalizing an on-site visit for Danny, on behalf of National Research Council Canada.”
“To make sure our agreement with Fyodor made it back without him?”
Noah says nothing, but his eyebrows say he doesn’t know what Danny’s referring to.
Danny hesitates. “Does NRC know about this?” His employer deals with sensitive stuff, including the Canadian defense contracts Danny handles. Is this an acceptable risk?
Noah sets the iPad on the conference table and heads to the sideboard below the bookshelves. He picks up a small silver box, thinner than a deck of cards, and hands it to Danny. Danny flips it open. Inside, a couple dozen business cards. I pull one out. Exact replicas of Danny’s real card, except the back has a Russian translation, and under his name, it now says —
“‘Director of Research and Development’?” he asks. “They signed off on that too?”
“Yep,” Noah says.
“I don’t want a promotion,” Danny says. “I like my job; I like my projects. I didn’t go into aerospace to end up in management.”
“I’ll have them make it temporary. But if you’re not a director or higher, nobody at Shcherbakov will meet with you.”
Danny’s gaze falls back to his new business card, and my stomach drifts downward, too. I hope he can see it — they’re already demanding concessions. Already taking things he loves. Coercing him to do one little mission? Yeah, right.
We still have time to back out.
Danny snaps the card case shut. “So I’m playing ambassador. Reciprocal visit making sure our agreement’s still okay.”
Noah make a little sure gesture. “Right. I’m guessing you’ll go through the usual paces of an on-site. Done that before?”
“On the hosting end.” Danny pushes the card case away and folds his arms. Defensive? Worried? Cold? I can’t say.
“Obviously, your real objective’s to find the files, if they have them.”
Danny’s emotions finally become clear in a skeptical frown. “How sure are we that the plans are there?”
Noah’s head bobs side to side. He’s hedging. “We’re not — but don’t worry; we’ll make everything easy for you.”
“I’ve heard that before,” I mutter.
Noah glares at me. Always an effective tactic for persuading my husband.
“Look, they’re your plans.” Noah sets aside the tablet to level with Danny. “Nobody can recognize them like you. You can see through any changes and variations by Shcherbakov.”
“And you have access to him,” I point out. And me over a barrel, I don’t point out.
Noah reins in the dirty looks this time. “Granted,” he admits.
I build on my momentum. “When would wheels-up be?”
“ETD is tonight, eleven PM.”
So fast? A knock cuts off my next question. Noah answers the door. “Long lunch, Lori?”
“I came straight here,” she says. Noah lets her in. Lori’s about my age, though it’s hard to tell because once she dares to cross the threshold, she fixates on the multicolored carpet. Between being a CIA officer and the shyness more crippling than a shrapnel bomb, you’d expect her to seem more fading-into-the-shadows. Instead, her deep red coat is accented with wide lapels and a matching belt. Her red hair is styled in an asymmetrical cut, one side chopped at chin-length and the other side nearly long enough to graze her collarbone. The incongruity’s startling.
So why is the shy girl who’s trying too hard to be noticed now on this case? Noah shepherds her over to Danny and they shake hands. “Lori, Danny,” Noah begins the introduction. “Danny, this is Lori. She’s an officer here, and she’ll be your interpreter.”
Lori makes eye contact for the first time — and it ain’t with her boss or her cowork
er or me. Nope, that’s my husband.
Danny’s answering expression is just friendly, but yeah. Color me not happy. (And green.)
I fight down an incredulous eyebrow and stand next to Danny to face Lori. “Ty govorish′ po-russkiy?” You speak Russian?
Uh huh. To test her language skills, I open with a yes/no question. Brilliant. But she should correct me for using the familiar form with her, a total stranger.
“Konyechno.” Of course.
“Kogda v posledniy raz ty byla v Rossiy?” When were you last in Russia? I don’t really care how long it’s been — five years for me, so odds aren’t great I can show her up. But I need to know if she’s up to the task.
“Ya ne byl tam.” She has to force the last word out, her eyes focused on my feet.
I. Just. Stare. Not only has she never been there ever, but the way she said it . . . no Russian speaker would phrase it like that. I try not to betray my surprise or the unease creeping up my spine. “But you’re ready to interpret?” And, you know, make sure my husband doesn’t die?
“Da.”
Call me a control freak, but am I seriously supposed to trust my husband’s safety to a woman barely confident enough to speak in complete sentences? This doesn’t feel right, not at all. “Sorry, what was your specialty again?” I ask Lori.
Noah cuts in. “I don’t think I said.”
I smile with exquisite patience. “I asked Lori.”
She swallows and focuses on the boring beige wall behind me. “I’m an analyst. A political analyst.”
Fire flares in my chest, but I keep that patient smile plastered over a look so pointed it could give Noah a puncture wound.
“We need a walk,” Danny jumps in before I actually perforate the dude.
“Yes.” My voice is firm.
“You can’t—” Noah starts.
“Pretty sure we can.” Danny places a hand on my shoulder and maneuvers me around Lori to the door.
Noah hops up to intercept us. “You’re coming back, right?”
“You’ll find us if we don’t.” Danny’s eyes say he’s not sure what’s coming, but he’s behind me 100%. I hope.
Noah nods for Lori to walk with us. She hangs back to whisper, “Did I do something?”
Spy Another Day Box Set: Three full-length novels: I, Spy; Spy for a Spy; and Tomorrow We Spy (Spy Another Day clean romantic suspense trilogy) Page 58