Strictly Need to Know

by MB Austin

  “Hey,” Angelo said, giving her a quick hug before slipping one arm around her shoulder. “We do have your back. And you’re an ace at improvising—look how great you did last night.”

  “My Russian was rusty, and it slowed me down. Rose could’ve gotten hurt.” She tucked her hand into the back pocket of his pants and they started up the hill again. “Speaking of which, what do Rose and Frank think your little project is?”

  “Turning state’s evidence—informing for the Feds. True enough, and Rose gets it. She’s the only one in the family who really understands how I feel about the family business. Knew that before she knew I was gay, and always kept both to herself.”

  “So she’s trustworthy. But she’s still a civilian.”

  “And she’s like a sister to me. She gets a few days to say good-bye to her family before I blow this place up. I owe her that much.”

  Maji didn’t like it any more than she ever liked having civilians involved in an op. But it was his call. “And Frank? How much do you trust him?”

  “With my life. And he’s on a CI agreement with the FBI, too. Don’t tell Rose—she’s worried enough about me.”

  “So you’ve got him scared silent? Can’t rat on you without getting himself killed.” Not Angelo’s favorite ploy, but he’d resorted to it before.

  “No, it’s not like that. He really wants to help. This guy, he’d take a bullet for me or Rose.”

  “Sooner we get her to a safe house, less likely it’ll come to that. I guess I should thank you for introducing us, even if you did fuck it up.”

  He laughed. “I knew you’d love her. She’s beyond fabulous. And I really needed for the two of you to meet, to know that you would have each other when I’m gone.”

  Angelo’s tone scared her more than his words. Operators might go off grid for a bit, when things got too hot, but they didn’t start new lives under WITSEC. “Gone how?”

  “Look at my ear. The one they broke.” He brushed his curls away and leaned toward her.

  “What’s to see?” There was no visible scar, no bruising where she’d last seen blood.

  “Cochlear implant. Nobody here knows. But I’m washed out for fieldwork. And besides, I burned myself in Fallujah, huh?”

  She nodded. “For Khodorov. Is he really worth it?”

  “Khodorov’s not just one target, Ri. He’s a gateway. And I’m willing to gamble it all on him. But when I’m done here, I’m done. I’ve got to be good and gone. No ties, not even to you.”

  Maji hugged him and wrapped her arm around his waist, inviting his arm over her shoulder for the rest of their walk. She thought of him leaving everyone behind for a life alone, in hiding. His house, the home of his childhood, came into sight. “Fuck you, Ang.”

  He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I love you, too, babe.”

  As Maji and Angelo entered the kitchen from the pool area, Rose walked in from the dining room. She smiled upon seeing Maji. “Welcome back. Ri.”

  Maji took in the bare feet and drying curls, the causal elegance of white shorts and a gauzy silk blouse. She allowed herself the most fleeting of fantasies, an unformed vision of spending days by the pool and nights upstairs with this woman. Who needs to get the hell out of Dodge, she reminded herself.

  Rose looked uncertainly between Maji and Angelo. “You are staying? Ang says you’ve been his cover before. You two have a plan, right, to keep him safe?”

  Maji worked consciously to keep her face blank. Angelo was going to break her heart, the asshole.

  “She’s staying,” Angelo said. “You’re under her protection until you get on that plane to Peru. But as far as anyone else knows, Ri’s just the girl of my dreams.”

  Rose nodded seriously. “And I only want you to be happy, of course.”

  Maji relaxed. Rose was bright, and honestly devoted to Angelo, that was clear. Maybe for just a few days…

  “I’ll be so convincing, no one will know who’s really with whom.”

  Dammit. She’s still a civilian—what did you expect? Maji pulled herself to her full height and looked Rose coldly in the eye. “There is only one story. If you’re in, you live it,” she drilled. “If you slip out of your role, someone will see, and there will be casualties. I am not your girlfriend. This is not a game. Are we clear?”

  Rose looked as if Maji had slapped her, but she spoke with her usual poise. “Quite.”

  Maji looked at Angelo, who had followed the exchange with quiet interest. He nodded once.

  Maji exhaled, stood down a notch, but still didn’t smile. “Here’s how it works. I advise you to go to a safe house, now. But if you stay, you stay under my protection. You go where I go, you do what I do, you follow my directions without discussion.”

  “Well.”

  “Can you live with that?”

  Rose looked at Maji steadily. “I’m a grown-up. I can do as I’m told, whether I like it or not.”

  Maji nodded and walked past them without further comment. She grabbed her duffel and took the stairs two at a time.

  Rose looked after her, then turned to Angelo. “Does she hate me?”

  “No, hon,” he answered softly. “But she’s good and pissed at me, and right about the stakes, too. If you change your mind, wanna catch the next flight out, nobody’d blame you.”

  “I’m all in,” she responded, crossing her arms. “Now what?”

  An hour after sunset, Maji told Rose to set an alarm for six a.m. Rose looked up from her copy of Vandana Shiva’s Monocultures of the Mind. “Oh six hundred? Yes, ma’am.”

  Maji didn’t laugh, or even smile. As she started to turn away, Rose reached out and touched her arm. “I hope I won’t be underfoot. At your dojo, I mean. I’ll bring a book, entertain myself.”

  “Don’t bank on that,” Maji replied, with a flicker of a smile. “You’re in training now.”

  Rose went to bed shortly after Maji left the room, then woke with a start. She couldn’t think what had disturbed her; but she scanned the outline of furniture shapes in the near dark of her room, ready to cry out if anything moved. Then she heard a sound, a murmuring voice outside her door. As quietly as she could, she slid out of bed and padded toward the sound. She pulled up short, realizing the voice was inside her room, at the base of the door itself. She froze, listening, ready to whirl and dash for the window.

  Her eyes adjusting to the scant light through the curtains, she peered at the figure curled up on the floor. Maji. When she’d said she would be right by the door, Rose had assumed Maji meant outside, in the hall.

  With just a sheet covering her middle, and a pillow under her head, Maji twitched and mumbled with some urgency, strands of hair loosed from her braid falling across her face. Rose knelt on one knee and reached out to brush the hair back. When her hand was nearly to Maji’s face, however, Maji snapped awake, grabbing her wrist and pulling her forward. Rose fell, while Maji scooted backward and away, catching her before she hit the floor.

  “Jesus!” Rose floundered to roll over and sit up.

  “Sorry,” Maji mumbled, brushing the hair from her own face.

  “You were dreaming.” Rose spoke haltingly, her heart pounding. More than anything, she wanted to kiss that face before it lost its soft, unguarded look. Instead, she said, “You can’t be comfortable down here. Why don’t you take half the bed?”

  Maji’s eyes glowed in the dimness just inches away. “No, thanks,” she said softly. “Better this way.” She slid back down to the floor and rolled with her back to Rose, the pillow clutched under her head.

  Chapter Six

  When her alarm went off at six, Rose looked to the spot on the floor by her bedroom door. It was empty. She washed her face in the private bath attached to her room and slipped out to peek in Maji’s room. The door was ajar, the sheets rumpled. She smelled coffee and heard Angelo laughing downstairs.

  Rose walked into the kitchen wearing her best guess at appropriate gear—yoga pants and sneakers, with a sports bra and T-shirt
on top. “Will this work for training?”

  Maji gave her a quick glance and answered without meeting her eyes. “That’s fine.”

  For six or seven miles, Angelo and Maji jogged, chatting away in a mix of English and Arabic, while Rose pedaled her bike alongside them. As casual as it seemed, she could tell that Angelo was familiarizing Maji with the layout of not just the family estate but all the homes and roads around them. The tour ended in the back of Angelo’s house, by the pool and the kitchen door.

  “Frank!” Rose said as she walked into the kitchen, raising her eyebrows at the sight of him, up and dressed at 7:10, and frying bacon with an apron over his polo shirt and chinos. “Is it my birthday?”

  “Not till October, hon. But I heard you needed a ride early today. Thought you might want some fuel to run on, too.”

  “Pull up here a minute, Frank,” Maji instructed from the backseat, as they reached the block with the dojo. The building looked like the other houses on the residential street. “We’ll be in that one, with the wraparound porch. See the front door?”

  The deep porch wrapped most of the way around the left side of the house and ran the length of its front. The picnic tables were the only indication it might not be a large single-family dwelling. The little walkway from the sidewalk to the front door was lined with flowers, and gauzy white curtains hung in the windows looking out on the street.

  Frank gave the whole place a quick scan. “Sure. Drop you here, then?”

  “Never. You see anybody at that door besides the mail carrier, assume they’re a threat. Now, take us down that drive to the right of the house.”

  Frank pointed the town car toward the garage at the end of the drive. As they neared the smaller wood-framed building, the drive’s left turn appeared. “Oh,” he said, and turned into the parking area behind the house. With just six marked spaces and another drive connecting to the alley between the houses on either side of the alley, the lot was invisible from the side streets. A six-foot wooden fence blocked the view from the normal backyards nearby.

  “Here, then?” Frank pointed to the back door, which stood ajar at the top of a ramp that had clearly replaced the original set of stairs.

  “Here,” Maji said. “Stay put a sec.” She got out, and Rose moved to follow. “Both of you.”

  Less than a minute later she returned and gestured for Rose to come in. Maji crouched down by Frank’s open window. Rose heard her quietly instructing him, “Go out the alley. When you come back at three o’clock, come back in that way. And pick another route to get here. Every time, a new route. Clear?”

  “Gotcha.”

  When Rose stepped through the back door, she saw the homey kitchen on her left, with its round wooden table in the center of a linoleum floor. She glanced to her right, into the laundry room. “I thought dojos were a kind of gym,” she said, hearing her own voice rise at the end, turning the statement into a question. She hadn’t sounded so unsure of herself since she was a teenager. How annoying.

  Maji turned to respond, but stopped at the sound of a voice full of quiet certainty.

  “Some say that dojo means place of enlightenment,” said the slight woman standing in a doorway just down the hall. “Welcome, Rose. I’m Hannah Cohen.”

  “Thank you for having me. I’ll try not to get in the way of your training.”

  “Oh no, thank you. Our two younger instructors will benefit greatly from having you as a student for a few days. A gentle warm-up before the teenagers descend next week.” Her accent was subtle, just a slight thickening of some of the consonants, paired with the precise way she pronounced each word. “Maji, why don’t you set up while I give Rose the tour?”

  “Oh,” Rose said. “Does everyone here call you Maji?”

  Maji looked to Hannah, who answered. “Ri is only for your family, and those…connected to them. If that gets too confusing, you may call her Ri here as well, to ensure consistency at home.”

  “She’ll manage for a few days, Sensei,” Maji said and left them in the hall.

  The locker room was plain, but immaculate. Rose stopped by a locker with her name on it and found a pair of white pants and jacket hanging inside. “How thoughtful.”

  “Your workout clothes are fine for now,” Hannah replied. “But you may want the gi later on. Someone will show you how to tie the belt.”

  Back in the hallway, Hannah motioned to the doorway next to the kitchen. “My office.”

  The hall ended in a larger long room that ran the full width of the squarish house, floored with a dense mat. One wall was covered in full-length mirrors, the one opposite it with a plethora of neatly stacked or racked items. Some Rose recognized as weapons, like the wooden staffs. Others she could only guess at.

  “Will I get to see how you use those?” Rose asked, pointing to a set of what looked like a cross between sawhorses and Tinkertoys.

  Hannah’s eyes crinkled. “I think we can work some parkour basics in. Yes.”

  The picture windows on the street side let in plenty of natural light, despite the gauzy white curtains. The inside of the door had a bar across it.

  By the far wall, Rose noticed Maji moving one of six putty-colored torsos on heavy stands. She had it tilted sideways and rolled it several feet out from the wall, into a line with the others. Rose walked to the dummy closest to the windows, farthest from the one Maji was muscling alone. It looked like a heavy task, but apparently one Maji had done five times on her own already, and nearly silently at that.

  The male figure pinned to the post had no arms. His torso muscles were outlined in the rubbery skin, as were a pair of trunks below his navel. He looked menacing, with a crew cut and square jaw, and eyes the same putty color as his skin.

  “Does he look angry because people punch him, or to encourage them to do so?”

  “A much-discussed paradox,” Hannah answered, with a smile in her voice. “But you’ll soon discover that a sparring partner you can never injure is a real asset to your training. You may even develop a fondness for Bob’s surly attitude.”

  “Bob?”

  “Body Object Bag.”

  “We can name one Ricky, if you want,” Maji offered.

  A smiling, curvy woman with a head full of blond curls announced her arrival at 8:20 by running across the mat toward Maji, near the spot where Rose was stretching by the windows. Rose watched Maji register the footfalls behind her, turn partway, and extend one arm back toward her attacker. The blonde grabbed her wrist, and Maji led her through what looked suspiciously like a swing dance twirl, but ended with the blonde sprawled on the mat, laughing. Maji gave her a hand up, and they hugged.

  “Show-off,” the blonde said.

  “I didn’t start it.” Maji nodded toward Rose. “Bubbles, Rose. Rose, beware La Bubbles.”

  Rose stepped forward, having backed herself up to the door while the two women were playing. She put out her hand and was pulled into a hug. Released a few instants later, she stepped back with a laugh. “Beware, indeed.”

  “Hey,” a young black woman said as she and a redhead bowed and stepped onto the mat, dressed in their gis.

  “Hey,” Maji replied. To Bubbles, she said, “Go suit up, already.” Then she introduced the two junior instructors.

  Tanya and Christy looked barely out of their teens. Maybe she could help give them confidence, and even gain a little herself, in the process.

  Frank was waiting for them as promised, the town car idling. Rose gave Bubbles a hug good-bye and slid into the backseat, followed by Maji.

  “How’d it go?” he asked, looking at Rose in his rearview mirror.

  “It was…fun. And quite a workout.” She leaned her head back on the plush seat and closed her eyes.

  After a few minutes, Rose opened her eyes. She did not recognize the street and remembered Maji’s words to Frank that morning. “Wouldn’t you have a better view from up front?”

  Maji switched her attention to Rose. “No. Protocol says ride with the protectee. I
can see enough from here.”

  “Oh.” So, she wasn’t staying close just to be close. Rose sighed. “Should I hold my questions until the house?”

  “About the dojo?” A smile flickered briefly on Maji’s face. “No, go ahead. I can multitask.”

  “Yes, I noticed you were doing that earlier.” Maji had spent most of the day inside Hannah’s office, or sitting against a wall with a laptop over her knees. “Don’t you need any practice teaching, like Tanya and Christy?”

  “Nope. This is their first camp. But the girls will love them. They teach teens here all the time.”

  “So how is camp different? Other than the intensive setting.”

  Maji looked at her, as if weighing what to say. She lowered her voice. “Camp is for young women who will be leaders in their communities and need a special skill set to protect themselves at home, so they can make a difference there. They don’t get everything they need in six weeks, but they get a lot. It’s very intense. And fun, because, you know…Bubbles.”

  Rose thought about the homey dojo, the mysterious camp, Hannah the sensei. The composed older woman with the close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, who moved like a dancer and spoke with quiet authority, made Rose feel honored to be invited into her private domain.

  “Was Hannah ever a dancer, professionally? She moves so gracefully.”

  “Not to my knowledge.” Maji did not stop her visual scanning of the neighborhood.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Not everyone who moves well has been a dancer. You haven’t.”

  Rose found herself distracted by the compliment, then annoyed. “That’s a dodge. What do you mean by not to my knowledge?”

  Maji leaned toward her, speaking even more quietly. “Hannah was Mossad. You know, the Israeli intelligence service?” She waited for Rose to nod. “So who knows what jobs she had as a cover.”