by Dawn Kunda
“I see he’s been here. He lay next to you. The impression on the bed.” A guttural laugh echoed in the room. “Maybe you wait for me? I’ve wanted a woman of Chenzira’s.”
Holding his breath and hoping for little noise, Cal gripped the hose and jerked it free from the wall. He stiffened and remained silent for a moment, wondering if the thud of the pipe inside the wall had alerted the intruder.
“Last chance. Dress now, or I consider you an offer to me.”
The intruder mustn’t have heard. Mary whispered something too softly for Cal to understand. He leaned over to peer under the door again. The intruder walked around Mary, poking his gun at her shoulder, then her chest. His back now faced the bathroom door.
The only thing Cal appreciated about this room right now was the fact that the bathroom door didn’t latch properly and the hinges didn’t squeal. With the intruder’s back still facing him, Cal eased the door open. He kept his eyes trained on the intruder’s movements. Mary saw the door move.
A seductive whisper hissed between her lips. “Come and get me, if that is what you want.”
The intruder stepped toward her, then bent down to her level.
Cal slinked outside the bathroom with the shower head and end of the hose in his clenched fists.
A gloved hand reached to Mary’s fingers, still clutching the blanket. The gun came to rest on the intruder’s thigh, still aimed for her as he tugged the blanket. A menacing laugh vibrated through his dirty lips as he bared her body.
Don’t mess up now. Don’t mess up now, Cal. Protect your partner. Cal’s adrenaline surged and sparked through his body. He lunged forward and wrapped the hose around the intruder’s neck. He pulled it tight and the metal casing cut into the intruder’s skin, causing spatters of blood to cover the noose.
The intruder yelled as he grabbed the encased hose with one hand, lifting the gun with the other. As he attempted to rise against the assault, Cal rapidly dug his knee into the man’s spine.
Mary jumped forward. She slammed her forearm against the wrist holding the gun. It flew to the wall and clattered to the tile floor. She rounded her arm and met his chin with a whack of her elbow.
Cal kept the noose tight and mounted the intruder’s back. With a swift smack of his forehead, a cracking of skulls put the intruder facedown on the floor.
Mary stealthily backed to the where the gun lay on the floor. She scooped it up. “Hold it right there.”
The intruder remained facing down and sucked in air as Cal loosened the noose. “Who are you, and who sent you?” Cal glanced at Mary as he questioned the intruder. So far, he didn’t fail her.
The intruder spit on the floor. Cal yanked the noose. “Who are you, and who sent you?”
“I will not tell,” the intruder snarled and spit again.
Mary kept the gun aimed on the intruder as she reached for her clothes. Cal nodded to her while speaking to the other man. “You’re coming with us, then you’ll tell us what you know.”
“Never.”
“We’ll see.” Addressing Mary, Cal said, “Get a cab. Then I need the cord from the phone to tie his hands.”
Mary slipped on her pants and blouse, her earlier attire. Quickly stowing the flash drives in their former hiding place, she then reached for the phone.
Cal spoke to the intruder. “Who’s your informant? How did you find us? Are you alone?” He didn’t expect an answer, but he was in no mood to let the intruder relax under him.
“The office said we could get a ride in about ten minutes.” Mary replaced the phone’s receiver on its cradle. Moving up to the intruder, aiming the gun at his head, she pulled the front of his jacket from under him. She dug into the pockets. A pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and a key fell to the floor. The opposite pocket had a wad of thousand-pound notes. “Bingo. We have money for our ride now.”
“You got the phone cord?” Mary handed a six-foot cord to Cal. He wrapped it around the intruder’s wrists as she checked the window for a cab. Sure that the impromptu handcuffs were secure, Cal retrieved his clothes. He walked to Mary, always keeping an eye on the man on the floor.
“Not the prisoner we expected, but better than a total loss.” Her voice held no emotion. Cal knew she would’ve addressed him as Agent Guevin, if they weren’t concealing their identities. The little bit of female affection she had shared was long gone. Back to being partners.
“Yeah, well, we’re alive.” She gave him a look as if his comment was a hint. He turned his head without acknowledgment. If this is the way she wants to play, he wants nothing to do with her game. It’s all about the work.
Tired of the mess the op had turned into, anger surfaced and Cal reached for the dangling noose and pulled another time for good measure. The intruder gasped and kicked at Cal. He mentally dared him to match his mood, and then he’d show the intruder who was boss and it wouldn’t be forgotten.
“Why don’t you wait outside for our ride.” He didn’t look at her. The outside door opened and closed, leaving him with the intruder.
Cal paced around the man on the floor and stopped in front of his head. “Who sent you? How do you know Chenzira?”
He took another step, then the intruder spoke. “I have nothing to do with Chenzira. He only brings problems to the city,” the intruder’s raspy voice informed. “You are stupid if you think Chenzira is your only enemy.”
Cal’s mind started to click with all the people involved in the Cairo op. It’d be impossible to name all the CIA personnel that knew anything about his whereabouts. Scattered back to the States, a simple phone call made for an airplane ticket, the dual identification, secretaries, agents used for information gathering, agents physically in place, all which skimmed the top layer of involvement. The layers went deep even on clandestine ops.
“You’re lying. Who else would’ve sent you other than Chenzira?”
No answer.
Cal huffed in frustration. He walked to the window, checking on Mary. She was his partner, and he’d hold up his end of the deal.
A lull in the throng of inebriated people on the street thinned the distractions. A few vehicles slinked through the darkness. Just before Cal sat on the bed to watch their captive, Mary opened the door. “The cab’s here.” Just as quickly, she pulled the door shut.
Cal held the curtain back to watch as she gave the driver instructions. The intruder didn’t need to know directions.
“Get up. We’re going for a ride.” Cal shoved the man and grabbed his elbow to pull him off the floor.
With the gun low and set against the intruder’s side, Cal led him to the taxi. “Get in the back.” The intruder obliged in silence.
Mary sat in the front staring straight ahead. Next to the intruder, Cal’s gun jammed into the man’s waist. The driver’s eyes darted back and forth between the street and rearview mirror.
The intruder talked to his lap. “Where are you taking me?”
“None of your business.” Cal pushed the barrel further and could tell the man missed many meals.
“You’ll be sorry. The people you bring me to will be sorry.”
Cal shifted his eyes toward the man. Cal was in control now. He wondered what kind of trouble the man had in mind as the man sat with nowhere to go.
Chapter 11
The cab pulled up to the US embassy. Mary jumped out in front of the brightly lit stone steps to the locked, bulletproof entrance. Without a word to Cal, she rushed up the steps and pushed the entrance buzzer stationed on the wall.
A glass panel in the door slid open as a print scanner appeared. Mary placed her palm on the scanner. Customarily, the door slid open when a print was identified. The screen went blank and the doors remained closed.
She pushed on the screen for a response while bobbing her head to see anybody behind the glass. The screen offered no help. Instead, three soldiers surrounded her with rifles aimed on her.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“We’re taking you to interro
gation. Your palm didn’t scan.” A guard shifted his gun up.
“Then there’s something wrong with the scanner. I’m Agent Mary Reiss.”
“Doesn’t matter. The scanner didn’t accept you,” the guard serving as spokesman told her.
She knew this was protocol, but there wasn’t time for any delays. Glancing toward the cab, she saw it had left. Shit. At least she’d be inside the embassy, but why did Cal leave? Nothing followed plan on this expedition. “Fine. Take me inside and I’ll get this straightened out.”
The spokesman nudged her with the barrel of his fire. She stumbled, gave him a dirty look, and then walked before the group of guards. They led her to a side entrance. Another guard accessed the scanner and let the group inside.
A pristine hall made of white painted cement walls stood before her. Brightly lit from fluorescent tubes, she didn’t see any windows, only solid doors evenly spaced down the length. A guard that hadn’t spoken left them at the entrance as he proceeded down the corridor, taking a left at the end.
“Where’s he going?” No one answered. “I have a right to know what’s going on. I need to meet with the ops coordinator. Right now.”
They continued to ignore her demands.
She felt the heat rise to her face as anger mixed with apprehension.
* * * *
Something wasn’t right. Cal watched the guards surround Mary. “Driver, pull up a block and park where we can’t be seen from the embassy.”
With a nervous twitch the driver sped ahead. He repeatedly glanced in his rearview mirror. Pulling in front of a meat shop known only by the sign “meat” written in multiple languages and taped to the door window, the driver parked with the engine running. “Sir, you must get out here. I cannot drive you anymore.”
With his stare glued to the intruder next to him, Cal warned, “Listen, I’ll make it worth your while to do as I say.” He lifted his concealed gun to shoulder level. “If you’d rather I drive, then get out and you won’t have to worry about a thing.”
The driver pulled a dirty handkerchief from his breast pocket and smeared it across his forehead. “Mister, my family…”
“Like I said, follow my instructions and you’ll get back to them safely.” The driver stuffed the dirty rag back in its place. He directed his stare through the front window, with his hands clenched on the wheel. “Good. Now I need your phone. I have to make a call.”
Cal reached his empty hand forward and waited for a cell phone. The driver gripped and released, gripped and released again, and then let go of the steering wheel. Fumbling in a compartment at his side, he came up with a phone.
Watching the deadpan expression on the intruder’s face and the anxious sweat across the driver’s cheeks, Cal punched in the numbers. He got a busy signal. “Damn it.” He tried again, and heard a dial tone and a click as the call connected. Cal spoke quickly. “We’re inked. Scribble me a direction.” That should connect him with the covert operations officer.
“I’m sorry, sir. The team is broken and nothing can be done.” Cal didn’t recognize the impersonal voice.
As if they heard the other side of the conversation, the driver quickly glanced to the mirror as the intruder shifted his position.
“The team is still intact. Let me talk to the man.”
“There is no team. Half is deserted.” The phone clicked dead.
He knew something had gone wrong. Drastically wrong. Mary didn’t desert him. The guards dragged her in for interrogation. And now the embassy wouldn’t acknowledge his code. Could it be because he used an unidentifiable phone? Unlikely. The code was what mattered.
“Sir?” the driver pleaded.
Cal glanced from the driver to the prisoner. “I need a minute. You’ll be done soon.” The driver sank in his seat.
“What’s your name?” Cal dug his gun back in the intruder’s waist when there wasn’t an answer.
“Ali.”
“Ali what?”
No response.
“Okay, Ali, we’re going for a walk.” Cal tossed a fifty-pound note from his new stash onto the front seat before he opened and kicked the back door wide. “Don’t forget your lesson in tips for drivers today.” He yanked the bruised and bleeding Ali to the street. To the driver, he said, “You can go. You’ve never seen us, or I’ll be back.” The car peeled off into the poorly lit end of the street.
With a hand firmly gripping Ali’s upper arm, he shoved his prisoner in front and forced him to walk back to the embassy.
His plan would have to work. The lights from the embassy would reveal their approach. Eyes always analyzed the exterior of the building, and he knew once they were spotted he couldn’t change his mind.
Briefly pausing on the sidewalk at the corner of the stark building, he made up his mind. He turned his prisoner up the sidewalk, which led to the same side of the building where Mary had disappeared. Quickly scanning the area, he kept Ali in front and directed him to the same door. A red light glowed from the palm scanner inserted into a cutout in the cement wall next to the door.
“This is what you’re going to do.” He checked the cord around Ali’s wrist, making sure it held tight. “You’re going to scan your palm and wait for the door to open. Got it?” No answer. He slapped Ali across the head. “You got it?”
Ali grunted with a nod.
With the gun pressed against the intruder’s back, he said, “Go ahead. Do it.”
Cal knew he would have limited time once the intruder used the scanner. His eyes darted to his peripheries as Ali placed his hand on the screen. The red light began to silently blink.
Cal backed away, turned and ran. He headed for the main street where he had come from. Alleys littered the spaces between the government buildings across the street, which blended into cafes, print stores, and places with useless items for those with a pocket full of change. Picking a dark alley three doors down on the other side, he knew the embassy could see his tracks.
Once inside the littered and narrow passage, he slunk behind the chosen print shop, his gun hugged to his waist, and decided on a route back to the embassy to view whatever took place. Garbage littered the back doorways of the shops. He stepped around the sludge and returned half a block down to the main street.
Out of view of the embassy at this point, he didn’t want to miss the door opening on his prisoner. A car with one headlight supplied a view back to the other side of the street. Following the random alleys, he got himself kitty-corner and across the street from the side door.
He pushed a trash can to block most of himself as he peered at his prisoner still standing by the door. Whether Ali feared the idea of running or thought he might as well give up his initial mission, he remained facing the door as he fidgeted his feet.
The scanner surely continued to blink red, which Cal couldn’t detect from his hiding spot, so it surprised him that no one answered it for this length of time. Just as this thought occurred, the heavy, solid metal door opened with a flood of hall lights illuminating the scene.
He expected Ali to be immediately apprehended and dragged inside by the guards. Instead, of the two guards who responded to the scanner, one stepped outside and scanned the grounds. The other spoke to Ali while relaxing his grip on his weapon.
Cal pressed against the wall of the neighboring pastry shop as the guard intensified his grounds search with a walk up and down the lawn. Peering between the trash can and the wall, a small slit exposed a distorted view of the scene.
Apparently Ali returned conversation to the guard still at the door, then he followed the guard inside without any force. They stayed at the entrance until the second guard gave up his search and joined them.
The embassy side door shut and Cal wondered what happened and who else he couldn’t trust. Why had a prisoner handed to the embassy been treated as a guest? Why had his initial contact over the phone been handed off as an aborted project or worse yet, as a project that didn’t exist? Those weren’t his first thoughts, thoug
h.
There may have been a lot of confusion between his partner and himself, defiance, anger, and love-lust bouncing from one another like the unpredictability of a storm, but he couldn’t allow himself to doubt their reliance on each other for safety at this point. Where did they take Mary and what would they do with her? He had little time, as this operation constantly proved to him, to devise a way to find her.
Chapter 12
Mary sat stiffly in the appointed chair on the one side of a no-nonsense conference table with the leftover guard standing on the other side. He made no effort at conversation or any indication that he would fill her in on why she wasn’t allowed to continue with her affairs as any CIA agent entering their embassy for that purpose would do.
Fed up with the minutes of silence, she confronted the guard again. “Why am I being detained here and not allowed to speak with the operations officer?”
He looked at her for a moment before answering. “He’s not available right now, and the operation you’re involved in has changed.”
“What do you mean by that? Why can’t you tell me when I’m the one in the middle and needs to know what’s going on or what’s changed? By the way, how do you even know what operation I’m here for?”
“Someone will be contacted. Until then, you have to stay here.” He didn’t answer her last question. Apparently they’d been waiting for her.
“That makes no sense. If there’s no one here to handle the situation, which I believe there is, why don’t you call the States and get ahold of my officer over there?”
“It’ll be taken care of here.”
“I can see that.” She leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Do you think I’m not serious? Just the way I’m dressed should prove it. I don’t make a habit of running around town looking like I belong in a harem. It’s not a regular habit of mine.”
The guard stared at her ragged, dirty, nearly see-through blouse, acknowledging the informal suggestion it implied. He probably wanted to see less material, as all the men she encountered in the past nearly two days probed her for being female while they most conveniently didn’t consider she had a brain above where their glances roved.
