tickets, so I bought the beer and hot dogs. She was also really cute. “I just got back from Iraq two weeks ago,” I pointed out, quite unnecessarily. Blinky knew damn well where I’d been and when I’d returned.
“You volunteered for France.” He rooted in a file on his desk and came up with a sheet of paper. “See, here it is.” He fluttered it where I could see it.
“That was a dream sheet I filled out years ago,” I remarked, and waved a hand in dismissal. All this drama was for show, of course. The heavies cared not a whit whether I was happy in my work; Blinky could send me to any spot on the planet with a stroke of his pen.
“So?”
“As I recall, when I volunteered I wanted a chance to make a personal contribution that would improve our relations with our French allies. I was thinking along the lines of assistant passport officer at the embassy, black-tie diplomatic parties, meeting a few nice French girls, invitations to the country for the weekend—“
“You’ve been watching too many movies,” Blinky said crisply. “The new head of European Ops asked for you by name.”
“He did?”
“Indeed.”
I was dubious. My stock at the agency hadn’t been very high since that disaster with the retired KGB archivist who defected the summer before last. “What’s his name?” I asked, trying to keep my skepticism from showing.
“Jake Grafton.”
Uh-oh! I ran across Jake Grafton a few years ago in Cuba, and he and I had crossed paths a few times since. He had my vote as the toughest son of a bitch wearing shoe leather. He was the man the folks in the E-ring of the Pentagon and over at the White House handed the ball to when things got really rough. “I thought he retired?”
“From the Navy. He’s working for the company now. But what the hey, if you don’t want to go to France, we can ship you back to Iraq — they’re asking for you, too.”
I was underwhelmed. “I work too cheap,” I remarked. Blinky ignored that crack. “So which will it be?” It wasn’t as if I were being asked to hang it out on a secret mission behind the Iron or Bamboo Curtain. Blinky was talking France, for God’s sake, the good-living capital of the world, where snootiness was de rigueur and fleecing tourists a way of life. Still, the folks in the DGSE played hardball. That agency was the successor to the Service de Documentation Exterieur et de Contre-Espionage, the SDECE, the spy agency de Gaulle founded after World War II. The name was changed after the SDECE’s reputation for murder, kidnapping and torture became a political liability. The same kind, gentle, in-tight-with-Jesus Samaritans were still there, however. “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe… France.”
“How’s your French, anyway?”
“Voulez-vous couchez avec moi?”
“Fluent,” he muttered, and launched into an explanation of my assignment. London first for a briefing, then France.
A few minutes later Blinky stood and held out his hand. That was my signal to leave. “Try not to get caught,” he said as he pumped my hand perfunctorily. “Yes, sir.”
He followed me to the door and muttered, “I once spent a summer in France.” He blinked a dozen or two times, seemingly lost in thought. “I’ve always wondered—,” he began, then fell silent and blinked some more. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
He shoved me gently through the doorway. The door closed behind me with a thunk.
So I cleaned my apartment, put the car back in storage, and took a cab to the airport on Sunday afternoon. I was in a fine mood as I strolled down the concourse at Dulles International.
Boarding was ten minutes away as I approached the gate area. I automatically scanned the crowd… and there she was, sitting with her back to the window reading a magazine. My old girlfriend, Sarah Houston. Oh, no!
Of course, she glanced up and saw me at about the same instant. Our eyes met for a second or so; then she turned the page of her magazine and concentrated upon it.
Oh, man!
After the mess with the KGB archivist, Sarah decided I was boyfriend material. Everything went fine for a couple of months, then, you know…
She was tall, brainy and gorgeous and worked for the NSA— National Security Agency — as a network and data mining specialist. She had a seriously twisted past and was a little cross-wired upstairs, but I was big enough to overlook those smirches. If you hold out for a saint, you’re going to die a virgin.
The lounge was filling up and there weren’t many seats left. That was fine — I was going to be sitting for hours.
I sneaked a sideways look. She was examining me over the top of her magazine. She instantly averted her eyes.
Of course it all came flooding back. She had gotten so serious … Did she have another guy now? I wondered if she was wearing a ring — and sneaked a look. Couldn’t see her left hand from this angle.
I know it sounds stupid, but suddenly I wanted to know. I walked to the window on her left side and stood looking at our jet, which was nosed up to the jetway. Finally I shot another glance at Sarah. Well, hell, I couldn’t tell.
They began boarding the flight, and since I was sitting in the back of the plane, they called my row immediately. I got in line and went aboard. Sarah was still sitting by the window when I last saw her.
I had drawn an aisle seat three rows forward of the aft galley and had a lady beside me who was fifty-fifty — about fifty years old and fifty pounds overweight. She sort of spread out and I tried to give her room.
The herd was pretty well settled when I saw Sarah coming along the aisle with her shoulder bag and wheeled valise. She had her boarding pass in her left hand. I ooched down in the seat to hide the bottom half of my face and took another squint at her left hand. No rings.
Then she spied me. She took a step or two closer, checked the seat numbers, turned and called loudly for a flight attendant. One appeared almost immediately, as if she had been waiting offstage for a summons.
“I want another seat,” Sarah declared in her I-am-not-putting-up-with-any-more-of-this-crap voice.
“We’re pretty full—“
“I’m not sitting near him!” This announcement carried all over the ass end of that cattle car, and to ensure everyone knew which cretin she was referring to, she pointed right at me. “I just couldn’t!”
The flight attendant zeroed in on me, even took a step closer and gave me a hard look to see if I was drooling.
“I’ll see what I can do,” the uniformed witch said. She whirled and marched forward. Sarah followed her up the aisle, her head erect, her back stiff.
As I watched them go I realized that everyone within twenty feet was sizing me up. “Jerk,” the woman beside me announced, then studiously ignored me.
We were somewhere over Long Island when I finally got around to wondering why Sarah Houston was aboard this flight.
The next time I saw Houston was at the baggage carousel at Heathrow. She stayed on the far side of the thing and refused to look at me. I was getting a little browned off at the public humiliation and tried my best to ignore her.
It wasn’t as if I left her stranded at the altar or branded with a scarlet A For heaven’s sake, we were both adults, nearly a decade over the age of twenty-one, perfectly capable of saying, “No, thank you.” I dragged my stuff through customs and joined the taxi queue. It was early on Monday morning in London, and I didn’t get a wink of sleep on the plane; I was tired, grubby and stinky. On top of that, just when I was in the mood to kill something, everyone was so goddamn polite, nauseatingly so. I snarled at the lady in front of me when she dragged a wheel or her suitcase across my toot and she looked deeply offended.
The CIA had an office in Kensington on one of the side streets, a huge old mansion that sat in a row of similar houses, all of which had been converted to offices. The sign outside said the building housed an import- export company. As my taxi pulled up in front, I saw Sarah Houston get out of the cab ahead. I knew it! My luck had turned bad; it had gone sour and rotten and was beginning to stink. People were going to avoid me, give me odd looks, leave rooms when I entered. I’ve been through stretches like this before — and some woman usually
