Merline Lovelace - Closer Encounters

This is for Vernon, my handsome,

curly-haired brother-in-law, who trained

at the Merchant Marine base on Catalina Island.

Like his brother—my own handsome hero—

he served his country with great distinction.

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Coming Next Month

November, 1941

The liquid notes soared through the balmy California night. They sprang from the golden slide of two trombones in perfect unison. The reedy seduction of an alto sax. The swish of a steel brush against cymbals. More than fifteen hundred couples lost to the dreamy ballad swayed cheek-to-cheek on the parquet floor of the world famous Avalon Ballroom on Catalina Island.

The singer waited for the clarinet to weep out the final bars of the bridge before stepping up to the mike. Her golden snood glittering in the light from five Tiffany chandeliers, Trixie Halston cradled the mike and poured out a throaty promise to walk alone, saving her laughter and her smiles until she could share them with her love.

She put her heart into each note, her earthy, provocative signature on each phrase. She was good at making every male in the audience think she was singing to him alone. Very good. All the while she scanned the crowd.

Johnny was here. She’d seen him come in a few moments ago, tall and curly-haired and achingly handsome in his merchant marine uniform. He’d come in response to the urgent message she’d left this afternoon. Now she’d lost him in the throng of dancers jamming the ballroom.

Her impatience mounting, she rushed the refrain and earned a quick frown from the bandleader. Smiling an apology, Trixie slowed for the last stanza. When the music faded, she signed off with her signature farewell to the men serving aboard the ships that sailed from Southern California’s busy ports.

“Good night to all you mariners. Stay safe.”

She didn’t need to glance at the note the band’s PR director had passed her to add a heartfelt postscript.

“And to the men of the USS Kallister, keep a song in your heart.”

She often singled out ships for a personal message, but this was Johnny’s ship. A munitions ship. Packed with high explosives for British and Australian forces fighting a brutal holding action in the Pacific. The United States had yet to enter the war that was engulfing the rest of the world, but even the most rabid isolationists and antiwar activists acknowledged it was just a matter of months, if not weeks. In the meantime, American ships ran a gauntlet of U-boats lurking off the coasts to supply the Allies with desperately needed supplies purchased under the lend-lease program.

Johnny hadn’t said anything about leaving L.A. last night. He couldn’t, of course. Yet Trixie guessed he must be shipping out soon. His kisses had been more urgent, his embrace more passionate, as if he wanted to imprint the feel of her, the taste of her, on his memory.

Anxious to get to him, she accepted the thunderous applause and slipped behind the stage curtains. A door led directly outdoors and onto the balcony that ringed the upper story ballroom.

Waves slapped against the rocks five stories below. The breeze carried the gay tinkle of rigging from the boats rocking at anchor in Avalon Harbor. Eager, impatient, Trixie called her lover’s name.

“Johnny?”

She heard a movement in one of the alcoves framed by the balcony’s ornate Moorish arches. With joy in her heart, she spun toward the sound.

That’s all she had. One instant of eager anticipation. Then an arm thrust out of the darkness and slammed into her shoulder. Off balance in her thick-soled platform wedgies, Trixie fell against the railing.

“Johnny!”

Another shove sent her over the rail. A scream ripping from her throat, she plummeted to the rocks below.

November, present day

An early frost glittered on the naked limbs of the chestnut trees lining the quiet side street just off Massachusetts Avenue, in the heart of Washington, D.C.’s, embassy district. Commuters pouring out of the Metro stop at the corner kept their heads down against the biting wind as they hurried to work.

If any had happened to glance at the elegant three-story town house halfway down the block, they might have noticed the discreet bronze plaque beside the door. The plaque indicated the structure housed the offices of the President’s Special Envoy.

The title was held by Nick Jensen, a jet-setting restaurateur who owned a string of exclusive watering holes that catered to the rich and famous around the world. Only a handful of Washington insiders knew that title masked Jensen’s real job—director of OMEGA. The small, ultrasecret organization sent its operatives into the field only at the request of the president himself.

One of those agents had just been activated.

Andrew McDowell—code name Riever—sat at the briefing table in the high-tech control center on the top floor of the town house. Shielded from penetration by every electronic eavesdropping device known to man, the control center hummed with the pulse of OMEGA’s heartbeat.

Frowning, Drew skimmed the data projected onto the screen taking up almost the whole north wall. There wasn’t much to skim. Just a list of Internet queries seeking information on the USS Kallister. Several of the queries cited a sailing date of 15 November and requested information on the ship’s course and cargo. The problem was, that course was classified. So was the cargo in the hold of the refurbished WWII-era ship.

The rust bucket that had hauled explosives across the Pacific during the war had been torpedoed and almost sunk. Mothballed after the war, it had been refitted and recommissioned in the late ’60s to meet the escalating demands of the Vietnam conflict. Now it carried a secret cargo—so secret, every circuit at the White House situation room had popped when the vigilant watchdogs at NSA plucked this string of queries out of the billions their computers screened every day.

“What do you think, Riever?”

Drew had derived his code name from the fierce raiders who wreaked such havoc on the Anglo-Scottish border in past centuries. Like his long-ago ancestors, he was hawk-eyed and broad-shouldered enough to swing a claymore. He felt the urge to swing one now.

He’d served a hitch in the navy before being recruited by OMEGA. That was almost eight years ago, but there was enough of the sailor left in him to generate a cold, deadly fury at the possibility someone might deliberately put a U.S. vessel at risk.

“I think,” he said to his boss, “I’d better haul my ass out to the west coast and check out the female who generated these queries. What have we got on her so far?”

“Not much,” Nick Jensen replied. Tall, tanned and tawny-haired, the one-time agent with the code name Lightning nodded to the console operator. A click of a mouse brought up the digitized image of a Washington state driver’s license.

According to the DMV, Tracy Brandt was twenty-eight years old, stood five-six and weighed a respectable one hundred and thirty-two pounds. No anorexic toothpick there.

The camera must have caught Brandt by surprise. Her picture showed a brunette with startled green eyes and a light dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

“Ms. Brandt worked as a budget analyst at the Puget Sound shipyards until two weeks ago,” Lightning advised Drew. “Her supervisor says he fired her because of repeated absences from work. He also says she told him he’d be sorry for letting her go.”