SLEEPER (Crossfire Series) (25 page)

“You’re quiet. Are you going to help me?” Lily interrupted his reverie. She rubbed her bare arms, worry in her eyes.

The thing was, he knew the worry wasn’t for herself. She was afraid he was going to refuse.

It humbled Reed. Lily was someone who knew what mattered to her heart, and, like Arch, she would do anything to protect what was important.

He understood the importance of his mission, that he couldn’t allow the weapon she had in her possession to fall into the wrong hands. At the same time, the lofty ideal of protecting the world and fending off the forces of evil was nebulous, childish even, when compared to the simple human level of Lily’s goal, which was something he should be doing—protecting the lives of innocent kids. In spite of all that psychological mumbo jumbo about embedded hypnotic commands, in spite of what she’d done to her friends, Lily was intrinsically a good person, someone who understood she had to right a wrong.

Hadn’t that always been something that was missing in his life? Someone who would admit to a wrong and correct it?

“You’re angry,” Lily said.

Reed shook his head. “I’m just thinking. You’ve left a lot of your background out. That part about the CIA being the one behind this reward explains why people might be after you left and right, but it doesn’t tell me the reason that they’re so eager to get you.”

“I told you I betrayed a bunch of people. Well, the CIA is one of them,” she said dismissively. “Now they’re after me.”

She wasn’t going to tell him. He had to get her to admit about the weapon. “Did you work for them then? Is that why you said you betrayed them? Most of us on the outside prefer to put that another way, sweetheart. Like, our side won one against them, for instance. Betraying…how’re you involved with them?”

“I wasn’t willing.” Lily turned away. “It’s a long and complicated story.”

“I have time. Are they also after these girls you’re helping out?”

She swerved back, her expression fierce and protective. “No, they’re my girls,” she said angrily, “and if they offer any help to take them in, you can tell them the deal’s off.”

He wanted to take away the pain she was desperately hiding. Betrayal. It was Lily who’d been betrayed initially.

But first, he needed the truth. “Why? The CIA has plenty of resources to help those girls out. They have easier ways to move them than what you or I could do with fake passports.”

“I know them and you don’t. Are you going to help me or not?” She looked away again, blinking hard. He suddenly realized she didn’t want him to see the tears filling her eyes. “Trust me, Reed, they’re going to use them like they used me.”

Trust. That was what stood between him and this woman. More than anything else right now, he wished he could tell her the truth about who he was, to make it clear he didn’t want to hurt her or those girls. But in the end, wasn’t that what he was going to do? He suddenly felt a deep loss inside, like helplessly watching a precious keepsake fall to the ground and break into irreparable pieces.

“If I let them have you, what do you think they’ll do once they get whatever it is you have taken from them? Set you free?” The double meaning of his words mocked him. Even though GEM wanted to have her extracted in the least painful way, it was as an agreement to Amber Hutchens. What about afterward? He put a finger under her chin and tilted it back to him. “I’ll have to think about this.”

Her dark, expressive eyes were sad. “There’s no other way. Don’t you think I haven’t thought about every possible way out? Tonight you saw how it was with someone who knew me—he wanted the reward money for himself.” She smiled. “I figure I’ll give the money to someone I like, which, lucky person, happens to be you.”

“You can come away with me,” Reed said, surprising himself. Where had that come from?

Lily shook her head. “And leave the girls? No way. I’ve betrayed enough people as it is, and they are what matters right now. Besides, it’s time I get a little comeuppance for what I’ve done in the past.” Her voice turned into a husky whisper. “This way I know a bunch of young girls will have new lives ahead of them. I’m going to give them a chance to turn out differently from the way I did.”

He wanted to shake her. Those bastards had really done a good job at giving her low self-esteem. With her usual resources gone, she was as alone as one could get, with not even a friend to whom she could turn.

But she turned to you.

Suddenly it was important to make sure he didn’t fail her with what mattered to her heart. He wanted her happy. And safe. He wanted to take her away from this and make it better.

The intercom buzzed. That was dinner on the way up. “Let’s eat first,” Reed said.

He kissed her softly, wanting to reassure her that everything would be all right. But he couldn’t say that. He had to find another way. It mattered to him that Lily complete this thing that was so important to her heart.

He glanced at her as he turned on the lights in the dining room. She was beginning to matter a lot.

* * *

“I can tell you don’t like your niece.”

Greta looked at the weapon in the display case in Gunther’s study. The man, it appeared, collected everything. Last night she’d checked out his tropical and semitropical flowers, which he’d specially ordered or imported from overseas. The night before, she’d seen a whole shelf full of his movie video collection.

She moved to the next display case. “Why do you say that?” she asked, tracing the glass top with her finger. The whole wall in front of her was a cornucopia of a thug’s dream, but she doubted Gunther actually knew how to operate half the weapons here. But she’d underestimated him already. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Gunther reminded her of that movie that constantly irritated her in the States because it was always being rerun on TV—Revenge of the Nerds. He was a geek who wanted to be a bad boy. And like all geeks, he went overboard with the security stuff and the weaponry collection.

“I’ve a feeling you were disappointed after your meeting, like you expected your niece to be less beautiful and more normal.”

Greta rolled her eyes. “Please. You’re making me out to be a very shallow woman, Gunth. Beautiful women don’t make me jealous. As for normalcy, I haven’t been around normal people enough to know what that is.”

Which was a lie, of course. She’d the best neighbors where she’d lived in the States, even though she’d mostly kept to herself. They had been typical Americans with their two-car garage and three kids in school, their little backyard barbeques and the family dog, their family reunions during Easter and Thanksgiving that had filled the street with cars. They’d even invited her because they’d felt sorry for a lonely old woman.

She had, at first, scoffed at their stupidity, that they couldn’t see who she really was. Then she’d congratulated herself for her excellent disguise, that she’d wormed herself into their hearts. Her
dacha
, when she went home, would be so much better than these little cookie cutter houses and their Ken and Barbie lives. She would own more interesting things than—she glanced around Gunther’s study—the latest electronic gadget.

But she’d grown to like her neighbors after some years. They were her source of entertainment when she was bored. Sometimes the kids had reminded her of her nieces and nephews.

One of whom was dead now, killed by a damn SEAL. Another who was using her husband’s privileges to steal weapons to sell to the highest bidder. That irked Greta. She would never steal from her country. Talia didn’t seem particularly bothered by that fact.

“Everyone’s doing it, Auntie,” she’d drawled. “Look, I’m not a scientist pimping my brain out to the highest bidder from other nations. I’m not even one of those who is selling our Russian girls to European and Asian bordellos. I’m sorry I didn’t aspire to be like Dragan, whom you approved of so much.”

Greta pursed her lips. Of course she’d known about Dragan’s big moneymakers—sex slaves and drugs. These had been the things that had financed the illegal arms business.

Ah well, maybe Talia had a point. She was young and independently wealthy. Greta should feel proud. So why did she feel vaguely irritated at the fact her niece didn’t seem to need her help?

“So do you think you can get along with her long enough for us to get possession of the item?” Gunther interrupted her reverie. He lifted a pearl-handled pistol that was cradled on a stand and handed it to her. “She still has value.”

“And how much value do I still have to you?” Greta mused. And vice versa, she wondered silently.

Gunther smiled, his lips disappearing under his mustache. “You have tremendous value, Greta, what with your excellent knowledge of the U.S. Intel system. I’ve always been a bit envious about that fact. There you were, in that place, the CIA shrine, surrounded by all that juicy information. I’d have given anything to be able to hack into their system from the inside.”

A geek who wanted to be a bad boy. Greta had met one or two before, even at the CIA. They were malleable as long as one fed them what they wanted, which was high-tech wizardry with which to play. An idea started forming. She rubbed a loving finger across the antique pearl handle of the pistol, admiring its luster.

“I do like parts of your plan, but there are some parts I think are absolutely horrendous.”

Gunther’s smile widened. “Be my guest. I’d love to hear your opinions.”

“I think it’s a mistake you veered from the original plan, which was for me to be the one to handle the explosive device. After all, I sent it out to my nephew. All I had to do when I left the States was to find the exact cache of weapons at which it was dropped. By involving Llallana Noretski, you’ve gotten yourself into trouble as well as lost the weapon, too.” She paused to gauge his reaction. With his arms folded, one hip leaning against his study desk, he looked curiously amiable, as if he were enjoying a class lecture. “Second, I thought your trying to undermine my operation extremely narrow-minded and unwise. I am, as you keep insinuating, an old lady just wanting to have a bit of fun before retiring. Yet you wanted me to look bad to HQ. That was disrespectful, and, frankly, after all these years of dealing with you, a bit immature. Why did you prevent me from getting Llallana Noretski the other night at the club? It’d taken me months to locate the damn woman, even with the offer of a reward, and now she’s disappeared again.”

Gunther straightened up and pulled out his cigarette case from his pocket. “It’s a nice long story, so you’d better sit down at the desk and be comfortable.”

After she’d done so, he leaned over her shoulder—a little too close, she thought to move the keyboard toward him. She didn’t say anything as she watched him punch in some commands.

She hadn’t typed in a while. God, how she’d hated being a secretary, slave to the keyboard. Sure, most of the information she’d procured had been very important, but she’d had to handle hundreds of boring and mundane things in between. She kind of missed it, she supposed. After all, that office had been efficiently run by one of the best assassins-turned-double-agent. She smiled at the thought.

Gunther clicked the mouse to open a file. “Some time ago, I was advised to look at a classified file out of a bunch of folders given to me from one of our network operatives. The person who called wanted me to read about an old CIA experimental program called Project Precious Gems. It was a fascinating read. On the surface it was an operation that extracted a group of young women and children who had been kidnapped from various parts of the world—you know, the ones your nephew used to buy up for his business.”

Greta gave him a sideways look. Was he poking fun at her or being sarcastic? He pointed at the screen, so she returned her attention to it. There were thumbnails of photos and a very familiar red Classified on the heading. During the past ten years, she’d seen and handled hundreds of documents that had looked like that.

“These are the subjects they extracted,” Gunther continued. “Like I said, the extraction was just the surface story. The CIA, while rehabilitating them, decided to use them as test candidates for their new sleeper cell project. It seemed these young girls, who had undergone tremendous mistreatment by the sex traders, were prime candidates because of their emotional damage. The CIA, in essence, was looking for people with strong hatred and a need to channel that emotion. With brainwashing methods and, later, hypnotic implantation with certain commands—
voilà
!” He snapped his fingers.

Greta frowned. “Human elements planted in the midst of normal society where they live quietly till they’re activated for a special assignment. We’ve seen plenty of that, even in Russia, where Chechen”—she stopped, then continued slowly—“women appeared to be detonating themselves in high-profile places. Llallana Noretski—”

Gunther clicked on one of the thumbnails and the photo enlarged. The face of a very young girl with dark hair and eyes stared back solemnly at Greta.

“Llallana Noretski,” Gunther said. “She’s one of the sleeper cells. Can you imagine, Greta, a collection of young girls who could take out hordes of UN soldiers while they caroused in Europe? And the wonderful chaos and scandal it would cause when it’s traced back to a CIA sleeper project gone awry?”

CHAPTER 15

At least I have one answer
, Lily mused as she stared at the ceiling. It wasn’t the luxurious bed that had given her that wonderful sleep the other night. If it was, she should be happily in la-la land, floating in that place far away from her present problems.

Instead, she was tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable, as if the bed were filled with marbles instead of feathers. All the while, her internal radar was focused on the man in the media room. He’d been in there an hour already. Had to think, he’d said…couldn’t he think in here?

She sniffed. Maybe not. She knew she wouldn’t be able to think if he here in bed with her. Every time he came within a few feet of her, her whole body lit up like Christmas lights.

Lily grimaced grimly. Christmas. She probably wouldn’t be celebrating Christmas this year.