“You’ll figure out a way to close the gap. You always do.” She reached over and patted his hand.
Chris closed his eyes as she drove, but he couldn’t rest. And he couldn’t shake the dark cloud of discouragement that hovered over him.
It was late when they arrived back at the Agency in Langley. They unloaded their gear, bagged and tagged it so it could be loaded on the plane with the rest of their kit for a military flight out ahead of them. Chris and the others would be flying under civilian cover, so if his weapons, explosives, comms, and other black gear were sent to the wrong place, he wouldn’t find out until they arrived in their area of operations.
Once the task was completed, Hannah drove them to their hotel in nearby Hampton. The pair entered the hotel and took the elevator to the fifth floor, where both their rooms were.
They stopped in the hall outside Chris’s room. He didn’t want to go in alone, but he wanted to do the right thing and say good night. He searched his mind for some middle ground but found none. While he thought about what to say, the silence grew more and more awkward.
“Thank you,” he finally said. “For today.” He tried to think of something else. “And for this mission.” He was sincere about his gratitude for her, but he wasn’t sure about the mission, especially after his performance on the firing range. Despite his concern, there was no turning back now.
7
In the evening, in the port city of Latakia, Syria, a middle-aged Chinese intelligence officer named Bo Geng strolled behind a twenty-something curvaceous prostitute called Farah. She led him into a cheap, dilapidated hotel. Although prostitution was officially illegal in Syria, the police turned a blind eye. Most of the women, like Farah, were from Iraq, refugees unable to work legally in Syria, so they turned to hustling. Others were pressured by family members in Iraq to become call girls in Syria. Their customers came from all over the Middle East, where moral codes were much stricter. Bo had paid the equivalent of four hundred dollars for an evening with her.
Before stepping inside the hotel, he looked for any signs of police or his own intelligence agency. He’d been filing false reports for more money and time to spend on Farah, and he was in no hurry to return to China. And he was certainly in no hurry to spend time in a Syrian jail.
Bo flipped the light switch, and cockroaches scurried across the dingy floor. The light was dim, but he could see well enough. He locked the door behind them.
Most of the wallpaper in the room was missing, revealing a concrete wall that crumbled in patches. Large chips of the vinyl floor were gone, and long cracks formed a giant spider web. The bed frame was rusted, but the tattered sheets appeared clean.
His eyes ravaged Farah from her scuffed knee-high boots to her frayed hip-hugging jeans to her tight, faded teal-colored T-shirt. She liked to suck in her gut, but it wasn’t enough of a gut to deter him. Even though her skin had a dirty complexion, he liked the darkness of it. He embraced her, but she pulled away and motioned for him to wait. Farah’s hands explored the outside of his trousers, stopping at his back left pocket, where he had a pair of handcuffs he’d used with her the night before.
“So you want that again?” he asked in Arabic. His hands quivered with anticipation as he pulled out the handcuffs. The danger of being caught by Syrian authorities or Chinese intelligence increased his excitement.
Farah smiled. From her worn handbag, she pulled out her own pair of handcuffs, raising the ante. Much of the black paint had rubbed off the metal, clearly used before, but they were new to him. If the police or his superiors busted through the door, he’d be hard-pressed to explain away what was happening. He was a fast runner, though.
Bo felt a rise in his trousers. “What do you have in mind?”
She sat on the bed and handcuffed one of her hands to a bent metal pole decorating the headboard. She giggled, and he quickly approached her to put his handcuffs on her free hand.
She motioned for him to stop.
Is she teasing me? “What’s wrong?”
“Handcuff yourself to the bed,” she said.
“You are a creative woman,” he said. If I handcuff myself to the bed, there’ll be no running away. But the police and my chief have no reason to come here. I ran a surveillance detection route before coming here. No one knows I’m here. And I can handle Farah. He handcuffed his hand to the bed.
Farah lay down on top of him, burying his face with her bosom, tantalizing him. She pressed herself hard against him until he couldn’t breathe. He thought he might suffocate, but Farah backed away, and he inhaled. Then she pummeled his face with her chest again. This time, with his free hand, he tried to pull up her shirt, but she moved away, escaping his grasp and allowing him to catch his breath. She unbuttoned and unzipped his trousers. Then Farah sandwiched Bo between her and the bed, but this time he could breathe and enjoy.
Click. Bo’s other wrist was cuffed to the bed, and Farah’s hands were free. She smiled and pulled off his trousers. He was so aroused that his emperor was ready to enter the palace.
“Now I want you to beg,” she said.
“I’m not going to beg,” he said pompously, tugging at his cuffs.
“No, you must beg.”
“I’m not begging.”
“I can see you need some time to think.” She giggled.
“Okay, okay, I’ll beg.”
“You better hurry.” Farah walked into the bathroom and closed the door.
“Please. I’m begging.”
“You don’t sound very sincere,” she said. “I’ll just freshen up while you become sincere.”
“Please. I beg you.” He waited, but there was no reply. He heard the shower running. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I want you more than life itself. I’ll do anything for you.”
“That’s more like it,” her voice called. The bathroom door opened.
Bo grinned. Then a stranger appeared in the doorway. Bo’s grin dissolved.
In the doorway stood a man with longish, black curly hair and a handsome face — he looked like a movie star. In his hand, he carried a brown leather satchel. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” the man said.
The man gave her a fistful of money, and she put it in her jeans pocket, avoiding Bo’s gaze. She brushed past the stranger, grabbed her handbag, unlocked the door, and ran out of the hotel room.
Once she was gone, the man locked the door again.
“Who are you?” Bo asked.
“That is not important now.” Condescension filled the man’s voice. “What is important is who you are.”
“I am a businessman with China National Petroleum Corporation.”
“Yes, Mr. Bo Geng. That is your cover story. I want you to tell me who you really work for.”
Bo’s heart rate sped up, and he started to sweat. “What are you talking about?”
“You are from the Ministry of State Security of the People’s Republic of China, no?”
Bo didn’t like how the stranger talked down to him, and he felt that the stranger was talking down to China. “Who are you?” he spat.