The Phoenix Encounter (2 page)

Robert didn't know how he found the strength to pull away, but he did. Tears shimmered in her eyes, but there was nothing he could do to staunch her pain. She'd made her decision.

“I love you,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper.

She offered a wan smile. “I'll see you in Paris.”

“I'll be there.”

“Go before you miss your plane.”

Because he didn't want to break down in front of her, he turned away and started toward the door. Hans shouted a farewell, but Robert didn't respond. Mechanically, he walked through the door, down the steps and onto the street. Around him, snow fell gently, a sharp contrast to the violence snapping in the air. He put one foot in front of the other, barely aware of his feet touching the ground. He counted the steps. One. Four. Ten. A missile streaked across the sky, filling the air with the whistle of impending destruction. Robert barely noticed.

He turned to take one last look at the pub. Lily stood in the doorway with her arms crossed, watching him. She waved, and he wondered how it was that they had come to this point. How he could go on without her. Raising his hand, he waved and felt the rise of grief like a bayonet in his heart. Vaguely, he was aware of the high-pitched whine of a missile. The night sky glowing eerily.

An instant later, the world exploded. The concussion whacked him like a giant baseball bat. He cartwheeled through the air, aware of the heat burning him, of tiny debris tearing through his clothes, searing his body. He hit the ground hard. The violence of the impact stunned him, knocking the breath from his lungs. Pain flashed brutally
through his left thigh. He heard bone shatter, would have cried out but there was no air in his lungs.

Disoriented, he lay in the snow and watched another missile glide overhead. Trembling and nauseous, he mentally tallied his injuries. There was a vague sensation of heat in his left thigh. But when he tried to move his foot, pain like he'd never known screamed through him. Groaning, he rolled onto his side and glanced down to assess the damage. He immediately spotted the large piece of shrapnel jutting from his thigh. He stared in disbelief at the growing circle of shiny black blood.

Robert had seen enough shrapnel wounds in the last ten months to know this one was bad. Life-threatening if he didn't get immediate medical attention. The piece of metal had hit him with such force that he'd sustained a compound fracture. The femoral artery had been spared, but he was still in danger of bleeding out if he didn't get medical attention soon.

Cursing and groaning as pain radiated up his injured leg, Robert struggled to a sitting position only to have the dizziness and nausea send him back down. He lay silent and still in the snow for a moment, aware of the growing circle of blood, the symphony of pain singing through his body and felt a moment of panic.

Damn it, he didn't want to die like this.

He rolled onto his stomach, worked off his jacket, then eased out of his shirt. Every movement sent ice-pick jabs of agony shooting down his leg. He spotted a narrow piece of wood nearby, looped his shirt around it and formed a tourniquet. Grinding his teeth against the pain, he twisted the makeshift tourniquet around his thigh, praying he didn't pass out before he could stanch the flow of blood.

Lily.

Raising his head, Robert looked quickly around to get his bearings. Thick smoke belched from the crater where the bomb had struck ten yards away. He squinted through the smoke and flaming debris, trying to locate the pub. Hor
ror swept through him in a flash flood when he realized the building was gone.

Robert blinked, disbelief and horror rising inside him like vomit.
“Lily!”
He heard panic in his voice but he didn't care. The terror ripping through him overrode the pain, giving him the strength he needed to struggle to one knee, his injured leg dragging behind him. He got one leg under him, but when he tried to move his left leg the pain sent him spiraling into blackness.

“Lily…”

Holding his broken leg, he went down in the snow and mud and floundered like a turtle on its back. Agony and terror streamed through him like a cold, black tide. He rode the waves, struggling to stay conscious, struggling even harder to keep his head.

“Lily.” He'd intended to shout, but her name came out as little more than a puff of air between clenched teeth.

Dear God, she couldn't be dead. Not Lily. She was too strong. Too vital. He loved her.

He lay there in the snow and mud, breathing as if he'd just run a mile, staring at the violent night sky, and cursed fate for being so cruel.

He didn't hear the jeep approach. Barely felt the strong hands that lifted him onto the stretcher. All he could think about was Lily.

Robert fought the hands pressing him down. “Got to…find her,” he said.

“It's okay, mate,” a British voice said. “I'm a medic with the Allied Medical Forces. We're going to get you out of here. Looks like you've got a bit of a problem with that leg. Try to relax, all right?”

Robert tried to tell the medic that he didn't want to leave. That he couldn't leave without Lily, but his thoughts were jumbled, his voice weak. “There's a woman,” he said. “In the pub. Jesus.”

The young man in the red jumpsuit looked over his shoulder at the crumpled building. There was knowledge
in his eyes when he looked at Robert. “There aren't any survivors in there, chap.”

“No…”

The young man glanced at Robert's leg and muttered a curse. “I need some morphine over here!”

“No!” Robert shoved at the hands pinning him. “I've got to find her. For God's sake…”

“Easy, mate, we're going to take care of you.”

The needle bit into his arm. Robert fought the drug, but it dragged at him. He stared at the flames and smoke and debris while he slowly came apart inside. “Lily,” he whispered.

And then the drug sent him to a place where he couldn't feel anything at all.

Twenty-one months later
Somewhere in Virginia

D
octor Robert Davidson left his BMW in the parking lot and took the redbrick path toward the building at the rear of the complex. It was a path he'd walked plenty of times in the last year and a half. A path he'd never imagined he would take. But even though he'd been reluctant at first, he walked it with a great sense of pride. Of duty. Of respect.

Just that morning Robert had been summoned by Samuel Hatch, director of the top-secret division of the CIA known only as ARIES. The call had come just before 5:00 a.m. Like all of Hatch's transmissions, it had been brief and to the point, with few details. Hatch needed an agent with Robert's expertise and credentials. He would be deployed immediately. Long-term assignment. High-level security clearance. Top-secret mission.

The drive from Robert's home outside Washington D.C. had taken just over two hours. Stiff from the long drive, he ignored the tinge of pain in his thigh as he passed several low-rise buildings where ivy flourished on the redbrick exterior. From the outside, the center looked like an Ivy League college financed by trust funds and old money. Robert knew differently. Behind the genteel facade lay one of the American government's most top-secret facilities in the world. With emphasis on foreign intelligence, biomedical research, genetic engineering and high-tech gadgetry, the ARIES boys and girls played with toys the CIA didn't even dream of. Toys that, in the eyes of the rest of the world, hadn't yet been invented. The ARIES agents, scientists and researchers had the best of everything. Money was never a problem because when it came to ARIES, Uncle Sam had bottomless pockets.

Robert told himself he wasn't nervous as he swiped his security card through the reader, then punched in his six-digit PIN number. He didn't get nervous. Once a man had had his world shaken the way he had twenty-one months ago, it took a lot more than a cryptic call in the middle of the night to shake him.

The steel-core door slid open to a small, windowless room with a tile floor and three white walls. Dead ahead, an elevator door dominated the fourth wall. In the center of the room, black inlaid tile formed a thick line on the floor. Robert stepped up to the line, then looked into the lens of the camera glaring at him and waited for the identification scan to begin. An instant later, a green light flickered, letting him know the retinal scan was complete. The elevator door swished open, and he stepped inside. Frowning at the panel mounted next to the door, he set his palm against the glass and waited while his palm and fingerprints were scanned and the images run through the ARIES per
sonal identification database. Like every other piece of equipment at the ARIES center, the security system was light-years ahead of its time and utterly fail-safe.

Once the green light flashed to tell him his prints had been scanned and approved, Robert pressed the button to the underground level, and the elevator rushed him toward ARIES's inner sanctum and Samuel Hatch's private office a hundred feet below ground.

He assured himself a second time that it wasn't nerves gnawing at his gut. For one thing, Robert didn't believe in premonitions. Still, he couldn't deny he had a feeling about this assignment. Hatch didn't call on his ARIES agents for anything but the most difficult of tasks. He wondered what the good director was going to ask him to do this time.

The elevator doors whooshed open. Robert stepped into a large room filled with low-rise cubicles, about half of them occupied by men and women hunched over computers or speaking into communication headsets. He spotted Carla Juarez, who waved, flashed a dazzling smile, then turned her wheelchair and headed in his direction. Robert watched her approach and smiled for the first time that day. He liked Carla. She was young and pretty with a lovely sense of humor. Up until a year ago she'd been a field operative. Then she'd taken a bullet in her back during a deep cover operation in Eastern Europe. The injury had left her partially paralyzed. She'd been through hell in the last year—something he identified with even though they'd never discussed anything so personal. But unlike Robert, Carla had never grown bitter.

“Hey, Dr. Davidson, how's it going?” she asked.

Because he didn't want to answer that truthfully, Robert put on a grin and lied through his teeth. “Couldn't be better.”

She rolled her eyes. “For an agent, you're not a very good liar.”

“Thanks.” Leaning forward, he pressed a kiss to her cheek. “I think.”

“Pin bothering you?”

Subconsciously, he brushed his hand over his left thigh. “Must be a front coming in,” he said shortly, not because he was annoyed but because it embarrassed him to complain about his leg to a woman with a severed spinal cord.

“Takes time,” she said breezily. “Been able to run yet?”

“I'm up to two miles.” It hurt like hell, but he ran. He'd be damned if he was going to spend the rest of his life letting the residual damage from a shattered femur keep him idle. “Played basketball a couple of weeks ago.”

“Ethan told me he beat your butt.”

“I guess that makes him a better liar than me.”

“And a sore loser.” She smiled. “Hatch is expecting you.”

“Thanks.” Robert opened the door to find Samuel Hatch standing at the back of his office looking at a tiny, withered plant.

He looked over his shoulder at Robert and scowled. “Damn strawberry plant is going to die on me,” he muttered.

“They need sunlight.”

“Security had a cow when I suggested I get an office with a view.”

Robert stepped closer and glanced at the plant, wondering why a man like Hatch was so concerned with a scraggly little plant no one cared about. “They like sandy soil,” he offered. “Or maybe some cow manure.”

At Hatch's questioning look, he added, “I worked in a nursery part-time during high school.”

“I'll see if procurement can get me a plant light and some cow poop, then.”

Hatch left the plant and seated himself behind his desk. Robert guessed him to be about sixty years of age, though he could pass for forty-five. He was bald on top but kept the rest of his gray hair cropped short. He was of medium height and slightly rumpled in appearance. Part soldier, part scientist, he was fit for his age and glowing with health. He would have been ordinary-looking if not for the sharp intelligence that burned like gemstones in his green eyes.

Robert took the adjacent chair and waited for the briefing to begin.

“How's the leg?” Hatch asked, pulling a file from his drawer and setting it on the desk between them.

Robert shifted uncomfortably in the chair, wondering how the other man would react if he answered truthfully. “No problems.”

“You running?”

“Twice a week. Two miles.”

“Good. I like my agents in shape.” Hatch opened the file. “I need you to go to Rebelia.”

For a moment, Robert wasn't sure he'd heard him right. Then the meaning behind the single word struck him like a rude slap. Dread curdled in his stomach. He stared at the older man, aware that his heart rate had spiked, that a cold sweat had broken out on the back of his neck.

“I know how you feel about Rebelia, Robert, but—”

“I don't think you do—”

“Dr. Alex Morrow is still missing.” Hatch cut him off. “I want my operative back.”

Robert had never met Morrow, but he'd heard of his work as a environmental biologist within the ARIES network. The man was brilliant. A legend in a few circles. “I knew he was missing. I thought you'd send someone else.”

Hatch looked at him with those sharp green eyes. “You know Rebelia.”

Robert shifted uneasily in his chair, wishing he'd never heard of that godforsaken country, trying hard to control the pounding of his heart—and the bitterness at the back of his throat.

“I need you, Robert. You know Rebelia and her people better than any man in the division,” Hatch said. “You know the customs. The language, the regional dialects. You have contacts—”

“Hatch, with all due respect I haven't been in the country for almost two years.”

“Save the excuses, Robert.” A hint of ice laced Hatch's voice. “I'm not asking.”

Clamping his jaws together, Robert looked at his hands, then at Hatch. “Rebelia is still pretty volatile these days.”

“You can handle it.” Hatch's eyes narrowed, sharpened. “Can't you?”

After an interminable moment, Robert nodded. He could handle it. But he sure as hell didn't like it. Not because of the civil war, but because of the ghosts.

“All right,” he said. “I'm in. What do you need?”

“Your mission is twofold. Your first priority is to set up a base of operations for what will be the third leg of the mission. While you're there I want you to find out everything you can about Bruno DeBruzkya.”

The sweat on Robert's neck turned to ice at the mention of DeBruzkya. He could feel the muscles bunching with tension. “You mean aside from his being a ruthless son of a bitch?”

“Intelligence tells us he's been stealing gems.”

“I know about the gems.”

“Then I'll recap what we know so far. We have substantial evidence telling us that he's behind at least four
heists. The Stedt Museum in London. The Legvold collection in Stockholm. A private collector in Frankfurt.”

“The Gala Summit.” Robert had been there as part of the surveillance team. He knew what had gone down. And he knew Hatch had nearly lost one of his agents. “Do you have any intelligence as to why he's amassing gems.”

“Could be any number of things. Maybe he's financing weapons. Maybe something worse. I want to know.”

Robert didn't even want to think about what a sinister man like DeBruzkya could do with weapons of mass destruction.

Hatch frowned at him. “We need to know what he's up to. The gems are secondary, but some information would be nice at this point.”

Robert's nerves coiled a notch tighter. He stared at Hatch, wondering if the other man knew how much he hated DeBruzkya. If Hatch knew Robert held the dictator responsible not only for an injury that had left him permanently maimed, but for the death of a woman he'd once loved more than life itself. He knew that wasn't the most objective mind-set for a field agent about to embark on a deep-cover mission, but Robert never claimed to be a good agent.

“What's my cover?” he asked.

Hatch handed him a slender manila folder with the name PHOENIX typed in bold letters on the tab. “Your papers are inside. French passport. Medical degree. You're part of a team of medical doctors traveling to Rebelia from Paris to administer medical aid to sick and injured children. Your meeting point is in a small village outside Rajalla. It's all there in the file in French. Your initial contact will meet you at a pub on the outskirts of the city and take you to your source, who will give you enough information on DeBruzkya for you to get started.”

Robert took the file and paged through it, seeing that, as usual, Samuel Hatch and his team had been very thorough. “I guess I'll need to brush up on my French.”

“And your Rebelian dialects. All communication will be via the ARIES satellite. I've got new encoding set up. Your code name is PHOENIX.”

“When do I leave?”

Hatch glanced at his watch. “Two hours. I've got a jet waiting at Annapolis that will take you to La Guardia. From there you'll take the Concorde to Paris then hop on the train to Rajalla.”

Robert slid the folder into his briefcase and rose. “All right.”

Hatch stood, regarding him with intelligent green eyes that invariably gave the impression he could read not only one's body language but thoughts, as well. “Watch yourself.” He extended his hand. “You know what DeBruzkya is capable of.”

“I can handle DeBruzkya.” As he shook the other man's hand, Robert knew the real question was whether or not he could handle the ghosts.

 

At eight the next evening Robert sat in a greasy booth in an obscure little pub called Ludwig's and nursed a stein of watered-down beer. The pub was crowded with weekend revelers. The booze was cheap, the cigarette smoke was thick and talk was of the old days and revolution.

Robert sipped his beer, wishing he were anywhere but this dank little bar in a country he wished to God he'd never set foot in. He'd been in Rebelia less than two hours, and already she dominated his thoughts. The last hours they'd spent together, making love on the narrow bed in her room above the pub. The fight they'd had over her refusal to
leave with him. The violence of her death. The black months that followed.

He knew thinking of her wasn't going to do a damn thing for his frame of mind or his mission. But he'd never learned how to block thoughts of her. Damn it, of all the places Hatch could have shipped him to, why did it have to be this hellhole? It wasn't like the world was lacking hellholes. Any one of a dozen or so would have done just fine.

Restless, he finished his beer and motioned for the bartender to bring another. He wasn't enjoying it, but he didn't have anything else to do until his contact arrived. He'd already set up base camp, renting a small apartment above a market in a seedy section of town, where he'd installed the tiny communications satellite dish and left a backup short wave radio per Hatch's instructions. He knew he should keep a clear head, but for the first time in a long time, Robert didn't want a clear head. Sometimes all that clarity made life a hell of a lot more difficult.

“Sir?”

Robert looked up from his beer to see a young man with black hair and a matching mustache grinning at him, and he took a long sip of beer. “Get lost.”

“I'm Jacques.”

Robert watched him closely, zeroing in on his restless hands and nervous fidget and went with the predesignated script. “What's your sign, Jacques?”