The Firebird Deception

by Dermody, Cate

  “Better get used to paying the piper, then.” Alisha sat up and reached for Erika’s laptop, which was propped in the fruit bowl. “Your keyboard’s locked. What’s the password?”

  Erika gave her a look of such utter disbelief that Alisha laughed aloud. “What? You don’t trust me?”

  “I do system administration for fun, Ali. I don’t trust anybody with my passwords.”

  “I spy on people and steal things for a living,” Alisha said cheerfully. “Who else are you going to trust?”

  “I’ve gotta get a new set of friends,” Erika mumbled. “The kind who don’t think obtaining my confidential information is fun.”

  Alisha held up one finger, then another. “First, you’d be bored with friends like that. Second, not until I’ve gotten all your confidential information on Reichart, anyway.”

  “All right, fine.” Erika took the laptop away and typed in her password, then jumped up as the doorbell rang and went to pay for the pizza. Alisha grinned and shook her head no as Erika looked at her in hopes of getting cash.

  “Pizza was your idea, babe. Besides…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I owe you.” Erika paid, grumbling without rancor, and Alisha relaxed into the couch with a sigh, feeling more comfortable with the good-natured banter and in her own apartment than she had earlier that day. There was an itch under her skin, like a promise that a course of action would be settled on, and soon.

  The only thing left to see, Alisha whispered to herself, was whether her course of action would be in line with the CIA’s.

  Chapter 14

  “I expected you yesterday afternoon, Agent MacAleer.”

  “I know, sir. I’m sorry.” Alisha’s apology was perfunctory and she made little effort to inject it with sincerity. Boyer flicked an eyebrow up.

  “Most people at least try to sound cowed when they’ve been called on the carpet, Alisha.” There was no trace of amusement in Boyer’s smooth, deep voice or in his dark eyes, but Alisha thought she sensed a hint of humor in his overall demeanor. She chose not to play on it, in case she was wrong, and instead spread her hands slightly.

  “Yes, sir.” She’d gone to some trouble that morning to dress for battle, wearing black slacks and a burgundy shirt so dark it bordered on black itself. The colors of war, she thought: red and black. She even wore heels to help erase the height difference between herself and the man who was her superior. The result had been startling when she’d walked past Greg, finding herself all but towering above him rather than the usual two-inch advantage she had. He’d pulled his shoulders back, straightening, as if an additional three inches of height on his protégé was a personal challenge.

  The few inches the heels lent her made less difference with Boyer, whose six feet of height was still well out of Alisha’s range, even in heels. Still, half of any fight was in the mind, and Alisha at least felt prepared for one. “I was in no condition to talk with you yesterday afternoon, sir. I apologize if I inconvenienced you.”

  “Dr. Reyes didn’t mention that you were distraught after your session.”

  Alisha lifted an eyebrow, settling into parade rest, her hands folded behind her back. “What did she say, sir?” There was no point, she thought, in giving away more than she had to. Anything she could learn that Reyes said would help her in playing out the situation with Director Boyer.

  “That you internalize emotion very well,” Boyer said, and a thread of amusement did come through that time. “That the Reichart situation stems partly from a lack of resolution with Cristina Lamken.”

  “Frankly, sir, I could’ve told you that without a shrink’s intervention.” Could she have? Alisha wondered. Maybe. It had certainly sounded plausible enough when she discussed it with Reyes.

  “She further recommends you be removed from the case.” Boyer went on as if Alisha hadn’t spoken, but his words drew her into a more formal stance, her chin lifting as her shoulders tightened. “She suggests a vacation might be in order.”

  “When a psychoanalyst says vacation, she means involuntary relief from duty until further notice, sir.” Alisha focused on the wall beyond Boyer and spoke crisply, as if doing so would force the idea out of his mind.

  “I’m aware of that, Agent MacAleer. I’m also aware that last time you were sent on vacation like that, you ended up locating and nearly engaging Frank Reichart.”

  Alisha’s gaze snapped back to Boyer, betraying the complete surprise that swept through her and raised cold goose bumps on her arms and neck. “Sir?”

  “We are the CIA, Alisha,” Boyer said a trifle wryly.

  Alisha tightened her hands together behind her back and returned her focus to a point somewhere behind Boyer. “For what it’s worth, sir, I was not looking for Reichart at that time. It was coincidence that I encountered him.”

  “Do you really expect me to believe that?”

  Cold washed through Alisha again, this time carrying the icy burn of anger. She felt that burn rise in her cheeks, bringing color with it, and knew her mouth thinned as she said, “I don’t give a shit whether you believe it or not, sir. It’s true.”

  Boyer barked out a laugh that made Alisha flinch, though she tried to hide it. “You think you’ve got nothing to lose, don’t you, Agent MacAleer?”

  “Am I wrong, sir?”

  “What would you do if you weren’t an agent, Alisha?”

  A pinpoint of nausea stung in Alisha’s stomach and grew rapidly, taking her breath and, it felt like, her will to live away with it. The grip she held her hands in slipped, muscle turning watery at Boyer’s unexpected question. Alisha abandoned all pretense of formality and stared at the director, trying to swallow away the sickness that lodged in her throat. “Sir?”

  “What would you do if you weren’t an agent for the Central Intelligence Agency?” Boyer repeated.

  “Sir, I…” It felt as if someone had removed the top of her skull and replaced it with air, making her so light-headed that she might easily float away, like a child’s escaped balloon. Alisha was afraid to look down, for fear that her feet would have left the floor and she would find herself adrift. The act of simply standing was difficult; she thought she must be swaying, like a tall building in the wind. The muscles in her neck felt stiff and creaky from holding still, an attempt to hide that rocking from Boyer. Her throat was too tight to make words properly. “I have no idea, sir” came out as a dry whisper.

  “It’s a question you should consider,” Boyer said, “before you make any rash decisions about what to do during the next two weeks while you’re suspended from active duty. You’ve had your second chance. I’m assigning someone else to the Firebird case. For what it’s worth, I’ll attempt to have Reichart brought in long enough for you to obtain some closure in that arena. You’re too good an agent to lose, but this cannot go on.”

  “Reichart’s not the sort you bring in, sir,” Alisha whispered hoarsely. “He comes to us with information and a price, you know that.” She could feel her chest and ribs expanding and deflating as she breathed, but no air seemed to be coming through. There was a knot of pain replacing her lungs, denying every breath its rightful place. What she said about Reichart didn’t matter; it was only a way to fill up silence and try to break through the heady feeling of detachment from her own body. Her fingers were cold. She could feel that, distantly, but it seemed meaningless. Everything seemed meaningless. What would she do, if she wasn’t an agent?

  “I suppose I’d actually become a yoga teacher,” she added numbly. Speaking the idea aloud sounded flat and lifeless, like the promise of a lifetime’s imprisonment. Something regretful darted through Boyer’s expression.

  “I’ll do my best with Reichart,” he said. “You’re dismissed, Agent MacAleer. You’ll be assigned desk duties until further notice.” Boyer gave her a brief nod and went around to the other side of his desk, settling into his chair as Alisha gathered herself and turned for the door. Her reflection caught in the door’s glass window, red and black. A thin strain o
f music played in her mind, the matching words coming unbidden:

  Red, the color of desire; black, the color of despair!

  Alisha tapped on the door to Erika’s fishbowl—a glass-encased office lined with so many computers that the actual fishbowl effect was greatly diminished—and went in without waiting for an invitation. Erika, bent over a tiny processing chip with a sparking soldering iron in hand, lifted one finger in acknowledgment and warning. Alisha sat down in a chair that wheeled a few inches back with her weight, and watched a fractal screen saver on one of the computer screens while she waited. There was a faint scent of burned ozone in the air, combined with the thrum of multiple computers running.

  Air-conditioning in the fishbowl was always at full blast, and two oscillating fans swept back and forth, tired-out ribbons flapping from them. It was still hot in the room, probably explaining Erika’s penchant for a working outfit that consisted of a sports bra and biking shorts. Hanging from the side of one computer monitor were three different professional outfits, all of them carefully pressed and ready for wear. They were Erika’s compromise for situations when she had to give presentations and look reliable. The rest of the time, she said, she was paid for her brains, not her fashion sense, and the dress code could go hang itself. So far her gadgetry knack and computer skills had overcome the resistance to her style. Alisha imagined she would find another job, if she wasn’t given her dress-code perks, and suspected that the CIA had come to the same conclusion.

  A yoga teacher. Alisha tilted her head back far enough to stare at the fluorescent lights gridded into the ceiling. Erika’s intellect might not be replaceable, but Alisha’s superior upper-body strength certainly was. A yoga teacher, she thought again, and bit her lower lip.

  “Arright.” Erika pushed her soldering glasses up on her forehead, catching a floppy 1980s wave of too-long bangs in the plastic lenses. “What’s up? You look—” She took in Alisha’s posture, slumped in the chair, and turned the iron’s heat off. “You look awful.”

  “They took me off the case.” Alisha was surprised at how calm her voice sounded, the cool remote that still lingered inside her coming through in the words.

  “Oh. Oh, shit, Ali. Are you okay? You knew it might happen.”

  “Mmm.” Alisha slid her gaze from the lights to the top of the window frames without really seeing them. “I knew it might, but that’s not all that much like having it really happen.”

  “Are you okay?” Erika repeated.

  Alisha pressed her lips together and returned her regard to Erika, whose forehead was wrinkled in concern beneath the edges of her protective glasses. “I’m on desk duty. Until the Firebird case is resolved. Maybe longer. I stopped by my desk to look at my schedule. I’ve got a meeting with Reyes every day for the rest of the month. And more paperwork than I thought I’d ever generated.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Erika pushed away from the chip she’d been working on, chair wheels creaking as she rolled across the room. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m…you know,” Alisha said slowly, “I think that pretty soon here I’m going to be really pissed off.”

  Erika flashed a little grin. “Pissed off’s better than sulking.”

  “I’m not sulking,” Alisha said instantly. “I’m just…cold.” She could feel the chill of shock starting to flake away, though, uncovering sparks of anger. “I either take desk duty or I’m out.”

  “Jesus, Ali. I’d say you always wanted a nice safe desk job, but I know better than that. You field agents have got a screw loose. All danger all the time. What is it with that?” she added rhetorically. Alisha pulled a faint smile.

  “You get addicted to the adrenaline,” she admitted, “but it’s mostly that it’s a job I’m good at, and somebody has to keep people safe. My sister’s got three little boys.”

  “So you’re doing it for the kids?” Erika teased. Alisha managed another smile.

  “You could say that. I like the idea of making the world a better place to live in. I think that’s what I’m doing.”

  “I just like making cool shit and getting paid for it,” Erika said with a grin, but then her smile faded. “What’re you gonna do, Ali?”

  “I’m going to go to my desk, and I’m going to do my job, and I’m going to go see the doctor at two o’clock like a good girl.” Alisha spread her hands and gave a helpless shrug. “What else can I do?”

  “What about the stuff we—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Alisha said with brittle clarity, overriding Erika’s question. Erika’s eyebrows rose, shifting the safety glasses on her forehead. Then she pursed her lips, one corner curving up skeptically.

  “Right. Arright. Good luck with that, then, eh?”

  “Yeah. Look, if they’ll unchain me from the desk you want to have coffee tomorrow morning?”

  “I can’t make our usual coffee break,” Erika said with unusual precision. “I probably won’t see you until at least lunch.” Alisha’s eyebrows wrinkled curiously as she met Erika’s too-guileless gaze.

  “Oh.” The word came slowly, as did the lie that followed it a moment later: “Well, I’ve got a lunch date off-site. Maybe afternoon break?”

  “Mmm.” Erika dropped a nod that said she was in on a conspiracy. Alisha turned away with a quirky smile, not quite daring to follow her own thoughts to fruition.

  “Hey, Ali.”

  “Yeah?” Alisha looked back and twitched her hand up into the air to catch a glittering silver pin from the air. She turned her palm up, studying its beveled edges and the red stone set in mesh at its center. Eyebrows raised quizzically, she looked at Erika, who shrugged a shoulder.

  “Experimental communication system. I’ve got the other one. In case your car breaks down when you’re out at lunch. You know. Just in case.”

  Alisha felt a crooked smile grow as she lifted the pin and murmured, “Thanks.”

  Ninety minutes later a breathless Karen Buckner, armed with a briefcase of paperwork, was the last person to board an early transatlantic flight to London.

  Chapter 15

  She changed planes and passports twice before coming into Paris, using an Agency-issued passport as ID to rent a sports car in Stockholm. She tossed the keys to a sleepy-looking youth in line behind her and made her way to the nearest bathroom without waiting to see his reaction.

  The third passport was an illegal one, a thought that always made Alisha grin, even in the midst of jet lag. It wasn’t Agency-issued, nor was the name on it—Mona Bryers—on Alisha’s list of known aliases. She exited the Stockholm airport restroom a coppery redhead, a far more distinctive color than her own tawny locks, but the color was one her skin tones could pull off believably. Contacts altered the shade of her eyes to grayish blue, lighter and more striking than her usual color. Alisha MacAleer dressed well without being over the top; Mona Bryers flaunted what she had with push-up bras and plunging necklines. Her makeup was subtle, stressing her cheekbones and the strength of her jaw until she appeared far more angular than she really was. That, combined with the lyrical accent that went with Mona’s Welsh homeland, would distract most people from lesser details like actual facial structure and height.

  She flounced through customs on both ends with a wave of her passport, blessing the European Union’s open-border policy. It made traveling through the Union countries easier; especially it meant avoiding any lingering inspection by the security cameras. As a spy, that was an inevitable bonus, but when it was her own government she was trying to avoid, Alisha was even more grateful for it. The thought made her shiver uncomfortably as she disappeared into the turmoil of the Charles de Gaulle airport. Being circumspect was a matter of course in her job, but she’d never gone so deliberately AWOL. Even fifteen months ago when she’d apparently turned mercenary, it had been with Director Boyer’s blessing. This—

  This would cost her her job. Alisha pushed the thought away with an imperceptible shrug. There was no point dwelling on it; she’d made her decision. You made it
days ago, Leesh, she told herself as she stepped out into the October morning and raised her hand to hail a cab. You’ve just been dancing around the inevitable since then.

  Six hours until Reichart’s rendezvous. Six hours in which she could make certain she hadn’t been tailed, before she faced her former fiancé and got all the answers she’d let slip through her hands. Until then it was simply a matter of going unnoticed.

  Alisha ducked into a taxi, slipping on an oversize pair of sunglasses to help further disguise her from the vehicle’s onboard camera. That form of surveillance always made her twitchy, though she appreciated the reasons behind it. Better for the cabbie—and the company—to be able to give a physical description of someone who injured their drivers than not, but for a woman looking to avoid contact with any authority figures, it was just another way of getting caught. At least the tapes weren’t typically reviewed except in cases of emergency.

  “Jardin du Luxembourg,” she murmured to the cabdriver, and turned her attention out the window, letting body language say she wasn’t interested in gossip. The park was a matter of blocks from Reichart’s rendezvous point, a sixty-acre tourist attraction too full of people for any one woman to stand out. It would more than do as a place to disappear into the city, and would allow her to approach Reichart’s meeting place as one visitor among many.

  No fate. Alisha mouthed the words, tapping a finger against her briefcase. The late night over cold pizza and pop had been successful, though it had taken cross-references and Erika’s punch-drunk suggestion of a thesaurus to begin pulling up hits on the phrase. Fate was often replaced by destiny in news references and files that touched time and time again on humanist philosophies. On man’s ability to forge his own future, predestination a relic of the past. The idea, Alisha thought sourly, fit Reichart well. He’d certainly made a profit off chiseling a niche as a mercenary in the espionage world.