Hail said, “I mean, when they send you in to collect information, how do you do it? Is it like electronic eavesdropping, video surveillance, what?”
Kara gave Hail a look that questioned his sincerity.
“Look at me for a second, Marshall,” she said.
Kara stood up from the table and did a slow turn as if she were an expensive porcelain doll revolving on a turntable.
With Hail watching her while still standing and still turning, she asked, “Do I look like someone they would send in to do video surveillance?”
“I don’t know,” Hail responded sheepishly.
Kara sat back down and placed her cloth napkin back in her lap. She took another sip of sake and said, “I’m the CIA’s version of a courtesan, Mr. Hail. I am the pretty thing they send in to get close to horny assholes. And then while I’m close, I steal their secrets.”
Kara stopped talking and stared at Hail with steely unblinking green eyes.
Hail wanted to look away, but he felt that shifting his eyes away from hers would be an insult of some type. So he didn’t. He looked at Kara Ramey, looked at her beautiful face and said, “And how did you get into that line of work?”
Kara took in the question and burst out laughing.
Hail started laughing, happy that his levity could break up the awkwardness of the moment.
But as Hail laughed, he realized something very important about this woman. Part of her job was to continually keep him off balance. Hail would try to center himself in a certain frame of mind so he could get a psychological advantage, and then, wham, she would completely blow him out of the water with a comment or a statement. When he had first knocked on her door, it was her comment about him liking her in tight fitting clothes. Then there was her mention of this being a date. And then there was something lurking in her interaction with his friend Gage. And then she had brought up his family’s death. And now, now that he was trying to figure out what she did and how she did it, again she flattened him with this new salacious proclamation.
After the laugher had subsided, Kara asked, “You know Marshall, what does it really matter to you? I can tell you for sure that Kornev is a bad guy. We’ve been watching him closely for a year or more and he sells nasty weapons to nasty people. I mean you’re content with plucking people off the FBIs top ten list. So what’s the fascination with this one guy?”
Hail said, “I could ask you the same thing. You have a list of all these bad guys, yet you’re concentrating your efforts on this one guy. He has to be important. He has to be important enough for you to risk your life.”
Kara didn’t respond. She pretended to look for the waiter.
“Put the flower in the vase,” Hail told her.
“That’s OK,” she said, dismissing his suggestion.
Hail asked, “Why do you do it? How did you end up working with the CIA? You must have a lot of skin in the game, so to speak, if your roll with the CIA is truly what you just told me.”
“That’s not important,” Kara said. “And anyway, I’m not allowed to tell you anything about myself. As far as you are concerned, I’m a CIA robot. I don’t have a personal life. I’m owned by my country.”
“God,” Hail said. “You got majorly damaged somehow. You’re almost as fucked up as I am.”
Kara looked at Hail as if he had slapped her in the face. She flashed him an expression of pure distain.
“When did you become a psychiatrist, Mr. Hail? Did you get a degree in psychoanalysis at MIT along with your physics degree? Did you get another Nobel Prize in damaged people assessment?”
Score one for the Hail team, Hail thought. He had finally gotten to her. He had knocked her off her game and rattled her. Now was as good a time as any to see what made her tick.
“Forget Kornev,” Hail said with a wave of his hand. “I’ll make you a different offer.”
Kara still looked angry.
Hail said, “If you tell me how you got the way you are, you know, the fucked up thing I was talking about, then I will let you into the mission center tonight.”
“Go to hell,” was Kara’s response.
“I already lived there for two years and I’m not going back.”
Kara didn’t say anything. She gave Hail a striking look of insolence.
“OK,” Hail said like he couldn’t give a shit. “I just thought you and I could start developing some trust between us. You already know everything there is to know about me. You even know my wife and my kids and all their names and when they were killed. You probably even know when they were born. But I don’t know anything about you except for the fact that you have some skeletons in the closet that keep trying to escape. Your fear of flying. Your joining the CIA and being made to do things you hate doing. There is a pressure building up inside you Miss Ramey and it takes every minute of your day to keep from exploding. I can’t trust a person like that with all I have built. At some point, you’ll have to level with me or you need to get off my boat.”
“Ship,” Kara corrected.
“Ship,” Hail agreed.
Kara finished her glass of sake and poured each of them another.
The waiter arrived with dishes of food. Some hot and some not. He placed them in front of the silent couple.
“If you need anything else, you know what to do,” the man said before heading back to the kitchen.
Kara picked up some ivory-looking chop sticks from her place setting. She began lightly poking at the sushi on her plate.
Hail watched her and waited. He knew she was trying to decide if she would give it up. It was a big decision. Either she had to level with him or she would be asked to leave.
“My parents were killed in The Five,” she told Hail almost in a whisper.
Hail was shaken by her confession. He’d expected something bad, like she was raped or molested as a youngster or maybe something even worse, if there was such a thing. But he didn’t expect what she had just told him. Every time, without fail, when someone told them they lost someone in The Five, it badly rattled him.
“And worse than that,” Kara continued solemnly, “they left me everything and nothing.”
Kara looked up at Hail and he saw tears forming in her eyes.
She looked lost, like a child who had gotten on the wrong bus and was heading out of town.
“I’m sorry,” Hail offered, but it felt as if he had said nothing. I’m sorry didn’t really mean shit. It was just something people said. Something that was expected to be said.
Kara ignored the sentiment and said, “I mean they were rich and now I’m rich, but only in money. In everything else that matters, I’m dirt poor. All my life I had someone taking care of me. I learned to do nothing on my own. Did you ever see the movie Arthur?”
“Yeah,” Hail said softly.
“Well, I feel just like that dumb fuck. The only difference was that Arthur was happy being a rich dumb fuck, and I’m not. I want to make a difference. Just like you. I want to find out who killed my parents. Not just what group killed them; I want to find the son of a bitch that pulled the trigger on the 9K333 Verba Russian made missile. And then once I find him, I want to shove the hardened tip of that 9K333 Verba right up his ass and pull the trigger. Does that sound harsh or demented or unstable to you Mr. Hail?”
Hail looked at her. Her eyes were still wet, but her rage was drying them out fast.
“That may be the sanest thing I’ve heard you say since you got on my ship,” Hail said.
Kara sniffed and dabbed the edge of her napkin under each eye. She then reached down and picked up her glass and drank another slug of sake.
“So that’s why you work for the CIA?” Hail asked.