Secret Agent Sam

Chapter 10

When she lowered the cup again, he saw her throat ripple with a hard swallow. He had to hand it to her, though; her gaze didn’t waver, not even a little.

“That scar behind your ear-” She made a scoffing noise and rocked back as if in protest. He held up a hand to stop the denial he could see poised on her lips. “Don’t, Sam. Don’t.” He waited, expecting her eyes to come back to his, hot with defiance, chin upthrust. But instead she turned her face away.

Anger boiled up inside him. Anger, disappointment-disappointment so acute it felt like physical pain. He didn’t know why-it was no more than he’d suspected. No more than he’d known.

“My God,” he burst out, in a harsh and tearing voice, “what were you thinking? They’d have killed us all, still might, if they catch us. You said it yourself-they were suspicious of us to begin with. Did you think they wouldn’t figure it out that it had to be one of us giving away their location? If I figured it out, they sure as hell can. And let me tell you something-al-Rami’s no fool; he’d figured it out already. Did you see the look he gave us just before he fled? He’d have killed us then, if he’d had the means at hand, and if he hadn’t been more preoccupied with saving his own skin. You can bet we won’t be getting a second chance.”

“I was doing my job, Pearse.” She said it softly, not sullenly…maybe with a touch of pleading.

His anger toward her didn’t soften. It filled his throat, choking him. “You used me, Sam.”

Her eyes flashed at him, bright and fervent. “It was a chance to get al-Rami. You expected us to pass that up?”

“I gave my word,” he said stiffly, bound up by his own anger.

“To a terrorist?”

“My word, Sam. Mine. He trusted my word. And I betrayed him. He won’t forget that. Or forgive.”

“Well, excuse me,” she lashed back, “if I don’t get too excited about what might upset Mr. Sheik al-Rami!”

He looked at her. Just looked. And saw the fire in her eyes slowly fade to anguish. She jerked, and looked away. “It wasn’t supposed to be like that,” she said tightly. “They were supposed to get in position and wait for my signal before moving in. I would’ve waited until the time was right. I would’ve-”

“The right time. Exactly when would that’ve been, Sam? Before or after the interview? Before or after we’d secured the hostages?” Before or after we made love?

“After dark, for starters,” she snapped back, glaring at him. “A broad daylight attack was just stupid. I would have waited until you’d gotten what you wanted from al-Rami, and I’d definitely have waited until we were safely out of there. My God, Pearse, do you think I don’t know what that interview meant to you? Do you think I’d have risked all our lives by calling in an attack on top of us? Who do you think I am?”

“That’s just it-I don’t know what to think,” he said bitterly. His anger was fading, leaving him feeling cold and tired. Hollow inside. “And I sure as hell don’t know who you are. Obviously.” He fell silent, too upset to go on, yet unable to bring himself to go and leave her there. She made a sound like air escaping from a tire, and turned her face away.

After a while, gathering his energy and will because he simply had to know, he asked softly, “So, who is it, Sam? Who are you working for-CIA? Homeland Security? Who?”

“You know-” she broke off, cleared her throat “-you know I can’t tell you that.” Her voice was as soft as his, but muffled and slurred where his was sharp and bitter.

Frustrated, still furious with her, he growled, “At least tell me how long you’ve been doing this. How long have you been an agent and I didn’t know?”

“How long?” Her head swiveled back to him, and she was the old Sam again, the Sam he knew so well, with that lift to her chin and tilt to her head that were both arrogant and defensive at the same time, and an aching vulnerability about her mouth even her defiant eyes couldn’t hide. “Those months when we didn’t see much of each other? That’s where I was-in training. I was recruited in flight school, went into training right after.”

“When were you going to tell me about it? Ever?” He tried, but couldn’t keep the pain from leaking into his voice. “My God, Sam. I asked you to marry me.”

“Yeah, and now you know why I couldn’t say yes,” she shot back, in a voice as ragged as his.

He stared at her, hot-eyed. After a moment she went on in a whisper he didn’t have to strain to hear, and it occurred to him only then that it had stopped raining.

“I’d just finished my training, you know…when I found out you’d gotten married. I’d been in the field for weeks, and that was the last big thing, and then I was done. I came home and the first thing I wanted to do was call you. I couldn’t reach you at the number I had, so I called Mom and Dad. And that’s when they told me. That you were married.”

Cory let a breath out and rubbed a hand across his eyes. When and how, he wondered wearily, had it come back around to him? How was it that he now felt guilty again, when it was she who’d kept such a huge, important catastrophic secret from him? His Sam, a secret agent? He couldn’t get his mind around it.

“So, I guess we’ve both been keeping secrets,” Sam said, as if she’d read his thoughts. She paused, and then, in a voice thick with gravel: “The only difference between us is, now you know all mine.”

He didn’t lift his head or uncover his eyes, but he knew by the scraping sounds and then the sudden emptiness around him that she had gone.

Sam was still shaking-with anger, she told herself-as she dropped ungracefully onto a root beside Esther Lundquist. She held out the bamboo cup-thrust it, her movements as jerky and uncontrolled as a broken windup toy.

“That was great,” she said, in a gruff voice that completely belied the words. “Thank you.”

Esther threw her a sharp look as she took the piece of bamboo and returned it carefully to the bundle near her feet. Then she reached over and gave Sam’s hand a squeeze and said softly, “Dear, you’re more than welcome.” And her pale blue eyes smiled with gentle sympathy.

Oh, great, thought Sam, cringing inside. Were we talking that loudly, or is it just my face? Some secret agent I am-couldn’t hold my own in a dorm-room poker game.

Casting about for something innocuous to say, she nodded at the bundle between Esther’s feet. “How did you manage to make that-the cup? It’s really cool.”

The woman’s smile broadened, crinkling her eyes. “Yes, it is, isn’t it? Hal’s made a few things-eating utensils, bowls and so forth. He’s quite clever with his hands.”

“Yes, but…bamboo this thick is tough-like wood. I mean, you must have had to cut it somehow.”

Esther hunched her shoulders like a guilty child and touched a forefinger to her lips in a quick silencing gesture. “Shh-don’t tell anyone,” she said with a crafty glance over her shoulder. Then she plunged a hand into the mysterious bundle and pulled out an oblong object thickly wrapped in leaves. She began to unroll it, and Sam gasped when she saw the dull glint of a knife blade.

“Holy…cow,” she said, remembering in the nick of time that she was speaking to a missionary of God. “Where did you get that?”

“I found it,” Esther said, with a pleased little laugh. “I imagine one of them must have dropped it. You can’t imagine how useful it’s been. We keep it hidden, of course-I’m sure they wouldn’t approve of us having it. Not that we’d ever use it as a weapon-heavens no. Hal and I don’t believe in violence.”

Sam gazed at her for a moment, then shook her head. Her eyes drifted to where Hal and Tony were sitting together some distance away, their heads bowed over one of Tony’s cameras. She took a deep breath, wondering when she’d acquired the aching lump in her chest. An alien need, a compulsion to talk to someone, rose up in her and flattened her pride like a steamroller. “You two amaze me,” she said softly.

Esther looked up from the task of rewrapping the knife, her eyebrows arched in surprise. “Oh, my, we do? Why?”

“Because…you seem so…close.” She gave her shoulders a little shake, not happy with the word but unable to come up with one better. “After all you’ve been through, in the middle of all of this…you still seem, I don’t know…domestic, I guess. Like…you’re this happily married couple and this just happens to be your life.” Embarrassed, she stabbed at the ground with the heel of her boot and mumbled, “I’m not saying it very well.”

Esther’s laugh was a little trill of amusement. “I think you’ve said it beautifully. We are a married couple, and this does happen to be our life-for now, at least.”

“But it could all end tomorrow.” A cold shiver ran through her and she bit down on her lower lip, wishing she hadn’t said it, unable to help herself.

Esther glanced up from her task, no longer smiling, though her eyes were serene and unperturbed. “Yes, it could. But that’s true no matter where you are, isn’t it? Just think of all the people who left home to go to work on that terrible day that changed our world, and never returned. It happens in smaller ways every day, in cities and small towns, all over the world.” She shook her head as she went back to her packing. “Hal and I have talked about it, of course we have. We’ve both agreed that if it ends for one of us-whenever that may be-the other must be strong and carry on-for the sake of our children, if nothing else.”

“You have children?” For some reason the notion both surprised and appalled Sam.

“Oh, yes-two lovely boys. Teenagers.” Esther’s smile was back, brighter than ever. “I’m sure they’re home in Ottawa now, quite safe and sound.”

“That must be so hard,” Sam said inadequately, shaking her head. She couldn’t even imagine it.

Esther was still smiling, but with a shine of tears in her eyes-the first Sam had seen. “Oh, yes, of course it is. But Hal and I are both blessed with wonderful families. Our hearts are at ease, knowing our boys are being cared for and loved.”

Sam stared at her feet; her throat felt clogged with wistfulness and longing. “It must be wonderful,” she said softly, barely aware she was saying it out loud, “to have so much in common. To have no secrets…”

Esther made a scoffing noise and briskly dashed away a tear. “I don’t know about secrets-I haven’t really thought about that. But Hal and I have very little in common-well, there’s the way we feel about each other, I suppose.”

“And religion, surely?”

She made that same disparaging sound, almost a laugh. “Oh, goodness no-you should hear the arguments we have sometimes.”

“So…the two of you do…I mean-”

Esther’s eyebrows arched with amusement. “Married couples do argue, dear. So do friends, lovers, companions, partners…Hal is truly all those things to me, and I do try not to keep secrets from him, but really, we’re nothing at all alike. He’s a dour Swede-” she made a face to illustrate “-and I…well, I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’m something of a flibbertigibbet. I’m nauseatingly upbeat and optimistic. I guess you could say…oh dear, it’s such a cliché, but you really could say we complete each other.” Her lined cheeks were pink and her eyes bright, making her look slightly embarrassed, and years younger. “He keeps me grounded,” she finished softly, “and I suppose I keep him from becoming mired in melancholy.”

“Yin and yang,” said Sam.

Esther tilted her head, considering that. “Yes-although I prefer the imagery of the oak tree and the cypress.”

“The oak tree…” Unfamiliar with the reference, Sam shook her head.

“Kahlil Gibran? The poet? Oh dear-well, I won’t try to paraphrase it for you, the language is too lovely to be mangled the way I would surely manage to do. But someday when you can, find yourself a copy of The Prophet, dear, and read the chapter on marriage.”

“I’m kind of amazed,” Sam said.

“Why, dear?”

She felt her cheeks burning, and wondered how she’d managed to talk herself into yet another corner it was going to be impossible to get out of without being rude-religion, along with politics, being one of those subjects Mama had always taught her weren’t to be discussed unless you knew for certain the other person held the same beliefs and opinions as you. “Gibran,” she said, squirming. “He’s Arab, right? Well, isn’t he…I mean, he’s not-um…”

Esther’s smile and voice were uncharacteristically wry. “There are words of wisdom and beauty to be found in every culture, dear. And, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, being out here, it’s not to get too tangled up in dogma.”

After a long and thoughtful silence, Sam put her hands on the root beside her and prepared to lever herself off it. “Well, I guess we’d better be getting on,” she said, “now that the rain’s stopped.”

But for some reason it was hard to make herself move. She felt heavy, weighed down…tired out by all the emotional turmoil. She let her eyes slide again to Hal and Tony, and her heart gave a painful leap when she saw Cory had joined them. She drew an unsteady breath and slid down from her perch, overcome with sadness and an indefinable fear.

She was turning when Esther caught at her arm, touching it briefly, just long enough to keep her there.

“It is hard work,” she said gently. “Loving someone over the long haul.” Sam stared at the frail-looking woman, wondering if she had the gift of second sight. And saw a shadow-not sadness…weariness, maybe-in her faded blue eyes. “You know, I think even the happiest, most loving couples must wonder now and then if it’s all worth the effort.”

“But,” Sam blurted out, anguish honing her voice, as it so often did, into a sound more like anger, “you’ve done it. You and Hal-obviously, you’ve made it work. So…so what’s the secret? How do you do it? Is it this…Gibran thing-the oak and the cypress? What?”

Gentle humor returned to Esther’s eyes. “I suppose I do have a secret.” Her lips curved with a sly little smile. “A small one-just one word, actually. I didn’t get it from Gibran, though. This came from a book I’m considerably more familiar with.”

“Yeah? What is it?” Sam held herself rigid, fighting back tears.

Esther’s lined face blossomed. “Forgiveness, dear.”

Sam gave a little huff of helpless laughter and turned away, disappointment leaving her with nothing at all to say. Forgiveness? How was that supposed to help her? Forgiveness pretty much had to be a two-way street, didn’t it?

Forgive? Okay, I can do that, I think I already have. The question now is, is he ever going to forgive me?

Cory was squatting, balanced on one heel, beside a patch of mossy ground on which Hal Lundquist had drawn a rough map of the island with a sharp stick.

“So,” he said, shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he stabbed the similar stick he held in his hand into a spot near the southern tip, “you figure we’re about here.” He moved the stick a couple of inches toward the center of the island and stabbed again. “And the village and airstrip are roughly here.” He looked up and pointed the stick at an imaginary point located halfway between Hal and Tony, who was, as usual, photographing the impromptu strategy meeting for posterity. “That is to say, there. No more than three or four miles that direction. That’s not too bad. We should be able to make it by dark.”

“You’re forgetting,” Hal said as he used his stick to draw a wiggly line between Cory’s two points. “The river. We’ll have to cross it.”

Cory squinted up at him over the tops of his glasses. “There must be ways. Fords…bridges.”

Hal scratched his beard and looked doubtful. “Only two that I know of. Of course there’s the bridge back at the village…”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think we want to go back there. What’s the other?”

“Farther upriver there’s a gorge-it’s not wide, but it is deep. There’s a rope bridge across it.”

“A rope bridge,” Cory said heavily, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, envisioning the sort of swaying contraption popular in action-adventure movies. Behind him he could hear Tony blaspheming under his breath and felt sure he was on the same wavelength.

“It’s not fun, but it is doable,” Hal said, though his dour expression suggested he hadn’t much optimism about their chances of success. “Esther and I used it several times during the last rainy season-during dry weather, of course, you can cross just about anywhere.”

“I don’t see we have much choice,” Cory said, standing up and brushing at his wet and muddy knees. “If you and your wife-”

“There’s just one thing…” Hal Lundquist was still scratching his whiskers, and looking more pessimistic than ever.

“Yeah? What’s that?” Cory’s heartbeat slowed to a leaden thumping. Behind him, he felt Tony freeze in the act of putting his camera back in its case.

“Well, as I said, there are only the two crossings. Al-Rami’s men use them, too, and they won’t be any more eager to backtrack through the village than we are. Which means-”

“We may run into them at the crossing,” Cory said grimly. “Or worse, they could be set up to ambush us when we try to cross. Great.”

“I doubt they’d waste their time and ammunition,” Sam said as she joined them. “Assuming al-Rami and his men managed to escape the raid on the village, they’ll most likely have crossed the river already and are heading for their nearest hideout as we speak.”

Silently, Cory watched her hunker down beside the crudely drawn map, and he was trying not to notice the fluid slide of muscles in her back and arms and thighs that not even men’s clothing could hide. Or the matter-of-fact way she’d taken charge, with a quiet authority that could only come from absolute confidence in her superior knowledge and expertise.

Of course, she’d been doing that all along, he realized, in slightly more subtle ways. He’d noticed and wondered about it, even felt twinges of uneasiness…entertained vague suspicions. But then, he’d been distracted-to put it mildly-by the flood of conflicting emotions he’d had to deal with since finding her so unexpectedly back in his life, not to mention the reawakened desires rampaging through his system. And even more than that, he thought, he’d been blinded by the image he’d carried in his mind for so long. Sammi June…Sam…his Samantha…who he’d insisted on seeing still as the arrogant but vulnerable college girl he’d fallen in love with that day in the White House rose garden.

Where was that cheeky golden girl now? Had she ever really existed, except in his fantasies? Certainly he could find no trace of her in this tanned and toned creature in camouflage cargo pants and T-shirt, reminding him of nothing so much as the swashbuckling heroine of some action-adventure film he pictured right at home raiding ancient Egyptian tombs or swinging one-handed on a vine while firing an AK-47 and vanquishing villains with the other. He had no doubt crossing a chasm on a swaying rope would be well within her capabilities.

“Besides, they can’t even be sure we’d be coming along that way,” she went on, squinting up at Hal Lundquist-making a point, Cory noticed, to avoid meeting his eyes. “For all they know, we might have been killed in the raid, or managed to meet up with the government forces. Either way, I doubt they’d sit around waiting at some bridge crossing on the off chance we might happen along.”

“That’s a very good point,” Hal said, though he looked no less dubious as he gazed down at the map.

“Well, like I said, I don’t think we have much choice,” Cory said briskly. “How far is it to the crossing? Can we still make the village and airstrip before nightfall?”

Hall shook his head. “In terms of miles it’s not that far, but the terrain and vegetation make for slow going. Then there’s the rain, which will make things more difficult. We might make it there by tomorrow morning, if we keep going all night, but I don’t think that’s such a good idea. The truth is-” he smiled dolefully at his wife as she joined them “-I’m not at all sure we can find the path in the dark. And with all the cloud cover there’ll be no moon.”

“We’ll take it as it comes, then.” Cory glanced at Sam, assuming she’d want to weigh in on the subject. But she wasn’t looking his way, and what he could see of her expression was aloof and unreadable.

He heard her asking Esther if she could carry her cooking pot and bundle for her, and heard Esther’s serene and cheerful, “I’m quite all right, dear, but thank you for asking.” And it occurred to him as he looked at the older woman’s gaunt face and frail body that both she and her husband, intrepid though they might be, weren’t superhuman. They had to be running low on reserves of strength.

“Do you know if there’s someplace we can take shelter for the night?” he asked Hal. “Another nice big tree, maybe?”

“Oh, we can do better than that,” Esther said, beaming at her husband. “Can’t we, Hal? There’s the hunter’s hut, remember?” She transferred the smile to Cory. “It’s on this side of the gorge, very near the crossing. It’s quite tiny, but it does have walls-bamboo, of course-and a roof, of sorts.”

“It did,” Hal corrected her gently, with a dubious wag of his head. “We can’t be sure it’s still intact.”

“Well, then, we’ll just have to put our trust in the Lord,” Esther said, and Cory saw her throw Sam a broad wink, and Sam smile wryly back at her. “After he sent these lovely people to bring us home I don’t think he’s going to let us down now, do you? After you, my love-lead on!”

Still wagging his head, Hal shouldered the larger cooking-pot bundle his wife handed him and set off through the dripping undergrowth, following a trail that remained invisible, at least to Cory. Esther fell in behind him, looking much like a terrier dogging the heels of a Great Dane. After a quick, almost involuntary-seeming glance at Cory, Sam followed her.

Tony moved up beside Cory and paused to rearrange the bags and cases that festooned the upper half of his body. “What is this, ‘After you, Alfonse’?” he said with a nod toward the others, who were already disappearing in the heavy undergrowth.

Cory gave a dry laugh without much humor in it. “Something like that. Can I give you a hand with some of that stuff?”

“Naw, that’s okay, I got it.” He took off the bandana that covered his head and mopped at his face and neck.

Cory gave an exaggerated start. “Whoa-I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with hair before.” Tony’s normally shiny head was now sporting a furring of dark hair. “Looking a bit scruffy, there, buddy.”

“Like you’ve got room to talk,” Tony scoffed, baring his teeth in a wide grin and pointedly rubbing the sparse black hairs adorning his chin and upper lip. “That’s the thing about us Injuns-no whiskers to worry about.”

“Injun, hah,” Cory said as he ran a hand over the half inch or so of beard on his own face. “What are you, maybe a quarter? You just like an excuse because you can’t grow a beard.”

“Excuse! What do I need an excuse for? Beards are a pain, man. Couple more days and you’re gonna start looking like the reverend, up there. Not me.”

“Yeah,” Cory said ruefully, “I am starting to feel a little like Robinson Crusoe. Probably don’t smell too good, either.”

Tony snorted. “Me, either.” But his eyes followed Sam as she ducked in and out of the banana trees up ahead. He lowered his voice and remarked, “Seems like some of us are holding up better than others.”

Cory grunted a reply, not wanting to notice the way Sam’s hair curled dark and damp on the back of her neck, or how her wet T-shirt clung to the smooth, fluid muscles of her back. Not wanting to acknowledge the gnawing ache in his groin whenever he looked at her, or the bigger, less well-defined ache higher up, in the vicinity of his heart.

“Something goin’ on between the two of you?” Tony asked in the same muttered undertone.

Cory lifted a shoulder. “Don’t know what you mean. I already told you-”

“Hey, I’m not deaf and blind, man.”

“Look, I told you, that was in the past.” Cory paused, exhaled and muttered, “And I’m beginning to realize she’s not the same person I knew then.”

Tony threw him a fierce bright glance. “Who the hell is? Look, man, you two have something beautiful going-sparks, some kind of connection. Don’t tell me you don’t-even an emotional doofus like me can see it. So, maybe you blew it once. You got a second chance now. Don’t blow this again, man.”

“What are you, Dr. Phil all of a sudden? Since when are you such a big fan of monogamous happy-ever-after relationships? Anyway,” Cory said, stiffening himself against hope and a strange wild despair, “that’s not my call to make. She’s made her choices.”

“Oh, right,” said Tony, “so it’s all her fault.” Cory threw him a dirty look and got one in return. “When I was a kid? Any time any of us kids got in an argument or a fight-and with eleven of us there were a lot of fights-Mama used to say it takes two to make a quarrel, and she’d take us by the scruff of the neck and she’d march us into a corner and make us sit there together until we’d ‘kissed and made up,’ was the way she put it.” He paused, and Cory felt the stab of his fierce golden eyes, all the sharper, maybe, for being those of his closest friend. When Tony went on, though, it was in a gentler tone. “All I’m sayin’, man, is you two need to get in a quiet place and talk this out.”

Cory made a scoffing noise, but his heart wasn’t in it. He hoped he was still mature enough to acknowledge when someone was right.

After a moment Tony shrugged and said, “Okay, so she did something that knocked you for a loop. Now maybe you know how she feels.”

Again Cory snapped him an angry look, but this time the one Tony returned was somber, maybe even a little sad. “Just think about it, man,” he said softly, then quickened his step and moved on ahead of him.

Left alone with his thoughts, Cory was in wretched company. Think about it? What is there to think about? The woman I love, the woman I wanted to marry and have children with, is a field agent-an undercover operative-a spy-for the CIA! At least he was pretty sure it would be the CIA. Or some agency even more secret he’d never heard of. How was he supposed to deal with that?

“Now you know how she feels…”

Wait a minute, he protested silently, this is different. It’s different. And anyway, I’ve told her everything. Everything I remember…

Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled, gradually coming closer. Thunder rumbled now, too, inside his head…Thumping, pounding, banging, angry and insistent, growing louder…coming closer.

He slammed shut the doors of memory, shuttered the windows and braced himself against them, breathing hard and shaking, his skin grown clammy and cold.