Page 19 of Gryphon

Jeremy laughed. “That’s what Taz kept saying.”

Which, Heidi realized, was where she’d heard the phrase. In the birth room no less, as if witnessing the event had been insufficient verifiable proof. The shivers were back. She nudged the temperature up another notch.

Jeremy and Taz had reproduced almost right away, and fatherhood looked good on him. Herself and Harry? “We haven’t really talked about it yet. There’s plenty of time.” The two of them were older than Jeremy, but they were younger than Taz.

“Well, you should talk about it. I’ll text Harry. Hang on…”

“No, wait, Jeremy.” He would too—she needed to run interference. “Why did you call?” She turned her back to the spray and the burning sensation shot to life again.

“Oh right. We’ve got a corpse that probably isn’t who he said he was. I’ve sent you photos, fingerprints, and a copy of his pilot’s and driver’s license.”

“Pilot’s?” Of course, with Jeremy being part of the NTSB that made sense.

“Copilot for LuftSvenska. Or he was until he snapped his captain’s neck and then crashed the plane.”

“Any other fatalities?”

“A hundred and forty-three with cabin crew and both pilots.” And there was the weird contrast of Jeremy. He could stare at a battered corpse and start modeling the necessary kinetic forces and external trauma to do to them whatever had been done to them. But he wouldn’t be able to speak to her hundreds of kilometers away if she reminded him that she was naked in a shower except for a pair of earbuds.

“Um, I’m on as a keynote speaker in a couple minutes. Send it all to Harry but remember, if it’s a truly deep cover, it can take a while to run. And Jeremy?”

“Yeah.”

“Please don’t bug him about having a baby. I’d rather have that conversation myself.”

“Oh, right. Enjoy your, uh…”

“Naked shower?”

“Yeah. That.” And Jeremy was gone. She clearly heard his blush long distance.

Sometimes all it took was a good friend to make you feel warm—at least on the inside.

12

“Is it down?”

“It is.” He sat in his cubical and wished he was sitting ten thousand miles away, like the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

“Good. Cleared to Phase Two.”

“Yes, Chief.” He hung up the phone carefully. He’d created the plan—or at least the idea—ten months ago.

That had been his first mistake.

It was a drunken night in the Bunker Bar and he’d been slamming back Lebowskis like the White Russians were straight cream. The Bunker, an ideal place to feel miserable after a breakup. They’d remodeled a World War II brick bomb shelter into a long series of arched chambers: the dance room with a tiny stage jammed at the far end, next the bar room for serious fuel mixed with close-body mingling, and a tiny kitchen at the other end for pumping out a steady stream of Western-style appetizers, burgers, and quesadillas. The Bunker’s website was hosted on the high-security Telegram app and the menu bore the stamp Classified.

A lot of intelligence service folks came here, drank hard, and rarely met each other’s eyes. Talking to each other outside the walls of headquarters wasn’t safe—on even the most innocuous topic. Even here. Despite the roar of the band. Yet, here they gathered together with enough general populous that they could avoid each other.

That night’s country-western cover band, mangling surprisingly few of the lyrics, had kicked out rhythmic blasts worthy of being in an underground bunker. The dance floor was jammed to the limits with plenty of likely young ladies in the mix and overflowing into the bar as usual. But the scars from Elene Burduli had still smarted. He’d gone down there with his ears drooped like a sad dog to bury his sorrows in the old shelter, not create new ones.

He'd had vague notions, which had become foggier as the night dragged on, that it had been his bar before she’d come along, and it would damn well be his afterward.

He’d turned to tell her so—

And for the hundredth time that night, she hadn’t been at her usual spot on the next stool over.

He’d sat at the bar, barely bothering Max, the bearded owner/bartender. And not quite watching the hockey game on the big screen above the lines of bottles. They slapped the puck back and forth like they were slapping him upside the head, like the band beating the time with a sledgehammer, like Elene Burduli—

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