Beatrice had done what any agent of her merit would’ve, she’d scoured databases and delved into her colleague’s dossier for something she could use to gain the upper hand should she need it, but the woman’s record was spotless. Not a single soiled word. She’d spent her career doing everything right and proper. Commendations here, promotions there, commitment, diligence, determination. Fair play. All the right moves. Her hands had never been dirty. The damn dossier might as well have been carved into stone tablets by God’s own unspoiled fingernail.
That was all hullabaloo and poppycock to Beatrice. She had always been of the belief that none of that prim and proper bullshit was necessary to achieve success. You just had to be willing to do what needed to be done, come hell or high water, right, wrong or indifferent. Kill one or kill a hundred. If it served the mission, it was justified. Dirty hands were requisite to dirty work. And regardless of what it had taken for her to get where she was or how she had gone about it, Beatrice’s success rate had always been exemplary, but so had Connie Hensley’s. And that made Beatrice detest her even more.
During one morning’s interdepartmental briefing, the embassy had informed the CIA outpost that the ambassador would be attending a festival in the old city of Jaffa that evening on the mayor’s invitation. The station chief had apprised DSS that a deep cover operation had been in progress within Jaffa’s ancient walls for months, and the chance of the op going kinetic during the festival was credible. Dissenting words had been exchanged, but neither agency had backed off. The station chief had recommended that the operation be postponed, but in the end, left the final decision to his operatives’ discretion.
Beatrice, then one of the leads, wouldn’t hear of postponement, and the operation had gone forward as planned. That evening, she’d led a team of twenty armed operatives in plain clothes to mingle with the crowd and hunt for their mark. Special Agent Hensley and a fifteen-member diplomatic security agent team attended as well, some escorting the ambassador, others scattered amongst the crowd. Most of the evening had gone off without a hitch, but several hours in, Beatrice’s overwatch had identified their mark. They’d surrounded and confronted him and had attempted to take him quietly into custody, but the mark had been concealing an AK-47 Draco pistol with a seventy-five-round drum beneath his robe. CIA agents had converged, drawn their weapons, and shouted commands. The crowd had panicked, chaos had ensued, and DSS had moved in quickly to protect the ambassador and attempt to maintain order, but it had been no use. Everything had gone to shit after the first gunshot, fired by one of Beatrice’s junior operatives.
Five civilians died of gunshot wounds. Ten others, including two children, had been injured by stray bullets. The mark had escaped. The ambassador had been furious. And all operatives had disappeared without a trace.
Nonofficial cover operatives moved about without names or faces, and there had been no accounting for them being there or the pandemonium they had caused whatsoever, other than Special Agent Constance Hensley, Department of State, having known who they were and having reported it as being so.
Beatrice was having warm mint tea and cheese-filled burekas for breakfast with two fellow agents the following morning when she was confronted by a woman who hadn’t appeared to have gotten much sleep the previous evening.
“Why, Special Agent Hensley? Good morning to you. Something I can help you with, dear? Your hair looks a fright,” Beatrice had said with a giggle.
Hensley hadn’t been amused and hadn’t responded, either. With zero warning, she’d tackled Beatrice to the ground, upsetting the table and spilling her tea. She’d straddled her and preceded to punch her in the face while her other hand clamped onto Beatrice’s collar and slammed her head against the cobblestone patio.
Beatrice had tried to fight back, but her attacker had been out of her mind like a rampaging chimpanzee. Just before her fellow agents had wrestled Hensley away, she’d swung wildly and landed a right roundhouse squarely onto Beatrice’s mouth, three knuckles striking just below her nostrils, displacing a trio of her teeth.
Despite her motives, the attack on a fellow federal agent had forced Hensley to resign her position in Tel Aviv, but she somehow must’ve remained conscripted with the State Department. How that had come about was a mystery, but it didn’t matter nearly so much as how in the world she had ended up here, in Beatrice’s front yard.
Beatrice had a bone to pick with her, and her time would come. A few other obstacles needed to be treaded upon first. She finished her V8, grimacing at the boring bitterness, and glanced at the clock. “Four thirty. Nearin’ the time to close up shop.”
She rose a minute later, tossed the empty can in the garbage, and gathered her things. She took leave of the house, having decided the steppingstone upon which she would tread at the outset.
Tori gathered her belongings at the end of another lengthy, drawn-out week in what had become a span of many. She scanned her desk for anything she might overlook or forget, and made certain to snatch her novel so she could finish it tonight. It was the sixth installment of a series, only a few chapters remained, and she hoped the story would reach some form of an ending. Had he completed a seventh, it was unlikely it had been published before the collapse. Had it been published, printed, and distributed, it hadn’t made it to the shelves of the Spanier Library, nor would it. Internally, Tori begged the author not to torture her with another blasted cliffhanger.
She strolled from her desk to the door leading to the stairway and flipped
