Between the three Iranian spies successfully placed in America, Afarin and her two colleagues had enough access to sensitive intelligence to jam up the CIA on behalf of the Iranians. By the time the FBI finally took the security breach seriously, tremendous damage was already done. That’s the problem with a law enforcement agency so cozy with politicians who hold the purse strings for its annual operations budget -- its people throw themselves into bed and get naked before asking who’s joining them in the sack and they always forget to use the figurative condom to protect themselves from sexually transmitted stupidity.
At any rate, the point is now moot, because I’m stuck in the middle of Arden Woods, on the banks of Lake Champlain, helping Uncle Edward run the establishment he fondly named the Bard’s Bed & Breakfast.
In case you’re wondering, Beatrice is definitely not my birth name. It was given to me by Uncle Edward when I arrived, as part of my cover. The same is true of Ben. And Uncle Edward really isn’t his relative at all. He mentored Ben’s father at the CIA. took him under his wing and brought him up through the ranks of the clandestine service back in the sixties, before leaving for academia in 1970. When Ben joined the CIA in 1998, he was unofficially schooled in spycraft by a real master, but he was also schooled in ethics by a man who prided himself on being a gentleman who did not indiscriminately use violence for the pleasure of causing pain. Uncle Edward is the thinking man’s spy, the antithesis of the more common garden variety of spies in the mode of James Bond and Jason Bourne, far more adept at getting answers to perplexing questions by using his intellect than a weapon. In other words, he’s a wily, old fox who can beat the pants off of anyone in chess. If it weren’t for the need for cover, he probably would have been a world champion. Unfortunately for him, I stink at the game, and he is forced to turn to the Internet for an ever-more challenging field of opponents, although I will admit that on occasion, Ben has risen to an adequate level of play that forced Uncle Edward to kvetch before he finally was able to utter “checkmate”.
Ben trusts his unofficially adopted uncle with his life. In fact, on many occasions, he relied on the older man to extract him from some pretty hairy situations, so there’s a bond there that’s even stronger than blood relatives share. A close brush with death often drives us into waiting, willing arms, and if those arms protect us from harm, the heart is forever grateful. But Ben was fairly discombobulated by his sudden reassignment to the wilds of Vermont. After all, how much business can the CIA have in the Green Mountains? For a man used to moving about the capitals of Europe and Africa with a team of operatives to do his bidding, his arrival at the Bard’s Bed & Breakfast was met with utter disbelief and not much amusement. After three weeks of scrubbing toilets at my side, the CIA finally sent a representative to give Ben his new assignment. He was charged with going through the last fifty years of CIA files to find a spy network that was put in place in 1962.
By that time, it became obvious why we had been sent to assist Uncle Edward. His retirement in 1970 was the first leg of that investigation, and his role as college professor allowed him unfettered access to valuable research and to a team of research assistants, actually CIA officers.
This may sound really mean, but I took comfort in Ben’s discomfort. After all, I had lost my beloved book shop and misery does love company. If I was going to spend the next several years kicking up cow pies in the bucolic pastures, it was only fair that I should have pleasurable company in the form of my husband.
It was up to the Shakespearean scholar to provide us with our new covers and after much thought on his part, we were named Beatrice and Benedick Jones. Uncle Edward said that Ben and I reminded him of the characters from Much Ado About Nothing. We do tend to bicker. Some people would call that sexual chemistry. I usually just call it annoying behavior on the part of my husband. Ben and I have been together long enough that our commitment to each other is rock solid. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to throttle him on occasion or tell him to go jump in Lake Champlain. I suppose it’s apt enough as far as covers go. I was conned into falling for Ben, and he for me. In many ways, our life together echoes many of the plots straight out of Shakespeare’s plays.
Uncle Edward has had a lifetime affair with the Bard. He makes an annual pilgrimage to Stratford-Upon-Avon for the annual festival even now. He saw Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud play a number of Shakespearean roles on stage, as well as other famous performers, and if you give him too much mead, he will regale you with stories of backstage scenes not known by the public. That’s because he was, at one point, a dresser in the theater. It happened as the result of a really bad op creating a lot of blowback. Uncle Edward needed to lie low for a while, so he chose to do it in England.
But I digress. I had continued my preparations and was in the middle of making up the Ephesus Suite for the incoming guest, Mr. Williams when things went south.
“Oh, Puck!” I groaned. “Puck!”
Uncle Edward’s rambunctious rascal of a poodle had managed to not only jump on the bed I had just finished making up, he threw himself at the pillows, sending them onto the antique Persian carpet below. With an agile leap down to the floor, he proceeded to attack them as intruders. Mr. Darcy popped his head in and joined the pillow fight. The two of them dashed around the room, leaping over each other like little pups.
“Out of my way, you little beasts!” I shooed them away, bending down to pick those pillows up and replace them on the bed. Puck shot past me, suddenly distracted by something that held his canine interest. He barked his little agitated bark, signalling a warning, which I ignored. He even brushed against my leg, trying to get me to pay attention to him. I continued to ignore him. But when my hand felt something cold, ice cold, under one of my beautiful down pillows, I did the only thing I could think to do. I dropped to the floor to get a better look.
“Holy crap!” I was on my hands and knees. Puck hid behind me, Mr. Darcy behind him. “Good God in Heaven, what the....”
There, snaking out from under the antique French bed, was a long, not-so-lithe arm with a very lifeless hand attached to it. There was no pulse and, judging from the stiffness of the limb, rigor mortis had begun to set in. I presumed the rest of the body was equally as dead.
“Aw, nuts! This is not anything I had on my to-do list,” I groaned. I grabbed my cell phone and dialed Ben. “Hey, did you leave yet?”
“I’m in the garage, babe.”
“Come on back. There’s a little package I need you to mail for me.”
“Right now?”
“Yes,” I insisted. “You’ll be going past the post office and it needs to go into the mail today.” That was code for get your ass up here now and get rid of this dead body.
“Is the package wrapped and addressed?” Ben wanted to know.
“No, I need your signature on the letter,” I responded, my way of telling Ben he needed to see the corpse for himself. In case you haven’t guessed yet, this isn’t the first time we’ve had one pop up inconveniently.
“Okay. I’m on my way.”
I scrambled under the bed to get a better look at the woman attached to the hand. I didn’t recognize her face or the rest of her over-exposed self. How did the killer get her into the Bard’s Bed and Breakfast? It’s not like we don’t have security.
“Quiet, Puck!” I shushed the yapping dog. “Come here, boy.”
Puck chose to run out of the room and I can’t say I blamed him. I felt like doing the same thing. Instead, I encouraged Mr. Darcy to join his canine friend and carefully shut the door, to discourage any passing visitors from stopping by.
“Bea?” I heard Sir Galahad’s size tens on the stairs and from the sound, he was wasting no time. “Where are you?”
“Ephesus Suite,” I yelled. There was something on the woman’s left ankle, a tiny tattoo. It was a little bee.
“Damn!” I heard Ben step into the room and lock the door. A moment later, his head appeared by the floor on the other side of the bed.
“Do you recognize her?”
“No,” I admitted. “She looks fairly young. Definitely under thirty. Actually, she doesn’t look more than twenty.”
“Help me pull her out from under the bed, Bea.” Ben didn’t look happy. There was something about this body that was upsetting him, beyond the fact that the girl was dead. “You take the arm, I’ll take the leg. One...two...”
On three, we both pulled, and the body bumped along the woolen surface of the rug. I was going to have to do some cleaning to get out the bodily fluids on that by day’s end. The dead body had unfortunately left its mark on Uncle Edward’s favorite Kerman.
Out in the open, we could see the mottled skin and the gray pallor on the poor dead girl, indications that she had been there for a while.
“How long?” I asked.
“Maybe six hours,” he replied. I thought back to where we were at that time. In bed. Sleeping side by side. I know because I woke up with beard burn on my cheek, from Ben’s amorous nocturnal attentions.
“She has a tattoo,” I told him. Ben’s head shot up and he looked at me with interest.
“Where? Show me.”
“Right here.” I pointed at the slender ankle. Ben took it in his two hands to examine it, which wasn’t easy, given the leg was unyielding.
“Crap. What time is Mr. Williams coming in?” Ben asked, suddenly concerned.
“Four-thirty. He wants us to pick him up at the airport. Why?”
“Look around you, Bea.You see a naked body.What does that suggest?” He was examining the body closely as I thought for a long moment. “Do you see the woman’s missing clothes? Hell, no.”
“Are you suggesting the killer must be a woman?” I asked with disbelief.
“Why else take the clothes?”
“It could be a male who wants to impersonate the girl. You think he or she has gone to intercept Mr. Williams?”
“It’s possible. But it won’t do her any good,” Ben decided. “Williams will kill her.”
Chapter Three --
“How can you be so sure?” I wondered. “Maybe he’s just looking for a chance to kill Williams and he doesn’t need a lot of cover, only enough to get close enough.
“She’s not the right honey.” He shook his head and pointed to that ankle, where the bee was now sporting very smudged wings. “If the killer tries to fabricate her own version of the tattoo, Williams will know.”
“Why would Mr. Williams suspect a fake tattoo, Ben? If the killer doesn’t have to show his tattoo to succeed at killing Mr. Williams, the tattoo doesn’t matter.”
“This one is probably made of edible ink. Williams probably knows what it’s supposed to taste like. She should have another tattoo on her somewhere....” My husband was checking out each side of the naked woman’s inner thighs. He moved up the front of the body before turning her over. “See?”
“It’s a flower,” I replied, looking at the tiny red blossom on her back, just inches from her fanny.
“Not just any flower. It’s a rose.”
“So?”
“A rose would smell as sweet. Give it a sniff,” he told me. I looked at Ben like he had two heads. It was bad enough I was this close to a dead body. I really didn’t want to put my nose near it. Ben waved his hand upward, until I got a whiff.
“That tattoo’s got perfume in it?”
“One tattoo is to be tasted and one is to be smelled. Those are her bona fides.”
“That’s ridiculous. What is the game here?” I demanded. “Why does she need bona fides?”
“She’s here to give him a key to the code he’s supposed to use. Williams knows what the verification involves.”
“Did the girl turn it over to her killer before she was murdered?” I leaned over his shoulder to watch as Ben was examining the young woman’s arm. He pointed to the needle mark.
“Possible overdose, but she doesn’t look like a junkie. No, if she was carrying the key on her, the killer probably didn’t get it because the girl wouldn’t have known the significance of the tattoos.”
“Why kill the girl and put her under the bed? Why involve us in this mess?”
“That’s the million dollar question, babe.” Ben stood up. “I wish I knew the answer. I have to make some phone calls.”
“Wait. How would Mr. Williams test the bee, by licking it, by tasting it?” I looked down at the girl with the two tattoos. “What if it’s a hit? What if the killer is wearing a toxic tattoo?”
“Food for thought. But at the moment, I need a photo of her. I have to call the Mother Ship.” Ben took two. He checked them and then started dialing before he stepped outside onto the Juliet balcony.
I stared at the young girl on the floor. In death, she didn’t look like a prostitute. She wore just enough makeup to enhance her well-proportioned features. Her hair was dark and luxurious, simply cut. I looked at her fingernails -- clipped short and painted in a light, pearly polish. There was nothing seductive about her, other than the fact that she was naked. The girl looked like she belonged on the tennis court, hitting tennis balls with some lanky, good-looking guy who would ask her out first chance he got. Maybe she was a young, inexperienced CIA trainee on a mission.
I thought about what I knew of Mr. Williams. Other than he was staying for four days, would be joining us for dinner tonight and tomorrow night, and requested we make a bicycle available for him to use during his visit, I knew little. On our way to the airport, I would call the “travel agency” that booked his stay with us and they would send me a photo of our guest and my copy of a verification phrase that Mr. Williams would recite to confirm his identity.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing important clues. The killer, who was in this very room at some point, removed all of the girl’s clothing, shoes, and whatever else she had with her. How did the killer get the girl into the Bard’s Bed & Breakfast without getting caught? Or did the girl sneak in here on her own, as part of a CIA mission?
I was lost in thought when Ben came back into the room, but I quickly realized he was not looking particularly happy. I can’t say I really blame him. I wasn’t all that happy about having a dead visitor, but then I wasn’t all that happy about the live ones either.
“Langley wants us to pick up Mr. Williams as scheduled. They want us to make sure we get to him before the killer can.”
“Ben, what if the killer is already here, as a guest? What if it’s an inside job, so to speak?”
“We’re working blind here, Bea. We don’t know Mr. Williams’ reason for staying with us. But the tattoos on the girl suggest he’s on a mission. Langley won’t tell me anything, but that doesn’t mean we can’t figure this thing out for ourselves.”
“Where do we start?”
“The tattoos. Bee and rose. Rose and bee. A bee stings. A rose has thorns. They’re both sharp. They both have a point.” Ben tried on a couple of possible answers, tossing them into the air and hoping they would fall into place.
“Bees like flowers,” I pointed out. “They go together, like salt and pepper, peanut butter and jelly.”
“Keys are usually numerical or alphabetical, or a combination of the two. It’s a starting point for uncovering a hidden message that stays hidden unless you have the key.”
“Uncle Edward’s reminiscences have rubbed off on me,” I admitted. “You know how he always talks about how vulnerable the new technology is to interception? He insists things were a lot safer back in the OSS years.”
“That’s true. This tattoo thing is an old-fashioned method of visually conveying a message,” he agreed, nodding his head rhythmically, absent-mindedly. “What would be an old-fashioned way of putting a code on her body that she wouldn’t see as a code and neither would anyone else, except for Mr. Williams?”
“Uncle Edward said it could be as simple as moving a plant from one side of the window sill to the other. The Nazis could look at it and see nothing. It only meant something if you knew what it meant. It had to appear to
be totally innocent. Something added or something missing.” We both studied the girl with fresh eyes. She really was totally naked. No jewelry. “But it has to be on her person at all times, right? Because otherwise, she might inadvertently leave it somewhere else. Where can you hide something on a naked body?”
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