Iron Dove. Judith Leon

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      A magnificent butterfly—electric blue and iridescent green, with bright yellow spots on each wing—landed on her hand as she double-checked the carabiner linking her to the pulley. I’m thirty-three and Candido is finally losing his control over me. I hope Robin gets over her father a whole lot sooner.

      “Let me have your unipod a sec,” she said to Padgett, urgency and some disgust with both men putting a sharp edge to her tone. Padgett turned his back, and from his day pack she fetched a collapsible aluminum pole that he used to steady his camera while taking photographs. The camera platform at the tip end of the pole would make a serviceable hook.

      She hurriedly extended the unipod to full length, let the sling harness and traverse line take her weight, then let herself off the sky bridge. The movement disturbed a flock of violet sabrewings. They burst in a shower of green and purple, flapping from the crown of a towering strangler fig ten feet away.

      Nova started pulling toward the girl, Robin’s “I don’t wanna die” still ringing in her ears. There were lots of places to die. Lots of places and times already in her life where she had come close to dying. For her this beautiful place would actually be a good one.

      A shriek cut the air. Nova’s head snapped in the girl’s direction. Robin now hung, rotating slowly, ten feet below the traverse line. Merciful God!

      She had been saved only by her safety line from a fall that would surely have killed her. The harness line was still attached to the traverse line—but not to Robin. How could that have happened?

      “Robin, Robin,” Charles Scott yelled.

      Nova’s pulse beating loudly in her ears, she yelled, “Robin! Do. Not. Move. Do you understand?”

      “I…I do.”

      Pulling fast, her heartbeat pounding against her breastbone, Nova raced back toward the skywalk. Be calm! Be cool!

      Training and discipline took over, her thoughts sped up and her senses sharpened. Now, in addition to the unipod, she would need a length of nylon rope, a rescue pulley and possibly a replacement carabiner.

      That’s what safety lines are for. It will hold. It has to hold. Please, make it hold.

      “Novaaa!”

      Chapter 2

      “So, Mr. Cardone, who’s so important you have to fetch him out of the middle of the jungle?”

      The Huey’s flight engineer had left her place up front. She perched on the jump seat beside Joe. She’d removed her headset, looping it around the back of her neck, and was yelling over the beating of the chopper blades.

      With Costa Rican permission, Joe, the flight engineer, and the Huey’s two pilots had come inland from the USS Reagan, stationed off Costa Rica’s Pacific coast.

      “How long until we get there?” he yelled back.

      “Ten minutes. You didn’t answer my question. Big secret?”

      “Not really. At least who isn’t a secret. Why we want her is.”

      “A her? Who is she?”

      Joe pictured Nova. Dark black ponytail and bangs, delicate fair skin. Nondescript makeup and a nondescript “look.” That’s how she had struck him the first time he’d seen her. But there was nothing nondescript about those startling emerald-green eyes. He recalled the first time he’d seen her dressed for a seduction for the Company. Man, had he ever been one bowled-over Texas boy. She’d let her straight hair down to her shoulder blades and tucked it back behind one ear. A crimson red gown clung to every mouthwatering body curve. Dangling crystal earrings had glimmered in the ballroom light.

      Jesus, she was the most incredible chameleon. Nova could disappear into the woodwork when she needed to, but dressed up she could morph into a movie star or Paris model. Code name: Dove. It fit her perfectly because she seemed so gentle and sweet, someone you could trust. But she was also as tough and professional a spy as he’d ever known.

      Well, Nova wasn’t really full-time CIA as he was. A contract agent, Nova served only when she chose to and when called in because one of her special talents or gifts was needed. Sometimes she was called upon because of her beauty, but mostly it was when the Company needed someone with an unsurpassed ability to win trust. Within the inner circles of the agency, she was famous for “spinning silken threads of either trust or desire.” She’d rescued the daughter of an Argentinean diplomat by winning over the hostage taker’s mistress. She’d convinced a Saudi prince that she was a doctoral student studying falconry, and by doing so, obtained information that enabled the Company to prevent the bombing of a disco in Malaysia.

      “Nova Blair,” he yelled back to the chopper engineer. “She’s a world-class photographer. Also a tour guide for an action/adventure travel company.” CAT was a legitimate travel company and also a CIA cover, the one Nova used most often.

      The flight engineer grinned. “My name’s Katie Donovan. And I’m a damn good dancer. You guys staying on the ship tonight? We’ve got a party planned.”

      He gave Katie Donovan one of his better smiles. Quite a few women had complimented him on that smile. “Sorry,” he yelled. “After I get Nova, it’s back to the Reagan to jet off ASAP.”

      “I’m sorry, too.” She paused a moment, then, “Does she know you’re coming?”

      Now there was a good question. She didn’t. In fact, he’d been told by Langley that since his last job with her, Nova had twice turned down assignments. In Germany, she’d fallen hard for Jean Paul König, a charismatic German politician with the looks of a movie star, but when the mission was over, she’d decided König wasn’t right for her.

      In Joe’s opinion, she’d been seriously let down. Hell. He’d caught her with tears in her eyes after making her parting speech to König, and Nova definitely wasn’t the crying type.

      He hadn’t pressed her for details. Nova just might be the most private person he’d ever known. And she owned some very deep and dark secrets, some he knew having to do with the stepfather she refused to discuss. Those secrets must be the explanation for why such a beautiful, intelligent, talented woman undertook the dangerous and sometimes murderous things she did for the Company.

      He thought it unlikely that Langley knew about her genuine affection for König. He wasn’t about to break her confidence and tell them; Nova’s private business was her private business. But the Company was clearly aware that the assignment had put her off working for them. “Look, we need her for this assignment,” he’d been told when his controller had awakened him in his D.C. condo at three-twenty this morning, “and we need her now. You’ll be going to Italy. To the Amalfi Coast.”

      “If she’s burnt out, maybe you should get someone else,” he’d replied, pleased that she’d quit Company work, a dangerous business mixed up with the scum of the earth.

      “You’ll get your briefing in Italy. Time is of the essence here. The bottom line is that fast and accurate translation is the key, and it may have to be done on-site. For that we have to have someone who can translate and speak fluently in Russian, Italian, Chinese and, of course, English, and who is intimately familiar with the lingo involved in virus research. The Italians don’t СКАЧАТЬ