3
“Sheikh Hyder,” said Benson. Those were the first words he said to her. She hadn’t even sat down yet. In fact he hadn’t even invited her to take a seat.
“Never heard of him,” Kathryn said, though the name did ring a bell. A vague, distant bell.
Benson looked up from the black leather binder on his brown desk. He smiled. “Good. And you don’t speak Arabic either, right?”
“Not a goddamn word, Sir.” Kathryn felt her lips twisting into an obstinate, almost sulky smile. Perhaps Benson would change his mind now. Suddenly she didn’t want to do this job. None of it. She wanted out. Now, dammit. “Sir . . .” she began to say, swallowing hard as she wondered if she should give her retirement speech right then. The CIA paid their shadow-killers well, and it wasn’t like she had much of a life outside work. Not enough of a life to spend much money, anyway, which meant she had enough saved to start a new life. A real life. Maybe there was enough humanity left in her to be salvaged.
“Enough with the ‘sir’ crap. You don’t work for me, Krane,” Benson said with a half-smile. He flipped that black leather binder around and slid it across the table. “In fact, if things go right, starting next week you work for him. For ten days, at least.”
Kathryn blinked as that chill came back, and she blinked again to make sure she was seeing clearly. The picture was hazy, taken from a distance, with digital enhancement that added a grainy touch to the final printout. The photograph had been taken at dusk, with the glow of the setting sun casting the man in a golden shadow.
“Oh, God,” she whispered under her breath, wondering why her heart was pounding as she glanced into the green eyes of the man in the photograph. He was dark, handsome, and rugged. Middle Eastern with sharp features and high cheekbones, broad shoulders and a thick, muscular neck. The man was standing at the edge of an ornate balcony, glancing into the distance, slightly off center from the camera. His strong jaw was tight, his large hands gripping the thick sandstone parapet firmly. He wore a dark robe, open in the front, and Kathryn blinked again when she saw the way the light captured the ridges of muscle lining his torso.
What are you thinking, Kathryn found herself asking the man in the photograph. What are you thinking, great Sheikh?
And then she knew she was going to say yes to whatever this was. Maybe this was a different kind of job. Maybe for once she wouldn’t be asked to . . .
“We’ve been ordered to take him out,” Benson said, tapping the picture and glancing up at her. He paused and swallowed, and Kathryn was suddenly alert and sharp again, taking in everything and processing it all in a split second. The words Benson used. The way he flinched when he spoke. He used the word “ordered,” which meant this wasn’t his idea. Was there more to this? Was there more to Benson? Was there more to . . .
“Sheikh Hyder of the Kingdom of Sehaar,” Benson continued, his voice clear and deep, as if he’d realized his slip and corrected himself. “And there’s a reason you haven’t heard of him. He’s taken great pains to be very low profile ever since he ascended to the throne of Sehaar.”
“And when was that?” Kathryn said, flipping through the binder and stopping at a page that summarized the timeline of Sehaar’s rulers. The page had a lot of blanks and question marks on it. How the hell did the CIA not know everything about this kingdom and this green-eyed king? They were an intelligence agency, weren’t they?
Benson smiled and rubbed his chin. “As you can see, we’re not entirely sure. The greatest intelligence organization in the world appears to be somewhat dumb when it comes to Sheikh Hyder and the kingdom of Sehaar.”
Kathryn frowned again as she quickly scanned the rest of the binder. She’d study it later, but already she could tell there wasn’t anything of much use in here. Part of the reason was certainly that Sehaar hadn’t been on the CIA’s radar in the past, and so they hadn’t allocated resources to gather too much intelligence on it. The U.S. was spread pretty thin these days when it came to spying on people. So many sketchy Arabs, so few spies . . . hah!
“There isn’t anything in here my ten-year-old niece couldn’t have found on the guy’s Facebook page,” she snorted, flipping the binder shut and finally taking a seat across from Benson.
“You don’t have a niece,” Benson said, smiling as he opened up a dark blue folder with the CIA’s logo emblazoned on the front. “You don’t have anyone, it seems. Never married. No children. No siblings. Parents deceased. Natural causes.”
“Cancer,” Kathryn said without missing a beat. “Hardly natural. But go on, Professor Benson. What else does my profile tell you?”
Benson tossed the folder aside and grinned, shaking his head. “You’re the one with the psychology background. You know damned well what your profile says about you.” He lost the smile, and that edge returned to his voice. “That’s why I asked for you. It has to be you. There’s no one else in the Company who can pull this off.” He took a breath, and his eyes broke contact for a moment before refocusing on her. “Maybe no one else in the world,” he muttered.
“Enough with blowing smoke up my ass, Sir,” Kathryn said, smiling from the corner of her mouth. “What’s the play here. You got a photograph of Hyder, which means you could have put a bullet in him if you wanted. And you called me, which means the play is a bit more complex than planting a bomb or faking a boat accident or whatever the hell else we do.”
Benson smiled again, taking a breath and leaning back. “We need to play the long game on this one, Krane.” He paused. “And if it works, it’ll be the last one for you.”
Kathryn blinked hard as she tried to read Benson’s expression. He was serious. Had Mel already said something to him? “What do you mean?” she asked, her throat feeling awfully tight. “Is this a suicide mission? Are we into that now?”
Benson smiled tightly and closed his eyes for a long moment. He shook his head and sighed before speaking. “Over the past few years,” he finally said, “I’ve watched several Sheikhs in the Middle East take American women as wives. And it’s worked exceedingly well for us.”
Kathryn waited for him to continue. Certainly she’d heard of several high-profile marriages between Sheikhs and American women over the past few years. But what the hell did that have to do with her? She waited for him to go on, but Benson stayed quiet. Again she saw him flinch, and she could tell he was uncomfortable. What the hell? This man had probably done, seen, and ordered things that would give a normal person insomnia for life, so why the hell was he was flinching and biting his lip?
“Go on,” she said finally, after waiting for what seemed like forever for Benson to finish.
But Benson stayed quiet. “You put it together, Krane,” he said finally, his voice almost a whisper.
Kathryn frowned as she held eye contact with the gray-haired Benson. Was he playing her too? Of course he was. Everyone in the CIA was a player. Everyone had their own game. Kathryn sure as hell did, didn’t she?
So Kathryn Krane blinked and looked away for a moment, allowing her mind to pull together the scanty information Benson had thrown at her. What had he said? The long game. If it works it’ll be your last. Sheikhs marrying American women and how that worked out very well for the CIA . . .
Oh, God, she thought as that tightness in her throat came back so quick she almost fainted. Oh, God, he can’t be serious. That’s insane, even for the CIA!
Kathryn swallowed hard and tried to gather herself. It took a moment, but finally she trusted herself to speak in complete sentences. “The long game,” she said slowly, her head shaking almost involuntarily as she looked into Benson’s eyes. “Are you asking me to . . . oh, God, I can’t even say it.” She swallowed again and took a breath. “You’re asking me to manipulate Sheikh Hyder into . . . . marrying me?! That’s it, isn’t it? You want Sehaar to become another Sheikdom with an Arab king and an American queen. A permanent, guaranteed ally of the United States.”
Benson stayed silent, and Kathryn saw color streak across his expressionless face. She was right so far, but he was waiting for more. She’d missed something, and when it hit her she had to close her eyes and focus all her willpower on the truth of what he was asking.
“But you also said you’ve been ordered to take Sheikh Hyder out,” she said slowly. “Which means you want me to marry the Sheikh and then . . . kill him.” She paused as everything came together in a rush. “Which would leave me as queen of Sehaar. The widowed Sheikha. The one and only ruler.” Now her eyes went wide and she knew the world had truly gone mad. The CIA had a long history of engineering coups and takeovers, rigging foreign elections and installing puppet governments to serve U.S. interests. But this . . . this was . . .
“Kathryn Krane,” Benson said quietly, pushing the black binder towards her again. “Are you ready to serve your country one last time, for the rest of your life?”