by Cindy Dees
In a mental non sequitur most likely borne of his mind shying away from that supremely unpleasant thought, it dawned on him that Katie was being uncharacteristically silent across from him.
“How do you feel about separating from me?” he asked her.
Her eyes widened in sharp alarm. “I hate that idea!” she exclaimed under her breath. “I don’t speak Russian or Uzbek, Dawn’s documents are iffy, I have no money and I have no idea how to get home. I need you, Alex.” She said it with such conviction he could almost believe she was referring to the emotional support he gave her. She was depending on him? That strange warmth passed through him again.
He turned over a half-dozen plans for getting out of this mess. None of them stood any statistical chance of working. He discarded them one by one in growing desperation until he was left with only one choice. The last choice. One he hated. This damned disaster was forcing him to call in favor after favor he dreaded paying back. Getting out of this latest pickle would put him in debt to people he’d really rather not owe anything to. Not that his opinion mattered for squat with six armed killers waiting for them outside.
Neither of them had any appetite, but he urged Katie to eat regardless. He had no idea when they would get a solid meal again. It was Spycraft 101 to sleep and eat whenever an opportunity arose to do either. As they finished choking down their meal, of which he’d tasted not a bite, he motioned over the maître d’ and asked the fellow quietly to call them a cab and let him know the instant it arrived. He palmed a U.S. twenty and passed it to the guy, who smiled broadly.
“Have some dessert,” Alex urged Katie. “The hotel’s concierge told me the chocolate mousse here is excellent.”
“Seriously?” she muttered.
“We have to kill a few minutes while our ride comes. It would look weird to just sit here doing nothing. And act happy.”
She pasted on a bright smile. “Mmm. Chocolate. I can never say no to it.” She added under her breath, “Even when I’m about to die.”
“Might as well seize the moment and enjoy it,” he replied grimly.
“Has your life always been like this?”
He frowned slightly. “I have never had any illusions that I would die of old age.”
“What an awful way to live.”
He’d never really stopped to think about it. It wasn’t as if he had the choice to live some other way. His life was one long, ongoing tightrope walk without a net. He shrugged. “It is what it is.”
She fell silent for a time and then said firmly, “I plan to live to a ripe old age and embarrass my great-grandchildren every chance I get.”
His gut twisted. Then she’d better get far away from him as fast as she could. He said quietly, “I promise that, as soon as I can get you somewhere safe, I’ll get out of your life and take my danger with me.”
She looked like a puppy he’d just drop-kicked in the gut. Dammit. It took every ounce of his self-discipline not to take the words back, not to promise to stay with her as long as she would have him—
Whoa, there. Rewind. As long as she would have him? Uh, no. He didn’t do long-term relationships. Hell, he didn’t do relationships.
The chocolate dessert arrived, and he said quietly, “Be ready to go on a moment’s notice. Speed will be vital. We’ll go out front and jump in the cab waiting there. But we need to get out of here without drawing any attention to ourselves, so walk out of here at a normal but brisk pace. Got all that?”
She scooped up a spoonful of the creamy mousse and held it out to him. “Share it with me?”
Reluctantly, he accepted the offered bite of chocolaty goodness. It was an apt metaphor for their relationship. He dashed her hopes, and she offered him sweetness anyway. How in the hell did a woman get to be her age and still be so damned naive?
The mousse slid off the cold metal spoon and melted in his mouth, sinfully sweet with a hint of coffee bite to offset the sugar. Just like her.
He watched as she took a bite.
“Oh my God, that’s delicious,” she groaned. His male flesh stirred at the look of sheer hedonistic pleasure that filled her eyes. Screw the hit team outside. He wanted to fall into her and put that look in her eyes himself.
“You’re falling behind on ooey-gooey goodness,” she declared. “And come to think of it, you’re behind in the pleasure department, too. I owe you a couple of major orgasms.”
He nearly choked on the mouthful of mousse she’d just given him. Not only was the bald observation unexpected, but it startled him. Prostitutes were paid to pleasure him. He had no frame of reference for a woman who wanted to give him pleasure for free. Oh sure, tons of women had hit on him in the past. But they’d had agendas. They were after his money or his notoriety or the perceived sexiness of spies. Curse James Bond, anyway. But none of them had even known him, let alone liked him. And certainly not enough to want to give him pleasure gratuitously.
He was saved from having to reply by the maître d’ raising a finger at him from by the front door.
“Time to go,” he bit out.
Pasting on a brave, fake smile, Katie gathered Dawn while he shouldered the baby bag. He placed his hand in the small of her back and escorted her politely from the dining room. They hit the front door and, following his instructions, Katie raced down the steps and leaped into the cab with him right on her heels.
“Go. Now!” he yelled at the cabbie.
Startled, the guy peeled away from the curb hard.
“Two hundred dollars U.S. to get us to the American embassy as fast as you can,” he told the driver. “Don’t stop for anything or anyone.”
The guy’s eyes widened in alarm, but then greed kicked in as Alex peeled the bills out of his wallet where the cabbie could see them in the rearview mirror. The driver took him literally, running red lights and screeching through intersections to the sound of retreating car horns. The wild drive made it impossible for their tails to hide themselves, and a black Russian Chaika tore across Tashkent behind them.
“Another hundred bucks if I can borrow your cell phone,” Alex said to the driver.
Without taking his eyes off the road, the guy flipped a cell phone into the backseat. Alex tossed the bills forward.
He contacted a local telephone operator and asked to be connected to the American embassy. C’mon, c’mon, he silently urged the slow phone system. That Chaika was getting damned close to them and might have orders to take them out.
“American embassy, Tashkent,” a female voice said in his ear.
“My name is Alex Peters, and I’m American. I’m with an American woman named Katie McCloud. We’re in a cab inbound to your embassy, and we’re being chased by Russian FSB agents. Am requesting that you open the gates for us so we can drive directly into the compound.”
“I’m sorry, sir. But that’s not approved protocol—” the woman started.
He swore in desperation. “They’re going to kidnap or kill us.”
Katie plucked the phone out of his hands. “Let me handle this.” Into the phone, she said, “My uncle Charlie—Charles McCloud, deputy director of plans, CIA—will verify my identity and authorize an emergency ingress to your location. Here’s his cell phone number. Call him immediately. Tell him Baby Butt says hello. We’ll call you back in five minutes.” She disconnected the call and sat back.
Alex stared, dumbfounded. Her uncle is a high-ranking CIA agent? Blank shock rendered his brain nonfunctional.
“What?” she asked defensively as he continued to stare at her.
The implications were so staggering he couldn’t even begin to think about them right now. He pushed them all aside to deal with the more immediate and pressing concern of the black car behind them. Regular operatives didn’t get big fancy rides like that to tear around in. But he knew who did rate a Chaika. And it made his blood run cold.
He had to say something. Do something. Freezing up was not an option. “Baby Butt is your authenticator phrase?” he managed to mumble.
She rolled her eyes. “Uncle Charlie gave me the nickname when I was about eight. My brothers picked it up, and it took me most of high school to break them from calling me by it. Uncle Charlie will know without a doubt it’s me when he hears it. It was the only thing I could think of on the fly that would let him know that I made the request.”
“How much longer to the embassy?” he asked the driver.
“Five, six minutes at this speed,” the guy answered.
“It’s gonna be tight,” Alex murmured.
It was more like four minutes when he rang up the American embassy. The receptionist picked up the line just as the driver said from the front seat, “It’s up ahead. One minute. No more.”
Alex looked back. The Chaika was maybe a hundred yards behind them, its big engine roaring like a lion on the hunt. Its bright lights shone, blocking any glimpse of the passengers inside. It would have blacked-out glass windows anyway.
“American embassy, Tashkent,” the female voice said in his ear.
He passed the phone to Katie with a single terse instruction. “Hurry.”
“It’s me again, Katie McCloud. Are the gates open? We’ll be there in about thirty seconds, and we’re coming in hot.”
He smiled reluctantly at the military terminology coming out of her entirely civilian mouth.
“Thanks so much,” she chirped into the phone. “I’ll be the blonde with the baby when we get out of the cab.”
She’d done it. Mentally, he sagged in relief. He could not afford to get any deeper in debt to his father. The gut-melting gratitude of having dodged an actual, physical bullet poured through him. She had no idea how badly he didn’t want the person in that black car behind them to catch him.
“Drive directly into the compound,” he told the cabbie. “Don’t slow down any more than you must to make the turn.”
The cab didn’t exactly stand up on two wheels as it careened around the corner into the embassy’s driveway, but it wasn’t far from doing so. The tires squealed in protest as the cab flew through the checkpoint out front. Two very armed marines leaped out to block the drive as the electric gate started to slide shut behind the cab.
Their driver slammed on the brakes and all but launched Alex and Katie into the front seat as the vehicle squealed into a half slide and screeched to a halt only feet from the back wall of the courtyard.
The driver turned off the ignition. The cab’s interior was silent but for everyone’s heavy breathing. If they got out of this mess alive, he would stop to ponder how an infant as young as Dawn seemed to sense life-threatening situations and go totally silent during them. Fascinating. But in the meantime...
“Keep your hands on the steering wheel in plain sight,” Alex told the cabbie. To Katie he murmured, “Lace your hands behind your head and wait for the marines to come get us.”
They sat quietly for a full minute before a half-dozen of the marines crowding the courtyard approached the car from every direction, assault rifles leveled at them.
To the driver, Alex said wryly, “Ever consider defecting to the United States? Now’s your chance.”
The guy smiled a little. “Can I take my wife but leave behind my teenaged kids?”
The marines gestured for them to roll down the windows and then proceeded to poke the muzzles of their weapons into the car. After that, it was pretty straightforward. They were ordered out of the car, thoroughly searched and their passports examined. The Americans were not particularly amused to find Alex’s Russian passport—in his original name—along with his U.S. passport, even after he explained he was a dual citizen.
An assistant attaché eventually declared them nonhostile, although the woman threw a suspicious look in his direction when she said it. Clearly, she recognized the Koronov name on his Russian passport.
Katie was shown inside separately from him; the attaché was already making baby noises and cooing at Dawn before they hit the door. As for him, he was poked in the back none too gently by an assault rifle and escorted to an interrogation room in the bowels of the embassy.
A marine officer joined him eventually, a fat dossier under his arm. “You’re a famous guy, Mr. Peters.”
He shrugged. “My father is famous. Or infamous, as it were. I merely stand in the edge of his dubious spotlight from time to time.”
“What are you doing in Tashkent?”
He told the story of working for Doctors Unlimited and their tent being overrun by rebels. He left out the bit about stabbing the American dressed as a civilian and the bit about the secret supply bunker or that the cargo plane that airlifted them out had been a Russian military aircraft. He picked up the tale in Osh and finished it with their rather spectacular arrival at this embassy.
The marine was not a professional interrogator, but Alex was a professionally trained prisoner of war. His father had drilled him for hours on end as a kid in techniques of resisting interrogation. It was one of a spy’s most powerful and necessary weapons—the ability to deceive, evade and lie with complete conviction.
The marine didn’t ask about the American he’d stabbed in Zaghastan, which told Alex the American had not been CIA. Embassies were hotbeds of CIA activity, and news of an American operative stabbed in Zaghastan and badly wounded would have made the rounds of the embassies in this part of the world. He hoped the guy hadn’t died. But the man had been stubborn and held out till the very last moment to trade information for that pressure balloon in his wound.
“What is your intent, Mr. Peters?”
“To travel back to the United States by the most expeditious means with Miss McCloud and her baby.”
At the mention of Katie’s name, all his shock and dismay from the cab slammed back into him. Uncle Charlie was a senior CIA official? Had she been sent on the D.U. mission to seduce him? To recruit him for the agency? Or, more likely, to entrap him into working for the American government? What were the odds that her assignment to help him was chance? His mind shied away from the math. The numbers did not look good for Katie.
Damn, she was talented. He’d bought her innocent-girl-looking-to-grow-up story hook, line and sinker. She must be laughing her ass off at him. Chagrin and a dose of wounded male pride surged through him. Only his father had ever made him feel this way. Mentally, he congratulated her for correctly identifying an Achilles’ heel he hadn’t even known he possessed; he couldn’t resist innocence. He was not used to being successfully hoodwinked. Clever bitch.
“About that baby,” the marine interrupted his grim train of thought. “How is it your names are on the child’s birth certificate?”
“I’m the physician of record at the birth. I am legally required to sign the birth certificate. As for naming us as the parents, Zaghastan has no system of adoption. Parentless children are informally passed around until they land with someone willing to raise them—or until they’re drowned, suffocated or simply starved to death. In the absence of any custody laws and any family willing to raise a child, any responsible party who’s willing to claim a child is pretty much allowed to do so. Particularly when the child would otherwise die. Rather than throw a helpless newborn on the uncertain mercy of strangers, we chose to declare ourselves her legal parents. Plus, it helped out with getting Dawn through customs in Osh.”
“Being a parent is a big responsibility.”
“Yes, it is,” Alex replied evenly.
“Kids need a home. Parents who are around for them. A steady environment.”
“I’m aware of that, Major. Do you have a point to make?”
Instead of answering, the marine changed subjects abruptly. “What are you planning to do when you reach the States?”
Jesus. Are they all going to try to recruit me? Did this guy want him to work for military intelligence or something? He snapped, “I expect I’ll practice medicine. I am a physician, after all.” No sense mentioning that he was wealthy enough not to have to work for several lifetimes. That would bring up all sorts of awkward questions about w
here his money came from.
So. Sweet, innocent Katie wasn’t so sweet and innocent, after all, was she? And here he’d been, all worried about protecting her purity and naïveté. Damn. He should have taken her up on that pleading request of hers to debauch and corrupt her. At least he could have had a little fun before she started blackmailing him, or whatever she had in mind to force him into the CIA fold. Damn her.
“What do you want from us, Mr. Peters?”
“I would like you to help me purchase three plane tickets to Washington, D.C., which is my home, by the way. And then we’ll need a ride and armed escort to the Tashkent International Airport at your earliest convenience. I expect you’d like to get me out of here nearly as much as I’d like to be gone.”
The marine smiled a little unwillingly. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to your room.”
Interesting. The guy never asked why the FSB had been chasing them so aggressively. Did the marine know something he didn’t? Or was it just so blindingly obvious who’d been in that Chaika, and why, that the guy didn’t have to ask?
He was shocked that his father might actually be here in person. His old man must have pulled all kinds of strings to get permission to enter Uzbekistan on such short notice. One of the border guards must have been on the FSB payroll for Peter to have found him and Katie so fast.
It could not be good that Peter was here. Calling in that favor pretty damned fast, wasn’t he? Alex knew his father was hot and bothered to get him onto the FSB payroll, but, jeez.
He followed the marine to a hotel-like room for embassy guests. A wired and fully monitored room, no doubt. Would Katie join him here? Try to seduce him? Film the two of them having raunchy sex? God, she was just like all the rest—out to use him, treating him like a freak. Did any of them seriously think they could embarrass him into caving in to them? He snorted mentally. A person had to have a conscience, a soul, to be blackmailed. Last time he checked, he had neither.
* * *
KATIE WAS PERPLEXED as to why she and Alex had been separated, and, furthermore, why the nice lady attaché seemed prepared to keep them apart while they were in the embassy. Was this some sort of mental warfare? Against an American citizen? Alex had warned her that the CIA didn’t play nice, even with its own people—maybe he wasn’t wrong after all. Chilled, she tried to keep her expression calm and open as the woman showed her to a guest room and murmured something about seeing if there was a crib that could be sent up for Dawn.
