Chapter Nineteen

Red

"What are you doing?" Red's voice was thick as she spoke into her cell phone.

"Trying to figure out how to tie this damned bow tie," Grey grunted. "It keeps slanting up on the left. Are you getting dressed for the ball we need to leave soon?"

"I just woke up from a nap."

"You feeling okay?" His voice had the strained sound of exasperation, but she knew that was aimed at the tie, not her.

"I'm off my game. But I can get the job done. I mean, look, I pushed through when I needed to meet Moussa."

"I hate that you did that, and, man, what a miracle you did. What are you thinking about all that?"

What? So much. Too much.

Moussa was an anvil sitting on her chest. Fine one minute, destroyed by the circumstances the next. He had been sitting at the table ordering lunch for himself and her.

He would wonder how much money was in the black bag. He was probably sitting there planning what he would do with it.

Where would he hide it? Would he tell his wife?

Something made Moussa lunge under the table prior to the bomb.

And there was that guy dodging the donkey cart, the one that she'd somehow recognized and photographed. He had been standing at Moussa's side. Did Moussa know him? Were they talking when the bomb exploded? It had occurred to Red that Moussa lunged under the table because of the donkey cart guy, the one with the strange design of dark moles around his eye that reminded Red of a star constellation.

She had access to his phone. After the ball, she'd look through it and see if there was anything at all that was interesting to the CIA.

When Grey asked what she thought about all that, it churned up those questions and got the thoughts and images roiling again.

Red tapped her phone onto speaker as she crawled out of bed and walked to her open suitcase. Reaching down, she pulled the stranger's phone she'd picked up along with Moussa's melted cell. "Oh, I was thinking I might have some octopus DNA in me somehow."

Grey chuckled.

"I'm serious, Grey. At the time of the bombing, I was out of my mind with a fever. Like, I kept arriving at places and wondering how I got there."

"That had to be frightening. But octopus-like? In my mind, I'm picturing blending into the environment. Is that what you're talking about?"

"I'm holding the phone from a guy I think was talking to Moussa when they died. I had recognized him before he came into the hotel, and, at that time, I took his picture to hand to the targeters."

"Okay, good."

"After the bomb, I found his camera and switched the biometrics on that phone to my own."

"Perfect. But octopus?" Grey asked.

"Each arm of an octopus has its own brain and therefore can function separately from the other arms. And yeah, I know that I was leaning into training and muscle memory throughout that event, but I prefer the idea of being an octopus."

Grey snort-laughed.

"You sound happier. Did you get the bow tie done?" Red opened the man's encryption messaging app and scrolled through his recent text exchanges to determine if she had access. She'd work with it later when she had time and focus. That would come after the ball.

"I'll try the tie again in a second. I'm working on my cuff links."

"Oh." Red scowled. "Wow. Isn't that something?"

"Cuff links?" Grey's voice was muffled. "No, not really."

"Synchronicity, I guess. The world is indeed a small place when it comes to treasure hunters and conflict relics. There are only so many names on a list. The web is spun of fine silk."

"Spiders, now, I see you're following the theme of eight-legged creatures. I'll bite," Grey said. "What are we talking about?"

"Wajeeb sent me on the track of Moussa, who stumbled across Poole. Of course, I was looking for information about conflict relics, and Poole was a surprise. I'm thinking that means Poole has some connection with conflict relics, too, or why would he be working with the import-export guy that Wajeeb identified?"

When she paused, Grey repeated, "Keep going."

"I'm looking at the phone from that guy I recognized heading toward the hotel. As an aside, someone collected Moussa's from my hospital room. Black wanted it at Langley."

"It arrived," Grey verified. "They're working on it. It was melted, but they might be able to get something. One cuff link down, one to go. It would probably help if I didn't have my phone clamped between my ear and shoulder."

"Probably."

"Do you think this guy is someone that might prove useful?" Grey asked.

"Well, he's dead." Red scrolled back and forth through his texts. "So I'd say no. But his phone at least gives me a little explanation of why he was there in the explosion."

"This is the ‘Wow. Isn't that something?'" Grey asked.

"Mmm. Loose translations of the exchange go like this: ‘I found a phone in my office. I believe it belongs to my secretary, Moussa. I believe he's been spying on me.' The guy answers, ‘What shall I do about it?'"

"That's true, correct?" Grey asked. "Your asset, Moussa did you say? Moussa hid a burner in his boss's office."

"That's my understanding. Listen, the boss answers, ‘He's going to a meeting. I am tracking his phone. Stop him before he tells anyone about Poole. If you see him with someone, take care of it.'" What was that saying about nine lives? It looked like she'd used three of them that day—the typhoid, the bomb, and an assassin.

How many did she have left?

Ice dumped through her system as she remembered the drug-enhanced hospital dream that kept peeking around her consciousness and peering at her. She shook her head to reset. "I hope they put that phone in a Faraday bag. Otherwise, they'll know the CIA is in the mix."

"Protocol. So yes. Stop here. I'll hold while you get the spyware on that phone. I want Langley's AI to be culling that for any information useful to this mission."

Red did as asked. "I got the green light. The data should be flowing to our targeters."

"I'll send a message to Black. So this guy in Lebanon was a hitman? And you honed right in," Grey's voice was congratulatory. "Good instincts."

"Ah, but for the shits, I would have faced an assassin and a bomb."

"Huzzah for the runs. Also, huzzah for the second cufflink achieved. I'm going to need to hang up to do the damn tie. But I called to make sure you were up and animated. Are you getting dressed?"

"I'll be ready and downstairs in twenty minutes. If you can't get the tie, I'll help you in the car."

"Good enough. See you downstairs in twenty." Grey ended the call.

Grey. He was good stuff. She'd always liked him. And he'd always had her back. Right from the very start when they met at the CIA training institute called The Farm.

As unlikely as it was for a woman at the CIA, Red had seen herself as a field officer from the get-go. That's where she'd wanted to be, out using her languages, background, and gift of sitting next to people and having them spill their life stories and deep, dark secrets. All Red had to do was sit and nod, and the most remarkable things came out of people's mouths. Since it had been such a natural occurrence in her life, as a teen, she'd been startled to realize that wasn't true for everyone.

Her friends, figuring out this talent, would send her out to find out if "Jimmy likes me" or if "Bill cheated."

And very quickly, Red realized that people didn't want the truth.

They wanted to hear what they wanted to hear.

Friendships burned quickly. Luckily for Red, her father moved frequently from country to country and embassy to embassy for his job, so the losses and malicious rumors stemming from embarrassment or hurt feelings were short-lived pains.

She continued to use her secret powers; she simply didn't talk about it.

In the context of her life, Red hadn't thought it would have applicability.

In the American high school Red attended, juniors took an aptitude test to point them toward a good career fit. Red's report indicated she should either be a dress designer or a language professor. To this day, Red was hard-pressed to explain, on a Venn Diagram, what aspects of her personality might have been shared by such oddly divergent results that the guidance counselor offered her.

But then, after reading an article about Virginia Hall, an American spy who was one of the most accomplished secret agents in the French Resistance in WWII, Red found her calling.

She would join the CIA and become a spy, too.

Virginia and Red had things in common. They were both women born to affluence with various languages under their belts. Both were well-traveled. They had both been born in Maryland, though Red's father was from Jordan, and her mother liked to tell her that she was of royal blood.

Red couldn't care less about her pedigree.

She looked Middle Eastern, and that was gift enough when it came to doing her present job. That and her father taught her to speak flawless Arabic alongside Russian and French.

Her Mom and America gave her English and the most rudimentary Spanish possible. And her work with the CIA had given her a smattering of regional languages.

There was a serious divergence between Red's and Virginia's backgrounds. Virginia shot herself (literally) in the foot, leading to her leg amputation.

Red shot herself (figuratively) in the foot. But that had to do with self-sabotage. She doubted her intellect, her skills, and her ability. She thought perhaps she was wrong to believe she could make it into the CIA, so she set her sights elsewhere. She changed her studies, thinking she might like to collect for a museum or an art gallery.

But luckily, one of her professors quietly worked for Langley, pointing out students he thought had the secret sauce.

Because this professor spotted her, the CIA knocked on Red's door.

Red would get the opportunity to follow in Virginia's footsteps, after all.

Virginia, too, had been discovered and recruited, though that was a much more exciting story. The person who tapped Virginia was the one and only Vera Atkins, the woman who many thought was Ian Fleming's template for Miss Moneypenny. Atkins got Virginia involved in Churchill's new Special Operations Executive (SOE), and she went after the Nazis in every way she could imagine.

Was Color Code equivalent to the SOE?

No. Their jobs weren't the same.

Virginia was crisscrossing Nazi-filled France, and Red was dealing with the business end of funding terror.

But still, Virginia Hall was her inspiration.

Would Red hobble around war-torn France with a wooden leg she named Cuthbert like Virginia had?

Certainly not.

Red would give her prosthetic limb a much better name.

But becoming a spy? That had excited her imagination in a way nothing had before.

Once Langley tapped on her door, Red had done her research. She didn't go into this career blindly. She knew all about how the women went through the Farm and then were relegated to the basement to do research as "targeters."

At the CIA, the men got the attaboys, fist bumps, promotions, pay raises, and field assignments.

Luckily, Black pulled her onto his team, and she didn't fall into the toxic swill the other women had to swim through.

"Look, Virginia," Red said aloud. "I made it."

She'd done it like Virginia would, with strategic alliances. Red had teamed up with a fellow recruit at the Farm. The man who would eventually become John Grey. And when Color Code wanted Grey on their team, Grey brought her to Black's attention.

She made the team on merit. She deserved to be there.

It was just a shame that her success depended on a man seeing past her XX chromosomes to understand she was value-added to the team.

Over the decade she'd worked for them, the CIA remained an old-boy, patriarchal, often misogynistic organization that had barely made cultural strides since the nineteen-fifties despite Director Haspel's ascendance.

Just look at the women who suffered injury and illness in the field and were cast aside in ways that the men weren't. Yes, her team had sent someone to save her. Yes, she got the medical help she needed. But what if her illness made fieldwork impossible? She would have ended up in the same straits as, say, those women who had been exposed to the Havana Syndrome shit. Many of them developed aggressive and unusual cancers.

Did the CIA stand by them? Support them? Care for them?

Questionable.

No, Red was under zero illusions. She worked for the CIA, and she loved her job. They would love her and the results of her work just as long as she was still producing. And then they'd kick her to the curb.

Not her team, though. Her team was family, and she believed they had her back.

But do you have time for continued warm friendships when you spend every day trying to save the world?

Color Code would remain busy, and Red was prepared to live out her life alone.

It was a price she'd decided to pay.

But tonight? Tonight, she'd be with Grey, and they'd be waltzing.

Red had to look very different at the ball than she usually did. She needed to ensure that if she showed up on any viral royal watch feed or influencer social media, moving forward, no one would recognize her, including AI software.

Her transformation was easily accomplished with the shading and highlights of her makeup.

She'd had the salon thin her brow and create stylish arches, which changed her look. Typically, Red wore her hair in a low ponytail or simply draped over her shoulders to obscure the sides of her face. Tonight, the stylist had swept her hair into a sleek updo and sprayed it with some titanium-like hairspray, which meant no strand of hair was out of place even after napping.

Standing in front of her bathroom mirror, Red inserted chandelier earrings with man-made diamonds that looked like they were worth a fortune. They were heavy, and she wasn't used to the tug on her earlobes. But as she turned her head from side to side, Red had to admit, they looked amazing. They weren't just decorative. They were digital cameras. Technology was miraculous.

Besides that, Red would have a couple of GPS dots to press onto Elena if possible. Tiny, she might even be able to hide one on the Fire of the Desert if she could get close enough.

Other than that, she was going in naked, equipment and weapons-wise.

Back in the bedroom, the full skirt of her red taffeta gown spread wide across the bed. The matching high heels with their pointy toes and crystal clustered embellishments lay on the carpet.

Red was sure that Grey had asked someone to "get Red a dress," and they'd heard "get a red dress" because this was very red. Very. It was a lovely red, though, she thought as she rubbed the fabric between her fingers. As far as formal wear went, she liked it. Tactically, it was an impossible gown. There would be no stealth with its rustling sound, no running with its yards of voluminous skirt, and certainly no hand-to-hand in a bodice that wouldn't allow a deep breath or sleeves that constricted her range of motion.

Fortunately, none of that really came up in her job. Dodging bombs aside—observation, contact, and manipulation were the daily skills she applied.

And this get up?

This looked as far from spy as she could get.

This looked a little prima donna if Red was being honest.

Good. That would make life a little easier for her tonight.

As tired as she was from her bout with typhoid, easy would be greatly appreciated.