by Cap Daniels
“It’s not what they did to her that made her talk, Chase. It’s what they threatened to do to you.”
“To me? What could they possibly do to me?”
“They told her you would be tried for treason and most likely convicted and sentenced to death for colluding with her. And she cut a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“In return for the U.S. Attorney’s agreement not to prosecute you for treason, she agreed to not only tell us everything she knew, but also to work with and for us.”
“Why would she do that? If her whole purpose was to dig her claws into me so she could infiltrate American covert ops, why would she turn her back on the Kremlin to protect me?”
“By all indications, her well-practiced act of loving you had stopped being an act and had become reality. She was willing to give up everything she believed in and everything she held dear to protect you, Chase. To save you from your own country.”
Unable to form any other coherent words, I mumbled, “You were never going to prosecute me.”
Dominic shook his head. “No, the U.S. Attorney was never going to prosecute you. The thought never entered anyone’s head except the Agency interrogators. It didn’t have to be true. They just had to make Anya believe it.”
Stunned silence pinned me to my seat and left me bewildered.
Why would she do that? Why would she sacrifice herself to save me?
“If she was in CIA custody, how did she end up in a Siberian prison?”
“This is the part you’re not going to like,” Dominic said.
“I don’t like any of it. Why would what comes next be any different?”
“Your little unsanctioned raid on the safe house in Virginia opened the door for a Russian snatch team to grab their girl back and whisk her away, leaving Captain Norikova in her place to wreak havoc while pretending to be Anya.”
The thought of my actions being the reason Anya was dying in a frozen hell in some godforsaken prison was enough to send my mind cascading into a pit so deep I feared I’d never see the light again.
“So, what happens now?”
Dominic cleared his throat. “That’s not up to us. It’s up to the geeks and bureaucrats at the State Department. The Russians want Norikova back for many reasons, not the least of which is she’s the daughter of an old-school Communist Party official. The fact that she’s an SVR officer falls somewhere way down the list of reasons, but it’s safe to say they’re willing to make a deal to get her back.”
“So, it’s simple,” I said. “We give them Norikova, and they give us Anya.”
Clark grunted. “That’ll never happen. State doesn’t give a damn about Anya. They already have what they need from her.”
No truer words had ever been spoken, and they tore at my soul. I would have to live the rest of my life knowing she’d thrown her life away to save mine, and all I’d done in return was get her thrown in the gulag.
Chapter 10
Not Exactly
Penny pirouetted in front of me with the tags still dangling from a dress that looked custom-made for her stunning body. “How about this one?”
I mumbled, “Yeah, that one’s nice, too.”
“Chase, what’s going on with you? You didn’t say a dozen words at dinner, and now I can’t even get your attention in the sexiest dress in South Beach.” She knocked on my head as if she wanted in. “What’s happening inside there?”
“It wasn’t Anya,” I said.
“What wasn’t Anya?”
“In the hospital. It wasn’t her. It was somebody else.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear and knelt between my feet. “Who was it, then?”
I couldn’t make eye contact with her. “It was an SVR captain named Ekaterina Norikova, Anya’s half sister.”
Penny squinted her eyes and tilted her head in a gesture of disbelief.
“It’s a long and convoluted story, but it definitely wasn’t Anya in Birmingham.”
“So, is she . . .”
“Dead?” I asked. “Probably. If she isn’t dead now, she soon will be.”
“What do you mean?” She seemed genuinely concerned.
“She’s in a prison called the Black Dolphin in southwestern Russia, near the border of Kazakhstan. She’s being held for treason, a capital offense in Russia.”
I couldn’t identify the look on her face. It may have been relief, but I couldn’t be sure.
“So, there’s nothing you can do, right?”
I didn’t answer.
“Chase, what are you thinking? You’re not going to Russia. You can’t.”
Again, I didn’t answer, and the look on her face morphed from relief to utter despair.
“You’re going, aren’t you?”
I closed my eyes. “She went to prison because she spilled her guts to the CIA when they threatened to prosecute me for treason. She did it to save my life.”
“No, that’s not what happened. You know that’s not the truth. Someone’s trying to manipulate you.”
“I don’t think so,” I said softly. “I think she believed they were going to convict me of treason and sentence me to death, so she did everything in her power to save me.”
“Chase, you’re being a fool. She’s a spy. You said it yourself. She never did anything other than what she was trained and ordered to do.”
I walked out onto the balcony. The Atlantic Ocean lapped at the sand of South Beach as tourists and locals drank, laughed, and misbehaved on the street below separating the hotel from the pristine beach. The late October sun had long since hidden itself beyond the horizon behind me, but the night air was still warm and humid. The horde beneath me danced and lived out their hedonistic debauchery, oblivious to the chaos of atrocities happening in the world around them.
I thought about Anya’s flawless Eastern European skin, and how the subtropical sun turned it caramel. She’d face the sky with her arms spread, relishing the taste and smell of the salt air and the warmth of the sun. The rays would dance on the strands of her golden hair as if she’d been made for the Caribbean. As if she were part of the trade winds. She’d never feel that heat on her face again. She’d die in the bowels of that frozen prison, with her beautiful hair knotted and filthy, and her angelic skin returning to pale.
Penny’s hands slid around my waist, and she pressed her body against my back. Her hair danced on the evening breeze, and her breath fell across the skin of my neck. She squeezed me against her and whispered, “It’s impossible for me to know what you’re feeling, but watching your heart break hurts me to my core. I love you, Chase. No matter how distant you are, either inside your head or on the far side of the world, I’ll not stop loving you. And as long as you want, I’ll be waiting for you to come home to me.”
I pulled her in front of me and placed my hands on her waist, lifting her onto the railing of the balcony. Her eyes never left mine, and she didn’t flinch, even though she was sitting on a narrow railing high above the street. The faith she had in me was unwavering, and I knew I could never let her fall.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish I could turn it off.”
She pressed her finger to my lips and then laid her hands gently on my forearms. “I’m glad you can’t. If you could, you wouldn’t be the kind of man I could ever love.”
“I’m not the man I want to be…not the man I should be.”
“You’re a man of extremes,” she said. “A man who is dark enough to dangle another human being over a bottomless pit, all because the goodness inside you can’t bear the thought of innocent little children being hurt. You’re dangerous and terrifying to those who would harm defenseless people, but you’re selfless and generous at the same time. How is that possible?”
I stroked her face with the back of my hand and tried to think of the right thing to say, but words wouldn’t come. A crack of thunder roared through the air, and an explosion of light filled the southern sky. Penny leapt from the railing and into my arms wit
h a startled, subdued scream, and then giggled like a delighted child. Ribbons of red, white, and blue fireworks painted the night sky, and the intensity grew until it was full of explosions of light. I stood with my arms wrapped tightly around her, and we laughed.
When the show was over, we made our way back into the suite, and the fashion show continued. Penny had bought some of the most beautiful dresses I’d ever seen. Every time she emerged from the bedroom, she looked more breathtaking than the time before. With every return, she left the door a little more ajar and rewarded me with a show even more dazzling than the fireworks.
We made love in the luxurious bed and finally found ourselves thoroughly lost in euphoric, wordless appreciation.
I excused myself then returned to the bed a few minutes later with a bottle of sparkling water and a few pieces of decadent, dark chocolate that had been left for us. Her new dresses were laid neatly across the arms and back of a chair, and I tried to decide which one I wanted to see her wear again.
“I can take them back if they’re too much,” she said, sounding almost like a timid child.
I placed a piece of chocolate on her tongue and kissed her nose. “Don’t you dare take any of them back. You’re astonishing in every single one of them. I don’t care how much you spent.”
“Are you sure?”
I lay down beside her and pulled her close to me. “I’m very good at what I do.”
She motioned toward the nest of covers we’d created during the previous hour. “Oh, yes, you are.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, “but, thank you. And you are more than any man deserves. Especially this man.”
She snatched a piece of chocolate from my hand, unwrapped it, and slid it seductively into my mouth.
I licked my lips. “As I was saying before you tried to re-seduce me, I’m very good at what I do, and I’m paid exceptionally well for doing it. You don’t need to worry about having the things you want. The card I gave you this afternoon is yours.”
Her eyes widened, and she playfully slapped at my shoulder. “Yeah, I kinda noticed that. It had my name on it. When did you do that?”
“I figured you were getting tired of asking for an allowance like a bratty teenager—which I’m sure you were ten years ago—so I had the bank send a card for you last week. Don’t start buying real estate or Rolls-Royces, but I want you to have the things you want and need.”
She grinned. “You slept with Earl, and now you’re trying to buy your way out of trouble. I knew it!”
I raised my hands. “You caught me. But in my defense, she’s much hotter than you.”
She doused me with the remaining contents of the water bottle, and we fell asleep in each other’s arms, trying to avoid the wet spot.
I awoke to the smell of coffee, bacon, eggs, and hash browns. Penny was placing a tray on the bed in front of me and wearing nothing except one of my button-down shirts hanging loosely around her shoulders.
“Good morning, Sleepy Head,” she said.
I yawned. “Good morning. I see you made breakfast.”
She smiled. “I ordered breakfast. But if you want to believe I made it, that’s perfectly fine with me. I thought you’d need some nourishment after the night we had.”
We ate in relative silence until Penny looked up from her orange juice. “You’re going to get her, aren’t you?”
I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply through my nose, and tried to form the most honest answer possible. “Not exactly, but I am going to Moscow by way of Tel-Aviv.”
“Tel-Aviv?” she questioned through a mouthful of eggs.
I dabbed at the corner of her mouth with my napkin. “Yes. We have to pick up a package in Israel and deliver it to Moscow.”
She finished wiping her mouth. “Is Clark going with you?”
“Yes, he’s coming. I wouldn’t consider this mission without him. We learned a lot of information at yesterday’s meeting with Dominic, and we have to take action now.”
“So, you’re leaving soon?”
“Probably tomorrow.”
She cast her eyes away. “It’s always going to be like this, isn’t it?”
“Be like what?”
She took a long drink of coffee. “You disappearing at the drop of a hat and me not knowing when or if you’re coming home.”
That was a discussion for another time, but I had to say something. “No, it won’t always be this way, but for now, it has to be. Can you live with that?”
She sighed. “I can live with the part about you going away to do your job, but I’m not going to deal well with it if you don’t come home.”
I took her hand. “Sometimes what I do is dangerous. I deal with personalities that aren’t particularly socially acceptable, so there’s always the possibility of getting hurt.”
“Or killed,” she said.
“I won’t lie. There’s always a slight chance that things won’t work out the way I planned, but I have Clark to look after me, and remember, I’m not that easy to kill.”
“If you don’t come home to me, I’ll be the one killing you, and not even Clark will be able to stop me.” She tried to make it sound playful, but there was no question she was serious.
I kissed her. “I have to get back to St. Augustine today. We’ll fly out of NAS Jax tomorrow. You can do whatever you’d like. If you want to hang out here for a while, the suite is available as long as you want it, or you can always go back to St. Augustine. Whatever you want.”
“Really?” she said. “Anything I want?”
“Yes, of course.”
She lifted the breakfast tray from the bed and placed it on the nightstand. “Okay. In that case, I want to go with you.”
I froze. Bewilderment overtook me, and I was certain my face showed the panic I was feeling.
After a full minute of letting me stew in my own juices, she said, “Relax. I’m just messing with you. You couldn’t drag me to Russia in November.”
I exhaled in marked relief. “It’s still October.”
“Yeah, well, thirty below is cold regardless of the month. I’m a big girl. I’ll be fine. I’ll hang out here another couple of days, and then see if I can catch up with Kip and Teri, wherever they are these days.”
Teri was Penny’s best friend since high school, and Kip was Teri’s husband. Their catamaran looked enough like mine to confuse a team of saboteurs, and it wound up on the bottom of the North Atlantic after an explosive device was planted on the hull. I’d pulled everyone from the burning, sinking boat before it’d vanished beneath the waves, but Teri sustained some pretty nasty burns. Fortunately, she’d healed quickly and was already shopping for another boat.
“I’m sure they’d love to see you,” I said, thankful she wasn’t on the verge of killing me.
She laughed. “The look on your face was hilarious. I thought spies were supposed to be masters of their emotions. You’d make a terrible poker player.” She planted her lips on mine, reminding me just how lost I’d be without her. “Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re not a spy.”
Someone cleared his throat just outside the door of our bedroom, leaving Penny grabbing for a robe and me grabbing for my pistol.
“Don’t shoot, Romeo,” said Clark. “It’s just me.”
“How’d you get in here?” I growled.
“Unlike you, I am a spy, and getting through locked doors just happens to be one of the things we spies know how to do.”
Wrapped awkwardly in the bedspread—the closest thing she could find to a robe—Penny said, “The maid let you in, didn’t she?”
He ignored her. “Get some clothes on, Uggah. We’ve got work to do.”
Looking down, I realized I wasn’t experiencing the same degree of modesty as Penny. “What do you mean, Uggah?”
He laughed. “You went to school at UGA, didn’t you?”
“That’s it,” I said as I started galloping toward him. “You’re getting a naked morning hug.”
“Oh, no you don’t!�
�� he said as he staggered backward.
I discontinued my pursuit and closed the door.
“You guys are too much,” Penny said, allowing the bedspread to fall to the floor. “But I’ll take one of those naked morning hugs.”
Clark would have to wait.
Chapter 11
Peas and Carrots
Clark leveled off at eight thousand feet headed back toward St. Augustine. “So, how’d Penny take the news?”
“Better than I expected.”
He set the autopilot and relaxed for the two-hour flight. “She’s a keeper, you know?”
“Yeah, I know, but—”
“No buts,” he said. “How long are you gonna keep doing this?”
“Doing what?”
He peered at me over the rim of his sunglasses. “Chasing Anya.”
“I’m not chasing Anya.”
“Look, man. I’d fight a bear for you—not like a grizzly bear, of course—I mean, like a Care Bear. I’d kick a Care Bear’s ass for you, but that girl back there with your car and your hotel room—she wants more than cars and hotel rooms. She wants your last name.”
Out on the blue waters of the Atlantic, I watched a sailboat enjoying the same southeasterly wind that was adding twenty knots to our ground speed. When I turned back around, Clark had repositioned his sunglasses and was scanning the instrument panel. He was the most hardened warrior I’d ever known, and completely fearless in the face of any threat, but behind that callused exterior was an unequaled sincerity and understanding of humanity. He may not have had any diplomas hanging on his wall, but I envied how he could read people. Especially me.
“I agree,” I said.
He kept his eyes focused on the panel. “That’s the surest way to be right…agreeing with me.”
I unbuckled his seatbelt and reached across him, pretending to open the door. “That’s it. Get out.”
He laughed. “Don’t tempt me. I know a beautiful girl down there in Vero Beach who’d love to have an old Airborne Ranger land in her backyard. That’d be a lot more fun than keeping you alive in Siberia.”
I reattached his seatbelt. “I agree with you that Penny’s a keeper. I just worry that what we do for a living makes a real relationship impossible.”