Laynie Portland, Spy Resurrected

by Vikki Kestell

  “Yes, General Sayed, sir. However . . . I am sorry to report that the operation has not been as successful as we hoped it would be.”

  Sayed paled. “Repeat that? How many deaths so far? How many?”

  “Media reports say 996 deaths.”

  “Yes, yes. In Philadelphia where you are. What about the other targets? What about New York?”

  “General, sir, the number covers all ten of the cities we targeted.”

  “You are saying only 996 deaths from all ten cities?”

  “Yes, General. We . . . we expect that number to grow. But only a little.”

  Sayed’s jaw hardened. “What went wrong? What did you do wrong?”

  “Sir, nothing went wrong. Our operatives did everything as planned. We had no problems, no mistakes. No one was discovered, no one was arrested. However . . .”

  “What?” Sayed shouted, forgetting his audience. “However, what?”

  “I-I have received word that a warning went out in the hours before midnight.”

  “My people here have been monitoring the news channels since yesterday. They heard no such warning! You are lying, Khasurt—and I will have your head for it!”

  Khasurt was offended at being called a liar in such a public venue. His tone hardened. “General Sayed, there was a warning, but it did not come from the government or through the news media. It came across various Internet bulletin boards and chat rooms. It was picked up and passed from one user to another to other boards and chat sites. It was sent by text message to various party organizers and attendees.”

  “Who? Who started it? I will tear out their fingernails and gouge out their eyes!”

  “I . . . we . . . that is, it is the nature of these boards and chat rooms that communications are often anonymous. Discovering the post’s author was not the problem. We know which online profile started the posts. But tracing that profile to an actual person and their location after they have logged off would be—no, is—impossible.”

  Sayed’s protests ground to a halt. Abruptly, he switched off the conference hub and put the satphone to his ear. “Who, Khasurt? Whose online profile?”

  Cossack watched Sayed’s expression as he listened. He asked a few more questions, then ended the call and turned in on himself. The man was dangerous at any time, but when crossed? He was pernicious and vindictive.

  Unpredictable.

  Volatile.

  Cossack eased back a step and maneuvered himself out of Sayed’s direct line of sight. A few other astute individuals did the same. The visiting generals and their seconds who could not hide themselves schooled their features and dropped their eyes. The technician who had set up the call froze in place, afraid movement would draw attention to himself.

  Minutes crawled by and no one spoke.

  Then Sayed, as if nothing were wrong, stood and said, “My honored guests. I am grateful to have you here. Please. Let us enjoy ourselves, shall we?”

  He clapped his hands and shouted to his servants. “More food! Bring fresh coffee and tea! Break out wine and beer. Let us be merry.”

  It was both a suggestion and a warning.

  His servants jumped to do his bidding. His lieutenants rushed to mingle with the guests, their conversations constructed to defuse the situation’s discomfort. The technician and his helper quickly removed the table with the satphone and speakerphone hub.

  Cossack, from behind Sayed, kept an eye on the two men. Noted where they stowed the phone and the hub.

  I now have the wherewithal. What I need next is opportunity.

  His gaze did not linger on the men or the equipment. He took a plate and heaped fruit on it, then joined a visiting general.

  The man slid a knowing eye over Cossack. “General Labazanov. How long, do you think, before Sayed’s anger and blame falls on some hapless soul?”

  It was a backhanded mockery of Sayed and a forecast Cossack shared. It was also a pit Cossack would not willingly step into—particularly since Usama was never far from earshot.

  Cossack selected a grape and considered it. His response was noncommittal. “Inshallah, General Isamov.” If Allah wills it.

  The general chuckled. “Well spoken. You are ever the cautious one, Arzu.”

  Cossack allowed himself to return the smile with good humor. They were in accord without saying anything further.

  A LOT HAD HAPPENED behind the grate since Laynie came down with dysentery. She’d suffered for three days and slowly recovered. Then Ksenia had caught what Laynie had—and so had all the other girls in the cell with them.

  But not all at once. No, the eleven others who’d refused to have anything to do with Ksenia and Laynie and had segregated themselves at the far side of the cave should have been fine. Instead, they fell victim to the illness like dominoes in sequence. With near-precision accuracy, they sickened in rotation, one or two women becoming ill just as the previous ones were recovering.

  And as long as the guards heard groans and vomiting coming from behind the grate, Bula ordered them to keep their distance lest the entire stronghold succumb to the illness. The guards brought food and water regularly. They brought Laynie her own mattress. They even brought hot water and fresh rags for the women to clean themselves after being sick. But they refused to empty the slop buckets . . . and they did not come in the evenings to take the girls to the soldiers.

  Thank you, Lord! I thank you for this dysentery that keeps Bula from ordering us out of the cell to service the soldiers. Thank you for extending your covering of grace over us for a season.

  Most importantly during the sickness, God moved.

  While Laynie tended and sang to Ksenia, the girl from the other campfire drew near to listen when Laynie sang. She watched and listened like a little bird but kept far enough away, Laynie believed, not to catch the bug.

  Not so. As soon as Ksenia was on the mend, their little sparrow fell ill . . . and the girls of the other group, with shouts of fear and disgust, cast her and her contaminated mattress and blankets out. Laynie and Ksenia dragged her things to their fire and tended the girl through her fever and all the unpleasant distress that accompanied it.

  “What is her name?” Laynie asked Ksenia.

  “She is Asmeen.”

  While Laynie bathed Asmeen’s face, arms, and chest, she whispered, “Asmeen, Jesus loves you,” repeating the words even though Asmeen understood nothing she said.

  It didn’t matter. Laynie’s gentle words and ministrations spoke the language of love to Asmeen—and she understood that dialect perfectly. While Laynie stroked her cheeks, tears leaked from under the girl’s lashes. When Laynie held her hand and sang, Asmeen and Ksenia closed their eyes and let the melody wash over them.

  I hear the Savior say,

  “Thy strength indeed is small;

  Child of weakness, watch and pray,

  Find in Me thine all in all.”

  Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe;

  Sin had left a crimson stain,

  He washed it white as snow.

  Laynie sang the same song so often that Ksenia and Asmeen sang the choruses with her, not knowing the meaning of the words they mimicked.

  When the infection caught hold at the other campfire and a girl threw up, the remaining “unsick” females would push her and her mattress away from them, and Laynie and Ksenia would bring the outcast into their circle. The first had been Asmeen. The second was Mariam. Others followed.

  It was then that Laynie, between songs, began talking about Jesus, beginning with Adam and Eve’s sin and the promise of a Savior. While they cared for the sick girls, Laynie talked about Jesus, pulling from every Sunday school lesson she’d ever heard. Ksenia, as enthralled as the other girls in their little clan, translated.

  What must Miss Laurel think of all this, peering down from heaven? Laynie reflected. Most of what I share I learned in her classes. The last time I saw her, she gave me a word from God, a correction that could have saved me from the unholy life I chose had I heed
ed it. In my ignorance and arrogance, I sneered inside and blew her off—and she knew it.

  Laynie bent her head and whispered, “I am truly sorry, Miss Laurel. I hope Jesus gave you a great golden crown set with lots of jewels when he welcomed you into his presence. Thank you for instilling so much of God’s word in me when I was a child. It did not return void.”

  While she nursed the Muslim women, they listened to Ksenia’s translations of Jesus’ life. They mourned his death, they exclaimed with wonder at his resurrection and considered Jesus’ promises of eternal life. Asmeen and Mariam prayed to receive Jesus as their Lord. They chose to remain with Laynie and Ksenia, even after the sickness left them.

  The other girls, however, returned to “their side” of the cave after they recovered, although . . . when Laynie sang, she would sometimes hear the soft echoes of voices from the other campfire, singing with her.

  Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe;

  Sin had left a crimson stain,

  He washed it white as snow.

  “Your word is not fruitless, O God,” Laynie murmured. “It is alive, active, and working in our hearts. I planted the seed. Someone else will water it. Your word will not return void.”

  She looked around their meager campfire at the three young faces turned to her in hope, turned to her for love. She led them in worship and in prayer. She taught them about Jesus. And she gave them what love and care she could.

  They told her their stories—Ksenia, from the hill country of Turkey, who watched her family be murdered. Asmeen and Mariam, who were stolen from their families in rural Azerbaijan—not from Muslim families, Laynie discovered to her surprise, but from an Armenian Orthodox village.

  “We knew about Jesus,” they told Ksenia, who then told Laynie, “but we did not know him as you do. Now he lives in our hearts, too. This is why we have hope!”

  For twelve days the sickness protected the girls within the grate from being taken to the soldiers. It hid them inside a fragile and transient bubble of peace and safety.

  On the thirteenth day, Bula stood at the grate and shouted for Laynie. And took her away.

  THE SERVANTS LOADED the tables with yet more food and drink. The alcohol Sayed had cut off earlier flowed again, and the gathering regained its party-like atmosphere—even if the attack’s failure left a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth.

  Sayed had withdrawn for a while to his sleeping chamber, taking his satellite phone with him. When he returned, he whispered orders to his servant, who scurried from the salon to obey him.

  His anger chilled, some of his usual bluster restored, Sayed held court in the center of the salon. He told jokes, recounted successful battles, and occasionally clapped a guest on the shoulder, regaling his listeners with some anecdote that flattered the guest. It was Sayed’s way of bestowing attention and favor on an individual, thus binding a naive man to him with cords of appreciation and obligation. The more astute individual received the honor but committed nothing of himself to Sayed.

  Cossack, passing from one knot of conversation to another, noticed Sayed’s eyes flick to the doorway of his salon. They were fierce and cold, not at all in keeping with his jocular mood.

  What is he up to?

  A moment later, Cossack saw Sayed again glance toward the entry.

  What is he waiting for?

  General Isamov’s warning jangled in Cossack’s head. Something terrible was about to take place. Cossack stepped behind a group of men and pressed himself against a wall, removing himself from Sayed’s sight.

  Bula appeared in the doorway, his hand gripping a woman’s arm. Sayed spotted him and smiled. Bula pulled the woman into the center of the salon.

  Laughter and conversation died away. Everyone stared at the woman and wondered why she was there. She was appropriately dressed—a fresh niqab over a soiled abaya. The veil covered her head, hair, and all of her face but her eyes, which were suitably downcast.

  All very proper.

  Sayed turned to his guests. “A while ago, I inquired further of my American commander concerning the failure of our attack—this vital piece of our overall plan. You heard Khasurt speak of the warning that went out to bulletin boards and chat rooms across the Internet. This warning was the cause of our failure. And you are, no doubt, wondering who released the warning and who is to blame?”

  Cossack stiffened. Steeled himself. Whatever was coming, it would be brutal.

  Sayed smiled at his listeners. “We are partners of a sort with a crime syndicate in New York, both sides benefitting from the arrangement. They agreed to provide us with cash and certain favors necessary to our cause.

  “In return, they asked us to supply them with a drug called fentanyl. We did so. They also asked for something more—the location of a certain woman, a computer hacker of some repute, whose icon is a fanged asp and whose ‘handle’ is Vyper.

  “You see, this Vyper person who works for an American intelligence organization caused the syndicate’s electronic files to fall into the hands of the FBI. The syndicate, understandably, wishes very much to get their hands on this woman. Through our eyes and ears in America, we were able to provide the syndicate with her location.

  “It was detrimental to us that our syndicate friends’ attempt to capture this wicked woman did not succeed. I say it was detrimental to us because, as it turns out, this same Vyper is believed to be the individual who started the Internet warning yesterday—the warning that caused our plan to fall far shy of its needed objective.”

  Sayed nodded to himself. His smile widened in a manner that chilled Cossack.

  Then Sayed pointed at the still, garbed form. “This woman is the leader of the hacker’s team. She is an agent of the Great Satan’s government who was sent into Tbilisi some weeks back to meet a local contact. But we knew she was coming, you see, because we had our own people embedded in the Great Satan’s government. And so, we captured her. Perhaps you have even seen her featured on many jihadi websites?”

  Sayed drew near the woman. “If you wish to know who is responsible for foiling our plans? Look no further.”

  Sayed yanked the niqab from the woman’s head, and his guests, as one, gasped. The woman’s hair, all of it, had been shorn at the scalp leaving a bare, scabbed terrain behind.

  A knife flashed in Sayed’s hand. He grabbed the front of the woman’s abaya and slit it from the neck down to her breasts. While Bula held the woman, Sayed ripped the garment to its hem. Bula released the woman’s arm and the gown fell away.

  She wore nothing but a ragged shift under the outer gown. She was filthy, disheveled, and nearly naked, but she stood uncowed and did not cringe or grovel. She lifted her chin and confronted Sayed’s guests. In perfect Russian she addressed not Sayed but his guests and his officers.

  “Did my team defeat a cowardly attack on innocent men, women, even children? Although this is the first I have heard of my team’s success, I celebrate it.

  “And I ask you, why do you follow such a man—” she lifted her chin toward Sayed, “if he is a man? He is no man who shames a devout woman of the Book as he has tried to shame me. Yes, I am such a woman—a Christian, a follower of Isa—Jesus the Christ. And does not the Quran say, Do not kill a soul that God has made sacrosanct?

  “You seek to raise a new caliphate for Allah, but did not the first Caliph instruct you, Do not kill women, children, the old, or the infirm; do not cut down fruit-bearing trees; do not destroy any town?”

  She stared her contempt at Sayed. “This man has made you odious in the sight of your god. He has—”

  Bula grabbed her by her neck. Sayed struck the woman in her mouth, ending her proclamation. With clenched fist, Sayed struck her again. A third and fourth time. Blood flew from her nose and mouth.

  Cossack felt his heart stutter and seize.

  She was older. She was thin and ill-looking. Her head was shaved—all her beautiful, long blond hair gone.

  But he knew her—and he knew that voice.

&nbs
p; He staggered against a wall, undone.

  His mouth breathed a name only he could hear, a familiar name but old, a name from another life, years before he was Arzu Labazanov, the Dark Destroyer.

  When he had been but a young, impetuous man . . . in a different life.

  “Magda.”

  FROM SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE himself, Cossack heard General Isamov shout a protest. Other visitors also grumbled against Sayed, their protests gaining strength and volume.

  “General Sayed! Stop this at once!”

  “Filthy kafir whore!” Sayed let go, and the woman dropped to the floor, senseless. When her head struck the carpeted rock, it made the sound a ripe melon makes when thumped.

  Isamov spoke above the protests. “If the woman is a spy deserving of death, General Sayed, then put her against a wall, shoot her, and be done with it. But to strike her in the face with your fist again and again? This is not right.”

  The atmosphere in Sayed’s salon swayed under Isamov’s commanding presence. Sayed himself was intimidated for a moment. But only a moment.

  He drew himself up and squared his shoulders. “Take her away,” he ordered Bula. “As for the rest of you? You have come into my home as my guests, and I have lavished my hospitality on you. Calm yourselves. Perhaps we did not achieve everything we hoped for in last night’s attack, but we will not be thwarted in our next effort—I promise you.”

  “You promise many things, General Sayed,” Isamov said quietly.

  Sayed stared at Isamov. “If any of you wish to leave our gathering early before I share the details of the next attack, I will bid you safe travels.”

  Isamov nodded. “Very good. Thank you, General Sayed, for your gracious hospitality. I and my men will gather our things and depart. The blessings of Allah be upon this place.”

  Others followed Isamov’s example, queuing up to thank Sayed and say their goodbyes—a lengthy process in Islamic culture.

  Cossack shook himself free of his shock and dismay. As soon as the exodus began, he stepped back, keeping one eye on Sayed and the other on Sayed’s confounded servant lingering at his master’s elbow. It was the work of but a moment to reach one hand behind the heavy tapestry curtain beside the bookshelves.