by Cate Dermody
“A what?”
“A Tudor. Like Elizabeth the First.”
“How the hell should I know?” Reichart sounded so affronted she laughed, leaning forward to turn the sink on and let the water run warm.
“I thought that’s what the Sicarii were. Descendants of royalty trying to get their place back in the world.”
Reichart gave an evocative snort. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“The records show you’re descended from Henry Tudor. Henry the Eighth.”
The shower rod scraped as Reichart shoved the curtain open. Alisha could feel his stare against her back, and held herself still, refusing to turn around. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.” She dared shoot a brief look over her shoulder, deliberately keeping her gaze high. “If you’re not working for them, Reichart, who are you working for?”
“Did you check your own name in these records?” Reichart demanded. “You’re probably descended from Charlemagne, or something. Half of Europe claims him as a forefather. Did Parker tell you this crap? Did you check his name?”
“No,” Alisha said, without specifying which question she answered. “You’re staring, Frank.”
Reichart muttered, “I do that when there are naked women around,” but the hoops scraped again as he tugged the curtain shut. “I told you, Leesh. I’m working for the Russians. Nobody more esoteric than that.”
“Why’d you lie to me about the Sicarii?”
“How’d you know about Emma?”
Alisha pressed her lips together, then shrugged her eyebrows, scrubbing sticky grime off her face and arms before she spoke. “I saw you in London a couple of years ago. I followed you. You and Emma and Mazie.”
“Christ. Alisha…”
“Don’t. It doesn’t matter. Are you still with her?” If it didn’t matter, why was she asking? Alisha pulled a hollow smile, shaking her head.
“No. Why didn’t you say something?”
Alisha bent to the task of washing, rinsing out the washcloth more than once before she brought herself to answer. “You looked happy.”
The shower shut off. Alisha straightened her spine defensively, but Reichart didn’t pull the curtain open again. “You thought I shot you,” he said quietly, “and you didn’t have me arrested and brought in because I looked happy?”
Alisha wrapped her towel around herself, still sitting very straight. “Yeah.”
Reichart said nothing for so long Alisha thought he might not speak again. The silence was a pressure, broken only by the burble of sink water. She could almost feel it, her own determined bubble of withheld explanations bumping against Reichart’s, catching them together in an endless vortex of secrecy. No wonder it hadn’t worked, she thought, admitting her own fault for the first time. Maybe people like them weren’t supposed to be together.
“The CIA, the FSB, MI-5 and 6, all of them, they’re all governmental agencies. Whether or not you agree with them, the essence of those organizations is to hold to an ideal, and to help that ideal be perpetuated in the world at large.” Reichart spoke so suddenly that Alisha turned, watching the blur of his shape through the shower curtain. He braced himself beneath the showerhead, arms stiff, head dropped between them. His nearer leg was cocked forward, making long clean lines of his body even through the plastic curtain.
“The Sicarii have no ideals, Leesh. They’re functioning from a Dark Ages mentality, might makes right. They believe God speaks to them and through them, and that any action they take is divinely favored. It permits them to act without conscience.”
“Jihad,” Alisha said. “Kamikaze. Crusaders.”
“Exactly.” Reichart lifted his head, staring at the shower wall. “Those kinds of people don’t try to protect their assets. They just discard them when they outlive their usefulness. They’re insane, Alisha, and they’re dangerous. And that’s why I lied to you. I didn’t want you to get tangled up in anything they had a hand in.”
“You could have told me.”
Reichart barked a sarcastic laugh. “Sure,” he said, and turned a grin on Alisha that she could see even through the curtain’s blur. “Because that’s in my nature.” He reached for the curtain and Alisha turned around hastily, pointing a reluctant grin at the countertop.
“So how do you know about them? The Sicarii Brotherhood.”
“Brotherhood.” Alisha could all but hear Reichart’s eyebrows rising. “Catchy. I like it. What the hell do you think I was investigating when I showed up at your boyfriend’s camp? I’m decent,” he added, which was just as well, because Alisha turned on him, offended. He’d wrapped his towel around his hips, attractively low, but Alisha’s focus was on his face and the challenge in his gaze.
“Boyfriend?”
“You and Parker seemed to be hitting it off pretty good.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Alisha put a hand on the counter, setting her teeth in preparation for standing. “Jealousy doesn’t look good on you, Reichart.” A bare chest and an unfairly low towel, on the other hand….
“Maybe not. Don’t squirm.” He lifted her into his arms before she put more than a fraction of her weight on her feet. Alisha didn’t object as he carried her back to the bedroom, his skin warm against hers. The purpling bruises on his ribs were more visible now that he was clean. “What do you mean, you were there about the Sicarii?”
Reichart sighed, backing away from the bed to sprawl heavily in a chair, towel loosening. Alisha grinned faintly and glanced away. “Not that I don’t appreciate the view, Reichart, but…”
“Shit.” Reichart adjusted his towel and kicked his feet forward instead of out, crossing them, comparatively demurely, at the ankle. “He works for the Sicarii, Leesh. He has for years.”
“That’s not possible. Greg got into his files, his op is CIA. It’s not possible.” Cold trickled over Alisha’s shoulders, making her pull the towel tighter around herself. It wasn’t possible.
Unless Greg was lying to her, too.
Cascading images fell through Alisha’s line of vision, memories of words spoken resounding inside her mind. Greg and Brandon, cavalierly leaving Reichart behind in the building Alisha was under orders to destroy. The strain in Greg’s voice: what if it was because she’d broken through to a level of operations that Greg knew about, but she wasn’t supposed to? Had she been set up from the beginning?
“Where’d you get the intel on the observatory? Why were you there?” Alisha asked, voice hoarse. Reichart’s silence stretched taut before snapping.
“I knew you would be.”
Alisha’s gaze jerked to him, a whole new wave of shock spilling through her and making her body colder than before. Only her handler and a few people above him had known where she was going that night. Alisha’s hand went to her waist, forgetful that she wore only a towel. The data she’d retrieved that night had led her to Brandon, to the Sicarii.
What if it had been a ploy?
To what end?
“I’ve got to go.” Alisha shoved to her feet, clenching her teeth against the wave of nausea that swept up, the cuts and scrapes hurting more than their worth. It seemed like the trade-off for the rapid healing that she’d always associated with foot injuries.
Reichart was on his feet again too, strong hands warm against her bare shoulders. “Leesh, you might as well get some rest, unless you’ve got clean clothes hidden in that backpack of yours. I didn’t think so,” he said as her face fell. “Lie down, sleep. It’ll help you heal and it’ll clear your head. I’ll wash the clothes. Besides,” he said more gently, “what’re you going to do? Waltz in and demand to know if Greg Parker’s loyalties really lie with the CIA? What do you think he’ll say, Leesh?”
“I don’t know. Why should I trust any of what you’re telling me?” She did, a searing cold line of truth that burned through her middle, but there was no reason beyond her gut instinct, she thought. She didn’t know whether to trust even herself anymore. “Did Cristina really shoot me?”
Alisha pulled away, folding her arms around herself and hobbling to the end of the bed, out of Reichart’s reach. Shards of agony shot up her shinbones and took up residence in her knees, making them ache like the weather was turning. “It was, um.” She swallowed, then sat, putting her face in her hands tiredly. “A terrorist threat, I think. Against Rome proper, not Vatican City. It didn’t pan out, though.”
“No.” Reichart crouched in front of her, hands dangling over his knees. His towel loosened again, precariously, and Alisha lifted her gaze to his face rather than call him on it. “The Sicarii made a power play inside the Church. They needed Cardinal Nyland out of the way in order to move one of their own into a stronger position for an eventual attempt at the papal seat.”
Alisha breathed laughter. “The Pope had been ailing for years, Reichart. Why then? Why Nyland?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Nyland was popular, and maybe too smart for his own good. He thought there was more to the maneuverings than simple politics and started investigating. He came up against the Sicarii, Leesh. The intel he was passing you was regarding them.”
Alisha shook her head. “But I had the papers he gave me.”
“You had the papers the Sicarii replaced the originals with. I watched Cristina switch them, Leesh.”
“Cristina!”
“I don’t know,” Reichart said harshly. “I don’t know if she knew what she was doing, if she was working for the FSB or the Sicarii, Alisha. All I know is I watched the papers get changed and then I lifted them off her in the chaos while they were preparing to move you to the hospital.”
“How could she have shot me? She was in the plaza. I saw her.” Alisha’s voice dropped. “What were you doing there, Frank?”
“The first I saw of her, she was coming from the stairs in front of you. She was high enough to have shot you. And I was supposed to protect the Cardinal.” Reichart ghosted his hand over her cheek. Alisha closed her eyes, tempted to lean into that bare touch. “I wanted to protect you. Neither worked out so well.”
“If you didn’t shoot me, why’d you disappear?”
Reichart huffed a laugh of frustration. “I got another assignment.”
“Another assignment worth leaving your fiancée bleeding to death in a Roman piazza. I hope it was a nice fat paycheck, Reichart.” The venom in Alisha’s voice was watered down with age and her own growing weariness.
“Alisha…”
Alisha shook her head. “It’s history, Frank. Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore. And right now I don’t know what to believe, so I’m just going to get some sleep. If you’re still here in the morning, we’ll talk then.”
Chapter 20
A cheap cotton T-shirt lay neatly folded on the bed next to her when Alisha opened her eyes. Its presence spoke volumes that her ears would have heard anyway: there was no sound of another sleeper in the hotel room, no noise in the bathroom to indicate someone might be in there. Alisha curled her fingers into the thin fabric and sat up, pulling the shirt on at the same time.
It didn’t matter: there was no need for modesty. Her ears hadn’t betrayed her. Reichart was gone, the T-shirt left as an apology for the man not being there. Alisha said, “Bastard,” to the empty room, without heat, and folded her feet up to examine the soles beneath their loose-wrapped bandages.
The cuts and punctures were clean, no signs of infection, but walking was going to hurt. She pressed her lips together and reached for new bandages, left by the bedside along with the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Very thoughtful of Reichart, she thought, to sneak out only after getting all the materials she’d need for a discreet exit from the hotel.
It was just barely possible that he might have still been there, had she not ended the evening before with the weary wisecrack that she had. It was a thought she preferred to let go unexamined. Easier to simply accept that Reichart wasn’t a man to be counted on.
But at least the shirt he’d brought her fell to her hips, covering the sleek fibrous material that the black suit she’d worn the night before was made of. He’d left the rubber-pebbled shoes she’d lent him. Tugging them over the fresh bandages on her feet made her dizzy, but once on they constricted in a more friendly fashion, as if the snug fit supported and cushioned her soles more efficiently than normal shoes would. She left the hotel with her expression deliberately neutral, unable to do anything about the white of her cheeks: every step reminded her of the cuts she’d acquired, the shoes doing almost nothing to pad her feet against the street’s surface. But it was better than being barefoot, and after the first minutes, the pain mutated into a thick constant ache that made her joints hurt halfway up her body, but was manageable. It was wonderful, she thought with a mix of honesty and sarcasm, what the human body could adapt to.
She collected her belongings from a stash near the airport: jeans, shoes, passport. Putting the tennies on sent a new wave of dizziness through her, roiling her belly and making her light-headed. Focusing on anything beyond her own feet was difficult, until the attempt to do so made her hyperaware of her surroundings. The air felt too hot, sticking against her skin, and despite the twitchy impulse to snap around and catch someone’s eyes on her, she only caught a few bemused smiles as she boarded the train to the airport.
Elisa Moon, dressed more casually than she preferred for traveling, boarded an international flight with a first-class seat barely an hour later. She ordered orange juice from the smiling flight attendant, accepted a DVD player and pushed her shoes off and under the seat in front of her. She turned her gaze out the tiny window, and felt an unexpected hitch in her breath letting go, unraveling tension that had knotted in her shoulders. It released the feeling of being watched, as if she’d escaped Frank Reichart’s intent gaze only when she’d boarded the airplane.
Alisha closed her eyes and inhaled deeply of the air, tasting the manufactured quality of it. Even with the doors still open, it was too often recycled and too dry. She felt for the bottle of water provided by the airlines, cracking its top and draining most of it without opening her eyes. Coolness hit her belly and spread through her body, as if it fought the good fight against the dryness of the air. It seemed to bring clarity to her thoughts, fine threads of watery blue spilling through the crooks and crannies of her mind. Alisha smiled faintly at the image, pressing her head back into the headrest.
It cradled her skull, a promise that she could drift into sleep without waking with a crick in her neck. Alisha held on to that idea, sailing out of conscious thought and into the semi-aware state that preceded sleep. The sound of the jet’s engines filled her ears, white noise that disrupted any need to focus on listening to the people around her. She felt the chair beside her shift, and the faint warmth of someone else’s body heat as another passenger—from the delicate scent of perfume, a woman—sat. To Alisha’s relief, the woman didn’t immediately speak, and she hoped they could pass the entire flight in companionable silence. She wanted time to think, not to exclaim politely over someone’s grandchildren or dogs.
She needed proof. Unless Brandon and Reichart were working together, a thought which Alisha refused to contemplate, the Sicarii must have some grounding in truth. The Vatican records were too old and delicate to be forged, but even they weren’t concrete evidence of a centuries-old conspiracy to lever divine right over democracy. Alisha felt her stomach muscles tighten with a laugh that went no further than that. Maybe it was human nature to believe in conspiracies, just as it was to believe in predestination and a reason behind everything that happened. She felt she ought to know better, but a part of her wanted to believe. Me and Fox Mulder.
She pushed away the wry thought, deliberately focusing on the scant handful of things she felt certain of. Brandon and Greg Parker, regardless of what other affiliations they might share, w
ere working together in Beijing at the Attengee production facility. Brandon claimed to be working undercover for the CIA as a mole within the Sicarii, an organization that Greg claimed to have no knowledge of.
But the assignment to investigate Brandon had come from above Greg. From higher in the CIA. From Director Boyer. Alisha reached for and drank the rest of her water without opening her eyes, feeling removed from her own physical actions. Assume, she thought, that Boyer was straight. Assume that his investigation was endangering a Sicarii protocol within the CIA.
Then everything she thought she’d known for the last ten years could be a lie.
And every action she took now could be a test. She was Greg Parker’s protégé, a young woman he’d groomed for nearly a decade. She was quick and smart and sometimes sentimental. If someone was unsure of where her handler’s loyalties lay, Alisha’s would also undoubtedly be in question.
That was the problem with spy movies, of course. Why did they always send someone with emotional investment? It was a dangerous, foolish practice, likely to result in mistakes made from clouded judgment.
Mistakes like looking for ways to keep Brandon Parker out of harm’s way, which could very easily be misinterpreted as her loyalties lying elsewhere. Alisha tilted her head until the crown pressed against the chair’s headrest, nostrils flaring as she drew in a too-deep breath. Maybe she hadn’t been drawn into the tangled web she was uncovering. Maybe she’d been placed in it deliberately, to see whether she was a spider or a fly.
She exhaled noisily, pressing her fingers into the seat arms. The possibility she was being played hadn’t occurred to her before now.
“It’s all right,” the woman beside her said in lightly accented English. “Flying is safe.” The words rose and fell with Asian intonations, full of warmth and gentleness. Alisha gave a startled half-laugh and opened her eyes.
