Christopher Reich - Rules of Deception

A shadow fell across her features. Her change in mood was like a sharp drop in temperature. “Your patrolman’s jacket, of course. A wig. Ski pants. Stage blood.”

“How did you get down into the crevasse by yourself? It was way too dangerous to go solo.”

“I didn’t.”

“What do you mean you didn’t?” he snapped.

“I walked into it from below. You showed me the route once the summer after we were married.”

Jonathan closed his eyes as it came back to him. They’d come to Davos for a weekend to do some hiking and had spent an afternoon exploring the warren of caves and couloirs that honeycombed the glacier. “But those caves are only accessible during the summer. You can’t get in during winter, let alone during a blizzard.”

Emma tilted her head, which was her way of saying he was mistaken. “I didn’t go to that meeting in Amsterdam last Friday. I came here instead to see if my plan was actionable.”

“‘Actionable’? Is that spyspeak or what?”

Emma ignored the remark. “It turns out that if you can find your way to the right spot at the base of the glacier, you can get into the caves. I programmed a handheld GPS unit, then route-marked the way up and back so I wouldn’t get lost if it snowed.”

“Which is why you insisted that we come to Arosa instead of Zermatt,” he said, feeling somehow complicit.

“I had good reason. It was our anniversary. We made our first climb here eight years ago.”

“‘Our anniversary.’ Right.” He knew then that she’d also lied about the weather report and sabotaged his two-way radio. “How did you know we wouldn’t go down and get you?”

“I didn’t really,” she admitted. “I gambled on the fact that Steiner and his team would be coming up the mountain to rescue a woman with a broken leg, not haul her out of a one-hundred-meter crevasse. Rope is heavy. I didn’t see them bringing more than was necessary. I was surprised they even had two lengths.”

“Steiner…you know his name.” He looked out the window. The hits just kept on coming.

“I had to hang around Davos to make sure things went as planned. I listened to his phone calls and radio transmissions. Don’t look so surprised. It’s a piece of cake to pull a cellular call out of the air.”

“And then? Didn’t you know that I would check on the baggage claims?”

“I hoped you wouldn’t get them. I wanted to retrieve the bags in Landquart myself, but it was too much of a risk. Once I was dead, I had to stay dead.”

Jonathan spun in his seat. “ You were there? You saw what happened at the train station with the police? You watched what they did to me?”

Emma nodded. “I’m sorry, Jonathan. I wanted to help.”

He sank back, at a loss for words.

She went on. “Afterward, I trailed you back to the hotel, but I was too late. Some of our team had already been through the room. You arrived soon after they’d left. I didn’t have time to get inside. Once, I thought you might have seen me. It was in the woods behind the hotel.”

Jonathan recalled sensing the presence nearby and looking into the tree line, but he’d seen nothing.

Suddenly, he’d had enough. He wasn’t interested in the who, what, and when. It was all just window dressing. He wanted to know why. “What’s this about, Em?” he said quietly. “What are you involved in?”

“The usual,” she replied, never taking her eyes from the road.

“You’re supplying Parvez Jinn with restricted equipment to enrich uranium. That hardly qualifies as the usual.”

“Nothing he wasn’t going to get sooner or later.”

“Don’t act like that.”

“Like what?”

“Cynical. Like you don’t care.”

“It’s because I care that I’m doing what I’m doing.”

“What are you doing? Who do you work for? The CIA? The Brits?”

“The CIA? God no. I’m at Defense. The Pentagon. Something called Division.”

“But Simone said she was with the CIA.”

Emma considered this, brushing her cheek with her fingers. “Really? Actually, I didn’t know about her until today.”

“Why would the CIA want to kill someone who works for the Pentagon? We’re both on the same side, aren’t we?”

“Power. They want it. We have it. The tug of war’s been going on for a couple of years.”

“But I thought you hated the American government.”

A thin smile told him that he was way off base. Another illusion gone.

“So, you’re American?” he asked.

“God, I wanted to wait to get into all of this. It’s so bloody complicated.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Yes, Jonathan, I’m American. If you’re wondering about the accent, it’s real. I grew up outside London. My father was with the U.S. Air Force stationed at Lakenheath.”

“Did he steer you into this?”

“In the beginning, it was because of family, I suppose. Daddy being in the military and all. But I stayed because I’m good at it. Because I’m making a difference for something I believe in. Because I like it. I keep doing it for the same reason that you keep being a doctor. Because our job is who we are and nothing much else matters.”

“Is that why you picked me?”

“At first, yes.”

“You mean something changed?”

“You know what changed. We fell in love.”

“I fell in love,” said Jonathan. “I’m not sure you did.”

Emma looked at him sharply. “I didn’t have to stay with you. No one forced me to marry you.”

“They didn’t stop you, either. Who better to slide you into position for your assignments than a doctor who actually enjoyed serving in hardship posts? What exactly did you do in all those places? Did you kill people? Are you an assassin like that guy you shot back there?”

“Of course not.” Emma dismissed the suggestion as if she’d never fired a gun, let alone shot and killed two human beings within the last thirty minutes.

“What then?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“You and Blitz and Hoffmann were selling uranium enrichment equipment to Iran. Jinn believed that you supplied the equipment in order to start a war. He said that we made a mistake going into Iraq without proof that they possessed WMD and that we weren’t going to do it again.”

“Did Parvez say all that? May he roast in hell forever.”

“That’s a nice way to talk about a man you screwed.”

“Fuck you, Jonathan! That’s not fair.”

“Not fair? You lied to me for eight years. You pretended to be my wife. Don’t tell me what’s fair.”

“I am your wife.”

“How can you say that when I don’t even know your name!”

Emma looked away. If he’d been expecting a tear, he was disappointed. Her expression was set in stone.

“Well?” he demanded. “Is it true? Are you trying to start a war?”

“We’re trying to stop one.”

“By handing out nukes?”

“We’re only hastening matters along, so we can control how the situation develops. We supply Iran with the technology they so desperately want now, and then expose their work to the world. It’s about being proactive. We can’t afford to be caught unawares. Not this time. And besides, it won’t be a war. It will strictly be an air campaign.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Don’t be so damned naïve. Some people can’t be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. If Iran gets them, you can jolly well bet that the really bad boys will have them soon after. That’s all there is to it.”

“And what’s going to happen when they retaliate?”

“With what?” Emma asked. “We gave them the equipment to make a little enriched uranium. Now we’re going to take it away.”