The Housewife Assassin's Ghost Protocol (21 page)

“The game agrees with you,” Bosworth Hobart, my former sponsor in Spooks Anonymous, admits wistfully.
 

I shrug. “Yeah, well, lesser of all evils.” I poke my finger through the hole in the halo of haze from his vapor cigarette. “And how have you been?”

“Busy, both in a good way, and a bad one.”

I laugh. “Make my day and start with the good stuff.”

“Fair enough. I’m learning origami. It’ll go far if I have to run to Japan.”

“You’d be much better off if you learned to manage a cat café. They’re big there, you know.”

He frowns. “Nah, wouldn’t work for me. I’m allergic to the critters.”

“Oh.” I wait to see if he can add to his picture of current bliss. When he can’t, I sigh. “Okay, what’s the bad news?”

“We should have a full house tonight. All of the disappearances are making people antsy.”

“Great. I’ll keep my head down and my ear to the ground.” I look at my watch. It’s a quarter after nine. I nod toward the door to the meeting room labeled,
Wilshire Gallery
: “Should we go in?”

He rolls his eyes. “The lapsed! How soon they forget.” He points to a closed door marked BROOM CLOSET.

We walk over. He looks around to see if anyone is watching. Noting we’re all alone, he raps his knuckles in some sort of convoluted knock-knock game.

Slowly the door opens, but no one is on the other side. In fact, it’s not a meeting room at all but a darkened corridor.
 

“After you,” he says.

I wince. “Should I crawl through?”

“Nah. But I’d suggest ducking if you hear gun shots.”

Some things never change.

Bosworth is right; the room is filled to capacity. Thank goodness it’s not truly a broom closet. In fact, it’s the same auditorium where they hold the Golden Globe nominations.
 

Unlike the well-juiced lighthearted revelry of that more celebrated event, this one is akin to the last passengers on the
RMS Titanic
, all arguing at once as to who gets in the last few lifeboats.

They are of both genders, all ages, and nationalities. I recognize a few of them: Ursula, the swallow-turned-nun; Jasper, a grizzled hitman whose now shaky hand saves him in his daily game of Russian Roulette; Lydia, a retired CIA Bureau Betty with too much knowledge of the game, and too much time on her hands; Frank-slash-Ivan, who boasts so much about his hits that no one really knows how many are real and how many are imagined; and then there’s the Castilian spymistress who carries a stiletto between her heaving breasts.

These people don’t just need a life. They yearn for the lives they once had.
 

In other words, the life I lead. I’m still not totally convinced that I should count my lucky stars.

Bosworth shouts above the hysterical din, “Calm down, everyone, or someone may send management to investigate!”
 

His threat has the desired effect. You could drop a pin on the carpeted floor and probably hear it.

“That’s better,” he growls. “Now, only when I point to you is it your turn to speak.”

They nod obediently. Lydia raises her hand. “The disappearances are all over the spook loops! I know at least ten of the missing personally! If they’re being tortured, a few may fold! In fact, two of my contacts squeal like little piggies if you waterboard them longer than ten seconds. Think of what they’ll give away!”

“You read the spook loops?” Ursula looks at her aghast. “But it’s against our group’s bylaws—”

“Give away, to who?” Ivan interrupts with a shout. He stares around the room, wild-eyed. “Whom are they taking to? My contacts in Moscow swear it isn’t the GRU!”

“And you trust those drunken Cossacks?” the Castilian spymistress smirks. “They chortle whenever they feed you this misinformation! Had Stalin known you were ever hired there, he’d be turning in his grave!”

“Why is Ivan still talking to Moscow?” Ursula asks indignantly. “It’s not fair! He’s out of the business, just like the rest of us!”

Bosworth throws up his hands. “Enough already! Enough! It’s Jasper’s turn! He actually sighted one of the missing spooks, right here in Los Angeles.”
 

His declaration shuts them up. The wave of faces turns to Jasper.

Their stares cause him to shake. Even his voice trembles as he murmurs, “It’s…it’s true! I saw him. Short and bald, with those round-frame glasses—a former Stasi. ‘Heinried Müller’ is what he called himself.”

Ah, so Pinky Ring’s name is Heinried Müller! Finally, Jack has the answer to the riddle of his nemesis’s identity.

“Müller? That sniveling little bastard?” This time Lydia’s spittle fans out, drenching three others in the face. “They put a revolving door in the Berlin Wall just for him. I prayed he’d be crossing when it came down, so that he’d die in the rubble.”

“That is what I’m trying to tell you! He did die—albeit not so poetically. In London, some six or seven years back.” Wild-eyed, Jasper shakes the man beside him “Please, you must listen to me! There are others too! I know, because he wasn’t the only one! He was there for a rendezvous with another who was long presumed dead. A woman with an exceptional figure. She was known as a mistress of disguises. I remember her as having ravishing red hair—a true beauty! Last night her head was covered in a turban, so I cannot swear it was she, since this woman also had a scar on her face. It made me gasp! They turned and saw me! I ran as if my life depended on it—”

Scarred woman.
 

Tatyana Zakharov.
 

When she first came up against Jack, she was the victor in their struggle for a thumb drive containing a list of bank accounts holding funds from Russian oil bribes to the Russian president. I ran into her when she tried to abduct Lee during a peace summit held here in Los Angeles. Jeff was taken in his stead.

Guess who killed her? Yep, you got it. I am the ultimate tiger mom.
 

But it was Jack who tortured her in Acme’s Club Dread. The facial scars were the most obvious result.

Could Tatyana have been the woman with Pinky Ring? On the Biarritz hotel’s security camera footage, her face was always covered, so it was hard to tell.

“Another man joined them, also long dead.” He points to Lydia. “You women used to swoon for him. He was a handsome double agent. No, make that a triple! He was always changing alliances—”

“That is
so
like a man,” Lydia spits on the floor in disgust.

Yes, I’m disgusted too. Doesn’t she know how dirty that is?
 

Wait…what’s this about a triple agent?…

“You couldn’t have seen this Heinried fellow, or the good-looking one, or for that matter the slut, Tatyana,” the Castilian spymistress scoffs. “All three are dead, remember? We are talking about spooks, not
ghosts
.”

“I did, I tell you! This, I swear on my handler’s grave!” Jasper insists.

“You ungrateful son of a bitch!” someone yells from the back of the room. “I’m still alive! Are you trying to put a curse on me?”
 

“That’s just my point!” Jasper howls. “We are all cursed! The living are being taken, while the dead walk amongst us!”

“Bah!” Frank-slash-Ivan throws up his hands. “I’m alive, and I may as well be dead.”

Suddenly, the room goes black. The speakers roar with a man’s voice, obviously altered mechanically: “I’m happy to accommodate you, Ivan.”

The streak of bullets from assault rifles flare from two directions.

Bosworth body-slams me to the floor. We fall deep within one of the stage’s voluminous velvet curtains.

His timing couldn’t be better. A spray of gunshot puckers the curtain over our heads, ripping it off its rod. It falls on us. It is so thick that I can barely breathe, and I dare not move.

Just as quickly as it started, the gunshots stop. Its silence only amplifies the chorus of moans from the injured.

Eventually, the lights come back on. I push aside the curtain. Not many are left standing—Jasper and Frank-slash-Ivan included. They lay in pools of their own blood.

Lydia sobs over their bodies. Ursula whispers a prayer in their memory.

Humbled and awestruck, the Castilian spymistress shakes her head, mumbling, “
Aye, Dios mio
! He was right! They have come back to haunt us!”

The shooters are nowhere in sight.

I suddenly realize Bosworth is still buried somewhere in the curtain. I find him from the circle of blood that blackens one panel of it. Furiously, I dig through it until I hold him in my arms. His eyes are closed. I reach down to his neck for a pulse—

Yes, he is still alive.

Slowly, he opens his eyes. He flinches as he touches the wound on his arm. “Just a scratch,” he mutters.
 

With my help, he sits up. He pulls out a cigarette—not vapor, but a real one. He shrugs at me.
 

I bend down beside him. “Those things will kill you.” I hold out my hand to his good arm. “Come on; let’s get you patched up.”

When we’re in the car, I call Ryan on speaker to tell him what just went down, and to ask if Acme’s resident physician, Dr. Friedman, can patch up Bosworth.
 

“Yes, of course, bring him in,” Ryan replies.
 

“How should we handle the rest of the carnage?” I ask him. “All those dead bodies…” I shiver at the memory.

Bosworth snorts. “It’s already taken care of. Our cleaners are meticulous.”

“How do you know any were still alive?” I ask incredulously.

He glares at me. “We take care of our own.”
 

Enough said.

“Donna, Emma is pulling footage now from the hotel’s security audio and video feeds, as well as the Beverly Hills PD’s street cameras. By the time you get here, we may have a clue as to who did the hit.”

“The bullet grazed Mr. Hobart, but he will be bandaged up in no time,” Dr. Friedman, assures me.

“Thanks, Doc. Hey, would you mind giving him a ride back into the city? Ryan needs to see me.”

“Sure, no problem,” Friedman agrees.
 

I give Bosworth a peck on the cheek. “Stick to the vapor cigs,” I warn him.

Bosworth acquiesces with a sly wink. “You know as well as I that this isn’t going to be what kills me.”

“Maybe not, but let’s not tempt fate, shall we?”
 

He whistles appreciatively as I walk down the hall.

Arnie is in Ryan’s office. However, Jack is not. “Is the illustrious Mr. Craig taking the night off?” I ask.

Ryan shakes his head. “Not quite. He’s on his way to DC to apprehend a suspect. We’ve had a break in the case.”

“I’m all ears.” I plop down on his couch next to Arnie.

“Arnie was right—in regard to one thing, anyway,” Ryan explains. “Drucker knew about Operation Hercules since its inception. Show her, Arnie.”

Arnie’s shaky smile indicates his knowledge that he’s still in the doghouse for his diarrhea of the mouth this afternoon at Lee’s little shindig. He clicks a button on his computer screen. It shows Drucker and Gordon Soames talking in the West Wing hallway, outside Drucker’s office. “Our audio scanning software went back as far as eighteen months, looking for any word recognition on the phrase, ‘Operation Hercules’. We were concerned because Eileen never set up security feeds, either video or audio, in Vice President Drucker’s West Wing office.”