An Affair of Deceit (11 page)

His smile dimmed. “Yeah, I know. They were probably calling me
outsider
, but I always liked the idea of being known as
aspen
or
willow
or something like that. I was taller than everyone else my age, you know.”

She smiled to think of a tall, towheaded, and bronze-skinned boy running down a muddy road surrounded by uniformly black-haired Taiwanese children. She hadn’t been so much an outsider as he must have been, but still, she felt something like kinship with him.

“You must have been a giant to them,” she said. She knew so few people who understood her complicated childhood, that feeling of never quite belonging no matter where you lived. “I was bigger too, though probably not by as much. I’m sure I don’t look very white to you, but my father’s blood made me paler and taller than everyone else, and believe me, they noticed.”

The words were out before she realized how much she’d revealed. She didn’t talk of her childhood; it inevitably led to the painful recollection of her last moments with her father, and besides, few people really knew what it felt like to straddle two continents and two cultures. All of her previous attempts at forging connections had led to disappointment. She wasn’t meant to be understood. Why try?

A rush of regret sliced through the warmth of alcohol and companionship that had loosened her lips. She reached for her beer, seeking a diversion that might make him forget how plainly she’d spoken. The glass dripped condensation on her plate as she drank.

“They sure do know when you aren’t full-blooded Taiwanese, don’t they?” he said, almost studiously avoiding her eyes. Giving her time to recover, she guessed. Thoughtful man. “It sounds like you weren’t any better off than I was. Stranger in a strange land and all that.”

“Probably,” she said, her mouth tingling from the alcohol. “But if I were all white, like you, at least I’d be taken at face value somewhere.”

“What, here, in America?” He cocked his head. “You don’t think you’re accepted as an American in America?”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Of course not. I’m Asian here, white there. You deny that?”

He shrugged. “I guess I can’t really say. I’d hope it wasn’t true. I know that’s not how I see you. I know it was true in Taiwan at that time, but maybe things have changed, even there.” He picked up a sushi roll and casually asked, “What do you want to be?”

The question was strange and dislocated, and its oddness coupled with the alcohol in her drink made her answer without thinking. “I am not a
what
. I am a
who
. I am
me
, and I have no desire to fulfill anyone’s china-doll or dragon-lady fantasies. I simply wish to be a person, a human, a woman, without the expectations and judgments that my appearance seems to inspire in others.”

“Anybody who calls you china doll or dragon lady had better do it out of your strike zone.” Riley laughed, and his skin glowed like champagne under the bright midday sun. “I don’t know exactly who you are, Abigail Mason, but wouldn’t that be boring if I did?”

Despite her seriousness, a small smile lifted her cheeks. She’d never been mysterious to a man before. Mean, sure. Feared, definitely. But enigmatic? Not that she could recall.

Still smiling, she lifted her gaze to his. The way he held her stare—so attentive, so completely engaged in her, as if she were the only thing in the world that mattered, or even existed—made her stop breathing. The distant noises of car horns and rumbling traffic vanished. She heard nothing but her own heart beating,
thud-thud, thud-thud
in her chest like a bass drum.

It was the beer
, she told herself later, after she’d gone home and tried to forget the intensity of her reactions to the man with the crooked smile. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d kissed her cheeks, and so she decided to do what she did best: solve her problem on her own.

R
ILEY CHECKED IN
with Greene at Langley after his lunch with Abigail.

“You say she quivered when you kissed her on the cheek? The
cheek
?” Greene guffawed.

“Quivered. Or shuddered. It was hard to tell. I have no idea what I’m doing when I’m around that girl.” Riley held his head in his hands.

Greene laughed and leaned back in his chair. It squeaked. “Man, for a psychologist, you sure are shit at reading women,” he exclaimed, bouncing up and down in his chair like it was a rocker.

Squeak, squeak.

“That’s not true. She’s just…” Riley looked around, noticing that Greene hadn’t bothered to unpack any of the boxes that lined the brightly lit office. He struggled to find words to explain Abigail’s reaction to his greeting but gave up. “All right. I’m a failure as a psychologist. I don’t even understand myself. But dude, when are you going to settle in here? Looks like you just moved in.”

“As soon as I’m here for five days straight. Hasn’t happened in three years,” Greene said without regret, still cheerfully bouncing in his chair. “I am not without people-reading skills myself,
little brother. So we’ve got a girl whose daddy left her when she was, what, eight? Do you really think she’s let that go?”

“Clearly not,” Riley agreed. “She says she doesn’t care about him, but she won’t stop looking into his disappearance. Obviously she wants to know why he abandoned her.”

“Yup. As I suspected. We’ve got some good ol’ fashioned daddy issues here. She’s been hoping he’d turn up sooner or later so she could show him what he’s been missing. Or kill him; it’s hard to tell. She fights like a circus elephant who’s tired of getting a cattle prod shoved up its ass, and I’m inclined to think Peter Mason might want to think twice about reuniting with his baby girl.”

“He deserves whatever punishment she chooses to give him.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Greene gave him a funny look. “You falling for her, genius?”

“No.”

“Really? Are you sure this isn’t going to be like what happened with Christie?”

“It’s not like that,” said Riley, feeling defensive.

Greene shrugged. “Hey, you know me. You know that I am all about getting some when the opportunity presents itself, but there are times when you just have to take a cold shower. It does not look good for one of my men to show a pattern of banging people involved with our investigations.”

Squeak, squeak, squeak.

“Christie wasn’t involved.” Riley knew that wasn’t the point. “At least not directly. She was barely even peripherally involved with the case, and my relationship with her didn’t affect a damned thing. Would you stop squeaking that damned chair?”

“I like the squeak,” Greene said offhandedly. “Can you say that having a relationship with Abigail wouldn’t be a bad idea? Can you be objective about pursuing Peter Mason if you’re falling for his daughter?”

“Can
you
be objective about him?” Riley challenged. “He’s been guilty until proved otherwise with you since the day you heard he was missing.”

“Don’t turn this around on me. You know my beef with Mason. I’ve got legitimate evidence against him that goes back years.”

“You’ve got hunches, not evidence. So Mason took a few unauthorized trips. So his reports don’t always mesh precisely with his movements. You know as well as I do that most intelligence agents fudge details like that to get around red tape. Maybe he needs a slap on the wrist, but you’ve got no evidence to prove that Mason has been working against the US. As far as his record shows, he’s the most productive field officer we’ve ever had, and he’s the one who’s come the closest to bringing down Lukas Kral.”

“I thought you were with me on this,” Greene said quietly. The squeaking stopped.

“Don’t get hurt. This is business here, nothing personal. I know we need to find the China mole, but you have to be objective. I’ll even agree that Mason’s record is smudged, but I’m not convinced he’s our leak. I’m not going to railroad a good man on a hunch, especially not when his life may be at stake.”

Greene’s lips pursed in frustration. “Damn it, he’s
dirty
, and he has people covering for him. I can’t stand this kind of shit. There’s a reason why America has lost faith in its intelligence agencies, and it begins with holier-than-thou assholes like Mason who think they’re above the law. Not this time. Not on my watch.”

“Really? You just gave me a ‘not on my watch’ speech?”

Greene cracked a smile. “What’d you think of it? I’ve been doing variations in the shower for days. I like the ‘holier-than-thou assholes’ bit.”

“It was a nice touch.”

“I mean it, though. Every word.”

“I know you do. Look, let’s just leave Abigail out of this. I’m done with her. She doesn’t know a damned thing about her
father, and the more I see her, the more agitated she gets.” The more agitated he got, too, but that didn’t need to be said out loud. “I don’t need her hands in this pot.”

Greene took a moment to respond, but when he did, his smooth voice had a cruel edge. “Yeah. She’s just some chick with daddy issues.”

Again with the misogyny. “You can be a real dick sometimes.”

“So can you, my sensitive little buddy.”

“
Sensitive
is what your ass will be after I finish kicking it.”

His friend laughed, and the chair resumed its happy squeaking. “And when will that be? You have never beaten me in a fair fight. Not once in twelve years.”

Riley rolled his eyes. “If I get you in a submission hold and you tap out, then I’ve
beaten
you, idiot, and I do it every time. I’m happy to provide another demonstration, but I’m flying into Marseille on a red-eye tonight, so prepare for your next beating to begin sometime after six a.m. tomorrow. I’ll need a nap first.”

“You got an earlier flight? Fantastic. I’m still on a morning hop to Algiers. I think I know where Kral got those Stingers. We have a guy in-country who says that while they probably left for Marseille out of Algiers, they might have come up through Libya. Libyans are missing some twenty thousand Iglas right now.”

“Of course they are.” Riley had read that news a few weeks ago via a CIA brief, right before a reporter got ahold of the intel and leaked it to the public. The news hadn’t made as much of a splash domestically as it should have, but those who knew what an Igla was were rightfully concerned about the possible spread of them throughout the region. “Chances are good Kral snagged a few handfuls before al Qaeda took the rest. But those are Iglas, and I thought we were talking about Stingers.”

Greene shrugged. “We were, but we’ll see what Kral really had in that storeroom. Maybe that British agent didn’t get a good enough look. They’re basically the same weapon.”

“If you trust the Russians with your life. You’d never catch me firing an Igla.”

“You’ve fired an AK-47, right? Those are Russian made.”

“Not anymore.” Riley grinned. “Chinese, baby.”

Greene laughed, but then he leaned forward seriously. “The big question is, what will Kral and Mason do with a bunch of antiaircraft missiles?”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe Kral just wanted them back to sell them to someone else. Not like he was going to leave them in that warehouse for SOCA to confiscate.”

“It was more of a storage room in the middle of an ancient Roman city, which these days means ‘tourist town.’”

“All the more reason to move them out.”

“Well, let’s hope that’s all it is. That doesn’t explain why Mason was taken alive.”

“We can’t know that until we find him.”

“You think so?” Greene gave him a level stare. “I think Mason is alive because he’s playing for Kral’s team.”

Riley sighed and conceded the point. “It’s a possibility.”

“Thank you.” Greene smiled. “Now, can you tell me why the State Department has taken up residence next to my prostate? They’ve been up my ass all day about this case.”

“Why?”

“They’re telling me that if Mason brings missiles into a foreign country, he’s committing terrorism against that country on
behalf
of the United States. He’s still a state agent, so it’s basically state-sponsored terrorism. Rogue or not, the US of A would have a crap-load of explaining to do if a guy on our roster turns up in Paris with a bunch of Stingers.”

Riley winced. “Abigail talked to a bigwig with the State Department this morning. Donald Wheeler. He’s old-school. I figured he’d try to cover this up, not blow it open.”

“Who is he?”

“The Foreign Service Institute director.”

“Why’d she go to him?”

“Old connections. He helped her get out of Taiwan when she was a kid. I don’t know what they talked about, although it apparently was what gave her the idea to invite me to lunch.”

Greene tapped his fingers on his desk, thinking, and then pointed at Riley. “Wheeler! Wasn’t he the guy who shipped like a hundred CIA agents into Asia in the seventies and eighties?”

“Probably. I’m sure that’s why he knows Abigail’s family.” Riley shrugged. “But he worked with a lot of people, my family included.”

“Your parents were CIA?”

“My parents were humanitarians.”

Greene laughed. “Sure they were.”