“Well, that was sweet of him, wasn’t it?” Eva said, lifting up the chilled bottle and examining the label.
“Mmhmm,” Owen muttered, as he lifted the back of her hair and nibbled down the side of her neck.
“Honey? Don’t you want to have some of this? It’s really nice and cold.”
“Mmhmm,” he muttered again as he continued nibbling.
“Owen!” she cried in mock exasperation.
“Fine,” he growled. “I’ll take mine a la nude.”
“What’s a la nude?”
“Take those clothes off and I’ll show you.”
• • •
Sometime later, Eva found herself ensconced yet again in the large hotel bed, as Owen licked the last of the champagne off of her torso.
“Honey, I appreciate all of your efforts, but no matter how much you lick I’m still going to have to shower, I’m sticky from head to toe,” she said.
“I hate to break it to you love, but I’m not the least bit concerned about how sticky you might be.” He looked up at her grinning, “I just like the licking part.”
Eva rolled her eyes and went back to reading the newspaper she’d picked up from the nightstand. Owen batted the offending newsprint out of his way as he settled on Eva’s left breast. “Owen! I’m trying to read this article about the palace of Sheik Abdabayah. You should hear about this place, it’s incredible. The draperies alone must be worth in the millions of dollars.”
“And are undoubtedly used to wrap all those AK-47s he’s been shipping to Afghanistan,” Owen muttered as he buried his face in Eva’s neck.
“What did you say?” she asked. “It doesn’t say anything about him shipping guns in here. In fact, it says that he’s a member of the Saudi royal family and one of their most respected philanthropists. Last year alone he donated over fifty million dollars to Saudi hospitals and schools.”
Owen looked up sharply for just a moment, and said, “I’m sure you’re right, I must be remembering someone else. I think I read an article yesterday and it was about some Middle Eastern arms dealer, all of those names sound the same to me.”
“Maybe we should at least try to learn something about foreign affairs,” Eva replied.
“Oh, let’s not,” Owen said, finally getting out of bed and heading toward the bathroom. “Foreign affairs are more trouble than they’re worth.”
• • •
They returned to the theatre for Owen’s concert ninety minutes before the performance. The time flew by as Eva sat in Owen’s dressing room with Herb, Derrick, and Alicia who toasted him with sparkling water and wished him luck. Then, when the stage manager shouted the warning, “Thirty minutes to curtain!” Eva gave Owen a kiss for luck and went to her seat to wait for the performance to begin.
After the door closed behind Eva, Owen turned to the other three: “All right, tell me where we’re at with the Abdul brothers and the security tonight.”
“For my part, I’ve switched up the drop point for you to deliver the documents,” Herb said. “You’ll be going to the discotheque listed on this card instead of the café I mentioned earlier,” he added, handing Owen a small business card. Owen looked at it for a moment then tore it into several pieces and stepped into the small bathroom adjacent to the dressing room, where he flushed the pieces down the toilet.
“You and I are the only ones who know that location,” Herb continued. “I won’t tell my courier until about 30 minutes before the meet-up. That ought to prevent it from being compromised, unless they’ve somehow found out which of my staff is going to do the pickup and they follow him. I’ll tell him to take extra precautions while he’s in transit.”
“Thanks, mate,” Owen answered. “Sounds like you’ve done everything you can. I’ll see him at the club then.”
With that Herb left to attend to other jobs that were taking place in Paris that night. It was a hotspot for the trading of intelligence in Europe, and Herb was a hands-on manager of his people.
Owen turned to Derrick and Alicia next, raising one eyebrow and giving them a quick nod.
Alicia’s long dark hair was twisted up at the back of her head, and she wore a knee-length sapphire blue wrap dress. With her dark eyes and skin she looked like an exotic princess, and Owen marveled, not for the first time, that such a charming package contained such a sharp steel core. “We spent most of the afternoon trying to confuse the Abdul brothers,” Alicia told him. “I made a big show of taking several suitcases out of your hotel and checking in under your name in several other hotels.”
“Meanwhile,” said Derrick, “I led the boys themselves around town on a wild goose chase, picking up and dropping off all sorts of packages in restaurants, warehouses, office buildings, even a chicken farm a little ways outside of the city.”
Owen looked amused. “A chicken farm, mate?”
“Lovely birds,” said Derrick with a smirk, “very appealing thighs.”
Alicia rolled her eyes and said impatiently, “Can we get back to business?”
Owen cleared his throat stifling a chuckle. “Yes, of course.”
“Well, here at the theatre we’ve got measures in place too, mostly to protect Eva, but also to give you cover when you leave after the show,” Alicia said.
“Right-o,” Derrick interjected, “and Alicia gets the credit for most of this, I would have just stuck personnel at the outside doors, but she’s a brilliant lass, our Alicia.”
Alicia looked bored with Derrick’s flattery and continued, “First off, Derrick and I won’t be in the audience, but in the technical booth … ”
“How’d you swing that?” Owen asked with interest.
“I brought the lighting chap a nice cappuccino and told him about my ‘brother’ who passed away last year and was a lighting technician. I said how I would feel so much closer to my poor late brother if I could view the show from where he used to work,” Alicia said.
“She’s like something out of a Greek tragedy when she gets going,” Derrick said shaking his head. “You should have heard her. I was ready to bawl by the time she was done with the poor git.”
“Well, I appreciate the effort,” Owen responded. “I’ll feel a lot better about Eva sitting out there knowing that you’re able to watch the whole theatre from the booth.”
“We’ve also got personnel at the front of the building and in the alleyway,” Derrick added.
“Sounds perfect, mate,” said Owen.
Derrick and Alicia left to take their spots in the booth while Owen had one last look around his dressing room. During his decade with MI6 he had worked with a lot of different personnel, and Derrick and Alicia were without a doubt two of the best. He felt confident that they would keep everything and everyone in good shape while he was performing. After the show it was just a short wait until he could pick up and deliver the documents. Then he would be free to spend the rest of his honeymoon with his gorgeous wife and no worries. He had this; it would go smooth as silk. He smiled to himself, grabbed his guitar and a bottle of water, and made his way to the wings of the stage to wait for his introduction.
• • •
The concert had been underway for close to fifteen minutes before Eva first noticed the men near her in the audience. She was seated on the far left side of the center section of seats, with another smaller section of seats across an aisle from her. The three men who captured her attention were sitting directly across that aisle and at first she couldn’t figure out why she’d noticed them. Then she realized it was because they weren’t looking at the stage. They didn’t appear to be paying any attention to Owen’s performance at all. No one ignored Owen’s performances — it was like seeing someone at the beach standing with his back to the ocean.
But, more than just their obliviousness to her husband’s performance, Eva noticed that they appeared to be looking for something — or someone — in the theater. These three giants kept scanning the room with their eyes, zeroing in on certain individuals for a moment and t
hen moving on to someone else. The few times the doors from the lobby opened, they immediately swiveled their heads that direction.
However, after a few minutes of watching them, Eva couldn’t discern that they intended anything other than ignoring the music and being odd. So, she put them out of her mind and focused on her husband and his songs.
Sitting in the dark theatre, she watched a single spotlight shine on Owen. He was dressed in narrow-cut black dress slacks, and a similarly narrow-cut button up shirt in black with grey pinstripes. Eva had teased him when they left the hotel earlier that evening that he looked like a gangster, but both she and he knew that, gangster or not, he looked fantastic. His blond hair contrasted with the dark shirt and curled up at his collar, sweeping across his forehead casually and, Eva knew, completely naturally. His long fingers flew over the guitar strings; his face was as serene and soothing as his songs. The audience was chock full of rapt listeners, everyone somehow transported to that special place that only Owen seemed able to guide them.
When he got to the end of his final set and left the stage, the crowd went wild, cheering and giving him a standing ovation. Fists pumped in the air, women shrieked and jumped up and down, and Eva just watched it all, nearly bursting with pride. She figured all new wives thought their husbands were something special, but not many of them had that confirmed by hundreds of strangers. When the cheering didn’t quiet down and the house lights remained off, Owen returned to the stage and sat down again with his guitar in hand.
“Thank you so much,” he said into the microphone. “You’ve been a fantastic audience, and I always love playing in this beautiful theater.”
“We love you too, Owen!” a woman’s voice screamed from the balcony.
Owen chuckled. “Well, that’s the perfect opening to tell you my news: I got married five days ago … ”
The crowd went nuts again, whistling and catcalling. Eva sat stunned, not believing that her privacy-obsessed husband had just revealed something about his personal life on a stage in Paris, it was so unlike him. She wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or to wonder if he’d lost his mind.
“All right, quiet down now. Yes, it’s true, and I couldn’t be happier. She’s absolutely fantastic. I didn’t ask her permission to do this, so I’m not going to introduce her tonight … ”
Sounds of “Oooh!” and “C’mon!” echoed back to him, and Eva smiled, recognizing that Owen hadn’t completely forgone his habit of protecting her from the public’s scrutiny.
“But, wait, just wait! I am going to sing a song for her. One that I’ve never done in public before, and one that I wrote just for her the day we got married. So, here it goes. This is for you, love.”
Eva’s eyes were overflowing before Owen even began the first notes of the song. She was so focused on remembering every moment that a Mack truck could have barreled through the room and she wouldn’t have noticed.
By the time Owen finished the lovely song Eva’s tears flowed freely, but a smile graced her face as well. He waved and began to make his way off of the stage as the spotlights went down. It took just a moment for the house lights to come up, and in the darkness some people began to shift in their seats, reaching for purses and jackets, standing up to stretch cramped limbs, turning to talk to friends in nearby seats. Eva stood up into the aisle next to her seat, anxious to make her way backstage and throw herself into Owen’s arms.
She had barely stood when she felt a sharp stinging sensation in her left ankle. She reached down to feel what had happened, and as she did she was overcome with dizziness. She started to pitch forwards but before she could fall onto the floor she felt large hands slip under her legs and back as she was lifted off of her feet. She looked up and in the dark she saw the outline of the face of one of the three giants she’d noticed earlier. He grinned at her as they made their way out of the theater.
Chapter Four
London — Five months and one week ago
Owen had taken Eva to dinner twice, a football game, lunch, and a picnic in the park before it happened. Although he was more than interested in Eva, he didn’t have a “plan” for how he was going to get her into bed. It seemed too crass to think about Eva in the same light as seduction, manipulation, and conquest. As wild as her kisses drove him, he never wanted to feel like he needed to convince her to go to bed with him. What he yearned for with her was so much bigger than that. Thus, it was as much a surprise for him as it was for her when they first made love.
He had planned on taking her to a little pub he knew about near her flat. A traditional Irish band played there on Friday nights and he thought she would enjoy the small, neighborly atmosphere and folksy music. He arrived at her door a little after 8:00 P.M. and knocked. From inside he heard what sounded like a fight. His immediate thought was that someone had broken into Eva’s apartment, which was followed by the equally chilling idea that someone had connected her to him and his job.
Panicked, Owen knocked harder. “Eva? Are you there, love?”
Another loud crash sounded and Owen, even with his decade of intelligence experience, lost the ability to think rationally. He backed up from the door, preparing to break it down. However, just as he stepped forward the door flew open and Eva stood there looking more than a little disheveled. Her thick blonde hair was mussed and hanging in her face, she had smudges of dirt on her nose and her left cheek, and she was obviously not dressed for their date, unless the “Paul’s House of Futons” t-shirt and paint-splattered cut-offs were some new sort of trend he wasn’t aware of.
“Eva, love, are you sick?” he asked with concern.
“Oh, Owen! Thank God you’re here!” she cried as she grabbed his arm and tugged him into the flat. She slammed the door behind him and he looked around at what was left of her normally tranquil and charming home.
There were pieces of furniture everywhere — blocking doorways, standing on end in front of windows, upside down in the kitchen. Pictures were laying helter-skelter on tabletops, the floors, and the sofa. Books had been torn off of the shelves, clothes were in the living room, curtains off the windows, and he thought he saw her pet parakeet’s cage hanging in the half open oven.
“Good Lord,” Owen said in amazement, “what happened?”
Eva was stalking around the room pulling a knick-knack off of one shelf and placing it on another, tossing throw pillows onto the floor, and holding wall hangings up in various locations.
“Eva?” Owen said again, trying to get her attention.
“Owen,” she responded, “do you think that the sofa would fit under that window? I’ve always wanted to be able to lay in the sun right there and while I had thought I’d build a window seat, I just haven’t had a chance to get to it, and you know the whole thing of having a sofa facing the fireplace is such a conventional mode of arrangement, I could totally picture getting a chaise or a loveseat and placing it on a diagonal to the fireplace instead. Then I could flank the sofa with those two large potted plants and maybe use the … ”
At this point Owen stepped forward, and placed his hands on Eva’s upper arms.
“Sweetheart, maybe you should sit down for a moment?” he queried, carefully.
“No, no, no,” Eva answered. “I just need to figure out whether I want that sofa under the window and then I can start on the color scheme for the foyer, because you’ll be able to see the foyer from the sofa with that new arrangement, and I want to make sure that you’re looking at something with the right feng shui.”
Owen scratched his head and smiled crookedly. “Um, OK. Are you all right, Eva?”
“Of course!” she snapped at him. “Why wouldn’t I be? Now, will you take that end table and put it next to the chair that’s facing the bookshelves? I don’t want to keep the chair there, but I wanted to see how the table looks adjacent to it.”
“I’d be happy to, but didn’t you want to go out? Did you remember we had a date this evening?”
“Oh, crap! We did?” she said suddenl
y.
“Yes, love, to go to the pub and listen to the Irish band?”
“Oh, dear,” Eva replied looking somewhat deflated from her frenzy.
“Eva, will you tell me what the bloody hell’s going on?!” Owen finally shouted in exasperation.
“I’m redecorating!” she shouted back at him.
“Yes, obviously, but why, and why right now?”
“Because it’s what I do! When something makes me mad, I redecorate. Now, I think I might want to highlight this room with some Asian touches, you know a little black lacquered table and some red satin throws or something. Do you like those bold colors or do you think they would overwhelm these volumes?”
Owen gave up at this point and threw himself onto the small spot on the sofa that wasn’t covered in wall hangings. He ran his hands over his face and then through his hair. He’d dealt with his fair share of irrational women — women who shrieked, women who cried, women who gave him the silent treatment, even women who’d shot at him — but never in his thirty-two years of life had he been confronted with an angry interior decorator.
At a loss, Owen took his jacket off, laid it on the sofa next to him and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “All right then, what do you want me to do?”
“Yay!” Eva squeaked, and clapped her hands as she jumped up and down. “Start with putting that table next to the chair like I asked.”
• • •
For the next two hours Owen lugged, dragged, scooted, and lifted furniture. He hammered picture hooks into the walls, hung curtains, and even stood as a proxy for a statue, holding Eva’s birdcage for five whole minutes while she decided where “Tweety” should hang.
Finally, some semblance of order restored to the room, he collapsed in an armchair — now placed on a diagonal to the bloody fireplace — and said, “I think my left biceps has gone on walkout. I can’t lift another thing, love.”
Love, Lies, and British Spies Page 3
