Toxic Seduction (Romantic Secret Agents Series Book 3) Read online

“Fine,” I told her grudgingly, just as there was a knock on the door.

  Billman called out for whoever was outside to come in, and I turned to see a very suave and attractive man, who looked like he was in his early thirties, enter the room. I was confused for a moment. This couldn’t be the redneck, Trump-supporting CIA agent. Could it?

  “Mrs. Billman?” the young man asked. I placed his accent as Boston, or somewhere in New England. Not at all what I had expected.

  “It’s Ms,” Billman replied curtly. “Take a seat, Mr Kern.”

  The young agent—Kern—took a seat and smiled at me. I felt myself blushing like a schoolgirl, and hurriedly looked away, just in time to see Billman raise an eyebrow in mock amusement at my discomfort.

  “Mr. Kern, I’d like you to meet Miss Christine Simmons.” I groaned inwardly at the emphasis Billman had put on the ‘Miss’ and turned in my seat to shake Kern’s hand.

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss Simmons. I’m Jason Kern.”

  “Call me Christine,” I mumbled awkwardly, and Kern smiled, making me blush all over again.

  “I understand we’re going to be working together?” Kern addressed the question to both Billman and me, but I answered.

  “Yes, that’s right. I’m very happy to be working with you on such an important investigation. It sounds like you have a head start on us when it comes to this Al-Farook.” I knew I was making a fool of myself, but there was something about this man. All the work I had done to make Billman think I was a serious, hard-headed young woman, and here I was losing my cool at the first sight of a pretty face.

  “Yes, we have a lot to catch up on.” He checked his watch, and I had the sense that he was frustrated to be stuck in an office when there was work to do. I knew the feeing, and felt something like affinity for this stranger. We were in the same boat, after all.

  Perhaps babysitting this particular American wasn’t going to be such a hardship, after all.

  Chapter 2

  Jason

  As soon as the news had started filtering through on CNN about an attack on London’s diamond district, I knew it was Al-Farook. Since New York, I felt like I had been waiting for his next strike, knowing it would inevitably come. MY colleagues had all drifted away from the Al-Farook theory—or were convinced that he had been seriously injured or killed in the last bombing. I had never believed that, and now—in the most awful way possible—I had been proven right. Even though I was scheduled for a day off, I had headed straight into the New York field office and taken my files up to my boss.

  Ahmed Al-Farook, the terrorist we believed responsible for similar attacks in Tunis, Chicago, and New York, had disappeared off the face of the planet since his last video had been received a few hours after the bombing in the Big Apple. I knew my colleagues—and my superiors—were sure he had been killed in New York, but that just didn’t feel right to me. Al-Farook was clearly a mastermind terrorist, and a very dangerous man. I simply refused to believe that he was capable of accidentally blowing himself up—or suddenly deciding to kill himself in a suicide attack. After all, his videos were full of his promises for a caliphate on earth; he wanted to be here to see the infidels wiped out, not in heaven with his seventy-two virgins.

  But now we had London, and this latest incident bore all the hallmarks of an Al-Farook attack. Targeting the wealthiest areas of a city to highlight the evil decadence of the west and our attachment to earthly pleasures over spiritual ones. It was either Al-Farook or someone who thought of themselves as a disciple. Either way, I had to get to the UK and get in on this investigation so that I could be there if—when—Al-Farook was found.

  It took me an hour to persuade my boss to let me get on the plane to England. I even said I would take some vacation and do it on my own time, but, as he pointed out, that would mean me operating under the radar and unarmed—a state of affairs he knew I would never tolerate, and that the Brits would crack down on in an instant. Eventually he gave in and placed a call to someone called Billman, who he clearly knew pretty well. Half way through the conversation he nodded his approval at me, and I left to make my preparations.

  The next available flight from New York to Heathrow didn’t leave for another eight hours. Time wasted, but also time to make sure I was well prepared. Not just prepared with my Al-Farook file, but also prepared with my excuses. Whoever this Billman was, he was going to have a lot of questions about why the CIA hadn’t been sharing their toys with the other kids when it came to this case. The simple truth was that the guys upstairs had never really bought into Al-Farook as a solo operator, assuming he was working as part of a wider group. Why pass on information to our allies that was likely to prove untrue, making America look stupid and ill-informed? National pride had a lot to answer for in these days of global terrorist attacks.

  Now it was beginning to look like I’d been right all along; and that we’d been withholding important information on the identity of the Chicago and New York—and now London—bomber from some of our closest allies in the UK intelligence community. I was going to have to go on a major charm offensive if I was going to be able to convince these Brits that we hadn’t been withholding information maliciously, or because we didn’t trust them, but simply because of a good old-fashioned screw-up.

  The flight to Heathrow was an overnighter, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep. I was too keyed up, my mind buzzing with a thousand different ideas, a million different strategies for finding Al-Farook before he disappeared again. I was one of the first off the plane and was pleased to see my cover name on a card in the arrivals hall—at least the UK knew how to give their guests a good welcome.

  I finally dozed off for a few minutes in the back of the car, but even in my dreams I was chasing Al-Farook. It was hardly surprising. This man had been a part of my life for over two years, ever since his terrorist attacks in North Africa had caught my eye during one of my first CIA assignments in Morocco. I’d written briefing after briefing about this guy, especially after the Tunis bombing, warning that he could become a major international threat, and it gave me no satisfaction that my warnings had come true. After he released a video claiming credit for the Chicago attack, I had asked for a transfer back home in the States, convinced, quite rightly as it turned out, that it wasn’t the last we would see of him.

  The driver had to gently shake me awake upon our arrival at MI5, which wasn’t the first impression I wanted to make. After waiting a few moments at reception, I was met by a prim, middle-aged woman who told me she was Billman’s secretary. As we made small talk, it became clear that Billman was a woman. Forewarned is forearmed, I thought to myself as we headed up a few floors in the elevator. Much to my shame as a modern man, I had wrongly assumed the head of UK counter-terrorism would be a man.

  As we arrived in Billman’s office, the secretary took my coat and then motioned for me to go through an inner door. I knocked first, even though I knew Billman was expecting me.

  A voice called out for me to enter and I pushed open the door. A middle-aged woman sat behind the desk, but there was a younger woman in the office, too, with her back to me. All I saw of her at first was the shiniest strawberry blonde hair I had ever seen, cut into a neat and practical bob. As she turned her head, I took in the big blue eyes, and realized with a wry smile that they were full of hostility toward me. Whoever this girl was, she was clearly my chaperone for the investigation—and she was just as clearly very unhappy about it.

  It has to be said that I was just as unhappy. Of course, I had known that MI5 wouldn’t allow to me operate on my own terms in their backyard, but I had at least hoped to have been allocated an experienced agent, not some young girl who looked like she had barely finished her training. I wanted someone who might add some weight to my investigation, not hold it back.

  Things only got worse when she spoke. She was not only inexperienced, but very naïve. She spoke like some giggling schoolgirl. The only consolation I had was that she was at least easy on the eye.

&nb
sp; “We have a lot to catch up on,” I said in reply to her breathless monologue about how pleased she was to be working with me. I checked my watch. I had been awake for twenty hours; I was tired and grumpy, and all I wanted to do was get to work—not sit here and make small talk with some newbie agent.

  Billman asked me to get them both up to speed on Al-Farook. The younger girl, Christine she had asked me to call her, did the first sensible thing I had seen her do so far; she took out a notebook and pen, ready to jot down pertinent information. Distractingly, she also tucked her hair behind her ear, a charming gesture that I found difficult to ignore.

  “OK,” I began, trying to focus on the task at hand. “I first came across Al-Farook when I was working for the CIA in Morocco. He operated against US targets—embassies, consulates, even US businesses in Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt.”

  I paused while I took out my files. I knew his story backward and inside out, but I wanted to show them that I was taking this briefing seriously.

  “At first, we were talking about civil disobedience stuff; vandalism, criminal damage. We didn’t even know it was Al-Farook at that point, not until his first major attack—a bomb in Cairo outside a bank with US connections. That was when we received his first video; real fire and brimstone stuff. US get out of Africa and the Middle East, you know. He claimed credit for the bomb and for the previous vandalism attacks. Warned that the west would pay for its decadence and for its corruption of Muslim society.”

  I motioned toward the water jug on the desk, and Billman poured me a glass herself. I nodded my thanks before taking a sip.

  “There was another bombing in North Africa a few weeks later, in Tunis. That was his first fatality; a security guard killed at a jewelry store. The place was leveled. It was a much larger impact than the first bomb. The video this time was more restrained, but there was something new. This time, he said he would be bringing his holy war to the doorstep of the infidels.

  “That was enough for me to try and bring this guy to the attention of my superiors, but there are so many on our watch lists, and he wasn’t going after military or political targets—just retail stores and banks. He was way down the list of priorities. Until Chicago.”

  I took a photo out of the file on my knee; it was a picture I knew all too well after almost three years working on the Al-Farook case, a picture of the devastated store fronts and buildings in Chicago’s jewelry district. Seven killed, including one firefighter, who died when the building he was checking for survivors collapsed on him.

  “I was still stationed in Morocco when the Chicago attack took place, but I knew it was him. Same MO as Cairo, same target as the Tunis bombing. And when he released his video, I asked to be transferred back to the US so that I could be put on the investigation. My boss had no choice but to say yes, given that I had brought this guy to him months before, and he had immediately dismissed my fears.”

  I shook my head. That still stung. The fact that I had information that might have helped our guys prevent all those deaths, and had been stopped from doing so because of concerns about resources, or worse, because they hadn’t even wanted to take my intelligence seriously.

  “When I joined the Al-Farook team, their main concern was how he had entered the country. Teams scoured CCTV at airports, even ferry terminals, but they came up empty. There was nothing in his file to suggest he was independently wealthy—in fact, he comes from a poor background—so our final conclusion was that he is either being bankrolled by a rich backer, or that he flew into Mexico and came over the border the same way all the illegals do.

  “After the New York attack, the video said that he was going to continue his jihad against western decadence, but we had no reason to believe that he was going to transfer operations to the UK. In fact, there are some at the CIA who don’t believe Al-Farook is responsible for the attacks. They think he is a fanatic who makes the videos to take credit, but who is probably still living in Morocco, living out his miserable life.”

  I watched Agent Simmons as she furiously scribbled down her notes. Her brow had creased during my last comments and she took a breath as if she wanted to speak.

  “Yes, Christine?” I asked, thinking I would give her a shot to prove me wrong.

  “But that doesn’t ring true, does it?” she asked, lifting her head and turning those amazing blues onto me. “What I mean is,” she went on, a little less confident under my scrutiny, “that if Al-Farook isn’t responsible, then why isn’t the group who carried out the attacks shouting to the world that he’s a fraud? After all, the whole point of such attacks is to promote your cause, make sure people hear your message. If someone else is responsible, they should be drowning out Al-Farook’s stories with their own videos.”

  I nodded in agreement. Maybe she wasn’t as green as she looked. “My point exactly,” I told her, and she blushed a little. It was adorable.

  I went on with my briefing. “Al-Farook has been quiet for months since New York—the longest time he has been out of action. There were some who thought he had died in the New York attack, perhaps crawling off injured to some hideout that we still haven’t found, but obviously the events of this week make that a moot point. Al-Farook is very obviously alive and very obviously responsible for this bombing.”

  Billman nodded and looked at Christine. The two of them were obviously close; I guessed that the older woman may even have employed the younger. Perhaps she saw something of herself in this eager, fresh-faced agent?

  It was Billman who broke the silence. “We haven’t yet received any statement or video from Al-Farook, but, according to your theories, that should materialize sometime soon?”

  “Absolutely,” I replied, grateful that we seemed to be moving on to the current part of the investigation, rather than going over old ground. “His statements are usually posted online within seventy-two hours of his attacks. I assume you have IT people monitoring the websites I sent you?”

  Billman nodded in response. “And until it comes in, the only evidence we have is what is at the bombsite itself. I suggest you start there, yes?”

  “Sounds good to me,” I answered. Christine was re-reading her notes, but looked up long enough to nod at Billman and to glance almost shyly in my direction.

  “Perhaps we could get a cup of tea first, to talk through the evidence from the US attacks in more detail?” she said, although the question was directed as much at Billman as it was at me.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I responded. Christine’s face fell. “I’ve been awake for twenty hours now—so maybe we could go for coffee, instead?”

  Chapter 3

  Christine

  Jason and I left Billman’s office and walked in silence to the elevator. Now that we were alone I was suddenly tongue-tied, not sure whether to make small-talk or to speak only about Al-Farook. Either way, I felt as though this older, more experienced, somehow more urbane agent had the edge on me. He knew more about Al-Farook than anyone in the building—perhaps anyone in the world. It was unlikely I was going to be able to add much to his understanding of the case.

  Not only had Jason surprised me by looking so different from the bullish and belligerent American I had been expecting, he had also surprised me with his knowledge and understanding of the situation. Almost three years of chasing Al-Farook had made him a real expert on the man, and I realized that, for all my petulant sulking about being sidelined on this babysitting job, he offered the best chance for us to find and stop this man before he killed again.

  In the elevator, I suggested we get coffee to go and head straight for the bomb site. Jason agreed readily, and I took the opportunity to ask him if he’d ever been to London before.

  “Only once,” he replied. “I had an English girlfriend back when I was in college. She’d come over to work as a counselor at one of our summer camps and I’d met her in a local bar.”

  “Sounds fun,” I answered, almost sulkily. This was crazy! I was behaving like some jealous girlfr
iend, and I had only known the man a few minutes. I had to keep my mind focused on the job at hand, and keep my attention very firmly off his gently waved black hair, steely grey eyes… It was no use. It was him that I was thinking about, not Al-Farook and his victims. I was going to be no use to anyone at this rate, least of all Agent Kern.

  We bought coffees at the café just outside our office and I headed for the parking lot where my Mini was parked. It was only as we approached that I wondered how this 6ft-something American, with his rugby player physique, was going to squeeze into my tiny car, but somehow he managed it—and with a good humored smile, at that.

  That finally broke the ice, and we chatted about his home in Boston—I had been right about the accent—and, of course, what things were like in London in the aftermath of the Al-Farook bomb. I told him how resolute we Londoners were—that famous Blitz spirit and all. He found it reassuring to note that people were still going about their daily lives around him, regardless of the devastation that had happened just a few streets away.

  We parked just outside the exclusion zone and walked the few hundred meters to the bomb site. Forensics were still working on the scene, so we were asked to put on protective suits. Yet again, Jason’s size caused problems, and his unflattering white plastic suit was rather stretched across his broad shoulders. I found my mind wandering again, despite my best efforts to keep it on track.

  As soon as we turned the corner to the site of the bombing, however, my mind was immediately focused on the task at hand. How could it not be, with the scene that greeted us? Although the forensic officers had been on the scene for almost two days now, there were still piles of rubble strewn across the roadway, each now marked with a tiny numbered flag, indicating that it was something of interest. I saw numbers in the six- and seven-hundreds. My mind boggled at the job ahead of the police—ahead of all of us—and I was determined to play my part in bringing the man responsible to justice.