Cairo
Egypt
Randi Russell ran her fingers through her short hair, moving closer to the showerhead and watching the black dye swirl down the drain. The fake tanner darkening the skin visible from beneath her hijab would just have to wear off on its own.
When the water turned clear, she shut off the faucet and stepped out onto the tile floor. The mirror was fogged, displaying only a hazy image of her thin, toned body and dark eyes beneath a shock of blonde hair. Her athletic beauty had always been an asset—opening doors, keeping men off balance, causing people to dismiss her as a piece of arm candy.
The last few years had been a solid run, gaining her the gratitude of multiple heads of state and generating a serious legend at the CIA, MI6, and a few other acronyms. The problem was that the dead enemies and friends, the blur of missions, and the constant moving were starting to get a little depressing. It was something she once again promised herself that she’d work on when she got back to the States. And with Charles Hashem finally rotting in hell, maybe she’d actually do it this time.
She pulled on a pair of old sweats and a T-shirt with a giant smiley face and the slogan “Have a Nice Day.” A gift from a Mossad operative with a sense of humor.
All she needed now was a drink, a comfortable bed, and ten solid hours of unconsciousness. Tomorrow she’d mix in with the tourists and businesspeople for a midmorning flight to Reagan and then a hysterical reaming for killing an American who everyone agreed needed to be dead. In the end, though, it would be little more than a bunch of bureaucratic ass covering. Nothing she needed to worry about any more than last time or the time before that.
Sure, one day they’d throw her under the bus, but not yet. They’d wait until she slowed down and wasn’t as useful anymore. For now, though, she had the comfort of knowing they needed her to do the things that they didn’t have the skills for, or that they thought could come back to bite them at a confirmation hearing. People with her talents and track record were hard to replace.
Randi rubbed the towel over her head a few more times and then pushed through the bathroom door into her hotel suite.
One of the things that had kept her alive for so long was the fact that there was no loss in translation between what her mind commanded and what her body did. By the time the man sitting in the leather chair next to the bar looked up, she’d pulled a knife from the pocket in her sweats and drawn her hand back to throw it.
He just frowned disapprovingly and looked at her over his wire-rimmed glasses.
“Mr. Klein,” Randi said, not yet lowering the knife. “What are you doing here?”
Fred Klein was the mastermind behind a loose confederation of independent operators that went by the intentionally vague designation Covert-One. The president of the United States—a childhood friend of Klein’s—had quietly authorized the formation of the organization years ago in the face of the government’s increasing paralysis. Covert-One had become an organization of last resort, brought into play only when time had run out and the consequences of failure were too dire to contemplate.
Randi had been recruited only recently based on the recommendation of Jon Smith, but she still didn’t have a strong sense of what she’d gotten herself into. What she did know, though, was that when Fred Klein showed up unexpectedly in your hotel room, something hadn’t gone to plan. And that brought her own survival into question.
“I needed to talk to you,” Klein responded simply.
“That’s why they invented phones.” She moved subtly away from the windows. The curtains were drawn, but there were other ways for a sniper to line up a shot.
Klein wasn’t particularly impressive to look at. Thinning hair, mediocre suit, slightly jutting brow. But in the short time she’d known him, she’d developed a healthy respect for the man. He had a disconcerting way of thinking ten steps ahead and rarely made mistakes. Great if he was on your team, but in her business team affiliation tended to be hazy and subject to sudden changes.
“This is something I felt we should discuss face-to-face.” He wiped away some imaginary sweat from his upper lip. “We’ve lost contact with Jon.”
“Lost contact?”
“In a fishing village northeast of Toyama, Japan.”
“I know that area,” she said, finally lowering the knife. “I’ll go find him.”
Klein rose suddenly enough that her grip on the blade tightened involuntarily, but he just went to the bar and poured two scotches. After handing one to her, he returned to the chair.
“He was hit in the back with a crossbow bolt and was last seen swimming out to sea with at least three men pursuing. I’ve had people out there for two days looking for him and we’re continuing the effort…” His voice trailed off.
The implication was clear. She made her way a bit unsteadily to a small sofa across from him.
“I wanted to tell you before you heard somewhere else,” he said as she sat. “The story we’re going with is that he was cave diving off the coast of Okinawa. That there was an accident and he’s missing.”
Typically clever, Randi thought numbly. No one would expect to recover a body under those circumstances.
“My understanding is that your mission in Egypt is finished and you’re flying back to DC tomorrow.” He seemed a bit bowed when he stood again and started for the door. “We need to talk when you get back. About what Jon was working on.”
She watched him leave in silence and then just stared at the closed door. For a moment she thought she was going to throw up but then it passed, replaced by an unexpected sense of loneliness that was even worse.
No. Jon had been in tough scrapes before and he always made it out. Klein’s people just hadn’t found him yet. Or for that matter, the man could be lying. What did she really know about him?
Randi forced herself to her feet and picked up the phone on the nightstand. Scrolling through an encrypted list of contacts with a shaking finger, she finally came to the one she was looking for—an unattributed number with a Japanese prefix.