Jad Bell: Bravo Part 6

"Wrigley Field." Feeling more confident now. Nessuno can practically see the game in her mind's eye, remember it like yesterday, the view from her seat on the first-base line. She can smell the beer, taste the peanuts. "Cubs were playing the Pirates."

"How old were you?"

"I was eleven."

Danso, who has been making tick marks on the sheet, looks up at her. "How old were you?"

She blinks, guard instantly in place, rising on instinct. No change in her expression, no darting eyes, no shift in her posture, all the things she knows to keep her lies looking like the truth. Outside, what she is showing Danso and Harrington and Warlock looks like nothing at all, she knows. Just a pause, just a woman taking a moment to reconsider.

But inside, a piece of her is writhing, fighting rising panic. Remembering Tohir, when he asked her the same question, his arms around her, flushed from their lovemaking. He'd told her that the first time he'd had s.e.x he was eleven, and she'd said something about him starting early. He thought himself a good lover, his performance had mattered to him. She remembers what she said, how she'd told him that he was probably f.u.c.king before she'd even kissed a boy for the first time, and he had laughed and buried his face against her neck and told her he loved her foul mouth.

"I was eleven," Nessuno says again, and the part of her that watches during these moments, that looks to both her performance and its reception, relaxes. "Maybe twelve. I'm sorry, I don't remember."

Danso holds his gaze on her a moment longer, and she gives him nothing in return. He goes back to his sheet. Harrington, still silent, hasn't looked away from her once, and she thinks that he is the more dangerous of the two, that he is the one she needs to worry about convincing right now.

"Name of your favorite pet," Danso asks.

Not good, she thinks. There's nothing there; she can't remember the cat's name. She can see the cat, curled on the foot of her bed; she can see the powder-blue comforter beneath it, the lace edge of one of the throw pillows. But there's no name, and she feels them watching her, waiting, and this time she knows she must say something before her silence condemns her.

"She was a tabby," Nessuno says. "I don't...Daphne. Her name was Daphne."

The questions keep coming, another two dozen that range from the ba.n.a.l to the invasive. She answers as best she can. From the corner of her eye, she can see Warlock standing aside, leaning against the wall. Unlike Danso and Harrington, he doesn't seem to be looking at her, but she isn't willing to bank on that.

Danso makes another mark, then indicates the photographs spread out between them with the pen. "From my right, please ident.i.ty these."

She looks at the photos. "That's my uncle Nicholas, at my baptism. That one is first grade, cla.s.s photo."

Harrington speaks for the first time. "Indicate, please, where you are in the photograph."

Nessuno puts her finger on a dark-haired girl in a blue jumper in the second row.

Harrington indicates the blond woman standing beside the third row. "Who is this?"

"Miss Johnson."

Danso makes another mark. "Continue."

She does, identifying pictures of friends and family. Her best friend from fourth grade, Carla Quinones; her field hockey team from high school, with Coach Linden and Tina the Terrible; the facade of her parents' restaurant in Chicago, in Six Corners; friends and family celebrating after her first communion; her fourteenth birthday party, with all the guests as she blows out the candles; her junior prom, with Alexander Buckman, wearing that neon-blue tux, and she in a dress she thought was wonderful and that now looks absurd and dated. All these questions, and looking at her hair in that picture makes her want to blush.

When she finishes with the photographs, Harrington gathers them up again, slips them back into the envelope.

"Last one," Danso says. "Who is Elisabetta Villanova?"

Nessuno answers without thinking and without hesitation. This question is easy. This answer holds no doubt. There is no need to plumb memory.

"Me," she says.

They make it through half of another bottle, this of Bulleit rye, before both of them are far too drunk to continue. Nessuno tries to argue for taking a cab back to her hotel, but Heath is having none of it. This argument ultimately collapses on both sides, less because of persuasion than because the pauses between declarations stretch longer and longer, and the next thing Nessuno knows she's awake, wincing, her back and hips aching from having slept in this d.a.m.n chair for G.o.d knows how long. Heath is still asleep, sprawled on the couch, snoring with her mouth open.

Nessuno makes her way to the kitchen and pours water into her body, enough to make the throbbing headache retreat, if only slightly. Her mouth feels like paste, and she's still drunk. She searches around through kitchen drawers, finds a notepad and a pencil, scribbles a message. She leaves it tucked beneath the bottle on the coffee table, where Heath will see it when she wakes. Then she calls a cab to take her back to her hotel. Heath is still snoring when she leaves.

She's got a room at the Courtyard by Marriott in Gaithersburg, because that is the kind of place that an army CW2 with a pay grade of W-2 and is pulling down just over 42K a year before taxes stays. It is exactly the kind of place that Petra Nessuno stays, and she hates it, because Elisabetta Villanova slummed it when she had to but lived large when she could.

She has lost count of the number of hotels she has slept in over the past two years.

When she first met Tohir, it was in a suite at the Baltschug Kempinski, in Moscow. Elisabetta Villanova was many things, and one of them was an art and antiquities dealer. She'd been brought in by a third party who had Tohir's trust to evaluate a painting, The Cheaters by Jan Miense Molenaer. The painting had been stolen from the Netherlands the year before, and Tohir claimed to be selling it for a "friend" who'd had no idea it had been stolen. He'd hoped Signora Villanova could help arrange the sale, perhaps for a private buyer. For the right price, she'd told him, it would be her pleasure.

She left that first meeting without ever learning his name, but she knew she had made an impression. Before they'd parted company, he had asked about her nationality (American), her pa.s.sports (U.S. and Italy), the number of languages she spoke (nine, but only five fluently). All things, she knew, that would make her very useful to a man engaged in transnational crime.

She had been correct. Over the next four months, he contacted her twice more; once to broker the sale of a stolen Pica.s.so, then a set of Babylonian coins stolen during the fall of Baghdad. With Heath's a.s.sistance back home, Elisabetta Villanova was able to move them all, and they both knew that each one of these jobs was a test, a means for him to evaluate her, to check on her history, her ident.i.ty, her story. Was Elisabetta Villanova for real? Was she to be trusted?

It had been at their second face-to-face meeting when she finally learned his name. Another hotel, the Dukes, in London, and Tohir had invited her to meet him there at the bar. She'd been staying at the Athenaeum when the invitation came, and she knew then that he had been having her watched, which was just what she and Heath had expected. Tohir had thanked her for her help, bought her a drink that was very, very strong, and then invited her upstairs. They had s.e.x for the first time in a room overlooking the street, the curtains open, sunlight painting them as they collapsed together atop the bed.

Nessuno pa.s.ses a television in the lobby, shrill punditry talking about WilsonVille and terrorism right here at home. Stories about what happened in California still live above the fold on the complimentary copies of USA Today. There were American flags flying everywhere during the cab ride here. When Nessuno had pa.s.sed the warning to Heath, she hadn't known much, just that something was planned; likely target, a theme park. The intelligence had seemed pitiful to her even then, and it seems somewhat miraculous to her now that it was of any use at all. When she looks at the flags, listens to the news, she thinks she should feel something more than what she does. The part of her that is trying so hard to remember Petra Nessuno feels only a distant sadness, a disconnect. Elisabetta Villanova feels nothing but scorn.

Her new cell phone says it's eleven minutes past seven in the morning when she reaches her room, and the clock on the nightstand disagrees by only two minutes. Nessuno hates the room even more than she hates the hotel, cheap furniture and art on the wall that's bought by the yard. She checks the bed, and the bottom sheet is not fitted and does not cover the end of the mattress. She thinks about changing into workout clothes and trying to sweat out the rest of the drunk with a run or weights, starts to get changed to do just that, and then finds herself sitting on the floor in her underwear.

Here it comes, she thinks.

The tears are sudden and fat. She sits there, just like that, until she's run dry, and for a little while longer, too. She cries silently, trying to purge a toxic mix of self-loathing and self-pity and relief and anxiety, stored over twenty-eight months filled with every striation and nuance of fear. Feeling the rough carpet beneath her skin, clawing at it with her fingernails until she's pulling threads.

When it's over, she rises, goes to the bathroom and washes her face and drinks more water, watching her reflection as she does so. Her face, hers alone, and that is how she feels at this moment: very alone. She wonders if that wasn't why Heath was so insistent that she get laid. Or maybe it's Heath's way of telling her to take her body back. Or maybe Heath just thinks s.e.x is the answer to everything. Right now, Nessuno can't see s.e.x as anything other than just another tool in the toolbox.

She leaves the bathroom, opens the door to the hall long enough to hang the DO NOT DISTURB, then closes the door and locks it. She pulls the blackout curtains until only one line of sunlight stabs the darkness, then strips off the rest of her clothes and climbs into the bed. She tells herself that when she wakes up, she won't have to be afraid, or confused, or adrift, or anything. She tells herself that these are the bends, and they will pa.s.s.

She tells herself that when she wakes up, she'll be alone, and safe, and Elisabetta Villanova will be a memory.

Harrington uses the device that isn't a View-Master to scan and check her retinas against their records. It's a HIIDE, a type of handheld interagency ident.i.ty detection equipment, and Nessuno has seen-even used-one before, but never a model like this. One more thing that's gotten an upgrade while she's away. Harrington presses a couple of b.u.t.tons on the monitor side, then shows the results to Danso, who nods. He sets the unit down and smiles at her for the first time, sliding the cardboard box across to her.

"You're all clear, Chief," Harrington says. "Your RP."

She lifts the lid off her reintegration pack, the box in which she sealed her life away more than two years ago, takes a moment to look before removing the items one by one. Her CAC, the common access card that serves as her military ID, that says she is Petra Nessuno, CW2. Her wallet, with credit cards, her driver's license, all of them agreeing with the name on her CAC, all of them kept current courtesy of Heath and others in BI. There's three hundred and eleven dollars in the wallet. Her Saint Nicholas medal on its gold chain. Her cell phone, battery long, long dead, and now looking antiquated as h.e.l.l, all the more so in comparison to the latest-generation smartphone Elisabetta Villanova left behind in Tohir's bedroom. Her knife, a Mel Pardue folding stiletto, silver fittings and fluted mother-of-pearl scales with a pearl-inlay thumb stud. She puts the Saint Nicholas medal around her neck first.

"We have your orders, Chief," Danso says. "Report Fort Belvoir, building one-oh-eight, room three hundred, thirteen hundred hours tomorrow for debrief by Captain Heath. Transport at your discretion."

"Fort Belvoir, building one-oh-eight, room three hundred, thirteen hundred," Nessuno repeats, now stowing her wallet, her knife, in her pockets. She doesn't know what to do with the cell phone, finds herself holding it in one hand. She'll need a new one. Danso and Harrington have already cleaned up the photographs and papers, the HIIDE back in its case, and they're on their feet. She rises reflexively with them. Both men offer her a hand, one after the other.

"Welcome back to the world," Harrington says.

They leave, Danso exchanging a nod and a grin with Warlock, and Nessuno finds herself just standing there, dead cell phone in her hand.

"Not the homecoming you imagined?" Warlock asks.

"No."

"It never is." He gives her an easy smile, and then, he, too, offers her his hand. "I'm Jad. Nice to meet you, Petra."

The phone wakes her, not the one on the nightstand but the secured mobile that Heath gave her after the debriefing at Belvoir. It doesn't ring so much as whine, and the sound lances her dreams and jolts her awake in a guilty panic. She was dreaming of Tohir, and that only compounds the disorientation, the darkness of the room, the sheets in a tangle around her. She is in Tashkent, certain she's been blown, that Tohir is holding her down and that every one of her fears has come to pa.s.s.

The phone cries for her attention again, and that's what brings her back. She frees an arm, fumbles for the device, puts it to her ear as she thumbs the connection. It takes another moment before she can remember which name she should use.

"Nessuno, go," she says. Her voice sounds like something crawled into her mouth and expired in her larynx.

"Get showered, get dressed, get down to the lobby," Heath says. "I'm taking you to the house."

"You said-"

"I f.u.c.king know what I said, all right? Your presence is required at the house. They want you listening in."

Nessuno is sitting up now. The air conditioner has been running all along, and it turns the sweat on her skin cold.

"Why?"

"f.u.c.k." Heath leans on the f, an expression of her frustration. "They've got a million whys, Chief. They want to verify what he's saying. They want an expert present. They want the operator who was next to him for a year and knows him better than anyone to listen to his bulls.h.i.t and if it comes to it to look him in the eye and call him a liar. It doesn't matter why. I said no, they said f.u.c.k you, Captain, this comes from the shiny on-high, and now I'm on my way to your hotel and you will be in the lobby and waiting for me when I arrive."

Nessuno closes her eyes.

"Understood."

She's expecting Heath to kill the connection then and there, but there's a pause.

"I'm sorry, Chief," Heath says. "I tried."

"Understood."

The call ends.

Nessuno throws the phone across the room, into the mirror over the desk. The mirror shatters, and she appreciates the weak satisfaction that provides. She takes another moment, pushes hair off her forehead, then untangles herself from the sheets. The Saint Nicholas medal bounces against her chest as she moves, and she puts the fingertips of one hand to it as she heads for the bathroom, the shower, and what will come next.

Praying for Saint Nicholas to protect Elisabetta Villanova and Petra Nessuno both from Vosil Tohir.

Chapter Eight.

THE HOUSE IS outside of Leesburg, some thirty miles west of D.C., twenty from Gaithersburg. The driveway drops from the county road abruptly, past a screen of trees and around a slow bend that Bell knows is crammed with surveillance, human and electronic both, despite the fact that he doesn't see anyone or anything. Four cars parked out front, two of them nose out, and both of those are big Ford Expeditions, black. Nose in is another Ford, a Taurus, painted the kind of tan that anyone who has ever changed a diaper can recognize immediately-and anyone who works in government can recognize it, too, but for entirely different reasons. The last car is a new Honda Civic, black, parked a few yards off to the side, as if intimidated by the presence of so much Detroit steel. It's the only vehicle that would look inconspicuous, except for the company it's keeping.

Bell thinks that there are too many f.u.c.king cars parked out front for a place full of people trying to keep a secret.

He swings his ride around, parks farther off to the side, nose also pointed out. He's been given the keys to a Mustang convertible, but he's driven top up, despite the glorious Virginia summer's day. When he exits the car, he bashes his head against the door frame. He rubs the b.u.mp and uses that as an excuse to eyeball the area for a second time. The trees provide a nice screen from the road, but closer to the house they've been cut back, clearing the sight lines. The house itself is at least one hundred years old, beaten red clapboard and capped redbrick chimney, the curtains drawn in almost every window he can see. He's not seeing motion or cameras, and he thinks the place looks like exactly what it is. The difference between hiding in plain sight in Hailey and hiding in plain sight here is almost painful to behold.

He makes his way over gravel that crunches beneath his sneakers to the door. He's knocked once and is about to knock again when it's opened by a wrinkle-faced old man with hair that's pa.s.sed silver and graduated straight to white. Bell, who stands over six feet, positively towers above the face looking up at him. The old man has both hands out of sight, and only one is on the doork.n.o.b, Bell knows.

"Steve send you?" the man says. The challenge phrase comes out with a smoker's rasp.

"Sorry I'm running late," Bell says. "Had to change a flat."

The old man eyeb.a.l.l.s him, weighing the confirmation, then grunts and steps back, and Bell steps forward into an entry hall where two men are lowering their weapons, one an MP7A1, the other a Benelli shotgun. Both are dressed plainclothes, T-shirts and blue jeans and hair long enough for Bell to know they've been at undercover work at least six months. One starts a muted conversation over his earpiece, never taking his eyes off Bell. The white-haired old man ignores everything and everyone, resumes his post on a wooden stool near the door. A small black-and-white video monitor rests at his elbow, showing a split view of the approach to the house, covering the exit from the county road and the drive. There's another shotgun in easy reach.

The one on the earpiece asks, "Carrying?"

"Yeah."

"No weapons in with him."

"He try anything?" Bell asks.

He gets two shrugs in response, and the other guard points down the hall. "You go that way."

Bell goes that way until he finds himself in a kitchen not that different from the one where his ex-wife served him iced tea less than seventy-two hours earlier. Another three men and the guns that go with them are here, the men in variants of the undercover garb he's already seen in the hall, mostly running to jeans and tees, all of them Caucasian, and not a face that looks over thirty. Bell gets nods of acknowledgment rather than greeting, feels them sizing him up and evaluating. He doesn't know them, and it's anyone's guess where they're from, but Bell thinks probably DSS or the like rather than FBI or CIA. If a special deputy AG has been a.s.signed to Tohir's case they could even be federal marshals.

"There's coffee," one of them says, using his chin to indicate the coffeemaker on the counter. "It's not entirely horrible."

Bell laughs, goes to the sink and finds a dirty mug, which he proceeds to wash, then fill. There's a window, and through it he can see yet another undercover, this one female, pretending to play with a German shepherd in the backyard. He wonders how far out the bubble stretches, just how dug in the defenses actually are. Inconspicuous or not, if anybody comes for Vosil Tohir, they're going to have one h.e.l.l of a time reaching him.

"Jad."

He looks, and Steelriver is standing in the doorway off to his right, the entry to a hall running perpendicular to the one where Bell entered.

"Hey, Tom."

Steelriver motions for Bell to follow him. Bell finishes his not-entirely-awful coffee before setting the mug back in the sink. They start back down the hall.

"Brought me in to give the play-by-play on the capture," Steelriver says.

"They put you in the room?"

"Nah, but I got to watch the first couple rounds via the monitors. He's not going down easily."

"Who's lead?"

"Some guy from the Company," Steelriver says. "At least, he's got the ball today. Name's Wallford. That's if you believe it when someone from CIA gives you a name."

"I may know him."

"Which would explain why he wants you in there."

"He try anything?"

"Heatdish? Not yet, but I wouldn't put it past him. He wasn't out from surgery and recovered enough to start talking in earnest until yesterday afternoon, and he's been restless ever since. Like he's putting himself through his own physical therapy."

"But he is talking?"

"Oh, he's talking, but whether he's saying anything, that's something else entirely."