Let Slip the Dogs of War: A Bard's Bed & Breakfast Mystery #1

by Barton, Sara M.

  At five, there was a knock on the front door. I opened it to find Mavis and two men waiting there.

  “We need to have a look at the child,” she announced.

  Half an hour later, Wardah had black ink on the tips of her fingers that she found very distressing. Even the big lollipop didn’t help. The lab tech scanned her eyes and examined her for distinguishing marks. Right after that, the doctor examined her, taking blood samples, checking her teeth, and swabbing the inside of her mouth. The two men said nothing as they packed up their kits.

  “How long will it take?” I was nervous. My stomach felt like the 5:47 express train was rumbling through the station without slowing down to discharge passengers.

  “We should know within twenty four hours, max.”

  In reality, it took much less time than that. Mavis’s smartphone rang while we were having dessert. A puzzled look popped up on her face before the mask of calm slid back down.

  “Something wrong?” I asked. Mavis shook her head quickly.

  “Not to worry.”

  “And yet I am worried,” I responded. Uncle Edward changed the subject, asking Mavis about an art exhibit at the National Gallery. The two of them got into a discussion about the difference between illuminists and Michelangelo.

  At eight, while I was reading “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” in English to Wardah, naming the various critters as I pointed to each illustration, Mavis appeared in the doorway.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Can you tell me front of the child? She needs to cuddle and it takes her about an hour to fall asleep.” I planted an affectionate kiss on top of Wardah’s head, to assure her that there was nothing wrong. Mavis pulled up the arm chair by the window, planting her feet on the bed and her hands in her lap. Titania wandered in, brushed against Mavis’s legs, claiming territory, before jumping up on the bed and settling on Wardah’s lap. The little girl’s hand gently patted the imaginary crown on the queen of the feline’s head.

  “Here’s the deal, Bea. Wardah is Jamil’s daughter. We had samples taken before Fatima was buried and it turns out she is not. But, and here’s the kicker, according to the DNA, Fatima is a relative.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. We think she’s Hashim’s daughter.”

  “Jamil is a fraud? He’s on the other team?”

  “Or he doesn’t know his daughter is missing. Maybe she was kidnapped in London because Hashim knew about the plan, and he substituted his own daughter.”

  “This is a mess,” I decided. “Do you think that’s why we haven’t heard from Ben yet?”

  “You haven’t heard from him, Bea. We have. He’s going to help us sort this out. It may take a few weeks.”

  “Weeks?” That sounded ominous.

  “Maybe a little longer. It’s hard to say.” Mavis nonchalantly pulled her feet down to the floor and calmly stood up. She studied the little figure in my arms, as if she was trying to make a decision. “It all depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether we can find the real Fatima.”

  “Mavis, how did the fake Fatima come to have those tattoos on her?” I asked.

  “What tattoos?”

  “The little honey bee and the rose. One was edible, one was scented.” Mavis’s eyes narrowed as I described them.

  “How did you know she had them?”

  “She was naked. I saw them.”

  “When?”

  “When I found her under the bed. Ben showed them to me. He thought they were part of a cipher, proof that the girl was sent to deliver a message.” Listening to me, Mavis shook her head as she listened. And when I finished, she looked me right in the eye.

  “They were a message, alright. But not the way you think. The real Fatima left London with henna tattoos. She had been to a gathering of Syrian ex-pats, where the women all got them. One was a large rose on her left hand, the other was a tiny bee on her right hand.”

  “We thought the tattoos were for ‘Mr. Williams’, as bona fides. Only you’re ‘Mr. Williams’ and you know the real Fatima had different tattoos.”

  “Maybe they were there to fool you and Ben. Maybe Philippe needed to convince you two that the right girl was killed. You would report the tattoos, the body would disappear, and I would be told the identification was verified, without ever seeing the corpse.”

  “I am totally confused,” I admitted.

  “Don’t be,” said the seasoned intelligence officer. “I put a note in my file at Langley about Fatima. It said, ‘Check tattoos. Bee and rose.’ It was a note to myself to make sure they were made of henna.”

  “Which means someone at Langley read them and misinterpreted your notes?”

  “You’re quick. Probably why Ben married you.”

  “That and the physical chemistry,” I replied, not thinking clearly.

  “Right. Of course.” It sounded like Mavis was laughing behind that hand she put up to her face, but I couldn’t be sure. She continued. “If we accepted the dead girl as Wardah’s sister, we wouldn’t look for the missing girl. But that would only work until Wardah arrived at the Bard’s Bed & Breakfast.”

  “Which means what -- Wardah would know the dead girl was an impostor?”

  “Could be. For all they knew, I was bringing the little girl with me, and she would give away the game.”

  “It would make sense that they killed the fake Fatima because of the real Wardah,” I agreed. “That means it was deliberate, not an accident. Does that mean they needed to set up Ben, the CIA station chief, and someone else?”

  “We sent Ben to Syria to get Azeeza, Bea, because he knows her. If he brings her out and the real Fatima is left behind, Jamil will still be vulnerable. The original plan was to get all three females out, so Jamil couldn’t be coerced into the cooperating by the Syrian government. Killing the fake Fatima meant they could affect the CIA’s effort to gain Jamil’s trust, because we failed to keep her safe, but their trump card would be the real Fatima, probably still in Syria.”

  “Where would they hide her?”

  “That’s a million dollar question. At least now we know we need to look for her.”

  “Mavis, if the fake tattoos were the result of someone seeing your notes, doesn’t that mean you got screwed, too? Philippe and Yuri went to a lot of trouble to bring the phony Fatima here, kill her off, and then they tried to burn the body in the cabana in anticipation of your arrival. The body was found in the suite we had reserved for you. It’s almost like Philippe and Yuri wanted to implicate the CIA in some big way. I heard Yuri talking to Afarin Hesami, and I know her father is in the Iranian navy, so how does Iran tie in?”

  “Maybe they improvised when you found the body and moved it. If the game was a Russian-Iranian effort, aimed at thwarting the CIA’s recruitment of Jamil, the Russians were probably looking for any advantage they could get. They have no problem cutting the Iranians off if they can gain direct control for themselves and influence how things go in Syria. If the fake Fatima is Hashim’s daughter, they may have been trying to stoke the bad blood between the brothers. The only way we’ll know if when we see the scorecard at the end of the game.”

  “Maybe the CIA interrupted the Russian effort to recruit Jamil,” I suggested, “and all this is payback.”

  “Could be. But I suspect there’s much, much more hidden under the surface. This isn’t your typical Russian intelligence op. It feels....”

  “Personal. Like a vendetta,” I finished the thought we were both sharing. “Someone is out for blood.”

  “Yes, I suspect this is all about revenge. Somehow Philippe managed to co-opt the department administrative assistant who handles my paperwork. She’s been reporting to him details of our efforts to handle Jamil for the CIA. Probably why Yuri used him as a contractor, to get the information. By the way, Philippe’s body washed up on the New York side of the lake yesterday. The official cause of death is drowning, consistent with the wrec
kage of the motor boat found nearby,” Mavis agreed. “Now that Yuri no longer needs him, Philippe was expendable.”

  “Hardly a tragedy in my book,” I decided. “His services were for sale to the highest bidder.”

  “All the more reason for Yuri to get rid of him. He was probably worried that Philippe would accept our offer of cash.”

  “Doesn’t it strike you that Yuri is really at the heart of all this? He’s the one guy who keeps showing up in the middle of the action. What if Yuri isn’t Yuri?”

  “Interesting thought,” said a contemplative Mavis. “By the way, Bea, we didn’t have this conversation. It never happened.”

  Chapter Fifteen --

  “I have good news and bad news,” said the voice on the other end of the phone two days later. Mavis was back at Langley. “Which do you want first?”

  “Is Ben alive?” My heart hovered on the edge of despair as I waited for the answer. She quickly put me out of my misery.

  “That would be the good news,” Mavis announced. “Alive and well, currently in Istanbul.”

  “Then what is the bad news?”

  “You’re probably not going to like it. Things didn’t go as well as we’d hoped.”

  “You’re stalling, Mavis. Get to it.”

  “Azeezah is in very rough shape, Bea. It’s touch-and-go at the moment. They tortured her to try and get Jamil to turn on the rebels. She has significant injuries. Even if she lives, she’ll need a good, long recovery time.”

  “How terrible.” I thought about little Wardah.

  “And the real Fatima was in the same prison. They subjected her to terrible treatment. Her injuries are more psychological than physical and she will need a lot of support to regain her mental equilibrium.”

  “Send her to us.” Don’t ask me what compelled me to say that. It just seemed to pop out of my mouth.

  “You want to take her on? Don’t you want to discuss it with Ben first?” Mavis was being cautious, and for a moment I hesitated. But then I thought about how Ben walked out that door without asking my permission. He didn’t even give me a chance to argue about the decision. Frankly, I owed him a kick in the seat of his pants, but I would settle for my own version of being noble. Let him bitch about it just once and I would remind him of all the times he put me through the wringer.

  “I’m sure Ben will support me in this. After all, he risked his neck to get her and her mother out of a Syrian prison, so he’s obviously committed to the cause. Besides, Wardah’s here with us, learning English. The original plan was to reunite the sisters at the Bard’s, wasn’t it? Why shouldn’t we stick with the plan?” I could hear a snicker on the other end. I didn’t want to interrupt, since Mavis seemed to be enjoying the moment. “How can Ben possibly say no?”

  “Indeed,” she drawled. “What about school?”

  “I’ll register Wardah for Four Corners Elementary School. She’ll enjoy that. And Fatima can be tutored by Lorna and Uncle Edward. By the time she’s ready for her senior year of high school, she’ll be a brilliant scholar.”

  “Well, she would certainly benefit from having a former professor and a research librarian teaching her.” As she spoke, I could hear the wheels spinning for Mavis. The CIA would approve it because it meant that Ben would keep the girls safe, I would make sure they had a good home, and she would have the best teachers possible -- not only were Uncle Edward and Lorna familiar with her world back in Syria, they could help her fit in here without disrespecting her culture or her beliefs. “You let me know if it’s a problem.”

  “It will be fine,” I insisted. I was going to make it fine. I knew it meant Ben had to stick around the Bard’s as long as we all needed that much security. “Did you ever figure out who the dead girl was?”

  “I’ll let Ben brief you on that.”

  “When will I see him again?”

  “Soon. Hard to say. I’ll be in touch.”

  Uncle Edward and Lorna were delighted when they heard the news, applauding the decision to bring Fatima to the Bard’s Bed & Breakfast. I found them in the library, playing backgammon while Wardah was coloring at the table beside them.

  “Fabulous,” Uncle Edward crowed, “what a coup for the CIA!”

  “What?” I was caught off-guard. “What do you mean?”

  “The CIA gets the whole family in a controlled setting. Normally, the kids would get parceled out to different foster homes, so as to protect them from discovery. But in this case, because Fatima can be tutored by us here at home, there won’t be any public school records. Wardah can take classes with other children her age. Thank heavens she’s not old enough to spill the beans about her family. We’ll change her name to Rosalind when we teach her English.”

  “Will it be a problem for you to stay on a while?” I asked Lorna.

  “Heavens, no. I’d be delighted. It’s nice to be needed.”

  I was about to turn away, heading back to the kitchen to pull my banana nut bread out of the oven, when I caught a look between the two conspirators. They actually had the audacity to high-five each other behind my back. I caught the movement in the wall mirror as I passed by the reflection.

  “You planned all this?” The hell with that banana nut bread. I was going to force these two senior citizens to spill the beans. “Dragging the girls here was part of a CIA plan?”

  “No, Bea,” Uncle Edward insisted. “That’s not what....”

  ““I think you’ve misunderstood, Beatrice. It’s not what you think,” Lorna insisted. “You see....”

  “I got conned again?”

  “We had better tell her,” Lorna told Uncle Edward. He concurred.

  “Tell me what?” I hissed. If I’d had a rattle on my tail, I’d have used it to warn them I was about to strike out.

  “Bea...”

  “We’re married,” Lorna blurted out in a rush of words.

  “Excuse me?” Had they eloped? When did all that happen? How did I miss it?

  “Husband and wife, Bea. Have been for quite a while.” Uncle Edward wrapped an arm around Lorna. As I looked at the pair of them, it suddenly dawned on me. They both spoke Arabic. They had worked at the same school for years, Uncle Edward as a professor, Lorna as a research librarian.

  “You’re Hortense,” I decided. Fear flickered in their eyes before disappearing behind their cheerful smiles.

  “Am I?” she laughed. “Whoever is that? Some Shakespearean character of whom I am unfamiliar?”

  “You’re Uncle Edward’s long lost wife, the ones the Soviets tried to kill. You’re on your third life as a cat, six more to go.”

  There was a long silence as they watched me, uncertain of what to do next, and even as I studied them in return.

  “Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me. But now I think I understand this whole mess. Uncle Edward, how does Yuri figure into this mess with Hortense?”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “This is a very ugly feud. Yuri had no problem screwing over the Americans, the Iranians, the Syrians, and even the Russians. For him, it’s very personal. I think he’s out to punish you and Ben. Why? What don’t I know about you two?” There was something that connected my husband to his adoptive uncle, and it had to do with the work Uncle Edward did in the OSS and later for the CIA. I wasn’t sure I needed to know all the details, but it was important that Uncle Edward and Ben did. Yuri was coming back to finish the job. I didn’t know when. I didn’t know how. I didn’t even know why, but I knew that was his intent. And even as I watched Uncle Edward squeeze Lorna’s shoulder confidently, I could see the doubt in his eyes that he wanted to hide from her. What if Yuri knew Hortense was still alive and she was his target? I found it hard to believe that the Russians cared so much about events that happened long ago. But if Yuri had a personal connection to someone in Soviet intelligence, maybe someone who was ruined as a result of Uncle Edward’s activities, he might never give up his quest for revenge.

  “Let’s walk, Bea,” said Uncle Edwa
rd, slipping into a more cheerful voice. “I want to show you the changes I’ve made to the rose garden. Lorna, would you mind keeping an eye on the child?”

  “Of course not,” she told him. But I could see she was worrying.

  We left through the French doors, stepping out onto the patio and walking out of sight. I knew Uncle Edward had been dead-heading the rose bushes for the better part of the morning. He pointed out his favorite plants, from the “Mr. Lincoln” to the “Memorial Day” to the “4th of July”. The perfume was heady as we walked through the tribute to American. Finally he waved me to sit on the cement bench positioned to have the best view of the glorious blooms. Once I was seated, he parked his carcass next to me.

  “You are right. This is a vendetta, and a very messy one at that. I know that Ben must have told you about Hortense. You know, then, that they abused her for the two years they held her after our success in Hungary. And you know that they returned for her again and again over the years. What you don’t know is that Ben’s father’s first assignment as a CIA officer involved tit-for-tat. You’re also right that Yuri is not Yuri. He is Grigoriy Demitrov, son of Colonel Anton Demitrov, the man who brutalized my Hortense in unspeakable ways.”

  “What did you do to Colonel Demitrov that made him so bitter?” I wondered, studying Uncle Edward’s face for even the slightest movement, knowing he might not speak the whole truth. I considered what I knew of Uncle Edward as a man. Overall, he was gentle and kind, decent even. But I didn’t doubt he would kill without hesitation, to protect the country he loved and the people he loved. And yet, I didn’t think that as a CIA officer he was a cruel man. He was focused on results, on winning hearts and minds more than on murder. “You kidnapped Yuri’s mother!”

  There it was, a little flinch, a slight flicker in the eyes. Yuri was looking to punish Uncle Edward, Ben, and the CIA for stealing his mama.