Once Burned, Twice Spy

by Diane Henders

  Kane nodded matter-of-factly. “I assumed that. They would have found you already if it had been one of theirs. So Nora says she’s your mother. Do you believe her?”

  I hesitated, my guts clenching in memory. “I… I think… I might have to. She knew things that… would be hard for anyone to unearth. But… I don’t know. After all, Sam was there off and on throughout my whole childhood. What if Nora is just one of his associates and he told her a few things that would sound convincing?”

  “Did she volunteer these personal details?” Kane asked.

  “No. She said to ask her anything. And I did…” I tried to tug at a lock of hair, forgetting that I was wearing Teresa’s kerchief. I settled for mangling my seatbelt in my fist instead. “…but what if Sam programmed me to ask exactly those questions, and fed his associate the answers so I’d be convinced?”

  Kane sighed. “That’s the big question. And the next big question is, even if you did manage to meet with her and even if she told you exactly what Sam had programmed into your mind, could you afford to believe her?”

  I dropped my forehead onto the steering wheel with a groan. “No. Hell, maybe she programmed me to steal the m-” I bit off ‘metal powder’ and substituted, “…stolen item and now she’s just luring me back so I’ll deliver it to her.”

  Kane sat up abruptly. “You have it?”

  “Um… Maybe…?” My voice came out very small.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

  “I have… had… um, found something… that looked like it. In my parka pocket.” At the look on his face, I hurriedly added, “But everybody had access to my parka. That’s why I think I’m being framed; and I’m pretty sure I know who’s doing it, and why.”

  “All right,” Kane said cautiously. “Who, and why?”

  I outlined Grandin’s activities and my suspicions while Kane and Skidmark listened in silence. While I talked, Skidmark’s chin drooped lower and lower onto his chest and his breathing deepened into soft snoring.

  I didn’t believe his act for an instant.

  Kane shot him a suspicious look, too, but made no comment until I’d finished my narrative. “So let me be sure I understand this,” he said at last. “Your original orders were to investigate Nora, and now you have even more reason to do so. But if you resurface to contact her you’ll be arrested and probably imprisoned until the extradition is decided, which could take anywhere from several months to two years. If the extradition goes ahead you’ll have a fatal accident before you ever enter the United States. If you can’t determine whether you’ve been compromised, you’re potentially dangerous to everyone, including yourself; and if you do ascertain that you’ve been compromised…”

  He trailed off, and I swallowed hard and finished his sentence. “I’ll have to turn myself in.”

  “And be executed,” Kane said flatly.

  “Probably.” I had intended my tone to be dispassionate, but the word crept quivering from my mouth.

  Kane frowned. “So if we can prove Grandin is framing you, the U.S. will drop its extradition request; and then we can put Nora on the lie detector and find out exactly what programming is in your mind, if any.”

  “Except that Nora has diplomatic immunity,” I said. “So she can’t be forced to take a lie detector test if she refuses; and she already refused. On Saturday she’s going back to the U.K., and then she’ll be beyond our reach. If that happens it won’t matter whether I’m up for extradition or not, because if the Department thinks I’ve been compromised I’ll be dead long before the Minister of Justice ever gets around to ruling on the request.” I crushed my long-suffering seatbelt in my fist. “I have to talk to Nora right away!”

  “And say what to her?” Kane demanded. “You have no way of knowing whether she’s lying. And anyway, if everyone thinks you attacked her they’ll have doubled her security in case you try again. And if she’s accessible at all, it’s likely because they’re using her as bait to trap you. Talking to Nora is a bad idea.”

  I clenched the seat belt tighter, making my arthritic thumb ache. “But it’s the only option I’ve got.”

  Kane studied me, looking troubled. “Or maybe it’s the only option you’re considering. Maybe you’ve been programmed to seek out Nora no matter what.”

  A queasy chill settled in the pit of my stomach. “Maybe.” My voice trembled, and I steadied it with an effort before continuing, “But maybe not. I didn’t have enough time to talk to her. I only asked a couple of questions; not enough to be sure of anything. And she did give me some hairs for DNA testing. Maybe she really is my mother and truly wants to help…”

  Kane was already shaking his head and eyeing me as though debating whether to tie me up and throw me in the trunk before I went completely bonkers.

  I gave him a ‘calm-down’ gesture and went on hurriedly, “I’m not saying I believe that. I’m just saying, what if she only wanted to give me a heads-up before she reported this to the Department? What if she’s actually willing to take a lie detector test about this? I can see why she wouldn’t have wanted to take one in public earlier. If she’s been living under an assumed identity all this time, she wouldn’t take a chance on being outed. If I ask her to do a lie detector test now and she refuses, there’s a pretty good chance she’s lying; which would be good news for me. And if she agrees, it solves the problem.”

  “If she refuses you’ll have put yourself in a dangerous position for no reason, because you still won’t know for sure what she’s concealing,” Kane argued. “And if she agrees, it’s still not proof that she’s telling the truth; plus you’ll have to find some way to arrange the test at the Department without getting arrested. We need to nail Grandin first.”

  “True; but if she tells me what she knows and agrees to take a lie detector test about it, at least…” I directed a significant glance at the pocket where he’d stowed my network key and generator. “I might feel safer using my, um… skills to investigate Grandin. I’m afraid to do that now because if I’ve been compromised, and I go in…” I bit off the phrase ‘into the network’ and substituted, “…investigating… you know there’s nothing in the world that can stop me.” I swallowed the sick feeling rising in my throat. “I could sell out without even knowing it.”

  “You’re right; I don’t think we should take that risk.” Kane scrubbed his knuckles through his short dark hair, eyeing me worriedly. “I still think it would be best to concentrate on Grandin.”

  “But without my…” I nodded at his pocket. “I don’t have any way to investigate somebody like him. Do you?”

  Kane blew out a breath. “No. I don’t have access to those resources anymore.”

  “So I really have to talk to Nora. She gave me her secret burner number and she’s got a bug detector; but she’s not an agent and I’m afraid she might be under surveillance without realizing it.”

  “Agreed. Calling her isn’t an option.”

  I sighed. “So I need to find a way to talk to her in person.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  I slumped lower in the seat. “I don’t either; but if I can’t call her, I don’t see that I have any other choice.”

  “Yes, you do,” Kane said firmly. “I’ll make contact with Nora while you stay dark with Skidmark supervising you.” He glanced dubiously at the smelly form slumbering in the passenger seat, then went on, “Dirk and Grandin don’t know me and I haven’t had contact with MI6 in years, so Nora’s agent likely won’t know me either…”

  Despair dampened my voice to a weary monotone. “He knows you.”

  Kane’s brows snapped together. “Who is he?”

  I glanced over at Skidmark’s somnolent presence. Hell, I couldn’t help it if he blew his own cover. “Ian Rand. AKA Orion Moonjava.”

  Skidmark didn’t even twitch.

  Kane did.

  “Dammit! What are the odds of that?” he snapped.

  I sighed. “When I’m involved? Anything that can go
wrong, will go wrong. And even things that can’t go wrong will go wrong.”

  Kane slumped against the seat, crossing his arms over his chest and frowning at me. “How do I even know you’re telling me the whole truth? Or any of it?”

  “I haven’t a clue. I think I am, but…” I trailed off, then burst out, “Look, this is stupid! I can’t even trust myself, so I can’t ask you to trust me. At least if I don’t have any of my weapons or gear there’s only so much harm I can do; so I’ll just give it all to you and you can go home and pretend this never happened.”

  Skidmark jerked upright with such suddenness that Kane and I both jumped.

  “Hell, no!” he barked.

  Chapter 34

  “You’re not leaving,” Skidmark snapped at Kane. “You know too much. If Holt intercepted Storm’s text to you, he’ll be on you with that fancy new lie detector as soon as you resurface. You’ll blow Storm’s cover all to hell. You stay with Storm, and I’ll get to Nora.”

  Shit, speaking of blowing covers…

  Kane was surveying Skidmark speculatively, but maybe it wasn’t too late for the old man to backtrack.

  “Skidmark, no. Orion Moonjava knows you,” I said. “And the Palliser is the fanciest hotel downtown. The doorman will give you the bum’s rush if you even get near the place.”

  Skidmark snorted. “Rand knows ol’ Skidmark. I can make sure he won’t recognize me, and the doorman won’t give me any grief.” His diction was far too crisp, and Kane’s gaze sharpened.

  “You’ve been smoking too much weed, old man,” I growled warningly. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Nope. Time to lay my cards on the table.” He locked eyes with Kane. “I’m an agent. Started off doing intelligence work in Vietnam; and Moonbeam, Karma, and I have been undercover out at the commune ever since. Those terrorists you tangled with last spring were part of one of our ops.”

  At Kane’s narrow-eyed look, Skidmark went on, “Yeah, we knew you were involved in that. And we know you were an agent and your buddy Hellhound is a Special Forces sniper and weapons specialist.”

  “Aydan…” Kane began ominously.

  Skidmark interrupted him. “Storm didn’t tell us anything. We researched you through our own channels. Our cover is so deep that your Department doesn’t even know we exist; but we let Rand into the picture when Five Eyes assigned him to round up those terrorists. That’s how he knows me; but he’s only ever seen this.” He made an up-and-down gesture at his scruffy appearance. “He won’t recognize me when I’m cleaned up.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” Kane said. “I don’t know how current your training is; but agents these days are up on the latest facial recognition techniques. I could spot you even in a disguise, as long as I could see your key facial features.”

  Skidmark grinned, his gold tooth barely visible through his forest of facial hair. “Can you see ’em now?”

  We studied him in silence. His face was almost completely obscured by his tangled beard, overgrown moustache, and bushy eyebrows. His long greasy hair straggled every which way, concealing his forehead. His eyes glinted with humour and intelligence, but if he kept them heavy-lidded as he usually did…

  “Not well,” Kane said reluctantly. “If I was paying attention I could still recognize you unless your next disguise obscured your features in some way; but if Rand was involved in an active op with you as an ally he might not have observed you that closely. And if he sees you in another disguise now, with your presence completely out of context… you might get away with it. Maybe.”

  “’Course I will,” Skidmark said comfortably. “’Cause even if he does recognize me, he’ll be recognizing somebody else.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Kane demanded.

  “Watch and learn, son.”

  Skidmark reached into the dirty rucksack at his feet and withdrew a small case. From it, he extracted bottles and jars of grooming products. While Kane and I watched in silence, he went to work with a comb, gel, and moustache wax.

  After only a few minutes, Kane’s eyes widened, a smile spreading over his face. “You old dog!” he exclaimed.

  I frowned at him, then turned to stare at Skidmark, who had tamed his rampant eyebrows and slicked his hair into a ponytail, revealing a noble brow and piercing eyes surrounded by a maze of laugh lines. His sleekly-waxed moustache curled in flamboyant arcs on either side of his mouth; and while I watched he braided his beard into a tidy queue and settled a black beret at a jaunty angle on his head.

  “Brenton Carlisle!” Kane laughed out loud, the sound full of delight. “It’s an honour to meet you!” He extended his hand, and Skidmark shook it, grinning. No gold tooth.

  “What the hell?” I demanded.

  Kane turned to me, a smile still lifting the corners of his mouth. “Aydan, I’d like you to meet Brenton Carlisle, a reclusive artist who has been revered for his West Coast landscapes for the last forty years.”

  “Seriously?” I stared at the transformed Skidmark. “You’re a famous artist?”

  He shrugged, his eyes twinkling. “When you’re out in the backwoods for decades, you gotta do something besides toke up and jerk off or you’ll go bugfuck crazy.”

  “Crazy-er,” I corrected with a grin, and he chuckled. I added, “John is a talented artist, too. You should see the beautiful illustrations he’s done for his children’s book.”

  “Is that so?” Skidmark raised an interested eyebrow.

  “Never mind that,” Kane said. “How do you propose to get to Nora?”

  “You said she’s at a fancy hotel, right? So it has a restaurant?”

  “Several,” Kane replied. “But if I was the agent in charge of a weapons director who had already been attacked, I’d lock her in her room and get room service.”

  “You could try,” I countered. “But don’t forget, Nora wants to talk to me. She doesn’t believe I attacked her. I bet she’d talk Ian into letting her out.”

  “If he’s a competent agent, she could talk all she wanted without changing his mind,” Kane said. “But if he wanted to trap you… he might decide to use her for bait.”

  “I’d put money on that.” Skidmark gave me a sly wink. “If you just got the better of Rand again, he’ll be hellbent on catching you. I bet he’s still smarting over that fifty bucks I won off him.”

  “What does your bet with Rand have to do with Aydan?” Kane demanded.

  Heat rose in my cheeks. “Never mind. So what’s your plan, Skidmark?”

  “Well…” He delved into the bulging rucksack again and showed us a sketchpad and a well-used set of pastels. “Portraits were never really my thing, but I can do a recognizable likeness of you. If I’m sitting in the lobby sketching, people automatically come and gawk. When your Nora comes by, I’ll make sure she sees the sketch of you. If she wants to talk to you as bad as you think, she’ll latch onto me.”

  “And then what?” Kane asked. “Rand will have a bug on her, and a locator device. You can’t take her anywhere without him following.”

  “I’m counting on it.” Skidmark grinned. “I’m going to take the lady out for lunch. And if we get a bit frisky in the cab, she might leave some clothes behind.” He turned to me with a lascivious eyebrow raised. “Is she hot?”

  “Skidmark, she’s my mother!”

  His grin widened. “So if she looks anything like you, she’s hot.” He sobered. “If you lend me that handy-dandy little device you used earlier… that was a bug detector, wasn’t it?”

  “Um…”

  I glanced awkwardly at Kane, who showed me his unreadable cop face. Damn. My call.

  I sighed. “Yes, it was a bug detector. Classified. If I manage to survive all this shit, I’ll end up in prison anyway just for telling you all this.”

  “Hey, I don’t know nothin’.” Skidmark let his eyelids droop and his face slacken. “I’m just a stoned old fart.”

  I smiled in spite of my worries. “Yeah, right.”

  He snapped back
to his alert self. “Anyway, I’ll get her in the cab. If she wants to talk to you as bad as you say, she’ll help me take any bugs and locators off her, and then we’ll do a transfer. You sail up behind the cab, grab her, and take off. Rand should be a few cars back, and if we do it smooth enough he won’t be able to catch you.”

  “I’ll do that part,” Kane said. “We can’t risk Aydan getting captured. When we’re clear of Rand, I’ll bring Nora to her.”

  “You can’t,” I objected. “She doesn’t know you, so she won’t go with you. And even if they don’t catch you when you try to grab Nora, they’ll arrest you for it as soon as this is over and you try to go home. You’re a civilian now, not an agent. At best, it’s obstructing an investigation and kidnapping. At worst…” I swallowed hard. “…if it turns out I’m compromised and selling secrets… it’s treason.”

  “Which changes nothing,” Kane said stonily. “If you’re compromised, this is treason.” He waved a hand at the three of us.

  My heart plummeted into my suddenly roiling stomach. “Oh, shit! Dammit, Skidmark, I knew this was a bad idea…” I sucked in a breath, my brain spinning up to maximum RPM. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. John, you’re going to get in your truck and drive straight to the nearest police station. Get them to contact the Department and tell them I tried to involve you in this but you tricked me into giving you the n-” I bit off ‘network key’ and substituted, “…stuff I just gave you. Tell them everything you know, including my fake identity. I’ll use a new one…”

  My heart sank even farther. I didn’t have another car. And I had used a bunch of my cash to pay for a hotel room I wouldn’t be able to use.

  “No,” Kane said.

  “Yes!” I glowered at him. “Daniel needs you. And I’m not going to let you go to prison because of my fuckup. Now get out of the car.”

  A small grim smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Make me.”

  He filled the back seat. Six feet four inches of hard muscle, deadly martial arts skills, and pigheaded stubbornness.