Laynie Portland, Spy Resurrected

by Vikki Kestell

  Wolfe chuckled softly. “No, you’re right about that. Tell you what, the minute we have Sherman in custody and have plugged that leak, we’ll tell the team the truth about Bella.”

  Jaz cut back to Wolfe’s previous statements. “What if Sherman doesn’t know who his handler is?”

  “As crafty as this traitor has been, that’s a distinct possibility. However, if we find that is the case, I believe I have another way to ID Sherman’s handler.”

  He dropped his voice. “You said the only activity between the two burner phones has been texts, that they have never spoken. We need to change that. We’ll need a legitimate and urgent reason for Sherman to call his handler and get him to pick up the call. That should do it.”

  Jaz frowned. “Do what? I don’t follow.”

  Wolfe raised one brow. “You think I won’t recognize the voice of a man or woman who reports directly to me? If we can get our traitorous mole on the line with Sherman, I should know who it is immediately.”

  Jaz smiled, not something she often did.

  Wolfe smiled in return. “Feels good to think something might be going our way for a change, huh?”

  TOBIN STOPPED THE CAR briefly at the guard shack, waking Parker with a start. When Tobin had cleared the security checkpoint, he drove into the compound and pulled the car alongside the cabin’s porch. Broadsword had snow, and lots of it, but a path from the car up the cabin’s steps had been cleared as had a path from the house to the gym and the track the guards patrolled inside the fence’s perimeter.

  Richard, impeccably dressed as always, stood waiting for them with Seraphim and Bo at his side. The three of them nodded a greeting, but waited without speaking as Wolfe walked up to meet them. They immediately went inside, leaving Parker, Tobin, and Jaz to deal with luggage.

  That suited Jaz fine. She was itching to get to her desk in the bullpen so she could “plug in.” She trotted upstairs, dropped her bag on her bed, grabbed her laptop, ran out the back door, and hotfooted it across a shoveled path to the gym. As soon as she pulled the door closed behind her, the task force’s collective attention turned her way.

  “Hey.”

  Not one voice responded, but six sets of eyes brimmed with resentment. More than a touch of accusation.

  Maybe out-and-out anger?

  “Tough room,” Jaz mumbled to herself.

  She slid into her chair, pulled out her laptop, plugged into power and DSL, then booted it up. She jerked upright in surprise when she realized that her teammates—to a person—had converged on her desk.

  Vincent, Jubaila, and Soraya’s expressions were foreboding. Brian and Rusty had their arms crossed. By the look on Gwyneth’s face, she was in charge of this rabid mob of the Third Estate—along with Jaz’s imminent introduction to Madame la Guillotine.

  Gwyneth glared at Jaz. “Really? You and Tobin figured that we—the lowly peons you left behind—would be just peachy with you two sneaking off to Bella’s funeral without us? Is that it?”

  “I, uh—” Jaz’s hand snaked out to snag the unopened pack of Black Jack on her desk.

  Rusty beat her to it. He snatched up the pack. Held it over the trash. Slam dunked it for two points.

  Jaz’s lips parted and she stared with longing at the trash can. She looked up. Her gaze skipped from one teammate to another. The collective level of “disgruntled” she encountered could have powered Broadsword for a month. And they were daring her to dumpster dive.

  “Um, well, you see . . .”

  “Shut it, Jaz. You’ve got no excuse. I’m so mad I could spit.”

  “Mad? I’m furious,” Jubaila sneered. “You excluded us.”

  “And we don’t do that on this team,” Soraya reminded Jaz.

  Brian chimed in, “Yeah. In the immortal words of Desi Arnaz, Lucy, you got some ’splainin’ to do. Serious explaining.”

  Jaz’s thwarted fingers twitched and spasmed. If a machete were to sever her digits, Jaz was convinced they would crawl across her desk toward the trash under their own steam. “Sorry. I, um, have something I need to do right now—for Director Wolfe.”

  “Oh! Oh, my. For the Director. For him personally, huh?” This was from Vincent, sarcasm frosting every word—a rarity.

  Vinny, you need to limit your exposure to Brian, Jaz thought.

  From the doorway Wolfe answered, “Yes. For him personally.”

  The torch-toting mob led by Madame Defarge melted away. All except Rusty. He lifted two fingers, pointed them at his eyes, whipped them back at Jaz, and hissed, “I. Am. Watching. You.”

  “Sheesh.” Jaz had never much cared what people thought about her . . . before. She was shocked at how much the team’s unified censure stung.

  She yanked the trash can toward her and dug for her gum.

  Wolfe walked to the front of the bullpen. “Gather ’round, people. I have important things to share with you this morning.” Seraphim was with him. So were Richard and Bo, their presence a departure from the norm. Tobin, Lance, and Sherman entered through a door at the rear of the gym so they wouldn’t disrupt Wolfe’s address.

  While her fingers were busy tearing into the pack of Black Jack and stuffing two sticks of gum—make that three—into her mouth, Jaz casually slid her eyes around to Tobin. He was leaned against a wall a couple yards behind Sherman. He dipped his chin once without looking at her.

  Jaz chomped the gum into a wad, tossed it around in her mouth, and calmed. As soon as Wolfe began to speak, she put her fingers to her keyboard and set to work.

  “I understand that Seraphim explained to you where Marshal Tobin, Miss Jessup, and I have been the past three days. Yes, we attended Bella’s graveside service. I’m certain you all have questions—the foremost one being, why were we allowed to go and you were not?

  “Here are the facts. Bella’s family asked us to attend her memorial service. To be clear, they asked for all members of Bella’s team to attend. They expressly wanted you there, you who worked closely with her and grew to appreciate and even love her. I know you would have been honored to do so.

  “However, the problems all clandestine agents must deal with during their active career—and often after it, I’m sorry to say—are the enmeshed matters of safety and security. Safety for the operative and security for the agency and its intelligence network. Anonymity is the only method that protects our intelligence network and ensures the safety of an operative, in the field and out.

  “As you are already aware, the woman you knew as Bella did not exist. Anabelle Garineau was a cover identity—one of many legends given to her to keep her true identity hidden from those who would have sought to harm her or her family. Yes, harm her family. Even after her death, Bella’s agency and I, as its director, are honor bound to guard her true identity lest we place in jeopardy those she loved.”

  Wolfe coughed to clear the thickness from his throat. “How and why would her family face possible harm after Bella’s death? The answer is not a simple one, but I will try to explain. You see, this woman, one of the finest agents I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, lived twenty-some years in the field. She gave her entire life to this work, to providing us with the information we needed to stay ahead of our foes.

  “To her credit, Bella infiltrated some of the highest levels of our adversaries and stole many valuable secrets. Put plainly, she made powerful enemies—enemies who have long, unforgiving memories.

  “As director, I made the decision that the individuals on the team closest to her would be permitted to attend her memorial. They would represent this task force, the people she was so very proud of. Bella’s family, deprived of her company for most of her adult life, was touched and grateful as we described the woman we knew and appreciated—their daughter, their sister, and their aunt.”

  Rusty startled Jaz when he rose from his seat. “Director Wolfe? May I speak?”

  A flash of consternation crossed Wolfe’s face. It was gone as quickly as it appeared, but Jaz was certain he was as uncomfortabl
e in the moment as she was.

  Sniffles and muffled sobs around the bullpen tore Jaz from her own reflections. It dawned on her how angry, how hurt she would have been to be left out of the scenario Wolfe described. Now she realized that the team—those who didn’t know Bella could still be alive—needed to grieve. Needed to memorialize her.

  “Er, of course, Rusty,” Wolfe answered.

  “Thank you. I just want to say how grateful I am to Bella. I was only a lowly IT help desk nerd, but when Bella made me a full member of the task force, she gave me a voice. She insisted that my ideas had value—that my contribution to our team was as good as anyone’s was. I’ll never forget her for that.”

  One by one, the members of the task force stood and said something about Bella. Most related touching moments with Bella and said something to honor her. Brian’s tribute, of course, was edged with witty sarcasm, but it was still, unmistakably, heartfelt.

  When he finished, the room went silent. Until, one by one, the team members looked at Jaz.

  What? Oh, crap—they expect me to say something?

  Unable to forget that the body shipped back to the States was not Bella and that the memorial her family had planned had actually not taken place, Jaz still found herself on her feet.

  Utterly uncomfortable expressing sentiment or emotion, she mumbled, “I-I learned a lot from Bella . . . about tenacity. About courage. I personally witnessed her confront danger and possible death and do the fearless thing anyway. I also watched her take charge of this group—or, shall I say, ‘this motley crew’?—and mold us into something far greater than anything I’ve ever been part of. She was—and always shall be—my friend.”

  Jaz sat down and buried her face in her hands. Argh! Please tell me I didn’t just adopt Spock’s epic line from “The Wrath of Khan!”

  With the team’s tributes over, Wolfe thanked them. Before he dismissed them, he encouraged them to press on in their hunt to uncover AGFA’s attack plans.

  No one appeared to realize that Tobin had said nothing.

  While her teammates dried their eyes and consoled each other in their common grief, Jaz stared at her hands and the half-empty pack of gum she twirled from finger to finger, around and round.

  Huh. I hadn’t planned on getting all mushy. Guess I got caught up in the moment—which wasn’t such a great idea, given what we now know. And I wonder what everyone’s going to think when they find out Wolfe led them on. That Bella may still be alive.

  They’ll probably nominate me for an Oscar—right before they call for my head on a pike.

  THE TEEMING CITY OF Baku, Azerbaijan, woke early each morning. The city, built on the Absheron Peninsula, was the largest and busiest port on the Caspian Sea, receiving ships and their cargos from Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Iran. Unlike the Black Sea, the Caspian had no outlet. Crane operators hovered over massive cargo ships and conveyed their sea cans directly onto railcars bound for ports on the Black Sea. At those ports, other ships would take delivery of the sea cans, exit the Black Sea through the Bosporus Strait, and continue on to their destinations.

  Some sea cans arriving at the port were off-loaded to the dockyards. There, dock workers toiled endlessly to empty cargo containers filled with all manner of produce and other foods. The workers would load the contents of these containers onto commercial trucks that made their way to warehouses outside the city where the cargo would be inventoried and scheduled for delivery.

  Baku had a population of two million mouths to feed. Hundreds of trucks left the warehouses each day and entered the city to deliver food to grocers and markets. Other delivery trucks traveled inland and supplied the stores that filled the pantries and cupboards of the peoples of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia.

  With such bustling commerce, trucks entering and leaving Baku were an ordinary sight. So were trucks traveling the roads that connected the three southern Caucasus nations. In fact, Yaver, who owned a small refrigerated truck, made the 360-mile trip from Baku to Tbilisi three times a week.

  Today, on his return trip to Baku, Yaver’s truck would contain a shipment of wine from a reputable Georgian vineyard. The grapes had been specially grown and vinted for the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in Azerbaijan. The vintner and his helpers had bottled and crated the wine, twelve bottles to a crate, had carefully stacked the crates on pallets four crates high and four crates wide, and had lashed the crates together to stabilize the pallets and their loads.

  When Yaver arrived at the vintner’s warehouse near 7:30 a.m., he backed the truck to the loading dock and lowered the truck’s ramp onto the dock. A forklift operator carrying two pallets, one stacked atop the other, drove across the ramp and into the truck, depositing the pallets in the front left corner of the truck. He deposited his second load of pallets to the right of the first pallets and backed out of the truck. The vintner’s men then entered the truck and strapped the pallets to the truck walls to prevent shifting. They repeated this careful dance until the vintner’s shipment was loaded.

  After Yaver and the vintner had signed the required paperwork, Yaver left the warehouse for Baku. Unbeknownst to the vintner, however, the truck made a second stop before leaving Tbilisi.

  Yaver backed his truck through the high doorway of an old and rusting factory at a quarter to nine. He parked in the middle of what had been the loading area and sat in his cab, waiting and picking his teeth.

  He did not wait long. Minutes before nine o’clock, he heard the approaching car. It rattled its way into the factory yard and died with a shudder when its driver turned it off. He climbed down to greet the two women.

  “Any problems to report?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” the old crone replied.

  “Good. Please tend to your duties one last time. Oh—and wrap her in all the blankets you may have. Then I will pay you.”

  He accompanied the two women to the corner of the factory where they lifted away a pile of old cardboard and uncovered the crate. He watched as they performed their tasks. When they had finished, they layered their charge with three blankets, tucking them under her.

  When they had nailed the crate’s lid back on, he spoke. “You guarantee she will sleep?”

  “For eight hours or longer, sir,” the gaunt old woman testified. “I packed another bag of saline inside and a prepared dose of the medication. One need only inject the medication into the port near the catheter eight hours from now.”

  “Very good,” Yaver murmured. “You have done well, both of you, and have earned your pay.” Their eager eyes followed his hand as it dipped into his pocket . . . and as he withdrew the snub-nosed revolver.

  “Thank you for your service.”

  He shot the old woman first. The younger one, stupefied, then realizing what was coming, thought to run. He saw it on her face, in her wide, terrified eyes.

  She died before her brain could convince her feet to move.

  Yaver wiped down his gun, walked it back to the cab of his truck, and wedged it under his seat. He returned to the crate wearing heavy gloves. He grasped the thick rope handle protruding from one end of the crate and dragged the box out from the corner, pulling it toward his truck.

  He fished the old woman’s car keys from her coat pocket before he dragged the bodies into the corner and covered them with the same pile of cardboard that had covered the crate. Next he drove the old woman’s car to the other side of the factory where, when the factory closed down, workers had filled the yard with the factory’s machines. He drove the car behind some of the rusted equipment, turned the car off, and left the keys in the ignition.

  As he walked back inside the factory, he checked his watch. Only 9:35. Time to spare.

  Twenty-five minutes later, he greeted the three men he’d hired to reload this special shipment. After Yaver let down his truck’s ramp, he pointed to the crate resting on the brick floor and explained what he wanted. The men unstrapped the two front pallets and cut the ties lashing the crates to their pal
lets. They carefully but quickly unstacked three layers of wine crates from the two pallets.

  At Yaver’s direction, they positioned the new crate to bridge the two pallets. It took the same space as four wine crates. The crates the men had removed—except those the new crate replaced—were then stacked in their original positions, surrounding and above the new crate, concealing it completely. The men lashed the two pallets together instead of separately and re-secured the pallets to the truck walls.

  Yaver opened one of the removed wine crates and withdrew a single bottle. He placed the bottle on his truck’s passenger seat and covered it with his coat. The three men who had helped him modify his shipment took possession of the remaining crates as their payment for less than an hour’s work.

  One of the men pointed his chin at Yaver and, with a good-natured laugh, said, “We shall toast you tonight, my friend.”

  “Many times,” another man agreed with a chuckle.

  Yaver grinned. “And I, you.”

  The men had no idea that, as a Muslim convert, Yaver no longer drank alcohol. In fact, the three men had no idea he was Muslim. As was the plan.

  After his helpers drove away, Yaver climbed into his cab and continued on his way, his refrigerated truck maintaining the truck’s cargo at a constant temperature of fifty-five degrees.

  Hours later, he arrived at the border checkpoint between Georgia and Azerbaijan. Two Azerbaijani border officers waved him forward for inspection. Yaver, with his frequent crossings, was known to the two officials. They greeted him familiarly and asked the usual questions.

  “What are you carrying this day, Yaver?”

  “Today? A special cargo—a shipment of wine to His Holiness himself in Baku.”

  “No! Really?” the first guard exclaimed. “Very special, indeed.”

  Yaver rolled up the truck’s freight door and waved his hand at the pallets and crates. The officer climbed up into the truck and peered into its depths. He saw only more pallets and crates, all the same.