Seven-Sided Spy

by Hannah Carmack

  A NineStar Press Publication

  Published by NineStar Press

  P.O. Box 91792,

  Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87199 USA.

  www.ninestarpress.com

  Seven-Sided Spy

  Copyright © 2018 by Hannah Carmack

  Cover Art by Natasha Snow Copyright © 2018

  Edited by: Jason Bradley

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact NineStar Press at the physical or web addresses above or at Contact@ninestarpress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-947904-82-8

  Printed in the USA

  First Edition

  January, 2018

  Also available in paperback, ISBN: 978-1-947904-88-0

  Warning: This book contains graphic violence and mentions of an eating disorder.

  Seven-Sided Spy

  Hannah Carmack

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Postman

  NPS

  Human

  Coup

  Neuroses

  Roswell

  Domovoi

  Bottom of the Sea

  Right Behind You

  Decay

  Ghosts

  Avarice

  Belly Up

  Lost River

  Forward

  Backward

  Who I Was

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  To Sara

  Without whom they are only halves

  Cast of Characters (In Order of Appearance)

  Tim Carroll, Codename: Dresden

  Diana Riley, Codename: Hera

  Da Vinci Moretti, Codename: Niccolò

  Wesley Russ, Codename: Nikola

  Rigan Hevel, Codename: Marco

  Ruby Starr, Born: Robin Harrison

  Roderick Walt, Codename: Gulliver

  Sergei Durova, Codename: Kal

  Postman

  AUGUST 3, 1963 THROUGH AUGUST 30, 1963

  Shortly after midnight, the mood in the Nightmare Café finally calmed down. Duke Ellington’s “Warm Valley” spun out softly from a late-night telecast. Couples on the dance floor swayed and glided like figure skaters on air. Dresden sat stiffly in a red booth at the back of the place, a newspaper lay out in front of him so his watching would not look conspicuous. He admired the gentle crane of lovers’ arms, the way eyes locked and spoke a language known only to two, and the faintest hint of a smile as it pulled at a woman’s lips. The dancers stepped so carefully, as though nothing else in the world mattered, but Dresden’s old-time fantasy cut out at the fading of piano keys and the familiar howl of Buddy Holly’s voice coming from the radio as the dance floor flooded. Music like this was fine, but it did not captivate Dresden the way a ballroom waltz did. It was then that a woman’s hand grazed the top of his shoulder.

  “Come on, Dresden.” Her voice sounded like honey, sweet and slow flowing.

  He waited for the café’s door to close behind her, before getting up and following her out onto the cold, barren streets of DC. He took one last glance at the dancing ensemble as he left.

  Outside on 22nd Street, she waited. Her name was Hera, and she was a goddess amongst men. With cascading pin curls the color of wheat and full apple cheeks that dimpled when she smiled, she radiated beauty. Her laugh could steal hearts. Her talent was unmatched. But these facts made her no less parasitic to Dresden. When they were together, he did not offer any warmth or words. Instead, they waited in silence. The only acknowledgement of the other’s existence came when the woman leaned back against a street-parked car and lazily held out a pack of thin cigarettes to him. Dresden considered the offer for a moment, but shook his head, deciding against it. She shrugged, lit one for herself, and continued to wait.

  Finally, the man their evening hinged on showed up. He was short and scrappy-looking, with a swarthy tan and a sloppily tucked button-up. He came from the back of the café, talking to Hera and Dresden even though they were clearly out of earshot. Eventually, he got close enough that Dresden could make out what he was saying.

  “And you two are just standing here like a couple of damn pariahs!” The man’s face lit up brilliantly with a grin. Any tension between Dresden and Hera dispersed for the time-being.

  “Are we good to go?” Hera asked. “Is everything done?”

  “Good as gold, but not if you two keep skulking out here.” The man turned to Dresden expectantly.

  There was another lull of silence as Dresden stared back at him with a blank expression. Things were starting to get uncomfortably quiet when it dawned on him. “You have the keys, Niccolò,” Dresden said. “That’s why we’re standing outside the car.”

  “Oh! Ha! Guess that means this one is on me.” Niccolò snorted as he rummaged through his pants pockets, first pulling out some lint, then a bottle opener, and finally their keys. “There we go.” He stepped around to the front of their car. It was a 1962 Corvair with a black exterior and cozily lined seats. “Let’s book,” he ordered as he slid into the driver’s seat

  Hera waited, not moving an inch until Dresden pushed the seat forward and crawled into the back. She never settled for anything less than shotgun.

  “How did it go?” she asked as she climbed into the passenger’s side.

  “Well enough for the rookie team to take it back over.” Niccolò turned the ignition and then pulled into the road.

  “Isn’t that keen.” Hera sighed, obviously discontent. She rested her hand under her chin and propped her elbow up on the windowsill.

  Niccolò spoke with an undeniable amount of sarcasm, “Clean-up crew not all you dreamt it to be, beautiful?”

  “Don’t you think it’s just a little bit ironic? The CIA has only, what…six or seven female agents and one of them is stuck on cleanup. It’s 1963! You think we’d be past this.” Hera curved her lips into a warm smile. Niccolò and Hera shared a coy glance that was quickly cut short by Dresden.

  “It is not ironic when the female agent put herself there in the first place,” Dresden said.

  Every muscle in Hera’s face started to change.

  “Honestly, I quite like it here,” he added. “I was hoping we would possibly elect to extend our assignment.” Hoping and possibly were added to create the illusion of choice. He had no intention of leaving the States again.

  “The work may be easy, but it’s unfulfilling, don’t you think? We’re making no difference here in DC. Your talent and fine attention to detail would be better utilized in the field.” She spoke fairly, showing no sign of bias. “Besides, we’re not even here on a certified assignment, Dresden. You know that.”

  There was a slow calmness about the exchange that set the group on edge. Niccolò tightened his grip on the steering wheel. White-knuckled, he cleared his throat. “So did you guys eat at the diner? Their pierogis were not that bad. I had this one filled with a raspberry coulis. Just heavenly. Delectable really. All that and more. The best pi—”

  “Of course, I could not forget that, Hera.” Dresden ignored Niccolò’s plea for normalcy. “I know we are here on punishment. A punishment which was grossly short for the offense.” Dresden turned his attention out the window so he didn’t have to make eye contact with Hera, who was now fully turned in her seat and staring him down.

  “What wa
s that?” She offered him a chance to recant.

  “Here, let me clarify,” Dresden said with such a dangerous control that his voice did not once falter in staring down his superior agent. “I am talking about when you exaggerated your clearance level, took advantage of a security breach, and then pinned it on Niccolò and me. Now, to verify the aforementioned, I feel like three months’ cleanup crew was a pretty lenient punishment.”

  “Man!” Niccolò shouted, trying to drown out the two of them. He banged his fist on the steering wheel. “Are we all still on this? Are we still arguing about whose fault the security breach was?” He sounded deceptively joyful. “Because you know what, we can put it on me and lay this whole argument to bed.” Niccolò let out a wheeze of uncomfortable laughter.

  “What Hera did was crooked, and she knows it.” Dresden shook his head.

  Niccolò cut in again, not letting Hera work a word in edgewise. “And when you steal from dukes and I lie to holy men, it’s crooked, too, but we keep going. That’s the job. Intelligence work relies on deception.” Niccolò pulled the car over to the side of the road, sweat building up on his forehead. He leaned in close to his partners and made large exaggerated gestures with his hands. “I can’t take you two aping out all the time. We are a team. An incredibly successful team, at that. Arguably one of the CIA’s best teams. With one of the CIA’s first and finest female agents. The breech is in the past. Let’s just move on from it. I cannot handle being in the middle of you two, especially while driving!”

  Dresden didn’t allow an inkling of silence. “I can’t see you like this, Niccolò.” He turned to Hera. “Let me out. I’ll walk from here.”

  “No, Dresden, it’s fine. I’ll drive us. I just want the situation here to simmer down before I start driving again, or we’ll all end up in the hospital because I will have an aneurysm on the parkway, and that’d be a drag.” Niccolò sassed, looking to and from his partners as though trying to solicit some kind of empathetic response, but they’d have none of it. “Anyway,” Niccolò segued, “we just had a pretty golden mission back there and we did it as a team. We were all on board and we made something amazing happen because of it. Why don’t we go back to that moment and get drinks or something? Celebrate a bit.”

  “I am just expressing my desire to stay in DC.” Dresden unbuckled from his seat. “Hera, if you would please. I’d like to leave.”

  Eyes wide, Hera’s glassy gaze turned to Niccolò. At first, Dresden didn’t understand what was going on. Once he realized what she was doing, he was disgusted. She was waiting for permission. Like the thirty-some-year-old killer needed the go-ahead from her boyfriend-of-the-month to let him out of the car.

  Dresden spoke again. “I will make you both move if I am not out of this car in the next ten seconds.”

  Niccolò ran his hands through his hair and relinquished with a sigh. “You may as well let him out.” Niccolò dramatically collapsed onto the steering wheel. “Once he’s set, he’s set. That’s just him. Such a Dresden thing to do. Go on. We’ll see you in the morning. Same time, same place as always, right?”

  Dresden smiled, although there was no warmth to it. “As always, Niccolò.”

  Hera opened the passenger side door, slid out, and then allowed for Dresden to step out onto the sidewalk.

  As he stood there looking at her, luscious blonde curls blowing in the breeze, she spoke, “I do hope we can have peace, Dresden. Please understand that what’s done is done, and all I did was the best I could. He’s forgiven me. Can’t you?”

  “He couldn’t be mad at you even if he tried,” Dresden hissed.

  “Because I won’t let him?” Her face remained relaxed. “I am tired of having this same conversation with you, Dresden. You need to fall in line.”

  “I am tired of you manipulating and lying to get what you want, but it looks like we’ll both have to settle for the night.” Dresden gritted his teeth into a grin and then quickly turned and walked away.

  As soon as he heard the Corvair pull back into traffic, it was as though a weight lifted off his shoulders and he could breathe again. He and Niccolò had been partners for five years. They’d spent those years together, successfully running missions, training new operatives, and climbing their way up the ranks. Working with Hera, nicknamed the Goddess because of her codename and notoriety, was supposed to be an honor. She was the best field operative the CIA had to offer. She had an irrefutably high success rate, but she brought an endless string of theater with her.

  Dresden had to reset, switching his focus instead on the crowd of faces passing him by on the busy streets of DC’s shopping district in order to avoid his own kind of aneurism. It was only after a minute had passed, that someone familiar approached. And although it took Dresden a moment to catch her attention, his face flushed red when their gazes finally locked. It was Ruth.

  “Timmy,” she called out, a big, toothy grin already on her face.

  A wave of cool air hit him right as Ruth’s voice rose above the crowd. Hearing his real name always provided him with a feeling of comfort and control. The people he hated called him Dresden. The people he loved called him Tim. He straightened up and stood still, looking for the twiggy little thing wearing some variety of in-crowd fashion.

  Ruth swiftly made her way over to Tim and then greeted him with a big hug and a peck on the cheek. She was significantly shorter and a decent amount younger than he, so she stood on her tiptoes as her arms wrapped around his neck for a fleeting moment.

  “How ya been, Timmy? Haven’t seen ya in a few days.” Her eyes sparkled.

  A number of things drove Tim mad about Ruth. She had eyes that glowed with youth and hope, a laugh that filled the room with melodic dreams, and a swaying dance of a walk, but perhaps the trait he admired most was her kindness.

  “Ruth,” he said fondly. “I’ve been well enough. Things have been busy at the post office.”

  “I could tell.” Ruth had an eager bounce about her. “I was watching when you pulled up. Was that the woman?” she whispered, her face scrunching in excitement. “The one who has been messing with your coworker’s head? Because that looked like a bad scene.”

  Tim chuckled. “The very one,” he answered. “But none of that. I just got my blood pressure down. How have you been, Ms. Ruth Lee? I haven’t seen you around the mailboxes in a while.”

  “Oh, I’ve been staying with one my girlfriends.” Ruth stiffened up. Tim could read in her body language that she was not only about to lie but lie poorly. “Just closer to work.”

  Tim raised an eyebrow, skeptical. “Something is troubling you.”

  “Ah, it’s nothing really. Ronnie just hasn’t written in a while and I’m worried. It’s not like him to not write. So, I stay over at her place, just helps keep my head straight—” Ruth’s voice dropped as her focus drifted from Tim’s face to slightly over his shoulder. “That’s her now, actually. She just got outouva picture and I was waitin’ to walk home with her. Why don’t we get together for a bite Tuesday, yeah? I can tell you everything over…” She moved her hands as though grabbing for some forgotten word. “Oh, what did you say they called fries overseas?”

  “Chips,” Tim mused.

  Already, Ruth’s thoughts seemed miles away from whatever she and her fiancé, Ronnie, had been fighting about. She waved her friend over.

  “But, to answer your question, I believe we already had plans for Thursday. Would you rather we meet on Tuesday?” Tim asked.

  “Oh, both.” Ruth boasted. “This’ll be a two-parter.” She held up two fingers for emphasis. “I can just feel it. So, I’ll see you Tuesday and Thursday at Dicks, yeah?”

  “Sounds like a gas.” Tim tilted his head just to the right enough to recapture her gaze from her friend. “I’ll see you Tuesday and Thursday at Dicks. I’m heading back home now. Did you want me to grab your mail and slide it under your door?”

  “Nah, it’s all good. Thanks, though, Timmy. You’re always thinkin’ ahead.” She pulled
him into a hug and gave him another brief kiss on the cheek.

  Tim waited for Ruth and her friend to completely vanish from his line of sight before starting toward the Upper East Side of town. He was farther from his apartment than he would have liked, but he couldn’t take another minute in that car. Hera had changed Niccolò. There was no doubt about it. She’d changed everything about the dynamic of their team. It worried him, but he had to press on.

  His apartment complex was only two blocks from the brightly lit and bustling historical district. Despite its promising location, the building was run-down. The basement windows were boarded up, and the call box looked like it’d taken one too many punches from a drunk’s fist. There was always the smell of river water wafting on the air, and some variety of sinister character lurking around the front stoop. It wasn’t much and it wasn’t pretty, but their confinement to DC was only three months long. This was one of the few places that would rent for such a short lease. Occasionally Tim entertained the thought of where his partners might live. He imagined Hera living in a glamorous studio uptown with what she’d call a “posh” interior, and Niccolò living half his night in a bar and the other half in the back of the Corvair.

  Inside the building’s entryway, there were rows of beaten bronze mailboxes. The lighting buzzed with a fluorescent hum, and Tim thought only of going upstairs, making himself a cup of coffee, and reading. But first, he stopped at the mailboxes and unlocked one: Ruth’s. He grabbed a handful of letters and flipped through them carefully, stopping only for one marked with an obnoxiously kitschy stamp and addressed with a heart. He put the rest of the mail back and then continued into the lobby’s handprint-smeared elevator.

  Three floors up, Tim slipped off his loafers outside his door and entered. Scattered around the room were boxes flooded with files. Decorating the walls, were scribbles of half-baked thoughts on torn page corners that were left all over like a secret code or madman’s drabbles. Around the room’s border, stacks of books looked dangerously close to falling. A small picture of younger, significantly happier-looking versions of Tim and Niccolò sat on the kitchen counter. Although there were plenty of places in the apartment that needed tending to, the first thing Tim did was sit down at his dining room table, which was made up of some milk crates and a piece of plywood. He smoothed out the stolen letter from his pocket and then opened it with an unmatched level of tenderness. He treated the letter as though it was a ritualistic piece of holy text.