“You showered. Let me get this salt spray off of me.” Maya took off her bra and slipped out of her panties, dropping both to the floor. Then she slowly went into the bathroom naked.
While the shower ran, he checked in with Roddy again, texting about his encounter with Sergei and Polina.
‘They were simply testing you,’ Roddy texted back.
Karl knew this.
Roddy continued, ‘They don’t have the authorization to kill you.’
‘Good to know,’ Karl texted back.
‘See you soon.’
Moments later, Maya came out naked, her hair wet. She smiled and crawled into bed. “Make love to me.”
He didn’t need much persuasion. After all, this might be the last time they would be together, depending on what the Agency decided to do with her.
Karl got undressed quickly and got into bed with her. They made love slowly, as if they needed to make each movement last a lifetime and neither one of them wanted to forget this moment.
When both were satisfied, they simply held each other, her head against his chest.
An hour later they checked out of the hotel and took a cab downtown. Karl made damn sure they had not been followed by the Russians.
Waiting for them across the street from one of the casinos was Bill Evans from the Curacao consulate, behind the wheel of a white SUV.
Karl took Maya’s bag with him into the back seat, while she got in the front passenger seat.
Bill turned to Karl in the back seat and said, “Obviously, everything went all right. You have something for me?”
Taking out all of his weapons, which could not go with him on his commercial flight, Karl slid them into the attache case. Then he also found Maya’s gun and returned that as well.
“What now?” Maya asked nobody in particular.
“Now, Bill will take you to the airport,” Karl said. “You’re flying back to the States on an Agency jet.”
She turned to Karl. “What about you?”
“I found out this morning that my uncle is sick,” Karl lied. “He’s in the hospital in Denver.”
“I’m so sorry,” Maya said.
“I think his cancer is finally taking him.”
She reached her hand back to him and he squeezed down on her soft skin. He hatted to lie to her, but that was exactly what she had been doing to him since day one when they met in Murmansk months ago. He kissed her hand and then got out of the SUV. Once he closed the door and walked away, he never looked back.
40
Karl had tried to sleep on the flight from Aruba to Charlotte, but his mind kept running through what had happened in the past few days. They had caught the Russians playing hide and seek with a nuclear missile. Yet, perhaps that was the problem. Why would they ship just one missile to Venezuela? After all, the facility hidden deep in the jungle could have easily housed at least four missiles on transporter erector launchers. It also looked like they were ready to start building a second storage facility next to the first one. That would have been at least eight missiles. Then those missiles could have been disbursed to even more remote locations, where they required only a small opening in the forest canopy to launch through.
What if this had been a diversion to their real intention? But what could that be?
As soon as Karl touched down in Charlotte and turned his phone back on, a text came through from his father. It simply said, ‘Call me ASAP.’
Karl got off the plane and found an isolated gate. Since it was closing in on midnight, that wasn’t a difficult task.
He called his father and waited.
Jake Adams answered, “Save the world yet, son?”
“Maybe,” Karl responded. “What’s up?”
“When I found out you were heading to North Carolina, I knew I needed to get in touch with you.”
“About?”
“Your mother.”
“My real mother or my aunt?”
“Your real mother. Toni Contardo.”
He was too tired to deal with this. “Okay. What about her?”
“She left something for you.”
“I’m too old for a puppy.”
“I see you got my smartass gene,” Jake said. “You’ll get a text in a few seconds with GPS coordinates. Go there.”
Sure enough. A text came through and Karl could tell from the coordinates that the location wasn’t that far from Charlotte. He clicked on the GPS numbers and it brought him to a map.
“It looks like the middle of nowhere,” Karl said.
“It’s not. But you can see it from there. I’ve only been there once. Years ago. I’m the only other person who knows about this place. It’s completely paid for, and the taxes and upkeep are paid through a trust administered out of Belize.”
“What is it?” Karl asked.
“A cabin. A retreat.”
Another text came through and Karl looked at it. This one was from his Agency contact, Roddy, asking where he was.
“I’ve got to go, dad,” Karl said.
“I know. Your Agency contact is outside of security. Roddy will want to debrief you on everything that happened in Venezuela and elsewhere. Which is the main reason I called you. Make sure you just give the basic facts. Omission is only a lapse in memory, not a lie. In other words, the Agency doesn’t need to know everything.”
Karl lowered his voice and said, “You want me to lie to the Agency?”
Jake laughed. “Are you serious? Did they tell you about that double agent in Murmansk?”
How in the hell did his father know all of this?
“You seem to have all the answers, dad.”
“I know enough to know that you can’t trust everyone at the Agency. Not everyone wants you to succeed, son.” Jake hesitated and then added, “Call me if you need anything. But go to your mother’s cabin pronto. My guess is she left you something other than just the cabin.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Take it easy.”
His father hung up and Karl stared at the phone. Then he sent a text to Roddy saying he was on his way.
Although he had talked with his contact at the Agency and texted him a number of times in the past few months, he had not seen Roddy since just before he left for Murmansk.
The two of them shook hands briefly. Then Roddy shifted his head toward the exit door and Karl followed him out to a waiting black SUV limo. They both got in the back and the driver immediately pulled away from the curb.
Roddy started off by asking Karl to detail his actions, from Russia to Venezuela.
Taking his father’s words seriously, Karl explained what had happened. He left out the intimate details about his relationship with Maya. And he even left out the part about the two men they had been forced to kill on that Venezuelan fishing pier.
“Tell me about Maya,” Roddy said.
“What about her?”
“Can she be trusted going forward?”
That was a damn good question, and one Karl had been asking himself ever since he found out she was a double agent. “I don’t know,” Karl said. “Maybe after some intense rehabilitation. What do the Russians have for leverage?”
“Not much, but maybe a lot. Cousins in Russia. But she said they would kill her mother if she didn’t comply.”
“That could be a lie,” Karl said.
“We know that.”
Karl considered Maya very carefully now. “If she wants to continue, I would let her do so. But the next person to work with her should know she’s working both sides.”
“Would that have helped you in some way if you knew in Murmansk?” Roddy asked.
Another damn good question. “Maybe not. But I think more information is always better than piecemeal.”
Roddy stared at him intently now. “Then why didn’t you tell me about the Venezuelan intel officers you had to kill on that fishing pier?”