Prologue
Everybody lies just like everybody keeps dark secrets buried deep within them. These are two universal truths about humanity that all cultures share. You will never see anybody admit to either one of them, let alone to both. No, these are things we keep to ourselves. We go through life denying that either aphorism exists, then work hard to bury them as soon as they begin to surface or start to nibble at the edges of our conscience.
We lie to ourselves and we lie to those closest to us. We tell ourselves the extra pounds we put on over the holidays don’t show. We tell our wife how beautiful she looks in that new dress she just bought, when the truth is she reminds you of your portly aunt Bessie. Not to be outdone, your wife lies about how much she spent on that dress.
We lie about the club we had drinks at with the boys from the office, telling our wives it was a business club, rather than a strip club. We lie to those same co-workers about our golf scores and how much gas mileage our car gets. We lie to the IRS when we fill out our tax returns. We even lie to ourselves about how happy we are, when in fact we are drowning in misery. We lie about all the important friends we have, when in reality we have none and are despondent and lonely. We even tell ourselves how successful we are, when the truth is we’ve been living on credit and are on the verge of losing everything. We lie so much that eventually it just becomes interwoven into our very fabric until it becomes an integral part of who we are.
The simple fact is deceit is as old as humanity itself. The first humans in the Garden of Eden lied to God, their creator, and we’ve been lying ever since. Not only lying, but hiding dark horrid, secrets deep in the pit of our psyche.
How does it start? How does an innocent, giggling baby turn out to be one of these adults? Perhaps, with the apple you stole as a child from the fruit stand as you walked home from ball practice one afternoon. Or the drugs and alcohol you used in high school, while going to church on Sunday and deceiving your parents into believing what a good child they had raised. Then there’s the things you took because they were there and nobody was watching? Or the affair you had at work with your secretary. Or the woman you took advantage of at the office Christmas party because she’d had too much too drink to say no and couldn’t stop you.
These are the sorts of things that mold the chisel that gradually chips away at that innocence until it no longer exists.
In one form or another everybody lies. Some may have darker secrets than others. Some merely tell bigger and more frequent lies. But regardless of which category you fall into, we all have one thing in common - Karma. Our Karma is like a debit card. We are born with just so much good reserve and with every lie we tell and every dark thing we do, we draw down the balance on that reserve until eventually, our account becomes overdrawn. And when that happens we face our Day of Reckoning.
BOOK I
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Spies Like Us
Chapter One
It's the phone call everybody dreads getting in the middle of the night. She's missing. Perhaps kidnapped, maybe something worse. As I listened my heart plummeted until I was awake enough to remember there was no 'she' in my life. The ‘she’ who was the subject of the phone call was not my wife or significant other, as I have neither. She was, I was informed, the wife of somebody very important, and therefore my assistance was immediately required. No, make that commanded as I had no choice in the matter if I was to keep my job.
Not only was I woken from a very pleasant dream that prominently featured Melissa Barrett, the hottest girl in my high school senior class, but now I had to drag my lazy ass out of bed, get dressed and drive into headquarters.
Now, a little about me and why it suddenly had become my responsibility to find this missing person. My name is Alexander Puskin. In case you're thinking I'm the famous Russian writer, he spells his name a little differently. Besides he's dead anyway. But, you've got to admit my mother had a great sense of humor when she named me.
Anyway, if any hot available ladies are reading this, I'm 26 years old, single, six foot three inches tall and weigh 185 pounds. I have emerald green eyes and a head of medium brown hair. And it goes without saying, like James Bond I'm very handsome and debonair.
But back to the mission. Two days later after having the best wet dream of my life interrupted I found myself somewhere in the middle of Bumfuck, Iraq on the trail of the kidnappers of the wife of some important defense industry muckity muck. Did it ever occur to those brilliant minds sluffing off and sipping Mai Tais in the Ivory Towers over at Spy World that this woman might not have been kidnapped? Suppose she simply decided to make a change in her life and ran off to join some rich Arab sheik's harem. It does happen I'm told, and it certainly seems to me to be a lot better than running away and joining a nunnery. Plus, I could see that happening with this broad. After seeing her photo during my incomplete mission briefing, she struck me as a little slutty if you know what I mean. There’s even a rumor making the circuit over at headquarters that she's been doing the salami dance with one of her husband's underlings, not that I'm one to gossip. Maybe she finally decided if she was going to give the milk away she might as well get more out of the deal than what she had been getting. Or maybe her husband found out she was getting her bread buttered somewhere besides home, and she was forced to go on the lam. Those sorts of thing happen too. Regardless of the reason she was missing, it was now my problem to find her.
According to my briefing, she had been doing some volunteer work with one of those charity medical outfits out in the Iraqi dessert just before she disappeared. And it just so happened that nobody else was available for the job or more likely wanted it. Which meant good ole Alex had to mount his white horse and ride out into the middle of the desert and rescue the poor little slut bunny in distress. Or something like that. Caravanning about on the back of a white steed, or in my case a white Jeep, is really not my speciality. I'm more of the type that sneaks around in disguises and employs all types of neat gadgets to steal your most closely guarded secrets. Another thing I conveniently forgot to mention is that I’m actually a spy working for a new outfit called Section 2. I’m told it’s a new international intelligence agency that is headquartered in the United Nations and is affiliated with some branch of Europol or Interpol or some other Euro-trash organization. I suppose I should have been paying better attention to what I was getting myself into when my former employer handed me over to these jokers. Or to be more precise, dumped me on their doorstep. Except, unlike in the movies I wasn’t a slobbering baby that had been hidden under a blanket and stuffed in a basket. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I'm far from innocent, but I do slobber on occasion.
The official name of the new agency I work for is United Nations Operations and Intelligence or UNOI. As in you annoy me or something like that. They've assigned me to Section 2, which is Operations and Intelligence. Section 3 is the Enforcement Division. And if you're wondering whether there a Section 1, as the saying goes if I told you, well you know the rest of it, right? One day I’m going to write a novel about my life and all the twists and turns and shenanigans that brought me to this place and publish a best seller. No doubt, with my luck and considering who I work for it would probably be blacked out like Valerie Plame’s book. On the other hand, maybe nobody at Spy World would blink an eye if I published a best selling tome detailing all the wonderful adventures I’ve experienced as a spy while divulging all their dirty little secrets.
So here's a preview, the Cliff Notes (my favorite textbook in college) version so to speak, in case you're interested in pre-ordering the book. It seems that I got into this mess because once upon a time I harbored grand illusions of working at the Farm. I'm not talking about the type of farm that grows tomatoes, but THE Farm, as in the CIA kind of farm.
After spending six years in college and having run out of classes to take they decided to give me a diploma and kindly show me the door. Not having a clue about what I wanted to do with my life I responded to a CIA ad I'd seen on campus promising to show me the world. Or was that the Navy? I really can't remember. In any event, I called the number on the flyer to see what was up and was granted an interview. After flunking a few tests, getting probed in some very private areas and analyzed by a couple of tight assed shrinks, they politely informed me that the only farm I was suited to work on was indeed a tomato farm. Imagine that!
So after being put out on the curb with the imprint of a size twelve loafer firmly ensconced on my ass, I hit the streets looking for a way to get into one of these other spy outfits. If you never want to get rid of me, just tell me what a worthless s.o.b I am and you'll crank up my motor like a chihuahua chasing its tail. My high school guidance counsellor hadn't minced words in letting me know what a loser I was and how I wasn't college material and was wasting her time trying to get a scholarship to college. Just to prove to her and the other teachers they were wrong I applied and was accepted into a small state university where I made a point of dedicating myself to study just enough to graduate with a sterling C average after six short years.
With my motor wound tight courtesy of the CIA, I spent the next several weeks pounding the streets, sitting through a ton of interviews and enduring more than my share of anal probing trying to get on at one of the other alphabet soup intelligence agencies, like the DIA - the Defense Intelligence Agency. But nothing clicked. I seemed to have Loser tattooed across my forehead. Then one evening after I had been out late sharing my sorrows with my good friend, Jack Daniels, something amazing happened. On my way home while stopped at a red light I was rear ended by a big fat black Mercedes Benz. Ordinarily getting rear ended is not a good thing, unless you’re Liberache, but in my case it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me. You see the driver of the car was none other than Mr. Grey Dearman, the senator who chaired the Intelligence Committee. And somehow by chance the fly of his pants had come open and attached to a very private member of his being was a big fat painted set of red lips that belonged to a hooker or stripper or somebody with huge honkers that obviously wasn’t his wife. Now, this presented a rather large problem for Mr. Dearman who was one of the leaders of the Tea Bagger or Mad Hatter movement or some kind of group that continually preached about family values. In fact, that was Dearman’s nick name - Mr. Family Values. Boy, what a hypocrite he turned out to be. He would go on all these talk shows and blather about buying American and not supporting the European Socialist economy and yet here he was driving a brand new Mercedes Benz, which the last time I checked was made in Germany. So here I find Mr. Family Values passed out drunk with some half naked bimbo laying in his lap playing tonsil hockey with Little Senator One Eye. It’s a good thing I watch the news because after I recognized him he became very helpful in getting me into the CIA. I guess I had misjudged these political types because I thought they were all assholes and as it turned out Senator Trouser Snake couldn’t have been more accommodating and nice to me.
I was sent to train at the infamous CIA farm in McLean, Virginia and after graduating from Spook School with undistinguished marks, I embarked on a career with them. Rejecting me five times before had to have been a mistake because once I got in we just seemed to be a match made in heaven. In fact, after a while I think they began to wonder how they had ever functioned without me. I really can have that effect on some people. But then somewhere along the way my mouth earned me a one way ticket out of the CIA. And after a whole lot of bureaucratic shuffling that would make any Congressman proud, they booted me over to the State Department like last week's news. There I was assigned to do intelligence analysis and briefings for the Secretary of State. I wasn’t over there very long before I realized what an over sensitive bunch of bureaucrats worked there. Gee, who would have thought one little comment about how big the Secretary of State’s butt was would generate such an uproar. Those political types sure don’t have much of a sense of humor. So, next thing I know I’m being handed off to this newly created division at the UN as a part of America’s cooperation in the worldwide war on terror. The idea was to create a centralized depository for intelligence that would be gathered by the CIA, MI6, DGSE and a lot of other alphabet agencies so it could then be shared among its member nations.
And so, that's my version of how I came to UNOI, where I have just been assigned my first mission. As strange as all this may seem, it’s the truth, or at least some part of it is.
So now I find myself out in the middle of the hot Iraqi desert in a Jeep chauffeured by Abdula the Raghead on our way to some isolated charity hospital to see whether we can find anybody who might know something about the missing bimbo. Now I realize you may not find that last comment to be politically correct, but in all honesty, I may have slept through a sensitivity class or two during my training at the CIA. Then again, I also slept through most of my other classes or occupied myself playing games on my iPhone. Now that I think about it, it's possible I missed that important training session on acceptable social etiquette.
But back to our story. My handlers tell me no other agency is better equipped than ours to find a person who's gone missing in the dessert of a country that just happens to be in the middle of a heated little civil war. So, the muckity muck, who also happens to be the CEO of a huge defense outfit came to UNOI with hat in hand begging for their help. And being the new kids on the block we just happen to be the only intelligence agency in the whole world who can help him. Right. And Santa Claus just added me to his gift list for this Christmas. The fact is, something smells here and it’s not just my soap averse friend sitting to the left of me. Speaking of which, the way he drives, Abdula shouldn’t quit his day job anytime soon, which I do believe has something to do with herding goats.
Now here's where this whole thing becomes interesting. I’m not a tracker; I'm not trained to find people, so I don’t know why I was picked for this mission. Maybe my employer was sending me out in the desert on a snipe hunt. If that's the case I would have to be on guard to make sure that Abdula didn't try to trick me into getting out of the Jeep so he could dump my ass in the desert and leave me to fiend for myself with the nomads and roach ranchers. I wonder if they even have cell phone coverage out here? Anyway, if this Camel Jacker tried anything he was going to become acquainted real fast with Susie, my Walther PPK. Yep, I carry a Walther. I figure if it’s good enough for Agent 007, then it’s good enough for Agent Puskin, Section 2. I need to come up a clever tag line like Bond's "shaken, not stirred" if I'm ever going to make my mark in this business though.
As my thoughts began to drift, I was soon drawn out of a new fantasy about tying my rug flying friend to a cactus and leaving him as a snack for the buzzards when he began to slow the Jeep. He was leaning forward and pointing at some dark blob lying up ahead in the sand. The first thing that popped into my head was that this thing might be an IED. Or was it an IUD I was supposed to be afraid of? Either way, I hunkered down in my seat. As the Jeep slowed to a stop the Fig Gobbler started jabbering in Arabic and then jumped out the door and ran over to the blob. I waited a few seconds and when the big kaboom didn't happen I decided to get out and check things out for myself. I reached down and slipped the safety off my Walther, opened the door and stepped out of the Jeep. Maybe this was some sort of setup and the opportunity he was waiting for to dump ole Alex out in the desert. Mustafa, or whatever his real name was, was bent over the blob trying to turn it over. The blob turned out to be a human with a badly sunburned face. It was a man, that much I could tell, so it wasn’t the missing woman I was looking for unless she had had a sex change operation after coming to Iraq. From the look of things he appeared to be the one who had been given a ride out into the desert and unceremoniously dumped, because that big red gash on the back of his head was screaming foul play. I didn’t have to stick a mirror in front of his nose to tell that he was still alive and breathing as I could see his chest heaving up and down. That was a good sign, I guess. It was also good for him that we came along when we did or he would have been buzzard bait. Mohammed motioned for me to give him a hand, and together we dragged the blob into the Jeep and plopped him in the backseat. His face was probably going to hurt like hell where it slammed against the seat when I let go and dropped him, but I didn’t plan on being around when he woke up to hear him bitch.
My turban cloaked companion started the engine and we continued our trek. I didn’t have a clue what we were going to do with our guest, but I’ve always subscribed to the saying that three’s a crowd. Since we were heading to a hospital, as far as I was concerned, that would be the perfect place to deposit him. I couldn’t imagine galavanting all over the desert looking for Lindsay Lohan's missing twin while dragging around a sun baked, half-living corpse. First and foremost, I had to complete my mission and find this tart. And all I knew was that she was last associated with some hospital that was stuck out here in the desert. Actually, we had the GPS coordinates of the hospital so we knew exactly where we were going.
I thought about the missing spousal unit and wondered whether she had met up with foul play and been dumped somewhere out in the dessert too? Or had she found Mecca out here in the middle of nowhere and suddenly had a miraculous conversion of faith deciding to become a holy warrior for Allah? I've seen the recruitment posters and they do look enticing - "Join Us For Jihad And Be Allah You Can Be." Stranger things have happened I suppose. We drove on following the GPS coordinates and as far as I could see in any direction there was nothing but sand. If Mecca was out here I hoped we would find it soon before our motion lotion ran out and I'd be forced to hitch a ride back to town on the back of a camel. I could picture myself walking up to the local Avis Rent A Ride tent and being asked "would you like the economy model (one hump) or the luxury model (two humps)?"
Now, I do consider myself to be an adventurous sort, but I also have my limits and I was beginning to feel as if they were being tested. As we crested a sand dune and drove over the top I could see a complex of tents in the near distance. It sure didn’t look like Mecca to me. Maybe it was just a mirage. Well, we would find out soon enough. I checked the safety again on the Walther to confirm it was off and slipped a fresh clip into the side pocket of my pants. Show time was fast approaching and we would find out soon enough if the folks in the village were friendlies or hostiles.