Let Slip the Dogs of War: A Bard's Bed & Breakfast Mystery #1 (11 page)

“If he was fine with Fatima being eliminated,
you should be, too. The important thing is to send the package back
to Syria. Once Salwan knows it’s in our possession, he will
cooperate. That will give us a double agent in place in the new
Syrian government.”

Anas’s face went through a series of
gyrations as he listened to the sharp voice on the other end. He
sucked in his breath several times, clearly wanting to level her
with force, but she held her own. Maybe that’s why Josh never stood
a chance when Afarin used her charms on him. Clearly, she was a
persistent little vixen.

“I must go,” Mr. Cranky Pants announced.
“Jones’ wife is still missing and I must find her. No, I do not
wish to discuss this later, Afarin. I will only discuss it with
your father. I don’t care what your title is. You are a woman, and
no woman tells me what to do.” With that said, the chauvinistic
Anas hung up.

Chapter Eleven --

I huddled in the cover of the pine trees,
listening, watching, wondering what would come next. I could hear
the little bear cubs wandering through the woods, looking for their
mama, and it made me feel like hog-tying Anas to a tree, smothering
him with honey, and letting all the bears in the Vermont forest
have at him. What kind of bastard shoots a black bear that’s only
being a black bear? It was gratuitous violence that served no
purpose, other than to make him feel powerful. He had a gun. He
used it. He was king of the forest, until someone else with a
bigger gun came along. Nizar probably would have concurred, if he
wasn’t so dead.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Anas
dialing his phone yet again. Perhaps he was calling Ben. I wondered
if he assumed his little game worked out just fine. If so, he
probably wasn’t expecting Ben’s response, whatever that might be. I
began to imagine what my husband would do to rescue me. Perhaps he
would arrive at the end of a rope, repelled from a helicopter. Or
he would descend on the scene with a caravan of 4-wheel-drive
emergency response vehicles filled to the gills with men in black.
I had no doubt that whatever Ben’s plan was, it would be a
doozy.

“Vasily, it is Yuri. I need you to brief
Voinovich. Yes, yes, I know. Homeland Security will hold Grapon for
several days. No, Jones is still convinced that Grapon was involved
in Fatima’s death. Here’s what I need you to do. Bring a couple of
guys and meet me in the woods. Jones’ wife got away and we have to
find her, because she is our leverage. Forget about the old man!
Jones is a professional. He knows Edward will sacrifice himself and
fall on the sword to protect him. The only person Jones will try to
protect is his wife, and I have her boxed in here. Leave the Bard’s
and get your ass over here now. You come in from the west with
Alexi. Have Serge come in from the east with Petra. Tell Boris to
meet me on the dirt road. We will either drive her further into the
woods or we will find her, but she will not go home tonight. No, I
had to eliminate Nizar. I have a contingency plan. If we can’t
capture her, we will tell Jones we have her and force him onto a
plane. We’ll just kill her when we find her, at our leisure. But we
must get that package into the air as soon as possible, in Jones’
hand. We want the death of the CIA’s station chief to look like
revenge by Jones. When the package arrives, it will also be
destroyed, and Hashim will turn on Jamil. We will have the minister
in our pocket to do our bidding, and we will knock out the Iranians
at the same time.”

I sat back on my fanny, stunned by the turn
of the conversation. Anas was Yuri? This was a Russian game to use
the Iranians to set up the Syrians? More importantly, they were
setting up my Ben to get the job done. They wanted him to go to
Syria to murder the CIA station chief. The Russians were jockeying
to gain some level of control over the Syrians, the Iranians, and
the CIA. I was damned if I was going to let that happen.

Yuri continued to make his phone calls from
his impromtu outdoor office while I carefully composed a text. I
included the details I overheard, along with a warning to expect
Alexi, Serge, Petra, and Boris. As soon as I pushed the button, I
shut down the cell phone again and waited to be rescued.

By seven-thirty, I was thirsty and hungry,
the sun was going down, and I was beginning to worry that my
husband had not received my texts. Where was he? The minutes since
I left him and his CIA colleague at the side of the road had turned
into hours, and the hours were beginning to accumulate. The bear
cubs had found their mother’s bloodied carcass and were now wailing
over their loss, no doubt unable to suckle. By sunset, I had a
sinking feeling that I was a goner, powered by the fact that Yuri
had encouraged his people to bring night vision goggles with them.
Certainly they would have the advantage in darkness.

As my despair began to deepen, I felt an odd
sensation against my my breastbone. I wasn’t sure what it was at
first. Perhaps an insect had landed on me, for the tiny vibration
felt much like insect feet on my skin. But then I realized it was
my locket, the one Ben gave me for our last anniversary. Sure
enough, when I placed my hand upon it, I could feel it moving. And
when I opened it up, there was a tiny pinprick of radiant light
glowing in the growing darkness. It must be a sign, a message from
Ben. He had not deserted me, nor had he failed to receive my texts.
Help was on the way. I hoped the CIA brought out their big guns and
Yuri was blown to smithereens. If anyone deserved such an
ass-kicking, it was the ruthless Mr. Cranky Pants, who was proud of
his handiwork with poor Fatima’s death. I was going to have a front
row seat to the showdown, and I would be rooting for the good
guys.

With nothing else to do but sit and wait, I
tossed around the information I had overheard. I wondered who
Hashim and Jamil were, and how Fatima was connected. But most of
all, I wondered what the package was that Yuri wanted delivered to
the CIA station chief responsible for Syria. Was it some kind of
smart bomb? Or maybe it was a chemical weapon?

“Bea!” came a hiss from my right. I levitated
about three feet off the ground. “Come on! I’ve got to get you out
of here!”

“Ben! Where are you?” Never before had my
husband’s voice sounded so sweet as I glanced around, trying to
discern the silhouettes of the pine trees from the one that
mattered most. “Oh, it was horrible!”

Ben loomed like the silhouette of a big,
black fly against the fading light of the forest. When I tried to
wrap my hands around his neck for a kiss, I was greeted by so much
equipment piled on top of his head, I felt like I was feeling up
the Six Million Dollar Man. He had his own set of night vision
goggles attached to a helmet of some kind. Where had that come
from? And where was the rescue team? “Not now, babe. There isn’t
time! Move it!”

“Did you just say ‘move it’?” I started to
protest, but I felt a hand grab me and yank me to my feet.

“Hush! They’re in the vicinity! We have to go
now or we won’t get out!” With that, Ben gripped my left elbow in
his hand and hurried me down the dirt track at a fast trot. “Don’t
say anything until we get to safety. It’s imperative!”

Fifteen minutes later, we left the dark dirt
trail and began making our way through the untamed woods. It was
slow-going as we stepped carefully on the uneven ground, desperate
to keep our progress as quiet as possible. It seemed to me that we
were going out of our way to get to where we were going, but after
zigging and zagging through the forest, we finally emerged into
thigh-high scrub, which then became knee-high grass. By the time we
reached the dark sedan at the edge of the road, my legs were raw
from the beating they took at the hands of the wild rose shrubs,
thistles, and blackberry canes. The only thing that would have
added insult to injury would have been stinging nettle.

“Mr. Williams” hailed us in the darkness
before opening the door to the back seat and encouraging me to
climb in. I noticed “he” took the front passenger seat, leaving Ben
to climb in behind the wheel. The interior light had been turned
off, no doubt to prevent us from unfortunate discovery. Ben started
the engine on the unfamiliar sedan, adjusted the seat and mirrors,
and then slid out smoothly onto the deserted highway, pulling a
U-turn in the darkness. A flick of a switch brought up the
headlights, illuminating the pavement. As he settled back in the
bucket seat, he began to accelerate. It looked like we were headed
back to Colchester.

A short time later, we passed a dark SUV and
a dark sedan parked at the end of the dirt trail. It looked like
Yuri had called out more assistance, because the matching pair of
Foo dogs were leaned up against their respective vehicles, clearly
doing guard duty.

Ben and “Mr. Williams” were busy maintaining
an eye on potential interceptors as we covered the miles, leaving
me to my dark thoughts. Where was the big rescue? With only Ben and
a woman posing as an old man to get the job done, wasn’t the CIA
taking a very big risk? Surely Yuri and his crew were a danger to
national security, especially if they were setting up the CIA
station chief in Syria. And that didn’t even count Philippe
Grapon’s participation in the scheme or Fatima’s death.

I thought about that young woman. She looked
like most Caucasian girls, with milky white skin, pale eyes, and
mousy brown hair. I would have never guessed she was Syrian, with
the name of Fatima. What was she doing with a passport that
identified her as Celia Dusquesne? What role did she play in the
unrest in Syria? Was she related to Hashmi or Jamil? Even as I
tried to fit the pieces together in my head, the biggest question
went unanswered. What had Yuri done to her and why had he done it?
And there was still the matter of the tattoos. Who put them there
and what did they mean?

As we came upon the tiny burg of Colchester
Village, Ben steered the sedan into the parking lot of a Days Inn.
It was half-filled with cars, most with New England license plates.
Ben parked next to a blue Prius.

“I’ll be right back,” he promised. A moment
later, he was entering the office.

“Why are we here?” I asked, half-expecting
“Mr. Williams” to cite national security secrets as a reason for
not answering.

“You’re supposed to be trapped in the woods,”
she replied, leaning over the back of the seat. In the golden glow
of the motel lights, she seemed friendly enough. “We can’t take you
back to the Bard’s. It would compromise everything.”

“You two are going through with it? You’re
going to let Yuri think he’s won?” I asked incredulously. “Mr.
Williams” gave a slight nod, almost apologetically.

“We have to, Bea. If we don’t, they’ll never
stop looking for the package, and the contents are too precious to
let get into the wrong hands.”

“Listen,” I said with great insistence. “I
can’t keep calling you Mister Williams. Is there something else,
anything else I can call you? Howard? Phil? Joe?”

“Call me Mavis.”

“Well, Mavis, let me just say this has been
one hell of a day.” That much was true. Not only had, I had
witnessed my first murder up close and personal, I handled my
second dead body. The last time around, a terrorist had left a dead
woman in my bookstore. He had sliced her jugular vein open and then
removed her left hand over in the biography section of the store. I
found the hand propped up against the bottom shelf. I wondered how
long it would be before Nizar’s body was recovered. Or even if it
would be.

“Here we are,” said Ben, sticking his head
through the window. “Let me get you two into the room, so I can get
back to the Bard’s.”

“You’re not staying?” It hadn’t occurred to
me that my husband would dump me in a motel with a stranger,
especially a stranger posing as a man.

“You’ll be in very good hands, Bea. Mavis is
one of the most seasoned CIA officers around. She’ll take very good
care of you.”

“What does that mean? When Yuri and his
people come barging into the room, she’ll beat them off with her
cane?” I turned to Mavis. “No offense intended, but geez!”

“None taken,” was her reply. I saw the
conspiratorial look that passed between them and suddenly wondered
what it was that I missed. Mavis disappeared discreetly into the
bathroom, leaving us alone.

“I’ll be back for you as soon as I can be,”
my husband promised me.

“Tomorrow?” Something about his behavior made
me nervous. He wasn’t telling me anything specific. He was talking
in general terms, like I was a school girl who needed to be
reassured that Hamlet’s ghost wasn’t really hiding under the bed. I
suspected it wasn’t the ghost or even Hamlet that was the
problem.

“You behave yourself while I’m gone.” He
kissed me more ardently than he had in a very long time. There was
urgency, almost a sense of desperation to the kiss. As if he were
trying to make it count, just in case.

“Where are you going?” I demanded. “Back to
face Yuri? What are you going to do, kill the bastard?”

“Bea, you know better than to ask me those
kinds of questions. Now, I will say good night and I love you.” His
lips lingered on mine. “‘Parting is such sweet sorrow.’”

“Is it? Then don’t go,” I said encouragingly.
“Stay here with me, where it’s nice and safe.”

“I have work to do, love. I’ll be back as
soon as I can.”

“Ben, please don’t go!” I had an ominous
feeling that was growing within, like one of those teeny-tiny
little trick washcloths you buy at the dollar store. It starts out
not much bigger than the size of a quarter, but the second it even
gets a whiff of moisture, it balloons up into a hundred times its
original size. The fear gripped my stomach when I saw that
expression on Ben’s face. I was looking at a man who didn’t think
he would come back alive. “Don’t you dare die on me, you bastard!
Don’t you dare! I will never forgive you if you do. I will haunt
you for eternity. You will have no rest. I will curse you
forever!’