by Sean Parnell
Meg’s front door was ajar, which made Steele’s fingers switch the bottle from his right hand to his left and twitch toward his handgun. He toed the door open, saw nothing but hazy low-light gloom and a drawn shade over the far picture window, heeled the door closed, and advanced farther. Then the bedroom door on his left flung open and she came flying at him, with her black hair askew, her ice-blue eyes big and wild, and the only thing covering her athletic form a criminally short, silk black kimono splashed with combating dragons.
She hurled him backward onto her pin-striped sofa, grabbed the lapels of his blazer in both tight fists, and kissed him hard while she straddled his waist. The impact flung his arms to the sides and the wine bottle bounced on a cushion, but luckily stayed there intact. With her lips still locked onto Steele’s, Meg tore off his jacket like a cop disabling a perp, pulled his 1911 from the holster, dumped the magazine, and racked the slide. A round went spinning off somewhere and she flung the gun and the mag in the couch corner—she hated Steele’s “one-in-the-chamber” habit. Then she got down to business.
She released his tongue from her lips, slid back, yanked his belt buckle open, and snapped his jeans and briefs down to his ankles. Steele didn’t need much more libidinous encouragement than that, but he was still somewhat shocked when Meg stared at him accusingly, as if he’d drugged her with Love Potion Number Nine, and then flicked her kimono sash open, whipped the whole thing off her gymnast’s body, and mounted him with a weird small animal cry. He was still wearing his shirt and she clutched the white cotton over his chest muscles like a pair of reins and rode him so intensely he thought she might break something important, but he held back until she reared her head up and orgasmed, then he followed suit because he thought that was fair, and then she rode him even harder, like it was the last lap of the Kentucky Derby, until they were both hyperventilating and shiny with sweat.
She rolled off him, tucked her gleaming naked body close to his bare thigh, dropped her wild-haired head on his chest, and sighed. Steele looked down at her.
“I’m glad to see you too,” he gasped.
“Just be quiet for a minute,” Meg whispered.
That was fine with Steele. It was going to take at least that long for his heart to stop slamming his rib cage. Meg wasn’t usually like this. She was controlled, reserved, and OCD neat. Their lovemaking usually occurred on a bed that looked like she’d measured the turned-down sheets with a slide rule.
But that didn’t mean she was prissy.
She’d been a field operator for the Intelligence Support Activity, a branch of the Defense Intelligence Agency that tasked young men and women with laying the groundwork for Tier One special operations. ISA personnel had been on the ground in Islamabad prepping the hit on Osama bin Laden long before SEAL Team 6 showed up. Meg had multiple deployments in her army 201 file, including Ramadi and Mosul, and then she’d worked some very rough Middle East neighborhoods for the CIA, almost losing her life in Algiers. She regularly kicked men’s asses in the hand-to-hand gym, but up until this evening, she’d been fairly bread-and-butter when it came to sex. Maybe this was the revelation of a wild side that she hadn’t shown Steele before. He was looking forward to more.
“Are we cleared for conversation yet?” he asked at last.
“It’s called afterglow,” she said. “You need to read some girly books.”
“I already am. I’m halfway through Eat, Pray, Love.”
“Ass.”
She slapped his chest, got up, recovered her kimono, and quickly rewrapped herself. Steele felt a little silly with his jeans down around his ankles so he pulled them up, but he had to unbutton his dress shirt because his body was steaming. Meg picked up the wine bottle from the couch corner and inspected the label.
“Why’s it called 19 Crimes?”
“It’s an Australian vintage. Apparently, way back in Merry Olde England during the eighteenth century, being convicted of any one of nineteen crimes could get you a one-way ticket to Australia, which was nothing but a penal colony at the time.”
“What were the crimes?” Meg walked into her spotless kitchen with the bottle and returned with two balloon glasses and a corkscrew.
“No idea. I’m an amateur drunk and only an occasional historian.”
Meg handed Steele the glasses, sat down next to him, clamped the bottle between her naked thighs, and started driving the screw into the cork. His eyebrows went up.
“You’re doing that on the couch?”
“I’m having it replaced tomorrow.”
“Ahh, that explains why you didn’t care about staining it.”
“Don’t be gross.” She poured the glasses, set the bottle on the floor, and they both clinked and sipped.
“And I missed you too,” she said. “And I’m pissed at you.”
“Why?”
“I’m not exactly in the Program, Eric, but I knew where you were and have a good guess at what you were doing.” The Keyhole project was not officially part of Cutlass Main, but Meg’s shop supported Program activities with real-time intelligence. “I was worried, and I’m sure you knew that, and then you swing back in here, go TDY, and I don’t even see you till you show up at the big house.”
He reached out to stroke her raven hair, then leaned forward and kissed her forehead.
“I had to see my mother.”
Meg laughed. “You’re definitely the only Tier One shooter I know who’s such a mama’s boy.”
“Well, she almost took one for the team. She deserves some attention.”
“Fair enough.”
They both sat back and sipped for a while. Then Steele broached the subject that was hanging right there in the air.
“I saw Collins Austin today.”
“I’m glad I didn’t,” Meg said as she slowly shook her head. “I know she wasn’t with Raines anymore, but she’s still going through what I’m scared of every day.”
Something about the way she said that set off an alarm in Steele’s operator head. Meg wasn’t his wife, and might never be, but he suddenly realized that having a ring and sworn vows didn’t matter. They were not both Alphas—he was at the sharp end, while she was still part of the handle—but they were starting to cross that line where emotional attachments could cloud a man’s brain. For him to keep on being a top operator with the Program, he could never find himself at the edge of some high-risk gambit somewhere and be thinking, This could get me killed. And what about Meg?
“That’s exactly why Pitts is so adamant about interoffice relationships.” Steele’s voice was chilly.
“I’m technically not part of the Program.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, “Well, do you think we should quit?”
“The Program?” Steele was certain that he loved her, but he was far from ready to surrender his career to love. He couldn’t imagine going from what he did every day to having a Colonial house with a fireplace, a kindergarten minivan, and a brood of kids.
“No,” she said. “Each other.”
There was no way to answer that ambush question, so he deftly begged off.
“Let’s just table that for now. I’m off to Paris in the morning.”
She snuggled up closer to him. “Just watch your athletic ass. Whoever took out Raines had to be some big, bad, ugly dude. Maybe badder than you.”
She’s not read-on to the file, he thought. Cutlass Main’s strict compartmentalization policy’s still airtight, just like it’s supposed to be. She doesn’t know the details of the kill. She doesn’t know it was a woman, or how it was really done. Better that way.
“What’s for dinner?” he said.
“I was thinking Chinese.”
“I passed Hank’s Oyster Bar today.”
She dragged her short fingernails through his chest curls and kissed him. “Believe me, Mr. Steele, you don’t need oysters.”
They ordered a pile of food up from Young Chow, watched on
e episode of Stranger Things, and went to bed. But they didn’t make love again. They both knew they weren’t going to top their reunion spectacular. Just before they fell asleep, Meg kissed him long and deeply, and whispered, “Just don’t get stilettoed under your jaw.”
“Not a chance,” Steele murmured, and then he was off to dreamland.
Steele’s internal cranial clock went off at exactly 4:00 a.m. It was one of his stranger talents, being able to wake himself up at any selected time, no matter his level of fatigue. All he had to do was envision a neon digital hour and minutes, with a.m. or p.m. glowing to the right, and that’s when he’d sit straight up in bed. He’d been doing it since middle school, when he’d gotten his first underage job working a milk truck in rural Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, he hadn’t taken advantage of the skill to get himself to school on time.
He slipped out from under Meg’s sheets, pulled his 1911 from below the bed, tiptoed to the bathroom, brushed his teeth with a finger, stepped into the tub, and took a quick “whore’s bath” with a washcloth—he thought the noise of a shower would wake her, and one long goodbye was enough. He dressed quietly in her salon, holstered the pistol, and checked his cell for secure messages; there were none. He locked himself out of her condo, took the elevator down to the indoor garage to recover his GTO, picked up a large burned coffee at an all-night McDonald’s, and headed for Dulles Airport.
He parked the GTO in a short-term lot, outside. It would be harder for someone to screw with his car or try to jack it out in the open. Then he sat there for a full hour reading every page of the Stalker Six file, twice, though mostly he focused on Raines’s last three days on earth, and he memorized place-names and Paris phone numbers. The autopsy report was in French, one of his best language skills, but still the words énorme perte de sang—massive blood loss—seemed worse in a romance language.
“You got sloppy, buddy,” he whispered out loud as the bright orange ball of the sun rose above Dulles’s massive runways and the early-morning jumbos careened up into the humid blue sky.
Then he felt bad about judging Raines, because he knew that any man who traveled like crazy, risked his life all the time, and was rarely home long enough to catch a baseball game could eventually develop a fissure that some wily adversary would penetrate.
“But she wasn’t just some female assassin, right, Jon? She was beautiful, seductive, red-hot and ready, the type of woman any of us would go for.”
He decided that he’d have to delve deeper into Raines’s personal dating tastes—aside from Collins Austin—which might offer some clues. But there wasn’t enough time for that now. He looked left and right out his car windows, making sure that no one was near. He reached back and pulled a black, nondescript REI backpack into the front seat, took off his holster and pistol, and zipped the 1911 and the red file into the ruck. Then he called Cutlass Main on his cell.
“Identify,” said a sleepy female voice on the other end.
“Max Sands.”
“Code in.”
He recited an alphanumeric string, waited through some beeps and clicks, and the voice said, “What can I do for you, Mr. Sands?”
“I need a handoff, Dulles, Air France check-in. One hour, please. I’m tight to my flight.”
“Absolutely. We’ll find you.” She clicked off.
He wasn’t going to leave his handgun and the file in the car, not even in a lockbox that could only be opened with a thumbprint. If somebody really wanted his “jewels,” they could tow his vehicle with a fake AAA tow truck and contract a safecracker to take his sweet time. He took his small rollaway from the trunk, locked up, and walked into the terminal clutching his bitter java and on the hunt for a cinnamon cruller.
Precisely one hour later, he was standing at one of those quick-ticket kiosks between Air France and KLM, inserting a Max Sands credit card from his wallet, when one of Cutlass Main’s couriers cruised in beside him, also dragging a rollaway and carrying an identical backpack, which he dropped at his feet right next to Steele’s. The handoff was easy. Steele’s ticket popped out, he took the courier’s backpack, which was packed with a laptop and plenty of Graceland Import Exports pocket litter, and headed for the security gates. The courier took Steele’s backpack with his 1911 and the red file inside, and headed back to Cutlass Main.
One of Steele’s well-kept secrets was that he loved to fly. All the other Alphas, keepers, armorers, analysts, and support staff bitched about it, claiming that they logged more miles than United Airlines flight attendants and federal sky marshals. Good soldier that he was, Steele crabbed right along with them, but the truth was that being on a long-range flight, even in economy class, was his favorite time. He could relax, watch a movie, read a book, and not have to answer some frantic call from HQ. To him it was like enjoying one of those sensory deprivation float chambers: no outside stimuli, other than whatever he chose.
But all of a sudden, he wasn’t enjoying this flight at all. The 737 had taken off on time, and he was halfway down the cabin, sitting in an aisle seat, in a luxurious half-empty plane with plenty of leg room. He’d already ordered a Bloody Mary, yet his face was immobile as cold granite and he was staring at nothing.
And he was wondering how Meg Harden knew about the stiletto that had killed Stalker Six. . . .
Chapter 8
Paris, France
Madame LeBarge, the night manager of the Montmartre Bed & Breakfast on 13 Rue Muller, wasn’t a pretty woman. In fact she was fat, pushing eighty, and had worn the same muumuu printed with Normandy bovines for three days in a row. She had wispy white hair, wore pince-nez spectacles, and chain-smoked Gauloises. The minute Steele saw her, he felt like he was facing a gatekeeper from the last iteration of The Matrix.
As soon as he’d landed at Orly, just after midnight, he’d called over to the B&B where Stalker Six had been staying and asked for a room. She’d told him she had none. He’d asked to see one anyway.
“A cette heure?” she’d growled in a smoky Parisian patois. At this hour? “Fou américain. Si vous insistez.” Crazy American. If you insist.
Now he was sitting with her at a pink metal table in the courtyard of the Montmartre. The courtyard was large, festooned with fresh blooms, and Madame LeBarge’s Jabba the Hutt figure was bathed in the yellow glow of overhead hanging lanterns. She was clearly displeased at having her reading disturbed. Steele noted her book was Albert Camus’s L’Étranger, which happened to be about a murder.
“I assure you, Madame, I’m Mr. Raines’s business colleague,” Steele said in French fluent enough to keep her from responding in English, which Parisians often did out of spite.
“So you claim.” She took a long drag off her filterless smoke, coughed, and folded her arms.
Steele then described Raines in detail. He knew Stalker Six had been traveling under his own name, which Alphas sometimes did when on leave. They were all “ghosted” and didn’t exist on anyone’s database, so occasionally it was safer that way.
“He has not returned to his room,” the night manager huffed.
“Well, he’s been having some family difficulties,” Steele said.
“They are not my difficulties. There is a bill to pay.”
“Do you still have his credit card information, Madame?”
“I do.” Yet she shrugged, as if that was worthless.
“Feel free to charge it,” Steele said. “And I’ll cover any additional expenses. Have you rented his room?”
Madame LeBarge palmed her ample chest. “Do I look like a thief?”
“Of course not.” Steele slipped a hand in his pocket and slid four fifty-euro bills onto the table. “I’d like to see his room. And then, perhaps I’ll book it myself.”
She looked at the cash over her pince-nez, then back at his jade-green eyes.
“You shall have to pay both his bill, and yours.”
“Avec plaisir,” he said. With pleasure.
She slipped the bills into her dress pocket, trundled into h
er small office, and returned with a brass key attached to a tag that said romantic artist room in English. She gave it to Steele, then pointed at a slim green door and said, “Third floor.”
He slung his REI backpack, gripped his rollaway, and went up.
The room didn’t match any of the nineteenth-century architecture he’d seen outside. It was minimalist, with cream-white walls, a black-and-white tiled floor, a Scandinavian king-size bed, and framed modern art all over the place. Left of the bed was a red plastic rocking chair, a minifridge, and an Art Deco electric fan atop an open wardrobe with a few wooden hangers. Right of the bed, a large modern bathroom was walled off from the rest of the space by plexiglass. Steele didn’t much care for that kind of toilet exposure, but then he saw a brocaded purple curtain that could be pulled from both sides of the glass for privacy. Raines’s toothbrush and shaving kit were still above the porcelain pedestal sink. Raines’s rollaway was open on a wooden luggage mount at the far side of the bed.
Steele looked through the luggage but didn’t expect to find anything revealing. The only unusual item was a music CD of Superchunk, lying atop Raines’s neatly folded clothes. Alphas generally traveled “naked,” meaning unarmed, and picked up whatever weapons or tools of the trade they might need from safehouses maintained by the Program in major capital cities. In the morning he’d head over to the safehouse in the 20th arrondissement and avail himself of an FN Five-seveN pistol in 5.7 x 28 mm, and a Smith & Wesson tanto folding knife. He figured he could get through the night without them.
Then he spotted one item that piqued his interest. Lying on the wooden night table was a four-color flyer, advertising the current Monet exhibit at the Louvre and a concurrent lecture by Egyptian-born French artist Emile Sadat. The date and time were circled in pen.
It was the same day on which Stalker Six had been murdered.
