Femme Fatale Read online

  Beth returned to the PDA menu and picked the photo of Egorov. Another time, another world, he would have been called a crime kingpin. Now he was just a rich man of influence to most people, a charismatic man in his fifties with piercing blue eyes and a rakish scar on his cheek. But behind the scenes, Egorov played cultures against one another with terrorism as his tool and money and power as his reward. Now he was discovering what most people knew…that all the power in the world couldn’t cure what mankind had not learned to cure.

  So he would die, and if Beth had her way, before he went he would know that his CIA mole had failed to kill Lyeta in time to protect his legacy.

  Although the mole still had the chance to stop Beth. And the mole had far too many advantages for comfort—unlike Beth, he was not on the run. Mr. B.S., for Bad Sniper, although it amused her that the initials were multipurpose. And unlike Beth, Mr. B.S. likely had a local team behind him, legitimately on the hunt for Lyeta and now the woman who’d supposedly killed her. Whereas Beth could not hunt for the mole, but simply do her best to evade him—and MI6—while she tried to understand Lyeta’s nonsensical death whispers.

  Not undoable. But it would take some concentration…and just the right moves.

  Not to mention doing without sleep for a while. She closed Egorov’s photo and did some quick surfing on the PDA, blessing its many enhancements as she hunted for anything “Blue Crane.”

  The little screen quickly filled with results, and she nibbled the doughnut, pondering and scrolling. Details on the bird itself, which didn’t seem like a useful thing to pursue. Various sports teams, mostly high school, didn’t strike her as particularly promising.

  But ah…the fact that the Blue Crane was South Africa’s national bird…

  That seemed like something. Just what, she wasn’t sure. But it was worth tucking away in the corner of her mind while she finished her coffee, blew doughnut crumbs off the PDA and slipped it back into her sling pack. As she slid out from behind the little round glass table at which she’d been seated, she caught the eye of the bored teen behind the service counter. He came right to attention, blushing a little behind his poor complexion, obviously considering those moments in which he’d been not so surreptitiously eyeing her. She asked him, “Know where I can find the Blue Crane?”

  “Which one?” he blurted. He hastened to add, “There are so many of them right here on the waterfront…that’s not even counting the ones in town.”

  Beth contrived to look confounded. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m supposed to meet someone there.”

  He shook his head. “You better ask ’em, or you’ll go bossies trying to track it down. Or try the shopping center, I suppose. There are a couple to choose from there. It doesn’t open for another hour, though.”

  “Dankie,” she said, and he grinned at her. Not necessarily a good thing; she didn’t want to be remembered. But then again, as the only customer who’d done anything more than rush in and out, she’d already gotten her share of attention.

  But she’d learned something here, and that was worth something. Not only was her hunch right—there were local establishments with Blue Crane in the name—but she had her work cut out for her in sorting them out. It was a start…and Barbara Price could help her prioritize her search. She might even have the right tidbit of information to send her to the right place the first time.

  Beth thought of the Breakwater Hotel, and decided against it. Even if it weren’t compromised, she couldn’t walk there and back before the shopping center opened. At the same time, the area had grown populated enough—mostly fishermen at this hour, but the occasional early-morning walker and overeager tourist—that she didn’t want to stay put. So she wandered, relaxed but her eyes surprisingly alert for a tall, hardened form in a dark olive oilcloth jacket. She strode past Market Square and over by the amphitheater, until she could make her way back to the shopping center and ease into the charm-laden building—a unique structure of indoor malls that from the outside looked like parallel buildings lined up against one another in stepping-stone fashion. The Blue Crane flower shop caught her eye right away; she didn’t stop. Unless she saw something that tugged at her, she’d simply “acquire” the shop locations to start with. Until then…

  Quit looking for him, she scolded herself as she noted a pair of broad shoulders in drab olive. When the man turned he had a smartly trimmed beard and impressively hooked nose. Her MI6 man had had a straight blade of a nose with an interesting broad spot that spoke of a mild break. It’s scary that you remember that, Flash. By a Local Artists Only storefront, she caught sight of someone with a lean silhouette and light step, and instantly turned…

  To find no one.

  Good going, I Spy. Clearly she’d been too long without a date. She’d have to do something about that when she got back to the States. Until then…

  Blue Crane Sport and Surf. Blue Crane Books. Blue Crane Body Naturals. Beth stopped in, intrigued by the basket-held displays. Easy to leave something in this place. She made a point to run her hands along the bottom of every readily accessible basket, not really expecting to find anything. While she was there she bought new toothpaste and brush and found her favorite citrus body soap. The four main classes of surfactants: Anionic, cationic, nonionic and zwitterionic. Zwitterionic—as words went, who could beat that?

  And upon leaving, she found herself facing an electronics and entertainment store. “I knew you’d be here somewhere,” she murmured at it. Better yet, it was one of the more populated stores in the center, full of kids playing with the games and adults admiring the big-screen entertainment system on display. The music was too loud to suit her purposes, but she found a spot near the entrance behind a stack of quiescent boom boxes and pulled out her personal digital assistant. A few quick shortcut commands with the stylus and the screen showed her the little dancer icon that Stony Man’s tech master, Aaron Kurtzman, had installed on her PDA OS with much sly pleasure.

  The dancer had blunt-cut hair and a unitard outfit, but was far too highly endowed to have made it as a professional; she danced across the small screen until Barbara Price’s image replaced her. It didn’t matter that it was late evening in Stony Man’s time zone; Barbara was somehow always there, always looking like Beth’s call was the most important thing in the world to her. Today Barbara didn’t bother with small talk. She said, “Things went badly.”

  “They went badly,” Beth agreed, adjusting the ear bud that made Barbara’s end of the scrambled conversation private. “But not as badly as they could have. I have what she was carrying.”

  Barbara frowned, with the faint drawing of her brow the only real manifestation of the expression. “Then why the delay? I expected to hear from you hours ago.”

  Beth quickly sketched the events on the dock, and said, “I think I should stay. If Lyeta was right about Egorov’s involvement, then the Bad Sniper mole might be after the keycard. It’ll be a race to see who finds it first, and we have no idea what the mole already knows. You’ll lose too much time bringing in someone else. I’m already in place.”

  “You’re compromised,” Barbara pointed out.

  “You should be able to mitigate some of that from your end.” Beth kept her voice mild as two young teens hesitated by the boom boxes, swapping technical turns in Afrikaans accents thick enough to baffle her.

  “Possibly.” Barbara gave her a thoughtful look. “But this isn’t the situation we sent you in to handle; you’re not prepared for it. You shouldn’t be alone, for one thing.”

  “You never know,” Beth said, and she switched to Russian for a few blunt words she didn’t want overheard. “Maybe Mr. MI6 will come along and I can convince him to play nice. I can use him, ditch him, and come home with the goods.” She added a quick description of the man, embellishing with a wicked grin.

  With the ear bud in place, Barbara could speak freely. “That’s not a bad idea.” She tapped a few keys on the keyboard that was just out of sight on the PDA screen and
said, “Of the MI6 agents known to be anywhere near that area, the description you gave me identifies your man as Jason Chandler. Very old-school, but he’s had SAS training. He can handle himself. He’d be a good backup, if you can convince him you didn’t shoot Lyeta. She scrolled through a few screens of text, her eyes flickering as she took them in. She nodded with approval. “He’s a good one, Flash. If you get the opportunity, take it.” Then she gave a little frown, staring at the off-screen monitor more closely. “I don’t see anything here about ‘really great ass,’ however.”

  “He’s SAS-trained,” Beth said airily. “And what is SAS but ass spelled sideways?”

  Barbara smiled briefly, a genuine amusement that Beth rarely saw in her. “The truth is, I should pull you and send in another team. But…you’re also right. We don’t have the time. If we can get our hands on a copy of Scherba’s master keycard, we can take Egorov’s organization apart from the inside out—not to mention get a handle on Krystof Scherba. He’s been a problem for a long, long time.”

  Beth snorted. “Wasn’t he notorious on an international level about the time he was thirteen? And what’s with all those tattoos, anyway?”

  “Yes to the first…and as to the second, if this works out, perhaps we’ll get a chance to ask him. Our profiler believes them to be merely an expression of his anarchist’s makeup.”

  “I think he just wanted to make his mother mad,” Beth muttered, thinking of the discreet tattoo on her own ankle, acquired when her own age still hung in the teens. Lucky for her the little rattlesnake was small enough to cover with a flesh patch for those times she couldn’t afford any visible distinguishing characteristics. She tucked her hair behind her ear and gave her nose a thoughtful rub. “If I’m staying, I could use a little help sorting through the Blue Crane establishments. Unless we come up with something else, it’s still the best bet. Though I sure would like to know where she stayed last night. Picking through her belongings would be a luxury right now.”

  “She was off everyone’s radar as far as I know, but if I hear anything on that, I’ll send it along. The Blue Crane information will come your way shortly.” Barbara gave a slight shake of her head, not entirely happy about the conversation. “Be careful, Flash,” she said. “I mean it. If we didn’t need this so badly…and get Chandler on your side. I mean that, too.”

  Beth sighed. She’d intended to forget that part of their conversation. “I hear you,” she said, glancing around the store to see she’d caught the attention of the boom box boys. “I’m going to stash the first package at my backup location. So if anything happens—”

  “Noted.” Barbara cut her off with a brusk tone. “I want you to stay in touch, Flash. We enjoy your unconventional ways, but this is one time I want you playing by the rules. Call in.”

  “My unconventional, successful ways,” Beth said, but it wasn’t an argument and they both knew it. “I’ll call.”

  She closed the connection just as the boys got close enough to look over her shoulder. One of them asked, “Is that a new game?”

  “Yes,” Beth said. “A prototype interactive spy game. It’s still in alpha testing, so don’t look for it on the market anytime soon.”

  “Then why do you have it in here?” the other boy asked, cleaning up his thick accent so she could understand. No doubt her own words had given her States origin away, although she could have affected any accent she wanted.

  Beth gave an airy wave at the electronics that surrounded her. “We’re trying out a new signal security system to assure proper function even in an environment thick with electromagnetics and radio waves,” she said, amusing herself. “Next I’ll be going to try it beneath the SABC tower.”

  “Duidelik,” the kid said in approval. His friend nodded wisely and they let Beth wander away, but not without further discussion between them. “Ag, china, you see her takkies?”

  Teens in any culture had their own language, it seemed. Beth knew they’d been looking at her dance sneakers, and she had to agree they didn’t blend in. While she was at the shopping center, she needed to pull out the old Stony Man credit card and grab up some clothes meant for something other than a deep night contact on the docks.

  On the other hand, if she could get to her backup location, she’d have everything she needed. Perhaps that was the next step…

  Her PDA beeped as she headed for the store exit; she hesitated at a spiffy little flat-screen HD television, caught by the familiar, homey look of a CNN broadcast. She flipped open the leather PDA wallet to confirm receipt of a file named bluecrane.txt, smiling to herself. Barbara Price, superwoman. There was no one else Beth would rather have picking up her field calls.

  “Shane Dellamer,” the display television murmured at her, and she glanced up to see a cookie-cutter announcer with ticker-tape announcements scrolling across the bottom of the screen and a small, clear image of Shane Dellamer himself. He looked every bit as cold as his reputation, an impression not helped by his flat gray eyes. “Mr. Dellamer, challenged by his political opponents to answer charges that the many facets of Dellamer Enterprises will pose no conflict of interest should he be elected, declined to respond with anything other than a reference to his campaign platforms. Dellamer Enterprises is involved in successful ventures spanning munitions to entertainment; Dellmore Pharmaceuticals just posted a significant profit increase from last year.”

  Shane Dellamer. Multinational, multicorporation…the man had his fingers in everything. Beth wouldn’t be surprised if one day she ended up in the field dealing with the dirty underside of all that success.

  First things first. She tucked the PDA away in her sling pack, her mind on the taxi she intended to catch and the bolt-hole she was about to dig into. Maybe she’d grab some takeout on the way. Brain food. With one of Barbara’s lists to sort through, brain food was definitely in order.

  If only she hadn’t looked out into the mall to see Mr. MI6.

  Jason Chandler.

  And he was looking right back at her.

  Chapter 3

  Jason almost missed her. He’d been through the shopping center once, cruising the sunlit, mall-like interior and shifting from one parallel set of stores to another. He thought perhaps he’d never need to see another African mask or stylized walking stick again, and he’d set his mind to filter out everything but the silhouette he remembered from that morning. Slender, straight, stiff little ponytail at the back of her head.

  Almost…but not quite. Not anymore. Now her athlete’s curves were nearly hidden in a finely knit sweater buttoned at the top, her hair framing her face and changing it from fresh and sporty to strikingly aesthetic. At first he looked right past her.

  And then she moved, easing absently toward the store exit, and his gaze snapped back to her.

  There was no mistaking the quality of that movement.

  She saw him an instant later. Annoyance flickered across her features, and then resignation. At first he thought she might bolt, but then she walked toward the seating arrangement in the center of the walkway, a sunken area bordered by tall, exotic and leafy plants—and deliberately passed by him so closely they almost brushed against each other.

  Bloody well looks like an invitation to me.

  She stepped down into the seating area, sat on one of the contoured wooden benches placed along the back of each planter in the triangular space, and crossed those long legs of hers. She had a sling pack now. No telling how well armed she was even without the goodies that had been in her parka but Jason imagined…

  Well enough.

  They stared at each other a moment, and then her gaze went quite deliberately to the squall parka nestled on the seat beside him. He nodded at it, giving no indication that he’d used it to cover his Browning. “Yours, I believe.”

  “Mine,” she said, composed. “Though I don’t suppose you left me any of the fun stuff.”

  “Depends on what I missed.”

  “Everything,” she muttered, and scowled as if she wer
e arguing with someone who wasn’t even there; she certainly wasn’t looking at him. “You missed everything.”

  The next step, he supposed, was to convince her she might as well come with him.

  Right, because that worked so well last time.

  He eyed her as she struggled with her internal conundrum, and wondered just how she managed as a field agent. Nothing was hidden on that face with its spare but expressive features; like her body, it was not a face of excessives. Audrey Hepburn as an athlete, with eyes that were wiser and lines of jaw and cheek that came lean instead of square…not to mention that incredible neck. And just as her internal struggle was plain to him now, so had been her anger on the dock, and that single moment of vulnerability when he’d crushed her against the crane pylon.

  On the other hand, boyo, she got you with that sultry act. Pure and simple. It had stirred something within him that very much stayed stirred.

  Creative types. Couldn’t trust ’em. Never knew when they’d go haring off on some impulse, or get carried away by all the emotion that fueled them. Never knew when—

  That’s enough, Chandler. Jason stopped himself cold, slamming the door on the over-lurking wellsprings of painful loss that lay in wait for such careless openings of thought. Another time, another place. Keep your head here.

  He discovered she was staring at him, one eyebrow arched. And well she might, to witness him with such a loss of concentration within striking distance of a woman he’d attacked—who’d responded in kind and prevailed—earlier in the day. She plunked her sling pack in her lap and crossed her arms over it. Defensive gesture, indeed. “How’d you find me?”

  “No bloody thanks to whatever it was you slipped on me,” Jason said, not how he’d meant to respond at all. “Have mercy next time and just bean me one.”

  She blinked in surprise. “You had a reaction to it? It’s only supposed to leave you a little confused.”