Drawing a deep breath, she pulled back, because if she didn’t….. “God, I need a shower—no, a hot bath,” she said with a laugh, looking away from Bruce and smiling at McCarty and the others. “With a glass of wine. And something to eat.”
And then, bed. Alone.
Unfortunately.
“Marina Alexander?”
An unfamiliar voice dragged her attention from the rescue team and she turned to see two men standing near the mouth of the cave.
They weren’t rescue workers, or EMTs, or even journalists. The pair looked cold and out of place in their dark suits and thin leather shoes, standing close to a heater running on a generator, and holding matching BlackBerrys.
“They’ve been here for hours,” Bruce murmured. “Wouldn’t tell us who they were or what they wanted. Just waited for you. Darin said they looked like Men In Black.”
“No sunglasses.” Feeling curiosity, apprehension, and some kind of dread, she kept her expression cool as she turned toward them.
One of the men looked about sixty. He wore glasses and his top-thinning hair brushed neatly over his scalp. Even from a distance, she noticed the sharpness in his eyes, and the air of authority emanating from him. He was handsome for his age, but his belly puckered out beneath the open buttons of his suit coat, giving him a gentle pear shape.
He was above average height, but his shoulders slumped in toward his chest, making him appear less imposing than the average man of over six feet. Shorter, and slighter than the tall, sturdy man next to him, he gave her the impression of an easy-going, fatherly persona. Except for those penetrating eyes.
The other man, younger by perhaps half his age, and closer to Marina’s own thirty-two, had short-cropped dark hair going prematurely grey. His body was tall and rangy, like a soccer player. His good-looking face was just as serious as his colleague’s, but unrelieved by even the slightest hint of good humor. In fact, he looked outright annoyed.
Flipping open her chin strap, Marina sighed with relief as her jaw released. It was like taking out a tight ponytail, or removing a well-anchored hairpin: you didn’t notice how painful it was until you removed it.
“Tammy,” she called over her shoulder as she walked toward the two men, who’d simultaneously shoved their cell phones into matching belt-cases. “I’ll need you and Ken to manage the de-rigging—tomorrow, when the water has subsided all the way; I’m sure we’ve lost some of the equipment, but a good portion of it should still be at the top of the winze.”
Satisfied that everything was as under control as possible —McCarty had Strand on the way to the hospital and Bruce was debriefing with the rest of the rescue team—Marina turned to her uninvited guests. “I’m Marina Alexander.”
“We gathered that.” The younger man spoke dryly, and she noticed that the bottom half of his trousers were soaked. Probably from standing too close to the mine entrance during the pounding rain.
He gave her what was probably supposed to be a disarming smile, but it had an edge to it that told her his patience was about at its limit.
So was hers. After all, she was the one who was bruised, sweaty, dirty, and physically and emotionally exhausted. She was the one who’d been crawling through a cave for ten hours.
She was the one who’d almost died.
“Gabe MacNeil and Colin Bergstrom,” the older man said, gesturing to himself as Bergstrom. “CIA.”
The other guy, MacNeil, flipped open a battered leather case to show the glint of a badge. She looked down at it, her helmet tipping awkwardly because she’d released the chin strap.
CIA. An officer in the Directorate of Operations, whatever that was.
Dad?
Absurd for that to be her first thought.
Talk about out of the blue. A non sequitir. And a place she didn’t want to go even if it was the topic of conversation.
It couldn’t be about Dad. Why would it?
The Lam Pao Archive, then. She relaxed a bit. That, she could handle.
Whatever it was, she wasn’t in any mood to be hassled. “Am I under arrest?” That, at least, was pertinent to the situation.
“No, Dr. Alexander, you aren’t—“
“Good.” Suddenly, her limbs felt like lead. She needed food and a shower. In whatever order they came. “Then it can wait until I’ve cleaned up. I’m out of here.”
“Shouldn’t you get checked out first?” Bergstrom asked.
She felt the crusted mud crack above her eyebrows. “At the hospital? I’m fine. Nothing wrong with me a hot shower and a glass of cabernet won’t cure. You’re welcome to follow me back to State College to find a hotel, but I’m not going anywhere else until I clean up. I’ll drive my own car. Wouldn’t want to get your government-issued vehicles all dusty with bat dung.”
Bergstrom laughed like a dog barked. At least one of them had a sense of humor.
He’d probably been playing Minesweeper on his BlackBerry while MacNeil worked. Then she remembered his eyes, behind those thick glasses. No, probably not. He was the kind of guy who only looked harmless. “We appreciate that, since we spend an awful lot of time in them. Blood’s not a problem, but we really like to stay away from bat-dung. We’ll follow you back to your hotel, then.”
“You want to tell me what this is about before we get there? I thought it only happened in movies where the spooks played their hand close to the vest, with cryptic comments and vague explanations.” She was too tired to spar for much longer, but damned if she was going to let them noodle around without at least a token fight.
Gabe MacNeil was obviously resigned to playing bad spook to Bergstrom’s good spook, because his reply was short and snapping: “The Skaladeskas.”
The Skaladeskas?
Damn. This was about Dad.
Marina’s hot shower would have been heavenly if Bergstrom and MacNeil hadn’t been hovering just outside the bathroom door. Talk about intense.
“Could you order up some food for me? And a glass of red wine?” she called loudly. There weren’t too many hotels in State College that offered the amenities of room service, but the CIA had managed to find one.
And since Marina had gone directly from the airport to the mine over twelve hours ago, she hadn’t given lodging any thought at all; she’d figured she’d crash wherever Bruce was staying.
Which was why she was showering in Colin Bergstrom’s hotel room.
She heard the door open and she peeked around the opaque, heavy-duty standard hotel shower curtain to see the CIA team peering into the room. “What? You’re going to interview me while I’m showering? Can’t you give me five minutes?”
“It’s a matter of efficiency,” MacNeil replied, but she saw the glint of humor in his eyes. Despite his initial annoyance, he was beginning to enjoy this. She had half a mind to invite him to join her—for efficiency’s sake. From the looks of the way his suit fit, and the breadth of his shoulders, it wouldn’t be a hardship at all.
“If we’d been able to talk to you six hours ago, we would have. We haven’t a lot of time for delays,” Bergstrom told her. Despite words that could have been harsh or accusing, he exuded a friendly, almost chagrined attitude—as if he reluctantly respected her making her point, like a parent who had lost a logical argument with a very young child.
“The short-term discomfort of you two gentlemen was nothing compared to the condition of the man at the bottom of a winze, and I was the one who devised the rescue plan. So I had to be there to execute it. I’ll be out in five.” Marina ducked back into her shower.
There was something about Bergstrom that she connected with, and she realized he was a man she would like. Respect. Unlike her father.
And she didn’t give a rip if they wanted to stand outside her door as long as she could stay under that hot pulsing water as long as she wanted to. And they had food waiting when she got out.
“Execute, and also risk your own life in an against-the- odds situation? Above and beyond the call of duty, Dr. Alexander. I am exceedingly impressed and deeply touched by your commitment.” Bergstrom’s voice carried through the cracked door, over the hum of the shower.
“It’s not in my nature to walk away from someone who needs my help.”
“I’m sure your accommodating nature would include assisting the CIA.” MacNeil’s deep voice filled the room. She noticed he had the flavor of the south in his tones; an anomaly in an otherwise sharp, solid persona. “I hope you like your steak medium rare.”
“That’ll do,” she replied, letting the water pound on the back of her shoulders. “And, to answer your question, it might. Depends what the CIA wants. I’m scheduled to fly to Myanmar on Saturday evening—that’s tomorrow!” It was indeed Friday morning. “How did you get them to make steak first thing in the morning?” she asked suspiciously, pitching her voice over the noise of the rushing water.
“It was on the breakfast menu. Steak and eggs. But the wine was a bit of a problem.”
“When was the last time you spoke with your father?” That was Bergstrom.
The change of topic might have been meant to disarm her, but Marina didn’t care. This whole situation was bizarre.
“I have a feeling you already know the answer to that,” she replied carefully, smoothly, soaping her hair. It would take at least two wash-rinse-repeats to get all the sweat and dirt caked up there, even though she’d worn her helmet, and by now she was resigned to the fact that they weren’t going to allow her to shower in peace. “But I’ll tell you anyway—about three weeks ago, I spoke with my father by phone. It was Father’s Day.” And she’d made her dutiful call to wish him felicitations, speaking with him for all of three minutes, twenty seconds. She knew because the time flashed on her cell phone for fifteen seconds after the call ended.
“And you haven’t had contact with him since?” That was MacNeil again. His voice was a bit louder now, and when she looked up over the shower curtain, she saw that the door had opened a bit more.