The Phoenix Encounter

Chapter 1

Twenty-one months later

Somewhere in Virginia

Doctor Robert Davidson left his BMW in the parking lot and took the redbrick path toward the building at the rear of the complex. It was a path he’d walked plenty of times in the last year and a half. A path he’d never imagined he would take. But even though he’d been reluctant at first, he walked it with a great sense of pride. Of duty. Of respect.

Just that morning Robert had been summoned by Samuel Hatch, director of the top-secret division of the CIA known only as ARIES. The call had come just before 5:00 a.m. Like all of Hatch’s transmissions, it had been brief and to the point, with few details. Hatch needed an agent with Robert’s expertise and credentials. He would be deployed immediately. Long-term assignment. High-level security clearance. Top-secret mission.

The drive from Robert’s home outside Washington D.C. had taken just over two hours. Stiff from the long drive, he ignored the tinge of pain in his thigh as he passed several low-rise buildings where ivy flourished on the redbrick exterior. From the outside, the center looked like an Ivy League college financed by trust funds and old money. Robert knew differently. Behind the genteel facade lay one of the American government’s most top-secret facilities in the world. With emphasis on foreign intelligence, biomedical research, genetic engineering and high-tech gadgetry, the ARIES boys and girls played with toys the CIA didn’t even dream of. Toys that, in the eyes of the rest of the world, hadn’t yet been invented. The ARIES agents, scientists and researchers had the best of everything. Money was never a problem because when it came to ARIES, Uncle Sam had bottomless pockets.

Robert told himself he wasn’t nervous as he swiped his security card through the reader, then punched in his six-digit PIN number. He didn’t get nervous. Once a man had had his world shaken the way he had twenty-one months ago, it took a lot more than a cryptic call in the middle of the night to shake him.

The steel-core door slid open to a small, windowless room with a tile floor and three white walls. Dead ahead, an elevator door dominated the fourth wall. In the center of the room, black inlaid tile formed a thick line on the floor. Robert stepped up to the line, then looked into the lens of the camera glaring at him and waited for the identification scan to begin. An instant later, a green light flickered, letting him know the retinal scan was complete. The elevator door swished open, and he stepped inside. Frowning at the panel mounted next to the door, he set his palm against the glass and waited while his palm and fingerprints were scanned and the images run through the ARIES personal identification database. Like every other piece of equipment at the ARIES center, the security system was light-years ahead of its time and utterly fail-safe.

Once the green light flashed to tell him his prints had been scanned and approved, Robert pressed the button to the underground level, and the elevator rushed him toward ARIES’s inner sanctum and Samuel Hatch’s private office a hundred feet below ground.

He assured himself a second time that it wasn’t nerves gnawing at his gut. For one thing, Robert didn’t believe in premonitions. Still, he couldn’t deny he had a feeling about this assignment. Hatch didn’t call on his ARIES agents for anything but the most difficult of tasks. He wondered what the good director was going to ask him to do this time.

The elevator doors whooshed open. Robert stepped into a large room filled with low-rise cubicles, about half of them occupied by men and women hunched over computers or speaking into communication headsets. He spotted Carla Juarez, who waved, flashed a dazzling smile, then turned her wheelchair and headed in his direction. Robert watched her approach and smiled for the first time that day. He liked Carla. She was young and pretty with a lovely sense of humor. Up until a year ago she’d been a field operative. Then she’d taken a bullet in her back during a deep cover operation in Eastern Europe. The injury had left her partially paralyzed. She’d been through hell in the last year—something he identified with even though they’d never discussed anything so personal. But unlike Robert, Carla had never grown bitter.

“Hey, Dr. Davidson, how’s it going?” she asked.

Because he didn’t want to answer that truthfully, Robert put on a grin and lied through his teeth. “Couldn’t be better.”

She rolled her eyes. “For an agent, you’re not a very good liar.”

“Thanks.” Leaning forward, he pressed a kiss to her cheek. “I think.”

“Pin bothering you?”

Subconsciously, he brushed his hand over his left thigh. “Must be a front coming in,” he said shortly, not because he was annoyed but because it embarrassed him to complain about his leg to a woman with a severed spinal cord.

“Takes time,” she said breezily. “Been able to run yet?”

“I’m up to two miles.” It hurt like hell, but he ran. He’d be damned if he was going to spend the rest of his life letting the residual damage from a shattered femur keep him idle. “Played basketball a couple of weeks ago.”

“Ethan told me he beat your butt.”

“I guess that makes him a better liar than me.”

“And a sore loser.” She smiled. “Hatch is expecting you.”

“Thanks.” Robert opened the door to find Samuel Hatch standing at the back of his office looking at a tiny, withered plant.

He looked over his shoulder at Robert and scowled. “Damn strawberry plant is going to die on me,” he muttered.

“They need sunlight.”

“Security had a cow when I suggested I get an office with a view.”

Robert stepped closer and glanced at the plant, wondering why a man like Hatch was so concerned with a scraggly little plant no one cared about. “They like sandy soil,” he offered. “Or maybe some cow manure.”

At Hatch’s questioning look, he added, “I worked in a nursery part-time during high school.”

“I’ll see if procurement can get me a plant light and some cow poop, then.”

Hatch left the plant and seated himself behind his desk. Robert guessed him to be about sixty years of age, though he could pass for forty-five. He was bald on top but kept the rest of his gray hair cropped short. He was of medium height and slightly rumpled in appearance. Part soldier, part scientist, he was fit for his age and glowing with health. He would have been ordinary-looking if not for the sharp intelligence that burned like gemstones in his green eyes.

Robert took the adjacent chair and waited for the briefing to begin.

“How’s the leg?” Hatch asked, pulling a file from his drawer and setting it on the desk between them.

Robert shifted uncomfortably in the chair, wondering how the other man would react if he answered truthfully. “No problems.”

“You running?”

“Twice a week. Two miles.”

“Good. I like my agents in shape.” Hatch opened the file. “I need you to go to Rebelia.”

For a moment, Robert wasn’t sure he’d heard him right. Then the meaning behind the single word struck him like a rude slap. Dread curdled in his stomach. He stared at the older man, aware that his heart rate had spiked, that a cold sweat had broken out on the back of his neck.

“I know how you feel about Rebelia, Robert, but—”

“I don’t think you do—”

“Dr. Alex Morrow is still missing.” Hatch cut him off. “I want my operative back.”

Robert had never met Morrow, but he’d heard of his work as a environmental biologist within the ARIES network. The man was brilliant. A legend in a few circles. “I knew he was missing. I thought you’d send someone else.”

Hatch looked at him with those sharp green eyes. “You know Rebelia.”

Robert shifted uneasily in his chair, wishing he’d never heard of that godforsaken country, trying hard to control the pounding of his heart—and the bitterness at the back of his throat.

“I need you, Robert. You know Rebelia and her people better than any man in the division,” Hatch said. “You know the customs. The language, the regional dialects. You have contacts—”

“Hatch, with all due respect I haven’t been in the country for almost two years.”

“Save the excuses, Robert.” A hint of ice laced Hatch’s voice. “I’m not asking.”

Clamping his jaws together, Robert looked at his hands, then at Hatch. “Rebelia is still pretty volatile these days.”

“You can handle it.” Hatch’s eyes narrowed, sharpened. “Can’t you?”

After an interminable moment, Robert nodded. He could handle it. But he sure as hell didn’t like it. Not because of the civil war, but because of the ghosts.

“All right,” he said. “I’m in. What do you need?”

“Your mission is twofold. Your first priority is to set up a base of operations for what will be the third leg of the mission. While you’re there I want you to find out everything you can about Bruno DeBruzkya.”

The sweat on Robert’s neck turned to ice at the mention of DeBruzkya. He could feel the muscles bunching with tension. “You mean aside from his being a ruthless son of a bitch?”

“Intelligence tells us he’s been stealing gems.”

“I know about the gems.”

“Then I’ll recap what we know so far. We have substantial evidence telling us that he’s behind at least four heists. The Stedt Museum in London. The Legvold collection in Stockholm. A private collector in Frankfurt.”

“The Gala Summit.” Robert had been there as part of the surveillance team. He knew what had gone down. And he knew Hatch had nearly lost one of his agents. “Do you have any intelligence as to why he’s amassing gems.”

“Could be any number of things. Maybe he’s financing weapons. Maybe something worse. I want to know.”

Robert didn’t even want to think about what a sinister man like DeBruzkya could do with weapons of mass destruction.

Hatch frowned at him. “We need to know what he’s up to. The gems are secondary, but some information would be nice at this point.”

Robert’s nerves coiled a notch tighter. He stared at Hatch, wondering if the other man knew how much he hated DeBruzkya. If Hatch knew Robert held the dictator responsible not only for an injury that had left him permanently maimed, but for the death of a woman he’d once loved more than life itself. He knew that wasn’t the most objective mind-set for a field agent about to embark on a deep-cover mission, but Robert never claimed to be a good agent.

“What’s my cover?” he asked.

Hatch handed him a slender manila folder with the name PHOENIX typed in bold letters on the tab. “Your papers are inside. French passport. Medical degree. You’re part of a team of medical doctors traveling to Rebelia from Paris to administer medical aid to sick and injured children. Your meeting point is in a small village outside Rajalla. It’s all there in the file in French. Your initial contact will meet you at a pub on the outskirts of the city and take you to your source, who will give you enough information on DeBruzkya for you to get started.”

Robert took the file and paged through it, seeing that, as usual, Samuel Hatch and his team had been very thorough. “I guess I’ll need to brush up on my French.”

“And your Rebelian dialects. All communication will be via the ARIES satellite. I’ve got new encoding set up. Your code name is PHOENIX.”

“When do I leave?”

Hatch glanced at his watch. “Two hours. I’ve got a jet waiting at Annapolis that will take you to La Guardia. From there you’ll take the Concorde to Paris then hop on the train to Rajalla.”

Robert slid the folder into his briefcase and rose. “All right.”

Hatch stood, regarding him with intelligent green eyes that invariably gave the impression he could read not only one’s body language but thoughts, as well. “Watch yourself.” He extended his hand. “You know what DeBruzkya is capable of.”

“I can handle DeBruzkya.” As he shook the other man’s hand, Robert knew the real question was whether or not he could handle the ghosts.

At eight the next evening Robert sat in a greasy booth in an obscure little pub called Ludwig’s and nursed a stein of watered-down beer. The pub was crowded with weekend revelers. The booze was cheap, the cigarette smoke was thick and talk was of the old days and revolution.

Robert sipped his beer, wishing he were anywhere but this dank little bar in a country he wished to God he’d never set foot in. He’d been in Rebelia less than two hours, and already she dominated his thoughts. The last hours they’d spent together, making love on the narrow bed in her room above the pub. The fight they’d had over her refusal to leave with him. The violence of her death. The black months that followed.

He knew thinking of her wasn’t going to do a damn thing for his frame of mind or his mission. But he’d never learned how to block thoughts of her. Damn it, of all the places Hatch could have shipped him to, why did it have to be this hellhole? It wasn’t like the world was lacking hellholes. Any one of a dozen or so would have done just fine.

Restless, he finished his beer and motioned for the bartender to bring another. He wasn’t enjoying it, but he didn’t have anything else to do until his contact arrived. He’d already set up base camp, renting a small apartment above a market in a seedy section of town, where he’d installed the tiny communications satellite dish and left a backup short wave radio per Hatch’s instructions. He knew he should keep a clear head, but for the first time in a long time, Robert didn’t want a clear head. Sometimes all that clarity made life a hell of a lot more difficult.

“Sir?”

Robert looked up from his beer to see a young man with black hair and a matching mustache grinning at him, and he took a long sip of beer. “Get lost.”

“I’m Jacques.”

Robert watched him closely, zeroing in on his restless hands and nervous fidget and went with the predesignated script. “What’s your sign, Jacques?”

The other man didn’t blink. “ARIES, sir.”

“If you’re an ARIES, what does that make me?”

“PHOENIX.”

The code words confirmed that this young man with the engaging smile and vivid blue eyes was, indeed, his contact. Robert extended his hand. “I was starting to think you weren’t going to show.”

“The soldiers set up a roadblock, sir. They’re angry at the rebels again. I had to wait them out.”

“Hopefully, they’re not feeling trigger-happy this evening. I don’t feel like getting shot at.” Robert rubbed the dull ache in his thigh.

“Yes, sir.”

“And cut out the sir crap.”

“Yes, s—” Jacques flushed. “What do I call you?”

“My close friends call me PHOENIX.” Rising, Robert dug five Rebelian dollars out of his pocket and left them on the table. “Let’s go.”

The young man glanced toward a narrow door at the rear of the bar. “This way.”

Looking once over his shoulder, Robert followed Jacques past the bar and out the back door into a narrow alley. Two men clad in ragged coats and dangerous scowls stood against the crumbling brick building smoking Rebelian cigarettes. They eyed Robert with a combination of hostility and suspicion. Robert stared back, keenly aware that if something went wrong he was on his own, outnumbered three to one and without a sidearm to boot.

“Hey, you the American?”

Robert glanced at the tall man with a bald head and full beard and mustache. His nerves jumped when the man reached into his coat pocket. A dozen scenarios rushed through his mind. For an instant he considered reaching for the switchblade strapped to his calf, but he knew if the other man had a gun there was no way he’d get to it in time. Adrenaline cut a path through his gut when the man produced a small, lethal-looking pistol.

Never taking his eyes from the pistol, he raised his hands and took a step back. “What the hell is this?” he growled.

Turning the pistol so the butt faced Robert, the bald man laughed outright, then passed the pistol to him. “You Americans are so jumpy.”

The three men broke into hearty laughter. Robert wasn’t amused and snarled a very American profanity as he accepted the pistol and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans.

“You’re a real comedian,” he said.

“Thank you.”

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Robert said, “If you’re finished joking around, how about if you take me to my contact?”

The bald man scratched the top of his head and glanced at the other two men. He spoke in rapid Rebelian. Robert was only able to catch every other word or so, but what he was able to decipher gave him a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Your contact is a very important person within the rebel movement,” said Jacques.

“Somehow I already figured that out.” Robert stared at him, waiting, wondering what the hell these three men were up to. “Take me to him.”

“The only way I can do that is to blindfold you.”

“Look, either you trust me or you don’t,” Robert snapped.

The three men exchanged looks again. The bald man spoke first. “This has nothing to do with trust.”

“Then why the blindfold?”

“Because if the soldiers capture you, they will torture you until you reveal the location of our headquarters. We can’t risk that. The blindfold is for your own protection, my friend.”

Because of the threat of hostile soldiers, the journey to the rebel stronghold was made on foot. Blindfolded, Robert walked behind Jacques with the bald man and his cohort bringing up the rear. A mile into the walk, his left thigh began to throb. Robert had learned to deal with the pain, mostly by directing his thoughts elsewhere. He was a firm believer in the mind-over-matter philosophy and had decided a long time ago that the injury was not going to limit his physical capabilities. Of course, the injury didn’t always cooperate.

The cold rain wasn’t helping matters. But Robert used the cold and wet to keep his mind off the pain. Still, after three miles, his limp became so pronounced that the bald man paused and touched him on the shoulder. “Do you need to stop and rest, American?”

The blindfold pressed soggily against his eyes. Robert smelled wet foliage and damp earth and guessed they were probably deep in the forests to the north of Rajalla. Cold rain dripped down the collar of his jacket, and the material pressed wetly against his back. His leg ached with every beat of his heart. But because stopping wasn’t going to help any of those things, he shook his head. “Let’s keep moving.”

“It’s not much farther.”

He concentrated on his mission objectives as he walked, formulating questions for his Rebelian contact. He wanted a run down on DeBruzkya. Rumors about an American who had been captured. Or gems. He tried hard to keep his mind on the business at hand, but his thoughts went repeatedly to a woman with iridescent hazel eyes.

“You can take off the blindfold.”

Thankful to be rid of the soggy material, Robert stopped and stripped it off. They were in the midst of a forest thick with tall trees and low-growing brush. Ahead, he could just make out the jagged peaks of the mountains and knew they were heading north. Blinking to clear his eyes, he spotted a faint path that wove between the trees to a small cottage nestled beneath the thick canopy of Rebelian pines. Yellow light shone in the windows. Smoke chugged from a stone chimney, and the smell of wood smoke hung in the air.

“Your contact is inside.” Smiling, Jacques reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “We’re glad to have you here, American.”

Meeting his gaze, Robert saw the sincerity behind the words, the truth in the other man’s eyes, and nodded. “We believe in freedom in America,” he said.

Bowing slightly, Jacques backed away. “Your contact knows how to reach me if you need anything.”

Robert stood in the rain and watched the three men disappear down the trail, then looked through the trees at the cottage. The sight was surreal in the utter darkness, like something out of an old fairy tale. A pretty cottage surrounded by a beautiful forest and the backdrop of breathtaking mountains. He wasn’t sure why, but the sight made him think about Lily. She would have liked it here.

“Don’t go there, buddy,” he said, cursing the ghosts that refused to give him peace even after so many months.

He pulled the old revolver from the waistband of his jeans, checked the cylinder and found it loaded. Hoping his contact knew English, he shoved the revolver into the waistband of his jeans, and started toward the cottage.

His heart pounded hard and fast as he stepped onto the stone porch and knocked on the door. Instinctively, he stood to one side, just in case whomever was on the inside had a nervous trigger finger and decided to shoot first and ask questions later. He saw a shadow move inside the window, and his nerves zinged. Resting his right hand lightly on the butt of the pistol, he knocked again.

The door swung open. Recognition sparked like a hot wire and sent a surge of shock to his brain. Robert stumbled back. His first fleeting thought was that he was seeing his first ghost.

Lily.

He stared at her, aware of his heart pounding in his chest. He tried to utter her name, but his brain was so overwhelmed, he couldn’t speak. All he could think was that he’d seen her die. That it was an absolute impossibility for Lillian Scott to be standing there in a thick cotton sweater and faded blue jeans staring at him as if he were the one who’d come back from the dead instead of her.

A thousand words tangled inside Robert, but he choked on every one of them as if they were shards of glass. Emotions snapped through him like thunderbolts, shocking his body with their awesome power. He stared at the woman standing in the doorway, aware of his heart raging in his chest, the dull roar of blood rushing through his veins.

He couldn’t believe Lily was alive. But it was her; he knew it as surely as he saw the flash of recognition in her hazel eyes. There was no other woman like her. No other who could affect him like this. He would know her anywhere and under any circumstance. He would know her in the dark, just by the feel of her, the scent of her. The energy surrounding her.

Robert stared, speechless and shocked to his bones. Her hair was longer, but still as radiant as burnished copper. She had the same flawless skin, as fragile as fine German porcelain. Only now there was a tiny scar that ran from her left eyebrow to the hairline at her temple.