The coffee tasted like watered-down cardboard but it was hot and with enough sugar and cream, Logan found he could swallow it. He forced himself to keep drinking. He was going to need the caffeine in an hour or so, when the last of the adrenaline trickled out of his system.
Nelson was thumbing out a text message on his cell phone, which was slightly more secure than a voice call. Then he snapped the phone shut and put it away.
Elias lifted a brow.
“Yeah, so, Brad confirms that Seoc told Malik that Micky was alive and well and living here on Ocean Beach.” Nelson picked up a spoon and dug into a huge hot fudge brownie sundae with relish.
Elias swivelled his head to look at Logan across the table. “This just gets better and better,” he said, his tone ominous.
“Someone’s got to tell him Micky’s dead. Send him the Mpeg file. I’m sure it’s parked on someone’s hard drive,” Logan said bitterly.
“Who gets to tell him? Seoc? He’s retired from the go-between business, in case you didn’t notice.”
“We’ve got a direct channel now,” Logan pointed out.
Nelson shook his head quickly. “It’s still one way. The NYC Library address will be dead now. The first cell phone was probably a throwaway and at the bottom of a large body of water already. And he used an anonymous FTP client.”
“You’re going to up the security on that FTP thing when we get back, right?” Elias growled.
“Celia’s working on it as we speak,” Nelson assured him quickly.
“So, no way to get in touch with Malik until he contacts us,” Elias concluded.
“He’s not going to contact us until he sees Micky and me in the LA Times social pages,” Logan said.
“It’s a pretty good way of confirming you’re who you say you are,” Nelson observed around a mouthful of chocolate ice cream. “We should use it sometime.” He glanced at Logan, then at Elias’ thundery face. “Well, it is,” he protested and dropped his head to concentrate on his sundae.
Logan forced himself to take another swallow of coffee and grimaced hard as it hit his taste buds. “What if we flew Celia over here? Dressed her up in couture and a blonde wig?”
“You think anyone’s going to believe she’s Micky?” Elias shot back. “The paparazzi aren’t going to take photos of anything but the real McCoy and they’re smart as hell at figuring out who’s who. Besides, why use Celia?”
The three cups of coffee Logan had already imbibed solidified into a curdled cream brick in his stomach, as the meaning behind Elias’ question hit him.
“No,” he said flatly.
“Why not?” Elias asked with the tone of a reasonable man. “Seoc still swears it’s her and we haven’t even started in with the couture.”
Nelson’s eyes widened. “Hey, yeah! The woman from Noriega!”
“I said no.”
Elias didn’t even twitch. “Last I looked, this was my unit.”
“You can pull rank and you can even bust my tail out of here. It won’t make a damn bit of difference,” Logan said, trying to keep his voice steady and his temper contained. “You need me to pull this off and I said no.”
Elias picked up a sugar sachet and flicked it with his forefinger. “Nelson, give us a minute, huh?”
Nelson looked from Elias to Logan and back. He slid out of the booth and headed for the front door of the diner, pulling out his cell phone as he went. He was already thumbing out a text message, one-handed, before his other forearm hit the door.
Logan leaned back, giving up on the coffee. He jumped in first. “You’re a real prince.”
“Thanks. But that doesn’t change a thing. We have to use her and you know it.”
“No, I don’t know it! There has to be another way. Think of something.”
“You’ve been in this game as long as me, when you count your military intelligence background. Can you think of another way?”
Logan licked his lips. Dry mouth again. “Then get everyone together. Brainstorm.”
“You know damn well we don’t have time. He wants you out in public on Thursday night. We have to use someone. Turning up without something resembling Micky at your side will unravel the whole thing. You agree on that much, right?”
“Right,” Logan growled, although he didn’t like the admission.
“Of everyone that we might use, the redhead will need the least adjustments and changes to her appearance to make her look like Micky and it will still be a major operation that is going to take a minor miracle to pull off in forty-eight hours.”
“She’s a strawberry blonde and worse, she’s a civilian, Elias. A complete and utter civilian. She collapsed at just the sight of a gun this afternoon. How do you think she’s going to hold up under something like this?”
“Well, you’ll just have to use what charm and persuasion you can find, won’t you?”
Logan gave a short, insincere laugh. “You’re going to send me in to deliver the bad news? Classy, Elias. Classy and gutless.”
“And I love you too.” Elias scrubbed his hair tiredly. “It has to be you to tell her and you know it.”
“Tell her?” Logan was genuinely lost for words, for there were too many protests, angles and arguments—too many goddam disgusting points to be made over such an outrageous statement. He finally just picked one of them. “First up, Elias, I’m not going to tell her anything. I’m going to ask her and if she says no, then I’m going to back up her refusal with my Glock. Got that?”
Elias considered this for a moment. “You’d better hope she says yes, then, hadn’t you? You know what’s at stake here. Just imagine the North Koreans being the only country in the world with cold fusion technology. Something cheap, easy to reproduce, clean enough to be built in the middle of Hanoi. They could build a dozen in a month, once they got rolling. All those warheads, with power ten times greater than the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever built.”
“You have no idea if Malik’s process converts easily to weapons-use—” Logan began.
“Give me a break,” Elias returned, with a sour curl of his lip. “Fusion’s fusion. Once they know how the process works, they can adapt. Don’t dodge the point.”
Logan swallowed the rest of his protest, because Elias was right.
But Elias wasn’t done squeezing him yet. “All those cheap, easy-to-produce warheads. How long before their paranoia drives them to take out China or Thailand? How long after that does China take to strike back with conventional fission warheads that make us all glow in the dark for a century?”
The sick feeling wasn’t going away. Logan swallowed. Swallowed again. Finally he took another sip of the horrid coffee. It didn’t help.
“We have to ask her,” he insisted but it sounded weak even to him.
“Fine. Ask her then.” Elias threw the sugar sachet so it skidded across the table and onto the floor and straightened up so that his full height and girth were evident and made the booth shrink. “But here’s another thought to chew on. If she does agree, we can protect her. She’ll be right at your side, the loving Mrs. Wilde, with a full security detail around her at all times. Lots of high profile types have details these days. It’s not even unusual.”
Logan grew very still. “So?” he pressed, wanting Elias to complete the thought in actual words.
“So….” Elias shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “If she says no, we can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Can’t…. Shit, Logan, you know what I’m saying.”
“Say it, you asshole.”
“Can’t protect her.”
“And she would need protection…why?”
Elias just stared at him.
“Why, Elias? Why would she need protection?”
“Because if she doesn’t do this, then we don’t get the notebook and the other guys will. They’ll get Malik and the notebook. And Malik thinks Micky is alive and hiding out on Ocean Beach.”
Logan swallowed. Dry, dry, dry…. “Finish it,” he croaked.
Elias looked like he wanted to strangle him. “Micky was moving into the business. She wasn’t just your ex anymore. They’ll come after the redhead because they think she’s one of us.”
Logan gripped the edge of the table. “I’ve always known you were a ruthless son of a bitch, Elias. I never knew until today that you were heartless with it.”
Elias was twisting another sachet in his big fingers. “Just get her to say yes and then you can personally ensure her safety. Once we’ve got Malik under our wing, it’s over.”
“It’ll be over in all ways, Elias. Either I get my desk job, or I quit. Your choice. But I will never work for you in the field again. Clear?”
Elias pushed a hand through his hair. Finally, he nodded.
Logan pushed his coffee cup away and stood up. “This is Belgium, all over again.”
“You didn’t get Micky killed,” Elias said sharply.
“No, you did. You’re the one who let her out in the field over my protests. And now here we are again.”
Sahara worked like a field hand all evening but even after she had shut the store for the night, she couldn’t relax. Time was running directly through her veins, making her throb with each passing second.
She headed upstairs and hung the keys on the nail next to the door. She looked at the kitchenette, considered eating and dismissed the idea.
Instead she picked up her pruning shears and began working in her “garden”—her big collection of pots and window boxes scattered around the apartment. In these she grew most of her food, including salad greens and miniature versions of vegetables and herbs that made up most of her diet. Over the years she had slowly retreated to an almost pure vegetarian diet, simply because the cost of meat was beyond her financial reach. What she grew cost almost nothing except time and attention. Some of her most soothing hours were spent caring for her garden.
Even tonight it worked its magic, until she reached the herb boxes on the window ledge beneath the front windows. Pippin had been in amongst the pots, digging and chewing. Half the crops were gone, thanks to his enthusiasm. She had been going to freeze-dry and sell many of these plants.
She stared at the damage, as a vice began to squeeze at her chest. “Oh, Pippin!” she whispered.
Hearing his name, the silvery cat trotted over to her and rubbed up against her legs, his tail high.
“Oh, Pip, look what you’ve done!” she said, bending down to speak to him.
He put one paw on her shin for leverage and reached up to bump his face against hers, purring loudly.
She lowered herself to the floor, suddenly too tired to do anything else. The shears clattered next to her and she realized that she was on the verge of a huge crying jag. As her eyes blurred, she thumped her thigh. “Screw it, no tears!” she told herself. “Baby!” she added, as they continued to gather.
Pippin, thinking the thumping was a signal for him, climbed into the cozy space made by her crossed legs and rolled over so that his back was propped in the vee of her legs, displaying his soft white belly fur for her to rub and tickle. It was an old game but the very last thing Sahara felt like doing.
Nevertheless, she blindly reached for his tummy and rubbed, feeling him purr beneath her fingertips. “Yeah, you’re right,” she told him, her voice hoarse. “It could be worse.”
The front door buzzer rang seconds later. The buzzer box was mounted on the wall over her bed, next to where she sat on the floor and she jumped. Pippin sprang out of her lap and dived under the bed.
“I’m with you,” she said to his one eye that peered out. She glanced at her watch. Ten thirty-three. “This had better be good,” she told Pippin and lifted herself up to sit on the bed. She wiped at her eyes and pressed the intercom button. “Who is it?”
The voice that replied was distorted by the old intercom but she recognized it, anyway. “Logan Wilde, Sahara. I need to talk to you.”
He moved awkwardly around the apartment, while Sahara sat at the table, her leg folded under her. She noticed that Pippin had chewed at the chives there too and sighed, before turning her attention back to Logan Wilde.
“You look tired,” he said. “Did you get any sleep since I left?”
“I could say the same thing about you.” It was an understatement. The man looked like he had aged ten years in the last few hours. He was dressed all in black now and it emphasized the beginnings of tired circles beneath his eyes.
She got to her feet, rinsed out the coffee pot and dug in the cupboard for a coffee filter. She got out the real coffee, not Caro. She wanted caffeine and lots of it, as soon as possible.
“I don’t want coffee, if you’re making that for me,” Logan said from behind her.
“It’s for me,” she said shortly. She heard the snap in her voice and tried to soften it. “Besides, you look like you could use some.” She glanced at him. In the better light in the kitchen section of the apartment, she could see signs of strain in his face that hadn’t been there that afternoon. The lines around his mouth seemed deeper. So were the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. The riveting quality of blue had lost some of its edge. It made him look older and worn. “You look ill-used,” she added.
His eyes widened a little in reaction. Surprise? But he didn’t follow her lead. Instead, he moved over to the table and sat in the plain kitchen chair and pushed his hand through his hair, making the black shock fall back over his forehead once more.
“Why don’t you take off your jacket?” she suggested. “It must be stifling in this weather.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“It’s still nearly eighties degrees out there. I’m sure.”
He stripped off the light jacket and she realized why he had hesitated. He still wore the gun harness over the shirt beneath. She busied herself with spooning coffee and cleared her throat, hating the reminder of his business.
When she returned to the table once more, she had her reaction under control. He was staring at her again but not like a man absorbed with memories.
“What?” she asked, prompting him.
“I suppose I can see why everyone else is so convinced you’re Micky,” he said slowly. “It’s there on the surface, sure enough.”
She gave a nervous laugh. “What’s underneath, then?”
He sat up straighter. “I should get down to business.” But instead of getting to business, he looked around the apartment. “How long have you lived here?”
“It’s been nearly ten years now.”
“You’ve always owned the store?”
“I built it from scratch,” she said and didn’t bother to hide the note of pride in her voice.
He took a deep breath and the thought struck her: He’s putting this off. The realization sent a finger of fear through her. To make this man reluctant to deal with it, the matter had to be horrendous.
“Tell me,” she said quickly. “Get it out.”
Instead of doing as she suggested, he pointed behind her. “Your coffee is done.”
She hissed a small curse under her breath, got up and made two cups of coffee, dumped the cream and sugar on the table and placed a mug in front of him. Then she sat again, stirred in the cream and sat back. “Now,” she said.
But while she had moved around the room preparing the coffee, he had regained his control. His expression was urbane and neutral. “Thanks,” he said, picking up his unaltered cup and sipping from it.
He got to his feet and moved to the counter to lean against it. It forced Sahara to swivel in her seat to see him properly.
He put the coffee aside like he was getting down to business. “The man in your store today was Seoc Roderic. Or at least, that’s the name we know him by. He’s a well-known go-between—someone who collects messages or objects from one party and delivers them safely to another. In our world—my world—couriers are minor players, barely above notice when tracing lines of power. But Seoc did know Micky, my ex-wife. This afternoon he was utterly sure you were Micky, even after looking at you up close and talking to you. I spoke to him tonight and he’s still convinced you’re Micky.”
“Even though Micky is dead?” Sahara asked.
Logan grimaced. “Seoc knows that in our business, death is a slippery state. So many agents reported dead have turned up alive somewhere else in the world, with a different name and sometimes even with different faces.” He shrugged.
“But your wife was not an agent, right?”
“She was known to a lot of people and so she had power of a sort. She floated on the edges, just as Seoc did. I think, sometimes, she was drawn to the romanticism of it.” His mouth turned down. “She didn’t see the real side of what we do.” Logan crossed his arms and took a deep breath.
Sahara thought, Here it comes.
The blue eyes pinned her to the chair. “We want you to be Micky—just for a while.”
Sahara jumped, even though she had begun to suspect what Logan was about to say. “Why would you want me to do that? You said she wasn’t an agent.”
“No, she wasn’t. But she knew a lot of people and one of those people is a man who is hiding out somewhere in the world. A nuclear physicist from Tehran, called Malik. He has something he wants to give to Micky, and only Micky.”
“What?”
Logan pursed his lips for a second. “The working plans for cold fusion.”
Sahara clutched her cup. “Cold fusion? They know how to do that now?”
“Malik does,” Logan said dryly, “and he will only share with Micky.”
“But why are you so anxious to get the plans? Surely other scientists….”
Logan shook his head. “Malik is a gifted genius. Iran’s version of Einstein. Western nations are generations away from even getting close to what he has created. Most have shelved the idea—they don’t think it’s feasible. Oh, they all agree it’s theoretically possible, just not something worth tackling. Like faster than light travel—it’s the stuff of science fiction as far as they’re concerned. So Iran has been quietly working on it, using Malik’s talent. It seems they’ve solved it and now they won’t share. But when you get the plans from him, they will be shared—with every nation in the world.”
“That’s incredible,” Sahara breathed. “This is really happening? They’ve really done this? Figured out cold fusion?”
“We have good reason to believe they have.” He took another breath and almost seemed to push the words out, as if he were hurrying to speak them. “You meet Malik at a location that he will give us, say hello and take the plans from him. That’s the full extent of your involvement. There shouldn’t be any complications. It’s not even like Malik is looking for payment. Straight in and straight out again. You’ll be gone maybe a week.”
“It sounds simple enough,” Sahara said, sipping her coffee. “And for cold fusion…that is worthwhile, isn’t it?” She looked up at him, hoping he would agree with her, for in truth she felt completely out of her depth. They were asking her to collect the secrets to nuclear fusion, for goodness sake!
She dredged her memory for what she knew about fusion power. It was a subject she knew a little about because of the clean power it would provide. “Once it’s understood how to recreate fusion, then there’d be clean power for everyone, right? No more radiation damage or nuclear slag heaps and spills. Free energy for the asking.” It was a huge thing. A worldwide revolutionary thing.
She realized her hand was shaking and put the cup down.
“I would be with you every step of the way, of course,” Logan said, as if she had not spoken at all. His arms were still locked over his chest. “And even though you would not see it, security would be tight. The tightest—to protect you.”
“Is there a need for such high security?” she asked. “You just said that it was simple. In and out.”
“You would have to change your appearance just a little,” Logan continued, again as if she had not spoken at all.
Sahara stared at him, her heart pattering. What was going through his mind right now, to distract him so much? It was almost as if he were speaking the words like a pre-set dialogue. Something written down and memorized.
“The hair, mostly,” he continued. “And you would have to learn names and facts from Micky’s past.” He took a breath and it lifted his chest and arms. “Your clothes too.”
“Logan—” Sahara began, trying to interrupt him.
“And Micky spent a lot of time with some very powerful people. You’d have to learn how to deal with them. We’ll be moving in embassy circles—”
“Logan!”
He stopped and looked at her and she knew that at last he was really looking at her.
“You’re scaring me,” she said simply.
“Good.” He grabbed the back of the chair he’d been using and turned it around and straddled it, sitting so that he was only a few inches away from her. “You should be scared.”
“What? But…you just said…”
“Don’t say yes to this, Sahara. It’ll kill you.”
Confusion was making her dizzy. “But Logan, you just—”
He pushed his hand through his hair again. “I know what I said, damn it. You think I don’t have bosses? Supervisors? A chain of command?” He grabbed her wrist. His expression was earnest, the blue eyes drilling into hers. “Say no. Don’t do it.”
“But you said I’d be perfectly safe.”
“So was Micky, for heaven’s sake!” He jumped to his feet and strode over to the counter. Then back to the table, in long, angry strides. He looked at her and spread his hands. “You’re always safe until you’re not. Micky at least had the measure of these people. She knew what she was involved in. You’re a complete innocent. They’ll chew you up alive.”
“Thanks,” she said dryly.
“That’s not what I meant, exactly.” He pushed his hands into his pockets and became still. The blue eyes were looking into hers again and this time she knew she was looking at the real Logan. The one behind the façade. “What I do mean is that I don’t want you to do this.” His voice was low, curling around her spine, stroking her insides until they quivered. “I don’t want you to do it, because it’s dangerous. Because it’s the sort of ‘easy’ job that got Micky killed and because they won’t tell you that.”
She clutched her coffee cup more to hide the trembling in her hands than anything else. “They forced you into this, didn’t they? They forced you to ask me.”
“It’s complicated.” He was hedging.
“They were going to ask me one way or the other, though,” she guessed.
He hesitated, then nodded.
She stood up, so that she was closer to his level and closer to looking him in the eye. “My mother died when I was eight and my father died when I was twelve. My foster parents died when I was sixteen. I think I’ve learned how to take care of myself well enough. You’ll just have to take care of the rest of it for me, because you’re right, I really don’t know your world. Every time I see you, I learn a little more and like it a little less.”
“Sahara, don’t—”
She laid her hand on his arm and was bombarded with sensations—heat, softness, the hard muscles beneath, the size of his forearm under her fingers. She pushed the sensations away, anxious to make her last point. “You’ve warned me. That’ll have to do. This needs to be done.”
He took a deep breath, calming himself. She could see him pulling on the restraints, bringing himself back to a calm state. “Why are you agreeing to this?” he asked and his voice was rough.
Because you didn’t lie to me this time. The words pushed at her lips but she held them back. “Because the world needs fusion power,” she said. It was part of the truth, anyway.
“You’re doing this for your country?” Disbelief tinged every word.
“Why not?” she shot back. “You’re so jaded, you’ve lost the ability to believe in ideals?”
“I’ll give you three weeks and you won’t have to ask me that anymore. You’ll understand all too well.” His tone was infinitely bitter.
“Then why are you doing it, Logan?”
He looked like he was on the verge of answering. His lips parted, as he stared at her. Then he turned away and grabbed his coat. “Let’s go.”
“Now?” She could feel her eyes widening.
“Yes.” He shoved his arms into his coat with snappy movements, not looking at her.
“But I need to pack…my personal things….”
“You won’t need anything. It will all be supplied.”
“But my shop! I can’t just walk out and leave it unopened and unattended!”
This sensible appeal finally halted him. His lips thinned as he considered the matter. “The lady this afternoon—”
“Tiffany.”
“She knows the workings of the store?”
“Tiffany flew back to London tonight.”
“Is there anyone else who could run the store?”
“I have a shoestring budget, Logan. I do it all myself.”
He remained still, thinking it through. In the silence, Sahara could feel an old excitement coursing through her. It took her a moment to recognize it and when she did, it was with a jolt.
This was the sort of drop-everything-and-go moment her father had often provided. A competition halfway around the world, in two days’ time? No problems, mate. There’s a Boeing to Heathrow in three hours, we can make it….
With the recognition came a sweet-sour ache of remembrance. She’d always thought she’d hated being picked up and shuffled off in this way. She’d believed that roots, family and stability—home—was the bedrock she craved. Yet now she faced another such moment and she was tingling with excitement at the idea of it. With chagrin, she realized that this had influenced her agreement, even before she had recognized it. Because of it, she tried a token protest.
“I can’t just up and leave, Logan. I have a cat and bills and...and a life.” It sounded pathetic, even to her. But then Howard’s harsh prediction lit up in her mind like a neon sign in the dark. She spoke more firmly. “Someone must run the store. If I don’t open, the whole business will stall. I have rent to pay, insurance, taxes. I won’t just fall behind, I’ll have to shut up entirely.”
Logan was studying her and it seemed that he didn’t quite understand.
“If my business shuts up, then I lose this apartment, too. It’s not just my income. It’s my whole life.”
He pushed his hand through his hair. “We’ll take care of it. Somehow. Give me your keys and I’ll make sure someone comes in to run it.”
“Really?”
“I promise,” he said firmly, heading for the door of the apartment. “That’s the one thing I can guarantee—you won’t lose money in this deal.”
His voice was sour enough to curdle milk.