SPIES, LIES & NAKED THIGHS

JINA BACARR

To my husband, Len. Nobody does it better.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

When I was a little girl I wanted to be an archaeologist and go on digs. Later when I had the opportunity to explore the catacombs outside Rome, I strayed behind the group and got lost. I wandered around alone in the underground caves with only a small flashlight to guide my way, marveling at the bones buried in the crypts. That was the first time I heard the bones “whisper” to me. I never forgot that. It became part of my story when I wanted to write about an archaeologist-turned-spy in the Near East.

In the world of covert ops, a spy works alone. So does a writer, weaving her tale in front of her computer, dreaming, planning, writing. What no one sees is the world behind them. Our backup. And I have the best backup in the biz. Thank you to my fabulous editor, Susan Swinwood, whose editorial guidance helped me bring my story full circle. And as always, thank you to my dear friend and wonderful agent, Roberta Brown.

Prologue

Somewhere in the Syrian Desert

A virgin moon caressed her ivory buttocks against a black basalt sky, stimulating him. Stars sparked their celestial approval, pleasing him. And a beautiful blonde lying nude in his tent aroused him.

Allah is good.

He rubbed the girl’s taut brown nipple between his thumb and forefinger, evoking a succulent sigh from her that made him smile. Then he pulled on both her nipples faster and faster until she began gasping for air. She trembled under his touch, subjecting herself to his will, though he sensed she fought against her desire. That resistance would disappear once she opened up under his stroking, her honey-sweet juices seeping down her thighs, a testament to his skill.

Empowered by his dominance over her more than his craving for her flesh, he gazed down at her like a sly jackal salivating over its prey. He reveled in what he saw. Her mint- green eyes ached for him, peering over the transparent veil covering her mouth moist with her hot breath.

“Now?” she whispered.

He shook his head. “Not yet, my beauty. I’m anxious to take you, but first I must complete the ritual.” He felt her shiver, but she didn’t resist when he spread her legs and rubbed rose oil on the smooth skin of her inner thighs. A preliminary stimulation before receiving his gedheeb, his rod. Underneath the loose white caftan covering his nude body, his need swelled, his glans tinted a deep crimson and red lines streaked from either side of his groin to converge at his navel. The sign of a primeval sect that reviled women and vowed to sacrifice their semen only during the heat of day. He emptied his passion when the mood suited him, but like the ancients, he believed the sun was man, its scorching, burning heat penetrating the desert sands with energy. The moon was woman, a cold, arrogant and selfish being, forcing the beauty of the desert to vanish into a hellish darkness between her legs.

Outside, a petulant night wind kicked up a powdery cloud of sand, dragging its long tentacles along the outer boundary of the tent in a noisy guffaw and reminding him of his oath. Wiping the sweat off his face, he shook off the ominous tingling up and down his spine. He was working himself into a sensual state, something he’d sworn against, yet he couldn’t help himself. Her burning eyes enslaved his will, forcing him to admit she’d upset the delicate balance of his being. The wind wailed its warning, a sibilant sound that grated on his nerves, but he ignored it. He was past listening. He observed the girl as a lover would, inspecting her, admiring her, his enjoyment of her physical beauty as much a part of the ritual as riding her to final abandon. Her face shone with an eerie whiteness in the candlelight, her gentle moans crawled over his skin like ghostly fingers arousing him.

He yearned to delight in the dewy moistness between her thighs, pussy softer than silk with wiry rays of sunshine encircling it, buttocks smoother than golden cream, hard bud plump and rounded, protuberant. His nerves taut, his fists clenched, he made his decision. He’d indulge in a quick coupling with the girl, then be done with her.

He lifted her nose veil and touched her warm cheeks flushed pink, then raked his fingers through her long, burnished hair braided with sweet-smelling white flowers. He knew she observed his every move from under lowered eyelids smeared with antimony to give them a silvery-white crystalline sheen. Yet she remained so still the swinging blue- glass pendants hanging from her earlobes lay flaccid against the silk pillow under her head. She reclined on a low pile of perfumed mattresses covered with a white counterpane, gold-and-purple silk pillows scattered at her head and feet. Dim saffron-colored candlelight caressed her curves.

How could he resist such beauty? Full breasts, smooth and pure as white sand, and a narrow waist rounded out into firm buttocks tempted him to devour her like a flame. At his request, she’d smeared henna on the palms of her hands and on the soles of her feet, then fastened a low-swung belt made of gold ribbon around her waist. The belt sparkled with tiny copper bells that sounded when she undulated her hips toward him in a teasing manner. He frowned. This charade could only end in the girl’s misfortune, but what choice did he have? The blonde was beautiful, but dangerous to the jihad. In a few hours, she would know her karma and he’d have what he wanted.

But first…

His thumb and forefinger twisted her sensitized nipple and she moaned. Louder.

“You want more?” he asked.

“Yes,” she breathed out, wetting her lips and beckoning him to kiss her. He didn’t. Instead, he turned her over and inserted his finger deep inside the small cleft moon of her buttocks. She cried out and bucked hard against his hand. He was amused she was so eager to show him passion. Didn’t she know she was but an instrument to quench his insatiable thirst for release? Yet he couldn’t deny the erotic feeling her soft skin moistened by the rose oil evoked in him or the sensation of her surprisingly tight butt hole under his expert touch. He increased the rhythm and the speed of his finger to match her grinding hips, the copper bells around her waist ripping through the stillness into a ringing cacophony. He couldn’t stop. Desire for her sharpened his senses, the pungent smell of myrrh filling his nostrils along with her musky odor. Her body tensed as if ready to explode, her hips jolting up and down, the tight crown of her anal muscles squeezing around his finger while he pumped her to satisfy her dark, secret desire. Her ragged breath and earthy moans made him quiver with anticipation, knowing he’d succeeded in unleashing the wanton in the girl. He pulled on her braided hair and jerked her head back, muttering, “Yes, that’s it. Release your fears and let them go.”

Under the tutelage of his skilled fingers, she twisted and writhed with abandon. He shifted his weight and maneuvered closer, plunging his finger deeper into her, groaning while savoring the heat of her excitement. He felt his pulse quicken. The girl was primed, ready to surrender to him. He removed his intrusive digit and she collapsed on the mattress, panting hard.

Pulling off his white mantle, he wiped the sweat off the back of his neck with the garment, disturbing his spiraling long black hair, matted and damp. As was customary, a small platform stood nearby with his personal items: his scent of mandarin, musk and lavender, along with a box of beeswax, flower garlands, lotions and perfumed powder to remove the odor of perspiration, as well as a jar of lemon peelings and betel leaves for sweetening his breath. After tossing the robe on the soft fleece carpet, he washed his hands in the basin of water for that purpose, then grabbed a condom and a pack of cigarettes. Al-Amra, a local brand. Long and slender, like the girl. He slipped the condom on his penis to catch his semen as a way of placating his God, but instead of grabbing a cigarette out of the pack, his fingers clasped around cold metal. A digital camera that fit in the palm of his hand. He stroked the cold metal and saw in his mind the many nights of pleasure he’d have watching the blonde on the video while she languished in hell. He pressed down the shutter button to the record position and pointed the camera toward her, then lit more candles to highlight the curves of her body.

“Now, my lovely one, you shall receive the talisman of divine pleasure.” He saw her take in her breath at the mention of his shaft. Foolish girl. She imagined herself in love with him. A wicked smile turned up the corners of his mouth. She was but the tool to show his power to the mujahideen.

He held her hips tightly as her back arched toward him and lifted from the mattress, her buttocks quivering. Then he thrust his hard cock into her….

1

Two years later Zurich

I lean over and tighten my sagging black satin bra strap before gravity takes over and my left breast pops out. Not easy to do when I’m running through the trash-strewn cobblestone alley smelling like dead cats and urine in thigh-high, black-leather embroidered boots with stiletto heels and a beaded Cleopatra wig, heading for the Central Plaza Hotel to hook up with my Russian informant, and I’m late. He insisted on meeting me at the piano bar in the hotel situated on the riverfront, a favorite of his, where the ex-KGB agent downed shots of vodka during the Cold War.

Not a good sign. His turf, his rules. I hope today’s mark doesn’t give me any trouble. The last man I shot asked me if I liked to sleep in a T-shirt or lingerie. Nothing at all, I said, then before he could take me down, I took him out with my Glock 22. After all, this is a job. And I’ve learned to do it well. The name on my U.S. passport identifies me as Breezy Malone, a twenty-nine-year-old female; place of birth, Philadelphia. I’m taller than average with sun-streaked, white-blond hair and green eyes. Since my recruitment as a special agent for Theta Agency, I’ve become proficient in adapting disguises, served as a provocateur to entrap extremists and participated in numerous black ops, including major “wet” operations.

Contrary to popular imaginings, the latter has nothing to do with ejaculation but with rolling up political insurgents in Europe and the Middle East. No thumbscrews for torture or blunt objects for persuasion for me. I use vaginal wizardry to entice the target. I go where other government agents can’t, taking down sophisticated men in gray tweed as well as terrorists who view the world with a piercing gaze and an AK-47.

As an Arab-speaking agent, I use my language skills as well as my personal attributes, often obtaining more intel by keeping out of the subject’s arms. If a man is only physically attracted to me, he will lose interest once he has had sex with me. But if he comes to rely upon me more for companionship and sympathy than merely for sex, the operation has a better chance of success. From supine and supple positions to tease and torture, I can execute any sexual task required of me. Using erotic techniques I learned at the TA training camp near Prague, I snare my target in a black-leather web of intrigue and lust.

My curvy body is the ultimate honey trap.

I check my weapon hidden in my bondage belt along with my prepaid cell phone and wad of cash tucked away in my corset. I’m not fond of the black-leather armor and skimpy red thong I’m wearing, but it’s part of the job. Fit in with the locals. Everyone on the streets is wearing crazy outfits. Guys with silver-painted bodies and sporting frizzy purple wigs, girls wearing lacy bras and bare-bottom cowboy chaps. I see latex and sequins everywhere, flower pasties, even pink-feathered boas. The Love Parade attracts big crowds in the Swiss capital for a weekend of love and beer, though it’s more about sex than love.

The perfect place to exchange cash for trash. Bureau-speak for useless intel. According to recent chatter picked up on the street, the Russian knows more than he’s selling about terrorist activities in Western Europe. We can’t afford any more intelligence failures. Everybody knows the game has changed. No longer are attacks planned and executed by a single al-Qaeda mastermind. Fueled by an ever-increasing well of recruits bound together by motives and causes, it’s up to me to find out what the Russian knows and who he’s working for.

Unlike military interrogators who push emotional buttons to get the intel, I’ve taken on the persona of a dominatrix to whip the informant into shape with my sexual tricks. With my sharp black nails flashing from the tips of my fingers to my mouth glossed with Sinfully Red lipstick, I’ve been sent to flush out this ex-KGB agent by my handler, Rork, Special Agent in Charge.

Unlike authorized FBI counterintelligence agents, TA special agents need a handler, an agent who can provide technical support in the form of service weapons, operating funds, clandestine communications gear, spy cameras and other specialized equipment.

A sudden stab of adrenaline strikes me, hitting me in my gut. I’ve also got personal reasons for working this case. I’ve waited a long time for this day since I went over the prison wall in Syria. If the Russian is involved with a certain Chechen-based renegade, as I suspect, then we’ve got business of another kind to settle. Every target I take down brings me one step closer to finding Sharif and bringing him to justice.

I’m about to round a corner when I sense someone sniffing me out like an animal in heat. Nothing new to me. Since I received government-issued breast implants, I’m used to being stared at wherever I go. But this is one pussycat who hasn’t got time for primal games.

I slow down, walk purposefully down the alley. I’m a TA special agent who knows her job, wants to get it done and get back into my slinky, formfitting catsuit. Black. I disappear in black, my chin-length sugarcane hair turned up in a perfect flip.

I wipe off the back of my neck with my hand. The damn wig is hot and sweat is dripping down my bare back. I inhale the smell of my own body heat and a familiar desire to relieve the gnawing ache between my legs hits me. Good. I can use my own need to keep the mark off balance, make the Russian forget he’s a card-carrying member of an elite terrorist group.

Out of the corner of my eye I see movement to my right. The answer to this blonde’s wet dream spills out of a doorway, weapon drawn. I stare at him, narrowing my eyes, then peek at him through my false eyelashes. Uneasy but not shaken, I hold my breath. The tattooed bodybuilder stud with the spiked, black-crow haircut and patch over one eye is pushing the cold barrel of the rif le against my neck. I’ve stared down the barrel of a T.A.R. 21 Tavor assault rif le a few times in my terrorist-fighting career. That doesn’t mean I’m used to it. My throat tightens and my nerves become taut, the icy metal against my flesh signaling a sense of impending danger loud and clear.

Where did he come from? Who is he?

He wasn’t on my radar a minute ago.

“Want to have some fun, Fräulein?” he says in German. I bet he cuts a notch in his rif le butt for every girl who says ja. Not me. Every move I make is under surveillance. It goes with the job.

“I don’t understand you,” I toss back at him in English, relaxing my stance, trying to appear insouciant. No doubt he’s a raver out for extra action and he chose this alleyway to frisk the first piece of tail to stroll his way. Why not? No cars allowed on the street during the parade. No cabbies. And the street revelers aren’t within earshot but carousing up and down Bahnhofstrasse, eating, drinking and ogling the free show.

“Give me what I want,” he says in English with a slight accent, “or I’ll—”

“You’ll do what? Spank me?”

Play dumb. Get rid of him.

I put my hands on my hips, teasing this one-eyed Jack with my sexy attitude while he checks me out with a question-ing look on his face. As if he’s not sure what to do next. I’m counting the seconds. I haven’t got time for his pickup line. I must get the intel from the Russian before he vanishes back into the black pit of insurgents plying their trade on the open market. He’s my only link to Sharif.

I slide my hand down my rib cage. Without missing a beat, the one-eyed Jack points the gun at my head. I hear him cock the trigger. I breathe out, slowly. Damn, I can’t pull out my Glock without getting my head blown off.

He, on the other hand, is breathing easily, not even breaking a sweat. I squint. Can he see out of that sexy black eye patch? He must like what he sees. He’s grinning. Why shouldn’t he? My low-cut black basque hugs my breasts and I’m wearing a wraparound pink skirt slit up one side.

I wiggle my butt and my skirt slips open to reveal my leather garters holding up black fishnet and purple stockings peeking up over my thigh-high boots. I tap my boots, clicking my military-style half soles and steel-toe caps against the cobblestones. The handcuffs hanging from my femdom utility-style belt clink out a tinny tune, drawing his eye. He glances at the hemp rope wound up in a circle on my bondage belt and starts to reach for it, then changes his mind. He doesn’t look like the tie-me-up-and-do-it-to-me type, but you never know.

I don’t dare make another move, seeing how he’s got the drop on me. The pulse on the side of my neck races. I’m stuck like a video-game character lost in a maze. I’m stressing. What if my Russian goes sideways? Disappears? I can’t screw up. I’ve logged more miles in the past two years manning the intel-gathering trenches in the European theater and the Middle East than most sex agents do in their entire career. I don’t intend to see it end in a dirty, beer-can-filled alley.

And I don’t intend to go back to prison

For months I’ve been working on this case, flushing out the Russian agent, getting him right where I want him. Even though the Cold War is over, it’s not unusual for Russians to trade their knowledge of U.S. intelligence to our enemies unless we get it from them first. My mission as a member of the elite sex squad is to retrieve a guidance chip that in the wrong hands could compromise the antiaircraft defense system of a major Western power. That involves softening him up and catering to his specific tastes, whether it’s showing off his prowess in bed with two blondes or playing master-and-slave with the tender backside of a pretty redhead. I avoid the latter. I prefer role-playing a dominatrix. I like being the top.

When I saw the prelim coded messages from the Russian, I begged Rork for this assignment. Then he mentioned I was up for an FFD, fit-for-duty psychiatric exam, because of an unpleasant incident in London. I put on quite a show to secure intel about a sleeper cell in Liverpool. I wore nothing but a shiny silver garter belt, stockings and pointy black stilettos. The mark tried to cut me when I peeled off my black stockings and I panicked. Ever since what happened to me in Tadma prison, I’m skittish where knives are concerned. I got the intel, but unfortunately, I had to shoot him, which was against orders. I was disappointed when I found out Rork filed paperwork that characterized my London performance as “ineffective, inefficient and substandard.” I suppose he had no choice, considering TA agents must follow different procedures than regular agents. Until the investigation was over, I was assigned to work undercover in a Glasgow company as a file clerk and photocopy documents. Still, I answered all the shrink’s questions with a smile on my lips and my legs crossed and got the assignment.

Now this.

Frustrated, I dig my nails into my palms. I’m not letting this stud mess up my plans.

“Why don’t you take your toy,” I say, my eyes scanning this dude in tight French jeans, crunchy black leather vest, no shirt, backpack slung over his shoulder, “and go play somewhere else.”

“I like big tits, Fräulein,” says the one-eyed Jack, ignoring my suggestion. He lowers his rif le, though he doesn’t take his finger off the trigger. “Take off your bra.”

Gets right to the point, doesn’t he?

“So you can cop a feel? No way.”

“I’m not used to having my orders disobeyed.”

“There’s always a first time.”

“I said, strip. Now.”

Taking my time, I give him a second look, my eyes moving up and down his body with an appreciative gaze. I notice a scar along his jawline. He needs a shave. I imagine without his scraggly beard he’d be considered good-looking. Is he a street thug? A local with a hard-on? Or a nerdy tech guy with a plastic gun?

Whoever he is, I’m not immune to admiring a pair of bulging biceps that sets my libido tap-dancing. I lick my glossed red lips. Too bad he’s not my mark. I’d like to take a ride on his pony, but I have no time for silly games. I have a mission to complete.

“Take if off yourself,” I say, challenging him. “If you can.”

I’m stalling, figuring out how I can get the drop on him when he pulls down my bra straps with his free hand and exposes my breasts. That’s not enough for him. He twirls me around and points his weapon at my rear, then smiles. I shiver, chills running down my back, then I send my emotions packing. No way am I going to let him inhale the faintly musty perfume of my pussy drifting up to entice him, making him want to taste my desire. A desire too long unstirred by real emotions. I don’t have the luxury of enjoying sex. It’s a job to me. Nothing more.

Perspiration pops out all over my face while I plan my next move. The thug pressing the rif le in my throat interprets my sweat as fear.

“You sweat. Gut. I enjoy watching you squirm.” He doesn’t move the rif le. Not an inch. Flush against my throat.

“I’d rather watch you squirm,” I say, trying to knock him off course, make him back off. He won’t budge.

“Do you know how a pigeon kills its prey, Fräulein?”

“It shits on its victim?” I grin, but I’m gritting my teeth at the same time. It’s not only the mental torture he’s putting me through that sets my teeth on edge, but the white heat vibrating in my sweet spot that disturbs me. What is it about this one-eyed Jack that’s eating away at my emo-core?

He laughs. “Pigeons kill their kind simply for fun,” he says. “Slowly, to prolong the pleasure.” He pushes his knee between my legs and jams me against the rough brick wall so I can’t disarm him. Worse yet, it’s a turn-on I never saw coming, sending delicious vibes down to my clit. I hate him for making me dream about him putting his face between my thighs. I take my job seriously, though I didn’t ask for it.

“Is that so?” I can barely utter the words. I’m breathing hard. Damn him. If I fail to connect with the Russian because of him, I’ll hunt him down and make him wish he’d kept out of my business.

“I’d hate to see your flesh picked apart.” He runs his hand over my neck. He’s got to stop this game. I’m losing. “You should be caressed and pleasured, my hands exploring the curve of your body and the smoothness of your skin until I fill you up with my cock.”

I take a deep breath, blow off the heat rising in me. This has gone far enough. I’ve been known to use any means to gather intel, from stripping in a window rigged with cameras and reading the lips of the men ogling me, to posing nude for amateur photographers who have military secrets to sell, but I’m a professional. I don’t fool around on the job for my own pleasure. More than likely, a long-range telescope is trained on me right now, a field agent from the bureau watching my every move. It’s their way of keeping me in line and not allowing my hormones to take over and compromise my mission.

“I have to go,” I mutter. “I’ve got a date—”

“He can wait, Fräulein,” says the one-eyed Jack, not smiling. “I want to fuck you.”

“I don’t fuck punks,” I say, spitting at him. My stomach twists into knots, my mind catching fire as I realize where this is going. Straight to hell. If he tries to take me, I’ll have to kill him. I don’t have time to play nice, not when my ass is on the line. I wipe my mouth with my hand, waiting. The next move is up to him.

He snorts, lowers his rif le and shoves it into my ribs. I swear I see fire coming out of his nose. He’s sweating. Big-time. And did the bulge in his pants just get bigger? I hit a nerve.

“You’ll find out I’m no punk, Fräulein.”

I pull back but not fast enough. He grabs me around the waist and crushes me up against his bare chest. Hard. Oh, has he got muscles. Tight, taut and perfect. I take a deep breath. No way am I going to lose control eyeing a set of abs glistening with sweat, while he flexes his biceps like an actor in a straight-to-DVD flick. Sure, he’s good. Really good. But I’m better. I have more to lose.

I go into auto mode. I raise my boot and smash him in the knee with my metal toe cap. He curses and stumbles backward, but recovers before I can execute my next move. Damn, he must have steel plates for kneecaps.

“What the—” I cry out when he slams me hard against the wall of the brick building, rattling my brains. I’m breathing hard and I can’t catch my breath. He points the rif le at my breasts.

“Don’t try that again, Fräulein, or—”

“Let me guess. You’ll splatter my fake boobs all over the alley?” I say, teasing him, but I’m not done with him yet. “I’ll take that chance.”

He grins. “You little—”

“Watch your language,” I say, letting my left hand stray down to my waist while my right hand cups my breast. Never let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. “You never know what’s coming at you.”

Before he can react, I rip off my skirt, revealing my bikini thong. Red. His eyebrow shoots up above his black eye patch. He grunts, rubs his crotch. I smile. Men. Give them a look and they’re putty. I’ve got him right where I want him.

Before he can grab me, I toss my flimsy pink jersey skirt at him. It lands on top of his head, covering his face.

Bull’s-eye.

I take off down the alley and race toward the riverfront hotel to meet the Russian, leaving him to tackle with my skirt. By the time he gets it off his head, I’ll be gone.

With considerable regret, I attempt to zap my meeting with the one-eyed Jack out of my mind, but a redolent aroma makes my nose twitch, though not in an unpleasant manner. A funky body odor arouses me, making me touch my crotch. Fresh. Yet earthy. Intoxicating. I savor the teasing smell lingering in the air. I’m wet, but it’s not my own scent turning me on. Black leather and musk oil. The one-eyed Jack.

I’m drenched in his sweat.

2

“You’re late.”

The Russian looks into my eyes. Curious. Puzzled. What does he see? A sex kitten? Or a TA special agent doing her job? Does he care? I doubt it. Sex is addictive, I’ve discovered, and cuts across intelligence. He isn’t the first informant I’ve known to risk blowing his cover to satisfy his perverted cravings.

“You weren’t at the bar,” I protest, keeping my voice light, hiding the ambivalent pleasure I felt being crushed up against the bare chest of the one-eyed Jack. I experienced an intimacy with him I could never expect to find in badinage with a target.

“I got tired of waiting for you,” he says, speaking in Russian. I understand him, though my Russian is merely adequate. “Where were you?”

I purr, he smiles, hiding his anger behind the cold mask of his face. “I was delayed by the street parade,” I tell him, jiggling the handcuffs at my waist and tantalizing him with the promise of naughty games. I had no problem finding his hotel room. Every Russian informant I’ve dealt with checks in under the name Ivan Ivanovich. John Smith.

“What’s important is, you’re here now.” He slides his hand up and down my body, frisking me.

“Why the pat-down, Ivan?” I coo in his ear. “Don’t trust me?”

“I like my pussy clean. No microphones. No wires.”

“Satisfied?” I notice his dull gray shirt, no tie, dark jacket. Typical spy attire. He pulls out my Glock and stuffs it into his jacket. Disarming me wasn’t part of our agreement. I try not to appear nervous.

“How can I be sure I can trust you?” he asks. “You have no creds.”

TA agents don’t carry a gold badge and credentials like regular agents. I’m not sanctioned by the U.S. government like “the Gs,” special-surveillance groups from the Bureau that keep track of the movements of people under suspicion. If I’m caught, it’s up to me to get a signal to my handler to ask for help.

“You were informed through the usual channels I’d be your contact.” I give him my code name, Gemini Blonde.

His face lights up. “You’re a blonde under that black wig?”

I smile. “Top and bottom.”

His eyes widen though his face is lined with tension. From what I can see, he’s one nervous informant. Crushed cigarettes lying in a saucer. A bottle of vodka half-finished. I have no doubt he can hardly wait to get his hands on me.

His mischievous smile widens. “I had a bet with myself you’d show up.”

“Who won?” I look around for anything unusual, like a tiny red light indicating a camera. All I see is a bland brown-and-cream decor, double bed, round table and chairs, small white lamps and a scary modernist orange painting hanging over the bed. The overworked AC barely moves the humid air around.

“I did.” He lights up another cigarette, drawing the smoke into his lungs, then blowing it out slowly. “I always do.”

“Always, Ivan?” I say in my sexiest voice, though I’m sweating in my dark-angel armor-corset, pulling in my waist so tight I can only take short breaths. A shiny, studded mistress leather bracer protects my right forearm, and bracelet coils of black leather snake around my other arm. Rings decorated with medieval motifs of chains and flowers and cheap gemstones adorn my fingers. Pointy rhinestone studs on my collar dare him to get close enough to kiss me.

I smile. If he wants to bad enough, he’ll find a way. What he doesn’t know is my choker also contains a sensitive microphone hooked up to a sophisticated comms system embedded in the rhinestone-studded collar to capture every word of intel that spills out of him. I hid the receiver in a planter in the bar and a cell phone tower relays the signal back to the field agents listening on the other end in a nearby parked van. The agents can monitor and neutralize intel gathered as well as sexual goings-on. I hope they’ve got plenty of coffee. This could turn out to be a tense and wildly erotic all-night session. A cyber ménage à trois.

“You must have a drink with me,” says the Russian, pouring vodka into a glass chilled with square ice cubes. “Before we get down to business.”

He hands me the vodka while his dark eyes rivet on the bare skin exposed above my thigh-high boots. I swear I see him salivating at the thought of nibbling on me.

“I prefer martinis.” Wiggling my shoulders, I reach inside the squatty glass and slide my fingers around a big ice cube. Wet and cold. “But I can use the ice to cool off.”

The Russian licks his lips with his fat tongue, watching me glide the slippery ice down my neck to the swell of my breasts, leaving a shiny wet trail on my skin before dipping the ice cube into my cleavage. I shiver. The ice is cold, yet sensuous. The effect is so refreshing I let out a low groan. That heats up his excitement.

Panting, saliva glistening in the corner of his mouth, Ivan puts out his cigarette, clenches his fists, then un-clenches them. He’s hot, but I’m just warming up. From mock orgies to perfect my multifarious sexual personas, to virtual-reality computer games to train my biometric skills and experiment with every sexual position imaginable, I’m well schooled in my job. I give BJs to die for, fake exquisite orgasms, execute the most delectable James Bondage knots, pull down my panties with style and use my grippers when necessary to give even the smallest dick a good time.

But having sex with the mark is not my goal. Driving him crazy with pent-up sexual frustration is. According to my preop meeting with Rork, the Russian’s intelligence is so valuable my mission is not only to extract the guidance chip from him, but to protect him and preserve him as a long-term asset. Which means no penetration. Keep him wanting it.

“Wish you could turn into an ice cube, Ivan?” I tease, letting the ice slide down the inside of my black leather basque. I shudder as the melting cube slithers down over my rib cage.

“You’re getting all wet,” he says, rubbing his hand on his crotch.

“I’m very wet,” I say, picking up another cube out of the glass and running the ice up and down my thigh above my stocking. “You could say I’m slippery when wet.”

His eyes bulge out, his breaths coming fast and short. “Let me see your cunt.”

“Not yet, Ivan.” I stretch my body up tall, and with a bump and grind, I edge my forefinger under my bra strap. Rolling my shoulders forward and humming to myself, I slowly pull down the strap until it slackens and falls down over my arm. “I bet that guidance chip is burning a hole in your pocket.” I lick my lips, but keep my eyes on the Russian. Anticipation plays a big part in my game. A slow smile creeps over his smooth face, but he makes no comment. That worries me. Long pauses are no good. He’s thinking. I pull my bra down lower, let him see more flesh, not too much, and ask, “Why don’t you get rid of it?”

Breathing heavily, the ex-KGB agent without a single gray strand anywhere in his slicked-back, dyed black hair, watches me with a combination of wariness and interest. After a brief hesitation, he dips his hand into his jacket, then opens his palm, revealing a small chip enclosed in a clear plastic case, shiny with the residue of his sweat.

“Is this what you want?” he asks.

“Yes.” I reach for the chip, but he closes his palm.

“Take off your clothes first,” he insists, leaning forward and reaching out to grab my bra strap.

“Not so fast, Ivan.” I turn my body away from him, though I keep my eyes on him. Never lose eye contact. Keep the mark under your control. “You don’t want to miss the show, do you?”

I rock back and forth on my high-heeled boots, elongating my leg to an erotic pinnacle, raising my arms up high, stretching my lissome body. Then I turn around to face him and slide down my other bra strap. With a pout and a moan, I push my breasts together to wow him with my cleavage. He’s almost panting, but I won’t flash my nipples. Not yet. Stripping in front of the Russian ref lects the power of my nudity over him. Men have a negotiable weakness for watching a woman take off her clothes. Promise them nipples and pussy lips and they’ll babble about everything from tip-offs to defections.

Why?

It’s simple. I let him get close enough to smell me, then his eyes take in my form-fitting corset, stockings held up by tight black leather garters, but I don’t let him possess me. The game is over then. I’ll get nothing from him. You could call me a tease, but interrogation can be a cruel game. Very cruel. How well I know the tenebrous mood of an angry interrogator.

An unconscious shiver slithers down my spine, chilling my blood as memories of my first day at Tadma prison play in my mind like a video on endless rewind. Though I long for a total blackout of that day, it never comes. I find peace only in total darkness, when I sink into a numbing calm and blur the vibrant but ugly colors of the prison scenes burned into my brain. No matter how hard I try, I can never erase from my mind the months of torture and pain I experienced in that hellhole. Back then, I never thought I’d be stripping in front of a man who’s a killer, a sexual deviant, a mole.

But my nightmare didn’t start in prison. I once led a normal life as an archaeologist, traveling the world in search of antiquities. And I had a family who cared about me. A mother and a sister. I also had dreams of advancing in my field. I’d just made a startling archaeological discovery in the middle of the Syrian Desert when the horror began….

3

Two years earlier An excavation site in northern Syria

I descend the crude stone steps into the dark underground vault, my heart pumping, my lungs trying not to breathe in the lingering incense. An eerie flickering from my flashlight angers a barrage of bats. Shrieking and fluttering, these mammals of darkness descend upon me, catching their spindly wings in my long ponytail and pulling on my khaki shirt. I cry out with frustration more than fear, pulling a squealing bat off my chest. A loose button pops off my shirt, revealing my cleavage nestled in a white lacy bra. I ignore it and cover my face, my long blue-glass earrings swinging wildly and stinging my cheeks as I slice through the damp, humid air with my flashlight, hissing and whirling like a mythical avian creature until the bats leave me alone.

Am I alone?

Hush…sssh, I hear as an unnerving susurration pounces upon my ears, unsettling yet wanting, needing, crying out. They’re here. Calling to me. I see no creature stirring save for scavenger scorpions busy feeding their hungry bellies on insects so tiny they escape my eye, but I know they’re here. Waiting for me. I can’t leave without seeing them one final time to contemplate the beautiful with the strange.

With more excitement making my pulse race than I would have thought possible, I sweep the beam of my flashlight on the emptiness below me. Cool air and moist shredded spiderwebs tickle my face. I wiggle my nose and a musky smell similar to the odor of sex makes me take in my breath. I place my boot on the crumbling step, then a second, a third, slowly, methodically, as if I’m in a hypnotic trance, unable to blink, my senses numb to all emotion except what I glean from the voices.

Voices.

They call me the bone whisperer. A fanciful term for an archaeologist, considering what I do falls somewhere between science and imagination, but it fits me. In my travels to numerous digs, I’ve listened to a mummy shyly whisper about having her pubic hair shaved before they wrapped her body in linen; to a young woman dreaming of her lover’s kiss before a lion knocked her down with its great paw and crushed her skull; to a queen’s haughty attendant boast about seducing a high-ranking court official before she jumped into the death pit.

I spend my days in other times in a fascinating world, where a kaleidoscope of images, sounds and smells all converge in a strange language that allows me to slip into the skin of these women and record their lives.

You have to see how the bones come out of the ground, I always say, to hear their stories. I whisper back to them before removing the bones from their final resting place, assure them I mean them no harm, then listen to their precious answers before I make my conclusions.

In my work, I’ve danced on wildf lower carpets throughout the Middle East, from preserved Roman cities with paved and colonnaded streets, plazas and amphitheaters to the vast desert with its burnt red moonscape valleys and towering sandstone mountains and cliffs. Hot desert winds at my back are my companions. Cold, damp crypts are my workplace.

I live to find the dead and tell their stories. Not easy to do when my grant money is about to run out. I’m a student in search of a Ph.D., following every lead that comes my way to complete my doctoral dissertation on the role of women in premodern Syria. I’ve spent my entire career trying to convince the academic world that archaeology is an important sexual science, that women played a major part in ancient civilizations, participating in sacred rituals, meeting secretly to explore pleasure, whether it was with male members of the tribe or with sex tools. Consequently, I often experience anxious moments at airport security when I forget I’ve stuffed broken bones or a stone phallic symbol from the Ice Age in my carry-on bag.

I’ve been kicking around the Near East for more than a year, working on various digs, but it’s rare to make any major discovery in the field these days. Archaeology is menial work, sifting dirt oozing with invading termites or scratching at hard rock, breaking off my nails, scrutinizing each bagful of potsherds, but rewarding for me when I see a small piece of bone, a faded remnant of cloth, a broken glass earring. Then I hear the whispers. This time they led me here to a forgotten vault in the middle of the desert.

It all started two weeks ago with a walk through the souk in Aleppo in northern Syria. I’d hoped to join a dig in Jableh but that fell through, so I decided to see the centuries-old bazaar before trying my luck in Damascus. No sooner had I found my way to the souk than a pleasant young man approached me, introduced himself as Ahmed and offered in broken English to act as my tour guide. Dubious at first, I shook my head no, but he followed me until I gave in, insisting he had excellent-quality copies of a popular guidebook special today to lady tourists. His boundless enthusiasm and toothy smile won over my incertitude. I couldn’t help but like the slight young man wearing baggy brown trousers and a dark gray shirt two sizes too big for him, wiping the sweat off his face with his twin russet-colored scarves twisted around his neck. He chatted with ease about the abundance of food overf lowing from each stall and his stomach being not big enough to hold it all.

If I’d been more observant, I’d have seen someone else also watching me. A man dressed in a camel’s-hair robe as white as the hot sands, his muscular body brown and hard, his raw masculinity so seductive his spirit would pervade my hunger for him until he became an obsession.

The game was on.

Two weeks earlier

I need a dig. Need it badly.

Sipping a mint-and-lime juice in the hot summer heat, I cruise down the long, dark alleys of the bazaar in Aleppo, Syria, the intense scent of spices seducing me, the curious crowds of people watching me, not knowing where the next turn will take me, Ahmed warning me not to pick up anything I don’t intend to buy since stallkeepers take that as a sale, when I hear the voices.

Not loud. Faint, subtle sounds in my head, telling me something stirs in the old stones under my feet, the shops with the faded wooden doors closing in on either side of me, the hidden corners where I hear but don’t see an old man chanting and keeping time with a small drum, unnerving me. The souk is filled with shops selling vibrant textiles, sweet dates, aromatic coffee beans and natural olive oil soaps. Not ancient bones, I tell myself, but it’s a feeling I can’t shake. Perhaps it’s the vibrant red-and-black scarves that Bedouin women wear hanging in the shop window and calling out to me. The floral motif and gold thread woven down the edge of the silk please my feminine instincts, a part of me that hasn’t been nurtured with a soft caress upon my skin since I left home.

Since then, I’ve slept on makeshift cots, watched the dawn break over the desert sky with its rosy hue; sweltered in the blazing noon heat on a dig while keeping my guard up for poisonous caterpillars; and spent days putting together the shards of the pelvic bone of a young woman, only to discover she’d never known the joy of holding a baby in her arms. At the end of the day, I’ve sat in the ruins under moonlight and listened to the bucolic sounds of a local digger playing the flute, its mesmerizing melody climbing up to the heavens and bringing me closer to the stars with each note.

I’ve also kicked off my boots and played with Bedouin children in the sand, delighting in the desert as a playground with all its colors and lights. The contrast between the orange glow hitting a blue-and-white-striped nomad tent in an oasis against the golden, hot sand is a sublime experience that awakens all my senses. Like now.

The air is hot and the shop somehow seductive.

Located on a tiny cobblestoned street crisscrossing under a domed alley, I ignore the stench of the slaughtered animals hanging in the doorway and wander inside the shop crammed with antiques. Ahmed runs after me, his backless running shoes making a scruffy sound on the cobbles.

“This shop no good,” he insists, holding his russet-colored neck scarf to his nose. “Cheat tourists.”

“Something I’m sure you’d never do, right, Ahmed?” I smile and indicate the photocopied popular travel guide he sold me since importing the real deal is illegal.

Ahmed rolls his eyes, shakes his head, then follows me inside the shop. “I come with you, Missy Breezy, but not Ahmed’s fault if you lose shirt.”

I laugh at his use of American slang, then my smile fades. I can’t explain it, but something pulls at me to wander up the winding black-iron stairway. Chattering behind me in the local patois about how his brother-in-law runs a stall down the road with the best cheese in Aleppo, my guide does what he does best: keeps curious onlookers away from me. I’m careful not to wear revealing clothing, though my tight khaki shirt and pants, shrunk from too many washings in cheap dorm rooms, draw disapproving stares. Ignoring them, I take my time in the makeshift flea market, examining everything that catches my eye, wiping away dust as thick as wool fibers. Among the collection of bric-a-brac piled onto shelves along the balcony, I find a bronze letter opener with a bird handle, medals, coins, Bedouin jewelry, silver, brass, wood-carved animals and, stuffed under a pile of books, an old leather album filled with cracked, yellowed aerial photographs of the desert. Amazingly clear photos, I note, with exquisite detail of the topography. Flipping through the black-paper pages cracking between my fingers, I also see pictures of a dark-haired, bearded archaeologist wearing gear from a time between the World Wars. Looking closer, I see he’s smiling and holding up a sword and…what is it? I squint at the photo. An edgy calm comes over me, as if I’ve gone into a trance, listening intently for the whispers, hoping the musky smell of the years past hanging over the photos will dissipate if I will it, holding my dreams tight inside me, wanting to see, feel, touch what this long-gone adventurer found that made him smile so big.

Peering over my shoulder, Ahmed quiets down, as if he senses I possess the ability to open secrets no one else can see. In the short time the Syrian has tagged along with me, I’ve earned his respect with my decent command of Arabic and willingness to accept the local customs, like greeting someone with the localism for hello, marhaba, with my hand outstretched, and taking my meals with my right hand instead of using utensils, not easy, since I’m left-handed. I’ve developed an easy friendship with my Muslim guide, who loves to practice his English on me and banters on about how difficult it is to get American music for his boom box.

I continue studying the old photo, tracing the outline of the object the man holds up high, allowing the odd shape to form on my mental plane, round, then oval, pointed in one corner with a drawing on it. No, it isn’t a drawing. It’s a crest. A chill goes through me, though the day breathes heat.

“It’s a shield, Ahmed.” I point to a cross with a rose. “There, see the crest?”

Curious, the guide leans over my shoulder. “Ah, very old, yes?”

“Most likely from the Fourth Crusades.” Not understanding, he blinks at me and hunches his shoulders. “Around the beginning of the thirteenth century,” I continue. “It could have come from the castle built to protect Christian pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. The fortress was never breached by invaders, but abandoned after a long siege.” I glance at the other photos and see the archaeologist holding what appears to be a goblet. “I don’t see any sign of the castle or the village surrounding it in these snapshots, but look at these huts.” I indicate cone-shaped, mud-laced houses stacked up next to one another.

“Beehive huts.” Ahmed shakes his head. “No one has lived there for a long time.”

I dare to look at my guide, hoping I heard him correctly. “You know this area?”

He nods his head many times. “Far from the city. In the desert.” He explains to me how the area is in a desolate spot not close to any oasis and accessible only by four-wheel drive.

I close the photo book, holding it to my chest, while Ahmed bargains for me with the shop owner with his hand already out. With my eyes shut, a thrilling vision blazes through my mind, making my pulse race as the whispers continue, bringing me closer to acting the crazy idea formulating in my mind. It’s too fantastic to put into words. The scribbled white ink on the photos proclaims the year was 1933. Underneath the photo with the goblet, the archaeologist wrote one word: Byzantine. That confirms what I suspected: here is the evidence of a story long believed by scholars to be legend. A story about a time when knights ransacked the great city of Constantinople and retrieved Christian artifacts to take back to Europe, including gold crosses, goblets, ivory, silver and precious jewels. Much of what they recovered was never seen again, since the returning knights often ended up in graves by the roadside, their loot buried with them or stolen by bandits. Could this be the site of lost Byzantine artifacts?

I’m so sure I’m on to something I can’t wait to get started. Why hasn’t anyone else ventured to this part of the desert to dig? I know the answer. So often, the academic community races across an excavated area like rabbits running across a color-rich Afghani carpet. The area becomes a blur of yellows and reds and blues. They spend their lives racing back and forth, studying a small portion at a time, never seeing the patterns, even with the help of satellite photos converted to digital images.

But this bearded archaeologist from long ago photographed the area from the air, making low flights over the desert to search for hidden ruins in a time before plows and irrigation systems destroyed large areas of archaeological record. He found something out in the desert near the tels, the ancient mounds common in the Near East formed where people lived in mud-brick houses and built on top of the remains of fallen structures. A sword and broken shield, a goblet, but not everything.

I’m going to change that. I heard the whispers.

I have no problem getting together a team of diggers, thanks to Ahmed, along with a cook—an Arab woman tattooed from her forehead to her chin with two children in tow. His wife and sons, Ahmed tells me proudly. I laugh and agree to take them along with us. Why not? With the woman’s patience enduring her husband’s constant chatter, smiling and following behind him with reverence, she allows him to lead yet she exudes strength. I admire that.

Ahmed hires a driver and I set out to acquire my permit to dig. I’m not worried. In the Near East, few prejudices exist against female archaeologists. Everywhere I go, my projects are well received, often welcomed by local antiquities dealers and museum curators.

Until I meet up with Dr. Hassan Omar from the National Museum in Aleppo.

“No, I can’t give you a dig permit.” Dr. Omar picks up a big, green, shiny olive from a glass tray and chews on it, his dark, searing eyes never leaving me.

“But why?” I ask, pressing my point. “All my paperwork is in order. My letter from the university, bank credit, passport—”

“No.” He continues chewing on the olive, sloshing it around in his mouth.

“Listen, Dr. Omar,” I continue, my voice strong but even, attempting to smile to alleviate the growing tension between us. I refuse to let this man get the better of me after what I had to do to see him. His male secretary insisted he was too busy to listen to my plea, so I sneaked into his office when the assistant left for lunch, then waited for the director to return and convinced him I was an archaeologist.

“A team from a well-known university in the States recently got a permit to dig in the northwestern region near the Tel Kalaf,” I insist, tossing out phony information, knowing it normally takes months to get a permit but hoping he’s too busy to check out my story. What do I have to lose? Any minute now Security will barge in here and throw me out. “I’m only asking for a short time. Two weeks.”

“I repeat, no.” He takes the slick, nude olive pit out of his mouth and tosses it onto the tray, then licks his lips, his eyes riveted on my chest. His obvious salacious pleasure in the salty taste isn’t lost on me. I can guess what else is on his mind.

I cast my eyes downward, notice my hand is shaking. Think. Don’t get angry. Losing my cool isn’t going to work with a man whose stony expression reminds me of the ancient, stoic-faced basaltic statues standing guard at the front of the museum, their strange, staring eyes painted huge and white to increase their effectiveness in their duty. Besides, I don’t have much time. A khamsin, winds blowing from the east importing extremely hot and dusty air from Saudi Arabia, is forecast in the next few weeks. The tem-perature can climb to a hundred and twenty degrees, making it impossible to sustain any work on an excavation.

I look up at him and cringe. Flashing my university creds isn’t good enough for him. I have a distinct feeling flashing something else would work better when I see him straightening his torso up off his padded chair to get a better look down the front of my shirt. Perspiration rolls down my neck and settles between my breasts. A pulsating noon heat zapped my energy and I didn’t bother to button up. A single layer of white lace hugs my cleavage, a stark contrast against my suntanned skin. God knows what he’s thinking, where this conversation is going, his eyes strip-searching me with the cool methodical gaze of a man used to discerning the tiniest detail. I imagine him probing the intimate crevices of the statue of an Assyrian queen with his greasy fingers. The thought makes me shiver.

To ease my tension, I scan his office. The room is open, airy, with sleek, black, modern furniture. In direct contrast, women wearing lightweight georgette abayas, long robes covering everything but their hands, their heads covered, scurry in and out, leaving paperwork on his desk and, though they take great care not to show it, listening to our conversation. We speak in English, but the brash tone of our voices clearly indicates a disagreement between us.

“I’ve hired a team of diggers,” I comment, hoping to appeal to his civic pride. “All local men. Fair pay.”

“I see. Can you trust these men?”

“Yes,” I answer without hesitation, though the truth is I know little about Ahmed and the diggers he found except they need work and appear strong and healthy.

“You are a most interesting young woman, Miss Malone,” he begins, getting up from his desk and walking around to face me. We stand eye to eye, though I’m taller. A strong, oily smell, mixed with something I can’t identify, assaults my senses. I don’t back down. “Breaking into my office and not even apologizing for your bold actions. How American.”

“We call it ‘going for it.’”

“I’ll make a note of that,” he snaps, his breathing ragged, his eyes going for a better look at my breasts. “I should have you thrown out of here, but I’m most curious, why do you wish to dig in that part of the desert?”

“A hunch.” No way am I going to tell him about the photos I found. I need him, but I don’t trust him.

“And you call yourself a scientist?” His tone harbors more than a hint of humor.

“Yes, Dr. Omar, but I’m a woman, too.”

“So I’ve noticed.” He walks around me as if conducting a perfunctory inspection, his eyes devouring my flesh, though he doesn’t touch me.

I ignore his comment. “I believe in instinct. A scientist can’t rely on calculations alone—”

“I also believe in following my instincts,” he says, breathing on me, his strong male scent suffusing my senses and making me turn away. Fool. That’s exactly what he wants. I shudder as he slides his dark, leathery hand over my thigh and cups my crotch, squeezing me hard, making me cry out in shock, then letting me go. I look down. Grease stains my light-colored pants an ugly brown.

“Dr. Omar, you—you—”

“I imagine you’re wet—and tight. Very tight, eh?”

Embarrassed, I look out the tall window, watching the puffs of clouds moving across the pale blue sky. I remember hiking out to the old fortress, those same clouds hanging like a backdrop against the remnants of the ramparts silhouetted against the sky. Seeing them illuminated by the sun, knowing at night they’re hidden by the darkness fascinates me, as if new artifacts wait for me to find them and bring them out of the darkness. I take a deep breath. I must continue my work, though I refuse to suffer more humiliation from this man.

“It seems I’ve wasted your time, Dr. Omar.” I turn away, pull damp straggles of hair off my face and compose myself. I’ll dig anyway, though without a permit I won’t receive credit should I unearth any artifacts. I’ll be labeled a tomba-rolo, tomb raider, and my reputation will be tarnished, but I can’t stay here a moment longer with him. I can’t.

“You seem to be in a hurry, Miss Malone.” He picks up an olive and pushes it between my lips, nearly choking me. “Care for an olive?”

I spit it out. “I made a mistake coming here, Dr. Omar,” I say flatly. “Sorry to have troubled you.”

Before I can take more than two steps, he closes the door, locks it, then turns to me, smiling. “Of course, there is a fee for my services.”

You mean grabbing my crotch wasn’t enough for you? I want to ask, but don’t. Instead, I brace myself, my eyes fixed on him. “A fee? How much?”

He names a figure that will blow the rest of my grant money. We bargain back and forth, him popping olives into his mouth and lickinghis fingers, me getting the fee down to an amount that won’t leave me with merely a camel for transportation.

In the end, I write him the check, counting myself lucky to obtain a dig permit without having to go through all the red tape with the local director of the Antiquities Service. So what if it cost me a bit of my pride? Finding the Byzantine artifacts will make it all worth it. Still, I barely have enough funds to purchase supplies and rent transportation, but what choice do I have? Only after I give him the money does he agree to help me establish provenance, the documented history of the site, should I find any significant artifacts. I agree. The Aleppo Museum already contains collections of antiques unearthed in northern Syria, from the Mediterranean to the middle Euphrates, near the point where the river flows into Iraq. Showcasing my find here would be a big step in finishing my dissertation.

“You won’t be sorry, Dr. Omar. My work goes beyond discovering the artifacts to building their scientific potential,” I continue, making my point and buttoning up my open shirt with my hand. “It’s the invisible part of what I do.”

He shrugs. “I’m more interested in what I can see, Miss Malone,” he says, handing me the permit, then brushing his fingers across my breasts and lingering on my nipples pointing through the soft fabric. “There’s one more thing necessary to complete our deal.”

“Yes?” I barely breathe the word, standing in his office, wrestling with my emotions, my fears, knowing he’s not finished with me. Known as a furious digger, a determined seeker after booty for his museum, no doubt he has other vices, as well. I stuff the permit into my pocket, then look for a way out. I frown. There isn’t another exit and the door is locked.

“I want to touch you and worship you as a goddess.” He unbuttons my blouse in quick, short movements, the silky grease on his fingers making me sick. I try to stop him, but he pulls down my bra cups and rolls my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. Gritting my teeth, I fight against him and push him away. Hard. He stumbles back against his desk, shaken.

“Unlock the door, Dr. Omar,” I say in an even voice, holding my shirt together. “Or I’ll scream.”

4

Present day

With slow, deliberate moves, I shake the past as I strip in front of the Russian. Where I once floundered, now I perform. I concentrate on the little things, the curve of my fingers when I touch myself, my lips parting in a silent sigh. I maintain a composure bordering on ice. I’m no longer the same young woman locked in a room with Dr. Omar. This time I’m in control. My pulse beats faster, my pussy vibrating to the burning but stimulating sensation a striptease evokes in me. I’m cucumber-cool while I strip, opening up to the pleasures of my art. I find no shame in taking off my clothes. Nudity is part of the game. The only exposure I fear is a double agent like Ivan blowing my cover to one of his cronies.

I turn, unhook my bra, and with the finesse of an artiste on stage, I ask, “Is this what you’ve been waiting for, Ivan?” With my back to him, I whip off my bra. Then, with a graceful flick of my wrist, I wave my undergarment back and forth in front of his nose as if it were a flag of surrender.

He says, “Turn around so I can see your tits.”

Tits. So American. Then it hits me. The one-eyed Jack from the alleyway used the same word. My pubic muscles go into overdrive, reminding me of our sexy encounter.

I push him off my radar, then say, “Not until we have a little talk, Ivan.”

“About what?”

“The real reason you came to Zurich.”

He suddenly flares up. “That wasn’t part of our bargain.”

I smile. “In wartime, an agent extracts information by force—” I drop my bra onto the floor, then turn around slowly, folding my arms over my nude breasts “—though I prefer other methods.”

He grins, though I see puzzlement in his eyes. “Our countries aren’t at war.”

“Aren’t they?” The smile fades from my face, replaced by a deliberate tenseness around my mouth. “Who are you working for, Ivan?”

“I work alone.”

“You’re lying.” I trace my fingers over my breasts, circle my nipples, which are hard and aching. “I’m asking you again, who do you work for?”

“You think I’m going to tell you?” He shakes his head. “I don’t intend to end up buried alive in a nailed coffin.”

I let out a sigh. Whatever the outcome, he’s a KGB pro-fessional of the old school. He knows the game. He knows the risks. Like most informants, the most striking thing about him is the contradiction between his evident strength of character and his vulnerability where sex is concerned.

Which doesn’t help my situation. If I don’t get him to talk, I won’t find Sharif.

I grab another ice cube and sweep its icy tongue over my nipples until it melts. Ivan is also going into a major meltdown. He plays nervously with a swizzle stick, drumming it up and down against the glass. He’s so hot, the sweat drips down his face and wets his shirt in a wide, dark stain across the front.

“I can’t wait any longer.” He unzips his trousers, wide gray pants made from a cheap fabric. “I’m so hard, I could fuck you all night.”

“Really? What a capitalistic idea.” I take in a deep breath, close my eyes. You’ll never get the chance, Ivan. Though I’d love to demote him maximally, I won’t. I need him. Besides, he disarmed me. No prob. My backup will hear my call for help if he gets carried away.

“I’m hard,” says the Russian, grabbing his crotch. “Take off your panties.”

I shake my head. “Not yet. My pussy is so hot, it needs cooling down first.” I have to work fast. I haven’t gotten the chip or the intel from him.

With a quick movement, I plunge an ice cube under my red thong, between my labes, making a sweet circle on my clitoris. I let out a loud groan. I shiver both from the chill and the high state of arousal surging in me. The ice burns on my clit. I push it deep inside me, the sensation so intense I want to scream. I’m so hot, the cube melts in seconds, dripping down my thighs in glistening rivulets, tickling my skin like icy fingers. A puddle forms between my high-heeled boots.

“Enough of your games.” He comes toward me, wiping his mouth with his hand. “I want you.”

“And I want to know what your organization is planning.”

“That wasn’t part of our deal.”

“I’m willing to pay.”

“You’ll pay with your cunt—”

“Ten thousand dollars extra.” I direct my disarming smile at him. It’s standard equipment for a TA special agent. This smile—and my government-issued cleavage—draw men to me like a prostitute wearing nothing but a pink boa and red high heels.

Didn’t the one-eyed Jack prove that?

I pull out a wad of used hundred-dollar bills from the hidden pocket in my corset, then stack them neatly on the table.

“It’s all there, Ivan.” He counts the bills, hissing through his cracked teeth. Greedy bastard. I’ll use that weakness to find out what he knows. “What is their target? When will they strike?”

Bitterness turns his face hard and pale. “No information until we complete the deal.”

Can I trust him? Before the fall of the Soviet Union he rolled up more than one KGB double agent and sent him to his death.

“How much do you want?” I ask.

“Twenty. And your pussy, too.”

“Next time we meet I’ll give you the money—”

He smirks. “I want to get into your cunt now.”

“The information first, Ivan.” I twist my collar with the embedded microphone, making certain the rhinestone stud containing the listening device is pointed directly at him. I don’t wear a comms earpiece since the Russian would have detected it when he was feeling me up and smelling my scent. “Or the entire deal is off.”

He grins. “Clever, aren’t you?”

“The money speaks for itself. There’s more where that came from if you play ball with us.” I am at once smiling at his compliment and frustrated by his reluctance with words. “Tell me what your organization is planning.”

I move closer toward him, run my fingers up and down his cheek, the black tips of my nails scrapping across his skin like chalk against a blackboard. He shivers. Good. He’s weakening. I snuggle up close to him, wrapping my left leg over his thigh. Biting down on my glossy-red lower lip, I toy with my garter. Tiny biofeedback sensors are hidden in the black leather garter circling my leg. If I can get him to touch the sensors, I’ll know whether or not he’s lying.

“I assure you,” he says, pulling on my nipple and rubbing it between his forefinger and thumb. “After our leader receives the funds he’s been promised, there will be an attack against government officials.”

I wince, but I refuse to show weakness in front of him.

“Where, Ivan, where?” Frustration zaps the breath out of me. He’s so busy playing with my nipples, I can’t get him to move his hand down to my thigh. Damn. I press my bare breasts against his chest and lick the pulse at the side of his neck. “Tell me.”

“No. I want to fuck you.”

“You won’t get any pussy if I don’t get the intel.”

His eyes narrow. He leans over me. His breath smells unpleasantly of vodka and garlic. “I’m meeting up with my connect in Paris. A Chechen. I can arrange for you to meet him.”

I exhale. Sharif? Is he telling me the truth? I’ve got to find out. I’m not about to send him to nirvana with my pink pussy lips for a lie. Besides, I have a personal stake in knowing this information. If Sharif is in Paris, I can’t take the chance he could locate me. I have an apartment on the Right Bank, though I change digs often. In my business, it’s safer that way.

“Touch me, Ivan,” I say, grabbing his hand and placing it on my thigh. “Here.”

I place his index and middle fingers on the two biofeedback sensors disguised as phony rubies. With his fingers on the sensors, I ask him again what their plans are. I get the same answer. A meeting in Paris. With a man I believe is Sharif. Is the converted Muslim getting ready to unload the artifact he stole from me? It has yet to resurface, not even in a private collection when the U.S. government seized Syrian artifacts on loan and auctioned them off to compensate Americans injured in a terror attack sanctioned by Syria and Iran.

I look for other clues—rapid eye movement, a flushed face—then I press the tiny set button on the side. Ivan notices my action and rips open the Velcro fastener and removes the garter.

“What’s this?” he yells, trying to dig out the fake stones with his nails. The LCD screen. My face pales.

I continue to smile, showing none of the rising fear surging inside me. “Give me the garter, Ivan—”

“Why? Did your lover give it to you?” he bellows, his words dripping with sarcasm.

I swallow uneasily. “Yes. It has sentimental value.”

He laughs. “Since when did a woman like you have a heart?”

I close my eyes and will the tears not to come. He’s right. I’ve turned into one of them, the miscreants of the netherworld who prey on the lascivious appetites of those who live for power. I have no heart.

But I can’t turn back. I have a mission to finish. I won’t give up until I kill the bastard who sent me to that prison and retrieve what he stole from me.

I sink back into the darkness, dragged down by my own hatred. Those few moments cost me. I open my eyes to see the Russian pull out a tiny plastic unmarked spray bottle. Holding the nozzle close to my face, he says, “You bitch! I figured you were double-crossing me. Is this a microphone?” He waves the garter in my face. “Is it?”

“No, Ivan, it’s not a microphone. It’s—”

Before I can stop him, he sprays a light mist into my ear, making my head go crazy. Is it nerve gas? I press my fingers to my temple as if to stop the sudden throbbing in my head. I can’t.

I blink, then blink again, trying to clear my blurry vision. Sputtering, I lose my balance when he pushes me facedown on the double bed. I land with a thud on the cedar-brown coverlet, when I feel hot breath on my thigh, his hand pushing aside my skimpy thong, followed by fingers plunging deep inside me. The merest contact with him disgusts me. The touch of his unseen fingers brushing across my clitoris sends a glittering trail of heat through my body as the unwanted sensations spark through me, though they can’t overpower my disgust.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him holding the vial close to my face. Fighting my revulsion, I try to push him away, but my strength is zapped. He’s about to spray more mist into my ear when I hear—

Knock, knock.

I stiffen, hope surging in me. Is it my backup?

“Go away!” he yells in Russian, moving toward the door with long strides.

“Room service,” I hear someone answer in German. Before Ivan can stop him, the door swings open and a tall man dressed in black bursts into the room. I can’t see him clearly. “Aren’t you going to share?”

“What are you doing here?” Ivan yells. “Leave us alone! I paid for this girl.”

“Yeah? She looks like she can handle two cocks at the same time.”

That voice.

An icy chill slams into the pit of my stomach. Want to have fun, Fräulein? I hear in my head, echoing over and over again in my brain.

That same voice—

—low, sexy…

I put my hand to my ear, shake my head to clear my thoughts. I can’t. I feel like an overpowering wave is pushing me down, threatening to suffocate me. I can’t breathe. I’m going to die. That horror reverberates throughout my body, touching my soul with a feeling I know so well, that moment when my soul is trapped between life and death. I didn’t die then. I can’t die now.

“No!” I cry out, my voice coming from deep inside myself. It touches every part of me, but I can’t stop the darkness from closing me in, I can’t. Someone grabs me, another pair of hands holds me down on the bed, voices yelling. The sounds are muff led, as if someone turned down the volume in my head. I can’t make out what they’re saying…

—ooh…

“Help me!” I call out just before my eyes roll to the top of my head and a maddening dizziness sends me spiraling downward in a free fall. I can’t stop my mind from going into total rewind…going back, back…back to where? Yes, I see it now. The desert…stif ling heat, blazing sun, yet I can’t stop searching, searching for…for what? I don’t know. Can’t remember. The nerve impulses in my brain won’t connect, but I can’t stop…can’t stop—

5

Two years earlier Syria

I put the unfortunate incident with Dr. Omar out of my mind and get to work. I got my dig permit, and following my hunch and the photos I found in Aleppo, and uninfluenced by the prejudices of others in my field, I set out with my small entourage of local desert wanderers eager for decent pay and a hot meal.

We head toward the dead cities, crumbling in the desert-like landscape, cruising along in a four-wheel drive with questionable brakes and a rickety old minibus that needs new tires. It’s the best I can afford after the pat down I got from Dr. Omar, a man who enjoyed eating big green olives while he played with my mind. I’ve heard some men find more stimulation in wielding a mental power over a woman than in taking her to bed. Seems the museum curator is such a man. When Dr. Omar realized he couldn’t intimidate me, he backed down and unlocked the door, though not without berating me and assuring me he’ll be paying me a visit at the site. No doubt I haven’t seen the last of him.

I put all of that behind me. I’m filled with hope and exuberance driving down the bumpy side road past fields of yellow wildf lowers. I travel without thought for comfort, though mindful of danger. Bandits as well as blood feuds between tribes are not unknown in these parts. I carry a gun in my backpack for protection, though I’ve never been awakened by bullets slicing through the canvas of my tent. Using the photos as a guide, I chart a course into the Syrian Desert away from the Euphrates River, following an ancient caravan route past the old Crusader fortress. Luckily, we don’t share the road with anyone except a few cows and a shepherd herding his flock.

About three hours out of the city, we reach an area where old beehive huts bake in the hot desert heat, unchanged for centuries. Are they the same ones I saw in the photos? I don’t know for sure, but we stop, fill our stomachs with tea and bread, then lift up our souls with a spiritual nod to the blazing noon sun beating down on the parched desert.

While my crew set up camp, I go to work. I grab my digital camera and start taking pictures of the site, then compare them to the heavy cardboard sepia-colored photos from so long ago. Disappointment etches its weary lines on my face. Nothing looks the same except the huts. The to-pography has changed in seven decades. It’s flatter, as if the desert winds are also searching for the treasure and have scratched away at the sand in a slow, tedious crawl. Worse yet, I don’t hear the voices, only the whisper of sand gently blowing up from the south.

I pull a map out of my khaki pants pocket, check it, see nothing that indicates I’m anywhere near the now-vanished road where the knightly Crusaders trekked centuries ago, then stuff it into my back pocket and wonder if what I need is strong Arabic coffee, not tea, to rev up my senses.

I head back to camp, pull off my wide-brimmed camel-colored hat and toss it down on my backpack, then lie down on the cot inside my tent, my hair wet from sweat, my mouth dry and wanting. Damn, what if I’m wrong? What if the whole thing is a hoax? The pictures fake? No, I can’t believe that. My gut twists inside me, telling me otherwise. Heinrich Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans followed their guts, struck out on their own paths and discovered lost cities, tombs and artifacts not touched by human hands for thousands of years.

The pull inside me to know the thrill of discovery doesn’t let up, that sublime moment when the spark of recognition of knowing you’re in the presence of something thousands of years old, unchanged, hits you. It’s as if you’ve done what people have tried to do since that first moment when they realized they had a past. You’ve traveled back through time.

That pull is as strong in me as the sexual urge and just as orgiastic. Or so I want to believe. Thinking about it, a pleasant sensation rolls through me before I can stop it, as I remember the first time I uncovered a skeleton more than two thousand years old, her remains well preserved, her jewelry still intact. I reveled in the feeling.

My yen for romance and adventure led me to study archaeology, but the science keeps me coming back, knowing my work supplies material for a social history of peoples’ lives not experienced through the written word, but transmitted through touch. When I run my fingers up and down the neck of a piece of pottery a thousand years old and rub its belly, I can feel the pulse of the woman carrying it on her shoulder as if it’s my own. I see her swaying her hips on her walk through the village, caressing the long neck of the jar when she fills it with water from the well, then flirting with a passing traveler. Does she offer him a cool drink and invite him into her tent? Pull up her robe so he can mount her? His hard chest crushing her breasts, his hot breath whispering in her ear as his cock finds the sweet pinkness between her legs eager for his thrusts.

Another pubic contraction rudely reminds me I haven’t been with a man for months, while a sudden dizziness tells me I’ve been out in the sun too long. Can I cure both at the same time?

Grabbing cold water to cool off more than my thirst, I guzzle down the icy liquid then slowly begin rubbing my crotch, my mind overflowing with pictures, like the old stereoscopic daguerreotypes with the same photo sitting side by side. I study the photos in the album alongside the ones I took with my digital camera, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t make the images merge into a living, breathing moment. Frustration takes over and my hand moves faster and faster over my throbbing clit until I cry out, letting go of my pent-up emotions before I fall into a dreamless sleep.

I awake to the smell of sweet honey and hot tea left by Ahmed’s wife. I look down. Wetness stains my crotch. A different scent, musky and familiar, rolls over me. My calm has returned. I’m ready to go on.

The desert sun rounds the earth on its daily course, changing color from pale yellow to burnt orange, far too quickly for me. Day after day, my team of diggers set hoe to ground every morning at 5:00 a. m., making a test pit, digging a small hole into the ground with a pick and scooping up samples of earth, but finding nothing more than broken pottery vessels, a few copper and bronze objects and a flint core. It’s impossible to date these objects without setting up an on-site lab, which I have no resources to do, so I sit under the pale green awning on my tent and catalog each object for transportation back to Aleppo. I refuse to show my disappointment to my team, especially Ahmed. I’ve formed strong bonds with these locals in a short time, living and working alongside the desert dwellers. To ease the tension, I compliment his wife on her excellent hummus, a tasty dish consisting of crushed chickpeas, cumin, parsley and olive oil, then I give the children key chains I carry with me to give out as souvenirs and promise to pay the men extra cash if they’ll stay on a few more days. Where I’ll get the money, I don’t know. Call my mother, I guess. Tell her it’s an emergency, but make no mention of the dig. Mom won’t question me, but my sister, Peyton, will. She’s never approved of my traveling around the Near East by myself, asking me if I have to wear a black robe and veil over my head all the time, if they have indoor plumbing in the hotels, and does it smell as bad as she’s heard?

I roll my eyes at her questions, but I try not to blame her. In her world, women play bridge and do lunch at the country club. They don’t trek halfway around the world in search of ancient artifacts, mummies, embalming salts and broken ceramics. They definitely don’t spend their days analyzing small pieces of dried flesh thousands of years old.

Adding to my problem this morning, the Jeep has a flat tire. Who knew no one put air in the tires at the rental agency? I don’t dare take a chance driving it. Worse yet, I have only two days left on my dig permit. Ahmed offers to drive me into town later in the minibus to call home since there’s no cell phone reception out here in the desert. I agree. I have no time to lose. We get started early on the digging, but by the noon meal, we’ve still found nothing but the usual potsherds. After lunch, I wander around the excavation site by myself, making notes, noting that one section in particular keeps drawing me back to it. It’s a mound without a blade of vegetation and occasional camel-thorn, but unlike other tels, we’ve found nothing there, as if the sands of time have formed the hunchback shape, not man building on top of old foundations.

On approaching it closer, I see no trace of a ruin, only the wooden stakes the diggers use to mark the yellow and parched earth. I notice the tattooed Arab woman cleaning up the lunch leftovers of mahshi, baked stuffed eggplant, and baba ghanoush, eggplant dip, while her sons gorge on watermelon and gather dry twigs, teasing each other with adolescent banter before tossing the sticks into the linen bag the older one carries. Ahmed and the other diggers sit around playing cards while loud Arabic pop music blasts on his boom box. The noon breeze has gone into hiding, the air hot and still as if it hangs suspended between the dry earth and the bleached white sky.

Fanning myself with a map, I no longer believe I’ll find anything here but broken pottery, but nevertheless, out of habit, I keep my eye on everything happening around me. I should give the order to dig in another spot, but I tend to remain in one place, especially when the pull is strong in my gut to stay here. I get emotionally attached to my excavation area, foolish perhaps, but it’s my style. Sometimes the whispers trick me, sending me in the wrong direction, but they never fail me.

I stand on the mound with my feet planted firmly, my shoulders straight back, my khaki shirt and pants beginning to show wear and stained with brown dirt, making me blend in with the earth tones surrounding me. Still, it’s a defiant gesture to the spirits to show them I’m not leaving, yet I swear the sun ignores my bland figure, preferring instead to cast its rays on the young boys chasing after each other. I blink as the bright flame of their red scarves flying around their necks in the sparkly glare bounces off my sunglasses.

Smiling, I watch the boys race over the wadi, ravine, toward where the men were digging this morning. As they jump and dodge each other as boys do, their mother is busy at her chore, not realizing they’re playing near the spot where the diggers set up the pointy stakes. I blink, realizing they shouldn’t be playing there. What if they slip and cut themselves on the sharp edges? I’ll never forgive myself.

I’m about to call out to them to be careful when the words catch in my throat. Frantic cries pierce the stillness as I watch the younger boy stumble, his brother grabbing on to his red scarf, pulling on it, but it comes loose and he disappears feet first into the bowels of the earth.

6

Present day

“She looks good enough to eat.”

No sooner did he speak the words did Caine regret them, knowing the Russian would take that as a challenge, using the girl as a receptacle, dispassionate and unfeeling.

He cursed under his breath. He was off his game, bursting in like this, tipping off the Russian. So far, he’d kept his surveillance on the down low, keeping the eyeball on the terrorist without him suspecting he was being tailed. Never once was the rabbit in the black—surveillance-free for more than a few seconds. The man wasn’t easily fooled, seeming to look at no one but keeping his eye out for any attention directed his way. Disguised as a punk with a spiked, black-crow haircut and patch over one eye, Caine had been closer to him than his shadow and he never knew. Until now. And why, why?

Her.

What the hell is she doing here? I thought I’d sent her ass packing. Now she’s lying half-naked across the bed, all melting flesh and big breasts, the smell of her desire driving me crazy.

She’d turned him on in that alley with her sassy attitude and curvaceous body, her breasts spilling out of that tight corset and nearly into his hands. He rubbed his fingers together, remembering jamming his knee between her legs and crushing her breasts against his chest. But that wasn’t what made him change his plans and follow her into the hotel. When she turned her head a certain way and raised up her buttocks, something clicked in his brain, as if he’d seen her somewhere. But his brain failed to connect the time or place when he rubbed up against her, smelled her, touched her.

He couldn’t believe it when she headed for the Russian’s room. He was certain she was walking head-on into a cover stop—a planned diversion by the Russian to cover up his real purpose. The ex-KGB agent would stop at nothing short of murder if she didn’t fit into his plans.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” said the Russian. Taking his time, running his hands over the curve of her buttocks, he snapped the tight red thong separating her cheeks. Her butt jiggled, pleasing Caine’s eye, but she didn’t wince. She didn’t feel the slap of the elastic band.

“Yeah. Primo ass.” Caine swallowed and nodded toward the strutting call girl lying unconscious on the bed as still and quiet as if she were bound and gagged. In spite of the situation, he grinned. Not a bad idea. He’d almost grabbed the hemp rope hanging from her belt earlier with a similar idea in mind. Now he wished he had. She’d be tied up in a rented room and out of danger and waiting for him. “What did you put in her drink? Or did you use a syringe?”

Did the Russian jab her in the thigh with a sleep-inducing drug? It was quick and done so discreetly she wouldn’t have seen it coming.

The Russian gave him a smirking look and he could tell he reveled in his application of tradecraft. “I sprayed a synthetic opioid in her ear.”

Caine tensed. “Fentanyl?”

“Yes. A favorite of mine,” drawled the Russian. “Much more potent than a Valium-type drug.”

Caine darted his eyes again on the gorgeous girl. He was no doctor, but he’d seen army medics administer the drug on the battlefield. It was a powerful anesthetic used in small, controlled doses to manage pain. Its effects were similar to nerve gas or heroin and hundreds of times more potent.

He said, “An overdose is usually fatal.”

“Not always.” The Russian patted his jacket pocket. “I have the overdose kit right here. She’ll survive.”

“Unless you don’t intend to give it to her.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Caine stared at him. Hard. Was he telling the truth? If not, he didn’t have much time. If the opioid was comparable to what the Mossad used in assassination attempts, she could suffer from respiratory collapse and be dead in a matter of hours. He had no doubt that was exactly what the Russian intended. Why? Something didn’t add up. Yet he didn’t have the time to react to the man’s accusation. He had a job to do, and damn this girl for getting in the way.

“I have no choice but to play along with your sexual diversions.” Caine kept his cool, though a chill ran through him. “What bothers me is the girl might be dead before I take my turn with her.”

The ex-KGB agent shook his head, then smiled with a toothy grin that unnerved Caine, something that rarely happened. “She’ll sleep until I awaken her.” A grunt, then a groan spewed from his mouth. “With my cock.”

His stomach turned and bile rose in his throat as Caine fought back a rising disgust for the terrorist. Instead he said, “Then you’re not going to share her?”

The Russian punched him in the ribs. Hard. “This one is mine. Get your own pussy.”

“Fuck you. I want her.” Caine shoved him back, careful not to push him too hard. He didn’t intend to be on the receiving end of a knuckle blow to the throat. If he allowed his dick to rule, he’d be putting his head in a trap. He was operating in a red zone—enemy territory—and he could expect no mercy if the Russian saw through his disguise. He wore the mask of an operative 24/7, revealing none of his inner thoughts, and, God help him, his feelings. Violence had always been his aphrodisiac, seducing him with its acrid smells and quick adrenaline rush. Now a different scent tempted him, a bouquet tipped with honey, and he liked it.

The Russian’s eyes blazed at him. “You’ve been tailing me. Why?”

“You didn’t know I was on your back until I burst in here five minutes ago.” Caine had only to see the hostile look on the Russian’s face to know he was right. “Admit it, your Cold War days of covering your tracks by dodging around the side streets in the snow or guzzling down vodka in bars are over.”

“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.

If he left her here and the local Politzei found her, she’d be charged with the Russian’s murder, a perfect solution to avoid blowing his cover. But if she wasn’t dead when they found her, she could also identify him.

So, what am I going to do with her?

He inserted the needle in the rubber top of the vial and drew up the naloxone to the 1 cc mark, all the while thinking, Should I give it to her? Is that what he wanted? Think.

He sucked in air, forcing his agency training to take command of his senses. Something about the way her lips parted in a sigh, how she wrinkled her forehead as if in her dreamlike state she found no peace, made him insert the syringe into her upper butt and push down the plunger. Then he removed her tight choker, rings, bracelet and leather cuff on her forearm, along with her wig. He wasn’t surprised to see she was a blonde, having already enjoyed the sight of her pubic hair.

He put his hand under her neck, tipped her chin up, pinched off her nose, then sealed his mouth over hers and breathed into her. Long, deep breaths to rescue her from the damning void imprisoning her brain. The drug depressed her ability to breathe on her own so he had to breathe for her or she would die. Yet he couldn’t deny he enjoyed the honey-salt taste of her lips. Soft, full and so sweet. How he wished he could guide her fingers down to his groin and she could feel how hard he was.

But her hands were cold, her head thrown back, neck arched forward, breasts pointed and shoulders shaking. Pushing air into her lungs, Caine pressed his body against hers, his huge erection straining against the coarse fabric and round navy buttons binding it in his jeans. An urgency was building in him as little tremors ran up and down her body, and she started to vibrate like a windup doll with a new battery. He was breathing heavier now, holding back, though yearning to move his tongue in and out of her in a parallel rhythm with his penis, though it remained hard and unbending in his tight jeans.

“Oohh…” she moaned once, then twice.

Abruptly, he released his mouth from hers. He continued leaning over her, smelling the lemony-mint fragrance of her breath. She was breathing easier. No more heavy, short gasps. Her lips were stained a pleasing pink, not blue, her eyelids fluttering. She was going to make it.

He held her in his arms, not wanting to let her go. His breathing quickened and he groaned louder as his hands glided over her bare back, touching—

What was it?

Rough edges pricked his fingertips. Without hesitation, he turned her over onto her stomach. Shock, then a different emotion gripped him. Anger. Her back was covered with faint jagged lines. Scars. Surgically applied skin grafts had helped heal her ripped flesh, but they couldn’t completely erase what had been deep grooves in her back, leaving faint impressions of crisscrossing welts.

Caine fought back the revulsion for whoever did this to her, threatening to overpower the analytical section of his brain. The girl had been whipped, not by a kinky lover but by someone filled with hate.

Who? Why?

He had the feeling that although she affected a couldn’t-care-less attitude, she used that to protect herself. Not uncommon of women in her profession. He’d slid down the panties of many shapely femme fatales in dimly lit hotel rooms, whispering what they wanted to hear while their eyes darted to the cash left on the nightstand. He made them cry out in ecstasy, thrusting his cock into them, but never, never would he lay a hand upon a woman except to pleasure her.

He picked her up in his arms and her head fell against his bare chest, igniting a warm heat in him that traveled down to his groin, making him hard. Again. He pushed his own need out of his mind. That was an indulgence he could not afford.

But the smell of her stirred something in him he hadn’t experienced in so long the ache to conquer her made his blood hot. His need unrelenting. He wouldn’t admit his ego was bruised, if only slightly, when the girl in the beaded black wig had slipped away from him. Though he was certain she was of a venal nature, that didn’t deter him from wanting her.

Because she’d made him hard in the alley, rubbing her body against his bare chest? Teasing him with her nipples pointing through her black bra?

She was recalcitrant in her refusal to back down to him and that attracted him, even if his credo was that a smart man didn’t chase after women for the simple reason he had no time to bother with the hunt. He kept telling himself his main job was to obtain intelligence, not satisfy his carnal needs. He hungered for secrets in the same way other men needed sex. Besides, didn’t his training demand he clean the scene and eliminate the witness?

With the beautiful girl in his arms, he kicked open the door with his boot, then checked the hallway. Deserted. He made a quick exit down the backstairs.

Training, my ass.

He wanted to get laid.

7

Dizziness invades my head and nausea rolls through my stomach, one wave after another. I try to take a breath, but my lungs hurt. Dammit, I can’t breathe. Can’t breathe. Panic makes me grind my teeth, possessing me with a fear so intense my heart jumps in my chest. What happened?

Damn, I can’t remember. My brain is swimming in a swirl of saffron fog, clinging to me like wisps of memories lost in a swirling sea. Unfortunately, my body is also suffering from a partial paralysis from whatever drug the Russian gave me and it won’t give up its secrets. I roll my head from side to side, begging for some answers, but all I feel are achy arms, stiff neck and, yes, my butt hurts. Not from the tight fit of a dildo jammed into my back end and bruising the soft flesh, but like someone jabbed me with a needle.

Wait. Someone did jab me in my rear.

I hear a man laughing. Was it him?

In a whirlpool of memory mist and damnable recognition, everything rushes back to me—the alley, the one-eyed Jack and the Russian. Vodka breath, fat, cold fingers, body ripe with sweat. I almost got the guidance chip from him, but I can’t remember much after he sprayed mist into my ear. Chloral hydrate? I don’t know. He could have added the sedative to the vodka he offered me, but I don’t remember drinking it.

I do remember I couldn’t breathe, my brain circuits zapping and zinging out of control. Worse, I failed at my mission. As a TA special agent trained in exfiltration, I’m more than a swallow—a female operative who uses sex as a tool. I’m also an intelligence agent who specializes in getting friendly agents out of hostile territory. It was my job to find the Russian and bring him in.

Where am I now? I stretch out and my feet touch a wall, my left shoulder another wall. I sense I’m confined in a small space. A coffin? Oh, God, no. It can’t end like this. Not after everything I’ve been through, not when I’m so close to finding Sharif. I must bring him to justice. He destroyed my life and my work.

I squeeze my eyes tight, trying to will my brain to focus. Images form in my mind. The young Arab boy…his red scarf…the unforgiving desert sucking him into its bowels. I let my thoughts dwell back to that day I chased after him. I was ready. I heard the voices. I did make an important discovery—

One of the greatest antiquities of the ancient world…

Two years earlier Syria

I race toward the spot where the child disappeared, my boots kicking up dirt, my body so tense I can’t breathe, the mood of the desert so quiet my ears hum in silence. As if it waits to see what I’ll do, if I can recover the bounty it’s taken to its breast as payment for my folly.

No. I won’t let the boy suffer for what I’ve done.

I pump up my speed, but I don’t seem to be moving any faster. What’s wrong? My rational mind tells me I’m running as fast as I can, yet my body floats in a macabre dance, my legs light and airy like a two-dimensional cartoon figure stuck in slo-mo. All the while, I chide myself for allowing this to happen. I should have seen the signs sooner. On closer inspection, I make out a dark layer where there should be bedrock. When I reach the mound I can see it’s a vast, shapeless mass, covered with scattered brush and scarcely any traces of footsteps except where the winter rains formed ravines down its perpendicular sides and laid open a sinkhole on the surface of a recently irrigated field.

And somewhere down at the bottom of the hole is a small boy.

Crying.

Muff led cries, but cries. I swallow hard, my heart beating again. He’s alive.

“Missy Breezy, my brother, help him!” The older boy grabs on to my shirt, pulling and tugging at me. I wrap my arms around him to comfort him.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get him.” I point up the hill. “Run back to camp. Tell them what happened. I’ll go down into the hole and—”

I feel my boots slipping, my tall frame pushing down into the earth. Before I completely lose my balance, I shove the boy away from me. “Go, run!” I let out my breath, not taking my eyes off him until I’m certain he’s out of danger, then, holding on to nearby brush, I lean over, straining to see down the hole. “Mo Ahmed!” I call out, using my nickname for the little boy, but I see nothing. More disturbing to my frantic nerves, I hear nothing. Is he so frightened he can’t speak? Or is he—

Not daring to put that thought into my rattled brain, I lean farther over the hole, calling out his name again, heedless of my own safety, already hearing the shrieking of the boy’s mother, the men shouting orders to one another. “Mo Ah—” I don’t finish the words before the ground gives way underneath me and I plunge down the hole, landing with a thud, then rolling over onto my side, choking and sputtering on a mouthful of dirt.

I wipe the grit out of my mouth, realize my sunglasses flew off my face, but other than that I’m okay. Within seconds, the dust clears from my eyes and I spin around looking for the child. He’s nowhere in sight.

Where did he go?

“Missy Breezy!” I hear voices coming from above me. Ahmed and his wife, along with the other diggers, peer over the side of the hole. I look up, figure I must have fallen into a well shaft about fifteen, twenty feet deep. I see portions of stone steps jutting out through the dirt wall. How far down do they go?

“Your son’s okay!” I call out with assurance, hoping I’m right. I heard him crying, so he must have pulled himself up and wandered away, but where? I’m surrounded on three sides by rough-cut walls. A daring thought traverses through my brain at lightning speed. A big hole near a series of steps leading downward was an attempt by builders to stop grave robbers from getting access to the rest of the tomb. Is a tomb nearby? I look around, squinting. A pile of dirt covers the other wall, dirt that sucked me down with it. A terrifying thought comes over me. Suppose the child is buried under that dirt—

“I come down,” Ahmed calls out, and I can hear him scuffling closer to the edge of the sinkhole.

“No, it’s too dangerous!” I yell back. I don’t want him to panic when he doesn’t find the boy with me. “Get a rope. I’ll tie it around him and you can hoist him up.”

When I find him, I finish silently, wishing I had my flashlight. The sun decides to be on my side after all, casting a sobering light onto the area. I see an amphora-shaped jar, unbroken and intact, lying less than a foot from me. My brain records it, yearns to grab it and examine it, but I have one thing on my mind. Find the boy. A chill races through me when I see a small opening I missed earlier. With new hope filling me up, I bend down and call out, “Mo Ahmed, are you in there?”

“Mama!” I hear a feeble voice coming from somewhere beyond the small crawl-through space. I can’t stop the tears forming in my eyes.

“Mama zamanha gaya,” I yell, getting on my hands and knees and making my way through the small opening, careful not to disturb the soft dirt overhead. “Mama is coming!”

* * *

Half an hour later, the little boy is gulping down cool sheep’s milk with his anxious mother holding him and mumbling how thankful she is to me for saving her baby. Ahmed hugs and kisses me on both cheeks over and over, something he’d never do under ordinary circumstances, then we go to work. With the help of my team, I bring up the amphora I found and, on closer inspection, identify the two-handled jar with a narrow neck and vertical handles that arches high above the mouth as twelfth, maybe thirteenth century. I can’t contain my excitement. According to my calculations, this entire area is believed to have been used for secret burials and human sacrifice long before the Crusades. The tombs unearthed in the area all date back more than two thousand years ago. If this is a buried tomb, and the size and shape of the vault indicates it is, then an interloper from a later time must have found the shaft and used it as a shelter.

A knight from the Crusades? I question. The archaeologist in the photos found his sword and part of his shield near the site, didn’t he? I sense the dead live here, waiting for me to find them.

Digging through the feet of soil filling in the rectangular shaft, we uncover a stone stairway consisting of sixteen steps leading to a tomb chamber roughly oval in shape. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I stop, my ears attuned to that distinct sound so familiar to my soul. I hear the whispers. When I come across another unbroken pot, my heart jumps. I’m a woman with a dream, focused, committed, not deterred by academic bickering or jealous rivalry among colleagues. I’m free to follow my gut. Legend says the lost Crusader knights headed toward Palmyra, located midway between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates. I believe the knights deviated from the route and were looking for a popular oasis in this area, an essential watering place for the many camel caravans that traversed the route in the time of the Roman Empire, when they were attacked by advancing Turks or a local desert tribe.

Shining my flashlight, I channel my previous trepidation into unbelievable excitement when I see two statues of lions, winged and human-headed, forming a portal. Mouth open, eyes trying not to blink, I bend down to creep under them and make my way deeper into the moist vault. I see another winged figure, this time an eagle with a human head, and two alabaster slabs with bas-relief faded not only from time but the dripping water seeping down through the earth. I make my way in small, careful steps, arcing the beam of my flashlight on specific areas, revealing portions of the wall decor in increments so it seems the pictures keep changing, like a dazzling slide show. Figures of slaves bearing objects of tribute such as earrings, bracelets and monkeys are painted on the walls, though the once-brilliant colors have faded. Broken pottery, trash, all lie strewn about the chamber, along with lachrymatories, tear-bottles, so named because they hold the tears of the people burying the dead. I unearth an arm here, a finger there, broken skulls. Not unusual because grave robbers dismembered the bodies to yank the trinkets from the dead. I see distinct tracings where the bodies were buried in wooden coffins, long decayed but lined with bitumen and a whitish material that gives off an eerie glow.

But no treasure lies hidden here. None.

Voices of a different nature play over and over in my head, their rich timbre giving me a headache, ominous voices commanding attention, telling me I’m a fool. Robbers long ago ravished whatever artifacts were buried here, but it could have been a royal tomb. The elaborate wall drawings and statuary decorating the antechamber attest to my theory. I have to admit to a major disappointment taking up residence in my mental adobe, but that doesn’t stop me from continuing my search.

Determined to validate the objects I’ve unearthed, my crew and I set to work, and within a few days, I’ve recovered several broken amphoras and gathered up the pieces of human bones scattered around the floor of the chamber and in a pile against a wall. I’ve found no jewelry fashioned of silver, gold or lapis lazuli, though I do recover a lump of iron, possibly from a meteorite, as well as ceramic vessels, some containing animal bones that may have been part of funerary animal offerings. Still, it’s a fascinating discovery, though disappointing not to have found any intact human remains or evidence the knights stopped here on their journey homeward. No doubt the tomb was plundered long before I tumbled down the sinkhole.

Yet still I hear the voices.

I’m a stubborn woman to the point of obsession when it comes to my work, treating every excavation like a crime scene, making certain my crew wears white hospital masks to keep the dust out of their lungs, plastic gloves to examine the pieces, and I never give up. Never. I go over every inch of that vault, the beam of my flashlight painting white streaks of sheer light from end to end, like a painter illuminating a celestial canvas, and somehow I miss it: a faint square about three feet in size outlined on the wall painting and nearly invisible to the naked eye. I would never have found it if I hadn’t been curious about the stones embedded in the faded mosaic of a beautiful woman in a swirling chemise, her hand outstretched and beckoning, as if calling out to me.

“Ahmed!” I call out. “Come quickly!” My team leader leaves his work gathering up pottery and hurries over to where I shine the flashlight on the wall. “What do you think of her?”

He nods. “Beautiful lady. Like you, Missy Breezy.”

I smile at his compliment, then point to the faint square outlined with my flashlight. “Look closer. Do you think that could be a door?”

He flicks on his flashlight and the double beams focusing on the spot confirm what I believe. “Yes. Another room?”

“Let’s find out.”

He calls for two men to help us, and, using a crowbar, we pry open the small door. It moves easily, which surprises me, as if it’s on a track. I train my flashlight beam through the wide fissure, Ahmed and his two workers peering over my shoulder and chatting with excitement. We all gasp at the same moment. The sight of a small side chamber or annex beyond makes me weak at my knees; the sight of two human skeletons lying side by side on the floor makes me lean closer, hoping to hear the whispers. Soft at first, then louder, the sounds lift me until I’m virtually beside myself with anticipation.

“This may be what I’m looking for, Ahmed,” I say in a soft voice so as not to disturb the dead. “Follow me.”

“I go anywhere with you, Missy Breezy,” he says with-out hesitation, then he adds with a catch in his voice, “You save my son.”

I nod, smiling, then with Ahmed behind me, I crawl through the opening to the other side. I shine my flashlight on remnants of clothing, chain mail from armor and a helmet that completely covers the face with a faded heraldry inscribed on it that I can’t identify. Thirteenth-century Crusaders wore such helmets, I tell Ahmed. At the same time, a story I read when I was a teen races through my mind, bringing up the same excitement I knew when I’d sneak off to read stories of history and lore, mummies and queens. My sister, Peyton, would hide my books, then dare me to tag along with her and her friends. I couldn’t. She never understood I felt different from other girls and I wasn’t interested in gossip and shopping. I wanted to travel to exotic places and break bread with the past to taste it, to embrace it and to understand it.

Now I’ve found my dream.

I hear Ahmed draw in his breath. “May Allah be praised, we’ve found a secret room.”

“We’re not the first to discover it. Look.” I shine my light on the smaller skull, most likely female, covered with dirt and deteriorating cloth fragments. She wears a necklace with fine, round, dark gray objects. With black dust billowing up around me every time I move a piece of the female skeleton, I tap on the round objects, one at a time, their tinny sound echoing in the chamber like footsteps marching back through the centuries. “Hand me a brush, Ahmed. These pieces might be silver.”

Not taking his eyes off the skeleton, he draws a paintbrush from his pocket and hands it to me. I kneel down beside the female skeleton and, with a gentle touch as if I were opening a book with thin, delicate pages, I begin dusting the dirt away. Little by little, I see glints of color.

“It’s gold, Ahmed.” I hold in my hand a gold necklace and a gold headband with thin layers of gold covering her features in the shape of a grape leaf. “That doesn’t make sense,” I ponder out loud. “If the grave robbers took everything of value, then why didn’t they take the gold jewelry off this woman? Unless—”

She took refuge in here years, centuries afterward, I finish in silence. Who was she? What were her last thoughts before death claimed her? A tightness grips my chest and the weight of my responsibility to preserve this woman’s final moments becomes real to me. I’m determined to tell her story.

“Over here, Missy Breezy!”

“Have you found something, Ahmed?”

He speaks as if he’s reciting a prayer. “Yes.”

I spin around to see him moving his flashlight jerkily over a moon-faced object lying on a small slab. It looks like a mask, the glimmer of azure then deep red then green flickering ever so brief ly in the demanding glare of his light, as if unwilling to wake up from their somnolent centuries-long sleep.

What can it be? I flip through the files in my mental catalog, bringing up what I can remember about lost Byzantine artifacts, many known to archaeologists because they’re mentioned in ancient texts or painted on tapestries and mosaics. I remember being enchanted by the story of a gold mask that belonged to an empress, a gift from her husband that was stolen from her tomb during the Crusades.

Do I dare dream this mask can lead me back centuries to the time of the cradle of civilization and give me the opportunity to pad out the bones of a beautiful courtesan who became an empress? And to recover a treasure taken from the famed city of Constantinople and lost for a thousand years?

“Hold my flashlight,” I say, handing it to him. “And keep it pointed on the mask while I remove the dirt.”

Using the paintbrush, I wipe away the layers of centuries with a reverence I’ve never felt before settling into my bones. I revel in the even flow of my movements, experiencing an emotional high, and though I’m involved in a physical act, I have no feeling in my fingers, as if they’re moving without effort. The tremendous power of my belief presses me to continue, enlightening me, until I become one with the object, my own self vanishing into the depth of the mask’s rich history. Even before the first golden sparkle warms the cold, damp vault with its shine, I know what it is.

A gold mask crafted in the likeness of this powerful woman and set with pearls, rubies, sapphires and emeralds mounted in gold, which hung in festoons from her temples to her breasts. A treasure worth untold millions.

The Mask of Darkma.

8

Present day

I start to shiver and light perspiration dribbles over my lips. Whatever the Russian drugged me with, I can’t shake it. It’s pulling me back and forth in a replay of events that haunt me. I’ve no doubt finding the Mask of Darkma was the beginning of my ascent into hell, a spiraling of events I couldn’t control, but that doesn’t lessen the fear I have of my present predicament. Where am I?

I detect a steady shaking under my body, and is that an AC vent blowing cool air in my face? I touch my hair, damp and sticking to my cheeks. My beaded black wig is gone. A sharp pain bounces from my head to my shoulders down to my pubic area. Without hesitation, my hand shoots down to my crotch to soothe the nagging ache in my groin. I hesitate when my long nails catch on a smooth fabric covering my legs, my hips. I tug on it. What’s this? I’m wearing wide jersey pants? And a T-shirt? I assume the clothes are courtesy of whoever brought me here. I’m tempted to bend my knees, kick my feet in frustration, but a more pressing need to know where I am and what happened gnaws at me. I shift my weight on the hard bunk beneath my butt as the wall—

Vibrates? Before I can drag open my eyes to survey my surroundings, my ears pop and a loud whoosh shakes me.

I don’t move. Take slow, deep breaths. Focus.

I know where I am, but I can’t believe it.

I’m on a train.

I always feel the pressure in my ears when another train passes the opposite way at a high speed. We must be traveling more than a hundred and fifty, sixty miles an hour. Train à Grande Vitesse, a high-speed train. I didn’t realize it before because I don’t hear the usual clickety-clack as the train wheels go over the tracks. The TGV rails are longer and fit close together between the joints.

So I’m on a train, the prospect of which intrigues me.

But where am I going? And who is the man laughing?

What the hell happened to me?

“He’s dead,” I hear him say. Who’s dead? He must be speaking into a cell phone, or so I assume. He can’t be talking to me.

“No, I got there too late,” he continues, hesitating, then: “Yes, he was alone.”

Deep baritone, slight accent. Sexy. Listening to him speak, it’s as if I’m hearing an echo, spreading out in waves to various parts of my body and making me shiver. Who is he?

I open my eyes only far enough so I can see him. A soft butter glow from an overhead light illuminates his broad shoulders emphasized by a white T-shirt. His back is to me, his black-crow haircut coming to a point in a sharp V at the base of his neck. And do I see a gun stuffed into the waistband of his jeans? He’s standing and looking out the train window. I can see his face in the ref lection in the window, though not clear enough to make a positive ID. The glass glimmers an unholy blackness, as if this denizen of the night has cloaked the train in darkness to hide his nefarious plans. Do those plans include me?

I hear him take a breath.

“MI6 agents were waiting for him at the hotel.” Pause. “How the hell do I know? Didn’t you say he had connections to an insurgent group based in London?” He clears his throat. “His neck was broken—”

I flinch. Now I recognize that voice and that face.

The one-eyed Jack.

Edgy, I lift my head up to get a better look at him. Tall, masculine stance with his legs spread wide apart, his gelled black hair seems to vibrate and spark, as if electricity instead of blood runs through his veins. I tingle when I see a black band stretching in a diagonal across the back of his head. An eye patch. It’s him, all right.

I dig my fingers into the thin red-and-white-plaid blanket underneath me. His words disturb me. He killed the Russian and he’s spoofing his boss and putting the blame on the British secret service.

Liar.

Why is he doing that? And where does this stud get off ruining my operation? He makes me angry in a way that has nothing to do with surveillance or intelligence. I should smother him with my nude breasts over his face. Why not? It only takes four minutes for a mark to suffocate, though more than one subject has died with a smile on his face and a hard-on in his pants when I take him down. I’ll make this one-eyed Jack wish he never met up with me.

“—no money on him,” he says. “They picked him clean.”

I claw my nails over the thin blanket, ripping it. Like hell they did. I left ten thousand dollars stacked on the table in that hotel room. Now I get it. He stole my money. Okay, so the dead presidents belong to the Bureau, but it’ll come out of my salary if I don’t get it back. The government doesn’t cut me any slack when it comes to the disbursement of payout cash. TA special agents have a rep for dipping their long nails into the money pot for “extra” expenses. Not me. I’m not in this business for money. And I don’t like killing. I only kill professionals and only then when my butt is on the line.

“Yes, I understand, a car will be waiting for me. Where?” Pause. “Got it. Ciao.”

Ciao? He spoke to me in German, now this Italian BS. Who’s he talking to? Why didn’t he kill me? As if I don’t know. Pussy galore is the motto for this thief in tight jeans. I smile. From this angle, the man’s got an ass packed tighter than a bag of cement. Sweet.

I turn my head and reach for my choker. My microphone. It’s gone. My rings, bracelets, all gone. Where’s my backup, anyway? Screwing in the van, I bet, when they should be helping me. If they’re dipping their dicks into a Swiss miss, how are they going to find me? I can’t put up a signal. As if I’m going to leave a chalk mark on a telephone pole when I’m streaking through the countryside at high speed.

I close my eyes. My hands shake and my stomach is in revolt, the taste of bile spurting up my throat and leaving a foul taste in my mouth. I’ve got to concentrate on coming up with a plan. I have no idea where I’m going, who this jerk with the black eye patch is or how I’m going to explain to Rork the Russian is dead.

I do know the one-eyed Jack is armed. And dangerous. And yes, I could kill him now. Fast, easy. Sure, he’s handsome and built like a superman, but I feel nothing for him. I must adhere to my code of owing no allegiance to anything but getting the job done. I refuse to back down, yet I need to vet my chances of success in view of my less-than-perfect situation. Lying horizontal on a hard bunk, faintly aware of a nagging headache dulling my brain as well as my sluggish motor skills, I consider for a moment whether I’m making a mistake. For a reason known only to him, the one-eyed Jack saved my life.

A sensual heat wiggles through me, down to my toes, warming my body in a tiny orgasm for the briefest of moments. I can’t help but bask in that feeling, though I can’t forget or ignore the fact that sexual attraction played a part in his decision to keep me alive. Does he want to make love to me? The reason a male is drawn to a woman is different in every man. No one physical attribute, mental awakening, scent or touch is common to all experiences, for each woman is unique. Though the one-eyed Jack may find my dominatrix persona a challenge to his alpha-male personality, I have reason to believe he’ll kill me after he takes me to his bed.

Should I surrender my womanly anxiety and wait to see what happens? Let go of my controlling thoughts and be aware of a different emotion revving up my power? Desire for sexual stimulation. I’ve been too long without the extreme pleasure a man’s touch can give me, whether he’s caressing the back of my neck or arousing me with a probing finger. I yearn to bathe in the essence of his touch, my sexual energy revitalized in the smell and taste of him, our bodies pressed against each other, his hands playing with my breasts.

I make my decision. The one-eyed Jack is key to my plan. I can’t wait for him to make his move. It’s imperative I find out why he killed the Russian.

With a smile, I run my gaze up and down his body, assessing his strength. His caramel-tanned skin has a satin sheen emphasizing his bulging arms. Strong. I can handle him. I’m not only trained in the art of seduction but also the martial arts. I’ll take him down and then I’ll see if he’s man enough to endure what I have planned for him.

And I know exactly how to do it.

Keeping so still hardly a puff of air escapes my lips, I open my eyes and survey the sleeper compartment, my gaze darting from corner to corner in the small single-berth room. I see a washbasin, brown Formica paneling and luggage racks attached to the walls. His backpack is confined in the metal luggage frame overhead. I twist my head from side to side, noting a door behind me with the latch locked. Good. No one will disturb us.

Squinting through the drips of perspiration streaking down my face, I reach down to my waist and my fingers wrap around my hemp rope. I don’t have more than a few seconds to overcome him, then restrict his movements with my two-meter-long rope. It won’t be easy. He’s a big guy.

I pull up my ki, my energy. Spiritual, mental and physical all work together to give me the accuracy I need to strike. Where? The back of his neck at the base of his skull is good, or the side of his neck at the carotid artery. Or each of his collarbones.

Hurry up. Pick a spot. If I have to strike twice, I may not get the chance.

I’ll already be dead.

He clips his cell phone to his belt and, with his back still to me, he reaches up to the luggage rack to open his backpack.

Now’s my chance.

I pull myself up to my knees on the hard bunk, then stand up so slowly I’m in slo-mo. Assuming a fighting stance in my thigh-high boots, I turn my left side forward, bending my knees so I can move quickly and easily, keeping my head and shoulders back to maintain my center of gravity. I flatten out my hand, keeping my thumb against it, my wrist straight as I raise up my hand toward my left ear and—

Before I make my move, the train whistle blows as another TGV passes us. Whooosh! The train jolts sharply, catching us both off guard, though lucky for me he braces himself against the luggage rack to keep the backpack from slamming to the floor. At the same time, gravity shifts under me and I nearly lose my balance.

Quick, strike.

Before he turns around, I bring my hand down at a forty-five-degree angle, clubbing him against the back of his neck with the edge of my hand. Perfect. He grunts loudly before he drops to the floor, unconscious.

I jump off the bunk and grab his gun, his cell phone, and stuff them into my waistband. Bending down, I check the pulse on the side of his neck. Strong, steady beat. He’s alive. I grin. Seeing him helpless and at my mercy ignites a delicious desire in me that tempts me to reach into my sexual arsenal, a longing to take this relationship to the next level. I turn him over and take a long, hard look at the bulge between his legs, aching to get my finger on his trigger. My eyes widen. Even unconscious, he carries a big stick. My question is, does he know how to use it?

I trace my finger over the dark stubble running down his cheek. Prickly hairs sting the pads of my fingers, but I don’t stop. I want to memorize the sculpted planes of his face. His sweat anoints my fingers and dribbles of perspiration edge along his black eye patch, tempting me to peek under it. I don’t. Not now. I want to see the surprise in his other eye when I do.

A sexual longing races down to my groin, making me hot. He’s mine to do with as I please. I run my fingers over his chest, my black nails ripping his T-shirt. He’s sweating, his wet shirt clinging to his broad chest; even the spiked black hair on the top of his head droops. I inhale his now-familiar scent. Only one way to cool him off.

Strip him naked.

9

I like to play sex games with the mark. It turns me on, the anticipation growing until I can hardly bear it and he’s pushed to the limit of his endurance. Sensory deprivation is the game I enjoy the most since it involves challenging my favorite sexual taboo: bondage. The shrink at TA headquarters says it’s because I have a distrust of men and I want to be in control. I’m not denying that. Before I became a TA agent, I had limited experience with sex, having spent much of my adult life studying and working for my degree. Yet I hungered for a man’s touch. I didn’t see why the male species didn’t understand women like sex, need sex, and we can give as well as receive.

On the other hand, I have to take some of the blame for my failure to maintain a lasting relationship. For years, I kept my emotions pent-up inside me, preferring instead to fan-tasize about my sexual desires rather than acting upon them. I was a loner in school and uncomfortable with boys’ comments about my body. How many times did I wish I had a boyfriend holding me in his arms, his hands sliding down my jeans, hearing him moan when he realized I wasn’t wearing panties, his fingers demanding entry into me? No one knew I fantasized about being a Frankish captive in a harim, the Arabic word meaning forbidden. A harem.

To feed my fantasy, I ravished book after book about the walled seraglio of the Caliphate, wildly romantic stories like the tale of a Persian entrepreneur who bought captives from the slave traders coming down from the Turkish border, how he trained the girls in the arts, clothed them in diaphanous, amber-scented gowns and lined their eyes with black kohl, sparkling with powdered pearls. Then he sold the most beautiful, the most talented girls to the Caliph for more than the equivalent of two prized racehorses.

No wonder I enhanced the fantasy when I found the Mask of Darkma and formed my own theory about what happened in the ancient vault. They say the past and the present are intermingled in the thoughts of those who write history. I could think of nothing but the past and what happened to the fleeing lovers. Their fear, confusion, relief, then acceptance of their fate.

The Turks are attacking, my lord.

Quick, woman, we must hide.

Down there, my liege, in the open vault.

You’re not frightened?

Not as long as I’m with you.

I found comfort in their whispers, knowing I’d unearthed not only the physical evidence of the existence of this brave knight and the woman he bedded, but the spiritual fulfillment of their quest.

I can still remember the thrill I felt racing through me when I held the mask in my hands. Crouching down on my hands and knees in a pile of dirt, I closed my eyes and I could hear the clanging swords echoing in my ears, men shouting battle cries, horses neighing, the Turks striking along the knights’ flanks, separating them from their foot soldiers, then knocking them off their horses covered in bright silk trappings and attacking them in their heavy mail armor.

And nearby the women watched and waited, their wails desperate, their hearts breaking, their tears flowing.

All save one.

A beautiful woman on horseback raced up behind her knight, screaming when she saw the horse and rider go down in a splay of sand, his saddle emptied. Who was she? Most likely, a consort. Spaniards took their women on campaigns, as did the French; even the sultan bade women from his harem ride with him. But this woman was different. She showed courage, focus and commitment. In the middle of the flaying, hacking and stabbing, she tended to her knight’s wound, then she grabbed his sword and on and on she fought beside her lover like a creature possessed, remembering the eve before battle, how her body had a will of its own when she removed her chemise in his tent and let it drop to the ground, both excited and at the same time eager to lie with her lord, how she cried out when he pressed into her soft flesh. I’ll never leave you, she swore, even when he insisted she mount his horse and save herself. She refused and together they escaped through the Roman ruins before taking refuge together in a vault left open by grave robbers when—

Off in the distance a great cloud rose over the horizon, dark and tumultuous, no warning, only the sticky humidity and whooshing sound of the tempest winds. No longer did the sun spark like lightning from the Crusaders’ armor and weapons. The clash of steel on steel dimmed as the sand spun and vibrated over them with whirling energy, burying them in a dark, lonely grave.

I envisioned the lovers embracing, their nude flesh touching, warming, comforting. At the same time, I wrestled with my need to tell the truth without my inhibitions threatening to hold me back. Whether I was uncovering the faded mosaic of a man and woman fornicating on a wall in Pompeii or polishing an ancient dildo with long, slow strokes, I believed it was my job to reconstruct history from the surviving bits and pieces of women’s daily lives and loves.

Including sex.

I nurtured my need each time I unearthed an artifact, like the small terra-cotta figurine with nude pointy breasts I found in a tomb, or held in my hand the bones of a slave girl I unearthed in a crypt in Jordan, her skeleton wearing golden wrist and ankle bracelets. Were her wrists fettered together with gold bracelets when she dropped to her knees and lifted her buttocks to give her master access to her? Did she cry out when he probed her, exploring her intimately with an intensity she knew would culminate in thrusting his cock into her? I visualized her grinding her hips, breathing in the cloying sweet scent of the harem, meeting him stroke for stroke, as he took her from behind, crying out as he drilled deeper and deeper into her.

Imagining the reality of these pleasures haunting my lubricious dreams helped me build on my dark desires. I became impassioned with the need to explore this sexual side of myself, wondering how I’d react when the man I desired tied my wrists together, then inserted his fingers into me, sliding them deep, deep inside me until he captured my hard bud, brushing it back and forth with loving caresses, my muscles instinctively tightening around his fingers, giving us both pleasure.

I attempted to explore that side of my personality with the man in my life before I left for Syria, but he balked. He didn’t have sufficient imagination to deduce the tempting possibilities a piece of rope could have on a girl; he was a math professor with a head full of equations that included me in one position. Under him.

He broke off our relationship, insisting he didn’t want to worry about me traveling in a danger zone. I tried to tell him the only danger I faced was crossing the winding streets in Damascus with the horn-happy drivers yelling and screaming at anyone in their way. He couldn’t accept that and wished me happy digging. He promised to write and he did for a while, but I never heard from him after I logged on to the Internet in a dorm in Harna and checked my e-mail. That was more than two years ago. I wanted to blame it on the Syrian government firewalls screwing up my e-mail, but I couldn’t. I had to face the inevitable. Unless I could find a man who shared my passion for wild, raw, stimulating sex, I’d end up alone. That disturbed me. I like getting down on my knees, and I don’t just mean digging in the dirt. Months of bouncing up and down on the hard seat of a four-wheel-drive Jeep for stimulation wasn’t the most satisfying way to have an orgasm. I didn’t have much choice, considering not much else revved up my libido since I embarked on my scholarly quest. Most penises I held in my hand were shriveled up, mummified genitals, like the penis of King Tut, the famous Boy King.

All that changed when I met Sharif.

Strip down. Rub henna on your hands and feet. Tie the gold ribbon around your waist.

Me? I proclaim, my voice catching in my throat, arching my eyebrows, playing my part so well I surprise myself. I’m a scientist, not a slave girl.

You want me to take you. I see it in your eyes.

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