Chris Moriarty - Spin Control

Eventually, however, Ash finished stalling, settled herself on the sofa facing Li. “I have a message for you from an old friend.”

Oh shit.

Ash smiled.

Li didn’t.

Silence arrived.

Li, who had outgrown the urge to make nicey-nice long before her first day of interrogation training, let it stay.

For one thing it gave her a chance to reexamine the impressively contradictory woman sitting in front of her. Gone were the high heels and the high-tech now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t suits. Ash was still carefully made-up—and Li never could quite bring herself to trust a woman who wore makeup—but she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and thick wool socks, and her long hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. She was more beautiful like this, Li decided. Certainly she was more approachable. But there was something slippery about her: a hard, unnatural self-assurance that repelled every attempt to access the person inside the beautiful package.

Basically, there was no there there. Unless you counted the toddler and the stretch marks. And that was the kind of “there” that could only make any sane person duck for cover.

“You haven’t asked who the old friend is,” Ash prompted. “Is that because you don’t want to know, or because you already do know?”

“Helen Nguyen and I have known each other since before you kissed your first boy. Or girl. Or whatever. We aren’t friends anymore, if we ever were. So why don’t you skip the dance of the seven veils and tell me what she wants from me?”

“Your help,” Ash said simply. “Your help to get the Interfaithers out of Israeli Intel.”

“And I should care about this because…?”

Ash’s perfectly made-up eyes widened. “I would think you’d be the last person to ask that question.”

“Are you about to become the next rich Ring-sider who takes one look at my DNA and thinks she knows what I should think and who my friends should be? It’s a long line. You’ll have to take a number.”

“You know I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Well, I’m not very bright, I’m afraid. You know how those Xenogen constructs are. Bet you’ve sat through any number of nice dinner parties where your mother complained about how hard it was to turn them into decent kitchen help.”

Ash’s lips tightened in anger.

Li—finally—allowed herself the faintest of smiles.

We have a decision, gentlemen. Bottom card fight to the lovely Miss Catherine Li on a technical knockout. And may it not come back to bite her in the ass when it really counts.

“Fine,” Ash said. “Here’s what Nguyen told me, and you can do whatever you want with it. I’m just the messenger. No need to shoot stray voltage my way.”

Stray voltage? Just the messenger? Had the woman watched so many action spins that she thought people actually talked like that?

The baby hiccuped twice and seemed about to cry. Ash leaned forward and patted absently at his diapered bottom. Amazingly, the gesture seemed to calm him.

“Mind if I smoke?” Li asked, taking out her cigarettes.

“Yes, actually. I never got used to it Ring-side.”

“Thought you were from the Ring.”

“Not exactly.” And there it was again: the momentary sensation that the real person behind the mask had appeared and just as quickly vanished. Like those times in hard-vac ops when a teammate cleared his visor to get an unmediated look at the field of battle. Mirroreyesmirror. All in such quick succession that you were left doubting you’d even seen the face inside the helmet. “It’s complicated.”

“Can’t see how that would be.”

The real person—or whatever it was in there—peeked out once more. “I’d say I was surprised to hear you say that if I didn’t think you’d jump down my throat again.”

“And I’d ask you what the hell that meant if I thought you’d tell me.”

“Right then.” Ash leaned forward, jeans hiking up over ankles that were, okay, yes, Li could admit it, fabulous. Even if the woman was sent straight from the treacherous hands of General Helen Nguyen.

Li sat up, blinking at a sudden and surprising thought. Was Ash Nguyen’s latest and greatest protegée? Had this lovely package filled the void left behind by Li’s defection? Well, Helen had always had eclectic taste.

“You heard Didi’s briefing. Everything he said was true. But there’s more. And that more is why I’m talking to you. Didi was surprised by Absalom’s resurrection. We weren’t. We’ve been tracking high-level leaks for a while now. Information has gotten out that was very, very tight band. So we took a page out of Gavi Shehadeh’s book—or should I say Didi Halevy’s book?—and cooked up a few barium meals of our own. We sent them through Didi’s office. And had them pop out in some of the last places anyone wants to see them.”

“The Interfaithers,” Li hazarded.

“Try KnowlesSyndicate.”

“The Interfaithers and the Syndicates aren’t exactly fellow travelers.”

“No, they aren’t.”

“But the Syndicates and the Palestinians are another matter. So we’re back to Absalom.” Li caught her breath. “Or are you suggesting that someone in Didi’s office is directly tied to Korchow?”

“Does it matter?” Ash let the question hang fire for a while. “You know about the prime minister’s list?”

“The kidon list?” Legend had it that there was a list, the single most classified document in Israel, containing the names of men and women with Jewish blood on their hands whom the Mossad’s kidon, or assassination teams, were cleared to kill as and when opportunity presented itself. “Sure. I’ve heard of it. So what?”

“Gavi Shehadeh’s name is on it. Naturally. But the prime minister hasn’t initialed it, so they can’t do the hit. Didi’s the one who’s keeping it from happening.”

“So they’re old friends.”

“Did I say different?”

No. Just walked me up to the brink and let me look over the edge all by my little self. Helen couldn’t have done it better.

“What are you saying? That Didi is Absalom and framed Gavi to keep from taking the fall himself? Or that Gavi really was Absalom and Didi’s in it with him? Or…I mean, what actually? You open up that can and you’ll find out it’s pretty hard to get the worms back inside.”

“Look, if Helen’s wrong, then no one will be happier than me. But if she’s right, we’ll be glad we played our hand close to the vest.”

“The problem with Helen—can I have a drink of water?”

Ash rose wordlessly and padded to the kitchen. Li heard the clink of glasses jostling each other in the cupboard, the burp of a bottle being uncapped, the rippling pour of water.

“The problem with Helen,” Li said loudly enough for Ash to hear her in the next room, “is that sometimes when she gets a hard-on for someone, it’s patriotism. And sometimes, at least in my experience, it’s just politics. And I really dislike being the hatchet man in a back-alley political brawl.”

“This isn’t political.” Ash came back to stand in front of Li, glass in hand, water dripping off her long and immaculately manicured fingernails. “I’ve seen it unfold firsthand. I’ve seen the spinfeeds and the office logs. This is the real deal. Your country calls. Rough men report for duty.”

“The last time Helen quoted Orwell at me, she ended up trying to kill me.”

“You just got between her and Cohen. It wasn’t personal.”

“Bullshit,” Li snapped, dangerously close to losing her temper. “Killing’s always personal. I know. I fucking do it for a living.”

“Not anymore, last time I heard.”

They stared at each other. This time Ash didn’t budge or blink or even smile.