Blown Circuit

by Lars Guignard

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m the mole. Now why don’t you point that thing somewhere else so we can get down to doing whatever it is you brought me here for?”

  Faruk may have been mean, but he was also cautious. He smiled again, his deep-set eyes probing me.

  “Mole for who?” he said.

  “He is a CIA employee,” Meryem said. “Mole for the Green Dragon organization, code name, Raptor. Does military intelligence not brief you, Colonel?”

  “Yes, they brief me. They tell me you are not to be trusted. That you no longer hold our nation’s best interests at heart.”

  Meryem spat at him, right in the face.

  “I am loyal to my country, Faruk. I am loyal above all.”

  Faruk ignored her. He wiped the spittle off his cheek, nudging the barrel of the gun farther into my chin.

  “How do I know you work for them?” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How do I know you are this Raptor? This Green Dragon mole? None of us have seen him. This MIT agent, she is not to be trusted. Firstly, we must confirm that you are who she says you are.”

  “How do you want to do that?” I said. “Ask your Magic Eight Ball?”

  “No. We ask someone better.”

  “Who?”

  “The Green Dragons.”

  My heart nearly skipped a beat, but outwardly I was calm. My expression was neutral. I could tell because I could see myself in the shiny veneer of the burled-walnut wall paneling. My eyes remained focused, my look stoic.

  “So ask them,” I said.

  I stared at Faruk. He stared at me. A pissing match if ever there was one.

  “Miss Shaw,” Faruk called out.

  Then I truly did feel my heart skip a beat. Because I knew what was coming. The worst possible thing that could come. I heard a door close, followed by a series of sharp footfalls on the mahogany floor of the corridor. And in that same burled-walnut veneer, I saw Kate Shaw. My enemy. My nemesis. My would-be executioner. I knew then, beyond a reasonable doubt, that my cover was blown. Kate stood directly behind me, in a long black dress, her hair up in a French twist, her tanned skin flawless in the reflection. She smiled at me, her strong white teeth dazzling, even in the reflected light. And I felt a small part of the hope that I had been holding onto ever since we had been captured, drain out of me.

  Chapter 29

  KATE LOOKED GOOD. There was no denying it. She was radiant, in a sleek black dress and pumps, her long legs fluid and tanned, her almond eyes meeting my own brightly. But she was the last person I wanted to see. There was no denying that either. She was the last person I wanted to see in the entire world. And she was standing there, in front of me, two armed guards at either door and a gun under my chin, my fate in her hands.

  I hadn’t seen Kate since the China Op, where I had turned her over to the Agency for questioning. Kate had once worked with my father on a joint CIA—MI6 mission, but had since gone rogue. In less than a week together, she had lied to me, had tried to kill me, and in no uncertain terms, been the worst ally a man could ever have. She should have been in custody, but I didn’t bother trying to fathom how she had escaped. It wasn’t the time for that. What I tried to determine was what she would do next.

  “Michael Chase,” Kate said softly.

  “Kate Shaw,” I said equally matter-of-factly, doing my best to hold onto what was left of my composure.

  “Happy to see me?” she asked.

  “Very,” I lied.

  “It’s been what, a few days since we saw each other last?” she asked.

  “Something like that,” I replied.

  “Enough,” Faruk said. “He says he is the mole providing information to your organization. Is this true, or can I kill him?”

  Kate took a moment to assess. She glanced at Meryem before looking back at me. Things were looking bleak. Any notion I had of the encounter ending well had left the boat with Faruk’s nasal words. I considered my options. Faruk’s gun was still under my chin. I needed a material change in the situation, an entry point. At the very least, I thought they’d move me before shooting me, if only to avoid blowing my brains all over their fancy leather sofas. Of course, the boat could have been a rental. If so, I found myself hoping that they had been charged a large security deposit.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say, Colonel?” Kate asked Faruk.

  “I said, is this man who he says he is or can I kill him?”

  Kate looked me over again. The guards at each door stepped forward. This was my moment. I was about to open my mouth, but Kate beat me to it.

  “Don’t be a fool, Faruk,” she said. “Of course he’s one of us.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly, but in case I had, I didn’t want to blow it. Maybe my cover wasn’t entirely blown. Maybe, for whatever reason, Kate was protecting me. So I did the one thing I could do. I smiled. Kate returned the grin.

  “Now do me a favor and get these guns out of here,” Kate said. “Michael and I have business to discuss.”

  LESS THAN FIVE minutes later, I found myself reclining on the bow of the yacht, a mojito in hand. My sunglasses had been returned to me and it might have been the lenses, but suddenly life was looking a lot rosier than it had only minutes earlier. But it was also infinitely more complicated. For one thing, Meryem was still being held at gunpoint, which didn’t sit well with me. For another, I was lounging on the polished teak deck with quite possibly my worst enemy.

  Kate Shaw was a woman who had lied and deceived and tried to kill me. A woman who had sold out my father to a terrorist organization, and whom I had, in turn, framed and delivered to the CIA in my quest for answers. Kate Shaw was a woman I had hoped to never see again. But there she was, reclining on a chaise lounge less than two feet away, her dress hiked up to get some sun, my fate in her hands.

  There was no way Kate thought I was the mole. She knew me too well. She knew what motivated me. She knew that I would never betray my father. But here she was, treating the situation as if she didn’t have a care in the world, and all the while lubing me up with a pretty good reproduction of a Cuban cocktail. Still, I was no fool. I let her talk first.

  “You want to know why I saved your ass?” Kate said.

  I didn’t say anything. Faruk was elsewhere and so were his men, but it didn’t mean the deck wasn’t bugged.

  “Relax, Michael. Nobody’s listening. If I was going to blow your cover, the moment would have been back there. This is my show. I vouched for you, so you’re good.”

  “What about Meryem?”

  “We don’t want your girlfriend. She’s fine.”

  Something about the way she said girlfriend made me take notice. She seemed to be testing me, waiting for me to offer up more. I didn’t. There was still too much I needed to know.

  “What do you want?” I said.

  “Your help.”

  I picked my tall glass off the deck and sipped the pale-green drink, careful to keep the mint leaf out of my mouth. The rum was strong, but the cocktail was refreshing. Honestly, I was having difficulty adjusting to my new circumstances. I had set this woman Kate Shaw up for a terrible fate. I had handed her over to a CIA interrogation team. I knew it was a terrible fate because I had endured a mock interrogation during training. It was not an experience I wished to repeat. But one question kept racing through my head. What did Kate really want? She seemed to read my mind.

  “Relax, Michael, we’re going to dinner. There’ll be time to tell you all about it.”

  THE YACHT WAS a big boat, but I didn’t realize how big until I got into her tender, a small wooden-decked speedboat, and checked her out. Along the waterline, I reckoned the yacht to be no less than a hundred and sixty feet long, complete with a helicopter and a landing pad on the rear deck. Her steel hull was deep navy blue and she had the clean classic lines of a cutter. I had seen yachts like her before, but I’d never been invited aboard. They were the kind of thing that appealed to Internet billionaires an
d Russian oligarchs. Strangely, I realized the ship’s allure was more pronounced from afar. Once onboard, you were just sitting on a boat.

  I directed my attention back to Kate. She had removed her heels and carried a pair of sandals in her left hand while she piloted the tender away from the yacht with her right. I sat on the bench seat beside her.

  “Like old times,” she said.

  “Not quite, Kate.”

  “Really? How so?”

  “You’re supposed to be in a cell.”

  “You’re supposed to be dead. Or you would be if Faruk had his way. I fixed that little problem for you.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Say thanks.”

  I thought about it. No need to have a miserable evening.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Good then. Let’s get to shore, shall we?”

  Kate hammered the throttle and the tender took off, its big inboard motor churning the calm water of the Mediterranean into a frothing wake behind us. It was a powerful boat, more powerful than the inflatable that had brought us there with bags over our heads. Kate scooted us up the coastline and into a wide-necked cove. There was a dock there and a small beach, but nobody else. She gracefully piloted the boat alongside the wooden dock and killed the engine.

  I threw out the plastic bumpers. Kate may have been a liar and cold-blooded killer, but I saw no reason to scratch her pretty vessel. Besides, she obviously had something she wanted to tell me or she wouldn’t have brought me out there. Antagonism wasn’t the best friend of communication. Surprised as I was to see her so soon after I’d delivered her to what I thought was a long stay in a secret penitentiary, I wanted to hear what she had to say. And so far, I thought it was going to be interesting, because she had already told Faruk that I was the Green Dragon mole inside the CIA, which was a brazen lie. To lie like that, I knew that Kate had other plans for me. Now I just needed to find out what they were.

  Chapter 30

  I HOPPED OUT of the launch and tied the bowline to a cleat. Kate secured the stern behind me. I figured if she was going to stab me in the back, which I was sure she was, she’d take her time about it—otherwise there was no point in bringing me out to the island. No, Kate wanted something from me, which put me into a position of strength. I simply had to figure out how not to give it to her.

  “We’re in the southern Mediterranean, off the Turquoise Coast.”

  “Turkey?” I said.

  “Yeah. You bet Turkey. You don’t get your get-out-of-jail-free card yet.”

  “I wasn’t looking for one. I kind of like it here.”

  “Good. That’ll make what comes next easier.”

  I looked at Kate. I hated her. I hated her for what she had done to my father. I hated her for what she was capable of doing to me. But I had to admit that a part of me, a small part, also liked her. I liked her cool, calm resolve. I liked her brazen ruthlessness. I liked the way she smiled out of the corner of her mouth when she talked. Her hair was a little mussed from the boat ride and her cheeks were flushed, but there was no denying that she looked good. Very good. In a different world, a parallel universe perhaps, I thought we might have gotten along well. Maybe even better than well. Not in this world, though. I shuddered even as I thought it. I reminded myself of how she had sold my father out to the Green Dragons. Then I focused on the reality of the situation.

  “What comes next?” I said.

  “We work together.”

  I just laughed. Kate smiled back at me. We reached the end of the dock where there was a long wooden walkway leading to another cove. I saw a small maintenance structure, but no people. Kate led the way down the boardwalk.

  “There is a sand here so unique, it’s found nowhere else in the Mediterranean,” Kate said. “The grains are called ooids. Calcium carbonate collects around a fine grain of sand that, combined with the wave action, creates a perfect sphere. Mark Antony brought it here for Cleopatra, over three thousand years ago. That same sand is still here today.”

  “Why did he do that?” I said.

  “He loved her,” Kate replied. “Legend says that he told her that this way she would never have to set foot on any land that wasn’t Egyptian.”

  “How romantic,” I said. “But I’m sure there was more to it than that.”

  “He wanted to cement their political relationship, of course,” Kate said. “The alliance between the two superpowers of the age: Egypt and Rome.”

  As we neared the other cove, I saw that it was smaller with a table for two set on the beach slightly below the waterline, waves lapping at the chairs.

  “Cleopatra wanted the finest beach in the world and Mark Antony gave it to her. The beach here is protected, you’re not even allowed to touch it.”

  The boardwalk dead-ended in the sea on the edge of the beach.

  “Then what are we doing here?”

  “We’re having dinner.”

  Kate stepped off the boardwalk and into the gently lapping waves. She didn’t seem terribly concerned about her dress getting wet. I slipped off my shoes and followed her, the Mediterranean warm on my feet, the strange, exotic sand seeping up between my toes. I picked up a handful of it. It didn’t even feel like sand, more tiny round grain. A waiter approached from the boardwalk. Tanned with dark, longish hair smoothly slicked back, he carried a bottle of wine and two long-stemmed glasses.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m not Mark Antony and you’re sure as hell not Cleopatra, so why don’t we cut the bullshit and get to what’s really on your mind.”

  As I said it, the waiter presented the wine to Kate. All I saw was that it was red. The waiter poured a quarter glass for her, then waited dutifully while she swirled the wine in her glass, smelled it, and lifted it to her lips. I had to admit, she made the whole process look more natural than pretentious. I checked myself because I was liking her again and I didn’t want to like her. I reminded myself of just how dangerous Kate really was. She seemed to like what she tasted because she nodded and the waiter filled her glass, followed by mine. Then he exited the way he had come.

  “Little-known factoid: Cleopatra is widely believed to have killed her sister,” Kate said. “She ordered her death. Her sister’s skeleton was found at Ephesus, not far from Aphrodisias where the plane picked you up.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “She did it with Mark Antony. They worked together.”

  “So she’s a murderer too. Good for Cleopatra. What’s your point?”

  Kate smiled.

  “My point is that you may not want to be a Mark Antony, but I’m certainly not above being a Cleopatra.”

  The warm Mediterranean lapped at my feet. It was the only time I had ever sat at a dinner table actually standing in the water.

  “And is that supposed to intrigue me?”

  “Of course not,” Kate said. “That’s what the dinner and wine are for.”

  I nodded and took a sip of my wine. It was good, if good meant that it was smooth and not too sweet. I liked it. I took another sip, swishing the wine around in my mouth. The heat of the day had subsided and we were fast approaching magic hour, the sun low to the sea in the west. If I hadn’t been sitting with a woman whose very sight unnerved me, the whole thing might have been relaxing.

  “How did you get away from the CIA?” I said. “I delivered you all wrapped up in a pretty black bow. What did you do? Tie them up in it?”

  “Nothing so risqué.”

  “You must have done something.”

  “All I can tell you is that the Dragons have their ways.”

  I thought about it. “So you’re one of them now, are you? Left MI6 far behind? You’ve officially joined forces with the enemy?”

  “Six would have left me to rot. I did what I needed to do.”

  “Which was?”

  “I didn’t dig my way through a six-foot-thick concrete bunker if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Tell you what? Why don’t we
skip your disappearing act and move on to what you want with me?” I said.

  “I want to tell you about your father.”

  Once again, I felt my heart skip a beat. I didn’t want Kate to see the effect her words had on me. She knew that finding my father was of urgent personal interest, but no need to hand it to her on a silver platter.

  “What about him?”

  “Patience, Michael. I said I want to tell you about your father. And I do. But before I do that, I have a question for you.”

  “I’d say shoot, but you might actually do it.”

  “You don’t know me nearly as well as you think you do, Michael.”

  “I know that you didn’t blow my cover, which means you intend to play me like a fiddle until you get what you want.”

  “Cover? Please, Michael. The people I work for are a little more sophisticated than the Turkish Secret Police. The Dragons don’t know what you’ve done with Raptor, but I can assure you that from the moment you stepped on that boat, they knew you weren’t him. The loyal Michael Chase a traitor? Come on. No need to tell your secret police friend, though. Wouldn’t want to get you into hot water for fibbing.”

  “What’s your question then?”

  “I’d call it more of a request really. We want your cooperation.”

  I found myself smiling on the inside. My cooperation. Of course they wanted it. They wanted a puppet on a stick. The waiter made his way back toward us, a dab of sweat on his forehead. He was carrying some kind of amuse-bouche. Amuse-bouch is French for amuse your mouth. The Dragons were amusing me all right. The dinner was over the top. It seemed that they were catering the food directly from the yacht itself via another launch. That explained why the waiter looked harried. He must have been running back and forth to the dock. My mind drifted back to the food. After we were done with the fancy stuff, I was hoping for a good rare steak. Something about having Kate around made me ravenous.

  “My cooperation?” I said. “I don’t know a damn thing. What is it you want my cooperation with?”