The Protector (4 page)

“I don’t have a ticket for first class.” I whispered hoping only he would be able to hear me.

“I know. I took care of that.  Just follow and sit next to me.”  He continued to lead me to the stairs that led to the first class part of the plane.  An attendant smiled at us as we climbed the stairs. I could do nothing more than follow him. It wasn’t as if I had much of a choice.

I had been in first class on domestic flights, but never on an international flight. The seats were huge compared to what I was used to.  “How did you get me into first class?” 

“Pulled some strings, now buckle up. They are waiting for us to settle so they can pull away from the gate and the sooner that happens, the better.” Again, I did as I was told and took the seat closest to the window. “Under no circumstances are you to get up once we hit Heathrow unless I am with you.”  His voice was full of authority.

“Are you kidnapping me?”  I
halfheartedly
chuckled as the words slipped off my tongue. If I was going to be kidnapped, at least he was handsome.  But once again reality snapped me out of my little fantasy and panic crept in.

“Kidnapping you?”  He whispered, a huge grin growing from ear to ear. “You seriously think I am kidnapping you?”

I looked at him seriously, “Aren’t you?”

“No,” he laughed.  “I am trying to protect you.” 

The plane jolted back from the gate throwing me forward in my seat. His arm reached out and caught me as I jerked forward. “Thank you.”  I settled into my seat and turned to look at him. “Why? And what did you tell the airline to get me in first class?”

Aston Martin man reached forward to push his backpack under the seat. “I showed them my badge and said that I was a US government agent taking a prisoner back to the States. I did not want you sitting with the rest of the passengers, so they sat us here. They’ll send a bill to someone later.” 

My eyes grew wide in bewilderment and I once again lurched forward in my seat. “You told them what?” I couldn’t help the fact that my voice was just short of a yell and full of anger.

“Shhh,” he said putting his finger to my lips. I pushed his hand away and slapped him on the arm and on the chest and anywhere else I could land a blow. He wrapped his hands around my wrists. He had a smirk on his face as well, and if my hands had been free, I would have slapped it as well.

I sighed in frustration and sat back in the seat. It was comfortable enough that I knew under normal circumstances I could have easily slept through the entire flight. But these weren’t normal circumstances.  I laid my head back and closed my eyes, thoughts racing through my mind. He let go of my wrists and he, too, leaned back in his seat. “I had to tell them something and well frankly it was the best story I could think of in a hurry.”

Again the urge to slap him came rushing through my body. I took another deep breath and clenched my eyes shut. What the hell was going on?  Finally as I could feel the jet taxi down the runway for takeoff, I mustered up the courage to ask the question, “Am I?” 

“Yes and no,” he answered me while looking straight ahead.  My eyes shot open and a sob welled up in my chest. How I managed not to let out an exasperated cry of protest I will never know.  Tears formed at the corner of my eyes. Nothing was going to stop them from falling. My mind raced in confusion.

“Alison, relax.” He reached over and touched my arm.

“Relax?” I managed to get out through clenched teeth.  “You’ve just told me I could possibly be under arrest and you want me to relax?”

“No one but the nation state of Israel wants to arrest you right now. That is why you needed to be on this flight. They guy you were talking too? Joed, he’s an Israeli intelligence officer sent to keep an eye on you. They sent him to the airport to delay you until his superiors could come. And they only reason they didn’t arrest you right there is they didn’t want a huge scene. You would have been interrogated and it would not have been pleasant Alison. I had to do something.”

Again confusion wracked every synapse in my brain. “Why do they think I’m a criminal? I was invited here because of where I work?”  My head began to spin and my body began to ache. The heavy feeling, like someone was sitting on my chest was getting worse. As the plane ascended into the sky, my head began to pound. “Who are you?” I managed to spit out in a barely audible whisper.

He evaded my question and it annoyed me. “We are getting everything straightened out.  The processor you handed off, before the phone call. You gave it to the wrong guy.”

I looked at him in disbelief as my head continued to pound. “I gave it to Professor Hassan

“No.  I know Professor Hassan and that was not him.”

“Wait.” I suddenly sat up in my seat. “How do you know Professor Hassan and how do you know I gave it to the wrong guy? And did Tom know about this?”  I could hear my heart racing in my chest.   The beating was causing the thumping in my head to get worse. They were simultaneous bursts of pain.

“I don’t know what Tom knew.”  He was almost sarcastic in his tone which angered me all the more. I suddenly felt stupid.

My head was now spinning and thumping and I had the urge to vomit all over the man who sat next to me. I opened my mouth and prayed desperately that words came out of it and not the contents of my stomach.  “How?  Who? Involved?”  I couldn’t finish the question I so desperately wanted to ask him. 

“You look like you could use a drink?”  He reached his hand up to the call button but my hand flew up and grabbed his arm. 

“No,” I whispered. “I need answers.”

“I don’t have all of them Alison. Not yet anyway.”  I met his golden eyes and knew I wasn’t going to get any of the answers I so desperately wanted.  Something had gone terribly wrong in Tel Aviv and I still wasn’t sure how and why.

I replayed the many conversations with Tom before I had left for Tel Aviv.  It was simple. He couldn’t go so I had to go to the conference in his place. He asked me to deliver a processor to an old friend of his he knew from Intel and that was that. It was perfectly legal technology they were swapping.  Then why did everything seem so much like a sick comedy of errors.  One thing goes wrong and everything seems to snowball.

I hadn’t exactly taken the processor Tom wanted me to.  He, as always, didn’t package it correctly and I was afraid I wasn’t going to get through customs with his so I had grabbed another one. The one Tom had given me was still in a box in my purse at the bottom of my closet buried underneath all the clothes I had decided not to take. 

Suddenly I felt so stupid. What had I done?  What had I given to this guy who wasn’t Professor Hassan. I could feel the blood drain from my face. I refused to let the tears fall and I choked back the sobs that were in my chest.

Aston Martin man reached for the call button again and rang the attendant.  As if we were the only passengers on the plane, she was there. “Could we please have something stiff to drink.”

The red headed lady looked at me with concern and nodded politely to my-
self
proclaimed
protector.  Soon, she came carrying two small bottles of Stoli vodka and two small bottles of some sort of whiskey. She also brought two glasses full of what looked like soda water.  The pounding in my head was getting worse and alcohol wasn’t going to make it go away.

“Tom was handing over military grade processors to the Israeli’s wasn’t he?” I turned to look directly at him. But he said nothing to neither confirm nor deny my suspicions. I tried to read his face to see if I was even close, but it was unreadable. He wouldn’t look me in the eyes, instead staring at the two empty seats on the other side of the aisle. “Something went wrong didn’t it?” I asked knowing full well the answer to my question.

I took a deep breath and grabbed one of the vodka bottles that the flight attendant had given him. I opened it and downed it in one gulp. The burning temporarily stopped the pounding in my head as it felt like my throat was now on fire.  “I didn’t give the guy the processor Tom gave me. I gave him another one I pulled off the line.” I finally admitted through intermitted coughs.

The man who sat next to me was suddenly closer than I had realized.

“What?”

“Tom never packages them right and I didn’t think it would make it through customs, so I pulled one off the line and packaged it the way we are supposed to.”  As if a wave had crashed on top of me, it all came flooding through. “Tom’s processor was rad hard wasn’t it?  This wasn’t an academic swap?”

The throbbing intensified as I laid back in my seat and closed my eyes.  The realization was there and my protector sat quiet.  I wasn’t sure how long we had actually sat in silence before he spoke.

“Now you see the problem.”

I turned to face him. His eyes were golden and his glare intent on my face. I nodded I did see the problem. Someone was expecting a very special processor and I, being the brilliant one, gave them a useless piece of electronics.  “So now I have a foreign government mad at me because I didn’t give them what they wanted, I gave it to God knows who? My boss is dead and well I’m not far behind him am I?”

He nodded. 

I realized he wasn’t one for sugar coating. “And you?” How did he fit into the whole picture? I had to know.

“Tom has been doing this for years with the Israeli’s.  We don’t know why, but he sent you in his place this time. We let it slide thinking you would just hand the processor over. You did, we just didn’t anticipate you switching them out.  Nor did we anticipate you giving it to someone other than Hassan.”  He leaned back in his seat. He suddenly looked relaxed and this irritated the hell out of me. I wondered how he could be so relaxed when I had screwed up so bad and now my life was in danger. Then the realization struck – I was the one in danger, not him.

“How much trouble am I in? You have to take me into custody don’t you?”  The horror of that question had to be written all over my face.

He shook his head no. “You didn’t know did you?”

“No.”

“My job right now is to get you back to the States and then possibly recover the processor.  We go from there.”

“What about the guy I gave the processor to? They have to know by now it isn’t what they were expecting.”

He looked at me with all the sincerity I am sure he could muster. “I don’t know Alison, I don’t know.  I won’t until we get back to the states.”

I reached for the second bottle of vodka, but his hand stopped me before I could quickly open it. His hands were warm and surprisingly comforting. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but not that.

“Easy!”  He took the bottle and opened it. He poured the contents into one of the two glasses of soda water he had on the tray in front of him. He handed it to me. “I can’t have you sick, so drink the soda water and you ARE going to eat something when they come around with food.”

I nodded and took a sip of the vodka.  Once again the spinning started, but I didn’t care as the throbbing had dulled a little. The flight attendants moved around the cabin tending to the other passengers, ignoring us for the most part.

My protector sat next to me sipping the plain soda water. I knew nothing of the man, except that earlier in the day, I had thought he was 007. How far off was I? “Do you at least have a name?” 

He sat next to me contemplating his response. I wondered if he would even use his real name. “Jack,” he finally answered.

I lifted my glass and smiled, which took everything I
had. “Well
, Jack, Nice to meet you.”  And then I downed what was left of my vodka and soda.

5
Jet Lag

Her breathing was steady and she was calm. At this point in time that is all that mattered. The alcohol had its intended effect and Alison slept all the way to London.  She needed the sleep after downing the vodka and I felt kind of guilty giving it to her, but I figured it was the best way to keep her calm and to get as much information out of her as possible. 

I had hoped the people I worked for could smooth things over with the people in Israel.  The Moussad were not a group to be messed with and the operative they were using in conjunction with us was now dead. As was Tom, and I had to believe that his death was not entirely due to natural causes.  I sighed and looked out the window at the lights below. I wasn’t thrilled about landing even if it was for a short time. Any little delay in getting her to the States could be detrimental to her.

I glanced over and watched as she tossed in her sleep.  I was sure this was a woman who rarely slept peacefully.  Her movements were jerky and she mumbled incoherently.  Her brown hair had fallen into her face, and I reached up to push it out of her face.  She twitched slightly and then turned away from me.  She was adorable.  Right at that moment I couldn’t think of any other word for her but adorable. But it didn’t quite fit.

I knew more about her than she could ever know about me. She held a BS in biology and minor in political science from the University of New Mexico. She had finished her Master’s degree last year at Georgetown and had shot up the ladder at the labs in Albuquerque, working on microprocessors for satellites.  She helped design the chips but she also had written several papers on how the technology produced at the labs would affect world politics as we knew it. While we were in Tel Aviv, I had Seth dig up a few of them for me. I had this urge to find out as much as I could about her. What I discovered was the fact she was an extremely intelligent woman; and now as I sat next to her, I was able gauge just how beautiful she was as well.