Quest for Honor (23 page)

“Sweden,” she said. He could not believe it. Märta’s country! An incredible coincidence.

The vigilant part, which did not believe in coincidences, would not leave him alone. “From Stockholm?” he asked.

She nuzzled his neck, tongue flicking over his dark skin. “Yes,” she said.

“I was there many years ago,” he said. “Beautiful city, beautiful women.” He kissed her deeply, his tongue probing for hers, finding it. He pulled back just a bit. “I knew a woman there,” he said, memories of leggy blonde Märta flickering back to life, in the greatest summer he’d ever known, before he went back to Uganda and his life started spiraling down another path.

“A girlfriend?” She flicked her tongue over one of his nipples, then the other, bringing a gasp from him. No woman had ever done that to him before.

“Y—yes,” he stammered. “We would meet…under the big mushroom.” It was funny how one’s memory worked. He recalled the odd, cement mushroom, in the square downtown. They would meet there when she finished work and go to dinner or a club.

“I know it. The Svampen,” she said with a smile. The tongue flicked the other nipple. “In Gamla Tan.”

He could not resist any longer. Reaching down, he grasped her hips and pulled her forward, freeing himself, and then pushed her back downward as he raised his hips just so, his tip finding something moist and inviting, and he sighed deeply as she pulled him inside.

Her lips left his and she raised herself, just a bit, her breasts rising from his chest. His eyes were on them and he reached for them as her hips began to move in the old familiar rhythm, He saw her glance away from him, just a quick movement he caught in his peripheral vision, as her right hand moved from his shoulder and slid underneath the pillow.

Something clicked inside his brain, the one small part that stubbornly resisted the overwhelming sensual overload. What had she said? Gamla Tan…that was the “Old Town” of Stockholm. But the mushroom, that was…where? In Stureplan, not in Old Town. He looked at her. The blue eyes were hard and her hand moved toward his neck.

He caught her by the wrist. There was a hypodermic needle in her hand, the point an inch away from his throat, his carotid artery. There was no passion in her eyes now, only determination. Summoning his strength, he thrust his pelvis upward, raising her up, and as she lurched forward he slammed his right elbow into the side of her head. She grunted, and he hit her again, harder, this time in the side of the neck. She fell off him, and he scrambled to the other side and off the bed. In his pants pocket was the pistol he carried with him everywhere. He leaped for the pants lying in a heap on the floor.

She was on him before he could get the weapon, bringing the hypo down toward his thigh. The needle grazed his skin as he swept it away and found the gun, bringing it up just as she was coming at him again. She stopped two feet away from him and dropped the hypo.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

She just smiled at him and backed away. Her nude body, so supremely beautiful just minutes before, was now the well-trained machine of an assassin. But, Allah be praised, he had not surrendered to her completely. His instincts, which had kept him alive all these years, one step ahead of his enemies, were still strong.

“I will ask one more time: who are you? Who do you work for?”

She cursed him in a language he did not understand. He shot her in the left knee.

“A Russian agent?” Amir said to him the next day, when he was safely back in his library at the camp.

“Yes,” he said. “From their SVR.” He did not add that her confession came only when he threatened to shoot her other knee. But that’s all she said before Ghedi’s security team broke into the room and hustled her away.

“But why, Yusuf? The Russians have always supported our cause against the Jews and the West. Why would they try to kill you?”

Why, indeed? Ghedi had expressed shock and anger at the woman’s betrayal. He swore that the woman had indeed been captured on board a yacht, registered to a Swedish owner, just as she’d claimed, but that was what his fellow pirate chieftain had told him when he loaned her to Ghedi for the evening. The Somali was no fool; he would conclude that he had been duped by his colleague, and Yusuf had no doubt there would be retribution. The pirates were thieves, and it was said in the West there is no honor among thieves, but Yusuf knew that among the Somalis in Eyl there was indeed a sense of honor, twisted as it might be.

But that was not his concern now. What concerned him was the inescapable conclusion that someone knew, or at least suspected, that he was on the verge of defecting. But who? If the Russians had truly planted her in Eyl just to kill Yusuf, how could they have possibly known he would come there? The only reason he had was to inspect the ship and arrange for—

Heydar. Of course, the Iranian had known all along they would be coming to Eyl. He was the only one to have known such a thing well in advance. Yet he had been just as shocked and angered as Ghedi last night. Or at least, that’s how he had seemed. Yusuf shook his head. To Amir, he said, “I don’t know, my brother. It is said that sometimes Russian agents hire themselves out for anyone who can pay their price. We have many enemies.”

Amir nodded in agreement. They discussed a few more matters about the camp and the upcoming mission, and then he left Yusuf, sitting alone in his library, a cup of cooling tea in his hands. He had always suspected the Iranian could not be trusted. Did his superiors have an idea of what he was planning to do in four more days? If so, why not order Heydar to shoot him right here? No, that would not do; they needed Yusuf, or at least his men, for the attack on the liner, for their diversion. They would not move on him at the camp.

Yusuf looked around the empty room. He was alone, and now he felt more alone than he had ever been in his life. He could trust no one, not even Amir. Five more days. He had to survive until then.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Afghanistan

W
atching her put
on her nylons was almost as sexy as seeing her take them off. One more reason for Mark to admire her beauty. In a land with so much primitive ugliness, it was refreshing to see sophisticated elegance. Better yet, he got to do more than just see it.

“What are you looking at?” The sultry voice with the cultured British accent never ceased to excite him.

“You know very well I’m looking at your legs. And the rest of you.”

Sophie Barton, foreign correspondent for the BBC, gave him a sly wink. “That’s nice.” She adjusted the lacy tops of the nylons at her thighs, snugged up her low-cut panties, then put on her bra. Mark sighed. Those just-the-right-size breasts that he’d grown to desire so much would be out of view for at least another few hours.

“You’re sure you have to do this thing tonight?” he asked.

“Well, if I were to call in my resignation right now, I suppose I could skip it,” she said, walking into the bathroom to fix her hair and makeup. “But I rather dislike being unemployed, not to mention it would leave me stranded halfway around the world.”

“I’d like to say you could bunk with me at my place, but I’m afraid it might be a bit uncomfortable for you.”

“When you’re out of the Army and back home, then perhaps we can discuss it again.”

That kept him quiet for a minute, thinking very hard, but careful not to say anything. She appeared in the doorway of the bathroom and leaned against the wall seductively.

“Cat got your tongue, Colonel Hayes?”

“Just thinking.”

“And may I ask, about what?”

“Going home. Wherever home might be.”

She came to him, sliding onto the bed across the sheets. Propping her chin in her hands, she looked at him. He drank in the green eyes, the cute little freckles around her nose, her sandy blonde hair.

“Would that be back in Wisconsin, perhaps?”

He smiled. “I haven’t thought about it much lately, but yeah, if any place is home, it’d be there. You’d like it.”

“You shall have to show me sometime.”

He gathered her in his arms and kissed her deeply. Yes, he might as well admit it, he was falling in love with her.

She broke free. “Calm yourself, my good man. Duty calls. You know about that, I’m sure.”

“Yeah. Duty.”

She gave him a peck on the cheek and got up from the bed, walking to the closet for the dark pants suit hanging there. “The press conference should be done by seven. Give me another hour to file the report, and then perhaps you would fancy a nice dinner?”

“Sounds good. When do you go back to London?”

“Next week. I’ll be down in Helmand province for a few days, visiting First the Queen’s Dragoon Guards.”

“I’ve heard of them. Good outfit. Isn’t that your cousin’s unit?”

“Second cousin, from Wales. I hope to see him, yes.”

“Can I see you here before you fly home?”

“Well, that depends,” she said with that sly come-hither look he’d come to love. “Treat a girl to a nice dinner and maybe a massage later, and she’ll probably come back for more.”

“You’ve got a deal.”

Kabul was relatively quiet tonight, so they chose a decent restaurant only a couple blocks from the hotel. Mark was in civvies, but he still carried a sidearm. He’d found it prudent to be armed wherever he went in country, the only exception being inside the embassy complex or ISAF Headquarters, which was only a few blocks further down Bibi Mahru Road from where they were dining. The Afghan waiters, accustomed to serving foreigners, were very efficient. Sophie ordered
mantu,
thick, Persian-style ravioli, while Mark chose the lamb.

“I’ll bet the city has changed quite a bit since your first visit,” she said as they started on dessert. She was having bride’s fingers,
asabia el aroos,
slender, syrupy crisps with sweetened nuts, while he had the elephant’s ears,
gosh feel,
a deep-fried pastry.

“It’s a lot safer now,” he said, remembering the first time he’d come to the city, during his first deployment back in ’02. “Still a lot of air pollution, but there’s a lot more commerce. You would’ve been hard-pressed to find a restaurant like this back then.” The walk over here from the hotel hadn’t been too bad. The morning rain had dampened down the pollution, which sometimes was so thick you could see the particles in the air. Respiratory problems were common among the Westerners here, at least for the first month or two until they got used to it. Mark didn’t want to think about what might be growing in his lungs.

“What’s it like? Wisconsin, that is. Probably more pleasant than Afghanistan.”

He grinned. “Oh, this place isn’t so bad. Give these people some peace and security, they can do some great things.” That was the standard party line, anyway, and Mark could see Sophie considered it to be about as accurate as he did: not very. “But yeah, Wisconsin is better. Lots of rolling hills, farmland. Quite a few lakes, especially up north. Great fishing. You’ve got Lake Michigan on the east coast, then the Mississippi River on the west. My brother went to college in a town near there. Said the river valley was beautiful.”

“Have you heard from your brother lately?” He’d mentioned Jim to Sophie once or twice, said he was widowed, but not much more.

“Talked to him the other night, after the firefight.” Jim’s current activities were classified, of course, but just thinking about that made Mark shake his head.

“What’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing. Jim and I don’t talk very much. Not as much as we should.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, why is that?”

Jim finished the last of his pastry, took a drink of water. “Well, it’s kind of a long story.”

“Perhaps you could tell me back at the hotel.”

Later, she lay beside him, running her nails gently through the curly hairs on his chest, a few of which were turning white, he noticed with some irritation. “You asked me earlier about my brother,” he said.

“Yes. But you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“No, that’s okay. I want to. I think it’s time I did.”

“All right.”

“I was thinking…about the day I left for my cow year at West Point.” He saw her cocking her head. “Junior year in the civilian schools,” he said.

“You told me once you had a fine time at West Point,” she said.

“I did,” he said. “First two years especially. They were a bit too fine. I needed an attitude adjustment, and that summer before cow year I got one.”

She waited patiently as his memories came flooding back. He’d never talked about it with anyone, hadn’t really taken the time to sort it through, but now it came rushing out, and he could see it with a new sense of clarity.

“My first two years were tough, but I played a lot of football, starting fullback by mid-season plebe year. That’s worth something on any campus and West Point’s no exception. The firsties braced me a lot, but it wasn’t too bad.” He shifted his weight a little bit, and she snuggled closer, his left arm around her. He looked down, and the sheet was falling away from that cute English rump, a sight that under other circumstances would’ve started him thinking in another direction. “In the classroom I was fair to middling. You can’t really skate through academics at the Point, but I wasn’t really putting forth a lot of effort. Then in the spring of my second year, one of my profs got on my case. I got a D on a test and he called me into his office, read me the riot act.”

“I’ll bet that made an impression,” she said.

“It did. He was a colonel, Vietnam vet, went through some really tough combat over there, and he told me I was just screwing around, that I had the potential to be an outstanding cadet, maybe even First Captain, if I would just shit-can the attitude and buckle down.”

“And did you?”

“It started me thinking about things a bit differently,” Jim admitted. “But I still wasn’t ready to start toeing the line.”

He had a month’s leave coming after the semester ended, so he decided to head home before going down to Fort Benning for airborne training in July. One night he went to a Brewers game with some friends from high school, and at a tailgate party a woman about twenty years older than him gave him the eye. So he brought her a beer, and after the game they capped the evening with a trip to a no-tell hotel. One more scene on the highlight reel of Mark’s life, and a good one it was.

Jim and Suzy came home at the end of June for a few days, and things were a bit awkward between the brothers. “It was almost like he was jealous of me,” Mark said. “I had no idea why he should be. He was two years out of college by then, had a good job and was married to Suzy, and she was a knockout, could’ve been a stand-in for Jaclyn Smith on
Charlie’s Angels.
Then a few days later, my dad was taking me to the airport and I found out what was going on.”

It was one of those father-son talks that the son never forgets. He remembered it now and allowed himself to be swept twenty-six years back in time. “You know, I could never get anything past my dad. He was pretty strict, so we never got into any real trouble when we were kids, although Jim was a lot better about that than I was. When I got to the Point, the discipline helped me fit in right away. A lot of the other guys had problems. But when I’d get leave, I’d cut loose a little bit. The time with the woman at the game, I let things get out of hand.”

“It was just a fling, Mark, you were a young guy, those things happen.”

He looked into those eyes again, wondering if she meant that to sound as casual as it came out. “Yeah, but that day at the airport, before I got out of the car, Dad said he had to talk to me about a couple things. He said he’d heard about the woman. Darlene was her name. She was a minister’s wife from Cudahy, the next suburb over from ours, and a guy my dad worked with was a member there and the word was out about her having a one-night stand with a young guy from an academy. Dad asked me straight out if that was me and I said yes.”

“Oh, dear.”

“I told him she wasn’t wearing a ring, how was I to know? And he said as an officer and a gentleman I should’ve at least asked. I mean, a woman her age, cruising a party for young guys, I should’ve figured something might be going on.” He sighed. “Dad said they were having problems in their marriage. I certainly didn’t help matters any.”

She said nothing, but he could tell she was listening intently. He’d never really opened up to her about his past, and wondered now if this was too much, too soon, but he had to tell her the rest of it, maybe because he had to hear it himself, hear it and finally deal with it.

“Then he told me about Jim, why he’d seemed so uptight when he was home. Said he’d applied for the Army Reserve and the day before he came home they gave him the word, they rejected him because of his bad knee. The year before, he tried the Marines, they said no, too.”

“Why did your brother want to join up?”

“Because he…” Mark stopped, almost choking up. “My dad said he was envious of me. At his wedding, the year before, I was his best man, and the word got out that I was at the Point, just finished plebe year and, well, I got a lot of attention from people that night.” He thought about telling Sophie about the bridesmaid he’d scored with, but decided to keep that one to himself. “Kind of stole Jim’s thunder, although I didn’t mean to. I was just having a good time at the reception and hey, people thought it was cool I was a cadet. But right after that was when Jim tried for the Marines.”

“And they turned him down, and then the Army too. I can see how he would feel badly about it.”

“I never knew, never imagined he could ever be jealous of me. And here I’d made a couple cracks that weekend to him about him missing those free throws in the state final, and how I had a championship ring and he didn’t. God, what a horse’s ass I was.”

“Your father brought that to your attention, did he?”

“He sure did. He got after me about my attitude in general. Said there was more to being at the Point than playing football, that would be gone in another couple years and then I’d be an officer and would have men to command, probably in battle.” Even now, all these years later, he could still hear his father’s words, as the old Korea vet sat behind the wheel of his Oldsmobile.

“I saw officers come out of West Point who thought they were God’s gift to the Army and they learned pretty fast that they sure as hell weren’t. Some of them learned the hard way in Korea. They didn’t come home and a lot of their men didn’t, either. I’m telling you, the balloon’s gonna go up again one of these days and you’ll be sent overseas. Maybe it’ll be the Russians, maybe the Arabs, but I guaran-damn-tee you, they won’t give a rat’s ass how many touchdowns you scored. When they come through the wire they’re gonna be looking to blow your goddam head off and you’d better be ready or you’ll be dead and your men will be dead. You need to get your head screwed on a little straighter, son. You have a helluva future, if you want it. Or you can just keep screwing around. It’s up to you.”

They were both quiet for a few minutes. Finally, he said, “Things were…different after that. I went off to Benning and it just seemed much clearer to me. I had more sense of purpose.”

“And your brother? You haven’t seen him very much, have you?”

“No. Not as much as I should, I guess. Mom’s funeral in ’99. I was in the Balkans when Jim called, said she’d been in a car accident.” His voice caught a bit. “She was on her way home from church. She worked at the office. Fucking drunk driver. She lasted two days.” He blinked away tears. “Then three years later, Dad’s funeral. I was over here, first deployment, got the call he’d had a heart attack, but the next one got him just when my plane was landing in Milwaukee.” He sighed deeply.

“I’m very sorry.” Sophie had told him both her parents were still living, back in northern England. She didn’t know how lucky she was. Or maybe she did.

“You know, I’ve only seen my niece four or five times in her entire life? She’s twenty-five years old, for God’s sake. I’m her only uncle.”