Ted Bell - Spy

Shut the damn blinds, Conch.

Suddenly, she rose from her chair and marched across the scrubbed wooden floor to the west-facing windows. There were four of them, tall casement windows, each with its own set of Venetian blinds. She grabbed each set of cords, yanked each of them to one side or the other until she finally got all four of the damn things to bang down on the windowsills. The office was plunged into deeper gloom.

She turned her back on the windows and stared for a moment with her arms crossed under her breasts, staring at the bad painting of a leaping sailfish that hung on the wall behind her desk. A grinning man with a bent rod stood on the heaving decks of the sport-fishing boat reeling in his trophy.

Hooked, goddamnit.

Ah, well, that’s better, she thought, looking at the shuttered windows and feeling her pulse slacken. No more distractions. Now, she could go back to her desk and get some work done. Who was he, anyway, to ’cause such a hellish fuss around here? There was vitally important work at hand. The next few days would be critical to State’s rapidly evolving foreign policy in Mexico and the southern hemisphere.

She sat down at the desk and considered her opening.

As she’d reminded President McAtee just before leaving Washington, the battlegrounds of the war on terror were constantly shifting. In her view, they were rapidly shifting to the south. Just look at the Mexican border. Cuba. Why, Chávez and the Venezuelan government had only recently—

“Conch?”

She took a breath. Here we go.

She looked up. Commander Alexander Hawke was standing in her doorway, leaning inside the frame and smiling at her.

He raised his hand in mock salute and said, “Reporting for duty, sir!”

She pushed back from her desk and stood, smoothing the pleats of her navy skirt. Finally she met his eyes.

“Oh, Alex. Come on in, please. No one told me you were here.”

He looked toward the shuttered blinds. “Conch, my bloody boat is right out—”

“On your way up to my office, I mean. No one told me.”

“Ah. Sorry about that. I guess I gave them the slip.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“Hmm.”

He stepped inside the door, fingering the scrambled eggs on the white Royal Navy commander’s hat in his hand. She was relieved to see he was a bit nervous, too. She moved to him, trying to avoid those eyes, looking at his epaulets, his buttons, his hands, anything. Without any conscious effort she was taking his hand and remembering how warm his skin felt next to hers in bed.

He said, “I didn’t give you much advance warning, did I? Sorry, my dear girl. I should have rung you, shouldn’t I? I just thought I’d pop up here and surprise you. You know, say hello before the conference got started properly. Under way. I do apologize for inviting myself to your conference, by the way. But you should know it was hardly my idea.”

“Really? That’s a comfort. God knows I’d hate to think you actually wanted to be here. So. How are you, Alex? It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Last time I heard from you, you were headed off into the jungle.”

“I did write. Many times.”

“You did.”

“You never responded.”

“I’ve been busy. There’s a war on. Any number of them in fact.”

“Look. It has been too long a while, Conch. I know that. That’s why I jumped at the chance to come to Key West.” If Hawke was aware of his inconsistency, he did his best to conceal it.

“Well—” she began, and then paused, for she thought she’d heard someone tapping lightly at the door.

“Oh, terribly sorry!” a young woman’s voice said. The door hadn’t fully closed and now it was opened about six inches. Yes, there was someone there, pushing the door open.

She turned away from him to see who it was. It was a tall and very beautiful young blonde with silky tresses falling softly to her shoulders. She carried a thin maroon leather satchel tucked tightly beneath one arm. Visible on the briefcase were the tiny letters AH embossed in gold. Her carefully tailored navy blue suit could not disguise a lush, spectacular figure. Somehow she’d made it through the rain with her makeup and wavy coif perfectly intact.

“Awfully sorry,” the young woman said, stepping inside, deftly managing to both look at Hawke but speak to her. “Alex, you forgot this. I thought you might need it in the meeting. I’ve included the newly edited section on Brazilian economy which went missing earlier.”

“How kind of you,” Hawke said, quickly taking the satchel. “Won’t you say hello to our hostess, the secretary of state?”

Conch extended her hand to the girl and said, “Consuelo de los Reyes. So nice to meet you. And you are?”

“Guinness, Gwendolyn Guinness,” the pretty girl said, smiling effusively but offering nothing more by way of information than to add that she was called Pippa.

Conch smiled back at her, but both smiles soon faded in the growing silence.

“Pippa,” Conch said.

“She’s my aide,” Hawke finally said, the pathetic word sounding as if it had been strangled up from the depths of his damnable soul.

No one seemed to have any idea what to say next.

Then Conch broke the spell.

“You call him Alex?” Conch said.

37

MADRE DE DIOS, BRAZIL

T he robot tank tore through the jungle like a wounded animal. It was all Harry could do just to hold on. Low-hanging creeper vines whipped at his face and shoulders. He was on the vehicle’s right rear, one hand on the grab-rail, one leg wrapped around one of the tank’s aft-facing machine guns. Caparina was up front on the left. She was bouncing around, looking back at him, plainly terrified. Hassan was holding on to the right front grab-rail with both hands. Every time the speeding tank hit a deep rut, or strayed from the narrow jungle pathway, the three of them were sure they’d be flung off.

The pint-sized Troll was doing about thirty miles an hour. Because of overhanging vegetation on either side, the passengers felt like they were doing a hundred or more. Dangling creepers constantly lashed their uplifted faces. You had to constantly duck and bob to keep a vine from lassoing you around the neck.

Now they splashed through a shallow brown river and disturbed a number of sleeping caimans. The South American alligators were not happy at the noisy intrusion and everyone aboard struggled to keep their flailing feet away from the snapping jaws.

Harry was glad of their speed and the fact that submersion in the river had not stalled the engine. The amphibious vehicle slowed, but kept moving forward, throwing off a bow wave of white water on either side. Soon enough they were dry and plunging back into the deep green stuff.

The lens remained pointed straight ahead. The human controller, wherever he was located, only wanted to keep the thing on the path. Harry sensed the robot was returning to home base. Speed increased and you got the feeling of riding a bucking bronco with a bad case of stable fever.

A half-hour later, it was tough on the bones. Harry was beginning to think the tank didn’t know where the hell it was going. They were still deep in the jungle but the path was angling upward and had been doing so for some time now. He figured they must have climbed about a thousand feet in the last twenty minutes or so. The air was slightly cooler and very damp at this elevation.

Suddenly, the damn thing slowed to a crawl. The trail had become muddy and deeply rutted.

They were going so slowly Harry was able to get up onto his knees and take a look at the road ahead.

“Big ravine up ahead,” Saladin Hassan called back. “More of a deep gorge.”

“I see that,” Harry yelled. “Are we going to stop, or get off, or what?”