Moon Mask

by James Richardson

  Yet, the turmoil he felt that raged inside of him was unrelenting. His need to honour his family’s memory conflicted with his desire to whisk the woman he loved off to some secluded island somewhere where they could spend their days far away from the horrors of the world.

  Surprising even himself, the usually mild mannered man grasped Sid’s head and pulled her down into a passionate kiss. At first taken by surprise, she started to pull away but, feeling his hunger echoed inside of her, she quickly gave in. Their lips locked, their tongues played and coiled around one another. He ripped her towel from off of her body; she tore his from his groin and then clambered astride him. Both ready for one another, they slid together perfectly, the sudden intimacy erupting. He drove into her, deep, holding her tightly. His eyes wandered down her body, the gentle yet definite contours of her neck and shoulders, her rounded breasts which he couldn’t resist lapping at with his tongue. His strong hands slid down her waist, over her hips, his thumbs rubbing her inner thigh before moving closer to her lustrous core, playing with her. The minutes of passion rolled on, time, that enemy which every man and woman tried to conquer, seemed to slow, and then stood still, as they moved together, their bodies rocking in hypnotic rhythm, their lips tasting one another, the intensity flaring, erupting up through their bodies in an explosive crescendo.

  Sid cried out in intense pleasure as he felt the fire explode from within him, their bodies tangled together, one and the same. Then, fulfilled for the moment, she crashed down on top of him, pressing her body against his, kissing his neck. He ran his hands up and down her bare back, circled her firm buttocks then began the return journey. Soothing, relaxing, and before either of them knew it, their sudden brief burst of activity drained the final reserves that they had been running on for days. Tangled bodily with the woman he loved, sleep finally began to claim Benjamin King’s troubled mind.

  “I never want to lose you, Benjamin King,” his fiancée whispered.

  He smiled. “You never will . . . Alysya King.”

  She returned the smile. Warm and loving. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid with the Moon Mask,” she demanded wearily. But, as sleep finally claimed her, she did not hear the hesitation in his voice.

  “I promise,” he lied.

  Sea Girt,

  New Jersey, USA

  “About two weeks ago, two men in black suits came to my door,” Mrs Braun explained. She and Alex Langley were once again in her living room only this time their postures were much more business-like. Langley had to keep reminding himself that the woman before him was nearly ninety because her energy and focus was that of a much younger woman.

  “They said they needed to speak to Emmett immediately,” she continued as she powered up her dead husband’s computer. It was state-of-the-art and the fast processor brought life to the machine quickly. “I told them he wasn’t around, he was out fishing.” Langley remembered seeing the blue and white fishing boat moored to the house’s private jetty. “But they insisted. Said it was a matter of ‘national security’ and all that crap that men just like them have told me over the years. But you’re different though,” she added, eyeing him, still with suspicion, but now with a twinkle of hope. Hope that this was the man who could bring about justice for her husband.

  “Anyway, what could I do? They were talking about it being a federal crime to impede their investigation, so I showed them to the transmitter over there,” she nodded to the radio Langley had spotted earlier. “What they didn’t realise was that I was listening in on an identical radio in the kitchen.”

  Langley laughed. “Mrs Braun, I should arrest you for making that confession.”

  “Just you try it,” she replied. Langley could feel a bond growing between them as he watched her navigate clumsily through her husband’s computer system. “Well,” she defended her actions anyway, “I was fed up with the government just whisking him away. He was an old man, not in any shape for all this excitement and drama anymore. Anyway, they told him all the usual stuff, ‘national security, we need your help, lives on the line’ that sort of thing. But Emmett said no. He said he’d finally retired and that they’d have to find someone else.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “Something very strange. They said, ‘the Phoenix has arisen’.” She paused for dramatic emphasis. “Of course, I had no idea what that meant but Emmett apparently did because he immediately agreed to help them. He came back to shore, packed some of his belongings and went. That was the last time I saw him.” Her voice wobbled at this last statement but Langley pushed on, fearing the momentum of her confessions would falter.

  “Is there something you’re going to show me?” he asked, looking at the computer.

  She snapped herself out of the melancholy that again threatened to overwhelm her and resumed her search through the computer. “Emmett had a photographic memory,” she said. “You could show him a page torn out of any book and a week later he’d be able to dictate it to you word for word. He was a brilliant man.” Langley had already come to that conclusion. “He was under orders not to talk to anyone about the work he did for the government, and he didn’t utter so much as a single word until the day he died. But, despite not being allowed to retain any material or data from the government projects, whenever he got back from one of their ‘missions’ he would sit here and barely move for days and days, recording everything he’d seen and learned, hoping that it might help in the future.”

  She turned and looked up at Langley, allowing him to see the screen. On it, a folder icon was displayed and beneath it was the single word: Phoenix.

  “After I was told that Emmett had been killed in a ‘car accident’ I knew he’d been killed to protect the secret of Phoenix, so I switched this infernal machine on to see if he’d kept any information about it.” She double clicked on the icon but the computer beeped and displayed a password box.

  “He encrypted it,” Langley realised.

  “I’ve tried every possible password I could think of,” she confessed, “but I can’t get in.”

  “Well that’s just a basic encryption package,” Langley explained. “You can buy the software on the high street or download it from the internet. I should be able to hack into it fairly easily.”

  “Be my guest,” Mrs Braun said, vacating the chair for him. But just as Langley sat down a strange sound assaulted his ears. It sounded like a wooden chair leg screeching across a tiled floor. It came from down the hall where Langley had seen the kitchen was located. The old lady, ever wily, had heard it too.”

  “Does anyone else live here?” he asked, cautiously rising to his feet. The old lady’s face had gone pale.

  “It’s just me now,” she confessed.

  “Stay here,” he told her, slowly pulling his handgun from the inside of his jacket. Mrs Braun backed away at seeing the weapon but Langley ignored her as he moved out into the hallway and slipped back into his previous persona as a SOG operative with ease. He glided silently towards the kitchen. Weapon at the ready, he eased himself through the half open doorway, crouching low. A strange smell assaulted his nostrils but he didn’t have time to process it as a black-clad figure suddenly bolted from hiding and burst through the door which opened from the kitchen onto the front of the house.

  Langley sprang into action instantly, bounding through the kitchen and crashing through the door which the intruder had slammed back to slow him down. Out on the road the passenger door of a black sedan, its engine running, swung open and the intruder dived into it. Langley fired but the car had already shot off the mark, rubber burning as it screeched away up the street. Langley ran out onto the street proper and aimed his weapon at the speeding vehicle but it was too far away.

  Then it struck him. The smell.

  Gas.

  Eyes wide, he spun and ran back to the house. “Mrs Braun!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Get out of-”

  Then the house disintegrated into a roili
ng ball of flames, pluming high into the sky. The shockwave of the explosion slammed into Langley and threw him down the street. The heat burned his skin, singed his hair and seared his lungs. He hit the ground hard and was temporarily paralysed.

  The thunderous boom echoed into the heavens as pieces of debris rained down all around him.

  46:

  Scars

  NATO Air Base Geilenkirchen,

  Germany

  Irritated by the disturbance, Nadia unlocked the door to her room but, seeing who stood on the other side, she instantly began to close it again.

  Nathan Raine thrust his foot into the gap and pushed against it. “Nadia, I just want to talk-”

  “I have nothing to say to my accuser!” she shot back vehemently. Realising she wasn’t going to win against the former special forces soldier, she stepped back. Raine, who had been pushing against the door, flew in, almost going down. He re-gathered his composure and looked at her.

  “Is this how you All-American-Heroes get the girl?” she demanded sarcastically. “By forcing your way into their room? Is this how you got Lake?”

  “What?” he frowned, confused.

  “I saw her leaving your room the other night!” Despite herself, she couldn’t keep the acid jealousy out of her tone. Unable to sleep after landing at RNAS Culdrose two nights ago, she had finally given in to the attraction she felt for the former fugitive. She had tried to deny it for months, watching him at the expedition base camp, swooning the young interns yet daring to turn his charm onto her the next morning. She couldn’t deny that she had always found him physically attractive: a lithe, athletic form, well-toned body, a permanent five-o-clock shadow, dishevelled hair and moody blue eyes. But her superior intellect- she was a genius after all- prevented her from succumbing to her base desires. Another trophy for the cocky American pilot.

  But she had seen how he had worked during this crisis and almost felt herself swoon idiotically at his dare-devil heroism, his calm head under pressure and his unyielding sense of duty to his friends, especially when King and Sid had been taken hostage. He had become a man possessed by determination to find them and save them. How could she not fall for him?

  And so she had crept out of her room in the dead of night, excited by the prospect of feeling her legs wrapped around his muscular body, of tasting his sweat as they clawed desperately at one another. But she was too late. She had halted in the shadows and watched Kristina Lake leave Raine’s room, barely dressed, hair matted, face flushed.

  She had almost felt tears threaten and, angry as she was at herself, the sense of betrayal had kept her awake all night, seething and indignant. Only hours later, the first man she had almost given herself to in years had accused her of betraying the team. The betrayal and the hurt had pierced her on a much deeper, more emotional level than she cared to admit even to herself. She could forgive Sid and King for getting swept up the conspiracy against her. She could forgive Gibbs and his team for placing the security of the mission above all else.

  But she couldn’t forgive Nathan Raine for breaking her heart.

  “So how was your little American slut?” she demanded bitterly now.

  Raine, taken aback by her discovery of his night with the SOG operative, ignored the Russian’s words. “I didn’t come to get the girl,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “I came to apologise.”

  “Oh, well that is okay then.” Sarcasm dripped off of every word. “So long as you have apologised, then falsely accusing me of betraying the team, my friends, the United Nations, and having me arrested, really doesn’t matter anymore!”

  “Come on, Nadia, would you have acted any differently?” he demanded. “I was given Intel that someone on the team was leaking information to the Russians. As the only Russian on the team you were automatically the prime suspect.”

  “You jumped to conclusions!”

  “They are Russians, you are Russian,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Yes, I jumped to a conclusion.”

  “Yet anyone who knows me would have known that I would never do anything for Russia!” She spat on the floor, such vehemence she felt at being associated with her country of birth. “I would never do anything for the country that executed my father!”

  “That’s just the thing Nadia,” Raine shot back. “Nobody does know you! You never let anybody get close enough to know you!”

  She put her hands on her hips and stared back at him, her beautiful features contorted by anger. Her long hair was loose and fell in waves over her smooth shoulders, visible through the narrow straps of a black vest-top which clung to her frame. Raine himself was similarly attired in a black T-shirt and cargo-pants.

  “You want to know me, Nate?” she said, her tone shifting to one of angry suspicion. “You want to know what makes me tick? What makes me the way that I am? The Ice Queen?” She scoffed, her lips twisted in hate but Raine realised it wasn’t hate directed at him anymore. “You want to hear all about how I was a perfectly normal young lady once, working with my father, one of the greatest minds in all of Russia, to create and harness the power of the tachyon?” Her gaze seemed to drift off into her distant past and Raine allowed her to follow her thoughts wherever they were going to lead.

  “It was to be the greatest discovery of mankind,” she said. “A source of unlimited power, a way to save the fossil fuels, the natural resources of this planet. You want to hear about how my government wanted to harness this power and turn it into a bomb?” she demanded. “About how my father, not just the greatest man but the bravest,” her voice cracked, her face twitched with emotion which she ordinarily did not reveal. “You want to hear about the night they came for him? The way the soldiers broke into our house? My father destroyed all the research we had spent years compiling so that he didn’t become another ‘destroyer of worlds’.”

  Voicing the memories was too much for her. The dam, holding back half a lifetime of pent-up emotions, finally cracked. A racking sob erupted from her mouth and tears, the first shed since that terrible night, began to stream from her eyes. Unabashed. Unashamedly.

  “You want to hear about how, as punishment, they tied him to a chair and stripped me naked!?”

  “Nadia, I-” Raine tried to cut in, suddenly feeling exposed, as though he was trespassing into a part of her mind, a part of her soul which he wasn’t allowed to see. But the distraught woman couldn’t hear him now. She lived once again in that moment.

  “You want to hear about how, after beating me and burning me with their cigarettes, they made my father watch as they raped me?! And not just one of them, but all of them!” Her voice was hoarse, trembling. Her entire body shook. “One by one. And all my father could do was sit there and watch and plead with them to stop.” She coughed suddenly, her throat raw.

  Is this the first time she’s ever spoken about this? Raine wondered.

  “You want to hear about how, after witnessing all this, they shot my father between the eyes? You know how that looks, Nathan!” she accused. “You’ve shot men between the eyes before. You’ve assassinated nameless, faceless individuals, for no good reason other than ‘simply following orders! You know how the skull erupts, bursting apart like a melon dropped from a height! Well that is the last image I have of my father! Every time I think of him, I picture that moment!”

  “Nadia,” he tried to say again but in truth he had no idea what he could say. Truly now, his pathetic apology did seem pitiful. His accusation was greater and shot far deeper than he could ever have imagined.

  “They left me then, alone in the house, lying in a pool of blood- some mine, some my fathers. Our neighbours found us the next day. The authorities blamed it on militants! They accused my father of selling his tachyon technology to Abdul Madzhid, the leader of Shariat Jamaat, a militant organisation fighting for Dagestan’s independence. They said that he was trying to double cross everyone and Madzhid killed him for it. They called him a traitor! But it wasn’t militants that killed him. It
was the soldiers of the Motherland! Of great and powerful Russia!” Then her gaze shifted back to Raine, her eyes smouldering. “And then you come along and accuse me of helping them?!” She practically screamed the words at him. “I would never help them! Never! Even if all of Russian was in flames I would not lift a finger to help them!” She fought for control again.

  “Now, do you know me Nathan?” she asked quietly. “Now do you see who I am? Does it give you pleasure to know that you have cracked the Ice Queen?”

  “No, of course-”

  “Is that what you came here for?” she demanded. “To see my scars! Huh? Well here they are, Nate! Take a good look! Here is your proof that I’m not working for the Russians! Right here!” She ripped her vest top up over her head and stood there topless before him!

  Scarring her perfect figure, where once virgin-pure, smooth skin had been, were dozens of angry scars. Knife wounds, some of them, but most, he realised, were small and circular: the legacy of burning cigarette-ends searing into her flesh; her back, her rib cage, her stomach and breasts.

  “Sexy, aren’t I?” She asked sarcastically. The anger seemed to subside slightly in her but it only swelled in Raine. His own thoughts turned dark, his own memories consuming him. He had seen acts of brutality the likes of which Nadia had survived. He had seen soldiers, U.S. soldiers, run amok through houses and villages, consumed in bloodlust, perpetuating an orgy of murder, mayhem and rape. He had been in the midst of it all. It had sickened him then, and it sickened him now. But what sickened him even more was that he had allowed it to happen, he had allowed the perpetrators to get away with it.