The Phoenix Law

by Cate Dermody

“Not gonna happen,” Erika said without missing a beat. “That thing’s buried under so much red tape, God himself would take three years to get through the bureaucracy to make a copy.”

  “Sure,” Alisha said. “I need a copy of it anyway.”

  “What is it, you believe I can walk on water or something? Alisha, I’m telling you, that box indicts Susan Simone as a double agent. One of the most highly placed CIA officers of the last decade. Screw the Freedom of Information Act. That thing is never going to see the light of day again.”

  Alisha sank down into the water until it spilled into her mouth when she smiled and spoke again. “So how long will it take you?”

  The Michigan woman spluttered, a sound of mixed pride and exasperation. “Why do you need it?”

  “Because Nichole Oldenburg doesn’t exist, and I want something—anything—that ties her directly to being Cristina Lamken. I think that recording’s my best bet. The Firebird black boxes have visual, don’t they?”

  “One of Brandon’s brighter ideas,” Erika conceded, though the tone suggested she didn’t mean it. “Alisha, I turned that thing over to people above Greg, because you asked me to. I haven’t even watched it. I honestly might not be able to get a copy.”

  “I have faith in you, E.”

  The mutter that came over the line made Alisha grin, water wetting her lips again. “I’ll do what I can,” Erika said. “Tell me about this tail you’ve got on your illustrious former partner. Maybe I can do something useful.”

  “She’s British. I don’t know what covert ops team she works for, but she used to be with Reichart.”

  “Whoa,” Erika said in a credible Neo impression. “With him with him, or just with him?”

  “With him with him.” Alisha kept her voice neutral, which fooled her friend not at all.

  “So you want this something useful to be, like, drop an anvil on her head? I could go all Wile E. Coyote on her. I’ve always kind of wanted to do that,” Erika added wistfully. “I mean, not so much actually dropping an anvil on somebody’s head, but arranging a near miss. Or a grand piano. You know. Classic slapstick stuff.”

  “You’re the only person I know who would genuinely love setting something like that up. You should’ve gone into set design for movies, or whoever it is in films who does that kind of thing.”

  “Ooh.” Interest piqued in Erika’s voice. “Maybe I could get a new hobby. Okay. British, ex-Reichart-chick. Anything else I should know? Deadly allergies to shellfish that can be used to our benefit?”

  Alisha laughed, closing her eyes. “You’re awful.” Awful, but Erika’s cheerful irreverence always made Alisha feel better. It was a dose of sunshine, promising that the world might have its dreadful moments, but they could be gotten through with humor and, as Erika would helpfully point out, a brain the size of a planet. “She’s dark-haired, about thirty-five, and I don’t know about shellfish allergies. Give her a hand if you can, E. I’ve got to get going.” The bath had done wonders for warming her frozen body, but Erika’s company, even over the phone, had gone even further in restoring Alisha’s equilibrium. “Call me when you get that tape, okay?”

  “You save-the-world types,” Erika muttered. “All right. Give me a couple of days.”

  “You’re my hero, E.”

  “Of course I am.” Erika hung up with a maximum of good-natured grumbling. Alisha dropped the phone on the floor and sank up to her eyebrows in water with a burbled groan of contentment.

  Snorting water cooled to room temperature had awakened her in a fit of coughing and tearing eyes. Afternoon sunlight glowed through the frosted bathroom window, disorienting her. Alisha jolted to her feet, sloshing water over the edges of the tub. She stood on slick wet tiled floor an instant later, moving on impulse rather than thought: a towel, snatched from the rack, wrapped around her as if by magic, though she could replay the motions in her mind later. Her heart hammered too hard, adrenaline curdling her blood, a sense of danger associated with the abrupt awakening. Something felt wrong, too much crispness in the air, as if she was breathing high on a mountaintop.

  Her weapons lay on a puddle of fabric by the tub, her clothes abandoned only seconds before she’d climbed into the steaming water in an attempt to warm up. Alisha slipped her jeans on, grimacing at their clamminess, and yanked her shirt over her head without bothering with underwear. She had weapons again, a Glock she’d picked up from a CIA drop point outside of Dorchester. Someone would pay for that: the year-old codes she had should’ve been changed months ago to prevent such a liberal borrowing of Agency equipment, but she was grateful they hadn’t been. Gun butt cupped in her hands, Alisha pressed herself against the wall and edged the bathroom door open, taking in a narrow sweep of the hotel bedroom. A mirror glittered within her line of sight, giving her more view of the room. Nothing out of the ordinary was visible. Alisha mouthed a curse and shoved the door open, diving for the bedside and the scant protection it offered.

  A maid shrieked and ran for the door, fresh towels scattering everywhere. Alisha relaxed into the scratchy rug, sprawling her arms wide, heart rate still out of control. Ten seconds of breathing deeply passed, then, more centered, Alisha rolled to her feet and finished dressing, grabbing the quantum case and pulling her shoes on as she ran for the hotel stairs.

  She left without checking out, unwilling to give the staff another good look at her face. An itch along her spine told her that despite the innocuous reality of the maid in her room, more than just that had spurred her into action. Paranoia was a hallmark of being a spy, and it was, in Alisha’s estimation, far better to be cautious and mistaken than confident and right. She hurried through the parking lot, taking in the makes and models of cars there without consciously realizing it. None of them were out of the ordinary, all of the right price range and class for a cheap hotel on a main thoroughfare. Nothing, Alisha thought, was wrong, and yet something felt distinctly not right.

  Vehicles zoomed by, none of them responding to the hitch-hiker’s thumb Alisha put out, though a cab slowed and stopped after she’d marched down the road for several long minutes. Alisha ducked into it, grateful it was a cab and not a cop that had stopped her, and turned to watch the road receding behind her.

  Nothing familiar and no one recognizable lay down the path she’d come from, but hairs stood up on the back of her neck anyway. Compartmentalize, she all but sneered at herself. How many agents had gotten out of bad situations by the skin of their teeth, all on a hunch that told them to run when nothing of certainty could prove them right? Regardless of training, it was an emotional job, and something as esoteric as a hunch could save lives. When the life in question was her own, it was of particular interest to her.

  A blue van, dinged and shoddy, crept up on the cab’s left. Alisha turned her focus on it, a sensation of half-remembered familiarity accompanying its slow approach. It pulled up to within thirty feet or so—close enough, Alisha thought with a chill, to see her—then dropped back again, slowing to a more sedate pace. It might, she thought, have come from the hotel parking lot, but then again, any number of the nearby cars might have. “Please take the left at the next roundabout,” she said to her driver, and caught his glance back at her in the mirror before he grunted an agreement. She slid to the right, where she could keep an eye on the traffic behind her in the driver’s rearview mirror.

  The van, far enough behind to remain discreet, took the left at the roundabout, chugging along with the determination of an ancient manual vehicle. Alisha bared her teeth at the reflection in the mirror and said, “Sorry, but at the next roundabout could you just go back the way we’ve come? Toward the hotel again?”

  The driver gave her another look in the mirror, but shrugged it off. Alisha could all but see the words cross his mind: it was her money, and there was no accounting for Americans. He said, “A-ight,” then offered, “bat thar’s coonstrooctun gawin’ on on t’fair sayd of t’one we joost took,” in warning.

  Alisha fought off a smile at the
thickness of his accent, wondering if he put it on for the foreigner in his cab or if he was indecipherable by nature. “That’s fine. I’m not in a hurry.”

  The blue van followed them around the second roundabout, falling far enough back to be almost out of sight, but as the road straightened again Alisha caught a glimpse of it and knotted her hand, thumping it against the armrest. “That construction you mentioned,” she muttered, then lifted her voice to say, “How bad is it? Will it slow us a lot?”

  “Eenooof,” the driver allowed.

  “Enough,” Alisha repeated, then asked, “Enough for me to fling myself out of a moving vehicle without getting killed?” as if it were a perfectly ordinary question.

  The driver’s eyes widened and he gave her a hard look through the mirror.

  “Don’t worry,” she added dryly. “I’ll leave the fare on the back seat. There’s a van following me and I’d like to try to lose it.”

  “Yoor mad,” he announced, an assessment Alisha was inclined to agree with. Then his accent cleared, or Alisha ceased to notice it so strongly as he went on. “There’s a huge shagging stack of drainpipes on the outside of the roundabout. I take the outer loop and you dive from the left, it’ll give you cover straightaway. A good swerve on my part ought to close the door behind you, and maybe you’ll lose the bastards, eh?”

  Astonishment filled Alisha’s smile. “SAS?”

  “RAF,” he said with a casual shrug. “Did a bit of my own sneakin’ around. Good luck, miss. Don’t worry about the fare.”

  “Thanks,” Alisha said, genuinely touched, though she dug in her pocket for a ten-pound note and stuffed it into the crack of the seat as she slid to the left, preparing for the roundabout.

  “Ai’ll give you the mark,” the cabbie said casually.

  Alisha nodded, concentration already fully on the task ahead of her. Deep breaths grounded her, filling her with an awareness of her body that bordered on ecstasy, and once more the incongruity struck her. In fifteen years of practicing yoga, she most often felt utterly at home within herself during moments of combat or high pressure. The peace meant to be achieved by the ancient practice never seemed so attainable as in those brief instants, and it never failed to seem almost laughable that she should find it in the most extreme of circumstances. She counted her heartbeats and her breath with equal ease, the cab slowing as it took the curve into the roundabout, and with precision hearing trained in combat, Alisha heard the cab driver give the mark.

  The door opened as if on its own, Alisha flinging herself to hit the road shoulder-first. A grunt of effort tried slamming the door behind her, though as she rolled and bounced over asphalt and rocks, there was no time to see if she’d succeeded.

  The stacked culverts were there as promised. Ignoring the aches and protests of a body flung out of a car driving thirty kilometers an hour, Alisha came to her feet in a low fast run, dodging into the curve of the closest drainpipe. She darted to the far end, then dove flat onto her stomach, making herself as much one with the corrugated surface as possible. She heard tires squeal in the roundabout and hoped her driver had managed to close the door, and that the van hadn’t put on a surge of speed to make certain it didn’t lose her. Her breath came in hard short gasps, bruises making themselves known, and somewhere in the heart of that, Alisha found a laugh.

  It wasn’t paranoia if they were really out to get you.

  Chapter 12

  When had they caught on to her?

  Alisha rolled onto her back and into a puddle, the gun she didn’t remember drawing cupped in both hands as she panted for air. Had the Firebird been rigged with a tracking device? Only too likely, and more foolish was she for not examining it closely. Or perhaps the copilot had described her well enough for Cristina or Greg to recognize her, though Alisha thought his glimpse had been too brief for that. Still, it was a possibility, and a good network might have tipped them to her arrival at the hotel.

  Dammit! She risked a glance around the end of the culvert, wishing desperately it was night instead of broad daylight. For once, the English weather held its own against tradition and expectation, cheery sunlight beating down to dry up puddles and damp spots left by the previous night’s rain. Alisha cursed it with something approaching humor: even the stereotypical gray dreariness would give her more to hide in than the good-natured brilliance shining down.

  Traffic in the roundabout was a hopeless snarl. Her derring-do escape from the cab hadn’t gone unnoticed, and people were already climbing out of cars and trucks shouting concern and spreading out in search of her. The blue van wasn’t yet in sight, and there was a possibility that backed-up traffic would keep them from her. Alisha managed another laughing groan and turned her attention the other way, to the hilly country surrounding the roadway. Dashing that way would certainly bring attention to herself, making it certain anyone looking for her would be pointed in the right direction.

  On the other hand, muddied, wet and scraped from her tumble across the pavement, she wasn’t going to be able to blend in with the helpful motorists who even now looked for her. As far as subtle disappearances went, this one belonged in the record book under the subject of fiasco.

  Over the general uproar she heard her cabbie’s distinctive accent rising in outrage: “Av carse Ai didn’t know she were plannin’ to jump, ye ragin’ eedjit!”

  Another quick glance around the end of the culvert told her he was staging a proper show, distracting a goodly number of the stopped drivers from their search. She whispered a blessing to his dramatics, and scurried out of the culvert to the stack’s back side. She pressed there, huffing quick breaths to oxygenate her blood, her gaze focused on the hills. The cabbie’s theatrics would only hold the motorists for so long, and movement on the hillside would help draw them away: nothing caught attention like an object in motion. One last breath drawn, Alisha tilted her head back against the curve of a culvert, squinting as sunlight bounced off the tall pile. It climbed well above her head, no doubt put into place by a crane or enormous forklift.

  Ye ragin’ eedjit, she thought, almost fondly.

  Half a breath later she got a few feet’s worth of running start and scrambled up the wide curves of the drainpipes, using haste more than grip to keep herself going on the corrugated surfaces. She cut her palms swinging into the uppermost culvert in the stack and clenched her shirt against it as she lay down again, this time well above anyone’s line of sight. Even as she lay there, she could hear disgruntled grumbles and cars starting up again, the majority of searchers with plans of their own they didn’t want to put off. With luck, the snarl would come undone quickly enough to send the blue van through the roundabout without stopping. Alisha rolled onto her belly, hand still clenched in her shirt, to watch traffic with her head lowered and eyes half closed.

  Less than two minutes later the van inched into sight, the knot of traffic lessened but not undone. Alisha saw the passenger window roll down and swore under her breath as a man leaned out and hailed the vehicle next to him. His mouth pursed with interest, gaze lifting as the other driver spoke. Alisha swore again, thumping her fist against the culvert. Common motorists would lose interest if they couldn’t find her. These men wouldn’t. As Alisha watched, the van flashed its blinkers and pulled to the side, working its way through the knotted traffic to come up on the bank almost out of sight, ahead of her. She squirmed down to the far end of the culverts, keeping out of sight as best she could as she climbed down again.

  Cat and mouse. The words felt like a whisper, as if even a loud thought might betray her presence to the men looking for her. Large as the culverts were, the thickness of metal wasn’t enough to hide her, not from on-end. Alisha held her breath, making herself as slender as she could as she cast quick, cautious glances down the corrugated tubes.

  Her followers were out of the van and split up. She mouthed a curse, though in their position she’d have done the same, covering twice as much ground. It was only inconvenient for the quarry, not the hunter.
One headed toward the hills, and the other angled just slightly uphill from the culverts. Alisha counted breaths, then darted toward the roundabout, putting herself on the most visible-to-traffic stretch of the culverts.

  She made it almost the length of the metal pyramid before one of the helpful passers-by noticed her and sent up a shout. Alisha put on a burst of speed, racing full-bore toward the abandoned blue van. She expected, with every step, to hear the report of gunshots, but instead there were only more voices raised, some in concern and others—the men from the van—in anger. Alisha kept her eyes high and focused on the van, eking every last inch out of her stride. She still had her gun in one hand, the weapon turning concern in people’s voices to alarm, but there was no time to put it away.

  She slid across wet grass as she reached the van, stopping herself with a hard grip on the driver’s door handle. Rather than the latch coming undone, it held fast, surprising Alisha enough to hesitate and take in details.

  The keys were safely in the ignition, confounding her for an instant. Then the number pad beneath the door handle clicked into focus, a combination lock that probably automatically triggered. Just as well, she thought with a clear sense of the absurd, that she hadn’t bothered to put the gun away.

  Glass shattered with the ricochet of a bullet and Alisha smashed her elbow against the hole, breaking it up until she could reach inside and open the door without lacerating her arm. The door yanked open, she ripped her shirt off and swept glass off the seat, then leapt in and slammed the door behind her.

  A boy’s voice cut through the focused silence of battle, full of heady delight: “Coor, didja see that?”

  A fierce grin at the flattery smeared across Alisha’s mouth as she turned the ignition. Her pursuers were almost on her, the sound of running feet drowned by the engine’s roar. Alisha gunned the gas. The van jumped forward with a startled lurch and jolted horribly over grass and piles of dirt as she avoided the roundabout entirely and drove through the surrounding construction area instead.