by Rebecca York
“My God, what’s in that letter?” Paula asked, glancing at the paper in Julie’s hand and then looking up to see that the blood had drained from the other young woman’s face.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t tell me ‘nothing.’ This has something to do with whatever has been eating at you for the past few weeks.”
“Paula, I’m not allowed to talk about it, and believe me, you wouldn’t want to get involved.”
“Honey, I care about you. If you’re in some kind of trouble, I want to help. You’ve been uptight ever since Dan was killed. This is more than grief, isn’t it?”
Julie buried her face in her hands. Carrying all this around was pushing her beyond the edge of her control. The temptation to lighten the burden just a little bit was overwhelming. She looked up at her friend. “I can’t tell you much. But I need your help tonight.”
“You know I’ll do anything I can.”
“I have to be somewhere at nine. You stay here. If I’m not back in two hours, I want you to call Cal Dixon.”
Paula’s mouth dropped open. “Cal Dixon. Isn’t he CIA?”
“I told you you wouldn’t want to get involved.”
“And I told you I want to help. I can’t let you go out to whatever this is alone.”
“The best way you can help me is to stay here.” Julie paused and laughed, her voice rising with an odd inflection. “Besides, someone has to take the pizza out of the oven. Keep it warm for me. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Julie slipped her shoes back on and grabbed her purse. Then she handed Paula the note. “Here’s the address. But don’t mess things up by calling Cal unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
* * *
ALEKSEI ROZONOV’S FACE showed nothing, but as he left General Bogolubov’s office, he felt a queasiness in the pit of his stomach that had little to do with the fact that it was eight o’clock in the evening and he hadn’t eaten anything all day.
He and the general had met twice since Julie McLean had offered to sell him the classified documents. He’d thought the toad would hop at the opportunity, but Bogolubov had stalled him. Today, when he’d proposed to set up another rendezvous, the general had said that he was going to take care of that aspect of the problem himself. When Aleksei asked for details, the general simply announced he was taking him off the case. Logically, he should have felt relief. He hadn’t wanted the assignment in the first place. But he didn’t like the comrade general’s imperious tone of voice or the triumphant gleam in his eyes.
Instead of going back to his own desk, he took the elevator downstairs to the embassy security office. Even though General Bogolubov wasn’t willing to level with him, there might be a way to get a hint of his plans. In the locked room was a book where KGB daily activities were logged, in case there was any question later about authorization for specific operations. Aleksei scanned the notations. They were a code unto themselves. He couldn’t tell what was being planned, but there was an item that mentioned a message being sent to Julie’s address followed by another address he didn’t recognize and a time—9:00 p.m.
What the devil was Bogolubov up to? He had to find out—and fast. As though he were simply going home for the day, he signed himself out and left the building. He needed to make a phone call, but despite the urgency he didn’t stop at the first booth he passed. Instead he walked to a small tobacco shop where he sometimes bought the evening newspaper. There was a phone booth in the back where he could talk in private and also watch the street.
Although he’d only dialed Julie’s number once, he’d committed it to memory. But the woman who answered wasn’t the one he’d been expecting. He almost hung up. Instead he asked in Spanish if Julie was home.
“I’m sorry, she had to go out to a meeting.”
The woman sounded upset.
“Where is she?” The queasy feeling in his stomach turned into a knife twisting in his guts.
“Who am I speaking to?”
Her Spanish was adequate but not polished. Could he fool her into thinking he was a native speaker? “I’m with the civil guard. Señorita McLean may be in danger. You must tell me where she’s gone.” He made the statement with so much authority that the woman didn’t question him further.
“She received a note. I’ll read it to you.”
After listening to the message, he responded with a quick “Gracias,” and hung up.
Still sticking to his expected routine, Aleksei bought a Spanish language newspaper as usual. Tucking it under his arm, he went out and looked casually up and down the street for a cab. There was one waiting for the light to change at the corner. Luckily it was empty. Once he was inside, his studied manner changed abruptly.
“I’ll double your fare if you can get to 573 Calle Hermosillo in fifteen minutes.”
The driver grinned and gunned the engine.
As they sped through the darkening city, Aleksei’s mind was racing. The note had mentioned Eisbenberg’s undercover job and an order for his assassination at the San Jeronimo. What a clever lie. Just the thing to trap a babe in the woods like Julie McLean.
He thought back over the wording of the message. It had been very specific about where Julie was to stand. That might be a setup for kidnapping. Or was someone waiting with a high-powered rifle on top of a nearby building? It would be hard to make a gunshot wound look like an accident. But maybe it could be passed off as terrorist activity like the assassination of Vice Admiral Esgrivas last year.
Aleksei glanced at the lighted dial of his watch. It was ten of nine. “Dese pris!” he urged the driver.
“If the police stop me, you’ll really be late.”
“Just drive faster.”
They turned onto Hermosillo. Aleksei watched as the numbers decreased. Only three more blocks. They were in a district of renovated office buildings. It seemed deserted now. An ideal place for a trap, he thought grimly.
When the cab pulled to a halt, he shoved a wad of pesetas into the driver’s hand and jumped out. The darkened sidewalk was empty of pedestrians. Traffic was sparse.
Julie was nowhere in sight, but he spotted the narrow alley the note had mentioned. Apparently it connected a courtyard with the street.
If he’d had any hard facts about what was going to happen this evening, he would have strapped on his shoulder holster under his suit jacket. Now he felt at a disadvantage without the Makarov in his hand. He forced himself not to dash down the passageway, but to move slowly, making a careful inspection as he went. When he reached the courtyard, he stopped in the shadows. Julie was standing directly opposite him, her head turned to the right, her hands immobile at her sides. She was wearing a pale yellow dress, and the light color made her slender form an easy target in the moonlight. Instinctively, he glanced up at the rooftops and windows. There was nothing that his trained senses picked up. But someone else could be cloaked in shadow, just as he was.
On the roof two stories above her was a small pillar capped by a bulbous concrete finial. Was someone crouching behind it?
He glanced at his watch again. It was only one minute till nine. Someone had been very specific about the place and the time.
Twenty feet away, Julie stood stiffly, feeling as vulnerable as a lone sentry in a field. If only this place weren’t so deserted. The note that had brought her here had been signed “A friend.” But what kind of person would want to meet in a dark, empty courtyard? For the last fifteen minutes her ears and eyes had tried to pierce the gloom, but as far as she could tell, she was alone. Was this a ploy to get her out of the way so that someone could search her apartment? If it hadn’t been so close to nine, she might have gone to warn Paula.
Did she hear footsteps? She whirled to face the alley where she’d entered, her heart in her throat.
Aleksei saw the movement. “Julie,” he called urgently from the shadows, “get away from there.” He half expected his warning to draw fire.
“Aleksei?” she whispered. It was obvious she cou
ldn’t see him.
“Move away from there,” he repeated, automatically shifting his position.
She didn’t obey. “What are you doing here?” She paused. “Did you send the note?”
There was no more time for talking. Suddenly he was running across the courtyard in her direction, his footsteps echoing loudly in the enclosure. He was prepared for a rain of bullets around his body, but he didn’t change his course. As his arm grabbed her by the waist, she screamed and tried to shove him away. Her eyes were wide with fear.
He ignored her reaction, half dragging, half carrying her away from the little shrine where she’d been waiting.
She screamed again, but the sound was drowned out by a clap of thunder almost directly over her head.
He pushed Julie against the wall and curled his body protectively around hers. The roof ornament above where she’d been standing separated from the building and crashed to the ground. It hit with a second thunderclap that vibrated through the enclosed courtyard like cannonballs ricocheting off the walls.
Aleksei didn’t have to look to know that it had landed precisely where she’d been standing only moments before.
For several heartbeats, neither of them moved. Around them, cement dust swirled like a summer snowstorm.
“Julie, are you all right?” he finally asked.
She didn’t answer, but he could feel her trembling against him. She started to cough and he pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it over her nose and mouth.
“We have to get out of here. Do you understand?”
She stared at him blankly but let him lead her out a side entrance to the court. When they reached the street he stopped and brushed the cement dust off his dark suit and her dress.
There were no cabs in sight. They had to walk several blocks down to the avenue before he could hail one.
When he helped her inside, she huddled in the far corner.
“Adónde?” the driver asked.
Aleksei named an address on a side street near the Palace Hotel.
It wasn’t a long ride. Now and again he glanced at Julie. She sat with her body rigid, looking straight ahead. She must be in a state of shock. But he had to force his mind to keep functioning. Bogolubov had tried to get rid of Julie. The bastard would try again unless he could be convinced it was the wrong course of action. She must be hidden until he could think of what to do.
When the cab pulled up at the address he had given, he paid the man off and helped his charge out onto the sidewalk. She seemed to be coming back to life.
“Let me go.”
“Julie...”
From the way she stared at him, he knew she’d made him the focus of her fears. “I’ll scream if you don’t let me go.”
There was no time to argue with her, no time to try and make her understand what was at stake. His only hope was that she bought the lie he was about to deliver.
“You will come with me, and you will come quietly if you don’t want to get hurt,” he ordered, his voice like cold steel. “I have a gun, and I’m prepared to use it. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Walk in that direction.” He pointed toward the cross street to her right. “I’ll be right in back of you with the gun.”
She obeyed, her shoulders rigid, her legs stiff. They approached the sprawling old Palace Hotel from the back. At the entrance to the garage, Aleksei put his hand firmly on her arm. “In here. If we pass anyone, keep still—unless you want an innocent bystander to get hurt.”
He felt her shudder, but she complied.
There was no problem about slipping across the garage into the basement through a door which he knew would be unlocked. There Aleksei stopped at a service phone and made a call to a contact on the domestic staff. A few minutes later he had the number of an empty room on the fifth floor. The door would be unlocked by the time he and Julie arrived.
They took the stairs instead of the elevator and emerged in a wide hallway lighted by decorative sconces. No one else passed. As promised, 503 was unlocked and unoccupied.
After closing the door and throwing the bolt, he turned to Julie. “You’re safe now.”
“You mean I’m your prisoner.” Her eyes were enormous as she backed away toward the window.
“No.”
“Then let me out of here. I have to tell the embassy what happened.”
“No.”
She glanced at the phone on the stand between the two double beds.
“Don’t make me rip it out of the wall.”
“What are you going to do? Shoot me? Torture me?”
He winced. “I’m not going to hurt you. I want to help you.”
She flexed the arm he’d grasped too tightly. “You have a funny way of showing it.”
“I had to stop you from trying to get away.”
They glared at each other.
“Julie, someone almost killed you tonight. They sent you to a precise spot in that courtyard and set an explosive charge to go off above your head at exactly nine o’clock.” The words were meant to persuade her, but they almost tore him apart. If she had been in some kind of shock, so had he. All at once the enormity of what had almost happened hit him. “They almost killed you,” he repeated in an anguished whisper.
She stared at him as though coming out of a dream. Ever since she’d gotten that note she’d been walking through some sort of bizarre nightmare. His words were like a splash of cold water in the face. They brought her back to life—and confusion. Her gaze skittered around the room, came to rest on the bed, then bounced back to Aleksei. Along with anguish, the sexual awareness that had been simmering be- tween them was in his eyes. And God help her, she felt it too.
Closing the distance between them in two long strides, he pulled her into his arms. He had to hold her, touch her, satisfy himself that she was truly safe. But it was more than that. Her brush with death had left him icy cold. He needed to wrap himself in her warmth.
“Julie,” he rasped, his hands moving to caress her hair, her shoulders, her arms. If she had shown any resistance, he might have stopped there. But her face lifted to his, and he saw the golden flecks of fire in her dark eyes just before he felt the soft whisper of her breath on his cheek. In slow motion he kissed her forehead. The contact snapped his restraint. All at once his lips were traveling rapidly over her face, kissing her cheek, her eyebrows, her nose.
He heard her speak his name too.
“You need me,” she marveled.
“Yes.” The admission was wrung from him. He’d thought he’d never say that to another human being again. But he’d said it to her.
As he spoke, her lips and hands began to move just as urgently as his. Their mouths collided, held. He heard her indrawn breath, felt her open to him, tasted her warmth and sweetness. She murmured something he couldn’t possibly understand. It didn’t matter. If neither of them spoke the other’s native language it would not have been important at this moment.
When they had kissed before, he had held something of himself back. Now that was impossible. His tongue explored the outline of her lips, then slipped inside to caress the silky interior. He felt her fingers thread themselves in his hair, her body mold against him. Her breasts, pressed against his chest, made him ache to increase the intimacy. His hands traveled down her back, cupping her bottom and pulling her hips more firmly against his own. He knew she must feel his arousal, yet she made no effort to move away.
Julie’s senses reeled. This man had denied she was his prisoner, but he couldn’t have been more mistaken. She was totally captivated by the strong arms that held her close, the hungry mouth that ravaged hers, and the hoarse confession he had made. More than that, he had cared enough about her to save her life.
She realized she had never felt more alive, more exhilarated than at this moment. Fiery threads seemed to weave themselves through her body, building an unfamiliar tension that threatened to consume her. She was a creature of sensation now, burning for Aleksei as
she had never burned before.
Her passion intoxicated him and almost made him lose all reason. He drank in her essence, sealing her mouth more tightly to his. He felt her hands in his hair tighten beseechingly. Shifting her body slightly, he cupped one soft breast in the palm of his hand. He heard her moan deep in her throat. Somehow, the tiny noise brought back a measure of sanity. How could he take advantage of her vulnerability like this?
To let her go would be to die a little. For one electric moment he allowed his hips to move against hers, savoring the ache inside him. Then his hands went to her shoulder, gently pushing her away so that a few inches of space separated their bodies. He lifted his head.
Her eyes snapped open. They were large and dark, the pupils dilated. Around their rims the golden lights seemed to dance.
“Julie, lyubovochka,”he murmured. “We have to stop.”
Her face registered confusion, hurt. “You’re playing with me again. The way you did at Casa Mendoza.”
“Playing?” His laugh was harsh. “Is that what you believe? Do you think a man can fake his reactions to a woman?”
Unwillingly, she shook her head.
“Julie, listen to me. The kind of brush you had with death tonight is the most powerful kind of aphrodisiac. You are very vulnerable right now. No matter how much I want to make love to you, I can’t use that to my own advantage.”
Deep inside, she acknowledged the truth of what he said. But she couldn’t attribute her longing only to that. “Is that why you think I...” She couldn’t finish.
“That’s part of it, certainly.”
“So you’re protecting me?”
“Yes.”
“Since when does a major in the KGB protect an American spy?”
“When he cares about her very much.”
Chapter Ten
Aleksei crooked his finger under her chin. “Julie, if you’re a spy, I’m a Russian Orthodox priest. And nobody has ever accused me of that.” From the first he’d sensed her discomfort with the role someone was forcing her to play. Now he was determined to find out what she really knew.
But she seemed just as determined to unmask him. “Just what have you been accused of?”
