The Mantis Page 7

  You need to go, typed Antonio. It's been ten minutes. I love you, and good luck.

  Before she got the chance to type her return, I love you, a knock came on the door.

  "Gabriella, are you okay, dear?" asked Claudia, in her sweet and reaffirming tone. "If you need anything like an antacid, please let me know. I've had my run-ins with travel discomfort too."

  Turning on the water slightly, Gabriella wet her fingertips, and wiped it on her face and the back of her neck and chest. Shutting off the faucet, she moved to the door, opening it up and stepping outside to Claudia with a look of exhaustion on her face.

  "Sorry about that. A little indigestion, I guess. I had a bit to eat at the airport before, and let's just say it hasn't agreed with me the whole time."

  "Well, that's just fine, dear. Let me get you a little something to settle your stomach, maybe some oyster crackers and a little bit of tea." Claudia’s eyes made a quick shift up and down Gabriella.

  Both of the women assessing each other again, could they be trusted, and could the other one be working for the other side? The instincts of both women came alive to assess the situation and find out just exactly what was going on with the other one.

  "You treat me so well, Claudia. Why do you do it?" Gabriella asked, placing her hand on the woman's shoulder.

  "Because you're just like me, darling. When you get to my age, you'll still want to be kicking ass too.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The desk looked no different than it had the days before, despite the fact that Nathan Young had convinced himself that he would do some cleaning.

  The consistent harassment from fellow employees had started out as teasing, but they had now become slightly concerned with Nathan’s complete disorganization and wild nature with which he had conducted his investigations throughout his time with MI6. His saving grace was his approach to filing and keeping track of items. It was plain and it was simple, he caught people.

  The bad guys would shudder at the name of Nathan Young, knowing if he had been assigned to the case that the man would instantly turn into a Pitbull. Chasing people to the ends of the earth before eventually getting his man or woman, and bringing them in to be locked up for their crimes. The murmurs and the questions would all go away each time he led someone in cuffs into the regional office, planting them down in a chair next to his desk, and pushing aside some of the papers for them to place down a cooling cup of coffee that sat in a Styrofoam cup. All eyes would turn toward him, faces from the news and magazines would be sat right before them, and Young would not so much as give a smile to his victory.

  "I really should do something about this," he said to himself. "It’s been about five years since I've cleaned up."

  Outside the door, a secretary giggled hearing the man muttering to himself as he often did. The questioning of his cleanliness had become a running joke, to the extent that on Christmas she had given him a tie that was already spotted with mustard and jams to save him the time from doing it himself.

  "Is that a funny one?" Young said, letting out a small laugh of his own.

  "I hear you saying that about once a week," the secretary replied. "But you're right, it has been about five years."

  "I shouldn't mess with it. Good luck is good luck," Young said back to the secretary. "Like all those footballers, they feel like their socks or underwear are lucky, so they don't change them until they lose. I plan on not changing mine until I retire."

  "The way you've brought everybody in across your career, I don't think anybody wants you to start doing things differently."

  "Thank you, I appreciate it. I'm not the best at making friends around here," Young admitted, showing himself a little more vulnerable than he had been the day before.

  Ring, ring.

  A muttering came from the secretary's area before the red light lit up on his phone, indicating that the intercom was put into action.

  "Mr. Young, I have a woman on the phone saying that she's in urgent need of speaking to you. She said if I let you know that it was G, meaning the letter G, that you would know who it was." The secretary was all too familiar with code names and the secretiveness of the job.

  "Oh, it's old G again, is it?" Young chuckled, trying to create more laughter with his secretary, but only caused her to be concerned of whether the person she had on the phone was legitimate or not. "Go ahead, put her through, she's the real deal. Just make sure you put a track on this one, okay?"

  "Will do, sir, if it's anybody that's not meant to be calling you, we'll have them tracked within minutes," the secretary said, followed by the light on Young's phone coming to life, showing the call on line one.

  "Young, who is this?" He spoke aggressively into the phone, taking no chances that the call could simply be a mistake or from a different person.

  "Is that any way you greet the love of your life?" Gabriella said on the other end of the phone, causing him to smile at the sound of her voice.

  "Well, if it isn't my travelling trouble," Young allowed a flirtatious tone enter into his voice.

  Standing up, Young made his way around and crossed the small area from the front of his desk to the door. He closed it slowly and gently, while catching the eye of his secretary who put on a bashful smile, knowing that her boss was smitten with the person on the other end of the phone.

  "I had a few questions for you, Boss."

  "A few questions, huh?" Young said. "Is that code for needing more equipment and more money?"

  "Not at all, sir. It's the way this whole thing is shaping up. The situations with Claudia and with everybody else around here. Seems like a lot of angles are being played," Gabriella whispered, looking over her shoulder to see if anybody had entered the room or moved into the hallway as she whispered.

  "From what I know, everybody is still on board," Young replied. "The problem is with these types of agents and them being located so far away, there's no way really to keep tabs on everyone."

  "Well, what kind of tabs do you have on these people?" Gabriella asked.

  "What do you think, Gabriella?" Young spoke with a slight irritation in his voice. "Are you suggesting that I might have sent you somewhere knowing that it wasn't secure for you, or put you in contact with informational sources that weren't safe? If I was going to do that, I'd let you know upfront, so you could be prepared."

  "I wouldn't be doing a good job if I didn't check everything," Gabriella returned the intensity in her voice that she felt in his. "All of a sudden, I'm popped into this place and I have this old lady telling me she’s on my team and knowing certain pieces of information, but I haven't heard of her or the contact I’m supposed to rescue before.”

  "The contacts they make over there amongst each other are ones that I can't follow," Young said, feeling more frustration and discomfort at being accused by the woman he cared so much for. "Gabriella, I would not put you in this type of a situation if I thought you were going to be at imminent risk."

  Letting out a small laugh, Gabriella shook her head at the other end of the phone.

  "Imminent risk?" Gabriella asked in a facetious manner. "Everything I do has an imminent risk, just the fact that I'm here is an imminent risk."

  "Point taken," agreed Young. "What I'm telling you is, I'm not gonna send you into a dead zone with no help."

  "I know, Young, it's just hard for me to take, okay?"

  "Are you telling me you want out?" he asked. "If you are, I've got no problem with it. I understand that what you went into may not have been what you totally expected. So much of it has shifted from moment to moment. If you don't think it's safe and you don't think it's right, I'll get you the hell out of there tonight."

  "It's just there's no way to tell who's who and what's going to happen." Gabriella moved to the edge of the doorway and looked down both lengths of the hall to see nothing. "Sending this call out to you, I had to bounce it through four different encryptions to feel comfortable, and then it bounced all over the world before getti
ng to you. You can tell the secretary there's no way she's gonna trace it, I could be on here until Christmas and she wouldn't find a thing."

  "I don't know, my secretary's pretty damn good," Young said with a big smile. "She carries the title of secretary, but she's really got some pretty serious black ops crap going on."

  "I can imagine. Can type a hundred and eighty words a minute, but can also track phone calls and set an explosive." Gabriella let herself laugh genuinely for the first time in days. "The question is, I've got no way of vetting any of these people, how do I know who I can trust and who I can't?"

  "Gabriella, you can't trust anybody, ever" Young let his voice go gentle and then to silence, at the end of the words.

  "Nobody?" Gabriella asked. "What about you?"

  "You can't trust anyone, Gabriella," Young said again. "If you trust anybody too much, it's just gonna be a problem. And that includes me. Don't let your guard down for anybody, not for Claudia, not for me, not for anybody. You've chosen to do your kind of work as a freelancer, and because you've chosen to do it that way, you have to make sure you're shielded on every single side."

  "So you're saying I'm running this alone?"

  "You've ran every mission alone," Young confirmed. "From the first one you did with us, and probably the hundreds of others that you've done for other people, you have always worked by yourself and with nobody else. You might get a contact here or there, but from my understanding, when I get intel back from places, you don't put a whole lot of stock in anybody else's word. I had one lady tell me you're a seeing is believing person. And that if you don't see it and you don't believe it, then you kill it."

  "I do have a habit of that," Gabriella sighed, reflecting why she needed so badly to know that there was safety of where she was, when the thought of having confirmed people working with her had never been an issue before.

  "Are you having memories from when you were younger?" Young asked her softly. "You could be having some struggles with this stuff all coming back up, even you are human."

  "Yes, there has been some of that. Just as I go to different places, I remember it from when I was a child, and I can remember some of the people from the streets that I had... interactions with."

  "It's okay, Gabriella, you can say it, you can say that they mistreated you." Young had a gentle and caring inflection in his voice of a father for his daughter, even from thousands of miles away. "And you can say that you killed them. They deserved it. They deserved to die."

  "This isn't something I can get into right now." Gabriella quickly shifted the conversation and pulled herself from the doorway. "So, in the end, you're just giving me shit. You're not telling me if I can trust these people or not, you're not letting me know a damn thing."

  "If you need me to be your enemy, Gabriella, that's fine. You've been there for me many times, and you've been there to enhance my career by the work that you've done," Young spoke softly and slowly. "You can focus on me and get mad at me, and I'm happy to take it for you, because I consider you a friend and someone that I can trust, and someone that would be there for me if I needed her."

  "That's all great, Nathan. The only damn problem is I'm sitting here just outside of Moscow, and things are about to go absolutely fucking crazy." Gabriella spoke forcefully. "I can't have mistakes anymore, and I need someone that's gonna put me in the best position to succeed."

  "You are in the best position to succeed," Young said with a stern tone in his voice. "You signed up for this kind of work, you know what it's like, and if all of a sudden this isn't the kind of job for you, that's perfectly fine. Everybody burns out on this, no one can keep going. Just try to not blame me for it."

  Gabriella sat in silence listening to the words of the man she knew had a fancy for her, and who she knew would do anything to protect her. Lashing out at him and blaming him was the easiest thing to do, because she was clear in her mind that he would never abandon her and would welcome her back with open arms.

  "Okay, London, I guess I'm going at it on my own. I'll bring you the head of who you want." Gabriella sighed and hung up the phone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “That’s it right across the street.” Claudia closed the door to the office behind her. “Don’t look straight out the window or they will pick you up in minutes. They have cameras that scan the area all day and night.”

  Moving behind the desk, Claudia took a seat and pulled open the top draw, removing a pen. Swiveling in the chair, she dropped the blinds with a quick pull on the cord and twisted the rod, opening them to about forty percent.

  “That should do us well. Take a seat.” Claudia motioned to the open seat in front of the desk. “If we can see them, they can see us.”

  “So, this is your legal practice?” Gabriella asked with a quick wink and a smile. “You’re a woman of many talents.”

  “I just work here on occasion. We have the room scrubbed daily by the attorney who works here. Once in a while he finds some recording device and causes it to malfunction.” Claudia shrugged.

  “The new bosses are not big on that privacy part of the democracy?”

  “Good god, no.” Claudia pulled out a compact from her purse and flipped it open. Looking into the mirror she inspected her face then placed the compact on the table, still open. “That will do fine for me to get a look at them. As for the spying, it is something the KGB has never got out of their system. They will spy just to spy. A kind of reflex action has over taken the whole agency.”

  “I take it that my contact is in that police station just across the intersection,” Gabriella noted. “Nothing like making it close to impossible to get him.”

  “That’s not the half of it, sweetie. He isn’t just in there, he is under there.” Claudia leaned across the table looking hard into the mirror of the compact. Several men gathered in front of the door of the police station, with one of the men taking charge and pointing in various directions sending the other men scattering. “The police in the building do not even know he is in the basement. This is just for the KGB. I know, because I was making my way through the ranks years ago when they opened that place, and I watched as it was built.”

  “How did you know it was going to be for the KGB?”

  “An attractive young man named Victor was a love interest of mine. He did a lot of construction that was issued by the state. He had the plans to everything.” Claudia smiled at the memory.

  “So, did you see him for business or pleasure?” asked Gabriella, seeing if she could get the older woman to blush.

  “Well the business often turned into pleasure.” Claudia winked. “But my mind was always on the task. We would go out and dance the night away. We would return to his apartment for a night-cap, and then I would slip a little something in his drink. As he slept the night away, I went through the plans to every building built by his company. Photos, names, phone numbers, everything about anyone connected to the project.”

  “That’s fantastic,” Gabriella praised.

  “I have always got far more from men with a smile than with a punch.”

  Gabriella erupted into laughter reflecting on her own experiences.

  “I would like to ask you something very serious though, Gabriella,” Claudia spoke as the laughter settled down. “Why do you trust me?”

  “I don’t,” Gabriella replied calmly. “Just like you do not trust me. We keep checking one another, looking to see if there is some other angle being played. It is in our nature.”

  “You’re right about that,” Claudia smiled. “But you took to me easily, and that leaves me with two things you could have in mind. One, is you are not who you say and you are working me for information. Two, you could be just that confident in your skills that you feel you could take me out at any time.”

  Sitting and nodding her head slightly, Gabriella crossed her legs, not saying a word.

  “I think you are that confident,” Claudia decided. “When England called about you, they gave no back up plan. I
t was as if you could not be stopped, and they knew you would be on time and on target.”

  “They have confidence in me.”

  “Then we met. I was struck by your beauty, but that is not uncommon in our work. It was your eyes that really hit me,” Claudia told her. “You are the woman they call Mantis, aren’t you?”

  “I have heard of her, but it is not me.” Gabriella shook her head. “I have the eyes, so people assume it is me, but it isn’t.”

  “Even if it were, you would not tell me,” Claudia spoke with wisdom. “I was the Mantis in my day. They did not call me that. I got the nickname, Sandy. The men joked that I was the sandman because of how many targets I would put to sleep with different potions. That’s when I did my best work. Many a man woke up in a bed with my naked body, but nothing had happened… though that’s not what I told them.”

  “You sound like you have the skills of a master of this profession.”

  “Your reputation will proceed you wherever you go,” continued Claudia, turning away the praise. “I am sure the name Mantis is well known by every terrorist group in the world. It is a matter of time before they catch up to you. We have a shelf life. You need to remember that. Do you understand?”

  Nodding her head, Gabriella felt the cold stare of a woman who knew what she was talking about. “Thank you for the advice.”

  “No problem. It eventually caught up with me, and I was useless until I got old,” Claudia confided with a smile that held a sadness within it. “Be selective, but not today. Today we are going into that station across the street.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Pulling the drawer of the desk open Claudia reached in, removed the key, and slid it across the desk to Gabriella.