Troubleshooters 08 Flashpoint

by Suzanne Brockmann

  She would have moved away, but he caught her arm. “Your job is to not get yourself thrown into prison on the first night we’re in Kazabek,” he told her in less than a whisper, his mouth near her ear. “Your job is to still be in one working piece if and when we find . . . what we’re looking for.” The laptop. He was not going to use the L-word. Not ever. Not aloud.

  Tess pulled free, held up one finger, then disappeared back behind the curtain. She came out seconds later carrying what looked like a dictating machine—one of those little handheld jobs that used miniature cassette tapes. She pressed the button and a conversation between two people—a man and a woman—began playing.

  Hey, that was his voice. And hers, too. What the hell?

  He heard the Tess on tape mention the latest Tom Hanks movie, and he realized she must’ve taped the conversation they’d had at the airport. They’d had an extremely innocuous discussion about their favorite movies while they’d waited to board the plane—while Jimmy had tried not to think about that night he’d spent with Tess. Usually he enjoyed his memories of intimacies shared, but this time those thoughts made him feel restless.

  She now set the tape player down on the table and stepped closer to him, but not as close as they’d been before.

  Which was something of a shame.

  “My job includes getting our computer system up and running,” she said in a low voice as, on the tape, she chattered on about Forrest Gump. Anyone listening in would hear only that taped conversation. “With Internet access. We need communications, too. In case you didn’t notice, both of our sat-com radios didn’t make it over here. If I can get a satellite dish placed somewhere high enough, I can rig a comm system with our phones. We’ll be able to keep in touch with one another as well as Tom—provided we’re in range of the dish. This is important, Jimmy. And it’s not something I can do when the sun’s up.”

  “Well, I’m sorry.” Jimmy tried to look it. It was hard. He was distracted by his own voice making some totally lame joke about Wilson the Volleyball in Castaway deserving the best supporting Oscar. On the tape, Tess’s answering laughter sounded much too polite. “But Decker thought it would be best if you used tonight to depressurize. Get your feet underneath you, get some rest.”

  Her eyebrows had lifted, and she looked amused. “Decker said that?”

  “Yes,” he lied. “While we were locking down the cart. Out in the back.”

  “You know, that’s odd, because I spoke to Decker, too, right before he left. And he gave me an absolute thumbs-up to go out and get that portable sat-dish in place.” Tess swung a black backpack off her shoulder. “He even gave me this to carry it in.”

  Oh, crap. That was indeed Deck’s bag. But . . . “You’ve actually got a sat-dish in there?”

  “It folds. It’s made from a special fabric, kind of like a kite,” she told him. “There’s a frame that opens up and snaps into place.”

  It was funny. This techno stuff—even just talking about it briefly like this—really turned her on. Tess Bailey was a true technogeek.

  “The heaviest part of it is the power pack,” she was telling him. “The whole thing’s ultralightweight.”

  She’d been all lit up, just like that, two months ago when he’d raced her down the hallway to her bedroom.

  “How do you anchor it?” Jimmy asked now. “What happens in a windstorm?”

  “It’s been known to fly away,” she admitted. “But really, it more than makes up for that by being so easy to replace.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Jimmy scoffed, purposely dissing her glorious new technology. It worked to make her take a step back, away from him.

  Which was a good thing, because whenever she stood so close, he had the urge to drop to his knees and beg her for a replay. And maybe even tell her the truth about why he’d never called her back: Because he’d wanted to call her. And hadn’t that scared him to death. . . .

  “We’re coming up on dust storm season,” he told her instead. “Usually there’s only one per week, but this time of year there could be three or four. Or one long one that lasts six days.”

  “Like any piece of equipment, this system has got its disadvantages as well as advantages,” she said. “I’ll have to check it regularly and replace it when necessary. Personally, if I’m going to climb up the side of a building, I’d rather not be carrying a traditional sat-dish.”

  Climb up the side of . . .

  Tess shouldered the bag, ready to head for the door.

  Okay. Moment of truth. Should he stick to his claim that he spoke to Deck in the yard, call her bluff, and accuse her of being the one who was lying? It was so obvious that her story wasn’t any more real than his, despite the fact that she had Deck’s bag. It was just her style to ask to borrow it without telling Deck exactly what she wanted to use it for.

  But before he could decide, she injected just the right amount of doubt in his mind by looking him directly in the eye and saying, “Deck said he wanted you to go with me. I told him I didn’t need a babysitter, I know exactly where I’m going to place this—I took a look down the street when I was helping unload the wagon. There’s an abandoned Catholic church not far from here that seems to have the right height to it. But he insisted. He doesn’t want me doing this alone. Not the first time, he said. Which, okay, I can respect that. I don’t necessarily agree, but . . . I know you’re tired, Jimmy. I am, too. But Deck really does want our computers up and running as soon as possible.”

  Damn, she was good. Not the first time. That really sounded like something Decker would say. And then to end it with that little challenge. I know you’re tired, Jimmy.

  Yeah, he was tired and his feet freaking ached—that twelve-mile late-night stroll had really put the frosting on his pain cake—but he wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep anyway. Damn it, after this afternoon, it was possible he was never going to sleep again.

  Jimmy knew that he didn’t move an inch, but something he did—or maybe it was something he didn’t do—made Tess’s eyes soften. She actually touched him, her fingers surprisingly cool against his face.

  Cool, but far too fleeting. Jimmy didn’t catch her hand, though. He didn’t touch her at all.

  “Thank you for being so great out there today,” she said. “That was . . . challenging in so many ways.”

  No fucking kidding.

  “You were wonderful with Khalid and Amman,” she continued. “I just . . . I was impressed.”

  Wonderful. Great. Yeah, he was terrific—he had a real way with kids who were still alive. But today, too many hadn’t survived.

  “Decker told me it was okay to cry,” she said, almost too quietly.

  Did she honestly think . . . ? Yes, she did. He’d let her get too close once before, and now she thought . . .

  Jimmy knew, without a doubt, that now was the perfect time to tell her. “Decker told me that if you weren’t on his team, if you didn’t work for Troubleshooters Incorporated, he’d be chasing you down the street.”

  He could see that he’d surprised the hell out of her with that—and possibly even offended her, too. So he pushed it even further. “When you get back to D.C., you’re going to find a message on your answering machine from the Agency, offering you a field position. You could have it all, you know. The job you’ve always wanted. And Deck.”

  She gave him a look that clearly said You are such a jerk. “Are you coming? Because I’m going in two minutes, whether you’re with me or not.”

  “I thought you just told me that Decker said—”

  “Screw Decker. Screw you, Jimmy. I’m not going to play your mind games.”

  “Yeah, like you weren’t trying to con me?” He touched her then, the same way she’d touched him. “Thank you for being so great out there today—”

  She slapped his hand away. “I wasn’t conning you. I was trying to—” She broke off. “God.”

  “What?”

  “Forget it.”

  “You were trying
to what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Let you know that it was okay to talk about it. You’re wired so tightly shut—”

  “Yeah, well, where I come from, that’s how you stay alive.”

  “Where do you come from?” she asked, looking hard into his eyes as if she’d find the answer there.

  Her question stopped him dead.

  “I know you’re not really from Connecticut,” she continued.

  “What the fuck does it matter where I’m from?” Okay. Stop. Apologize. But he didn’t get a chance.

  “You’re right. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m worried about you,” Tess said. “And okay, maybe you can pretend that’s just some female hormonal reaction to having slept with you, but Decker’s worried about you, too.”

  He tried to shrug it off—all of it. Including the way that her visible flinch at his harsh words had made his stomach hurt. Including the way that she hadn’t then turned from him, but instead took a step toward him. She was worried about him. And as for Deck . . . “Deck worries about everyone.”

  “He worries most about you,” she said. “I see him watching you, and lately . . .”

  “Okay, you win.” Jimmy couldn’t talk about this anymore. He couldn’t even think about it. “Let’s go get that sat-dish in place.”

  Once they went out Rivka’s door, they’d have to be completely silent. Thank you, Jesus.

  Tess turned away—probably to hide her triumphant smile. “You better get changed, then.”

  “Not a chance.” That made her turn back to him, but he read only surprise on her face. She was either really good, or truly sweet and completely triumph free. “You’re the one who needs to change,” he told her.

  She didn’t comprehend.

  “Play this little scenario out in your head,” he said. “You’re out on the street, creeping around after curfew, dressed like one of Delta Force—you’ve got everything but the combat vest and the AK-47. What do you think’s going to happen if you get caught, looking like that?”

  “I have no intention of getting caught.”

  She was serious. “If you have no intention of getting caught,” Jimmy pointed out, “then you should have no need for a sidearm.”

  Tess lifted her chin as she informed him, “I know how to use it.” With her eyes slightly narrowed as she gazed at him, she looked like Minnie Mouse doing an impersonation of Clint Eastwood.

  Laughing at her right now would be bad.

  But all he had to do was picture her stopped by one of Padsha Bashir’s patrols and the urge to laugh vanished.

  “I don’t doubt that you do,” he said. “But if we do get caught—and I’d like to point out that no one ever intends to get caught—you’re not going to be carrying a gun. Or dressed like GI Jane. It won’t fit with the story we’ll use in case we do get caught, so go back there and put on the clothes you were wearing earlier today.”

  She didn’t move.

  “That wasn’t a request,” Jimmy said.

  “What story?” she asked.

  Jesus Christ. Okay. “We’re newlyweds, it’s been a rough day, we had our first fight. You ran out of the house, I followed.” Jimmy made it up on the fly. “ ‘I’m so sorry, Officer, Tess completely forgot about the curfew. She was just so upset. You know how women can get, ha, ha, ha. I promise it will never happen again, sir.’ ”

  “You know, with that kind of attitude toward women, it’s a wonder that men in this country ever get laid.”

  “Women are property,” Jimmy said. “You don’t ask your horse if it wants to pull your cart today.”

  “God.” Tess looked at him as if the oppression of women in third-world countries was his idea. She turned away, turned back. “What if they look in my bag and discover the satellite dish and power pack?”

  “You must’ve taken the wrong bag at the airport. You’ve never seen this equipment before in your life. You thought you were grabbing your clothes.”

  She nodded. Turned away. But again she turned back. “What did we fight about?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “What do people who were just married fight about?”

  Tess thought for a moment, then smiled. “You’re an idiot,” she said. “We had a fight because you’re a total idiot.”

  She crossed to the table, waiting until her voice on the tape finished a sentence. “. . . like to see an action movie that ends, you know, after the nuclear bomb has been defused, with the heroine walking away from the hero’s romantic overtures, saying, ‘Yeah, right, like I want to spend the rest of my life in couples counseling. No thanks.’ ”

  As Jimmy watched, Tess clicked off the machine and went behind the curtain to change her clothes.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  When Decker said, “Dimitri Ghaffari,” the overwhelming response from the people of the street was “Michel Lartet.”

  Lartet ran a private “club” for Westerners who couldn’t go a week—or a day—without a drink in the otherwise dry city of Kazabek. Decker didn’t know the Frenchman personally, but he’d been to his establishment a time or two, back about five years earlier. It was right after a car bomb sprayed shattered window glass onto the patrons of the restaurant in the street level of the Kazabek Grande Hotel. Forty-seven people had been hospitalized, four had died.

  And it could have been worse. The car’s driver could have gotten even closer to the twenty-eight-story hotel and taken out that entire half of the building.

  Needless to say, the Grande had shut down operations for the weeks it took to move the restaurant into the huge ballroom in the hotel’s windowless basement.

  During those weeks, business at Lartet’s club had boomed.

  Nowadays, the club was a whole lot less crowded. Not counting the recent influx of relief workers, there just weren’t that many Westerners left in the country.

  Which meant it was entirely possible Dimitri Ghaffari was gone, too. Out of all the people Decker had spoken to, none had seen Ghaffari in months. But they all agreed that if he was still in Kazabek, Lartet would most likely know how to find him.

  Inside the “club,” in the basement of a butcher shop, Decker took a table along the wall opposite the bar. Sitting there, with his back against the concrete blocks of the building’s foundation, he could watch both the front and rear entrances with little effort.

  He recognized Lartet behind the bar—he was a big man, with some excess bulk and not a whole lot of hair. Lartet had glanced up, taking note of Decker as he came in the door, but other than that, he didn’t appear to pay him much mind.

  Besides Lartet, there were nine other men in the place, most of them Europeans. One was American, and two were young K-stani men. They were dressed in decidedly Western garb, and appeared to be either good friends or employees of Lartet.

  Out of the lot of them, only the American posed a potential immediate threat. He was staring at Decker, sizing him up. There were two bottles of vodka on the bar in front of him, one empty and one half-full.

  Decker was picking up a heavy drunk-and-looking-for-a-fight vibe, so he met the man’s glare for maybe three seconds—just long enough to let him know that he wasn’t afraid. If the American was looking for an easy target to intimidate, he needed to look elsewhere.

  And then he dismissed the guy. Deck purposely turned his attention to the five burka-clad prostitutes sitting quietly off to the side, while still keeping the American on the edge of his radar.

  At first glance, based on the size of their feet, he would’ve bet that all the prostitutes were really women underneath those heavy robes. But only four of them were looking submissively at the tables in front of them. The fifth was surreptitiously checking him out.

  Which probably meant she was either a man with small feet, or not Kazbekistani.

  Lartet gave a nudge to one of the young men, gesturing toward Decker with his chin.
The man slid off his barstool and approached.

  “May I get you a beverage from the bar, sir?” he asked in flawless English.

  The American and the fifth prostitute were no longer the only ones looking at Decker now.

  “A beer.” He answered in the local dialect, loudly enough for his entire audience to hear. “In a bottle or can. I’ll open it myself.”

  Ahh. He could almost hear the murmur of approval as the entire bar seemed to take a breath and nod its collective head. Whoever he was, he drank like all the other ex-pats in this part of Kazabek. With extreme caution.