The Libra Affair (2 page)

Mr. Taylor shook his head in disgust. “I need those jeans tonight.”

“Let me go check the rack again.” This time Jordan didn't stop. She made her way to the back of the shop and then over to the side door, where she slipped out and into the parking lot.

From a distance, she heard Jolie making their apologies and promising to have the jeans cleaned and ready within the hour. It was the least she could do; she was the ditz who'd spilled half the container of liquid detergent on Jordan's clothes. But Jolie was a good kid; she didn't mean any harm.

Sprinting across the parking lot, Jordan stopped at the entrance to the corner coffee shop. She drew in a breath before walking inside and over to the counter, where she ordered a coffee black.

The shop was next to empty save two workers engaged in conversation. Seated at a corner table, Chou had his back to the wall and a newspaper drawn. She knew he spied her.

With coffee in hand, Jordan walked casually across the room as if looking for a seat before claiming the chair next to his table.

She sipped her coffee before picking up the newspaper that Chou had planted in the chair next to her. Thirty seconds passed before she spoke. “Excuse me?” she said to him as though addressing a stranger.

Chou lowered the newspaper in his hand without speaking.

“You wouldn't happen to have Section C of the paper, would you? Seems it's missing from mine,” she said.

“Anything in particular you're looking for?” he asked without the slightest hint of his native accent.

“Local
events
, horoscopes.”

He glanced at the paper. “Any one in particular?”

Giving him the code name, she said, “I heard it was a good day to be a Libra.”

Chou folded the paper in half and set it aside. “Did you upload the application?” he asked.

“Done.”

“When?”

“Friday night during the cocktail reception at NASA headquarters.”

“Any complications?”

“None.”

“And David Dunn?” he asked, referring to the head of NASA.

“Never the wiser. I was in and out of his office in less than five.”

Chou reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope. He tucked it inside a portion of the newspaper and handed it to her. “Your flight to Frankfurt leaves out of Dulles tonight at 7:05. They'll be plenty of time to make the connection to Tehran.”

“Where am I meeting the contact?” she asked.

“Magazine stand across from Gucci. Code him in. His name is Farrokh Okhovat. You'll know it's him when you see his left prosthetic hand. He'll get you in and out of the missile silo. He has the launch codes; you know the rest. If anything goes wrong — if he turns on us — take him out and set it off manually. And another thing, after detonation, don't let Farrokh take you any further. He's a liability. You'll have to clean up and make your way into Turkmenistan and on to China without him. Understood?”

She nodded.

“Any questions?” he asked.

“Tools?” she said, referring to weapons and equipment.

“You'll find a weapon stashed inside the mattress of your room in Tehran. The rest of the equipment will be delivered to your room in Mashhad. Don't carry anything with you except your new papers; you'll be naked, but buried. As soon as the missile launches, get out of the country. Your plane is stashed at the Ashgabat airport. Once you're in Turkmenistan, make contact before you fly it out. Use a pay phone and call the number Fat Su gave you. One of us will answer.”

“Wouldn't it be easier to carry a phone?”

“No. No trails. Fat Su and I will be monitoring your progress via satellite. Let me be clear, from here on out, you're off the grid.” Chou stopped. With his instructions delivered, there was nothing else to discuss.

“Leave the boy alone,” Jordan said, referring to Ben.

“You know I can't make a promise like that,” Chou replied.

“We may need him again.”

“Don't think so.”

“Your fall man is David Dunn, not the boy,” she said calmly. For Ben's sake, there was no way she could show any emotion. Not to Chou. “You'll need him to make a case against Dunn if anything goes wrong.”

“I think the problem is you got too close to your boy.”

“No, I didn't. I did what I had to, to get next to Dunn. To access his computer.”

He looked at her without revealing his thoughts. He had a cold solemnity about him that was hard to read; she'd detected as much by speaking with him over the phone, but seeing him up close amplified the fact. She knew without any doubt that if she made one wrong move, he'd hack her to pieces.

Realizing her mistake, she pushed ahead. “Take him out if you have to,” she said and then suppressed any potential micro-expression she might have revealed. Chou would not miss a sign of weakness and a broken heart was a definite sign.

“Don't worry about the boy,” he said, then released a smug little laugh. “And get rid of those jeans.”

She returned a sneering smile, but only for the show of understanding the game. “I can hardly wait,” she said. If there was anything she learned about Chou from this meeting, it was his weakness — he was arrogant.

He reached for the newspaper lying on his table. “You just worry about the missile,” he said as he unfolded the paper. “And one more thing — don't go home. The cleaners are already on their way. The package in your car is all you need.” He gave her a knowing look before diverting his eyes toward his paper.

She rose from her chair, thinking back to Friday night. Her job had been simple over the past year: plant an application inside the program that guided Ben's laser, so she could use the laser to destroy the missile once it was in flight. The only hard part of this mission had been waiting a full year to access Dunn's computer at the right place and time. If she loaded her application too soon, it was sure to be discovered. By using Dunn's computer to transfer the program to Payload Operations Control Center to be uplinked to the Space Station Control Center, she'd avoid any suspicion of tampering.

Once the program was uplinked, all she had to do was head to Iran to set off the ICBM, which she'd aim at Germany. This would give the world the appearance that Iran was waging war against Germany. She'd make her escape, report back to the Chinese, and when the time was right, return home to the U.S. And that was basically it for her.

The rest of the game simply came down to politics. Politics where convoluted plots and conspiracies were born that juxtaposed allies and enemies like pawns on a chessboard while the major players vied to reshuffle the weight of the world's economic powers. This time, it was the Russians and Americans trying to outmaneuver the Chinese. After the missile was destroyed, the Americans and Russians would side with Iran; the Chinese with Germany. And when the Chinese moved to invade Iran as they intended, the rest of the players would come down on them like a hammer.

So next week, if all went as planned, sanctions would fall on the Chinese, the Russians would sell a little more vodka, and Big Brother U.S. would have gotten a favorable foot back inside Iran's door to keep a watch on their nuclear development, and the rest of the world, including the repressed citizens of Iran, would be a little safer … for a while.

Jordan had nothing to do with the political stratagem. Her job was purely logistics. It made her feel like she was in control and that she could make a difference, regardless of the reality.

That Friday night, after inserting the application into the computer program, Jordan had returned to Ben's side, where she slipped her hand into his and whispered in his ear. “Are you ready to go?” She brushed his sloppy dark curls from his dark brown eyes.

He replied without any hesitation. “Absolutely.” Had he known this was the last night she'd lie in his arms, that this was the last night he'd ever make love to her with a passion so rich words had no meaning, that this was the last time she'd feel the warmth of his breath on her shoulders, he would have understood the reason she cried in her sleep.

There wasn't another place on earth that Jordan wanted to be that Friday night and there wasn't another man she wanted more. She was dying inside and would soon have nothing more than Chou's words to haunt her. You got too close …

Jordan zipped across the drive-through lane of the cleaners and tossed Mr. Taylor's jeans through the narrow opening of the sliding glass door. The jeans were gone and so was the life Jordan had lived for the past year.

She just had one more stop to make before catching her flight.

• • •

Kara Murphy entered Ben's lab at NASA. “You got your ticket to the Cape yet?” she asked.

“I've got a television at home,” Ben replied casually, as if discussing the weather. Then he turned the dial on a piece of lab equipment.

“All this time, you finally get a payload and you're not even going down to watch the launch?” Kara shook her head in disbelief.

When he didn't comment, she continued. “I'd be down there in a heartbeat watching my baby fly.”

“Yeah, well, what's the point?” Then he pressed the start button on the machine. “It's not like they let anyone get all that close.”

“Man, I'm so jealous,” she said.

Ben looked over at her.

She threw a hand to her hip. “Yeah, I said jealous.”

Kara had been instrumental in helping Ben get his Laser One experiment on board the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket — one of the rockets developed by a private sector company that had taken up where NASA left off in spaceflight — but she had never talked about her own ambitions.

“What?” she said when he didn't say anything. “Don't you think it'd be cool to look at my bubbles in space?” she asked, referring to her own medical research.

He quickly agreed. “Yes, you're right.”

“But I'm super-excited the bone density experiment made the flight.”

Ben suddenly realized how insensitive he was. “Kara, I'm sorry. Your science is solid. Your work should have been considered. To tell you the truth, I don't even know how my laser experiment got approved.”

“Don't be sorry, you ham. My project wasn't ready, you know that. I was just razzing you, man.” With hardly a pause, she redirected the conversation. “Hey, you want to grab some lunch?”

He checked the machine still running. He really wasn't in the mood for company or food, but he didn't want to hurt her feelings again. “Can I get a rain check?” he said. “I've got to wait on the spin coater to wrap up this run.”

“No problem,” she said, letting him slide, then paused a moment before leaving his lab. “Do you mind if I say something here?”

He looked at her; he had an idea what she was going to say next. “Lay it on me.”

“You really ought to take a rest with those crystals and head down to the beach with that dry cleaner chick of yours.” She paused. “Not that it's any of my business. I'm just saying.” She tapped the top of the lab table with her file to make her point.

He forced a lighthearted chuckle. “Yeah, I hear you.”

She touched a light fist to his arm. “Later, dude.” She left the lab.

Ben hadn't told Kara about the split. He couldn't. It was too fresh and he wasn't ready to talk. No one knew about it, except some idiot on a barstool who'd exchanged spit with Jordan.

But what kind of guy would stand by and let his girlfriend kiss another guy like that? Didn't that give him the right to become jealous … even to completely lose it?

How had a perfect Friday night turned so disastrous? He'd lost the perfect girl, the perfect relationship, and missed the perfect opportunity to tell her how he felt and what he wanted. None of this felt real.

Ben stared at the paint peeling off the edges of the white cylinder block walls. He wanted to be mad, he wanted to throw something, he wanted to cry, laugh, or be happy again. He wanted to be something, anything, that would help him make sense of what had gone wrong, but all he felt was numb.

• • •

“Box 1044,” Jordan said to the branch manager of her bank.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “Right this way, ma'am.”

Once she was alone in a private chamber, Jordan removed a metal case from the safety deposit box. She opened it and inspected her baby, a Beretta XX-Treme. She looked through the scope, examined the silencer and laser, and then secured the latch. Next, she removed a large manila envelope and quickly inspected the contents, then stuffed it into her bag along with the weapon.

She had one last task. Grasping her hair to the side, she slipped a long gold chain from around her neck and over her head. A pendant securing a three-and-a-half-carat diamond dangled from the end of the chain.

She hesitated a moment, admiring the glint of the stone, listening to the hum of the fluorescent lights. The necklace was all she had left of her parents. There was nothing else, not a card, not a photo, a single souvenir, or an ounce of their ashes. And she wasn't prepared to lose it under any circumstances.

She never took it with her into the field. It didn't make sense to bring it. Nor was she permitted to wear it.

However, each time she left the necklace behind in that cold little box, it felt harder to do so, more emotional. And for some reason, this time felt the hardest. A part of her wondered if she would ever see her beloved jewel again.

She slowly lowered it inside the confines of the safety deposit box and fastened the lid. She rose from her chair and stared down at the box. The tick of the light fixture irritated her to no end. And the longer she stood there, looming over the metal case, the more aggravated she became until she was suddenly overcome with an inexplicable impulse and reopened the box.

Ben tried the key in the lock of Jordan's apartment. “I can't believe it!” The words belted from his mouth. Refusing to accept that she'd locked him out of her life, Ben banged on the front door to her apartment. He needed answers.