Platitudes from Bertraud, desperate to keep her attention, had delayed her. As she left the HIV support group, Olivia dialed her phone to contact the eyes and ears of her CIA support team.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Outside the bookstore half a block away, playing tourist with my camera,” Robert, her partner, said.
Olivia unfolded her mental map.
“You’re at La Librarie Centrale then?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Where’d Slate go?”
“We’re following him. He’s at the Wanadoo cyber café. Go check your email. You can make the meeting look accidental. It’s the busiest cyber café in the city.”
“What if he doesn’t go for me?”
“You’re hot, he’s horny, and you’re trained for it.”
Olivia stared at the cobblestones beneath her feet.
“You okay? Say something,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said.
“You’ll have three officers watching you. This’ll work out fine, but not if you keep standing there.”
“Okay, I’m going,” she said.
“I’ll stay two hundred yards behind you.”
Cell phone to her ear, Olivia crossed the street. She walked for five minutes, surveying her surroundings.
“Anyone following me?” she asked. “I noticed three possible trails.”
“I saw four.”
“You’re not counting the old British couple?”
“I did. I got a good image in my camera. The facial match came back pretty quick. He’s a barrister from Devonshire. The woman–his mistress. Lucky for him we’re not private investigators.”
Olivia stepped around a sloppily cleaned pile of dog droppings. The pile made her aware of the faint stench of the city sewers.
“What about the other three?” she asked.
“The two juveniles are local high school students. The middle-aged woman with the Gucci handbags is a tourist from Florence. They’re all just randomly following your path except for one guy, the older guy in the sport coat. I’m still waiting for his data.”
“That older man sticks out,” she said. “Armani blazer and a classy tie.”
“Renard dresses his men well.”
“His men shouldn’t be trailing me,” she said.
“Not you. Slate. Renard trusts Slate, but we’ve seen him trail him before. And any trail on Slate would be interested in new people in his life, like you. Be watchful.”
Her breaths became shallow.
“Doesn’t feel right,” she said.
She realized that she sounded like a coward. No combination of training or acumen beat instincts, she knew, and her instincts told her to turn back.
“I understand you’re hesitant,” he said. “I respect that you’re back in the field after what happened on your last assignment. You’ll be fine.”
She slid her cell phone in her purse and hastened her pace. She wondered if the incident with Marko had made her paranoid. If so, her career was over.
Rollers squealed as a portly man with a bloodstained smock slid a metal cover over a storefront. He pointed to a glazed suckling and barked out instructions to an assistant. The assistant mounted a bicycle and brushed Olivia’s shoulder as he pedaled by her.
“Désolé, mademoiselle,” he said.
The assistant ran his eyes over Olivia’s body. She frowned and pointed, and he returned his attention to the street in time to swerve around a stone post.
Men are slaves to their penises, she thought.
Her phone rang.
“Hello,” she said.
“Listen up. I got a match on the Armani blazer. He’s a retired French submarine chief petty officer. He’s got to be working for Renard. You have a trail.”
“So we call it off and try again tomorrow,” she said.
“Negative. Your trail is on a cell phone, and so is Slate. Slate just left Wanadoo and is heading your way.”
Olivia dropped the cell phone into her purse and felt walls closing in. The image of a slave trader holding a knife to her neck crept into her mind. She reminded herself that this was a low-risk assignment.
Behind three giggling teenage girls, Slate approached.
“Hey,” he said in English. “Olivia, right?”
She tried to sound surprised and perky but heard tension in her voice.
“Oh, yeah. Hi. Jake, right? I was just on the way to Wanadoo to check email.”
“I was just going to try some new games, but it’s too crowded in there. So how’d you enjoy your talk with the mayor’s arrogant little son?”
“It wasn’t that bad,” she said.
“You’re too nice. I can’t stand a word he says.”
“I did, at least for the first two minutes or so.”
“You mean the first ten thousand words,” he said.
Olivia chuckled, but the tightness in her throat stifled her natural laugh. It sounded whiny, she thought, but Slate seemed unconcerned.
“Yeah, he’s a talker,” she said. “And there’s no question who his favorite subject is.”
“I wish I could have saved you,” Jake said.
“You did your best, and I can take care of myself,” she said.
“Yeah, I figured. I had you pegged for a tough guy.”
“Tough girl.”
The tension ebbed from her voice. Her phone rang and she reached into her purse.
“Who’s calling you? You just moved here?” Jake asked.
“My aunt and uncle live in Aix. You better let me get this. They’ll freak if they can’t check on me twenty-four seven.”
She placed the cell phone to her ear.
“The trail is ten seconds behind you,” Robert said. “We tapped into his cell phone signal. We didn’t get the whole conversation, but he was talking to Slate about you. You’ve got his attention.”
“Oh, Uncle Robert,” she said, “you have so little faith in me. I can take care of myself.”
Olivia watched Slate. He crossed his arms and smiled.
“See, you talk like a tough guy,” Jake said.
“Quiet!” she said and flicked her wrist.
“Then take care of yourself,” Robert said.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Seduce the man. What else? Having an audience doesn’t change anything, and we’ve got you covered on both ends of the street if it does.”
“I appreciate your concern,” Olivia said. “Give my love to Aunt Jennie.”
Olivia slid the phone in her purse.
She forced a smile and tried to invite Slate’s gaze, but he was looking over her shoulder. She thought she caught him winking as the trail approached behind her.
She could smell the trail man’s strong cologne. The Armani blazer passed by the corner of her eye, slipped his cell phone into his breast pocket, and kept walking.
She sighed.
“A new Italian restaurant just opened. If you join me tonight, I’ll treat,” Jake said.
“What?” she asked.
“Italian,” he said. “Let’s go to dinner.”
*
Three days later, Olivia dreamt.
Jolting pain filled her skull, and a knife scratched her throat. A man with a face contorted in lust and anger squinted and rammed himself into her. She felt the burning and throbbing from his hurried and careless entry.
She rose above herself and asked the naked CIA officer on the Parisian pimp’s couch if the vaginal pain was a repressed memory or a nightmarish embellishment. The rape victim answered herself by pointing at her crotch and stating that the bruises proved it was real.
“The bruises are worse on your cheek because they broke your jaw,” she said to her body.
“I know,” her body said. “I couldn’t eat solid food for weeks.”
“Where’s your pimp?” she asked her body. “Isn’t he supposed to protect you?”
The rape victim’s face scrunched in pain and disgust.
“Blown cover.”
The plastic explosives in the Parisian pimp’s room exploded.
Olivia awoke.
She was covered in sweat and her cell phone was ringing. She rolled to her nightstand and grabbed it.
“McDonald,” she said.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Robert said. “Mustn’t blow the third date with Slate napping too long and being late.”
“Yeah,” she said, “I’m up.”
“You, okay?” he asked. “You’re panting.”
“Just a bad dream.”
“Recurring nightmares again?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“I’ve pulled officers out with fewer issues than you’ve got. After what you’ve been through, I’m not sure if this mission isn’t asking too much.”
Olivia glanced at the clock. She was running late.
“And you replaced them–the officers you pulled out?”
“Whenever possible. Sometimes you can’t.”
“Well, you can’t,” she said. “You got an HIV-positive French-speaking female officer lined up?”
“You know I don’t.”
“Then it’s me or we lose Renard.”
*
Olivia walked to Jake’s apartment, and the cool summer air invigorated her. She knocked on the door, and he smiled and let her in. Nausea overcame her as she entered the ground floor entryway of his home.
“You okay?” Jake asked.
She felt weak and dizzy.
“I need to sit,” she said.
He stabilized her arm, slid a wicker chair across adobe tiles, and guided her into it. Her nausea intensified as he crouched in front of her.
“You want some water?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
He went between a pool table and a wide screen television.
“The fridge is on the second floor,” he said. “I didn’t want to give you tap water from the bathroom.”
“Sure. Whatever,” she said.
As he climbed stairs, she scanned the room for something that would make her want to vomit. The oak floor had been mopped. The stucco walls were free of water damage and mold.
The ceiling creaked as Jake fetched her water. She closed her eyes, contemplated, and realized that as her nausea passed, her mind turned to thoughts of her last mission.
Jake appeared with a glass of water.
“Most women who get violently ill in my presence usually don’t wait until they come into my house,” he said.
She stood, grabbed his starched collar, and jabbed her nose towards his neck. Inhaling, she recognized the source of her problem and stepped back to the pool table.
“What?” he asked.
“Your cologne.”
“It’s Drakkar Noir. I just bought a bottle.”
The guy who raped me wore that, she thought.
“What’s wrong? You allergic?” he asked.
“Yeah. Maybe…”
“Okay,” he said. “Sit tight. I’ll shower and change. You can play pool, watch TV, or step outside for fresh air.”
He darted up the stairs, and the nausea ebbed.
Her hands shaking, she arranged pool balls on maroon velvet and slammed a stick into the cue ball. She missed everything but the rail and dropped the stick on the table and then scanned the room to distract herself.
The entertainment center’s black finish swallowed the overhead parlor light. A six-disk compact disk player, DVD player, and a plethora of movies and music covered the center, but she saw too many titles to draw any conclusions about his tastes.
End tables at either arm of an Ikea loveseat held plants and potpourri but no pictures. A coffee table supported generic coasters from a local brewery. The room seemed sanitized of insight into Jake’s history.
Sweeping balls into pockets, she drew the somber conclusion that Jake was too careful to reveal anything about Renard.
He descended the staircase.
“That was fast,” she said.
“Hey, I can take n… quick showers.”
He almost said “navy showers”, she thought. He’s only human. Maybe he will slip up.
“Tommy Hilfiger okay?” he asked.
She grabbed his shirt and nudged her face in it. The scent was invigorating with a jolt of citrus. She smiled and drew him into a kiss. It was their first deep kiss, and taking command of it rekindled her confidence.
He seemed uncertain, even nervous, but he didn’t pull back until she broke contact. She had owned the kiss from start to finish and felt ready to take ownership of him.
“Do I get a kiss after every shower?” he asked.
“You’ll get one every time I think you’ve earned one.”
“How do I earn one?” he asked.
“That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”