Operation Damocles Read online

  The cold, damp sea and monotonous shoreline had become a gray, netherworld limbo that sapped the brain of thoughts. He had decided that regardless of the risk, they needed to find a town and mix with the living. They needed to sit in a restaurant, among familiar sights and sounds, and eat a hot meal. After that, a warm motel room, a hot shower, a long sleep and some dry clothes. Familiar things the mind could deal with. Physical comfort. It was all he could do for her now.

  ###

  It took them five days to drift down the Florida coast to Miami, stopping overnight in cheap motels at Fort Pierce and Boca Raton. Once in Miami, Reed felt both relieved and sad that the boat journey was over. It had been physical misery, but it had suspended the feeling of desperate flight for a time, and the sick feeling in his gut when he was reminded that there was no way back to his former life. Now he must become active. He must begin to plan.

  Beverly was still distant and introspective much of the time, especially in the evenings. She still wept occasionally, quietly and to herself. He couldn’t help her, so he quit worrying about her, telling himself she would eventually tire of grief, as the mind does, and slowly begin to put it behind her. In a couple of days, he thought, he would try to distract her, turn her attention to other things. Maybe take her to a nightclub and some of the more garish parts of the city. Give her a little color and excitement. Maybe it would draw her out of her shell. First, though, he had to get some of their immediate cares out of the way. At least she was coherent now, and there had been no further comatose lapses.

  Reed finally came to terms with their situation, and the feeling of sick panic faded. He was a survivor. He accepted. He had spent his life in similar situations, fearing discovery and death, and his mind began following habitual paths, running through prospective travel plans, and weighing their chances of success. They needed identification documents and new personas. Those tasks came first, and were the easiest to accomplish. Secondly, they needed money. Fortunately, that, too, was not a problem.

  Reed was single, and had worked in one remote hellhole after another for almost fifteen years. One day, ten years ago, he had been rummaging through his bureau drawer for something and discovered that he was pushing five payroll deposit slips out of his way, trying to find a spare apartment key among his jewelry. When on assignment, he lived on the other salary that he drew and banked under his cover occupation. His normal pay was sent automatically by electronic transfer to his personal bank account in Arlington, Virginia.

  He decided to establish a secret account, just for future emergencies. He happened to be on assignment in Amsterdam at the time, and he had promptly opened an account in a bank, under a secret identity. He had drawn out alternate paychecks, once each month, and put them in the Amsterdam bank, half his annual salary after taxes, for the past ten years. He had $275,000 in savings and accumulated interest, and his agency had no knowledge of it. It would take a couple of days to transfer a few thousand dollars to a local bank, but then they would have a little breathing room. He decided then and there to take Beverly Watkins to California with him, if she would go, and to help her get established where he could help her and watch over her for a while. He felt responsible for her suffering, and wanted to at least help her to safety. He felt he owed her that much. That was the reason he gave himself, at any rate.

  He rented connecting rooms on the second floor of a small motel, near a swim beach in south Miami. It was an older, two-story structure, built in the shape of a “C,” with parking inside the center courtyard. It was run by a retired couple from Chicago, and while it was by no means a resort spot for the rich and famous, it was clean and well-managed. Tenants appeared to be passers-through. Reed noted that a preponderance of the cars were loaded down with luggage and beach paraphernalia, and sported out-of-state plates.

  Reed bartered the boat near there, in a Cuban-run pawn shop-cum-gateway to the Miami black market, for new identity documents. His livelihood had depended on his having a great deal of arcane knowledge about the underbelly of society in a dozen countries. He knew where to find reliable “fix-it” shops in most of the major cities in America, Europe and the Middle East, where documents such as licenses, passports and birth certificates could be forged. That was why they were here. The shop in Miami was one he had used several times. They were completely professional.

  Their birth certificates and other documents were put on quality counterfeit forms and letterhead stock, from county seats in Indiana and Oklahoma, near Beverly’s and Reed’s respective points of origin. The vendor had hundreds to choose from.

  To be effective, new identities had to hold up under mild scrutiny, and Reed had long ago learned that it paid to keep the professed origins as factual as possible, so that accents of speech and colloquial vernacular were genuine, and knowledge of the area of origin was accurate.

  The documents they received were “aged” to look convincing. They were dipped in mild acid and air-dried under an ultraviolet lamp, to fade the ink and fray the microscopic fibers of the paper, so that the documents looked as if they had been issued years ago. The driver’s license photographs would have to wait a few days, until their appearances were sufficiently altered.

  Reed bought new bathing suits and leisure clothing for Beverly and himself in a local department store. He bought a bottle of baby oil and three ounces of tincture of iodine in a supermarket pharmacy, and mixed them to make a tanning solution. They both dyed their hair black, and Beverly started wearing her shoulder-length hair in a ponytail, thus changing her appearance from that of a professional woman, to one with a more youthful, bohemian flair.

  She wore contacts, so Reed took advantage of it. She was fitted with brown-tinted contact lenses to mask her blue-gray eyes. He stopped shaving his upper lip and let his mustache grow. They applied the tanning mixture liberally, and spent a great deal of the daylight hours on the beach, or walking around the casual resort section in bathing suits, shorts and tank tops to weather their exposed skin.

  They lived in the brief clothing for the better part of two weeks, and at the end, the combination of sun and dyeing agents had darkened their complexions to the point that they could have passed for Cubans or Puerto Ricans easily. As they glimpsed their reflections in storefront windows and mirrors, they both agreed that their best friends wouldn’t know them. Reed thought that asked unawares, they wouldn’t even have recognized themselves in a photo. The time had come; they had their photos taken for their new drivers licenses.

  ###

  A week after reaching Miami, Reed lay awake one night, thinking. His and Beverly’s beds abutted the same wall, on opposite sides. The sound of someone weeping finally registered in his consciousness, and he realized it was coming from her room, again. It was a nightly ritual. His stomach sank from dread. He knew he must deal with it sometime, and he didn’t have a clue as to how to go about it. He lay there for some time, listening, unsure of what to do. He wasn’t certain that he should do anything.

  He realized that he had been purposely distant from her, keeping his mind occupied with planning and replanning, and trying to sort out what resources he had in the Miami area; he had deliberately avoided thinking about her confusion and her still-fresh pain. Worse, he was beginning to treat her as an irritant. He admitted to himself that he had wanted to dodge the issue, hoping she would somehow come out of it on her own.

  Her entire world had been destroyed in a twinkling, as if it had suddenly turned to sand and run through her fingers before her startled eyes. She had come home, weary from her day at work, and ten minutes later everything she had known was gone; her life had vanished before she had even had time to register what was happening. She had suffered a far greater loss than he had, and the realization of his own selfishness suddenly struck him. No wonder she’s miserable, he thought. She’s about as alone as she can be.

  This was an ordinary woman, out of her depth, totally dependent on him for her very life. Like a child, she either asked outright, or looked
at him questioningly before she did almost anything. The sudden awareness of this fact was like a blow. He felt inadequate for the first time since he had entered basic training in the Marine Corps.

  Finally, reluctantly, he got out of bed and pulled his pants on. He trekked barefooted to the adjoining door, and knocked. There was a long delay, but she finally answered. She opened the door in response to his voice. Her face was streaked and her eyes were red from crying.

  She was dressed in her green flannel nightshirt. It emphasized the points of her breasts and the curve of her hips. Reed was painfully aware of the fact that she was a beautiful woman, having seen her in a bathing suit and skimpy attire for days now. He had noticed the admiring glances that other men gave her, on the street and in restaurants, and noted with growing self-disgust his own feelings of jealousy.

  At the moment, he was aroused, and yet sensitive to the fact that she was very vulnerable, and very confused. Not knowing what else to do, he took her in his arms and held her close, stroking her back and shoulders. At first, she looked confused, but didn’t struggle. She had become accustomed to doing as he told her, accepting his actions without question, following his lead. After a moment, she pushed back gently, looking into his face.

  He sighed. “I heard you crying,” he said, “and I thought you needed comforting. I’m new at this—taking care of someone, I mean. I’m probably making a lot of mistakes that are obvious to you, but not to me. I’ve been preoccupied with arrangements, and I haven’t been very conscious of your state of mind.” He sighed again. “No, that’s not true. Actually, I’ve been ducking it, hoping you would snap out of it. I don’t mean to be callous; I just don’t know how to help you. I don’t know what you need, or what I can do to comfort you. You’ll have to tell me. At this point, I don’t even know if I should go on calling you Mrs. Watkins, or if we can be on a first-name basis.”

  He flushed, self-consciously holding and patting her hand. “I . . . I want to be your friend. Very much so. I’m not hitting on you. I mean . . . I want to, but I know it’s not right, not just now. Oh God, what am I saying,” he said, stepping back. “Look, Mrs. Watkins, I’m sorry. I’ve made a mess of this. I just wanted to help. Please just forget this ever happened.”

  He turned and left the room, embarrassed and in haste. Beverly stood for some moments where he left her, staring at the closed door, a blank expression on her face. After a while, she got back into bed. She lay for a long time, staring at the shadows cast on the wall by the courtyard lights that shone dimly through the curtains of her room. She listened to the sounds of traffic in the street, hearing them for the first time. Finally, her eyes closed and she slept. For the first time in several days, she didn’t have nightmares of her husband being murdered.

  After leaving her, Reed paced up and down in his room for the better part of an hour, thinking tumultuous thoughts, angry at himself. For once, he was totally conscious of her, her alone, and the exigencies of their flight were submerged beneath the passionate fire coursing through him. The memory of her softness, of her breasts against him, of the curve of her lower back as it sloped outward into the rounded swell of her hips, hips that he had longed to touch, was burned into the very fiber of his soul. The scent of her lingered in his nostrils. He ached for her. Desire sang through his blood like an exotic drug, so powerful in its urgency that it was almost a madness. Raging adrenaline demanded action, and a new emotion, more powerful than any he had known, spurred him to crash into her room and lose himself in her soft flesh, her sweet scent.

  At the same time, he feared the possible consequences. He wanted the same passionate response from her, not just mechanical submission, and he wasn’t at all certain that she would submit. He knew that a self-possessed woman still lurked within her, a spirit suppressed and submerged by shock, and by her forced dependence on him, but still very much at the root of her being. He felt guilty for his own role in her grief, and thought that she might secretly despise him. He feared to find out. He feared that if she were pushed, she might vanish out of his life forever.

  He realized that, by degrees, he had become used to her being in his life and his thoughts, and he had just found out that he would miss her greatly if she decided to seek her own path.

  His thoughts went round and round, always ending up with no satisfactory conclusions. He called himself a fool for going to her room in the first place. At the same time, he wished that he had kissed that soft, tremulous mouth, and attempted to make love to her. What would her response have been? What did she feel about him? Did she think anything at all about him? Finally, his racing heart subsided, sheer exhaustion set in, and he lay down in bed and fell asleep with the light still on.

  ###

  The following morning began as usual. Reed knocked on her door and they went down to breakfast in the motel restaurant. Reed was his usual, businesslike self, laying out their schedule for the day. He was halfway through eating when he realized that she was just sitting there, silently listening to him and watching his face. He blushed, and sat looking at his plate, not knowing what to say.

  “I would like you to call me Beverly,” she said.

  Reed looked up, surprised. She was smiling tentatively. He smiled back, then laughed, happy and relieved. He held out his hand across the intervening breakfast dishes.

  “Hi Beverly,” he said, “I’m Jim.”

  ###

  Later that day, she lounged on the sofa in his room, watching him and listening as he sat on the bed making innumerable phone calls. She wore jeans and a tank top. Reed was dressed in cut-off blue jeans and a T-shirt. They both wore tennis shoes. She had tied her hair up with a bright red piece of yarn, making a bow atop her head, and put on makeup for the first time since Nathaniel’s death. The TV was on—the volume turned so as to be barely audible.

  Beverly took in Reed’s long, muscular legs and broad frame. His face was ruggedly handsome. Not pretty, but with a masculine cast, and honest, expressive brown eyes. The female in her responded for the first time in a long while. She had been happily married—immersed in her career and the busy pace of her daily job. Suddenly, that had all been torn away, as if it had been only a dream. From that moment until now, Reed had been her only reference point in an unfamiliar world, a world in which she no longer had a place. Reed had been like someone giving her professional help—an expert guide who knew the streets and byways of a world gone dangerous and strange. She had seen him alternate from brief moments of being a big, happy boy to something incommunicative and dangerous.

  When he was in that fey mood, he sometimes reminded her of a stalking panther, cautious and alert to their surroundings. At other times he seemed reckless and confident, as if he knew exactly where he was going, and their surroundings were of no concern at all.

  Suddenly, he was showing his human side again, and she knew that he was smitten with her. She colored slightly, thinking about his awkwardness and discomfiture in the middle of the night. Her life had gone from a staid, predictable, planned existence to a concatenation of wild, new experiences, and she really didn’t know how to respond to any of them. Something about his nocturnal visit had catalyzed all the mingled and suppressed emotions that had troubled her for days. Today was clearer. She felt alive and aware again. The numbness of the past ten days had receded a bit, and she was taking notice of her surroundings. A glimmer of hope had invaded her heart.

  Reed was busily practicing his art, arranging all the minor details that would allow them to blend into the background of mainstream society once again, as new and different people. Like all successful agents, he had his own network of contacts around the globe—people known only to him, who were not the common hired hands of the agency.

  He knew someone who worked in administration at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. The woman maintained a respectable life on the surface and was, at least to Reed, about as honorable as a mercenary gets. She was a computer specialist, and she made her living outside her cover lif
e by selling and manipulating information to those with money and a need.

  Reed had used her often to acquire records of a personal nature, such as financial transactions and personnel data. She had spent years developing routines that could gain entry into the most secure computer nets in the world. Reed had occasionally used her to sift through the intelligence networks of other federal and defense agencies in order to track the petty larceny and graft that covered serious intelligence leaks.

  Many small bureaucrats and military officials knew things of national significance, but would not disclose them because it would require an admission of guilt in some petty dealings of their own. You had to weed through the minor graft to get to the pertinent information. On those occasions, the one being screened seldom knew it. The agency felt it was worth it to tolerate the petty graft, in order to maintain a useful source.

  On this occasion, Reed was having her arrange for false scholastic records to be entered into the computer at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, and credit histories for their new names into the consumer credit network. He and Beverly had spent half the night working out the details of their scholastic and credit histories. They had stuck as close as possible to the truth regarding educational backgrounds.

  When his contact had completed her task, the university’s records showed that a man named Jack Townsend had a degree in communications engineering, and a woman named Eve Lawrence had a Bachelor of Science degree in television journalism, both having graduated from the University of Miami during the 1980s.