Linda Howard - All The Queen's Men

John watched her absorb that, saw the quick suspicion in her eyes that Frank might be lying, as well. She wasn't a naive, trusting little soul, but neither was she experienced at completely hiding her thoughts and emotions.

"Why am I here?" she asked abruptly, switching her gaze to John.

Frank drew her attention back to him. "We have a ... situation." He poured a cup of coffee and handed it to her.

"How does that involve me? Could I have some cream and sugar, please?"

The simple question rattled Frank, unused as he was to domestic duties. He gave the tray a panicked glance, as if he hoped the requested items would materialize.

"Ah... I-"

"Never mind," she said, and composedly sipped her black coffee. "I can drink it like this. What's this situation?"

John restrained a bark of laughter. As he remembered very well, she always drank her coffee black. This was just Niema needling Frank a little, getting back at him for setting her up for such a shock. She had always been able to hold her own with the team, and the realization was still as surprising now as it had been then, because she looked like such a lady.

Frank looked at him as if asking for his help. John shrugged. This was Frank's little show, let him run it. He had no idea why Niema was there, except as Frank's heavy-handed attempt at a little matchmaking. He probably thought John needed some R and R, and since he had admitted being attracted to Niema-well, why not? Except Frank hadn't been in Iran, and he hadn't watched Niema's face while he ordered her husband to kill himself, or he would have known why not.

'Ah . . . we're very interested in the work you've been doing. An undetectable surveillance device will be invaluable. As it happens, we have an urgent need for it now. You know more about the device than anyone, since you designed it. You also have some field experience-"

"No," she interrupted. "I don't do fieldwork." She was pale again, her jaw set. She got to her feet. "If that's the only reason you wanted to talk to me, I'm sorry you wasted our mutual time. A phone call would have sufficed, and you could have saved yourself the trouble of bringing me here." She paused, then murmured ironically, "Wherever here is."

" You haven't heard all the details," Frank said, shooting another quick look at John. "And you are, might I add, an employee of the Agency, not a freelance contract agent."

"Are you going to fire her if she turns you down?" John asked interestedly, just to pin Frank down and make him squirm some more.

"No, of course not-"

"Then we have nothing more to discuss," she said firmly. "Please have me taken home."

Frank sighed, and gave up. "Of course. I apologize for the inconvenience, Mrs. Burdock." He wasn't a man accustomed to apology, but he did it well.

John let him reach for the phone before he interrupted. "Don't bother," he said easily, abandoning his lazy sprawl against the desk. "I'll drive her home."

Chapter Six

Niema got into the car and buckled her seat belt. "Shouldn't I be blindfolded or something?" she asked wryly, and she was only half joking. The garage door in front of them slid up and he pulled out, then turned left onto the street.

Tucker-no, she had to get used to thinking of him as Medina-actually smiled. "Only if you want. Don't tell me they blindfolded you to bring you here."

"No, but I kept my eyes closed." She wasn't kidding. She hadn't wanted to know where the deputy director of operations lived. She had lost her taste for adventure five years ago, and knowing where Frank Vinay lived came under the heading of information that could be dangerous.

Medina's smile turned into a grin. He was really a very good-looking man, she thought, watching his face in the dim green glow of the dash lights. In the past five years when she remembered him it had been in terms of what happened, not in how he looked, and his face had faded from her memory. Still, she had recognized him immediately, even without the heavy stubble of beard.

Seeing him was a bigger shock than she had ever thought it would be, but then again, she'd never imagined she would see him again, so there was no way she could have prepared for it. Tucker-no, Medina -was such an integral part of the worst thing that had ever happened to her that just hearing his voice had thrown her five years into the past.

"I should have known you were regular CIA, instead of a contract agent." In retrospect she felt like a gullible idiot, but then things were always clearer in the mind's rearview mirror.

"Why would you?" He sounded interested. "My cover was as a contract agent."

Looking back, she realized that Dallas had known, which was why he had urged Medina to stay behind rather than risk capture. And Dallas, an ex-SEAL accustomed to top security clearances and need-to-know, had kept the information to himself, not even telling her, his wife. But she worked for the Agency now, and she knew that was how things were. You kept things to yourself, you didn't tell friends or neighbors what you did for a living; discretion became second nature.

"Dallas knew, didn't he?" she asked, just for affirmation.

"He knew I wasn't a contract agent. He didn't know my real name, though. When I worked with him before, he knew me as Tucker."

"Why did you tell me? It wasn't necessary." She wished he hadn't. If even half the rumors she had heard whispered about the elusive, shadowy John Medina were true, then she didn't want to know who he really was. Ignorance, in this case, was safer than discretion.

"Perhaps it was."

His voice was reflective, and he didn't explain further.

"Why did you have a cover with us? We were a team. None of us were out to get you."

"If you didn't know my real name, then, if any of you were captured, you couldn't reveal it."

'And if you were captured?"

"I wouldn't be."

"Oh? How would you prevent it?"

"Poison," he said matter-of-factly.

Niema recoiled. She knew that some operatives, back in the tense Cold War days, had carried a suicide pill, usually cyanide, that they were to swallow rather than allow themselves to be captured. To know that John Medina did the same made her feel sick to her stomach.

"But- "

"It's better than being tortured to death." He shrugged. "Over the years, I've pissed off a lot of people. They would all like to have a turn removing my body parts."

From what she had heard about his exploits, he was understating the case. It was even rumored he had killed his own wife, because he discovered she was a double agent and was about to expose a highly placed mole. Niema didn't believe that particular rumor, but then neither had she believed John Medina was a real man. Not one of the people who talked about him had ever met him, seen him, or knew anyone who had. She had thought him a kind of... urban myth, though one restricted to intelligence circles.

She couldn't quite take in that not only was he real, but she knew him. And even more astounding was how accepting he was of everything entailed in being who he was, as if his notoriety was simply the price he had to pay to do what he wanted.

"Given your circumstances," she said with asperity, "you shouldn't have told me now, either." The fact that he had made her suspicious.

"Actually, I was so surprised to see you that I blurted it out without thinking."

The idea of him being taken off guard was so out of character that she snorted, and stretched out her left leg. "Here, pull this one, too."

"It's true," he murmured. "I didn't know you were going to be there."

"You had no idea Mr. Vinay wanted me to ... whatever it was he wanted me to do? And you just happened to show up? How likely is that?"

"Not very, but unlikely things happen every day."