Spies, Lies & Naked Thighs

“I admit nothing,” insisted the Russian, finishing his drink. “You still haven’t explained what you’re doing here.”

Time to play his hole card.

“Sharif sent me,” he said in a conversational tone of voice, though inside he was seething with need. The girl was ruining months of work with her silly game. He had to get his business finished and not worry about her.

Arching an eyebrow, the Russian asked, “What does Sharif want?”

“Did you make contact with—” Caine rattled off the names of several men connected with a sleeper terrorist cell in northern Italy. The Russian was to hook up with these men of Indian and Ethiopian descent in Basel, where France, Switzerland and Germany met. A crossroads. Basel was very useful to anyone in the espionage business. Caine often used a small café near the train station for dead drops. An agent was there for a few hours then he disappeared. It was anyone’s guess where he’d gone, especially if someone was tailing him.

Unless that someone was Caine.

“Ooohhh…” A raspy sound came from the girl’s throat. His pulse raced. She was stirring, but her breathing was ragged. And were her lips turning blue? What if she started vomiting? He couldn’t take her to a hospital. Too many questions.

“Quiet, bitch,” yelled the Russian in his native dialect, then he held a pillow over her face, cutting off her air. Her legs kicked wildly, her hands flailing about, her black nails trying to scratch her assailant.

“You call that pillow talk?” Caine grabbed the pillow and tossed it onto the floor. The girl gasped for air, but she didn’t open her eyes. The effects of the drug kept her prisoner. He leaned over her, wiping the perspiration from her upper lip with his finger. Her closed eyelids shimmered silver and blue and gold like a metallic sunset, and her lips blazed red. He shuddered, imagining those lips giving him pleasure.

Raising his voice, the Russian yelled, “I don’t care if Sharif did send you. Get out!”

“I’m not going anywhere. I have my orders.” Alert and tense, Caine fought back the growing contempt he felt for the Russian. “Since you won’t share her, I’ll watch.”

“So you can report back to Sharif?” The Russian tossed him a smirk. “Or is watching the only way you get off?”

Caine tried a smile. “You’ll have a hard time proving that.”

The Russian ignored his remark and ripped off the girl’s red thong and lifted her pelvis up to his lips, plunging his tongue deep into her, sucking and lapping. Her pulse twitched in her throat, her face numb and without sensation. Caine watched with disgust the desperate attempts of the terrorist to show his sexual mastery. Did the girl feel his rough tonguing? Was she enjoying it?

“You Russians are so crude,” Caine insisted. He hated the way the man licked the girl, then, after wiping his mouth of the salty taste with the back of his hand, he inserted a finger to arouse her. She emitted a low groan and shifted her hips as he pushed his finger deeper inside her, circling her clitoris with rough strokes, gathering her juices on the tips of his fleshy pads. Distaste formed in his mouth as he watched the Russian spread the wetness over her thighs, letting it dribble down over her black and purple stockings, then bending over and sniffing her essence like a dog.

Caine’s right hand curled into a tight fist. The man had no finesse, no idea how to arouse a woman. Why should he expect anything else from the ex-KGB agent? He recalled the terrorist’s background specified that he engaged in bang-and-burn ops. Demolition and sabotage operations.

He had always prided himself on his sensual expertise to turn a woman on with his intellectual abilities to gain her confidence and create intimacy, then using that to his advantage.

“Watch carefully.” The Russian laughed. “You Germans don’t know how to fuck a woman.”

Caine smiled, ignoring his challenge. “Is that the only reason she’s here? Or is she a bargaining chip?”

His opponent’s eyes snapped open. “Mind your own business.”

So he was right. The Russian was a double agent, working for Sharif, but giving information to whoever paid him. He glanced at the U.S. currency stacked on the table. Didn’t the money prove that? Was the girl part of the deal? A little pussy to sweeten the pot? Then kill her?

What happened to the federal agent the Russian was supposed to meet? That had to be the reason for the quick trip to Zurich. Then why had he been so sloppy on this op? Behaving recklessly and leaving a clear trail? Speaking openly on his cell phone and renting a room using a credit card under the name of Ivan Ivanovich? Caine never used the same credit card twice, had access to numerous passports through his prober, an operative who was also a specialist in false documents, and always used cell phones with cloned or stolen numbers.

Before barging into the room, Caine had checked the area, looking for FBI suits hanging around the hotel. Nada. He had seen a blue van parked a block away. Three federal agents were probably inside, going crazy trying to figure out why the bug they planted wasn’t working. He grinned. Figuring the FBI was operating somewhere in the vicinity, he’d removed the receiver from the planter in the bar and dismantled it. Those FBI boys had no imagination. They’d been using the same old hiding place on every op since the Nixon days. He couldn’t take the chance on anyone taping him and burning him. Compromising him.

As he did with every disguise, Caine spent a lot of time perfecting his legend, creating a German street thug in need of cash and excitement. The Teutonic accent wasn’t difficult for him to master since he spoke fluent German. The clothes were flea market glitz. His weapons procured through old contacts. To complete his disguise, he’d changed his gait and added a black eye patch with a pinhole in the middle to see through so it wouldn’t alter his depth perception.

To prove himself, Sharif had been only too happy to let him demonstrate his capability with a Beretta 92 in the assassination of a Yemeni sheikh terrorist-turned-informant. Caine prided himself on his skill with weapons. When he was a teen, his father got a job as a security guard at a strip bar and legal brothel in the Nevada desert. His mother did the accounting. When he wasn’t peeking through the windows of the whorehouse watching the action going on, Caine spent his free time teaching himself marksmanship by shooting the heads off rattlesnakes. He could cock his weapon, fire and hit his target in under two seconds. This was vital to his survival since he worked moment to moment on pure instinct and adrenaline, barreling into ops headfirst, gun blazing.

Caine took out the mark discreetly and efficiently, though after the renegade sheikh had relieved the FBI of more than a hundred thousand dollars. The lost funds, he decided, were a small price for the U.S. government to pay for him to infiltrate the relatively unknown but dangerous terrorist network. He also enjoyed showing up the boys at the Bureau. They hated it when a CIA operative beat them at their own game.

Everything had gone according to plan. Until now. He had to find out why the Russian hadn’t returned to Paris as expected. The ex-KGB agent had orders to bring back details of a shipment of TATP to be delivered to Sharif. The highly volatile triacetone triperoxide was a vital component to the terrorist leader’s bomb-making operation. Caine hadn’t been able to find out his exact plans. Sharif kept that intel to himself, though the CIA operative had reason to believe the Chechen was preparing to increase his war chest by unloading a major antiquity with disputed provenance. Such a transfer into the wrong hands could not only deprive the art world of a centuries-old artifact but also cost innocent lives if Sharif used the money to fund terrorist activities. His job dictated he prevent that from happening, though at times Caine abhorred the tactics he must employ to get intel in the murky netherworld in which spy craft was often on a collision course with international politics.

Taking a deep breath, Caine played down the suspicions in his mind and pulled out a wad of cash. He shoved it into the Russian’s face. “How much do you want to let me fuck the girl first?”

The Russian, aware Caine was baiting him, waved his hand away. “I told you, she’s mine.”

Caine could see the intent in the man’s black eyes that appeared deep in his face because of the dark purple half-moons underneath them. Even though they were smiling at him, he sensed the danger that lurked within them. He was wound up so tightly, any wrong move could set him into offensive action.

Caine stood very still. What if he was wrong about the entire setup and there was no meeting with a federal agent? Could the microphone he found in the planter be old equipment left over from the Cold War? The blue van nothing more than a bunch of kids smoking weed?

His normal MO was to catch the mouse, not when he was in his hole, but when he poked his head out of it. Not this time. Like a fisherman with his line, he had to know where to cast it and what bait to use.

He leaned over the unconscious girl. The aroma of this expensive catch dripping with her own juices greeted his nostrils and made him more desperate to satisfy his own needs. This wasn’t supposed to happen to him. He was trained to forgo sex when necessary. The last time he’d allowed a woman to get close to him nearly cost him his life.

He squinted through the black eye patch to get a better look at the girl. She ignited something in him dormant for a long time. And he had to put out the fire. Fast.

The Russian’s voice was flat like cardboard when he spoke, though his eyes blazed at Caine. “Why did Sharif send you?”

“After you left, he received information that the facilitator of the Italian cell is a suspected al-Qaeda operative and is under surveillance by British MI6 agents.”

The hint of a sneer played around the corners of his mouth as if he figured he’d catch Caine in a lie. “Why didn’t you contact me sooner?”

“I had to be sure you weren’t being tailed,” Caine said, choosing his words carefully. Sharif suspected the Russian was double-crossing him and he’d ordered Caine to tail him. “I’m here to escort you safely back to Paris.”

“Sharif told me there would be a car waiting to pick me up when I return.” The Russian knocked the empty bottle of vodka on the hardwood floor, breaking it. Caine jumped sideways to avoid glass shards scattering everywhere like chunks of ice.

“The plans have changed,” Caine said, gazing around the room with the eye of a man well schooled in the art of escape. No way could he allow the Russian to believe he’d let his guard down. All the while, he was gauging how to take him down, assessing his escape route.

“You’re lying!” the Russian yelled, then he swung at him, catching him on the jaw and sending him staggering backward. The man ripped off his eye patch as his knees sagged, but Caine didn’t lose his balance. Instead, he slammed a balled fist into the bridge of the man’s nose. Blood gushed, the Russian’s eyes shot upward, but he recovered and landed a punch on his shoulder.

Caine put his hand up to his face. His patch was gone. He became aware of a new threat. He couldn’t afford to have the Russian discover his identity.

He ignored the pain and used the heel of his hand to deliver a quick blow to the Russian just below the ear. Without so much as a grunt, he fell hard, hitting the polished wooden floor with a loud echo. While he was down, Caine calculated his next move. Instinct warned him to keep on the offensive, knowing the Russian was armed. He wasn’t worried about being disturbed by an angry hotel guest. The room was soundproof, a modern touch to combat the noise from the traffic and trams outside.

The Russian got up, holding his bleeding nose. “No German street thug has moves like that. You’re MI6 or American CIA. You bastard.” The Russian drew a heavy revolver out of his jacket pocket and aimed it at Caine’s chest.

Before he could fire, Caine kicked the gun out of his hand. The Russian attempted to grab him, but Caine executed an evasive side step then chopped down onto his forearm with the edge of his hand. Next, he delivered a blow to his throat. Before the Russian could recover, he shot a sharp low side kick to his knee, followed by a swivel punch to the heart. Finally he attacked the back of his neck with a chop on his spine with a hammer-fist blow.

The Russian slumped to the floor, his eyes dull with pain. Caine leaned down and slammed the man’s head and spine against the hardwood floor, then let him go. He didn’t move. Satisfied he was dead, he slipped his eye patch back on, then went through the man’s pockets. He was surprised to find a second gun, a Glock, along with a phony passport. Cash. Lots of it. Cell phone. And a plastic bag with—he looked closer—a microchip? More than likely, the Russian had intended to use it as a trade. Nausea made him recoil, then take a breath. So Ivan had extracted the federal agent and gotten the cash. He took another breath, a cleansing breath. He felt no remorse.

The asshole got what he deserved.

He searched his other pocket and his fingers wrapped around something small and smooth. He pulled it out and examined it. A tiny vial marked Narcan. The brand name for naloxone. The antidote. Also, a syringe.

He also found a train ticket to Paris, leaving tonight. And a train schedule with stops checked off with red ink. Scrawled across the top was a date. Two weeks from now. He grinned. This was it, the timetable for the delivery of the explosives.

He’d be on that train and surprise whoever was meeting the Russian in Paris with the news of the untimely demise of the ex-KGB agent. An MI6 agent dusted him, he’d tell Sharif, blaming it on the Brits. Only one thing didn’t add up: The girl.