Sudden Deception (A Jill Oliver Thriller) (19 page)

12:51 Zulu Time—HAMBURG, GERMANY

Jill sat in the corner of the pub and watched the door. The smell of cigarettes made her nauseous. She lifted the full ashtray that sat on the red checkerboard tablecloth in front of her and placed it on the table beside her. Despair filled her eyes. She was so deep in thought, she didn’t notice that Leila had walked through the smoke-hazed doorway.

Tall, dark, and strikingly beautiful, Leila stood dressed in dark green khaki pants, the kind that David would wear. But these pants were clearly built for a willowy, sleek body. The legs of the pants had the usual side pockets similar to Jill’s now soaked fatigues. But Leila’s were tapered down her legs and hugged her calves before trailing into her stiletto black boots. Jill felt rumpled and defeated as she stared at this black beauty. Jill was athletic and regarded herself as no pushover. A beauty most times, she could hold her own. Leila could hold her own too, but somehow she exuded raw beauty. Class.

Her picturesque stature turned in Jill’s direction. In the dingy light as Jill stood up, Leila abruptly stopped and stared at her. Drenched and shivering now, Jill pushed towards Leila.

“What happened to you? It's almost three a.m., for God’s sake?” She stopped short of touching Jill on the arm.

“Let's talk in the car. I need to get out of these clothes. Is the taxi waiting?” Jill's lips quivered.

In the taxi, as they sped along the dark road, Leila squeezed her hand quickly then let go and said, “We need to get you warm, Jill. I don’t think we should go back to the Fairmont; my hotel is closer.” Leila nudged Jill’s pack that sat on the floor between them with her left boot. “It’s all here.”

But somehow this did not give Jill comfort. All she could say was, “Yeah.”

“Marriot,” Leila said to the driver. He nodded, pulled into the right lane, and merged off the main highway. Leila was always abrupt. She was no-nonsense, which annoyed Jill some days, but today she didn’t care.

At least fifty streetlights whizzed by the windows before anyone spoke. Jill was too busy looking at the driver as he peered back at Leila, a hint of admiration in his glances. Jill looked past the peering eyes in the rear-view mirror. She was getting colder now and her body had begun to shiver uncontrollably. But even the constant shivers that attempted to keep Jill warm didn’t stop her from watching to ensure they weren’t being followed. I'm being paranoid. It probably wasn't Stan's car that she had seen. After all, why would he need to follow me? There were few headlights on the road at this hour. Jill finally sighed relief and looked over at Leila. “I saw Stan. We were just talking about David and stuff. We got into an argument. He called David impulsive and dumb.” Jill sat miffed. “He asked me if David had been in touch with me or left documents of some kind for me.”

“Documents? How could he have left you documents?”

“The only thing I can think of is his notebook. He did leave that on purpose. It's why I am in Hamburg. But all the pages were ripped out of it.”

After a few minutes Jill wondered why Leila didn’t say anything. All Jill wanted was to go back in the tunnels. They sat in silence before either one of them noticed that they were leaving the heart of Hamburg.

They heard it before they saw it. The fierce roar of the engine came up behind them fast, and then without notice high beams flicked on and lit up the inside of the taxi. The glare almost blinded the driver as he looked in the rear-view mirror and the car slightly swerved in reaction to the right.

Their bodies lurched hard as a large truck hit the left side of the rear of the taxi, spinning it. Exhaustion left Jill and was replaced with adrenaline.

“Hold on, Leila,” Jill yelled. The taxi spun in circles. Instinct again tapped, as if begging for Jill’s focus, trying to communicate … like an action movie trailer flashing in front of Jill’s eyes.

One word came out of Jill’s mouth: “PIT.” Jill instantly knew that these pursuers, whoever they were, were not trying to kill them. They were not trying to run them off the road. They were trying to stop them.

Jill knew the PIT well. During training she had enjoyed the thrill of chasing Tom’s car, pushing him into that fateful spin. Tom was not unlike the driver of this taxi who was attempting to control this spin in the Goddamn wrong direction.

“Leila, when you can get out, run. Okay, run!” Jill commanded. For a split second she caught the fear in Leila’s eyes. Then the car stopped so fast Jill hit her head on the car door window. The whack dulled her senses for only a moment. And a moment was all they needed. She heard the footsteps, then the shouting. A man yelled something in what seemed to be Russian. Both car doors opened. She saw Leila’s back arch and convulse before Jill felt the Taser rip through her nerves.

The sound of water dripping woke Jill. The smell of wet earth pierced her nose. Groggily she grabbed her head. She opened her eyes, but it was pitch-black. Jill tried to sit up and feel around the floor, but she almost fell over when she attempted to get her bearings. Drugged, was her first thought. The cold cement floor was dry and so were Jill’s clothes. How long she had been in this dark room, she did not know. She felt around the concrete. Something ran over her hand and Jill yelped. “What the…?” It must have been a rodent. God. Where the hell am I?

Confusion filled Jill. She’d been in a place like this before. Drugged, cold. She thought for a moment that she could smell her own fear. Flashbacks of her time with McGregor shook her. She didn't know how long he'd had her in that cold cave. Being drugged provided her only relief, numbing the pain he inflicted.

“Leila?” she whispered aloud. Nothing. “Leila?” Again nothing. “Leila, hello, anyone?” Thirty seconds passed before she heard something. Movement. Muffled movement. Then Jill heard a moan. “Leila?”

Jill waited in silence. Then she heard a scream. It wasn’t far away. But it wasn’t in the same room. The scream sounded more like a surprise scream, like something you would hear in a horror house at an amusement park.

“Freakin’ rats,” Leila yelled as the click of her stilettos tapped the cement.

“Leila, where are you?” Jill stood up and immediately bumped into a wall. Feeling around the wall, she discovered that it wasn’t cement. “Leila,” Jill repeated.

“Jill?” After a series of back and forth callings, they found each other … only the wall separated them.

“Where are we, Jill? I hate effn’ rats.”

“I don’t know,” Jill replied. “We need to get out of here fast. There were two men. I think they would have killed us if that was what they wanted, but they’ll be back. We need to get the hell out of here now,” Jill tried to come up with a plan. “I think this wall is just drywall. Stand back; I’ll see if I can kick through it.

After a series of knocks Jill figured out where the studs were and lifted her leg to do a front-snap kick. Jill raised her right leg, the stronger of the two, and aimed her boot squarely between the studs. Her boot thudded against the wall before her knee snapped back at her. The reverberation was so strong that her knee hit her right boob.

“Ow, mother—! It’s not drywall. Crap,” Jill spewed as she tried to regain her balance.

“Jill, can you hear that?”

Jill stopped and listened. It was clearly the sound of boots hitting hard cement in the distance, reverberating in their direction. Then Jill blurted to Leila, “If they come to me first, wait. When you think it’s right timing, make a distraction. Some sort of distraction, anything,” Jill said desperately. And before Leila could answer, the key twisted in Jill’s door. The lock clicked open and Jill could see the silhouettes of two men.

A light flicked on and the harsh light burned Jill’s unaccustomed eyes. She squinted while holding her hand up to shield herself from the glare. A shorter man stood in front of Jill. He looked as gruesome as the photo she had seen of Petrovich. He had short brown hair, and his tight black turtleneck met his full-face beard, an attempt to cover a large scar. Jill assessed his body language fast. He stood in attack stance and held a Taser in his right hand.

“Where is he?” His Slavic accent was thick. The big man stood by the door like a bouncer in a dark bar. He was blonde with an American Marine buzz cut. He shifted from one leg to the other. Getting ready for something, Jill thought.

“Who?” Jill stalled. They know who I am. She profiled as fast as her brain could manage, but it wasn't fast enough. The left hook hit her square in the jaw. Blood splattered from her lip as she fell to the ground.

Dazed, Jill’s head rung hard. She spat out blood. “You know where he is, you bitch. Think you can get away from us? You know he is here in Germany. Why else would you be here?”

Before Jill could say anything, she felt the pain of his boot landing directly into her rib. It was her rib that saved her liver, her spleen. Jill cried aloud in pain. The short man grabbed her hair with his left hand and lifted her head up. His breath smelled like rotting teeth. His throat growled again as he pulled up phlegm and said, “Piece of shit American,” then spat in her face. Jill’s head hit the ground and clunked. “You think he can stop us, that stupid piece of shit.” And just as he was about to crack another rib…

“David! David! Help me, David!” Leila shouted.

That’s all Jill needed. She was trained in HTH. Hand-to-hand combat is what you do when you don’t have a weapon, when you need to survive. She’d communicate with him alright. She was used to pain after Matthew McGregor.

Still on the floor, it was the crescent kick—a defensive maneuver where one kicks the left foot in a clockwise swing—that disarmed the short man with the Taser while he had been looking over in Leila’s direction. That landed the Taser beside Jill. She grabbed it fast as the small man lunged towards her. His back arched when Jill zapped his calf. She rolled fast towards the bouncer and jumped up directly in front of him. As slow as he was, all it took was a split second for Jill to front-snap him directly in the groin. He fell to his knees in agonizing pain. Jill winced as she turned her body sideways and thrust her foot into the side of his head.

Jill screamed as she grabbed her side, the cracked rib reminding her of her beating. The men were both down in the tiny room when Jill turned the key and pulled it out of the door. She didn’t look back before she closed the door and locked it. She knew she only bought them about three minutes. But three minutes was all they needed. Tasers could last up to ten minutes, but she didn’t want to assume the best just yet.

“Leila. Leila.” There was a hint of panic in Jill’s voice.

“In here,” Leila yelled. Jill scrambled with the keys. The first didn’t fit, but the second one did. She flicked on the light and Leila almost leaped onto Jill.

“Let’s go.” Jill spat blood and hobbled alongside Leila, her arm holding her side. As they pushed through a steel door, the hallway opened up into what appeared to be a warehouse. Sprawled out on a stainless steel counter were the contents of Jill’s carry-on. The numbers from her pouch were in disarray across the gleaming metal. Leila’s camera was opened and the memory chip was gone.

They heard yelling and boots on cement. “Shit.” Jill winced as her arm swept the collection of stuff back into the pack. They hit the exit door and ran out into the street.

The fire exit door slammed behind them and they found themselves on an empty cobbled side street. Tall buildings surrounded them at least six stories high, and it looked like the sun was just starting to set.

“This way!” Jill yelped as she headed towards the sound of traffic. She could see cars passing fast on the street in front of her.

“Ouch,” Leila hissed as her ankle twisted and the heel of her left boot cracked off.

“Come on,” Jill ordered. Although every slap of her boots on the pavement jolted pain into her body, she had to keep going. When they hit the main road they stopped at a taxi that was just letting off its fare. An old woman was counting change when Jill jumped into the backseat. Leila hobbled behind her in a panic, nearly knocking over the woman.

“Go, go fast,” Jill said frantically. The driver looked back with a questioning lift of his eyebrow and then squealed the tires as they merged into traffic. Both Jill and Leila looked out the back window. No one followed.

8:23 Zulu Time—HAMBURG, GERMANY

The elevator bell spoke “twenty-first floor.” Jill’s head lifted from the gaze she had planted on the dark tile floor where she sat waiting. She looked down the sterile hallway towards the elevator. Leila and a tall thin man stepped off. Leila was no longer wearing her sleek boots and no longer hobbling. Instead, she wore what appeared to be Adidas runners that resembled black shoes. Jill knew they were runners because the rubber soles squeaked towards her.

“Sorry it took so long, ma'am,” the man apologized with a glance at his watch. It was 10:23. The thin man presented Leila to Jill.

“Who knew they could run fingerprints that fast. They even found a match for my iris.” Leila sounded impressed. “You must be a VIP here or something,” Leila said to Jill with a no-nonsense stance. For security reasons, most VIP offices in governmental operation centers were on top floors. Leila followed Jill’s gaze to her shoes. “Ah, yeah, while they were checking me out to get this security clearance,” Leila’s finger flicked the new shiny card clipped to her right breast jacket that proudly stated GSG Security Clearance Class 3, “they sent for my things at the Marriott. Real shame, those Jimmy Choos!”

“Follow me, ma'am.” The German guard gestured. Jill stood up and grimaced, her taped ribs still jabbed when she moved. They followed the guard along a glass corridor and into what looked like an interrogation room.

Jill and Leila sat in silence, Leila shifting uncomfortably in her chair. Jill watched her as she looked around the tiny room to see if there was any sort of surveillance. She was paranoid now too. After Mathew McGregor, there was always something- that something tapping on her shoulder, the hair that stood up on the back of her neck. Somehow McGregor seemed to own her. Her senses would never let her rest. The PTSD doctor told her about heightened senses, but today, watching Leila, Jill knew something was not quite right with her. It was Leila’s body language that Jill recognized, that made her suspicious. Maybe it was the security checks that put Leila off-kilter. It couldn’t be the loss of her Jimmy Choos that was bothering her, could it?

A knock on the door intruded on the silence, and the chief walked inside. “Jill … oh, hi,” he said. “Can I have a word with you, Jill?” A glint filled his eyes as he looked at Leila. She was beautiful, after all. “In private?”

Jill looked at Leila and it was clear she wasn’t moving. “I’ll wait here,” Leila said.

Outside in the corridor, the chief opened a file. “I have some intel for you. But I wanted to speak to you first.” He looked at the pages in the file then quickly closed them. “Leila has passed the security checks, but what I am about to tell you is personal. Private, Jill.”

Jill paused and for a brief second she felt relief. “It’s okay; I trust her,” Jill said to the chief. Jill couldn’t help but feel hope when they walked back into the room.

Leila tilted her head as she held out her hand. “I’m Leila Sorel.” She was flirting again, and this time it annoyed Jill.

He shook her hand, holding it a second longer than he should. “Johan, but you can call me chief.” He flipped through some pages and began to read out loud. “Leila Sorel, thirty-two, born American in Freeport, Louisiana. Mother and father Jamaican. Current job, photo journalist for Time.” His robotic voice changed when he flirted back. “Nice to meet you, Leila.”

His face turned serious when he looked back towards Jill. “I see the swelling on your lip has gone down.”

“No worse for wear,” Jill said. “Did you go to that building? Did you find anything?”

“We couldn’t find it. Sorry, Jill.” Johan flipped a page in the file. “We also searched our databases for any gang-type members that fit their description. Chechens, Russians, so far we’ve got nothing. But we did run those names you gave us … David and Stan Brown with Petrovich, and there was a blip.” Jill's eyes widened. She waited for Johan to continue and wondered if they could hear her breathing speed up. He glanced at Leila. She sat serious. “I had to get special authority from the US to access these files and get special permission to share them with you both. They’re highly confidential. But first I need to ask you both some questions, which,” he shot his glance back to Leila, “which is why you are here, Leila.”

Leila didn’t flinch. “I’ll help if I can.”

“Leila, how long have you known David?” He looked at her squarely.

“Ah, about three years, give or take.”

“Have you ever been on assignment with him?” he asked more pointedly.

“A couple, why?” Was that annoyance Jill detected in Leila’s reply?

Johan moved his eyes back to Jill and continued, “Jill, do you know what a NOC is?”

Leila began to shift nervously.

The drip of newly spawned adrenaline began to fill Jill and she said, “NOC as in the NOC you spoke about in your brief?” Johan nodded. “You mean spy?”

Non-official cover is what most countries’ governments called them. Operatives who’ve assumed roles as everyday citizens, but remained in specific locations gathering information for one operation or another. Sometimes the NOC would stay dormant for years before being called upon for duty. Other people would referred to NOC as black ops or covert operations. There were no records of these types of operations except at the highest security levels in each country. It was sort of a gentleman’s agreement, something unspoken. Plausible deny-ability between countries was the spy game. It often called for extensive arrangements that hid the details, the evidence, hiding the fact that the goal or target of such black ops ever occurred. WMD, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, was one such operation. And if something went wrong, the NOC was on his or her own.

Leila shifted again and was about to say something to Jill. Her hand reached over and she laid it across Jill’s forearm. Her eyes pleaded. “Jill.”

Johan interrupted, “Jill, I said we found out new information, a blip when we ran Stan and David Brown’s name.” Leila looked at Johan knowingly and nodded affirmation to him. Not that Johan needed it. A courtesy was all he offered.

There was no other way to tell her so he blurted it out fast, “David’s a NOC for the CIA,” he paused and looked back to Leila, “and so is Miss Sorel.”

Jill sat back in silence feeling like she'd received another kick to her gut. All she could do was blink, and with every blink played a flashback. She had only known David for just over a year. Late nights, long assignments, the hush between them that simply existed but was never spoken. That’s why her instincts over the past year were like salt and pepper together in one mill. All Jill knew was that she loved him, she’d dismissed anything else. Her instincts were so jumbled she couldn’t make any sort of semblance of them when she was around him. Jill’s shoulders slumped and she exhaled too loud to be polite.

After several minutes it was Leila who broke the silent spell. “David loves you, Jill, he truly does.”

“Stop it, Leila. Just shut the fuck up.” Hearing her words echo, Jill was almost embarrassed at what she just blurted, but what else could she say? What else could she do? Jill grabbed her hair with both hands and leaned her tired head into her palms, elbows perched on the cold table. What was Jill supposed to think? After all, this was her lover, her best friend. Best friends tell the truth … don’t they? Fear and anger circled around in her head and Jill suddenly felt morbidly tired.

“Do you want me to leave you two alone?” Johan asked.

Jill didn’t answer. She didn’t lift her head. Strands of tight short hair pushed between Jill’s fingers and she felt like pulling it goddamn out.

Finally, Johan gave a slight huff, clearly German displeasure. “There's been a sighting of David, Jill,” he finally said. He flipped another page insensitively and before Jill could react he continued, “What gets even more interesting is Stan Brown. He’s David’s current assignment.”