Undercover Nightingale (2 page)

Six months later

T
he yacht that had lulled her to sleep hours ago now jerked Allegra Nightingale awake. She sat up just as the yacht’s powerful twin engines shut down.

They were stopping.

Why?

She climbed out of bed and looked out the stateroom window. It was early morning and the sun was on the horizon. In the distance she saw a jet boat speeding toward the
Stella di Mare
.

Filip was about to get company.

Yesterday they had cruised through the Strait of Messina and headed up the coast of Italy. Filip hadn’t told her where they were going, and she hadn’t asked. He’d been in an unpredictable mood since their exodus from Nescosto.

The attack on the villa had been well-executed, the incursion swift. Nescosto was now a pile of rubble along the Amalfi Coast, and buried beneath it was Filip’s brother Yurii.

From the moment Filip had dragged her onto the yacht, she’d known no one else had survived. He’d ordered her below deck, and there she had remained while the
Stella
quickly sped away into the night.

For three days she had danced around him, trying to stay out of his way—feeling as insignificant as a barnacle stealing a ride on the yacht’s hull. But now a boat was arriving, and so she pulled on the black sweatpants and gray T-shirt Filip had issued her like a prison uniform on a slave ship.

She left the stateroom, headed through the companionway, and scaled the stairs to the deck. She heard voices and stopped to listen.

“I came as soon as you called.”

“You made good time, Lazlo. Is Matyash with you?”

“I’m here, Filip.”

Allegra appeared in the morning sunlight just as the man, Matyash, leapt onto the deck from the jet boat christened the
Sera Vedette
. He was a thin man who wore his dark hair long like Filip. His face, however, wasn’t nearly as handsome—a long scar cut deep into his cheek and curved into the side of his mouth.

He spied her and sent his eyes on a slow, very deliberate appraisal of her body. The smile that followed puckered his scar and made his appearance grotesque.

“You read my mind, Filip. A little entertainment to pass the days at sea will lighten our moods.”

Filip turned.

When his soulless eyes locked with hers, Allegra kept her face as expressionless as his. She had no idea what he would say or do.

Her training had taught her to never show weakness. But today Filip was in control. He had been since they’d fled Nescosto as it crumbled into the sea.

He could let these men take her, and they would use her as unconscionably as they used their guns. And if he chose to pass her from one to another, no amount of protesting would stop them.

If she was entertaining enough perhaps she would survive. If not, she could be tossed overboard.

Chin high, her backbone straight, Allegra waited for the ugly one to make his move, promising herself she would endure whatever ill plan he had for her.

“Leave her be. The woman is mine.”

Filip’s words were spoken with the same authority that made him such a dangerous adversary to his enemies, and a feeling of relief washed over Allegra.

He held out his hand to her. “Come, Allegra.”

He hadn’t touched her in three days, but now he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her into the protection of his muscular body.

He was a head taller than her five-seven height—an Adonis with wild black hair, high cheekbones and a pair of dark eyes that were as unpredictable as his moods.

Lazlo pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. Allegra saw that it was a newspaper clipping. Filip dropped his arm from around her and took the paper.

“A little something to fuel the fire inside you,” Lazlo said.

Filip scanned the information, and as he did, Allegra craned her neck. It was from an Italian newspaper confirming the death of Yurii and the fall of Nescosto.

The photo was horrifying, the devastation catastrophic. More important the article revealed who had been responsible. The NSA was claiming victory for the insurgence.

Filip crumpled the paper in his hand and tossed it overboard. Allegra moved away from him and went to stand at the railing. Behind her she heard him exchange words with his comrades, and in a matter of minutes the two men returned to the jet boat.

Lazlo spoke to the captain, then followed his friend below. They were back within minutes with duffel bags slung over their shoulders, they boarded the
Stella di Mare
once more.

This time, the man named Lazlo headed into the wheelhouse. The powerful twin engines began to sing, then the luxury yacht quickly moved out.

Allegra remained at the railing, the warm tropical breeze lifting her dark hair around her shoulders as the yacht picked up speed. Yurii was dead, and he’d taken the details of their secret assignment to his grave. She questioned whether Filip was privy to the mission’s details. If he was, how long would it be before he shared them with her?

She had no phone. She’d left everything behind when she had fled Nescosto. But if Filip hadn’t assured her that they were on the same page by the time they reached land, then she would find a way to contact Cyrus.

She was deep in thought when an explosion rocked the yacht, pitching her into the railing. When she regained her balance and turned around, orange flames and billowing smoke were rising up out of the sea. Filip was holding a detonating device in his hand, and the
Sera Vedette
was gone, as well as its captain.

The death of Yurii Petrov made newspaper headlines across the country. The
Washington Post
must have been lacking news on Wednesday, as they dedicated the entire front page to the incident, and bored the public with a lengthy profile on an international criminal no one was aware existed—no one outside the criminal elite and government intelligence.

The article listed Yurii’s many atrocities beginning with money laundering, and ending with his affiliation with the Red Mafia. A color photo of Nescosto, Yurii’s headquarters, ate up half the page. If not for the caption, the once sprawling four-story villa built into a sheer rock face along the Amalfi Coast would have been unrecognizable.

The NSA claimed credit for the takedown. They were vague on the details, but that was standard when the special operations group, code-named Onyxx, was involved—they were the invisible spooks no one talked about.

The news story ended with a brief statement from France’s Department of Foreign Information and Counterespionage. The SDECE reported that two of their agents had died in the siege.

It was the first Onyxx Agent Ashland Kelly had heard that another intelligence agency was undercover inside Yurii Petrov’s citadel at the time he’d planted the explosives, sending Nescosto into the sea. There had been a window of opportunity to escape before detonation—a small window. Had he known about the French agents, their lives could have been spared.

Too bad the left hand hadn’t informed the right hand what the hell they were doing. But it was rare to find two agencies willing to share information, let alone work together. The only two who came to mind at the moment were Onyxx and EURO-Quest.

Ash tossed the paper on the couch in his Washington apartment and headed for the shower. When he climbed out, he saw that his boss had left a message on his cell phone. Dripping wet, he tucked the towel around his hips, reached for his phone on the sink, and hit voice mail.

“Did you see the morning paper? Burgess Stillman from the SDECE is on his way to Washington. Before he gets here, we need to talk. My office. As soon as you get this.”

Ash headed into his bedroom, dropping the towel in the doorway. He dressed quickly, then left the bedroom wearing jeans, a black V-neck sweater, and his lucky cowboy boots.

On the way to the kitchen, he glanced out the window. It was snowing this morning—big, wet winter flakes that made the November day as gray as his socks. He liked hot weather—desert hot—and he’d never gotten used to the inconvenience of winter, or the dampness that accompanied it.

He made his morning pot of tea, poured a cup to take with him, and grimaced over the fact that there was no time to quell the hunger in his belly.

Thinking about how good a fried egg sandwich would taste, Ash went out the door with his tea, pulling on his brown leather jacket, his shaggy, sandy blonde hair still wet, his jaw unshaven.

The snow wouldn’t stay, that was the good news. But it would make the morning commute to headquarters slow. The traffic was already backed up as he pulled his green Jeep out of the underground parking lot, the cars resembling an ant march to a picnic.

He joined the march. As much as he detested crowds and smog, he drove through morning rush hour like a cultured city boy instead of a man used to the hot wind in his face on a dirt road in Mexico.

Ash entered the front doors at Onyxx headquarters forty minutes later. He stepped inside the elevator just as the doors were about to close, and came face-to-face with Burgess Stillman.

He’d never met the SDECE commander, but he’d seen pictures, and heard the rumors about the forty-year-old Frenchman. Six-six, two-sixty, with a silver crewcut, Stillman looked like the kind of guy who ate roadkill for breakfast and asked for seconds.

“Ashland Kelly.” Stillman looked him up, then down. “You’re thinner than your profile stats,
mon ami
. Merrick must be working your ass off these days.”

“Excuse me.”

“I don’t accept excuses, Kelly. You’ll learn that before this is over. I have two dead agents, no bodies to console the families, a superior climbing up my ass, and no way to amputate the hemorrhoid. Not yet.”

Ash opened his mouth to defend the mission that had cost the SDECE two agents, then closed it. It had been a straightforward assignment. Get in, get out, and leave nothing standing once Petrov’s data had been hijacked, and they’d rescued the female Quest agent, Casmir Balasi.

“You got blood on your hands,
mon ami
. But that’s your specialty, isn’t it? What is it they call you?” Stillman paused. “
Oui,
I remember. They call you the Ashtray. An appropriate name for a man who likes to play with matches, no?”

Stillman retrieved two pictures from his coat pocket and stuck them in Ash’s face. “That’s Felton Chanler with his wife, three kids and their dog. This one, Jazmin Grant, was the best damn agent I’ve had in years. Twenty-eight is too damn young to die.”

That was for damn sure, Ash thought staring at the beautiful blonde. “I’m sorry about your agents.”

Stillman slid the pictures back in his pocket. “I don’t want your condolences, Kelly. I want your hide. But since I won’t get away with skinning you alive, I’ll settle for my second choice.”

“And that would be?”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

Stillman hit the button on the elevator and it took off. Within minutes they were walking down the corridor side-by-side, headed for Merrick’s office.

The SDECE commander knocked, then swung the door open as if he owned the agency and every man in it. He stepped inside the room just as Merrick hung up the phone.

Adolf Merrick arched his gray eyebrows over his chilly blue eyes. “You’re early. I didn’t expect you until this afternoon.”

“I met your firecracker, Merrick. He wouldn’t be hard to pick out in a line-up. He fits your MO.”

“My MO?”

“
Oui
. Your recruits are a bunch of marauders. Criminals, every last one of them.”

“My agents don’t have a particular MO, except one, Stillman. They know how to survive. That’s what it takes to be successful in this business. Maybe if your agents were made out of similar stuff, they’d still be alive.”

“That’s a helluva thing for you to say to me.”

“Sit down, Ash. Stillman, if you’d like to take a seat down the hall in the waiting room, I’ll have a cup of coffee brought to you.”

Stillman pulled out the chair in front of Merrick’s desk and sat. “I’ve never taken a number in my life, Merrick, and I don’t plan to start now. Your errand boy can wait outside, or stay since he’s the reason I’m here.”

Ash waited to be dismissed.

Merrick said, “Kelly, take a seat.”

Ash made himself comfortable on the couch along the wall. He’d keep his mouth shut. Speak if he was engaged. If not, he’d just take up a little space and oxygen, and enjoy the showdown between Stillman and Merrick. It was going to be entertaining. The temperature in the room was as chilly as the weather outside.

“I’ve talked with my supervisors about this situation,” Merrick began, “and we’re sympathetic. No agency likes investing time and money and coming up short. And when agents don’t come home, it makes it worse. But that’s the business we’re in. Sometimes we win big, and sometimes the losses are hard to swallow.”

“Save your pat speech. An apology won’t fix this, and it’s not why I’m here. I want compensation. My number one agent is dead.”

“Onyxx is under no obligation to compensate the SDECE. We sympathize,” Merrick said again, “but we never make restitutions or apologies. I don’t know of any agency that does. We all know the score when we send our men and women into the field.”

“You command a gang of fugitives. A well-kept secret that I’m sure the NSA would like to keep hidden in the closet. What do you think the media would do with that kind of information? What do you think the public would say if they knew their tax dollars sanctioned a bunch of criminals?”

Ash said nothing, but he was thinking that for Stillman to know so much about Onyxx, he’d gone digging. All the data on Onyxx and its agents were kept confidential—sealed under lock and key within the Green Room upstairs. No one could access the file without an authorization number. Hell, they couldn’t even get through the door without proper ID.

“You mentioned compensation. What is the SDECE proposing?” Merrick asked.