Vengeance: A Derek Stillwater Novel (Derek Stillwater Thrillers Book 8) (14 page)

She smiled. “We almost ran into each other at the G8 several years ago, but a different job was required of me.”

That had been a pretty horrible experience for Derek. “Lucky you missed it.”

“I think so.”

The waiter appeared and she ordered white wine.

“I’ve needed to thank you all these years,” she said, “for saving my life.”

“Barely.”

She smiled again and he thought, she’s mellowed. He noticed no wedding ring on her finger. Noa wore gray slacks and a champagne blouse, maybe silk. A simple gold necklace graced her neck, gold stud earrings decorated her ears. Twenty-some years ago she had been attractive, but young, almost always angry. She had improved with age. She was stunning.

“Here I am, Derek.”

“Yes.” Frowning, he said, “Coincidence?”

“No. I’m here as part of my country’s delegation regarding Syria. When I found out you were with your State Department’s delegation, I did some research.”

“I assume you’re staying at your embassy.”

She shrugged. “We have several properties in Moscow, as well.”

Safe houses, he imagined. He wasn’t oblivious to the way she had a tendency to not answer his questions.

He sipped his beer. “You look well. Very well, in fact. You recovered from your gunshot wounds, apparently.” During the mission in Afghanistan she had been shot several times.

“You mean the wounds I received by being shot by Osama bin Laden?”

Derek sighed. He didn’t talk about it much and tried not to even think about it. But during the course of that mission in 1991, he and Noa and Jim Johnston had encountered Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. It was a decade before 9/11, but part of Noa’s mission, unbeknownst to Derek or Johnston, had been to kill bin Laden and Omar.

As the helicopter they had commandeered to save her life flew from the village, Derek had the two men in the sights of the chopper’s missile system. He’d decided not to take the shot. Years later he would have nightmares about that decision.

“Yes,” he said. “Those wounds.”

“I recovered fully. It took about two years, though. Several surgeries. A lot of physical therapy.”

“You look fit.”

“So do you. Maybe a little beat up.”

“Definitely.” He laughed. “But here I am.”

“What happened to the shoulder?”

He told her a little bit about it.

“Ah,” she said. “So you’re the one.”

“Do you know anything about the Nazif Brigade?”

“Quite a bit, actually.”

“Really?”

“One of my jobs these days is to track Muslim extremist groups in the region.”

“That must keep you busy.”

“It does.”

They lapsed into silence. Derek looked at her, struck how some women, though attractive when they are younger, seem to age into their looks. It would be difficult to tell how old Noa was—somewhere in her forties, probably—but she could pass for younger. But there was something about her, confidence perhaps, that suggested she was a woman, not a girl. He found her far more appealing now than he had twenty-two years earlier when they had butted heads constantly. Maybe he had changed as well.

“Twenty-two years,” he said. “You spent the entire time with Mossad?”

“No,” she said. “I got married to my doctor.”

Derek started to laugh. It rolled out of him. When he finally stopped chuckling, she was looking at him as if he were crazy.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “After I left the
CIA
I spent some time with the U.N. I married my doctor, too.”

“Still married?”

“No,” he said. “Couldn’t survive our jobs. You?”

“He died ten years later of cancer.”

That was sobering. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “I had two children, two boys. David and Samuel.” She paused for a moment. “David is in medical school now at Hebrew University. Sammy is in the IDF.”

“You sound proud of them.”

“I am. They’re good boys. What about you, Derek? Children?”

He told her about Lev.

“You have a complicated life,” she said. “But you sound proud of him.”

“Want to see a picture?”

“Of course.”

He had tons on his smartphone, which he handed over to her. In exchange, she handed over her’s as well. There were not many photographs on her phone, but they were mostly of her with two young men, both dark haired, olive-skinned. Sam was taller with broad shoulders and short hair, often photographed wearing his Israeli Defense Forces uniform. David was slender, a little shorter, and had curly dark hair and a dark, carefully trimmed beard. They were both good-looking men and he told her so.

“Their father was a handsome man. Older. Charming.”

“So you retired, but you’re back.”

“I only retired for a few years, then I went back to Mossad. Mostly I work as an analyst.”

“Mostly,” Derek said.

She rested her hand on his wrist. “There are things I can’t talk about.”

“I understand.”

She met his gaze. “Why don’t we go up to your room?”

Derek poured a glass of
wine and handed it to Noa. She took a sip and looked at him over the rim, the Moscow skyline lit up behind her from his room on the twenty-fourth floor. “What should we toast to?” he asked. “Is there a traditional Israeli toast?”

“
Lechaim.
”

“To life. Of course. I must be—”

She stopped him from talking by stepping close and kissing him. She tasted of red wine and something else he couldn’t quite identify. Her lips were moist and warm, her body both soft and hard pressed against his. She put her wine glass down and took his from his hand, setting it on the end table next to her.

“You talk too much,” she said, reaching out and shutting off the light.

And then she was in his arms. A whisper of silk, nylon, the feel of a warm firm breast. Stroking, clothing falling to the floor, tangled and sliding onto the bed.

They were adults and it was real. It felt awkward, and he wanted to rush, so he forced himself to slow down, to explore. The curve of her jaw. The hollow of her shoulder. The striations of her bicep. Slope of breast. Concave belly.

Scars. Hard beneath his fingertips.

Her fingers were exploring his body as well and she murmured, “So many scars.”

She reached down and held him. He rose up and slid into her. She gasped.

It was slow at first, gentle, sweet. The tension rose, the speed of his thrusts picking up.

She gasped and cried out. He exploded into her.

Later, lying in the bed, with her tucked alongside him, his fingers ran along some of the scars. “Are all of these from Afghanistan?”

“Most of them.” She drew his hand down to one on her lower belly. “Knife wound from a Palestinian terrorist.”

Her fingers drew his hand from the lower belly, up across her breasts to her left shoulder. “Enjoy the trip?”

“As a matter of fact I did.”

“This one is from ball bearings. Suicide bomber in Jerusalem. I was lucky. What about you? The shoulder is recent. But … ” Her fingers found one on his knee, although it took a winding route to get there. “Old football injury?”

“Actually, I got kicked there by a former Special Forces partner who went on to become a terrorist. Required some surgery, but it’s as good as new.”

“And this one?”

“Shot by a terrorist out in California.”

“And these?”

“Knife fight with a crazy terrorist.”

She got up on one elbow, looking over at him. She was outlined against the window. “Maybe we should stop getting in harm’s way.”

“I know. I’m getting too old for this crap.”

Her fingers trailed down his chest and cupped his testicles. “I didn’t notice the age. Are you ready for more?”

Because she was Mossad, he had wondered briefly if this was some sort of honey-trap setup. He couldn’t imagine why the Israelis would think he was of any use to them in that way and he also didn’t much care.

“Maybe in a little bit.”

She kissed him. Then continued down his body. “I might be able to help with that.”

“I think you’re right,” he breathed.

Sometime in the
early morning Derek felt Noa slide out of bed. A moment later he heard her speaking softly. Then he heard water running in the shower. Fumbling for his phone, he checked the phone for the local time, saw it was 5:30
AM
and sighed. Damn, that was early. And the jet lag and the night’s activities left him tired. He told himself he should go join Noa in the shower, but fell back asleep.

He was awakened a little later by a knock on the door. Instantly alert, he rolled out of bed, looking for the bag containing his gun. Noa walked past him. “Relax. It’s room service. I ordered us breakfast.”

She checked the door carefully, opened it and signed for the food. The waiter rolled in a cart laden with food and left. Derek slipped on a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt, yawning. “So that’s what the talking was about earlier. What’ve we got here?”

Noa had ordered a large breakfast with rolls and sausages, eggs, pancakes, crepes, fruit, tea, coffee and orange juice. Derek sat down at the table and stared at the food. “You were expecting company?”

Helping herself to tea, eggs and sausages, she said, “I didn’t know what you liked. So I ordered a mix.”

“Well. Thanks.”

“Well,” she mimicked his tone. “You’re paying for it.”

“Probably the State Department is paying for it, but we’ll see.” He decided he was hungry enough to eat pretty much all of it, so he helped himself to pancakes and a crepe and sausages and some melon. He went for coffee, black.

Eating, he looked at Noa. “God, you look beautiful in the morning.”

She actually blushed. “Flatterer.”

“This is all rather unexpected, Noa.”

“You’re going to go all guilty on me?”

“No. I’m going to wonder what’s next.”

She shrugged. “After I eat I’m going to go check in at the embassy, probably avoid answering some potentially embarrassing questions, get into a fresh change of clothes and drive over to the Kremlin for a day of planning, negotiating and politicking with the Russians, the Americans, and presumably one or two Brits and other assorted interested parties. None of it will matter if Assad won’t go along with it.”

“That’s why the Russians are involved. Whatever brilliant plans we have, Russia’s got to make the offer in order for Syria to save face. And just for the record, I hate this kind of shit. Give me a problem, leave me alone to solve it, I’m there. All this back-and-forthing to massage everyone’s egos drives me crazy.”

She grinned. “Me, too.” Finishing her breakfast, she leaned over him and gave him a long, lingering kiss. “See you later.”

“I look forward to it.”

And she was gone.

The rest of
the day was reasonably productive and somewhat to his surprise, not terribly awkward. The two Russian Syria experts he’d worked with before were there, and a Brit from the
UK
Foreign Service named Nathaniel Warrington who chewed on toothpicks he seemed to have in endless supply while listening closely to everyone’s suggestions and refining most of them. Noa was there with one of her peers who was either with Mossad or the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As far as Derek could tell, it could go either way, since Noa was introduced to everyone as being with the MFA.

Noa had introduced him personally to her associate as Saul Rose. Saul appeared to be in his sixties, and had a bulbous nose laced with veins, strands of white hair plastered to his big head, and stooped shoulders, as if he carried the weight of the world on them. In a shabby black suit and no tie, he shook Derek’s hand and muttered, “Yes, yes, I’ve heard of you. Good ideas you presented, if we can get the imbeciles to go along. Nice to
meet you.”

Derek’s suggestions were more technical in nature. The only real political thing he had suggested was that in order for Syria to get on board with destroying their chemical weapons, the plan was going to have to come from a strong ally. That ally would have to be Russia. If at all possible, everybody needed to get Iran to keep their big fat mouth shut, since if they stuck their oar in, everyone else would stop rowing, no matter if their suggestions made sense or not.

Noa mostly observed, while Saul knew enough about the region’s politics to make terrific suggestions. Derek presented a rough proposal for transporting Syria’s chemical weapons from a variety of locations in the middle of a civil war, and then be destroyed, preferably by independent contractors. Every party, including the U.N., would have monitors involved in the process. It would be ugly and dangerous as long as the Syrian civil war was continuing, but the stakes were high enough to warrant the risk.

“It’s a complete technical hairball,” he said.

The Russians didn’t understand what he said. Noa and Warrington laughed. Warrington said, “Consistent with the region.” Noa translated his comment into Hebrew for Saul, who nodded. “Indeed, my friend. Too bad they didn’t go along with the signatory in the first place.”

By late afternoon the meetings were done. Noa said, “I’m going back to the embassy, then we’ll be flying to Egypt. This ought to be interesting.”

They walked out together. “Egypt?”

“Supposedly, we need their okay. If we get Egypt, we can work on Saudi, Jordan, the rest of the batch.”

“Except Iran.”

“They might comply on this, but Saul’s right, if Iran gets involved it all falls apart.” They paused. A car appeared and Saul looked at her. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Saul nodded and slipped into the rear of the Audi. Derek said, “He knows.”

“And doesn’t care. Saul’s a friend.”

“Mossad?”

She smiled. “Going to see your son?”

“Yes.”

“I will see you soon. Saul and I are flying with you to Egypt.”

“Really?”

“Since 2011 our ambassador has been working out of your embassy.”

He vaguely remembered hearing that Egyptian protesters had attacked the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. He hadn’t tracked what was happening since. So much world, so little time. “So you’ll be staying at the U.S. Embassy?”

She grinned a rather wicked grin. “You have a problem with that?”

“None whatsoever. I’m just a little surprised.”

“Well, we will have Saul as a babysitter, so we won’t be able to join the Mile High Club.”

Derek grinned. “Oh, I don’t know, the Secretary’s a friend of mine. Maybe he’d let us use his office.”

She kissed him. “I will see you there.”