Killer Reads: A Collection of the Best in Inspirational Suspense

by Luana Ehrlich

  Nevertheless, because I couldn’t just turn my instincts on and off like a water spigot, I continued to mull over Jamerson’s interest in me.

  Lerner pointed to a large house at the top of a winding lane. “Well, in these new digs” he said, “you’ll have some state-of-the-art rehab equipment for that leg. Support purchased this little casa for a song during the housing bust.” He laughed. “It’s been remodeled to our specifications, of course.”

  I didn’t laugh.

  I was too numb.

  We pulled in front of the “casa,” which was at least a 10,000 square-foot house. It was surrounded by gigantic oak trees, and, in the distance, at the back of the house, I spotted a large lake with a boat dock. As we pulled into the circle drive, I half expected to see a butler and several uniformed maids appear at the front door to welcome the master of the castle home.

  The house was well situated on several acres of forested land and located within a gated neighborhood of similar residences. I imagined most of the well-to-do owners had their own security systems. We had entered the safe house property through a remote-controlled sliding gate, and I suspected security cameras had been tracking us ever since.

  “This one is called The Gray,” Lerner said.

  The name made sense. Instead of addresses or numbers, the Agency used color-coded names for their safe houses, and, while the exterior of the house was blindingly white, the window shutters and the front door were painted a muted shade of bluish gray.

  Previously, I had been debriefed in The Red. It was at least half the size of this one and had a red-tiled roof. There was no butler, just a slightly plump Italian cook named Angelina who had helped me gain back the weight I'd lost on a mission into Pakistan. The neighbors thought I was her son. The complexion I’d inherited from my father made it easy for me to pass myself off as an Italian, or even an Iranian of mixed ancestry.

  Lerner got out of the car and headed for the front door. “Jamerson, get his kit from the trunk and meet us inside.”

  I took my time getting out of the car.

  I paused to zip up the jacket of the tracksuit I’d been issued at the air base in Turkey, and then I leaned back inside the car and picked up the cane from the back seat. All the while, I was keeping an eye on Jamerson. He grabbed the duffel bag given to me on the flight over from Turkey, and, when he closed the trunk, our eyes met.

  He motioned toward the front entrance with a slight nod of his head. “After you, sir.”

  I was almost six feet tall, and he was about my height, but, unlike me, he had a beefy body. I wondered how many hours he spent in the gym each day.

  I hadn't seen the inside of a gym for years.

  I hobbled toward the door, thankful Jamerson hadn’t offered to help me.

  In fact, if he had, I might have marshaled whatever strength I had left and slugged him.

  Pride was a great energizer for me.

  Lerner was already standing inside the giant foyer of the mansion, having keyed in the front door’s security code beyond the range of my prying eyes. He was speaking in hushed tones to a middle-aged couple. I presumed they were the homeowners—at least to the other residents in the neighborhood.

  After Jamerson had deposited my duffel bag on the floor, I asked him, “Ex-Marine?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You served at the American Embassy in Iraq in 2008?”

  There was no mistaking the pride in his voice. “Yes, sir. I’m surprised you even remembered me. You weren’t in very good shape that day.”

  “How could I forget—?”

  “Greg and Martha,” Lerner said, interrupting our conversation, “let me introduce you to your newest houseguest.”

  As Lerner steered them in my direction, Jamerson gave me an understanding nod, and I turned my attention to the couple in charge of the safe house.

  Greg was in his late fifties with a slight paunch around his middle and close-cropped gray hair. He smiled at me with a lopsided grin. His wife was petite, had short black hair and piercing blue eyes.

  I shook their outstretched hands.

  “Titus Ray,” I said.

  Martha’s smile was warm. “Welcome home, Titus.”

  Martha immediately took me on a “tour” of the house. It lasted almost thirty minutes. On the first floor, besides the huge eat-in kitchen, dining room, living room, and den, there was also a study, a library, and a media room.

  I was sure the basement level was like no other house in the area. Three rooms made up a mini-hospital with an operating table, x-ray apparatus, laboratory facilities, and a pharmacy. There were also fully equipped physical therapy rooms and a soundproof conference room, wired with state-of-the-art audio and video equipment.

  Upstairs, along with the master suite occupied by Greg and Martha, there were six bedrooms. Security officers were in two of the bedrooms, but I was the only guest of The Gray at the moment.

  As Martha escorted me to my room, she casually mentioned other facilities, so I suspected there had to be a safe room somewhere, plus a room for all the security and communications equipment. Those rooms were either located on the basement level, or in a part of the house I would have to discover for myself.

  My bedroom was at the end of the upstairs hallway, the furthest from the master suite and next door to one of the security officers’ rooms. As soon as Martha left me alone, I opened the wooden shutters and spent a few minutes appreciating the view.

  The manicured landscape included a large boulder waterfall with a cobblestone path running alongside it. I assumed the path led down to the lake. I suspected there might even be a tunnel from the basement right down to the dock and boathouse. Most safe houses remodeled by Support had secret exits somewhere.

  Within an hour of my arrival, Greg appeared at my bedroom door. He informed me I was scheduled to see Dr. Terry Howard in the basement “hospital” for a physical.

  It would not be my first encounter with Terry Howard.

  Howard and I had met when I was recruited by the CIA in 1980 in the middle of the Iran hostage crisis. My time at The Farm, the CIA’s training facility at Camp Peary in Williamsburg, Virginia, had been full of surprises, one of which had been a case of appendicitis.

  About two hours into a three-day training exercise, I had noticed a slight pain in my right side. Howard, who had just completed his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in emergency medicine, was a member of our four-person squad, and when I popped a couple of aspirin, he started to suspect something was wrong with me. However, our team had come in last in our previous exercise, and, as the team leader, I was determined it wasn’t going to happen again, so I kept ignoring my discomfort.

  The task took place in and around Raleigh, North Carolina and involved locating a human target, eliminating the hostiles—another squad of trainees—and delivering the target across a “border.” The border in this case was the Virginia state line.

  By midnight of the first night, as my team and I were meeting together in a cheap motel on the outskirts of Raleigh, I started vomiting. After one such trip to the bathroom, Howard ignored my feeble objections and pushed on my belly. He ended his exam by asking me some ridiculous questions. Finally, he announced I was having an appendicitis attack and wanted me to check into a hospital.

  I angrily disagreed and insisted on completing the task first, so Howard backed off for a couple of hours. However, after the four of us determined the location of our target, my pain became noticeably more intense.

  At that point, Howard started hammering me with the facts of a burst appendix.

  His lecture convinced me to work out a compromise with him. Without informing anyone at The Farm, Howard took me to the ER at Duke Raleigh Hospital and made arrangements with a surgeon to remove my diseased organ. From my hospital bed the next day, I continued to direct our mission, using one of the team members as my messenger. On the third day, our target was secured, so the team picked me up from the hospital, and we made our run for the
border.

  Unfortunately, we came in second.

  However, none of our trainers ever found out about my emergency appendectomy. The only time they questioned me was before my initial overseas assignment. Then, the examining physician noticed my scar and remarked that someone had failed to enter my appendectomy on my medical records. At that point, I backdated the operation’s date, and that was the end of it.

  After our training, Dr. Terry Howard had been assigned to the Middle Eastern desk. I’d seen him a few times since then, twice for debrief exams and once in Kuwait when he was called in to examine some high-value targets before we started interrogating them. Now, since he was the attending physician at The Gray, I assumed he was assigned to Support Services permanently.

  After Greg escorted me to the elevator, I told him I could make it the rest of the way on my own. Even though Greg’s assignment included keeping an eye on me, he didn’t voice any real objection to my small gesture of rebellion. However, as the elevator doors began to close, I noticed he hadn’t moved. To reassure him, I gave him a small wave goodbye before the doors completely shut.

  When I entered the exam room, Terry Howard was fussing over a set of empty vials used to draw blood; his head was bent low, trying to read the labels with a pair of bifocals perched precariously over his nose.

  “Hey, Doc, how are—”

  He juggled two of the vials, almost dropping one of them. “Aaagh! Titus, you startled me.”

  “Sorry. I thought you heard me.” I waved my cane in his direction. “This thing makes a lot of noise.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” he grumbled. “And don’t bother apologizing. I remember how you used to like sneaking up on people.”

  Terry Howard had reached his late fifties with a full head of hair, no wrinkles—except for a few lines across his forehead—and he still had the slim physique he’d had when I first met him.

  His grumpy demeanor remained unchanged also.

  “You don’t look good at all,” he groused, wrapping the blood pressure cuff around my arm.

  “Well, I need a haircut.”

  He grunted and continued taking my vitals, making meticulous notes as he probed and prodded. Lastly, he examined what had been my busted left leg.

  “It was bad, huh?”

  “They said I shattered my femur and tore all the knee ligaments. It wasn’t pretty.”

  He shook his head. “With that much damage, you were either in a car accident or playing in the NFL.”

  “I jumped off a very high roof. Forgot to tuck and roll.”

  “That would do it.”

  Even though he had the security clearance to do so, Howard didn’t question me about the particulars of my injury—that would be the job of my debriefers. He inquired relentlessly, however, about the functioning of every part of my body.

  Finally, he put his hand on my knee and gave it a twist. “Did that hurt?”

  The pain was excruciating.

  “Ouch. Yeah!”

  “Good. Maybe the surgery didn’t damage your nerves too badly.”

  I tried massaging the pain away. “What kind of test was that?”

  He ignored me and pointed to my cane. “You’ll need a few weeks of rehab to get rid of your little crutch there,” he said. “After that, I can’t guarantee you won’t continue to have some pain, but, as I recall, pain was never a big deal to you anyway.”

  He reached over and touched my appendix scar.

  “I’ll never forget how infuriated you were with me during that training run in Raleigh when I told you your appendix was about to burst. I’ve never seen anyone so enraged before.”

  Before I could protest his recollection of events, he asked me, “Have you learned to control that temper of yours yet?”

  I wanted to give him a flippant answer, but in light of the decision I’d made one night in a tiny living room in Tehran, I decided to reply with the truth.

  “I'm really trying, Doc, really trying.”

  CHAPTER 2

  They left me alone for three days.

  At first, I figured it was because I’d arrived on Friday, and all my debriefers wanted to have a long weekend.

  Later, I found out it was because Gordan Bolton—the Agency’s chief of station in Turkey and the first person to greet me when Rahim released me from the trunk of his car in Dogubayazit—had suggested my bosses give me a few days off to decompress before starting my debrief.

  I did nothing on Saturday except eat, sleep, and become familiar with the house. Every time I showed up in the kitchen, Martha fixed me a huge meal. For his part, Greg stayed as close to me as possible, moseying with me through the kitchen, the media room, the library, just keeping an eye on me, but willing to engage in conversation if I felt like talking.

  I didn't.

  I met Jim and Alex, the security officers.

  Jim was an outgoing type of guy, and, like me, he was in his late forties, although his thick brown hair was already turning gray. The left side of Jim’s face was disfigured by a two-inch scar running from his eye socket to his ear. However, he exuded self-confidence.

  His attitude reassured me because I felt shrouded in a blanket of uncertainty.

  Alex, who appeared to be in his early thirties, had curly blond hair, an acne-scarred face, and deep-set blue eyes. He barely spoke to me when we were introduced, and I had the distinct impression my presence made him nervous.

  His reaction was understandable.

  Covert operatives coming in from a failed mission tended to make Agency people skittish.

  After waking up on Sunday morning, I took my mug of thick black coffee outside, stared at the pool and gardens, and finally started asking myself some serious questions about my future.

  Did I want to stay covert? Would I even be allowed to do so? After what happened in Tehran, were they going to offer me a desk job—analyst or such?

  I thought about that for several minutes.

  I decided I’d go crazy if I wasn’t allowed out in the field.

  The night before I’d left Tehran, Javad had asked me a question. I had answered him truthfully. However, what did that mean for my career now?

  I was surprised by my feelings of helplessness and insecurity.

  My emotional tenor reminded me of a time, ages ago, when Laura had left me for another man. I’d felt just as vulnerable then. Our divorce was one of the driving forces behind my accepting an offer to come to work for the CIA in the first place.

  Did my life need to take a different turn now? Was it time to leave the Agency?

  Praying about these questions felt like something I ought to do.

  I bowed my head.

  Nothing came.

  Prayer wasn’t a familiar practice in my life.

  By mid-morning, I was getting antsy, and, even though I was officially quarantined at The Gray until my debrief was over, I briefly considered leaving the house for a couple of hours.

  I knew that the Agency’s quarantine restrictions—no outside communication, television, or internet—were in place to preserve the integrity of the debrief. However, as much as I agreed with this concept in principle, trying to obey such rules always proved to be an entirely different matter altogether.

  Despite my restlessness, though, I discarded my escape plans.

  Instead, I wandered into the library, where I found a variety of reading choices on the shelves. There were the classics, lots of “how to” books—so I could learn about installing a toilet or making a PowerPoint presentation—and some contemporary fiction. I also found a whole shelf of religious books and different versions of the Bible.

  I finally selected A Tale of Two Cities, The Cambridge Guide to Astronomical Discovery, and a Bible.

  Then, I slipped off to my room.

  Greg knocked on my door around one o’clock and asked me if I wanted some lunch. I followed him downstairs and into the kitchen where Martha was slicing up some roast beef.

  When she saw me, she immediately picke
d up a remote control and turned off the flat-screen TV mounted on the wall in the breakfast nook.

  Fox News Sunday was playing.

  After putting down the remote, she looked over at Greg and silently mouthed an apology, “Sorry.”

  He waved her off.

  He must have thought I hadn’t heard anything.

  Chris Wallace had been asking someone about Iran’s nuclear program.

  Alex was perched on a stool at the kitchen island wolfing down a sandwich. He gave me the once over, nodded his head, and left the room.

  Greg grabbed the vacant stool, and I sat down next to him.

  Martha placed a big roast beef sandwich in front of me, along with a small bowl of potato salad. “Thanks. This looks great.”

  She acknowledged my compliment with a smile. “You want lemonade again?”

  My mouth was full, so I just nodded. A few minutes later, she placed a large icy glass in front of me.

  “Greg, can I get you something?” she asked her husband.

  “I’ll take a cup of coffee.”

  After she handed him a mug, a knowing look passed between them, and, seconds later, she made an excuse and left the room.

  A few minutes after she left, Greg removed a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. “Here’s the schedule for your debrief tomorrow,” he said. “It looks pretty straightforward. I know you’ve been through this drill several times.”

  I took the schedule and stuffed it inside my jeans pocket without looking at it.

  “You like working for the Agency, Greg?”

  I wasn't sure whether it was my question or the fact I was beginning to talk, but Greg smiled when he gave me his answer. “Yes, yes, I do.”

  He took a sip of his coffee then gestured at his surroundings. “Obviously, this is a pretty cushy job.”

  “Did you ever go operational, work in the field?”

  His eyes shifted slightly to the left, and he hesitated a moment before answering. I had no doubt he was weighing whether it was more important to keep me talking or follow Agency rules. He decided on the former.