The Coil (53 page)

“Have you decided?” she asked.

“Yes. I'm going to Santa Barbara with you.”

She pulled away. She looked into his eyes, saw a weariness that had been growing since July. She kissed him, and he kissed her back, lingering.

“I can't do it anymore,” he told her at last, stepping back. “Somewhere while I was in MI6, I got lost. It's such a bore, but it's the truth. I want to find out what else there is.”

“I'm glad you'll come. Very, very glad. And I feel the same way. That's why I have to keep teaching. The students give me hope.”

“I know.” He tugged on her hand, pulling her close again, and they resumed their watch. “The best is, we'll be together.” The sun had dropped below the hill. The sky was red.

“Did you see that?” she asked.

“No. What?”

“Across on the next hill. A flash of light. It's gone now.”

“Probably a bicyclist, or maybe a shepherd with some metal on his knapsack. We should go. It's a long drive out to Cefalù.”

She nodded, and he swung his arm across her shoulder, holding her close as they walked to the pickup.

She slipped her arm around his waist, her body matching the rhythm of his. “Did you know that Gangi has a pagan festival? The Christians don't much like it, of course. It's called the Sagra della Spiga, and there's a procession of the old gods—Pan, Bacchus, and Demeter, the fertility divinities. When I was in town, a man at the Bongiorno palace told me Monte Alburchia may be the site of an ancient fertility temple built by the Greeks.”

“The Greeks? I'd forgotten they'd gotten this far inside Rome's territory.”

“Curious, isn't it? Wherever humans go, we take our gods, in one form or another.”

As they continued to talk in low, intimate voices, a man rose to his haunches on the hill opposite, where Liz had seen the flash of light. He had been lying on his belly under the leafy branches of an olive tree, using a powerful directional microphone as he listened and watched through binoculars. For an instant, he had worried he would be discovered. But the moment passed, because Liz was involved in Simon and the future. This was good; what he wanted.

He ran a hand over the new growth on his head. Soon his hair would be full again, thick and gray. He repressed a wave of yearning to be with his daughter, packed away his equipment, and hiked off into the night.

Several years ago, Liz Sansborough took up residence inside my mind. She'd played a pivotal role in my first novel,
Masquerade,
but that wasn't enough for her. She wanted her own book, her own story. So she lingered, contemplating her future, making me increasingly uneasy as I waited. What would happen to her? Her life had been suffused with violence. Both parents were international assassins, now dead. Her CIA husband was tortured and killed in the field. She was CIA, too, and loved the work. Or thought she did. But all of us change. Sometimes we learn. Now Liz wants out. She wants peace. For herself, for the world. In this new violent millennium, perhaps impossible. But she must try.

Liz returns to school to earn her Ph.D. in the psychology of violence….

Because the examination of violence from its most subtle to its most bloody permeates
The Coil,
I turned to friend and colleague Lucy Jo Palladino, Ph.D., who in earlier books led me in explorations of Asperger's syndrome, cellular memory, and conversion disorder. As always, her guidance was revelatory, providing an insider's view of violent people and acts and cultures.

For information about assassins, MI6, the CIA, and the globe's underbelly of crime and espionage, I thank several sources who must remain unnamed and in particular fellow author Robert Kresage, founding member of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center.

Paris, France, played a major role in
The Coil.
For advice, photos, and translations, I am indebted to Christine McNaught and novelist Len Lamensdorf for their selfless help.

Editing is that mysterious but crucial art form that in rare instances elevates a work above the author's vision. Most of us start with a blank page and a dream. Somewhere along the line, the pages fill, and the dream is overpowered by the words, scenes, chapters, sections. I was saved from that by Keith Kahla, editor extraordinaire, who knew better than I the novel inside
The Coil
. With deep appreciation, I thank him for his insight and wisdom, his nights and his weekends, and the unfettered access to his highly creative brain.

My husband, novelist Dennis Lynds, is both editor and collaborator, a constant source of feedback, revision, and ideas. My gratitude to him is boundless, as it is to my literary agent, Henry Morrison, and my international agent, Danny Baror, and my former webmaster, Brandon Erikson, and my new webmaster, Greg Stephens.

I've been blessed with a spectacular new publishing family at St. Martin's Press, including Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear, George Witte, Matthew Baldacci, John Murphy, James Di Miero, Joan Higgins, John Cunningham, Jennifer Enderlin, John Karle, Dori Weintraub, Steve Eichinger, Harriet Seltzer, Christina Harcar, and Jerry Todd. I'm most appreciative for all of their help and support.

And finally, no book comes to life in isolation. My gratitude to Barbara Toohey, Paul Stone, Julia Stone, MaryEllen Strange, James Stevens, Theil Shelton, Philip Shelton, Kathleen Sharp, Elaine Russell, Monika McCoy, Kate Lynds, Deirdre Lynds, Fred Klein, Randi Kennedy, Steven Humphrey, Melodie Johnson Howe, Bones Howe, Nancy Hertz, Gayatri Chopra Heesen, Julia Cunningham, Ray Briare, Katrina Baum, Vicki Allen, and Joe Allen.

Read on for an excerpt from the next book by Gayle Lynds

 

THE LAST SPYMASTER

 

Coming soon from St. Martin's Press

 

Prologue

 

November 16, 1985
Glienicke Bridge, between West Berlin
and East Germany

The wintry darkness seemed colder, more bitter, at Glienicke Bridge when a spy exchange was about to begin. Jay Tice shoved his hands deep into his overcoat pockets in a futile attempt to warm them. Beside him stood a young Muslim revolutionary—Faisal al-Hadi, his half of the predawn swap. Moving like shadows over the snow-dusted road and among the skeletal trees were a dozen U.S. Army soldiers on high alert, armed with M-16 rifles. Their truck waited, engine rumbling.

On edge, watching for trouble, Tice scanned carefully. He was a rumpled man of thirty-four, just shy of six feet tall. His nose was straight, his hair brown and of average length, his mouth wide and implacable. Depending on the light, his eyes were blue or brown. His one distinctive feature was the deep cleft that notched his chin, which was dramatic. Still, Tice had perfected the art of appearing almost bloodless, clearly boring. Seldom did anyone remember him or his cleft chin—unless he wanted them to.

“Issa'a kaem?”
al-Hadi demanded.

With a sharp movement of his head, Tice peered at the militant. Gazing up at the fading stars, the youth stood straight as a sword in his Western jeans and duffel coat, as quiet as death. He had yet to look at the bridge, which Tice found highly unusual. Those waiting to be traded tended to stare across it with raw hunger. Just twenty years old, he was Tice's height but narrow, with the acute features of a desert falcon. According to his dossier, he spoke English, but no one in the command had heard him use it.

Tice checked his wristwatch.
“Issa'a 5:12. Da'ayi' hidashar.”
The exchange must be finished by 5:42 a.m.—sunrise—which meant it must begin soon, eleven minutes to be exact. Tice glanced around once more, then raised his binoculars. Across the bridge, Kalashnikov-toting Communist soldiers moved slowly, menacingly, in the gray light as they guarded Pavel Abendroth, the human-rights dissident and Jewish refusenik. Jailed nine years in the gulag, Dr. Abendroth had lost a third of his body weight from starvation rations and illness. Dressed in baggy clothes, he pressed his ear muffs close and smiled toward the West. With him was Stasi officer Raina Manhardt—Tice's opposite number. A half-head taller than the diminutive doctor, she wore a fur hat and a stern expression. He lowered his binoculars.

This was Glienicker Brücke, “Bridge of Spies,” witness to many of the Cold War's most crucial exchanges. It was a bridge leading nowhere, unused but for the infrequent official vehicle on a military mission between the Communist East and the Free West and the occasional vital exchange. It was here in 1962 that downed U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers walked grimly past Soviet spymaster Rudolf Abel to freedom. Here, too, just last June, twenty-five European operatives were swapped for four East Bloc spies jailed in America. Some trades were made in daylight, and press conferences followed. Most, however, required secrecy and the cover of darkness.

When a car's motor sounded, Tice whirled. Rifles lashed around menacingly. The engine was a deep purr—large and expensive, its timing impeccable. A Mercedes. As soon as Tice read the license plate, he waved an arm backward in a wide swing that those on both sides of the bridge could see, signaling everyone to stand down.

Wearing a camel's hair overcoat, Palmer Westwood stepped quickly from the luxury car. His thick hair was pepper gray, his features sharp, angular, and grave. Fifty-two years old, Westwood was the CIA's new Associate Deputy Director of Operations, the ADDO, just in from Langley. He was late.

As he hurried toward them, he glanced at the terrorist. “Any trouble?”

Al-Hadi's face was expressionless.

“Quiet so far,” Tice told Westwood. “How was your flight?”

“Too long.” Westwood reached inside his coat and pulled out his pocket watch. The fob was a small gold triangle—flat, with two jagged edges.

“We should go.” Tice noted the gold piece. Beneath his shirt was a similar triangle, hanging from a gold chain.

Westwood read the time. “I should say so.”

Tice signaled. The soldiers closed in, and they advanced as a group, passing the sign that warned ominously in four languages:
YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR
. The old steel bridge was radiant, ablaze in arc lights. It stretched ahead more than four hundred feet. For the first time, al-Hadi looked at it. Then he stared. But instead of with hunger, his black eyes burned with a fury he could no longer hide, and Tice began to understand his silence and apparent lack of interest in the bridge.

“Come over here,” Tice ordered as they stopped at the bridge's edge. On either side, the dark forest was hushed, still, almost predatory. “Stay on my left.” The terrorist was right-handed. Tice turned away so al-Hadi could not see as he quickly unbuttoned his coat, pulled his pistol from the holster, and slid it into his waistband. He put another item into his left pocket.

When al-Hadi hesitated, a GI used his M-16 to prod him into position. Tice raised his wrist to check his watch again and peered across just as Raina Manhardt looked up from hers. They nodded to one another, and both stepped forward alone, two enemy intelligence officers doing their duty. Al-Hadi instantly caught up with Tice. Manhardt slowed for the Jewish doctor to join her. The walk had begun. As an icy wind gusted off the river, the two operatives and their charges advanced across Glienicke Bridge.

Tice moved close to al-Hadi and spoke in English: “You're damn lucky. If Dr. Abendroth weren't a cause célebre, you wouldn't be going home.”

Al-Hadi's gaze was locked on the small Soviet doctor in the distance.

Tice studied his intense profile. “That's it, isn't it?” he continued softly. “A Jew is saving your life. Worse, a human-rights Jewish activist the West reveres.”

“Mabahibish khanzeereen,”
Al-Hadi sneered. His right hand twitched.

Immediately, Tice used both hands to slap a handcuff on the wrist and squeeze it tight enough to inhibit circulation. “Keep walking. Now I've got a gun pointed at you under my coat, too. Dammit, don't pull away. You don't want anyone to see this.
Ala tool. Ala ikobri.
”

“
Kufr.
Infidels! The Jews are the enemies of Islam. Jews are the source of all conflicts! They are liars.
Murderers.
They have stolen the Palestinians' homeland. And you Americans are pigs for supporting them! If I am defending my home, no one can call
me
a terrorist. All infidels must die!”

“If you hadn't behaved yourself in lockup, I never would've been able to talk Langley into letting you go—even for someone of Abendroth's stature. Your family's paying a fortune for your freedom. Up to now, you've been smart. But you'll never make it home alive if you don't drop whatever you're carrying in your right hand.”

Al-Hadi's head whipped around. “What? How did you know?” His pinched face showed the pain caused by the constricting handcuff.

For the past month, ever since his capture in the shootout in West Berlin, al-Hadi had tried to hide his intelligence behind a mask of indifference. But Tice had noted his watchful gaze, the small advantages he created for himself, and his ability to perceive routine in an apparently randomized interrogation schedule. His intelligence would argue against self-destruction.

“Experience. Keep walking.” Tice tightened it more. “Get rid of the weapon, or you'll never see Damascus again.”

For the first time, doubt flickered in the young man's face.

“Drop it, son,” Tice said instantly. “You'd be insane not to want to go home, and this is the only chance you'll get. Drop it.”

The fire that had burned so feverishly in al-Hadi's eyes died. His fingers opened. As they progressed toward the bridge's center, a razored metal file fell silently into the snow, a weapon of close assassination. Al-Hadi turned away, but not before Tice saw his humiliation. He had failed.

Then al-Hadi's lips thinned. He seemed to gather himself. “Release me!” he demanded.

Tice considered, then reached over and unlocked the handcuff.

Al-Hadi gave no acknowledgment. Instead, he lifted his chin defiantly and fixed his rigid gaze on the desolate silhouettes of leafless trees on the hilly horizon. Neither spoke as they continued on across the bridge.

At last they reached the four-inch-wide white line that marked the border. As a gust of the bitter wind needled his face, Tice stopped a yard away, following protocol. But his wiry prisoner merely paused, then bolted toward the line.

“Halt!” Tice made a show of grabbing for his arm.

“La'a!”
Without a glance at Dr. Abendroth, he hurtled onward, running a zigzag course as if dodging a storm of bullets. Clouds of brittle snow exploded from his heels.

Tice gazed steadily and coolly at Raina Manhardt. “I wish I could say it was a pleasure.” He spoke in German.

The Stasi officer's eyes flashed, and she responded in English with a perfect American accent: “So we meet again, Comrade Tice.” She turned on her boot heel and left to follow her charge.

Tice stared after her a few seconds, then turned and walked forward, extending his hand. “Dr. Abendroth, it's an honor.”

“Spaseeba!”
Abendroth was excited. He pumped the hand and stepped across the border into the West. “My knees ache, or I would fall down and kiss this old bridge.”

They turned in unison and strode off. The cold seemed to settle into Tice's bones. He took a deep breath.

“You were worried?” Dr. Abendroth asked curiously. He had the wrinkled skin of a seventy-year-old although he was only in his forties.

“Of course. And you?”

“I gave that up long ago.” The dissident's smile deepened. “I prefer to think of pleasant things.”

The return trip seemed longer to Tice. Ahead, in the sheen of the artificial illumination, with the first rays of a flinty dawn rising slowly, almost reluctantly above the bleak hills, the waiting party of armed soldiers resembled a still life from some military album. Only Palmer Westwood seemed real. In his camel's hair overcoat, he stalked back and forth, furiously smoking a cigarette.

As soon as they stepped onto land, Tice introduced the two men.

The small, shabby pediatrician took the hand of the tall, urbane CIA official. “You came just to welcome me, Mr. Westwood? You are so civilized. I have shaken no one's hand in friendship in years, other than another prisoner's. And now I have done it twice within minutes.” He turned toward the stately Mercedes, where the driver stood at the open rear door, waiting. “My chariot?”

Tice looked at it, too. “Yes.”

With a crisp nod, Dr. Abendroth marched off alone, his head rotating as if his eyes were memorizing the world, while Palmer Westwood followed. Tice paused and checked over his shoulder. On the other end of the bridge, Raina Manhardt and the young radical were approaching their Zil limousine.

When Tice looked back, Westwood had stopped to grind out his cigarette beneath the toe of his wingtip. Quickly, Tice shifted his focus to Abendroth, monitoring his approach to the open door of the luxury sedan. It was time. Taking a small step backward, he squared his shoulders and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

The percussive noise of a single rifle shot splintered the quiet dawn. Blood and bone fragments exploded into the air, and Pavel Abendroth pitched forward, the back of his skull shattered by a bullet. As rifles froze, then moved violently, searching for a target, one of the dissident's arms bounced off the door frame and landed hard inside the sedan.

Across the bridge, Raina Manhardt shoved a gaping Faisal al-Hadi into the limo and dove in after him. At the same time, Tice ran to Abendroth, bellowing at his people to call in the attack and go after the sniper.

With the stench of hot blood filling his nostrils, Tice crouched. The pediatrician lay crumpled on a patch of dirty snow. He picked up the hand that had fallen inside the car. Thick calluses and ragged scars covered the palm, showing the brutal labor and torture Abendroth had endured.

Tice found the fluttering pulse in Abendroth's wrist just before it stopped. He closed the dead man's staring eyes, then lifted his head to watch across the length of Glienicke Bridge. Tires spinning on the snow, the Communist limo shot off toward East Berlin.