Chapter 42
The drugs were a warm blanket, familiar in their weight upon her thoughts and the soft foggy cocoon they wrapped around her.
She’d been trained in many of these types of scenarios.
Imagined a myriad of others over the years as mental exercises.
Still, over sixty years of spycraft should have prepared her better for this moment.
Or, better yet, avoided it to begin with; she’d turned lazy in her dotage.
The North Vietnamese had never known how deeply she’d infiltrated their territory, for all the good it hadn’t done during the American War, as the Vietnamese called it.
The Soviets hadn’t existed for thirty years and to their knowledge she’d been blown up five years before their fall—yet their former KGB’s throttlehold on Russia was worse than ever before.
She’d later arranged to die so that even the CIA lost her trail when they’d decided she knew too much, had outlived her usefulness, and needed removal for security reasons.
And then, after years of protecting the residents of the White House, foolish old woman that she was, she’d thought that quitting and retiring to Montana had been a sufficient final covering of her trail.
She supposed it had been. The long roster of enemies she’d confronted were gone.
But instead of fading away, the list of new nation-states with a grudge against America had multiplied like the Hydra, sprouting two heads for each cut off.
And she’d been no Hercules with goddess-given swords and poison-tipped arrows to defeat the beast.
Yes, she’d guarded herself sufficiently against enemies both foreign and domestic. What she hadn’t done well enough was protect herself against allies.
The English.
She supposed it was both the best and worst that could have happened.
Mossad would have already given up and killed her by now.
The French DGSE would at least have fed her decently.
The English were going to polite her to death.
All understated. All apologetic. They were going to kill her with deep regrets and far too much hesitancy.
There was only one hope.
Please let them have hidden their trail well enough that Dilya did not come looking for her.
The girl had such gifts. They must be saved for the future.
Dilya didn’t know her own powers yet. But she had the basis now; she would grow into them on her own.
The US was swinging the wrong way and it was only people like herself and Dilya who had a chance of swinging it back.
People like Dilya anyway.
Her own dance might not last out the day.