Troubleshooters 02 The Defiant Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “You don’t see it at all when you look into a mirror, do you?” he asked her softly, still in near perfect, lyrical Welsh. “You don’t have any idea what you look like, of the power of your smile. Would you smile for me, I wonder, if I . . .”

  The words were ones she didn’t know, but their meaning was more than clear. Shockingly clear.

  This was ridiculous. What could he possible be thinking? He was barely out of diapers and she was an ancient and jaded thirty-one. And that was completely ignoring the fact that she was married. Although she suspected Abdelaziz wouldn’t want anything longer than a single night of passion.

  And maybe, like Daniel, he just didn’t find marriage to be that big a deterrent to casual sex.

  “I want to see you smile when I—”

  “Oh, please,” Meg interrupted him, unable to listen to another ridiculous word. “Just go back in with the SEALs, sugar.”

  He stared at her.

  “I’ll cut you some slack for the lack of sleep. And you’re young, so maybe four days without sex has done something weird to your brain as well, but believe me, I do know what I look like, thank you very much.”

  She looked like exactly what she was—the still somewhat pretty mother of a seven-year-old. And maybe that was part of her problem with Daniel. Maybe when he looked at her beside him in his mirror, he didn’t like what he saw anymore.

  Or maybe he was just a lying, cheating son of a bitch for whom fidelity wasn’t part of his working vocabulary.

  “You speak Welsh?” Abdelaziz choked out, startled back into English. Apparently she’d shocked the hell out of him.

  “Yes,” she answered in that language. “That seems like a little detail you might want to check in advance next time you start waxing poetic, Romeo.”

  “No one speaks Welsh. At least no one in Kazbekistan does.”

  “I do. And so do you, apparently.” She had to laugh at the improbability of that. “How on earth did you—”

  “My mother was Welsh.” He had the good grace to be embarrassed, his too-handsome face actually flushing beneath all that mud and grime as he realized all that he’d said to her. “I’m really sorry, ma’am. It wasn’t my intention to offend you. I never would have said any of that if I knew you could understand.”

  “Oh, so it’s okay to say such things to a woman if she can’t understand?”

  He was so young. And so terribly embarrassed. Still, he had guts. He didn’t run away, escaping back into the sanctuary of her office. He stood firmly in front of her, forcing himself to look her directly in the eye. “I apologize. And I beg you not to let my despicable behavior reflect upon your treatment of my men—the other men.”

  “Why don’t you go inside,” she said gently, “and let the doctor check you out? I’ll get some food and some clean clothes—and I’ll also find some rooms with beds so you and your friends can get some sleep. And tomorrow we can all start over.”

  He bowed, and wisely, he went into her office without uttering another word.

  In the end, it was her files that were moved out of her office rather than the refugee and three SEALs.

  When it was clear they were determined to stay put, Meg made arrangements for cots to be moved in. And when she stopped by in the morning to transfer some files from her computer’s hard drive onto a disk, Abdelaziz was fast asleep, spread-eagle on the floor.

  He lay there as if completely boneless, in complete abandon.

  It was the way a child might sleep.

  Or a man who hadn’t slept for four days straight.

  Still, he stirred before she finished with the computer, lifting his head and pushing himself wearily up onto his hands and knees, off the floor. “Report,” he said.

  Sam, the SEAL with the Texas drawl, was awake, sitting up with his weapon held loosely in his arms. “The team commander is still asleep. I gave Mrs. Moore permission to get some information she needed from her computer.”

  Abdelaziz lifted his head and looked directly at her. It was obvious that he’d been unaware that she was in the room until Sam had given him warning. He leapt to his feet—she’d never seen a man move that fast before—raking his fingers back through his sleep-mussed hair and straightening his clothes.

  “As far as I know,” Sam continued, “there’s been no change in the political wind. Unless Mrs. Moore has some news she wants to share. Of course, she may not be feeling too kindly toward us, since she’s going on day two without her office.”

  “The only rooms available were on the top floor, which is a far more vulnerable position than here on the second floor.” Abdelaziz’s smile was rueful. “Here I go, about to apologize to you. Again. I’m sorry for any inconvenience we’ve caused you, but I needed to sleep and I wouldn’t have slept up there.”

  “As long as you don’t mind me coming in to use the computer, it’s not that big an inconvenience,” she lied.

  His smile said he knew better. And he was still embarrassed about yesterday, as well. As he should be. “Have you heard anything from the front line?” he asked.

  Meg hesitated, not sure what to tell him. The K-stani government had threatened to kick all the Americans—ambassador, staff, and civilians—out of their country if Abdelaziz wasn’t surrendered to them within the next twenty-four hours. The American oil companies couldn’t afford to be kicked out, so they’d added their voices to the ongoing shouting match.

  The general feeling of the embassy staff—including her husband Daniel—was to placate the Kazbekistani government and secure their shaky position in this oil-rich paradise by giving up Abdelaziz.

  Which would be virtually the same as putting a gun to the man’s head and pulling the trigger. If they gave him up, he would be executed.

  But probably tortured horribly first.

  Abdelaziz read her silence correctly. “The news is that good, is it?”

  “The ambassador doesn’t have much to go on,” she told him, “since you’ve refused to answer his questions. How can he vouch for your innocence when the government accuses you of all these terrible crimes?”

  “What happened to innocent until proven guilty?” he murmured.

  “That might be true in America, but we’re not in America.”

  As she watched, he crossed the room and looked down at the wounded man, the leader of the SEALs, Ensign John Nilsson.

  “Is he all right?” she asked quietly. There was a sheen of sweat on Nilsson’s forehead and his eyes were closed. He was sleeping, but only fitfully.

  “He should be in a hospital,” Sam said tightly.

  Abdelaziz nodded in agreement. “We’re going to do whatever we have to, to medevac him out of here.”

  “Anything short of turning yourself over to the Kazbekistani government,” she corrected him.

  “Yes, that probably wouldn’t be a very good idea.”

  Sam snorted. “Probably?”

  Abdelaziz turned and gave Sam a long, measured look.

  Meg remembered that look later that day, when she received word that the ambassador had arranged for a chopper to fly the Navy SEALs to an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. She was in the middle of translating some desperately needed document, vital for the ongoing negotiations, when she was told of their departure.

  “Navy SEALs?” she asked Laney. “Plural? Are you sure? Aren’t they just flying out the one SEAL—the injured man?”

  “No.” Laney was smug about having received the information first. “All three of them left. I saw them as they headed to the heliport an hour ago. They’re already gone.”

  The three SEALs had left the American embassy. Had they really just walked away—and left Abdelaziz behind to face his fate alone?

  An hour ago, Abdelaziz had been in the middle of a meeting with the U.S. ambassador and several key members of his staff. Meg knew that the meeting had been dragging on for hours, as the ambassador tried to convince Abdelaziz that they would do everything in their power to see that he received fair treatment and a
fair trial upon his surrender to the Kazbekistani government.

  Meg had heard that at one point, Abdelaziz had requested several K-stani officials be brought into the dialogue—which soon turned into a shouting match that caused the meeting to end and Abdelaziz to be escorted back to her office.

  Where his Navy SEAL companions were no longer waiting for him, having left K-stan without him.

  Or had they . . . ?

  All of a sudden it all made sense. All of a sudden, Meg knew.

  She stood up, nearly knocking her chair over backward. “Laney, finish this for me.”

  “But—”

  She was out of the room before her assistant could complain. She ran down the hall, down the stairs, toward her office.

  Two guards were still posted in the hall. They didn’t try to stop her, didn’t even blink as she breezed past them and opened the door.

  And there he was.

  “Abdelaziz, my ass,” Meg said. “You’re really—”

  He moved so quickly, she didn’t have time to let out more than a very undignified squeak as he grabbed her arm, pulled her inside the room, shut the door behind her, deftly covering her mouth with his hand.

  Her computer’s CD player was on, she realized, and he pulled her toward it, cranking the speaker volume so that Shania Twain thundered throughout the room. If the office were bugged—and it probably was—whoever was listening wasn’t going to hear more than that music.

  Meg could hardly breathe, he was holding her so tightly, one arm wrapped around her, pinning both of her hands. When he spoke, his voice was practically inaudible, his lips brushing her ear. “Don’t you dare do or say anything that will put my men in danger.”

  His accent was completely gone.

  She’d guessed correctly. The SEALs hadn’t left Abdelaziz behind. They’d walked him out of the embassy right under the Kazbekistanis’ noses, while this man had been distracting both the American diplomats and the K-stani government. They’d carried Abdelaziz onto the waiting chopper and flown him out of the country, pretending he was Ensign John Nilsson, injured in the line of duty.

  While in truth, she was standing pressed uncomfortably close to the real Ensign John Nilsson, the very solid and healthy Ensign John Nilsson, his hand clamped hard over her mouth.

  “The helo won’t be safely on board the carrier for another twenty minutes,” he breathed into her ear. “If you give me away, the K-stani Air Guard could try to force it down.”

  And was his plan to stand here, with his hand over her mouth, for that entire twenty minutes?

  Meg made a writing motion with the one of her hands that could still move an inch or two, and somehow he understood. He shifted her over to her desk and gave her a piece of paper and another few inches of mobility to her right hand so she could pick up a pen.

  Meg wrote quickly, in clear block letters, “Promise me I’m not helping a terrorist escape to the United States.”

  She felt more than heard Nilsson laugh over Shania’s rich voice. “I promise,” he breathed into her ear. “He’s not a terrorist, Meg. He’s CIA. But if you tell anyone I told you that, I’ll deny it.”

  Meg picked up her pen again. “What are they going to do to you?” she wrote.

  He laughed again. “What can they do? I’m not the man they’re after.”

  “We better make sure they believe that. Let me go,” she wrote.

  “If I do, will you scream?”

  “About what?” she wrote.

  Again, she felt the warm vibration of his laughter. “Well, good,” he said into her ear. “Just watch what you say—the room is bugged—we found the mikes.”

  Meg stepped away from him, turned down the music, turned to face him. “Do you have identification saying that you’re . . . who you are,” she said to him. In Welsh. Because the two people in Kazbekistan who spoke that language were both here in this room. Nothing they said in Welsh would be understood by anyone listening in. And it would take the K-stani government weeks—if not months—to find a translator.

  He grinned at her. “You’re brilliant,” he said, also in Welsh.

  She should have known he was American yesterday, from the first moment he’d smiled. His was definitely an all-American smile.

  “No ID,” he added. “Not on a covert op like this. We go in completely sanitized.”

  “How was it possible you pulled this off?” she asked. He’d actually asked to meet with the K-stani officials this afternoon. How gutsy was that? “Weren’t you afraid someone would know you weren’t Abdelaziz?”

  “We’re about the same height and build,” he told her, “and about the same age. Same general description—brown hair and eyes. I took a gamble there were no detailed photos of old Abdel lying around, and won big time.”

  Meg shook her head. “Still . . .”

  “I used an old con,” he explained. “We came running in here with the K-stani Army pointing at us and shouting about Abdelaziz, right? The U.S. ambassador comes to see us and everyone points to me when he asks who’s Abdelaziz. And why would we lie, right? So when the K-stani officials were invited to join our little discussion this afternoon, I’m officially introduced as Abdelaziz by the U.S. ambassador. Now both sides are convinced I’m their man.

  “Believe me, the members of the K-stani government were the ones who thought they were getting away with some kind of con. By shipping out all three of the SEALs who’d been sent to protect me while I was in that meeting . . . ?” He laughed. “They’re probably still congratulating themselves on their deviousness.”

  He was amazing. But if the K-stani government believed him to be Abdelaziz . . . Forget about the fact that they were wrong. He was in danger.

  For starters, they had to change his appearance. Right now, with the exception of his perfect smile, he looked like someone named Abdelaziz. For his own safety, he had to transform back into Ens. John Nilsson as quickly as possible.

  “We’ll give you a haircut,” she decided. “A buzz cut. Something really GI Joe. And I’ll see if I can find a uniform.”

  His smile faded. “I don’t want you to get into trouble for helping me.”

  “I won’t.” She moved toward the door. “Do you trust me enough to let me start looking for something a little more military for you to wear?”

  He held out his hands, palms up, in a gesture that might have been interpreted as surrender. But combined with his words and that warmth in his eyes, it became part of the nicest compliment she’d ever received. “I trust you completely, Meg.”

  Meg managed to scare up a Marine uniform. That and the haircut she gave him made him look far more like an American.

  The next few days were crazy. Kazbekistan nearly declared war when they found out that Abdelaziz had been spirited out of the country. And the foreign service staff at the embassy was furious, too. It took a solid week of frantic explanations and apologies to convince the K-stani government that they had been duped as well. And even then the ambassador and his staff were left looking and feeling extremely foolish.

  Meanwhile John Nilsson was kept locked in Meg’s office, under guard.

  It was entirely possible that if Meg hadn’t kept bringing him food, he wouldn’t have been fed. She brought him books and newspapers and often stayed to keep him company. She brought Amy to visit with him, too, mostly to remind him—and herself—that she was married and much older than he was. Anything other than friendship would be completely inappropriate.

  It was one evening that he was sitting beside her daughter, coloring in her Anastasia coloring book while Meg pulled more files off her computer, that he looked over Amy’s head and spoke to Meg in French.

  He was a languages specialist, and out of all the languages they’d found they both spoke with proficiency, French was the one for which they shared a similar high level of understanding.

  “I had a meeting today with the ambassador.”

  Meg looked up at him, waiting for him to continue.

  He set d
own the blue crayon he’d used to color in Anastasia’s ballgown. “Your husband was there.”

  Meg glanced at Amy. They’d lived in Paris for several years. “Was he?” she replied—in German.

  “Ja.” He smiled his understanding. “I don’t mean to pry,” he said in German, too, “and at first I thought I shouldn’t say anything, that this is probably none of my business, but I have to tell you that I overheard something another man asked him, something about, well, his estrangement from his wife. His estrangement from you.”