Walking out on her last night had been the best thing Harry could have done for her. It gave her a plausible reason to be bitter enough to betray him. Besides, he’d be back. She’d seen him hesitate at the door. He wasn’t any more ready to call it quits than she was—although it might be best if they did. Last night was their first real fight of what promised to be many. He knew that as well as she did, which was why he’d kept going.
So why was her heart so damn sad at the thought of their affair being over?
According to the clock it was a few minutes after ten, a little early to call Yasmin on a Sunday morning. At the same time there was a good chance she’d be in.
Yasmin answered on the fourth ring.
“Why do I always fall for the wrong men?” Lies demanded.
“Beats me. I’m not the right person to ask.” Her cousin’s answer came out husky with sleep and pitched unnaturally low, as if she were trying not to wake someone. “Give me a second.” Lies heard the rustling of bedclothes and the creak of a mattress, then the faint snick of a door being carefully closed. “OK. Tell me all about it. What did you do to make Harry mad?”
“How do you know I’m talking about Harry? And why do you assume I was the one who did something wrong?”
“Because I saw the way you look at each other. And I’m not assuming you did something wrong, I’m saying you did something to make him angry. You did, didn’t you?”
Sudden suspicion interrupted Lies’s desire to unload her own problems. “That had better be the soccer player and not Baart in your bedroom.”
“It’s neither. He’s an accountant with the company I work for.” Yasmin sounded self-satisfied. “He asked me out a few times and I finally accepted—which I might not have done if I hadn’t met Harry and liked him so much. So see? We really do share a type. Now tell me what you did wrong so I’ll know not to repeat your mistake. Then we’ll figure out how to fix it.”
No words came out. She shouldn’t have called Yasmin. She couldn’t explain to her how two parts of her life kept converging. She couldn’t say how she had thought she’d loved Michael Ajam, but that the man she’d been in love with had never existed, while Harry, on the other hand, exemplified everything that Michael had turned out not to be.
She wanted to be talked out of fixing things with him, not encouraged to do so.
She’d called the wrong person.
“Go back to your accountant,” she said. “We can talk later.”
She cut off Yasmin’s protests. Then she called Dan.
“Jesus, Lies. It’s four-thirty in the morning here.” He sounded annoyed and impatient, although neither was an unusual state for him to be in so she didn’t let that deter her.
“I’ve done something stupid and I need someone to talk to. If I tell you about it, can we keep this conversation off the record?”
Three long seconds dragged by. “It depends on how stupid it is and who it involves.”
“It’s similar to the last stupid thing I did and might or might not involve the defense trade commissioner to the Netherlands.” Perched on the side of the bed, she tensed for his reaction. It would set the tone for how much she’d feel free to say.
“What is it with intelligence officers?” Dan demanded. “Are your social skills really so poor that you can’t hook up with strangers in bars whenever you need an itch scratched? Because it can’t be stellar standards or morals holding you people back.” He blew out a resigned sigh. “OK. As long as the trade commissioner isn’t committing any crimes and neither of you is compromising national security, this is off the record. But pretend I’m your brother and spare me the details.”
A load shifted off her shoulders. Judging by Dan’s reaction, hers wasn’t the first phone call of this nature that he’d ever received.
She told him as much as she dared, holding back anything to do with the investigation—because John Carmichael had instructed her to keep it to herself—and the intimate details, because she didn’t think Dan needed to hear how Harry had taken her from behind while she’d been bent over his sofa.
“Why are you telling me all this and not a girlfriend?” Dan asked when she finished. “Why is it my shoulder you’re crying on?”
She didn’t know. “You told me to protect my integrity on this assignment. I guess I needed to hear that I haven’t done anything too terribly wrong.”
“What are your instincts telling you? Do you think you can’t do this job to the best of your abilities? Do you believe you’ve compromised your investigation?”
“No,” Lies said. “I don’t believe I have.”
“Neither do I.” He said it with enough conviction to ease her conscience. “Don’t get me wrong. I’d rather you hadn’t gotten involved with the trade commissioner. But while a lawyer might bring it up during disclosure, I doubt if it would have any real effect on the outcome of a trial. And I don’t think that’s why you really called me.” He paused as if gathering his thoughts, or maybe he was deciding if he should voice an honest opinion. “I think you really want me to tell you to stop seeing the trade commissioner. I’m not going to do that. I want to ask you a question instead and I want you to be honest with yourself when you answer it. Is he worth sacrificing your career for? Because from what I’m hearing there doesn’t appear to be any middle ground between the two of you. It sounds to me as if he hates your job.”
A sick sensation clamped her stomach muscles in a vice. “What do I do?”
“Forget about whether or not he hates your job for a second and take a step back. Do you like your job? Would you consider taking a desk job instead?”
“I love fieldwork,” she admitted. “No. I don’t want a desk job. Not yet. Maybe someday. But not in the foreseeable future.”
“Don’t ever give up on something you love to make someone else happy, Lies. You were angry with me for telling John you’d gotten involved with Ajam. You thought I was being sexist and had double standards. Maybe I was and maybe I do. I know this sounds stereotypical, but women are more likely to give up their dreams for men than men are for women. I’m not saying to stand your ground without compromising. I’m suggesting if you want a relationship with the trade commissioner, you should start out the way you mean to continue or you’ll both end up miserable. Oh, and Lies?”
“Yes?”
“If sleeping with the trade commissioner negatively impacts on this investigation in any way, this conversation won’t remain off the record. And the stakes are too high for me to protect you. You understand that, don’t you?”
Her fingers tightened on the phone. She’d known it when she called. “I do.”
“Remember the order and priority of your commitments. Get your case wrapped up first and sort out your personal life second. That’s the best advice I can give you right now.”
“Thank you.”
She laid in bed for a long time, mulling over their conversation. Dan was right. Until she finished this case she couldn’t give Harry the consideration he deserved. She’d call in sick at the embassy for the next few days, then head to Amsterdam and eavesdrop on Bernard with that listening device she’d planted in his master bathroom.
It would give her the break from Harry her heart and mind sorely needed.
* * *
The glum Sunday morning reflected Harry’s mood. He hadn’t planned on waking alone. It was no one’s fault but his own that he had.
He wasn’t the type of man who confided the details of his relationships with women to other men.
Instead he called Alcine.
They hadn’t parted on warm terms. While he deeply appreciated her confiding her concerns about Vanderloord to him, he’d been less enthused about the details of their affair and the accompanying list of his faults that she seemed to believe justified it. He couldn’t say why he was calling her now.
He almost hung up. His thumb hovered over the telephone icon on his cell.
“Harry?”
He closed his eyes. “Alcine
. How are you?”
Caution crept into her tone. “Is something wrong?”
Yes. I need to know I’m not a complete ass as far as women go and that I have at least a few redeeming qualities.
And he was calling an ex-lover to find out. That was how crazy Lies made him. “No. Just checking on you.”
“It’s been nine months. It’s a little late to be worrying about me, don’t you think?” She said it without malice, simply stating a fact.
She was right and this was awkward. They weren’t friends.
Maybe that was what they should have been. They’d genuinely liked each other in the beginning, but Alcine had wanted more than tepid affection. Now that he knew firsthand what they’d been missing, he no longer blamed her. He simply wished he’d been the first to find out they were finished, not the last.
“Better late than never. Believe it or not, I do care what happens to you.” He really did. They’d spent three years together, not all of them bad.
“I’m getting married.”
He absorbed the shock of that blunt revelation. She’d never been interested in marriage. Not with him. “Congratulations.”
“I owe you an apology,” she added. “There’s no excuse for what I did, although I do think it turned out to be a favor in the end. For both of us.”
The point wasn’t worth arguing. He hadn’t called her for that. “Are you happy?” he asked.
Her voice softened and warmed. “Extremely.”
He waited for the jealousy to hit. It never came, making him equal parts sad and relieved. “Then I’m happy for you. Can I ask you something?”
She hesitated, her wariness returning. “Of course.”
He rolled his question around in his head, seeking the best way to frame it, before giving up and tossing it at her like a live hand grenade. “Was I too possessive?”
She let out a gasp of surprised laughter. He could picture the backward tilt of her head, the length of her throat—how very pretty she was—and the memory did nothing for him. She wasn’t Lies.
Her spurt of amusement turned into a sigh. “Hardly. If anything, you weren’t possessive enough. If I wasn’t in the same room with you, you didn’t spare me a second thought. Even when I was I don’t think your attention was ever completely on me. I wanted to come first in your life. The sad truth is that I didn’t even come a close second.”
He winced, wishing he could deny it. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s no reason to be. Everything’s worked out for the best. I’ve found what I was looking for. I really hope you do too.”
That was part of the problem. He hadn’t been looking for anything. Certainly not what he’d found.
He made himself a cup of coffee and sat on the sofa in his living room to drink it, pondering over their conversation while watching the world news on BBC. The stark, unvarnished truth finally sank in.
He might not have been possessive enough with Alcine, but he was far too possessive of Lies. He lost his mind around her. They were no better suited than he and Alcine had been, although their differences played out in a far more destructive manner. He clasped his hands behind his head and stared into space, torn between regret and resolve.
This had to end.
Chapter Fourteen
Lies set up her listening post at a small boutique hotel not far from Bernard’s home. Her room, although austere and meant to be nothing more than sleeping quarters for tourists out exploring the city all day, was clean and comfortable enough for her purpose.
She had a good book with her, which was fortunate because Bernard spent little time at home on the computer or the landline next to it. By the second afternoon she was beyond bored and becoming concerned she might have to return to The Hague with nothing to show for her efforts.
And then Bernard made a phone call.
She could only capture one side of it, and she didn’t understand the language he spoke, but her instincts said it was Ukrainian. She’d have to send the recording to John in Ottawa for translation to confirm that this was the connection between Mike Freeland, the lawyer, and Bernard she’d been seeking. That connection, in turn, would lead back to the defense minister. She could feel it.
“You were right,” John Carmichael announced when he called her back the next evening. Lies had remained in the hotel room in Amsterdam, not yet ready to return to The Hague and cross swords with Harry. She wanted to get her job done first, as Dan had advised. “Freeland brokered the sale of weapons systems parts from Canada to the Ukraine on behalf of a third party. Vanderloord’s call was to arrange for payment and delivery, and confirms the hawala system the Albanian diplomat’s wife reported. Freeland, as it turns out, is the defense minister’s personal attorney—on retainer, no less. And it’s highly unlikely that those parts will remain in the Ukraine, or at least with that particular company. I couldn’t see how a helicopter company would have a need for CP140 Aurora parts, particularly ones shipped from Canada when they could legally buy the same P-3 Orion parts directly from the original equipment manufacturer in the States, so I did a little more digging. The Ukrainian helicopter company is owned by a Russian enterprise, which in turn is owned by a dummy corporation, and—wait for it—links back to one of Vanderloord’s businesses in the Netherlands.”
The intricacies of Bernard’s game were impressive. The defense minister’s daring involvement equally so. The level of arrogance, stunning. She could only imagine what these people could accomplish if they’d harness their powers for good.
“What’s my next move?” she asked.
“Now that we’ve established Freeland is a domestic threat to national security, we can complete the investigation of him from Ottawa. You’ll finish out the next two weeks with the embassy,” John replied. “I’m sure Vanderloord has been flying just under Interpol’s radar for years. I don’t want to take you out so abruptly that he pieces together CSIS is also now interested in him and reports his suspicions back to the defense minister. And I really don’t want the minister questioning me. Once the two weeks are up you’ll be transferred on paper to a British possession in the Caribbean and disappear from the system.”
Lies picked at a loose thread on the worn hotel bedspread, struggling with a sharp jolt of regret that she now had a date for saying good-bye to Harry rather than the ambiguous timeline she’d been exploiting. Sorting out her personal life was going to take no time at all. Their affair really was over.
“What about Bernard’s grievance with the trade commissioner?” she reminded John, although she could see the writing on the wall for it too.
“I can’t find any logic behind it. It still troubles me, but as hard as it is to believe, it might simply be a case of clashing personalities.”
Translation—it wasn’t CSIS’s problem.
Maybe not, but it remained hers. She couldn’t let it alone. Bernard claimed to neither like nor dislike Harry. He hadn’t said he had no interest in him. If she left without identifying the problem, on top of CSIS not having Bernard arrested, then Harry’s visit to CSIS would have gained him nothing except one more reason to remember her without fondness.
Lies had plenty of time to think about it—and Harry—on the train from Amsterdam to The Hague. She stared at the landscape whipping past, ignoring the noisy students seated behind and across from her, and rubbed at her temple with one fingertip.
Her chest ached in tandem with her throbbing temple and burning eyes. This was her second affair to crash and burn while working a case, only this time she’d fallen for a man who was exactly what he presented himself to be and she wasn’t going to recover from it as quickly. She hadn’t been sleeping with Harry strictly for the sex. She’d pushed him from the very beginning because she’d been drawn to him. Because being honest and straightforward didn’t mean there weren’t interesting layers to him for her to explore. She’d fallen in love with him the night they’d been caught making out in his car and he’d flipped off a group of boys. She would never hav
e trusted any other man the way she did him. Not after her last gross mistake.
Two weeks. She crossed her arms, hugging her stomach.
A woman carrying a blond, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked baby in her arms took the empty seat to her right. The baby, a girl, wore a bright blue, quilted jacket with ducks on it and shiny yellow rubber boots. Her fine, fuzzy hair stood straight up in the front and stuck out in every other direction, reminding Lies of a dandelion gone to seed. She examined Lies with wide, inquisitive eyes before gifting her with a toothless grin. Drool dribbled from a plump lower lip and down her chin, suggesting she wouldn’t be toothless for long. Lies had no burning desire for children of her own, but appreciated them when she could hand them back to their parents.
“Hallo mooie meid,” she said. Hello, beautiful girl.
The baby’s mother smiled at the compliment. The two women struck up a conversation that kept Lies distracted for the remainder of the forty-five minute trip.
In the back of her head, however, she knew what she had to do and why there was no point in prolonging it. She’d tell Harry about her upcoming transfer. If he wanted to end things between them immediately, she’d begin shuffling her responsibilities to other staff members in his office, minimizing any interactions between them for the next two weeks. But if he were as reluctant to end their relationship as she was, and she believed him to be…
She couldn’t allow her hopes to go there. Harry had never been about compromise.
The minute she walked through her flat door and tossed her bag on her bedroom floor, she pulled out her phone and sent a brief text. We need 2 talk.
His reply was immediate and equally terse. Agreed. Be there in an hour.
Her bell rang fifty-seven minutes later. She let him in.
His dark brown hair had been recently trimmed, the front styled so it slicked upward. Designer jeans outlined well-muscled thighs. His intent eyes, the same color as his hair, scanned her face as if committing it to memory. Her heart beat faster. She wasn’t ready to say good-bye. She wanted to grab him by the lapels of his gray sport coat and drag him into her bedroom instead.
His Spy at Night (Spy Games Book 3) Page 17
