CHAPTER THIRTY
Five hours later
October 8—6:30 P.M.
Near downtown Denver, Colorado
“Would you like some more?” John asked. He held a bottle of Cristal champagne.
Alex rolled onto her stomach and held her glass out. They were laying, naked, wrapped around each other in a tiny CIA-owned boutique hotel room near downtown Denver. After being checked and bandaged in the emergency room, John and Max were whisked through a series of tunnels into Homeland Security vehicles. Ben arrived to escort Max and his broken rib to a family home outside of Montreal, Canada.
John refused to leave Alex, so they compromised with this hotel. John planned to write up his research project for the Journal of the American Medical Association. Alex and Raz had bets that he wouldn’t make it a week. Alex had already arranged for his escort to Scotland.
“First,” John said.
He grunted. The bullet had caught the edge of his body armor, bruising his shoulder. He was bruised and sore. Yet, for a man who had been pronounced dead only a few hours ago, he was remarkably fit.
She crawled across the bed to kiss him. He pressed her onto her back as their passion caught. They had been lying in the bed, celebrating the two-year survival anniversary with champagne and love for the last three hours.
“I think the news is on,” Alex said.
“Oh, by all means—I’d love to see your show,” John said, rolling to his back. Plucking the remote from a side table, he flicked on the television. Alex rested her head against his chest, while he flipped through the channels.
“Here we go,” he said. He kissed her head.
“Three dead as a day of remembrance turns deadly,” the FOX News reporter said.
“I think that’s a little dramatic,” Alex said.
“Lots of ‘dead’ in that. How about this one?” John asked.
“A family’s tragedy deepens as Senator Patrick Hargreaves loses another son on the anniversary of his son Alexander’s death.”
“That’s a good picture of my Dad,” Alex said. “Oh look, I missed this.”
Patrick, supporting a weeping Rebecca, moved into a limousine while surrounded by Secret Service officers.
“She looks very sad,” John said.
“She’s good,” Alex said. “Look—there I am.”
The camera showed a picture of blond-haired, blue-eyed Alyssa collapsing in the hospital waiting room. Alyssa sobbed into Erin’s arms, while Matthew pushed the cameras away. The announcer said in a solemn voice, “They were to be married in less than two weeks.”
“How did I do? Very convincing?” Alex beamed.
“You were brilliant.” John kissed her. “Where is Zack?”
“Zack’s dead, John, you know that,” Alex replied in the same tone he used when he “reminded” her that Jesse was dead.
John squinted at her sarcasm, and she laughed. Rolling over, she moved on top of him so that her mouth was next to his ear.
“He’s with his girlfriend.”
“Bestat the dragon?”
“Mmm . . . She sent me a text when they arrived in Cairo. They’ll stay at her family’s home near the Valley of the Kings until this is over.”
“And when do we think this will be over?”
“This week,” Alex said, rolling onto her side. He rolled onto his side so he could look at her. “He’s had success, so he will keep moving forward. We are in place to move at any time.”
“Hmm,” John said. “Dare I ask? What’s next?”
“We aren’t sure,” Alex said. She rolled onto her back to cover her lie.
“Hey.” John touched her shoulder. He misinterpreted her lie for sadness.
She looked over at him.
“At least it will be over at some point,” he said.
She nodded, wishing that she had his confidence.
“I have something for you,” she said.
“A diamond?”
“Something better,” she said. Standing, Alex went to her suitcase and pulled out the box she had found in the cabinet in the vault.
“We got this for you,” Alex said. “It was a team present. Everyone was involved. Dwayne found it at one of those shops with junk stacked from floor to ceiling in Abidjan—you know, the Ivory Coast. He took Tommy and Jesse to see it, but the shop wasn’t open. I think Paul finally purchased it like a month later. Charlie had it cleaned. Mike made sure it was authentic. Anyway, everyone had something to do with this, including me.” She smiled. “Close your eyes, and hold out your hand.”
She set a heavy, cylindrical object in his hand. “You can open your eyes.”
John opened his eyes to an antique fountain pen with an intricate snail detail in gold overlay on the black enamel body of the pen. The gold cap continued in the snail detail. Opening the pen, he made a small noise reading the inscription on the gold nib—ALCO.
“Oh my God.”
“Mike said that the pen was made in 1884 or 1885, but the nib is newer,” Alex said. She pointed to the date—1915. “I thought it was cool to think about someone using this pen for thirty years before replacing the nib. The eyedropper to fill it is in the case.”
She passed him a pen case marked Aiken Lambert.
“I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“We were going to give it to you when you finished your General Surgery certificate, but we were stuck somewhere,” Alex said. “We were going to give it to you for Christmas, but . . .” She shrugged. “We wanted to get you something special, and we knew your love for fountain pens.”
“I use my green fountain pen every day,” John said.
“The one I gave you for our one-month anniversary?” Alex asked.
“I write my notes with it every day. I even wrote my first prescription with that pen,” John said. “Alex, this is the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever received. Your team . . . they were truly great men. I will treasure this.”
“Everyone felt involved in you becoming a doctor, and a surgeon. We were proud of you. I am very proud of you.”
“Thank you,” He smiled at her and touched her face.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Dinner?”
“I had something else in mind first,” he said.
She giggled when he pushed her onto her back for another round.
FFF
One day passed, and another.
They began to believe they were on vacation. The hotel had secure connections to every major computer system and video conferencing. Alex wandered down the hall to work on the maps of Afghanistan and wandered back for lunch. Her Sergeant and his wife came for dinner one night. Raz moved into a room down the hall. For the first time in more than two years, Alex and Patrick played pool with Raz for an entire afternoon, while John worked on his paper. She played poker with Max via video conference between his morning fly-fishing on the lake and his afternoon fly-fishing on the river.
The constant pressure of pretending to be Alyssa, covering who she was, and looking over her shoulder slipped away in this twenty room CIA-created oasis. Two days passed into three days.
They were deliciously happy.
FFF
October 12—9:30 A.M.
Downtown Denver, Colorado
“Ah shit,” Alex said, as her cell phone rang. “Do you mind?”
She and John were eating a late breakfast in a courtyard tucked into the middle of the hotel. The waiter had just set their meal on the table when her phone rang.
“Go ahead,” John said, opening the Denver Post. “I have this important newspaper to keep me company.”
Alex smiled. Surrounded by CIA operatives, government employees, and various spies from a variety of countries, she didn’t worry about being overheard. Plus, she was fairly confident they were taping her calls anyway. She hoped they enjoyed their hotel-room videos. She smiled slightly.
Better than porn.
“Yes?”
“Your friends wish to see you now,” a voice said
on the phone. “We’re waiting for you in the front of the hotel. Tell him: ‘Sorry, I have to go.’”
Alex clicked off the phone. Standing, she slipped on her leather jacket.
“Sorry, I have to go.”
Smiling, John looked up from the newspaper. She kissed his lips. Their eyes held for a moment. She shook her head slightly.
“You know, he always says ‘friends.’”
John’s eyes caught hers. She seemed a million miles away. Better to just let her do her work. She’ll be back soon, he thought.
She smiled slightly and touched his chin, “I love you.”
He smiled in response. Without another word, she walked out of the courtyard and through the front of the hotel.
Raz pulled out a chair from the table.
“Where’s Alex?” he asked.
“She got a call and had to leave,” John said, from behind his newspaper.
“Then she won’t mind if I eat her . . . She left her coffee?”
John looked up and nodded.
“It was quite strange, really. She said that she had to go and said that ‘he always says ‘friends.’”
Raz jumped from the table and ran through the hotel. Alex was sitting in the back of a cab that was pulling away from the hotel. She turned to look at him and pressed her hand against the window of the cab. Her brown eyes were round and hollow. He felt as if he could see straight to her soul. He ran to catch a cab, but a hand held him in place.
“Sir, we need to ask you to return to the hotel,” the CIA doorman said. “There’s been a confirmed major threat against this facility.”
“But . . .” Raz said. He watched the cab move into traffic.
The doorman all but pushed Raz back into the hotel. The doors shut. The outer doors, designed to protect against car bombs, clanged shut. Looking down at his cell phone, he saw what he expected. “No Service.” He threw the phone into the brick wall.
In that moment, Raz understood what Alex had told John. Furious with himself, he missed the fact that in every call, Eleazar said the word “friend.” His mind clicked through a series of commands and sounds from the calls. Eleazar planted the word for the moment he would use it to control her. Walking back to the table, Raz felt his entire world crumble around him.
“John,” Raz said.
“Hmm,” John said from behind the paper.
“Eleazar has Alex,” Raz said.
F
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