The Firebird Deception

by Dermody, Cate

  Brandon rocked back on his heels, putting his hands into his pockets again. “Apparently my genius is too great to be ignored, especially when Director Simone provided all the paperwork authorizing the Sicarii mission.”

  “Director Simone.” Alisha found herself leaning forward on her toes, as if making up for the distance Brandon had rocked back. “The European theater director? She sanctioned your infiltration mission?”

  “The paperwork’s in order, Alisha,” Boyer agreed, deep voice filled with a soothing rumble. “Brandon and Greg were both involved in a covert mission that only a handful of very high-level people knew about.”

  “And you weren’t one of them.” Alisha turned toward Boyer, her words somewhere between a statement and a question. She’d trusted Boyer out of desperation and an odd belief that a man whose voice was as deep as his was must be as solid as he sounded. Her trust in him had nearly gotten him killed, but even now she sought the reassurance that she hadn’t been played by her director, too.

  “When I say high-level I’m talking about senators and generals, Alisha. A mere CIA director doesn’t rate.” Boyer chuckled as he spoke, though his eyes remained cool.

  “I wish you’d told me,” Alisha said.

  Boyer inclined his head, acknowledging her desire if not apologizing for having failed to fulfill it. “You didn’t need to know.”

  Alisha nodded stiffly and looked back at Brandon. “You asked for me on this mission?” She barely waited for his nod before asking, “Why?”

  Brandon’s eyebrows lifted a little. “Because I trust you, Alisha. You know me and you know my work, and just as importantly, I know you and yours. I haven’t been a field agent in a long time. I need someone I can rely on if I’m going after the box.”

  “You?” Alisha asked incredulously. “You’re a scientist, not a—”

  “Doctor?” Brandon put in, grinning. “Your geek is showing again, Alisha.”

  “So’s yours.” Alisha felt a smile curve her lips, though it faded quickly. “Brandon, I know you’re physically fit, and I know you had field-op training when you first joined the Agency, but it’s not something you decide to do on a lark. I’m not sure this is a good idea.” She glanced at Boyer, hoping for support, and found his expression utterly neutral. There would be no help from that corner.

  “Alisha, these AIs are my life’s work. I don’t want anything associated with them in Sicarii hands, and Reichart is—”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Alisha burst out. “Don’t tell me he’s working for the Sicarii, Parker. Not after what you did to me.” She fought the urge to clap a hand against the back of her neck, where a lump of scar tissue was all that remained from an explosive that the Sicarii had planted to make her their proxy. An explosive they’d planted, Alisha reminded herself violently, after Brandon Parker had turned her over to them.

  “Alisha, I had no choice,” Brandon protested, desperation coloring his voice. “They’d realized I was working with you. If I hadn’t brought you in they’d have tortured and killed me.”

  “That’s a choice, Parker,” Alisha snapped. “A lousy one, but a choice. There were better ones. You could’ve come in instead of keeping up with the game, so don’t give me that bullshit about having no choice. You damned near murdered me.”

  “I can see this is going to go smoothly,” Boyer said mildly. Alisha flinched guiltily, looking toward the man she’d forgotten about. Boyer gave her a brief smile. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, perhaps you two could take solving your differences out of my office. Alisha, you have a two o’clock appointment with Dr. Reyes. I expect you to be there.” He left unspoken the reminder that she would be suspended from duty if the appointment wasn’t kept. Alisha put her shoulders back, all the more aware of the warning for it not having been said.

  “Yes, sir.” She marched past a tight-lipped Brandon and into the hall with the scientist on her heels.

  “Alisha—”

  Alisha turned on her heel, stopping so abruptly that Brandon came up short and was forced to take a step back, out of her personal space. “Don’t,” she said. “I’ll work with you because Director Boyer seems to think it’s a good idea. I’ll keep you from getting your ass shot off. But don’t think I’ve forgotten Rome, Brandon, because I haven’t.”

  Brandon smiled, quick and regretful. “You have a lot to forget about Rome, don’t you.”

  “Go to hell, Parker. Just go to hell.” Alisha turned and walked away.

  “Alisha. Ali!”

  Alisha pulled her lips back from her teeth in a snarl, head ducking before she forcibly lifted it and turned toward the voice. Gregory Parker, her handler and Brandon’s father, was a small, dapper man, the curls in his graying hair kept barely under control by a short-clipped haircut. He grimaced at her expression and drew to a stop beside her. “I take it you’ve been to see Boyer.”

  “When you said we’d discuss it, Greg, I didn’t realize you meant the we that included a psychoanalyst. Silly me.” Alisha didn’t try to hide the bitterness in her voice. Greg heaved a sigh and slid his hands into his pockets as he shrugged. Alisha’s mouth flattened with recognition as she realized he shared that piece of body language with his son.

  “Alisha, I had to discuss the matter with Director Boyer. No one, least of all you, can afford for your personal life to affect your job.”

  Alisha closed her eyes, front teeth set together as she inhaled, waiting until she trusted her voice enough to speak. “A variety of people were holding guns on me, Greg.” She opened her eyes again, meeting her handler’s gaze. “What exactly was I supposed to do? Getting shot wouldn’t have achieved anything except six weeks in traction. It certainly wouldn’t have brought the box back.”

  “Your report suggests there were at least a few minutes when you were alone with Reichart. You could have acted then.”

  Alisha groaned. “Except I thought I was alone with him. Reichart and I are pretty evenly matched. Mano a mano, I figured I could take him. From that perspective there was no harm in not acting immediately.”

  Not even she believed it. Greg’s sideways glance told her he didn’t, either. Alisha pinched her mouth, looking away. “Psychological reevaluation just seems a little harsh for one mistake.”

  “What about last June?”

  “Greg, I kicked his ass!” Alisha protested. “I thought he was down for the count. I did not deliberately allow him to make off with the Attengee software.”

  Greg sighed. “I’d like to believe you, Alisha.”

  Bitterness filled her tone again. “But you won’t until Dr. goddamned Reyes does. You can go to hell, too.”

  Good sense told Alisha that waiting calmly in one of the doctor’s comfortable armchairs would make the best first impression. Impatience dictated that she pace the office, avoiding the chairs and stopping to read the certificates of accomplishment that decorated one wall. Dr. Margaret Reyes.

  “I prefer Peggy.”

  Alisha turned from the wall of diplomas to look at the woman standing in the doorway. An inch or two taller than Alisha herself, Dr. Reyes wore her hair in dark cornrows, the ends highlighted to warm blond. Half-moon glasses were nestled in her hair, and she carried a long coat over one arm. She was at least a decade younger than Alisha had expected, and smiled as she came forward with an offered hand. “Peggy,” she repeated. “Peggy Reyes. It’s nice to meet you, Alisha.”

  “You, too,” Alisha said automatically, then felt a flicker of irritation cross her face. Peggy Reyes saw it, too, and flashed a grin.

  “Or it would be if you weren’t being sent to be brain-drained against your will, right? Well, there’s no getting around it, I’m afraid, so we might as well get started. Coffee?” She flung her coat across one of the chairs and looked over her shoulder curiously at Alisha.

  Alisha wet her lips and found a crooked smile waiting. “I don’t drink much coffee in this country. You’re not really what I expected. My last psychoanalyst was…”

&nbs
p; “Stodgy?” Reyes suggested with a grin. “Old? Solicitous? The truth is, Alisha, nobody likes being sent to a shrink. Volunteering to see one is one thing. Being sent is something else.” She stuck her head out the office door to ask for two cups of coffee, adding, “Just in case,” to Alisha as she came back in and closed the door. “So I make it a practice to try to do away with underlying resentment and sullenness by being as up-front about the whole process as I can be.”

  “What does that accomplish?”

  Reyes dropped into one of her own armchairs, kicking her feet onto the coffee table. “Makes me seem more human, more likable. People are usually more willing to talk to people they like.”

  Alisha breathed out a laugh. “I think it’s working,” she admitted wryly. Reyes lifted her hands, palms out, giving them a revivalist shake.

  “Glory be. So tell me about this ex of yours. Is he really all that and a bag of chips?”

  The secretary came in with coffee. Alisha accepted her cup without sitting down, inhaling the scent as she looked for a way to answer without betraying her own secrets.

  Chapter 5

  “How’d it go?” Brandon jogged across the tarmac to catch up with Alisha’s long strides, her attention focused on the plane ahead of her.

  Not focused enough, she thought drily, or Brandon was determined to not be put off by a cold shoulder. She glanced over at him, watching him match his stride to hers, and shrugged. “Not so bad,” she acknowledged. “I never thought I’d meet a psychoanalyst I liked, but she was nice.”

  “They’re all nice,” Brandon said. “It’s their job. They’re supposed to be. But Reyes is interesting.”

  Alisha did a double take at him. “You’ve met her?”

  “You really think they’d let me back on the job without scouring the inside of my head first? Even with Simone’s paperwork all in place, after three years working for the Sicarii they weren’t taking any chances.”

  “I’m sure you won’t take it wrong if I say that makes me feel better.” Mostly better, Alisha amended silently as Brandon fell back a step or two and gestured her up the plane stairs ahead of her. It might have made her feel much better, had she not been vividly aware of the things she hadn’t told Peggy Reyes in their session that afternoon.

  “I’d be surprised if it didn’t,” Brandon said from behind her. “I know you’re angry, Alisha, but I’d really like to talk about that incident in Rome.”

  Alisha stopped in the plane door and turned to look down at Brandon. His expression was open and hopeful, no guile in it. “You know what? I’m not ready to do that yet.”

  Disappointment washed the blue out of his eyes, leaving them gray in the afternoon light. “All right,” he said quietly. “Maybe you’ll tell me when you are.”

  “Maybe.” Alisha ducked through the plane door—unnecessary; there was plenty of headroom for a woman her height—and made her way into the passenger area. It was a military flight, the amenities lacking, but it was leaving immediately, which was all that mattered to Alisha.

  “Who are we meeting?” Brandon asked as he sat down across from her. Alisha looked up sharply.

  “I am meeting an asset in Paris. You are not meeting anyone.”

  A pained smile crossed Brandon’s face. “What’s wrong, Alisha? Don’t you trust me?” He turned his gaze to the window, watching military personnel on the tarmac, clearly knowing her answer and not wanting to hear it spoken aloud.

  And so she didn’t say it aloud, studying his profile in silence instead. It was more than not trusting him; experience had taught her not to reveal any of her assets or the places she’d be meeting them. Alisha’s hand drifted to rub beneath her left collarbone, the edges of a gunshot scar more noticeable in her memory than they were on her body. Frank Reichart had put that bullet into her six years ago in Rome, and she still wasn’t certain if he’d also murdered her contact that day, a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. She’d told Reichart where to find her, and it was very possible the cardinal’s blood was on her hands as figuratively as it had been literally.

  Not again, Alisha promised herself. She wouldn’t compromise another asset that way. CIA policy was based on need to know, and Brandon Parker didn’t need to know.

  And this is what those of us in the business would call a long shot, Alisha thought half a day later. She wrapped her hands around a coffee mug nearly as large as her head, watching the Seine whisper by just to her left, on the far side of a thick, waist-height wall. The water reflected the gray skies, but in her mind’s eye it was black, bouncing street light back up toward the café she patronized.

  The river’s rush was a backdrop to French voices raised in laughter and greeting now as it had been then. Alisha braced her mug against three fingers of her left hand, brushing her thumb against the base of that ring finger. Frank Reichart had proposed kneeling next to this table, and fifteen months ago when he’d wanted to talk to her, this was where he’d said to meet him.

  It was a very long shot. Alisha put her coffee mug down and pulled her cell phone from her purse, using it as the timepiece she’d opted not to wear. Evening would have been a better time to try this stunt, she thought, but she wasn’t sure she was up to facing the café under circumstances that similar to the night Reichart had asked her to marry him.

  Three-fourteen in the afternoon. Pi, Alisha thought with amusement, and put the phone facedown on the table, picking up the mug again. Dr. Reyes would get more mileage out of Alisha’s being at the café than she wanted to think about.

  Maybe they were right, Alisha thought. Maybe her judgment really was that bad when it came to Reichart.

  She breathed out a laugh. If it was, it wasn’t just about Reichart. The clandestine journals she kept, the mistrust she felt for Brandon Parker—if Reichart was a problem, it was only because he was the linchpin to the whole house of cards that was Alisha’s life. She couldn’t afford for the psychoanalyst to be right. It would take her life apart at the seams.

  The phone rang, beeping out the Mission: Impossible theme. Alisha grinned at it as she always did, picking it up to put it to her ear with an automatic hello that was less a question than a statement.

  “You’re completely mad.”

  Alisha’s heart rate leaped as relief and vindication swept over her, leaving goose bumps on her arms. She slid down in her chair with a quick laugh, pushing her coffee mug away. “Where are you?”

  “Close enough to know where you are,” Frank Reichart said acidly. “Are you completely mad?”

  Alisha closed her eyes, still smiling. “You’ve spent too much time with Brits, you know that? ‘Completely mad.’ ‘Lovely.’ The first word you ever said to me was ‘lovely.’ If we’d been in America I’d have thought you were gay.”

  “You wouldn’t have been the first. Is there a purpose to this little trip down memory lane?”

  Alisha’s smile faded and she straightened up in her chair again, watching the river. “I’m expecting an asset who can give me some kind of information on where the black box has gone.”

  “And you chose here as your meeting place?” Enough strain came into Reichart’s voice that Alisha couldn’t stop herself from glancing around, as if she might catch a glimpse of the man. She wouldn’t see him, she knew, but he was closer than she thought if he used here instead of there to define the café.

  “I figured if he was paying any attention, this place would flush him out of the woodwork. And I was right. So who’d you sell it to?”

  “You are completely mad,” Reichart said. “Me? An asset?”

  “It’s got too many syllables to be the first word that comes to mind,” Alisha said with a faint smile. “But it’ll do.”

  “Why the hell would I tell you anything?”

  “Because you don’t want me to lose my job,” Alisha suggested.

  Startled silence followed, before Reichart let out a swift curse. “I’m sorry, Leesh.” Then he hung up, leaving Alisha to study her phone with pursed lips.
It had been a long shot, she reminded herself with a shrug.

  “Alisha.”

  The man who spoke from a few feet behind her wasn’t the one she’d hoped it would be. Alisha turned her head toward him, sighing. “You’re not supposed to be here, Parker.”

  “I know. But we’ve got a problem.”

  “It’d better be a doozy.”

  “It is.” Brandon sat down across from her, sliding an envelope toward her. Alisha arched her eyebrows.

  “Is this okay to open in public?”

  Brandon looked at the empty tables and chairs around them. “I think it’ll do. You won’t need much of a look anyway.”

  Alisha’s hands stilled in the process of opening the envelope. “Is somebody dead?”

  “No.” There was no surprise in Brandon’s voice at her question. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “Jesus,” Alisha said mildly. “You’ve filled me with confidence.” She tilted the envelope, sliding photographs out of it. She was too aware of Brandon’s gaze on her as she rifled through them, no more than brief glances before she slid them back into the envelope and leaned back, eyes closed. “Ah.” The quiet sound was all she could trust herself to make for a few moments. Then she pressed her lips together and opened her eyes to meet Brandon’s as steadily as she could. “Whose are they?”

  Brandon shook his head slightly. “The satellite was over Russia.”

  “The FSB? Not possible.” Alisha gave a short, sharp jerk of her head. “He wasn’t working for them.”

  “They say he wasn’t,” Brandon said. “He said he was. Somebody’s lying.”

  “Besides.” Alisha dumped the envelope’s contents into her hand again, looking at the top picture. A satellite photograph, taken only twelve hours earlier, according to the time stamp. It showed a field scattered with silver-domed drones, the machines at rest in the first photograph. Chaos ensued in the later pictures, one army of combat drones fighting another. Splashes of color indicated the kills. Alisha rifled through the photos again, watching the fight play out like a flipbook: from one picture to the next, each side of the drone army regrouped, moved together and attacked. There was a single machine left in the final picture, the sole survivor of the mock battle. Total annihilation, Alisha thought.