ATHENS, GREECE

EXCERPT 1
“I saw you die!”

“You saw me fall off the building.”

“Yes, and you died! I saw it happen. The explosion from below. The fireball that swept up. Your last look. I’ve relived that moment every day since. Oh my God, Marnie, I was there. I saw it all.”

“And I’m here with you, Dan.” “You’re not. You can’t be.”

“I am and we can be together again.”

She reached out to him. Dan Reilly stepped back and stared. She was wearing the same dress, green blouse, and leather jacket she had worn that day in Stockholm; the day Marnie Babbitt returned to his hotel room seemingly regretful; wishing things were different; wanting to make them so.

“You loved me, Dan,” the brunette said softly. “You can love me again. Tonight. Here in Athens.”

Dan Reilly stopped retreating. Yes, he thought. Here. Athens.

He looked at the surroundings. Nighttime traffic was flowing along Adrianou Street. Horns honked. Couples walked arm-in-arm. Tourists window-shopped. Everything was normal until the woman he had desperately loved, the woman who had betrayed him stepped out of the shadows in front of him and into the light of a street lamp.

Dan Reilly had just concluded a successful business meeting at Kuzina, one of Athens’ most celebrated restaurants that boasted a magnificent view of The Temple of Hephaestus, the Agora, and the Acropolis. He had come to discuss the final terms for his company’s acquisition of a luxury hotel property currently owned by a Greek billionaire. It would take lawyers months to solidify the terms, but atop the restaurant’s Tarazza, with the golden glow of the Acropolis backlighting them, Reilly and the seller toasted to their relationship with a final glass of Ouzo.

It had been a good night for the International President of Kensington Royal Hotel Corporation. As he had walked along the cobblestones on Adrianou, Marnie Babbitt was not on his mind, but suddenly she was there alive and vibrant as ever. Her beauty took his breath away. Her voice was as soft and lilting as the last whispers in his ear.

Or the last lies, he thought.

“No lies, Dan,” she said as if reading his mind. “This time it will be different.”

At first, Reilly had felt immobile. Then he was drawn to her.

She reached out to him and stroked his cheek. Her touch was as present as ever. The light gave her an almost ethereal glow. She looked longingly into his eyes and proved she was alive with a lingering, deep kiss. Then she said, “Is that the kiss of a dead woman?”

Her tongue, her scent, and her breath were just as he remembered.

Just as he missed. So was the quickening of his heartbeat.

He withdrew and looked into her brown eyes. They were so bright and inviting.

“You missed me. I know you did.” She smiled and took a step back into the shadows. “Come with, Dan.”

The sounds of the city faded away. Gone were the car horns and sirens, people talking, dogs barking, car doors slamming, and footsteps on the sidewalk. Everything around him blurred. There was just Marnie and him. He felt his desire for her grow. Then he thought of Yibing Cheng, the woman now in his life.

“But—” 

“It’s all right my darling. I know that there’s someone else. But I’m back. You want me.”

More thoughts from his head. How did she know? “You want us to be together again.”

“Marnie, I saw…

“You saw what we wanted you to see.”

She leaned forward and kissed him again. She felt him. He responded. “Now I’m here. To be with you.”

He withdrew.

“Don’t you want that, Dan? Don’t you want me?” “Marnie…”

“Yes.”

“Marnie,” he said again. “Yes, my love.”

“But you’re—”

She suddenly laughed. Her brown eyes went black.

Maybe it was the Ouzo, but all he initially felt was a prick in his stomach. Then he looked down. There was the hand that he had loved caressing. But now it held the black handle of a Russian Kizlyar Spetsnaz Special Forces knife.

He brought his eyes up to hers. She smiled cruelly, waited a moment, and then twisted the 6.5-inch blade and sliced upwards.

Reilly tried to speak. He couldn’t. He felt his legs crumble, but Marnie Babbitt’s grip on the knife kept him on his feet. She twisted again.

“Why?” Reilly silently gurgled.

“Because this is the way it should have ended.”

Marnie’s words confused him. He grabbed her hand with his. Blood soaked them both.

Should have ended?

Reilly tried to pull out the knife, but she was stronger. Life began to leave him.

With a sickly sweet laugh, she repeated, “This is the way it should have ended. You, not me.”

Should…have…ended. The words were familiar. He’d heard them before. Many times before.

“No!” Reilly shouted in full-throated defiance. “This is not how it should end! And…you…are… dead!”

“What?”

“You’re dead,” he shouted. “You’re dead!” “No, Dan. No! It’s all right.”

He was shaking violently. “Dan!”

Dan Reilly bolted upright. He automatically grabbed his stomach. It was wet, but from sweat, not blood. And the woman whose concerned voice was cutting through his dream belonged to Yibing Cheng.

“Dan, Dan, it’s okay. You’re here with me. Yibing.”

Reilly slowly collected his thoughts. Yibing turned on a night light and faced the man she’d been seeing for just a few months. They were in Athens, but he was not on the street bleeding. But he had had nights like this—in Paris, Washington, and where Reilly and Yibing had first met, Beijing.

“Your dream again?” she asked. He gathered his thoughts.

“Yes, except this time it was here. Outside our restaurant last night.

The street—”

“I’m so sorry,” Yibing said pulling him close to her naked body.

What did she do?”

“At least she didn’t throw me into a woodchipper this time,” Reilly replied lightly. “No plastic bag over my head. No fall from a cliff.” He rubbed his gut. “But she was pretty good with a knife, even for a dream.”

Reilly knew what was going on. Shrinks might call it PTSD. He saw it more as a combination of guilt over the fact that he failed to recognize Marnie Babbitt was a Russian plant and guilt that he couldn’t save her the moment he realized she wanted out. It was all manifesting itself in very vivid revenge dreams. But it was not paranoia.

There was more that wasn’t in his dream world. Dan Reilly had seen drones out his window after he and Yibing had returned from Beijing. He’d spotted people following them. And they were not his people. Not Yibing’s either.

For now, he viewed the tails and eavesdropping as intimidation. Russian or possibly Chinese. But it could get worse. It likely would get worse and not because he was an international hotel executive. It was his moonlighting. Dan Reilly had deep ties with officers at the CIA and even deeper ties with the United States Secretary of State.

 

EXCERPT 2
Two hours in and no marlin. But that wasn’t because the fish hadn’t bit. Santiago was floating lazily in the waters six miles off Miami without a line in the water. This was all he needed.

One sandwich gone. One bottle of water. It was still too early to crack open a beer. The cigar was another thing. It was half-smoked when he saw a small somebody adrift some 300 yards away. He strained his eyes. A person, he thought a woman, was waving frantically on a drifting Jet Ski. It looked like she was calling out, but he was too far away to hear. Duty kicked in. Santiago engaged the engine, brought the cat around, and pushed ahead at 12 knots.

He was right. The person in distress was absolutely a woman, an olive-skinned beauty in a bikini. Indian, he first thought, maybe

Brazilian or Middle Eastern. Nothing unusual for such an international city as Miami.

“My engine died,” she said apologetically with no noticeable accent. “Thank God you were out here.”

“You got that right,” Santiago said nudging up alongside her. He slowed and tossed the woman a line which she attached to her Jet Ski. “How’d you get out this far in that?”

“I guess I calculated distance badly. Then I ran out of gas.”

The woman definitely needed help. He was used to being around to help.

“No problem. I can tow you back in.”

As he extended his hand to her, he considered, there were worse things in the world.

She smiled as she came aboard. “You’re damned lucky.”

“I sure know that now. Thank you. I lost sight of the shore and didn’t remember east from west.”

“Well, you went way east.”

“But ending up in able hands,” she replied.

It sounded suggestive, enticing, almost unbelievable. Bells should have gone off in Santiago’s mind. Training should have kicked in. Instead, he offered the woman a sandwich and a beer.

“I suppose names would be good since we’ll have a few hours together.”

“Of course, I’m Parisa. Parisa Dhafari.”

“Iranian,” he said noting the name and placing the accent. “Very good, Mister—”

“Santiago. Carlos will do.”

The name Dhafari sounded familiar. He couldn’t place it. And it didn’t seem important. It was.

After another hour with the waves kicking up and Dhafari’s Jet Ski bouncing on the tow line, he said they should head back. Santiago offered to secure her craft better.

 “I’ll do it,” she said. “You ready your boat.”

She hopped back over, doubled the line, and returned with her backpack that had been tied to the Jet Ski.

Santiago started his engine, checked the map, got his bearings, turned the catamaran toward the shore, and reacted to what felt like a bug bite on his neck.

He automatically reached up and scratched. He sensed a certain numbness. Numbness? No, worse. He turned with more effort than seemed necessary. The woman stood aft, near the outboards. She was now covered up with a sweater and looking anything but sexy.

His brain sent words to his mouth—her name, but he couldn’t talk.

Her name? He knew it was familiar. Then the thought was gone.

Santiago’s heavy eyes drifted down. She was holding something. Pointing it toward him. He struggled to identify it. Somewhere through his fog, he recognized the item: A gun. A Glock 17. Police and military. U.S. Army Special Forces and— And who? A recollection formed.

He desperately tried to speak. He mouthed her name, but nothing came out. His legs began to buckle. Carlos Santiago wobbled forward. Report…in. But that notion faded. And again he reached for the wom- an’s name. Syllables formed. Da-far-e, Yes, yes. He knew it. He’d read it—on a report—from work—a woman who had been killed planting a bomb on the exterior of a hotel—flights up. But…

Then came a swirl of overlapping, fleeting images. Blue Marlin on the end of a fishing line. Someone named Elizabeth. A badge. A huge airplane with a red, white, and blue flag. And, a little boy saluting a man in a uniform leaving his house. Daddy.

Carlos Santiago collapsed onto the deck. He wasn’t dead yet, but he was paralyzed. Parisa Dhafari now moved fast before his bladder released and she would have to clean up the mess. The catamaran needed to be spotless when she left.

She put her pistol down. Fortunately, it hadn’t been needed. She dragged Santiago starboard, lifted him, and leaned his torso overboard. He didn’t resist. He couldn’t resist. Next, she reached into her backpack, produced a switchblade, opened it, and sliced his arm that was draped over the side. She tossed the knife into the water and then, with one hefty push, flung the Director of the Secretary of State’s Diplomatic Security Service, the DSS, overboard wondering if the sharks that feasted on him would also be affected by the poison still working its way through his body. She didn’t wait to see.

After wiping the rental boat clean of her fingerprints, she returned to her Jet Ski, released the line, and drifted away from the unmanned rental with ample fuel and a half-smoked cigar.

One problem solved, mused the assassin, sister of Dominique Dhafari who had been killed in a Washington, D.C. hotel bombing. Easier than most. This was the first of three assignments. The next would be harder, yet more thrilling. The third, pure revenge.