Bad Russian 02.04 ivy Page 2

  The doors slide shut.

  The shock on her face and the flames in her eyes will stay with me a long time. I’m so hard my cock is stretching my pants. Damn it! She is the one. I know it.

  And she may be the only woman in the world that I can’t have. There’s no way that I will ever see her again. I can’t bear it.

  It’s impossible. When I complete the mission, I need to get myself and the asset back home and fast. I’ll be out of the country by midnight. I’ll never be able to risk coming back.

  I have an ID card. Quickly I slip it through the elevator’s card reader, then I push the button to go down just one floor.

  I take the stairs back up. Then I go straight back to find the archive room.

  Chapter Four

  Her

  The Russian without an accent won’t leave my thoughts. I try to ignore the image of him in my mind, but I can’t. I’m struck by the coincidence that he said he was looking for the archives, since that’s where I have to go.

  I stop at the steel door to the archives, sniff a sharp breath in and slip my card across the reader. I’m not looking forward to this task.

  The red light flashes and turns green and the lock makes a soft click. Inside, in the low light, between the book stacks and the neat shelves of boxes, Richard Drinkwater, the Deputy Secretary is bent over an open file drawer.

  His face flips up, abruptly. He looks like an angry and disagreeable boy caught with his arm in a cookie jar.

  He has the smooth appearance and the arrogant bearing of a Harvard lawyer. One of those kids from the privileged elites that get into high office at a stupid-young age. A man who’s used to telling people what to do and getting what he wants, for the whole of his life.

  I tell him, “I’m sorry, but the Director is very firm on the rules. I’m here to tell you that you need to make an appointment with her to view materials in the archives.” He glowers. When my manager called, he said I had to come. I thought that I heard something in his voice. Now I know what it was. He wanted to dump this on me. Offload the responsibility. Send the intern to do the thing that he was afraid to do.

  I try to keep myself steady as I look into Drinkwater’s face. “It’s procedure.” I flash a smile. “I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you.”

  “Come over here.”

  “No. Sir, no, I—” I’m looking around.

  “Come here!”

  He is so abrupt. My reflex takes over, and I’m obeying him. I’m doing the wrong thing. And I know I am. I don’t want to do it, either. I don’t want to go near him.

  I have a bad feeling as I step forward and the door begins slowly to close behind me.

  Richard Drinkwater’s smile reminds me of a snake.

  “I just need a few more minutes,” he says, “Miss Whatever Your Name Is. It’s important, though, and I’m afraid I can’t let you deny me that time in here.” From inside his coat, he pulls out a long, thin knife. I jump back. Too slow.

  He catches my wrist with his free hand. My arm jerks in its socket. It hurts as he pulls me. Pulls me and spins me around. I catch a faint sound from the door as he slams me into a dark aisle and up against the shelves. I struggle but he holds me hard. The blade arcs toward me.

  Richard Drinkwater halts instantly and his face darkens in shock. His eyes roll and his body bends backward. The Man Without an Accent stands behind him. Pushes him down to his knees. He removes a short, thick syringe with a long needle from the back of Drinkwater’s neck.

  His eyes hold mine. My breath freezes. Shock echoes through me. I’m unable to move.

  The Deputy Secretary slumps forward. The Man Without an Accent holds him, then lowers him, gently, until his face is on the floor. His eyes don’t leave mine. Inside, I’m shaking like a leaf in a gale. Outside, I’m stone.

  Quietly he tells me, “Wait,” and he reaches into his pocket.

  I’m terrified. But not of the right thing. Looking at him, standing over the motionless body, I have every reason to be afraid. I should be in fear of whether Richard Drinkwater is dead. Whether the man has killed him. Whether he will kill me.

  I’m not afraid of that. What I am terrified of is my reaction.

  He lifts an eyebrow and says it again. “Wait.”

  I think the sound in my ears is me screaming as I run for the door. I want to believe that it’s not though. Not me. I want to think I dashed out quietly. Efficiently. A professional, doing my job.

  I run, flat out. Every step feels like I’m dragging myself through a triple-thick shake. My heart pounds. I wait by the elevator, leaning against the wall. Jabbing and mashing the button with my thumb. Looking around to see if he’s coming after me. Pleading with the elevator to come.

  I’m frightened of what I felt. What I thought. I’m scared that he’ll call. Tell me again to wait.

  Because I know that if I hear him, I will. Because it’s what I want.

  When the doors slide apart, I hurl myself inside, jamming the ‘1’ button. Spinning into the corner. Stretching to reach for the ‘Close doors’ button. The doors begin to shut. He’s there. The Man Without an Accent. He’s running.

  The door is shutting just in time.

  His hand comes through the gap.

  Automatically the doors slide open again. I’m pressed back into the corner. He stands, fills the doorway of the car. He stays back. Out of range of the camera, I’m guessing.

  But then, he leans in. Touches me with one finger. At the top of my throat. Under my chin. With that one finger, he pulls me to him. I stretch forward, helpless, as he puts a kiss on my mouth. For that moment, as I taste him, the world falls away. Then it’s over.

  His voice is soft and deep. But serious.

  “I’ll see you again. There’s no need for you to be afraid.”

  The doors slide shut as I hear him say, “Not of me.”

  I want to believe him so badly it hurts.

  Shaking all over now, I keep mashing the number ‘1’ button, jamming my thumb into it, as if pushing it harder and faster would make the car go the tiniest bit faster. My heart pounds. The elevator goes down and it’s agonizingly slow. Each floor number that lights up makes me think it’s going to stop.

  It doesn’t. The car lumbers and glides and it takes me all the way down to the first floor. I bolt to the front desk.

  There’s only one guard at the reception post. After four-thirty in the afternoon, all the Barbie doll receptionists are gone and the building is guarded by uniformed service personnel.

  Lena is a tough Marine. She’s bulky, but I bet every ounce of her is muscle. Handsome, as my daddy might say. I tell her, “There’s a problem on the archive floor.”

  She looks at me with an intense suspicion. After a glance at the monitors under the shelf with the sign-in log, she tells me, “I’m watching the screens. What’s happened?”

  I don’t know what to say. I blurt, “The Deputy Secretary is in the archives. He shouldn’t be there. Not unaccompanied.”

  Before I start to tell her the rest, she looks up at me. “I’ve been monitoring.” She says it as though I’m saying she hasn’t been attentive doing her job. Which probably means that she hasn’t. “There’s no-one in the archives. I’m looking at it now.”

  “I was there myself, less than three minutes ago. He attacked me.”

  “Not in the archives, Miss.”

  For a moment I’m speechless.

  Then, I say, “Look, I’m telling you. Don’t you need to at least go up and check?”

  Her eyes harden as she looks at me. “I will when the rest of the shift comes on. Can’t leave the desk right now, though. No cover.” She fixes my eye. “There’s been nobody in there. Not since I came on. That was forty minutes ago.” She blinks. “Maybe you want me to call your director.”

  I’m getting a bad feeling about this. How can I be reporting an attack and she isn’t doing anything about it. But how can she have seen the screens show the archive room with nobody inside?

/>   She tells me, “I think you’d better wait in the office. I’ll call your director. It’s Ms. McCleaver, isn’t it? You’re an intern in records, right?”

  “No. It’s… Look, don’t worry. I’ll call her.” and I swipe my card on the turnstile. It swings open.

  From the corner of my eye, I see that she’s making a move.

  I tell her, “As soon as you can, you should check. I think there may be an intruder.”

  That gets her attention. She’s calling me back, “Wait,” but she was too slow. Or I was too quick.

  I’m at the front door and I’m out.

  I know it would take more of a crisis than that to get a Marine to desert her post, so I figure I’m safe for a couple of blocks. I spot a black and orange cab passing, and I step out and hail him. As he slows to a stop, I pull open the door and slide in, almost a single motion. I tell him my address in Georgetown.

  “Lady, that’s only six blocks from here.”

  “Just take me there!” I can’t keep all of the tension out of my voice.

  He sighs. Then he slouches and tuts. But he drives off. Slow and sluggish, we wallow into the downtown traffic.

  The thought of getting home to an empty apartment does nothing to calm my jangling nerves. I’m sharing the Georgetown terrace apartment Rhianna is buying. We were study buddies at UMBC, although she was in her final year and I was a freshman. If I wasn’t rooming with her now, I would have to live in Baltimore or Virginia or somewhere. Spend all my money on the commute and have probably an hour less at each end of the day.

  Rhianna has a couple of good offers for law schools next year, but she’s also got herself a pretty good job so, who knows. Me, I’m trying to get my first foot on the reputation ladder. The State Department would be my dream career path, but it’s tough and it’s competitive. That’s why I worked so hard to get this internship.

  I don’t see how I’ll get through the whole of the summer without having to take another job, though. Something in a library or a bookstore would fit in best for me, but I’m not closing my eyes to waitressing. I don’t want the life, but it is possible to do well with tips in DC.

  Rhianna’s out of town a lot of the time, so I have the place to myself. She told me that when I moved in like it was a real plus. I don’t mind it, but I think I would prefer to have some company. This isn’t the kind of town where you make friends easily. I haven’t ever really done that anywhere but DC, well, Georgetown at least, seems especially hard. People here are busy.

  So. I get home, catch my breath, I find a tumbler and splash in a shot of whiskey. I never really got used to the burn on my tongue and the way that it sears down my throat, but I need a shot of something strong. I know that I’m going to have to do some explaining, maybe first thing in the morning.

  I wonder if this is going to cost me my job.

  I’m holding down a sense of panic. An interns compensation at the State Department is pretty tiny, but I doubt if I can live the rest of the month here in DC without money coming in at all.

  Take another toke of the whiskey. A rasp in my chest is unfamiliar but not unpleasant. Just when I think I’m starting to get used to it, the back of my head starts to feel out of balance.

  I don’t know why that reminds me of the Man Without an Accent.

  Did he come to the archives to attack Richard Drinkwater, or was he there to save me? Stupid question. There is no reason he would have done that for me. All the same, I burn to know who he is.

  The whiskey is making my heart sing in a way that’s loud and rough. It’s harsh and crude. And I like it.

  The memory of that man stirs me even more somewhere else. Lower down.

  Chapter Five

  Him

  The Deputy Secretary is heavier than he looks. I heave him over my shoulder, knowing that I don’t have long to get him to the elevator. I’ll have a surveillance blackout for less than another fifty seconds. That will leave me just enough time to get down in the elevator to the parking lot. Then I have cover to get to the van and to get Drinkwater secured in the cage. After that I have thirty-five seconds to exit the building.

  I dread seeing anybody on the way to the elevator. The cameras won’t catch me, but if anybody sees me, I will have no choice about what to do. At this point, I can’t leave anybody who could identify me. If anybody sees me carrying Richard Drinkwater, I wouldn’t be able to leave them around to report on what they saw. That just would not be good.

  While I wait for the freight elevator, I hear voices. A man and woman, approaching the corner. Coming this way. I have my gun drawn and ready.

  She is telling him, seductively, “Oh, you really have to show me.”

  He says something in a deep voice. I can’t make out what he says. When she laughs, it’s a low, primal sound.

  I’ve checked that there is a round in the chamber. The elevator doors open. As quietly as I can, I lay the Deputy Secretary into the corner of the car.

  As the doors slide shut, I keep the gun at the opening, in case either the man or the woman sees me.

  When the doors are closed, I’m relieved. The car starts to descend.

  As I drag Richard Drinkwater out of the elevator car and down three cement steps, his foot catches on a rail. It’s hard to disentangle him, and I nearly lose my patience. That’s a warning sign. I pause for a breath.

  I’m feeling stronger as I carry him to the van. The Mercedes V-Class is painted in the yellow livery of the Central Cab Company.

  I pop the rear door up, and look around. Every sound in the gloom of the parking levels bounces with hard echoes. It’s hard to tell where sounds come from. A large box is built into the rear compartment. The thick door of the box opens to reveal the cage inside.

  I heave my unconscious captive into the cage. It’s awkward bundling him in. He is a dead weight. In more ways than one. I close the cage and lock it, then the soundproof box that the cage is inside. Then I pull the door down shut.

  Twenty-six seconds left. Seems like it should be long enough but I know that it will be tight. As I climb into the driver’s seat, I think back over how long it takes to drive up the two levels, onto the exit ramp, and then the wait while I scan the parking level pass. I know that the pass is going to work, but it’s always tense. Waiting.

  I’ll be wearing an all-over rubber face mask. It’s the mask that goes with the card for the biometric scanner.

  At the exit barrier, I don’t look into the camera lens as it studies me, after I swipe the card.

  Instead, I cheer myself up thinking about the girl. She’s not going to get into too much trouble. But if she did, I would have to bust her out. Maybe I have to do that, anyway.

  I have to have her. And I know that I can’t.

  We’re not even on the same side.

  My mission protocol is clear. I need to drive the Deputy Secretary to the safe house. Search his belongings. If he’s fit, make a preliminary interrogation. Prep him for transfer, and get him to the airfield by 6:30 tomorrow morning.

  I should make a slow, indirect journey to the safe house. Many turns. Well below the speed limit at all times. The car is inconspicuous. Nobody notices a taxicab. The license plates are not on any police or security databases. Neither am I. I should do nothing to draw attention to myself or the vehicle.