sufferance.”
Since a team from the On-Site Inspection Agency had been aboard the downed Russian plane, both Washington and Moscow were willing to allow an observer from the agency at the crash site — somebody who could help identify the victims, round up their personal and professional effects, and funnel reports back to O.S.I.A’s Washington headquarters. But none of the top officials involved in either capital were likely to have much patience with him if he pissed off the experts tasked with the real work of investigating the crash.
Helen leaned forward and asked softly, “Is O.S.I.A really that bad, Peter?”
“It’s Siberia without the perks.” Thorn tried smiling and failed.
“Seriously, I have a nice carpeted office, a nice new computer, and a nice clean desk. but nothing important or interesting ever comes across that desk. I write reports analyzing terrorist threats that go straight into a circular file somewhere. And the rest of the time I sit around waiting to answer questions that are never asked.”
He snorted in disgust. “I’m forty years old, Helen, and I’m stuck behind a desk when I should be out leading troops. But I wouldn’t mind that so much if they’d at least let me do the job they hired me for.”
“Then why not resign?” Helen asked bluntly. “Why stay in the Army if they won’t let you do what you’re best at?”
Resign? Leave the Army? Thorn pondered that for a split second and then shook his head decisively. “Can’t do that. They can fire me if they want to, but I won’t quit.”
She frowned.
“Jesus, Helen. I know that sounds stubborn, even muleheaded. But I’m a soldier. That’s all I’ve ever been. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be since I was just a kid.” Thorn paused, remembering the pride he’d felt as a little boy watching his soldier father march past with that green beret sitting proudly on his head. “I took an oath to serve my country. I’ll honor that oath however I’m allowed. Whether it’s behind some goddamned desk. or out here in these damned woods.”
Helen’s frown faded. “Now that’s the Peter Thorn I’m used to hearing.”
Her lips curved upward into a slight smile. “Pigheaded, yes. Opinionated, yes. But not a whiner or a quitter.”
Thorn winced. “I guess I did sound pretty damned bitter, didn’t I?”
“Yep.” She reached out and put a hand gently on his knee.
“And not a bit like the same man who told me to stay in the FBI whenever I wanted to give up. Who pushed me back into the ring every time I got knocked down.”
She looked down at her lap for a moment. “I haven’t forgotten the months you spent getting me back on my feet, Peter. Not a second of them.”
Thorn nodded slowly. While leading an FBI Hostage Rescue Team raid on a terrorist safe house in northern Virginia, Helen had been badly wounded. Her doctors had warned her that her injuries might be permanent. That she might never walk unaided or without a severe limp.
Well, she’d proved them wrong. It had taken months of rigorous physical therapy — months of constant pain and hard work but she’d regained the full use of her legs.
He’d encouraged her to fight for her health and her career every step of the way. Some members of the FBI’s old-boy network would have been very happy to see her accept a presidential commendation for heroism and retire on disability. But she’d surprised them all. She’d reported back for active duty with a clean bill of health from every doctor she could corral.
Thorn smiled to himself. Helen had more courage in one of her little toes than all the bureaucrats at the FBI’s Hoover Building headquarters put together.
Her sigh startled him. He looked up and found her studying him intently.
“Peter …” She hesitated, then fell silent. She tried again.
“Peter, I think we need to talk”
“Yeah. We do,” Thorn cut in hurriedly. Those were not words he wanted to hear right now. He took his hand off hers and quickly tried to change the subject. “You’ve had more time on the ground here. What’s your first take on this plane crash? Do you buy the accident theory? Or do you think we’re looking at some kind of sabotage?”
Christ, I’m babbling like an idiot, he thought.
Helen rolled her eyes. “Peter Thorn, you are the most irritating man I’ve ever met.” She sounded exasperated beyond endurance.
Bingo.
Thorn grinned slowly. “Does that mean you still like me?”
Almost against her will, Helen matched his grin. “Probably.”
She shrugged. “Maybe I even still love you.”
Aware again of the pulse pounding in his ears, Thorn lifted the hand she had on his knee, enclosed it in his own, and pulled her slowly toward him. Her lips parted, met his gently, and then pressed back even harder.
Suddenly he felt her stiffen.
Slowly, reluctantly, Helen pulled her lips away from his. She whispered, “Someone’s outside, Peter. I just heard a twig snap.”
He sat up and faced the tent flap — watching her hand slip toward the shoulder holster hanging from a peg over her cot. Her combat reflexes were obviously still good.
Someone rapped on the canvas. “Special Agent Gray? You are still awake, I hope?”
Helen visibly relaxed. “It’s Alexei Koniev.” She sat back on the cot and smoothed her sweater into shape. “I’m awake, Major. Colonel Thorn and I were just talking. Come on in.”
Koniev slipped through the tent flap and stood looking down at them.
His eyes twinkled. “I hope I am not interrupting anything of importance.”
“Nothing much, Major,” Thorn heard himself say stiffly.
“Ah, that is good.” Koniev tossed his officer’s cap onto Helen’s improvised desk and sat down in the empty folding chair. He crossed his legs casually and leaned forward. “Perhaps we can discuss our strategy for tomorrow, then. Our game plan, I believe you Americans say?”
Thorn bit down hard on his irritation. Koniev had as much right to visit Helen’s tent as he did — maybe even more. And he couldn’t fault the Russian major for wanting to get a head start on the next day’s work. He just wished the younger man didn’t look so much at home in her company. His love life and this investigation were already complicated enough.
CHAPTER TWO
EARLY WARNING
Colonel General Feodor Serov slid the pile of brochures and bank transfers into a special file folder and nodded to himself. Cuba would serve as the ideal shelter for his family and his newfound wealth.
His lips thinned into a mocking smile.
Some of his old comrades-in-arms might attribute his decision to a liking for one of the world’s few remaining communist states. Despite his professed fondness for “the U.S.S.R.“s good old days,” they would be wrong.
Ideology was a younger man’s luxury, he thought. Socialism was dead or dying. The mighty Soviet state he had served all his life was gone — leaving only a pale, shrinking ghost in its place.
His lopsided smile turned into a sneer. Yeltsin’s Russia could not even maintain its grip on Chechnya — a piss-poor region inhabited only by ignorant Muslim bandits. Four centuries of Russian and then Soviet imperial conquest were being thrown away by the quarreling fools in Moscow.
No, Serov had far better reasons for settling in Cuba.
Hard currency was king in Castro’s island nation. Land was cheap.
Wages were low. And Fidel’s hard-pressed government didn’t ask inconvenient questions when wealthy expatriates brought their resources to its aid. He and his family could blend in with the growing colony of other newly rich Russians who had already moved there — drawn by the sunny, warm climate, and by the chance to
