Miles To Go Part 16

"Thanks," she said, taking Hannah's proffered hand up. "Stay here and rest for a moment. I need to call in."

Hannah nodded and Rennie dialed the number as she walked.

As before, the call was answered on the first ring. This time she was certain it was Brian Ryder. "Yes. We're secure," he said.

"This is Vogel."

"Where are you?"

Rennie paused. "Maybe five or six hours from the village."

They were hours ahead of her earlier estimate.

"We believe Martin Garrison is in the village waiting for delivery of the doc.u.ment. CIA is there already and will pick him up." That's a huge a.s.sumption.

"Call in as soon as you're established in the village. More CIA is in transport with Jonathan Garrison, but won't arrive until after 0200 hours. You will turn over the doc.u.ment to them."

Jonathan Garrison had been captured as a result of her intel.

At least something beneficial had come out of the ambush.

"Is that all?"

"Let's hope so," the agent said after a beat.

Rennie slipped the phone into her pocket and ran her fingers through her hair. Let's hope so. What was that supposed to mean?

She shook her head. The FBI needed to hire handlers who weren't so ambiguous.

She turned back toward Hannah who was sitting against a tree with her head resting on her knees. The drug was already worming its way through Rennie's veins, evening her out, and quas.h.i.+ng unwanted emotions on the verge of bursting to the surface. Kneeling to Hannah, she put her hand on the back of her neck, which was damp and slick with perspiration.

"Let's go. We'll stop and have a real rest in a couple of hours."

Martin Garrison paid his bill and left the cafe. He stopped on the sidewalk and scanned the street in what now seemed the futile hope that Armin's men might turn up in this last moment before he left their meeting point for the final time. Tomorrow he would board a plane, leave Tajikistan, and fly to Berlin where he had a contact he had put off using, knowing it would solidify his betrayal to his country in a way that was irreversible.

He walked in a direction away from his boarding house.

After sitting for so many days, he needed to stretch his legs.

The afternoon sun was strong but milky, casting hazy shadows on the street. It was busier than usual as people hurried to the shops and markets before they closed. He walked several blocks, thinking of Jon. Time was running out. He had to get to Jon before the CIA found him. Turning a corner, he found himself in front of a bookshop. Local newspapers were stacked outside the door, weighted down by pieces of broken masonry. His need for current news drew him inside. The shop was dark and close, dust motes floating in the still air. Paperbacks were stuffed into every conceivable nook and in stacks on the floor. They emitted that pungent, sour smell of books printed in developing countries.

Garrison stood just inside the door, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He didn't pretend to browse.

There was no counter. The clerk sat on a low stool drinking tea and arguing in a quiet voice with a customer. Garrison spotted more newspapers in the back of the store and went directly to them. Copies of Tajikistan and the Times of Central Asia were slumped against the back wall. There was no Le Mondehe was almost thankful for thatbut, amazingly, a single two-day old Guardian. Garrison s.n.a.t.c.hed it off the floor glancing at the headlines above the foldthe usual Israeli-Palestinian deadlock, an article on the psychological benefits of exercise and not much else. He folded the paper, paid the clerkwho eyed him warily and put his money in a box on the floorand went back out onto the street. At least he would have fairly recent news to get him through the evening in his smelly room.

Garrison had developed finicky habits over the years and tried to hide them, knowing they weren't masculine, were perhaps even un-American. They had developed, not through upbringing, but through philosophy, or so he thought, unwilling to believe that they might reflect his own true nature. Humanity was steeped in mediocrity and the detritus of human leavings filled him with disgust. In such moments of clarity, he wondered if his son's quirks weren't solely the responsibility of his mother.

Garrison walked for awhile, circling past his boarding house before turning back. The sun was lower as he crossed his street a block east, heading toward the alley that led to the back door of his residence. It was a short block and he could see a woman entering the front door of his house. The battered entrance fronted directly onto the street, no sidewalk, no steps. Even from his distance he could tell that the woman wasn't Tajik. She wore a headscarf and traditional Tajik female attire but he could see by her coloring that she was probably blond. And there weren't too many blond Tajiks. His body s.h.i.+fted gears as his instinct told him she was an American, something about the way she held herself.

They had found him. It must have been through Armin.

Or more likely, Armin's men. He had learned long ago that sometimes the most militant-seeming extremists will abandon their cause in a moment if they believe that they have a chance of a life in a free country. Armin's men may have cut a deal with the CIA. Garrison stopped at the corner before turning into the alley. He had everything he needed to jump into a car and run to the airport. He had no reason to go back to his room. But he had to know what this woman knew.

Garrison rounded the corner of the alley with caution.

Where there was one there could be many. He walked quickly, his hand inside his jacket within reach of the 9mm Browning snug under his armthe only reason he was wearing a jacket in such a climate. The alleytoo narrow for a carreeked of urine.

He could see the proprietor of the boarding house sitting in the open door, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. He was probably only thirty but looked much older, with deep lines crossing his forehead. He nodded as Garrison approached.

"A woman just entered the house from the front." Garrison spoke to him quietly in Russian. "Did you see her?"

The man breathed acrid smoke through his nostrils and shrugged. Garrison wanted to gut him on the spot for his apathy, his blind acceptance of his wretched circ.u.mstances.

Control.

Instead, Garrison stepped past him and moved down the narrow hallway to the staircase. The building had sprung up, probably overnight, during the time when Moscow still held the reins over most of Central Asia. The house had been erected without care for its longevity and now it was crumbling. Climbing the darkened stairway silently, careful to avoid the creaks in the old, badly fitted wooden boards, Garrison reminded himself that he would have to be restrained. This woman was likely an American. She was only doing her job. He had no ill will for her.

How long had it been since he'd killed a man? Or a woman for that matter? He never relished it but it did come with a certain satisfaction.

The air in the hallway was close and stale. The proprietor seemed to think he could keep his lodging fresher by leaving the windows closed and keeping out the stink of the street, a miscalculation in Garrison's mind. His room was at the end of a narrow hallway on the third floor, a nasty little garret that made him think of Raskolnikov. His mind often went to the Russians as a point of reference, an inheritance from learning his trade as the Cold War wrapped up.

Garrison moved down the hallway as silently as a cat, dim light barely emitting from a naked, flickering bulb badly attached to the low ceiling. Reaching his door, he could see that someone had entered his roomthe mark he always left was disturbed.

He moved past the door and stood in the shadows, his ear against the wall.

He could hear movement in the room through the thin wall.

He knew it was the woman he saw entering from the front and he wondered what he would do with her. His instincts, sorely won through countless horrific events, would have to guide him now.

He slipped the Browning from the shoulder holster and tucked the Guardian into the back of his pants.

He stepped closer to the door and could hear drawers being opened and closed. She wouldn't find anything of interest, nothing to incriminate him or give any hint of who lived there.

He put his hand on the k.n.o.b of the door and inched it openhe had oiled the hinges himself when he checked in.

The woman stood at the wardrobe at the back of the room checking the pockets of his suitcase. He couldn't help but smile a little. This would be too easy. Silently, he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He stood for a moment watching her. He could see the b.u.t.t of her weapon under her arm through her unlikely clothing. Then she froze, sensing him.

"Not a movement. Not a breath. You mustn't try anything foolish."

The woman raised her hands and turned slowly to face him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

Rennie walked fast, keeping her pace. They were so close now. The entire ordeal would be over soon. But she knew it would also bring an end to her time with Hannah. She didn't know how to think about that and kept it pressed down deep.

Control. She had always maintained control in her emotions with women. Never show too much. She never opened herself up completely. Never felt whatever it was that would allow that to happen. No woman had touched that place in her. But now, she could feel herself stirring. Something new was opening up inside her. And she wanted to take Hannah in, deep inside, where no one had ever been. It terrified her. To go there was dangerous.

It meant making herself vulnerable, open to a kind of pain she had never felt beforeand, yes, perhaps with it the potential for happiness. She didn't know if it was worth the risk.

She had been alone for so long. In D.C., when emptiness cut away at her until it reached her very core, she would go to a club, some trashy place in a sketchy part of the city where the boys cruised each other every night of the week. There were girls there, too. Always a few, at least on the weekends. Paying her cover at the door, she would feel the thumping ba.s.s rousing her senses. She'd move into the room, a ma.s.s of undulating flesh, slowly, striding fluidly and deliberately into the mix. The s.p.a.ce throbbing, pulsing, lights flas.h.i.+ng, she would press herself into the twisted knot of bodies, moving to the never-ending thump.

She always wore something dark and tight, showing off her arms and the perfect chisel of her abdomen. She moved in a sultry half-cadence to the tribal beat permeating the room, drawing energy from the sea of sweating, s.h.i.+rtless men. Each time was like the others. Eventually and inevitably, a woman appeared out of the crush, behind her, moving against her. This was what she came for. A moment's connection in the dark, chaos rearing up on all sides. She moved against her, feeling the contour of her body, a phantom woman still, creating and reshaping her as the music insinuated itself into the very rhythms of her brain. This was the moment, before she knew who moved against her, where an instant of pleasure meant more than anything in the world.

Then the knowledge that the moment had pa.s.sed, and it was all a farce, crawled, scrabbling like an animal into her consciousness.

Finally, she turned and their bodies, hers and the phantom woman's, would meet, face to face. Social convention kept her there an instant more and then she went alone into the night.

She never went home with a woman from a club, only from bars.

The club was a sacred, desperate, unholy place that she returned to like a junkie.

But here in the woods, that world seemed a million miles away and the desire for that transitory pa.s.sion felt utterly meaningless.

Rennie could hardly believe she had ever wanted it. This was realshe and Hannah fighting for their lives, discovering what they were made of in the worst possible conditions. Rennie's arm was tense under the weight of her weapon. She saw the shape of the muscle as it embraced the bone. Her body was strong. She could feel its strength and rely on it. She wondered about the rest of her. What else was there? Did she have anything to offer another person? Someone who wasn't just a moment in the dark.

She glanced over at Hannah, who looked ragged.

"Can we stop and rest? Just for an hour?" Hannah's voice broke with fatigue.

It was time. It was a good spot. Hannah must have been keeping an eye out for a suitable place. Rennie shelved her thoughts to attend to the moment.

"Yes," she said as she threw down her pack and sat upon the soft earth. She spread her legs and Hannah settled in between them. They didn't speak. They both knew the drill by now. It wasn't very cold but Rennie slipped her arms around Hannah.

Hannah curled her own around Rennie's. Their bodies warmed to one another quickly. They sat in silence, feeling the indescribable pleasure of not moving. They both understood the comfort of the moment, the closeness of their bodies. Hannah leaned further into Rennie and dropped her head back onto her shoulder.

"What did you leave behind?" Hannah spoke quietly, turning her head slightly so that she could speak just under Rennie's ear.

Rennie's body began to respond, to the intimacy of the moment, Hannah's breath on her neck, her voice velvety smooth. "Before you came here, to shoot bad men in the woods?"

Rennie found herself unable to speak. A sound emerged from her throat, but it wasn't language. It came from somewhere deep, from that place that hadn't ever been touched. The touch stung and she felt the pain of it mixed with something else so perfect she couldn't name it if she tried.

"Nothing."

It was true. No close family or friends, no pets. Her one close friend had made the journey with her, but wouldn't be returning home. What was there to go back to? She had put so much into her career that there was never anything left over for the things in life that she knew really mattered. Maybe she had planned it that way.

0.

Hannah trailed her fingers lightly along Rennie's arm. "No lover?"

There was Marta. But they weren't that to one another.

Everyone she had ever been with had been a convenience and nothing more.

"No. No lover."

They sat in silence again.

"This was our first mission together. My team. Me. Most of us were new to special forces."

Hannah drew Rennie's arms more tightly to her body. She hesitated before she spoke, seeming to choose her words carefully.

"Do you think it's unusual to send a newly formed team on such a mission?"

Rennie thought of Smythe and what he had said to her in their briefing meeting. It seemed so long ago, another lifetime.

Had they been set up to fail? A young team sent on a mission beyond their capabilities?

When she finally responded, Rennie spoke with more honesty than she intended. "It is unusual. But I don't think any of us could allow ourselves to think that. Yes. It is very unusual."

Rennie moved her cheek against Hannah's, banis.h.i.+ng all thought. And then, her mouth open, she moved her lips along Hannah's neck, taking in her scent, so close to a kiss, so close.

Hannah leaned into her and Rennie could feel her breathing deepen.

She had to stop. This wasn't the time. She wondered if it would ever come.

"Sleep now, sleep. While you have the chance."

Hannah paused for a long moment and then drew Rennie's hand to her lips, turning it, and kissed her palm lightly.

"Okay, okay."

Then she s.h.i.+fted slightly, laying her head on Rennie's chest, and slept.

Margot Day heard the voice and felt a cold sweat rise to the surface of her skin. She turned slowly, her hands raised in supplication. Martin Garrison stood just inside the door holding a silenced automatic. She said nothing, there was no use. She knew he would never take her for a local thief.

"Put your hands against the wall and kneel." He spoke softly.

His voice seemed to hum.

Margot followed his instructions, hearing him move behind her. She could feel his nearness. He reached under the folds of her dress and plucked her pistol from beneath her arm. Then, he put his hand on her head resting it there gently for a moment before he delicately peeled off her headscarf. She felt the silk of the scarf slip slowly, almost sensuously, from her neck and then replacing it was the hard b.u.t.t of the silencer at the base of her skull.

G.o.d. No. It can't end like this.

Margot felt sorrow wash over her for everything she had left undone and waited for the motion of Garrison's finger on the trigger. At least it would be over quick. When it didn't come, she began to tremble. It began as a s.h.i.+ver creeping up her spine until it met the gun against her head. Her muscles began to twitch, in waves. As if she were giving birth, the waves came more frequently as her panic rose until she was shaking so hard the silencer was tapping against her skull, politely knocking. She felt her eyes begin to well.

Don't cry. G.o.ddammit, don't cry. At least die with dignity.

Then Garrison laid his hand on Margot's shoulder, his thumb along the back of her neck just under the gun. Her trembling ceased under his touch and she tried to think. She had to think if she was going to save herself.

What were his options? He now knew the CIA had his location. He obviously had no intention of turning himself in and was willing to add to his crimes by detaining a fellow agent at gunpoint. Did he have anything to lose by killing her?