wouldn’t believe the number of strange and inhospitable places I’ve been where I’ve had to whip up a meal from whatever I could find around me. I’ve learned to eat some pretty disgusting stuff in my time, so being able to cook a decent gourmet meal on my own is a gift.
Although I don’t go out much, there are a couple of places I frequent. One is a gym that’s farther south on York, past the university. It’s actually just over the line separating Towson with Baltimore. It’s a funky little gym that appeals to minority toughs. Only a few white guys go there. It’s mostly Hispanics and African-Americans who are into boxing or weight lifting. I imagine a lot of them are in gangs, but they don’t bother me.
The other place I go, and on a much more regular basis, is the Krav Maga studio that’s in the same strip mall as my dry cleaners. It’s close enough that I walk there from the townhouse. And that’s where I go today after breakfast.
I put on my workout clothes — a jumpsuit, really — and make sure the security system is on. I leave the house and begin the ten-minute walk to the strip mall. It’s a fine day outside — spring has come early this year and we didn’t have a bad winter. Of course, I was gone most of the winter, so it didn’t matter. The assignment in the Far East took nearly three months. I was in Hong Kong for most of that time doing the preparation for the job in Macau. The assignment also involved a couple of trips to Singapore. Tracing the Shop’s arms pipeline in that area turned out to be more difficult than was originally predicted.
I received mixed reviews for the Macau job. Lambert was pleased with all the stuff I got out of the casino’s computer, but he wasn’t happy about the killings. Kim Wei Lo was indeed a very bad man and probably deserved to die, but Lambert felt we could have gotten more information out of him later. He would have gone down in the subsequent arrests that the Chinese government will surely initiate once the NSA provides them with the proof of the Shop’s existence in their country and territories. Hell, I didn’t set out to kill him, it just happened that way. It was either him or me. Lambert understands that, but he was still perturbed. He’ll get over it, though.
As Splinter Cells go, I’m pretty lucky that I’m not assigned to a static location. Dan Lee, the agent who was killed in Macau, lived and worked in the Far East territory. Of course, the guy was Chinese, so that made sense. But there are other Splinter Cells stationed in parts of the world where I certainly wouldn’t want to stay all the time. I like coming back to the States between jobs, even if it’s only to
I was in the CIA before I became a Splinter Cell. I hated it. Too much bureaucracy. Too much in-fighting and not enough cooperation between the other big agencies. In the CIA I had to spy in the traditional way — usually posing as a diplomat or someone in an official capacity. I had to be in more social situations than I cared for. I’m not good at entertaining some prime minister and his wife and talking about the local politics. Later on I moved to a stateside job in weapons development. I thought I came up with some pretty good theoretical work on information warfare, but the bureaucratic machine hampered my creativity. It was extremely frustrating. I’m a man of action and that’s why I left the CIA when Colonel Irving Lambert asked me to join Third Echelon.
I was reluctant at first, but Lambert did a pretty good job of flattering me. He told me I was the only man for the job. I was a “rare specimen,” he said. I was a spy who had never come close to being caught. I had a lifetime’s worth of espionage experience (I’m four years older than Lambert!), but I haven’t left any fingerprints on the intelligence community. He told me I knew how to survive and stay invisible. He knew I could keep a secret. So I joined.
The Macau job was pretty typical of what I do. My cover in Hong Kong was that of a journalist, which is something I’ve been on several occasions. I was supposedly working on a book about the changes in Hong Kong since the handover in 1997. To tell the truth, I didn’t see that many changes. I’d been to Hong Kong many times before 1997 and a couple of times since, and I can’t tell much difference other than the fact that there are fewer Brits now.
Still, there are some British government agencies left in Hong Kong. They provided the private boat that got me to Macau and back. The rest of it I had to do alone, though. I motored around the peninsula at night and moored a couple of miles from the main port. Like the Americans, the Brits supposedly had no knowledge of my presence or actions in the area, although the U.K. is just as interested in closing down the Shop as we are. That’s why they helped.
I get to the strip mall and walk inside KM Studio, early as usual. I’m always the first one there. The instructor is an Israeli woman named Katia Loenstern. She’s thirty-something and extremely attractive. Very buff and strong, too. I think she likes me, but I can’t reciprocate. It’s just too dangerous in my business to get involved with someone. Besides, I never know when I have to leave the country, and I can’t talk about what I’m doing. It’s not the best set of circumstances upon which to build a relationship. I don’t particularly
Katia is in the studio, limbering up on a ballet rail. I think she rents the studio to a ballet class on some days. I can’t imagine that Krav Maga classes alone pay the rent.
“Sam!” she says, obviously surprised to see me.
“Hi, Katia,” I reply.
“Where the heck you been? I thought you’d disappeared off the face of the earth.”
That’s right. I was in the Far East. I hadn’t been to class in three months even though I had paid for the whole year in advance.
“I’ve been away on business,” I said. At least it was the truth. “Sorry. I should have told you I’d be gone a while.”
She straightens out and faces me. As usual, she’s dressed in a leotard and tights for the warm-up. She’d put on a little more clothing later for the sparring portion of the class. Katia is tall, muscular, and has a nice, natural body. Her black hair comes down just past her shoulders. She has brown eyes, a long nose, and a rather pouty mouth. Yep, I would certainly jump her bones in another life.
“Just what kind of business are you in?”
“Sales. Overseas sales. I was in the Far East for three months.”
She eyes me skeptically. “You don’t look like a salesman.”
I put down my gym bag that contains a towel and an extra T-shirt and sit on the mat. I begin my own warm-up stretches and ask, “I don’t? What does a salesman look like?”
She gets on the mat near me and continues calisthenics. “I don’t know. Just not like you.”
“What do I look like?”
“You look like a soldier. Like a career soldier. Someone who’s been in the army for thirty years.”
“
“No, I guess you’re not. Okay, twenty years. How old are you, anyway? I forgot.”
“It’s on my application for the class, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I could go look it up, but I’m too busy right this second.”
“I’m forty-seven.”
She makes a face that indicates she’s impressed. “Sam, you don’t look a day over forty. Maybe even thirty- eight. And that’s getting pretty close to
I look at her and she smiles at me. Is she flirting? Was that a come-on?
“Why, how old are you?” I ask.
“You know it’s impolite to ask a woman her age.”
“Aw, geez, Katia. Come on, I fessed up.”
“Guess.”
I’m pretty sure what the answer is, but I pretend to think about it. “Thirty-five?”
She raises her eyebrows. “Very good.”
Two more students enter the studio. Josh and Brian are orthodox Jews who believe that “the war” will come to their neighborhood someday, and they want to be able to defend themselves. They’re big guys. I don’t think
