Point Of No Return. Susan Warren May

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      “Then study up. Most important, you understand why you must find this girl. The agency will make it worth your while—not only now, but later, too.”

      Chet glared at them, hating how they knew so much—and the way they knew just how to use it.

      Miller leaned forward, lowering his voice. “And if Darya did run away on her own power, you gotta talk her into going back home.”

      Chet stared at him, fighting the urge to launch himself across the desk, take the man by his burly neck and have a go—frankly, it might make him feel better, flush out all this simmering frustration. Or perhaps, instead, he should fling the file off his desk and watch the papers scatter into the air, not unlike his life so many years ago. He was still working on scraping up the pieces.

      “Has it occurred to either of you geniuses that she’s better off? Life at home in Bashim’s camp isn’t exactly peaches. Who knows what she’s had to endure, living on the run in the mountains of northern Georgia with terrorists?”

      “She’s a student at Oxford.”

      “She looks like a kid.”

      “That was taken a few years ago, obviously.” Carlson got up, paced to Chet’s window and peered down at the courtyard. “She was in Western culture long enough to know just what her father is up to, and what it could mean for the world.” He turned to Chet, arms folded.

      “She’s betrothed to Akeem Al-Jabar.”

      The agent waited as if that name might ring a bell for Chet.

      “I’m too tired—”

      “Iranian prince. Son of Osama Al-Jabar.”

      Oh. Of course. “The same oil tycoon who’s behind the truckloads of cash being poured into Iran’s nuclear program.”

      “You do read the international news wires, then.”

      “When I’m not catching up on Reader’s Digest. Just so I can connect the dots, Darya is educated, and I’m assuming since you know her political disposition—you, meaning the collective CIA—”

      “And others.”

      “Right. And others, have coerced—” he particularly enjoyed watching Carlson flinch “—her into a forced marriage so she can, what, spy on the Iranians for you?”

      Carlson turned back to the window. Miller pursed his lips, staring at Chet.

      “Great. So now I’m a matchmaking service. Let me get my wand.” He pushed back from the chair and stood. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, guys, but I’m not going to track down a runaway girl and drag her back by her hair like some caveman so I can throw her into marital slavery. Sorry, but I gotta draw the line somewhere.”

      “I know you won’t draw the line at dressing like Snow White, but saving the world from nuclear holocaust puts you over the edge?”

      Chet scooped up the folder and held it out. “Personally, I’m against human trafficking in all forms. You should have discovered that in your homework somewhere.” Before he started his company, he’d spent five years—and earned one spider-webbed scar low in his gut—bringing down a Chinese human trafficking ring. His last great mission.

      He stared at Carlson, then Miller. “I can’t help you boys.”

      Miller stood and took the folder. “That’s a real shame, because I hear that Bashim already has a price out for the kid who took her.” He met Chet’s eyes, speaking slowly. “And anyone caught aiding and abetting him.”

      So they had been tapping his phone.

      “Listen, Stryker,” Carlson said quietly. “Darya agreed to the marriage. In fact, she came to us with the idea of marrying Al-Jabar. They’re friends from London. We’re not the thugs you’ve drawn in your mind.”

      “She ran away for a reason.”

      “She’s nineteen. She got cold feet. Or maybe she has a thing for this kid. We don’t exactly know, but until someone finds them, Bashim is a powder keg. He gets itchy and invades Georgia again, and suddenly we have an international incident. Georgia fights back, Russia roars in to protect Ossetia, and with Georgia on track to be a member of NATO, well, who knows how far this thing could reach,” said Miller.

      Translation: American troops on the front lines of another war.

      “And, as Miller pointed out, this thing touches home for you in many ways, doesn’t it?”

      Chet wasn’t sure what they might be referring to. Yes, he’d spent his years early in his career arming the Ossetian rebels, namely Akif Bashim and his tribesmen, for freedom during their civil war. Back in the late eighties, the powers that be had simply wanted Ossetia to break free of Russia’s grip, via the Republic of Georgia. But he held no allegiances to Ossetia—especially since, twenty years later, they had banded with the Russians to attack Georgia. Maybe Miller referred to Chet’s hope of revenge and the opportunity to see Bashim pay for murdering the woman Chet was tasked to protect. Or perhaps he referred to rescuing Mae Lund, the woman he couldn’t forget—didn’t want to forget—who was now flying right into the danger zone of southern Georgia without a clue about the hornet’s nest awaiting her.

      He sighed.

      Miller tossed the file back on the desk. “There’s a visa and your flight pass. Hope you don’t mind flying military. It’ll be just like old times.”

      Oh, joy, the chilly back end of a C-130. He hoped he still had his earplugs.

      Carlson followed Miller out. “According to our sources, you’ve got five days until the groom arrives. Try not to be late for the wedding.”

      It didn’t matter what former Soviet satellite country Mae stepped into—it all smelled, sounded and felt like Moscow.

      It wasn’t a fair assessment, and Mae knew it—after all, Ukraine had worked hard to shed the residue of Russian imperialism the minute the iron curtain fell. Mae well remembered the crowds toppling the iron statues of Lenin along Khreschatyk Street. And Latvia and Estonia fought for their freedom years before they actually saw the Russian tanks heading for the border.

      But despite the battles for freedom, Russia had stamped her architectural and cultural fingerprint onto the satellite societies so indelibly that, as Mae climbed up from the subway line to the center of Tbilisi, Georgia, time swept her back to her days at Moscow University.

      From the names of the streets—Lenin Square, of course, and Komsolmolskaya Street—to the statuesque cement buildings with their narrow wrought-iron balconies and street vendors lined up selling shiny gold religious icons, sunflower seeds, walnuts and bright pink peonies…she could be standing in the shadow of the Kremlin. She half expected to see her old college Russian pals, Roman and Vicktor, emerge from under the red umbrella of a food vendor, holding a dripping plumbere ice-cream cone.

      In a wide fountain at the end of the square, children splashed, water dribbling off the backs of their drawers as they shivered in the early fall air. A yellow trolley-bus rattled by, sparks jumping off the overhead СКАЧАТЬ