Doranna Durgin - Comeback

There wasn’t all that much material in the folder. A summary, for her benefit: Cole had been called back into the field because they’d seen a perfect opportunity to use the Berzhaani reporter persona he’d established during the hostage crisis before he’d removed the disguise and ended up blazed across the front page of national and international newspapers. Au naturel, so to speak.

She took a moment to absorb the irony of that. Cole had come to Berzhaan unauthorized, on his own time, and ultimately had been released from his contract because of it. The agency hadn’t even paid for treatment of the leg he’d broken in the process of helping to defeat the terrorists, although the state department had happily picked up the bill. But now the CIA had called on Cole to use the very persona he’d developed during that incident.

These are your people now, she reminded herself, and went on to read the mission brief.

Cole Jones had gone to Berzhaan to locate and retrieve a Afghan man lost in mid-defection—Dr. Aymal. Selena went hunting for a first name and didn’t find it, and then realized the man must be Pashtun—a culture that generally took on surnames only to make dealing with Western nations more convenient. Aymal was this man’s lone name, and he didn’t appear to have any need for such convenience.

Feeling the pressure of the allied hunt for terrorists across the Mideast, Aymal had made the leap to the other side, reaching out to the States with promises of information about both Iran-to-Iraq weapons sales and impending terrorist strikes across organizations. CIA officers had gotten him from Afghanistan to Berzhaan…and then lost him and nearly one of their own in an ambush. Aymal, it seemed, had gotten away but still had nowhere to go.

Cole had gone in to find him. To do what he did best, which was to navigate his way through high-stakes circumstances that couldn’t be planned to the last detail. Going into Berzhaan, he’d had only a number of contacts and pickup arrangements.

And this time, he’d missed one.

What were you thinking, to leave me? To leave us?

The brief didn’t make any suggestion as to what might have happened. It noted only that no Westerners had been reported as killed or jailed since Cole’s arrival in Suwan, Berzhaan’s capital city.

A city Selena had recently come to know all too well.

And that’s why she was here—in this plane, on the way to Langley in her riding tights and boots and aroma. Because she was Cole’s wife, and the only person who had the barest chance of anticipating Cole’s moves. Because she knew the city.

And because the city knew her. It loved her.

And it owed her.

By the time they reached Langley—setting down on a private airstrip, hustling off to the McLean campus in the waiting car—Selena was more than ready for a shower and change of clothes. But her clean-cut escort indicated there was no time for such luxuries. The young woman smiled pleasantly and said little, walking Selena through the lobby of the Original Headquarters Building, expediting her passage through security, stowing her luggage in a small locked room. They headed up to the fourth-floor main entrance to the New Headquarters Building, moving too quickly for Selena to catch the view of the OHB from the skylighted entry corridor. But when they hit the atrium, Selena dug in her heels just long enough to take in the four stories of airy windowed space, to get a good look at the three suspended aircraft models overhead. She recognized the Blackbird and squinted up at what looked like a drone of some sort.

“I’m sorry,” the young woman said. “But they’re waiting for us. We really can’t linger here.”

Nor did she want to. Not with Cole’s fate in question.

Odd. Until the previous winter in Berzhaan, neither of them had ever seen the other in action. Even then, they’d merely passed each other in the midst of chaos, hesitating long enough for a quick exchange of information across the room. Before that they’d gone their separate ways while working, aware of what the other was doing only through vague hints and innuendos.

Now suddenly Cole’s life depended on her, and unless she was mistaken, they would very much see each other in action before this was over.

She wondered if it would feel as strange then as it did at this moment.

Her guide led her through the atrium to the six-story tower on the other side, and they entered the glass-sided elevator to ascend to the fifth floor. The door at which they finally stopped opened into a room lined with windows and a view of the landscaped courtyard, fish pond and manicured trees.

Selena noted those things only absently. For sitting around the table of this little briefing room with its high-tech presentation options and Aeron chairs were several people she didn’t know…and one she did.

Steven Dobry.

He looked her up and down, pausing visibly at the lime seam stripes on her schooling tights. “Nice.”

She didn’t respond. She suspected that were their situations reversed, Dobry would still be up on the mountain, and it was enough. Nodding a greeting to the others, she pulled her eyes-only folder from the briefcase and dropped the briefcase to the floor, sitting in the empty chair with a pad of paper and pen neatly waiting for her. Then, since everyone else had ice water at hand, she poured herself a glass from the pitcher in the center of the table and helped herself to a croissant. The sandwich she’d had on the plane hadn’t nearly done the job.

The busywork gave her a chance to assess the others in the room. Just three of them: Dobry, the man she belatedly recognized as the individual who’d pulled Cole out of the training event at the Farm, and a woman she didn’t know. “All right, I’m here,” she said. “And the sooner I get back to Berzhaan, the better.”

“That’s the idea,” the woman said. “My name is Janet, and this is Randy.”

Selena raised an eyebrow as she bit into the croissant. No last names, even for this? Janet smiled at her. “You’ll be working with the station chief in Berzhaan. There’s no point in cluttering the situation with distracting details.”

Selena swallowed without chewing. “Cole is over there somewhere,” she pointed out. “You can trust that I won’t be distracted from that.” Whatever he was thinking when he left, I intend to put us back together.

“Really?” Dobry said. “I thought the whole reason you were teaching at the Farm was that you couldn’t be trusted at all.”

The woman aimed a disapproving look at him. “This operation will depend on teamwork. We chose you, Mr. Dobry, because of your expertise with disguises and your familiarity with Ms. Shaw Jones, although your language skills for the area are only passable. We expect you to go in under a subtle cover, and to be available to obscure both your identities when necessary—the instant it’s necessary. If we’ve made a mistake, we can rectify it before we waste any more time.”

Dobry was smooth enough, Selena would give him that. “My words weren’t well chosen, but this is something we really should put on the table.”

“That’s fair enough.” Randy No-Last-Name put down the pen which had only hovered over his pad. Dobry’s pleased nod disappeared fast enough when the man pinned him with an unwavering look. “But you should keep in mind that if we find it necessary to shuffle the team, you’re the one who’ll be going back to the Farm.”

Janet didn’t let the words linger before moving on. “We’ve considered the circumstances which sent Ms. Jones—”

“Shaw Jones,” Selena said. “Or better yet, Selena.”

Janet nodded. “Selena, then. Monthly evaluations have shown satisfactory progress. The details of last month’s incident at the Farm and the aftermath actually played a significant part in the decision to move forward with this ops plan. Selena’s reaction was an excellent example of a trained field officer reacting to a perceived threat. And we trust enough time has passed so that any awkwardness resulting from the incident is gone.”