by Slaton Smith
Waters was trying to activate Sean, but he couldn’t hear his phone in the club. Sandy put the phone away and glanced at Sean. The girl was still hanging on him, running her hand up his back and through his hair. Sandy thought for a moment. She needed to get him out of the club where he could hear his phone.
Then she did something she had wanted to do for a long time.
She reached around and un-hooked her bra and pulled it out of one of her sleeves and dropped it on the floor, walked over to Sean and stood directly behind him. She tapped the girl on the shoulder. She turned to look at Sandy. As with most women, the German girl was five or six inches shorter than Sandy. Sandy held her thumb out and made a motion for her to scram. The girl scowled at Sandy and took her hand off Sean and started to flip Sandy off. A big mistake. Sandy did not have time for this. She grabbed the girl’s finger, bent it back, pulled her close and in German screamed in her ear.
“THAT’S MY HUSBAND YOU SKANK!”
The girl said something that Sandy could not understand, made a face and walked away with her friend. Sean did not notice that they had left. She put her hand on Sean’s back and stood next to him. He turned and saw Sandy smiling at him. He nodded at her and kept watching the band.
Now Sean really thought his night was going great - a second girl was clearly into him. She was tall and hot, too. Nearly as tall as he. He could feel her hand on his back, running down to his waist.
Sandy had her left hand on his waist and slid in front of him, pressing her body tight against his. Sean dropped the beer. Losing the bra was a good idea she thought. She knew he could feel her breasts against his chest. He put his hands around her waist and started making out with her. He ran his hand down her back and put his hand gently on her rear. Her skirt started to ride up. She ran her hand up under his shirt and caressed his chest.
For Sandy, the room went silent as he kissed her. She had realized months ago that she had a thing for Sean.
Sandy stopped kissing him and took his hand. Sean followed her like a puppy as she knew he would. She learned a long time ago that men would do anything she wanted. She was leading him out of the club, when she felt Sean gently stop and pull her back towards him. They started kissing again. Sandy did not stop him. “What were a couple minutes?” she thought to herself.
Sandy looked over his shoulder and saw the restrooms. She took his hand and forced her way to the front of the ladies room, pulled him inside and locked the door. She pissed off half the bar. People were pounding on the door and screaming obscenities in German. The bathroom was tiny and painted all black with a black toilet and small sink with a graffiti covered mirror above it. She could still hear the bass pounding through the walls. Or was it her heart?
She pushed Sean against the wall and kept kissing him while working the belt and buttons on his pants. Their hands were all over each other. His hand moved under her skirt and he started to remove her white cotton thong panties, while kissing her neck. Sean picked her up and placed her on the sink of the tiny restroom. Sandy put her arms around him and kissed his ear. There was no ventilation in the room and both of them were sweating. Neither cared. She had been fantasizing about being with him for a long time, not necessarily in a bathroom of a loud smelly club in Berlin, but she would take what she could get.
“Oops,” Sean said unconsciously. Sandy didn’t notice right away.
They continued kissing and Sandy wrapped her arms around his neck. Sean picked her up by the waist and placed her feet back on the floor. He had a big smile on his face. No surprise. She was smiling too.
“Who are you?” he tried asking over the music.
In German she kept saying “What?” She knew he did not understand her. She straightened her skirt and grabbed his hand. Like before, he followed her. They opened the door and were greeted by twenty or more irate German women. Sandy pushed past them towards the exit. The outside air felt twenty degrees cooler.
“Let’s go somewhere else!” Sean said, in a voice that was closer to shouting than talking as his ears had not adjusted to the relative quiet after the ear crushing decibels of the club.
Sandy smiled at him again and started to speak when his phone rang. He looked at it. She was suddenly sad. It was not like her. She knew he would not remember their first time together, but she would never forget it.
“I am sorry. Excuse me.”
“This better be good,” he mumbled, as he put the phone up to his ear. Part of Sandy wanted to slap it out of his hand, but it was too soon. She was not ready to begin her plan. She was nervous because she also knew that she might never see him again. She needed him. A dead Sean would not help her in the least.
“Hello?” Sean answered, still slightly screaming from exposure to the loud music in the club.
When he answered, Waters opened the door to Sean’s subconscious via the triggers and gave him his assignment. Almost instantaneously, a van pulled up and Sean and Sandy got in.
Later that night, an accused Serbian war criminal died in his bed.
There were no witnesses.
No witnesses left that is.
IV
How would the Talking Heads say it?
Nashville - Holiday Inn
Sunday Night - Late
“Look Sean. I know you are upset. I wanted to tell you, but there’s so much to talk about that I didn’t know where to start.”
Sean stared into Sandy’s eyes. He knew why she was pregnant now. The damn condom broke. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” he said to himself.
“Sean, there are black spots in your memory. Some right before Waters gives you the triggers and then right after. Our first time in the club was on the fringe of the activation.”
“I know why you’re pregnant. The condom broke,” he volunteered and looking up at her.
She smiled.
“I know it did.”
Sean now started to freak out. She seemed a little on the nutty side and getting more so by the minute. He was sure his facial expression spoke volumes.
“Sorry! Sorry! I should not have said it like that. I sound like a psycho,” Sandy said, putting her hands over her face.
“Just a little bit,” Sean whispered.
“I meant to say that I know it happened. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”
“Sure. No problem.” Sean didn’t know what else to say.
Sandy rolled off of him and walked to the bathroom. Sean watched her long legs and quickly forgave her, at least for the moment. She pulled on a pair of panties and came back into the bedroom.
She got into bed next him and rolled over on her side and looked at him. He was staring up at the ceiling.
“Sean?”
“Yes?” He rolled over on his side to face her.
“You stink.” She smiled as she spoke.
Sean took a deep breath.
“All this time, I thought it was you.” He got up and headed for the bathroom.
“Shut-up.”
Sean smiled at her and shut the bathroom door. He turned on the water and got in. He was exhausted, physically and emotionally. All of this was too much to take in, but he did not have a choice, he had to deal with it. He used up the rest of the hotel shampoo and got out of the shower and brushed his teeth.
As he opened the bathroom door, he saw Sandy sacked out in the bed, the sheet only partially covering her body. He turned off the TV and the lights and got into bed next to her. She put an arm across his chest, Normally, that would have been great, but it wasn’t. He felt like a pawn in some larger scheme that he had absolutely no control over and didn’t fully understand.
In addition, she was freaking him out. He had known her for eighteen months, but could not remember her. She seemed to be in love with him, but he had few memories of ever speaking with her, save the bathroom encounter. Oh! And who could forget, she says she’s also pregnant. That’s a big one. No, a huge one.
On top of that, he had to meet her father in the morning and was praying that she had not told him
about the baby. He did not relish the thought of a huge, Russian Special Forces soldier choking him to death.
V
She’s Tall . . .
Pittsburgh - Bureau of Police
Late Sunday
Brian took the picture of Sandy and stormed back down to Cindy’s office. She was still sitting where he had left her. She looked up as he approached.
“Brian, you look exhausted.”
“I feel like crap. I did not sleep much after Sean’s accident.”
“Where is the car they found Willis in?” Brian asked. He knew part of the team Cindy was on would be going over every inch of the car.
“They are towing it in to the garage. We are going to tear it to pieces to try and find something.”
“I don’t think you will find anything. Whoever did this was very good. The footage at the hospital was gone. Everything. It was made to look like a computer failure,” Brian responded.
“I agree. These people just vanished into thin air. Creepy,” she answered, taking a sip of water from a bottle sitting on her desk.
“Sean’s disappearance is driving me nuts.”
“I heard something about that, it’s hard to believe. Did he fly that bird off the hospital roof?”
Brian sat down across from her. Unlike Jenkins’ desk, a handful of floors up, Cindy’s was immaculate. Everything in its place.
“I don’t want to believe it. He seemed to know the woman that killed those two men.” He took out the printout from the hospital security tape. “Here, take a look at this.”
Cindy reached across the desk and took the picture. She looked at the photo for a moment and then back up at Brian.
“This it?”
“Yeah. It’s not much. It took some searching to find it. She seemed to instinctively know where the cameras were. She avoided all of them except one in the elevator. This was all I could get. Can you do anything with it?”
Cindy scratched her head, put the picture down and looked across at Brian.
“I doubt it. I can try, but don’t get your hopes up,” Cindy informed him and instantly saw that it was not what Brian wanted to hear.
“Plus, she’s a blonde.”
“So this is not accurate?” Cindy asked.
“No,” he said, leaning back in the chair and staring up at the ceiling. He knew it was not much. Actually, it was less than “not much.”
“Look, I will scan it. Give me some details about her and I will see if something comes up,” Cindy offered, as she fed the picture into the computer. She hit a few keys and went to another screen.
“OK. She’s between twenty-four and twenty-seven years old. Easily six feet tall. I’d say 120 to 135 pounds,” Brian recalled.
“That’s good,” Cindy exclaimed, entering the data into the computer. She looked up at the Brian. “You sure this is not your dream girl?”
“No way. She scared the shit out of me. She knocked off these two guys without blinking an eye. They were not regular joes off the street either. A guy from SWAT thinks they were ex-RECON Marines. She knew my name. She knew my friend Michelle’s name. The whole thing is scary.”
Cindy stopped typing to listen. Brian had not had time to really talk about it. She let him keep going.
“It seemed like she had something going with Sean. After she killed the two Marines, she grabbed him and started kissing him. She acted like she had known him for a long time, but I have never heard Sean talk about her.”
“Would he have?” Cindy asked.
“You just heard her description. Sean would have been doing cartwheels if she was going out with him. He would have told me. Hell, he would have told everybody.”
Cindy nodded and tried not to smile. She had met Sean.
“I had the feeling she was planning this for a while. It was too smooth. She had a place over at the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. Some kind of safe house.”
“Should we take a look at it?” Cindy asked, looking for any angle.
“It would be a waste of time. She’s not going to leave anything to find. Shit, she even folded the towels and made the bed.”
“OK. Let’s finish here,” she said, going back to the computer screen. “Anything else that would help?”
Brian went through the images Sandy in his mind.
“She moves like an athlete. A good one. I would not be surprised if she competed at a high level in college.”
“As tall as she is, it could be volleyball, basketball, rowing. Swimming maybe?” Cindy suggested.
“It’s possible.” Brian answered, trying to remember any other pertinent details.
“She have an accent?” Cindy said, trying to narrow it down further.
“None.” Brian could not remember anything distinctive.
“Brian, this is going to be close to impossible. We have some good details, but it is not enough,” Cindy said carefully. She knew Brian was worried about his friend.
“Cindy, where does the CIA go to recruit people?”
“I don’t know. All over I guess. I don’t know much about it.”
Brian stared straight ahead. Sean was always watching those boring documentaries. He watched anything that was on. He remembered something on the history of the CIA.
“Ivy league! They do a lot of recruiting there,” he blurted out.
Cindy shook her head.
“You think she is CIA?” Cindy asked, with a bit of skepticism.
“I have no idea, but I would not be surprised.”
“I don’t think it is going to help. Look, I am going to be tied up on Willis’ murder. I have two interns coming in on Monday morning. I will give them the project. Fresh eyes might help.”
“Anything on the prints?” Brian asked.
“No. It is the strangest thing. Normally, I get the data back fast. Nothing,” Cindy replied, glad to have the change in subject.
“You are not going to get anything back. Either they have been removed, destroyed or we are being blocked.”
“Who would do that?”
“The CIA or some other group. I bet they killed Willis too.”
“Come on! They are not supposed to be operating in the U.S. You sound a little paranoid, Brian.”
“I know what I saw and I know it sounds crazy. How else do you explain it?”
Cindy shrugged. Brian did sound a little crazy, but she knew he had been through a lot.
“Thanks for looking into this.” Brian got up to leave.
“You’re welcome. We’ll find him.” Cindy smiled at him.
Brian left Cindy’s office and headed home. He was beat. He needed some sleep.
VI
Officer Down
Pittsburgh - Shadyside
Monday Morning
John got into Pittsburgh early on Monday morning, just before 4 A.M. He followed the signs to the Pittsburgh International Airport and proceeded to the long-term parking lot in search of a good car to steal and a place to dump the Tahoe. The airport was the place for both. He drove up and down the lot in the Tahoe looking for the right car. He spotted a blue Chevy Malibu with tinted windows and Pennsylvania plates. It looked to be fairly new. He parked two spots down from the car, got out, opened the rear cargo door and pulled out a small tool kit. He rummaged through the tool kit until he found an electronic devise that would allow him to instantly gain access to the car. The device scrambled the security features on the car, causing it to think that it was not being boosted.
John gained access to the car and got it started in less than twenty seconds. He took a small bag out of the Tahoe and locked the truck. He would not be back to get it and wondered how long it would sit there before anyone noticed. He opened the door to the Malibu, tossed his bag onto the passenger seat, shut the car door and fiddled with the controls to get the heater and defroster going. It was a crisp morning in Pittsburgh and a thin layer of dew was on the windshield.
John left the airport and headed towards downtown Pittsburgh. His stomach was growling, but he i
gnored it, telling himself that he would get something to eat after killing the cop. Biscuits and gravy maybe.
Brian found that he could not sleep. He had tossed and turned all night. Bailey had left her post at the front window where she was watching for Sean and had jumped into Brian’s bed. She was restless too and knew something was wrong. Brian had left his hand on her head most of the night. He knew it made the dog feel better. It made him feel better too. He decided he was not going to get any sleep and got out of bed a little before 5 A.M. and decided to get his day moving.
“We are going to find him. Don’t you worry,” Brian said to Bailey. Bailey had her eyes open watching him. Her brow was furrowed. It made her look like she was deeply concerned.