Thorn studied them for a few seconds, working up his nerve. Then he turned to Helen. “Much as I hate to spoil my knuckle-dragging image, I have to admit that looks like fun.” He hesitated, suddenly surprised to discover how afraid he was that she’d refuse. “Would you care to dance, Miss Gray?”
“I’d love to, Colonel.”
Thorn led her out onto the floor, still perplexed by his earlier hesitation. Up to now, he’d never let any woman, or anything else for that matter, throw him off his stride like this. So what was so different about this one woman?
He forgot to worry about it as she slid into his arms.
Thorn moved in time with the music and with Helen for several minutes, content at first in the comfortable feeling of her body pressed lightly against his. He was conscious, though, of a growing desire to learn more about her. When the song ended and someone else put on a louder, faster tune from the seventies, he seized his opportunity. “Mind if we sit this one out, Miss Gray?”
“Only if you stop calling me Miss Gray,” she replied. “Deal?”
Thorn grinned. “All right… Helen.” Her first name seemed to flow very easily over his lips. He followed her off the floor, again admiring her beauty and grace.
They found a table far enough away from the jukebox so they could hear each other speak. He smiled across at her. “I hope your shoes are still intact. I’m afraid that dancing isn’t my strong suit. I took some classes at West Point, but not much stayed with me.”
Helen laughed. “Lucky you! My father was so afraid that I was becoming too much of a tomboy that he made me take cotillion with my sisters for three years!” Cotillion. That explained some of her grace. Thorn flagged down a waiter and secured two fresh glasses of white wine. “Sisters? I guess the Gray family’s a pretty big clan, then?”
She shrugged. “Not that big. I have two sisters, one older and one younger, and one older brother.”
Thorn smiled crookedly. “As an only child, that sounds like a pretty big family to me.” He took a drink, remembering the long evenings and quiet holidays. “I used to wonder what it would be like to have brothers and sisters. But I guess I wouldn’t trade my relationship with my dad for anything. It seems like he and I did everything together when I was growing up. Hiking… kayaking… skiing… riding, you name it.”
Helen shook her head. “Your dad sounds like quite a guy.” She hesitated. “What about your mom?”
Thorn felt his jaw tighten. “I don’t have a mother. Haven’t had one since I was a kid.”
“Oh, I’m sorry… Did she die?”
He paused, undecided about how much to tell her. They were treading in very private waters. On the other hand, he felt intuitively that he could trust this woman. “No, actually my mother left us when I was eleven after my dad came home from Nam. She said she needed more ‘space,’ that she had ‘grown up’ while he was overseas. I’m not sure either my dad or I ever really understood what she meant by that. We pretty much lost contact with her and learned to manage on our own.”
Thorn stopped almost abruptly, somewhat embarrassed at having revealed so much. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound bitter. It may have been a blessing in disguise. I probably got away with taking all sorts of crazy risks with just my dad looking after me. After she left, my dad wangled a transfer to Fort Carson, Colorado, for a couple of years.”
He pushed the conversation and his memories on to more pleasant ground. “That wasn’t a bad place to grow up, really. I rode horses all year round and skied in the winter. Heck, I even cross-country-skied to school. It was great. And then when I was thirteen we moved to Tehran so my dad could help train the Iranian Army…”
The stories of some of his teenage adventures and misadventures in Iran’s crowded capital lightened the mood considerably. But Thorn suddenly realized he’d been monopolising the conversation for far too long. He made a frantic bid to turn the spotlight back on her before she decided she had been trapped by an egomaniac. “What about you? Where did you grow up?”
“Nowhere quite so glamorous, I’m afraid.” Helen’s smile took the sting out of her words. “We lived in Indianapolis, where my dad was an executive with the phone company. Probably what you’d call a typical suburban existence. I had all the advantages of a close family, good schools with teachers who cared about me, and wonderful friends.”
She grinned broadly. “I’m practically a poster child for solid midwestern values.”
Thorn snorted. “Right. Lots of suburban girls go on to careers as an FBI commando.”
Helen spread her hands. “Well, of course, since I was the third kid I was always jockeying for position in the family And while my sisters fulfilled my mother’s dream by becoming charming, pretty girls who married well, I was always chasing after my brother and building forts in the backyard. I think sending me to cotillion was a last-ditch effort by my parents to make me suitable company for men.” She laughed. “Little did they know that I’d choose a profession where I’m almost exclusively surrounded by men!”
Suddenly, Helen’s watch beeped. Thorn saw her stiffen and then relax.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Eleven o’clock. I’m afraid I have to leave soon.”
“Does your ride turn into a pumpkin at 2400 hours or something?”
She chuckled. “No. But I do have an 0400 wake-up call, courtesy of your Sergeant Major Diaz. He’s challenged my team to a rematch.”
Thorn shook his head moumfully. “Remind me to see if I can get Diaz transferred to an Arctic weather station.” He looked seriously at her.
“I’d really like the chance to see you again.” “I’m based at Quantico,” she said quietly.
“That’s not very far from Washington, is it?” he asked.
“No.” The smile reached her eyes again. “It’s not.” They stood up to go. “I hope you’ll call me.”
Thorn nodded seriously. “You can count on it.”
He watched her go, slipping through the crowd with a dancer’s grace. She turned once, looked back at him, smiled one last time, and then vanished.
He shook his head, completely baffled. How had she got him to talk about his family and his childhood? Those were not things he usually discussed at the drop of a hat. Especially not to someone he’d just met. And just what the hell had he said? Whenever he tried to recall the conversation in detail, he remembered little more than a blur of voices and those warm blue eyes.
“A hell of a woman…” he murmured.
Helen Gray was still remembering the way he’d smiled back at her from across the room. Still holding her wineglass, she moved off to find Louisa Farrell and say her goodbyes.
The general’s wife found her first.
“Well,” she said, nodding back toward the knot of officers standing near the doorway. “What did you think of Peter Thorn?”
“He’s an interesting man.” Helen took a last sip of wine, carefully considering her response. “A very interesting man.”
CHAPTER 6
INFILTRATION
“Senior administration officials that the most interesting development at this U.N. conference on security and international development is something that wasn’t on the official agenda at all: a series of private meetings between U.S. Secretary of State Austin Brookes and his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Ahmad Adeli. Sources close to both governments have characterised these meetings the first between high-ranking American and Iranian officials in more than ten years as surprisingly cordial and productive.”
Colonel Peter Thorn turned his head toward the open bathroom door and paused with his hands halfway through the convoluted process of turning a thin strip of colored silk into a perfectly knotted necktie. He’d left the television on both out of habit and from a desire for some noise to break the silence enveloping his rented town
