Chapter 28 Ingrid
Ingrid
Their marriage was at a tipping point. After years of growing older together, years of being us, they now sat at a tavern table, afraid to talk to each other.
Afraid of what might come spilling out. She couldn’t deny that this was all her fault, even though it really shouldn’t be her fault.
When they were first married and living in Rome, she had often been called away with little warning, for reasons she could not disclose to him, and he had accepted it.
He knew her job called for such secrecy, and sometimes he had no idea even which country she was headed to.
Her sudden departure from Purity, with no explanation, was hardly new to him, and he should have taken it in stride.
Then why do I feel so guilty?
Was it because she’d enjoyed the thrill of being out in the field again, feeling young and vital and consequential?
These past few years in Purity, she’d settled into a sedate retirement, filling her days with gardening and reading and volunteer work for the library and the Stone Coast Conference.
She’d almost forgotten the woman she used to be, the operative who could slip silently down dark alleys or swan through embassy ballrooms in an evening dress, the chameleon who could don a wig and a latex mask and transform herself into someone else.
Rodrigo, and this assignment, had brought that woman back to life.
But the man sitting across the table from her, this kind and funny man whom she’d so deeply wounded, was also her life.
She and Lloyd were the only patrons sitting in a bar that claimed to be the oldest in Madrid.
It looked its age, with its ancient wainscotting and creaking wooden benches.
A mounted bull’s head stared down at them from the wall, like a stern judge waiting to pass sentence.
Does this marriage deserve to survive? They sipped their wine in painful silence, neither one of them quite ready to broach a subject that could not be avoided much longer.
“You must have questions,” she finally said.
“Will you answer them?”
“I’ll try.”
He gave a tired laugh. Put down his glass of wine and rubbed his hand across his face. “I suppose that’s better than ‘I can’t tell you.’ An answer I’ve heard too many times from you.”
“Because it’s always been true. I couldn’t tell you, even if I wanted to.”
“And I accepted it. I took it as just a part of being married to you. But this, Ingrid, this time it’s different. Because you were supposed to have left that job behind, along with all the lies and secrets. It’s supposed to be just you and me now.”
“This is still about the job. That much hasn’t changed. And I’m still bound to secrecy by—”
“It’s not about the job! We both know that!”
She paused, taken aback by the outburst. She looked at the misery etched in his face and said quietly: “You think it’s about Rodrigo. Don’t you?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Okay,” she sighed. “I’m going to be completely honest with you. What do you want to know?”
He fixed her with a look she could not avoid. “Are you . . . involved with him?”
For a moment she was silent as she weighed how much to tell him, and whether the truth would make things better or worse. “I was,” she said. “But it was years ago.”
“You were together?”
“Yes. It was unwise, because we were also working together, but we did what was required of us. We accomplished our missions. Except for that disaster in France, when we lost Gordon and Simon, as well as the woman we were protecting. We made an excellent team.”
“Then why didn’t you two last?”
“He had a roving eye. I knew it wouldn’t work between us. And then I met someone else. Someone better.”
“Who?”
She laughed. “You. You silly man.”
He shook his head. “Please. Be serious.”
“I am serious. Why is that so hard to believe?”
“Because—I mean, look at the man!”
“Yes, I admit it, Rodrigo’s a fine-looking fellow. And if you’re under fire in a foxhole, he’s a good man to have at your side. But I didn’t marry him, did I? I chose you.”
“To be honest, I always wondered why.”
“Remember that day in Langley, when we met? We were all in the conference room, reviewing the latest satellite photos. Then you stood up to speak, and I thought: ‘There’s a clever man. A funny man.’ Only later did I realize you were also a kind man.
” She placed her hand over his. “Do you think I’d settle for less? ”
“Then why are you here, Ingrid? Why aren’t we both at home right now, where we belong?”
She looked down at the table. At her hand, clasping his. “You’ll just try to talk me out of it.”
“Yes, I probably will.”
“I made a promise, to Gordon and Simon and Sophie. The people we lost. The people we failed. They deserve justice. I want to deliver it, even if it means I have to pull the trigger myself.”
“You’d actually do that? Pull a trigger and kill a man in cold blood?”
“This particular man?” She looked him in the eye. “Yes. I would.”
“Good God, Ingrid.”
“You weren’t there, in France. You didn’t see that poor girl bleed to death. Or what they did to Gordon and Simon. To the families they left behind. We’re closing in on this killer. I can feel it.”
“Why does it have to be you? And why with him?”
“Rodrigo brings the skills. And the resources.”
“You don’t even know who his client is.”
“That’s the point. Deniability.”
“Be honest. Is this really about justice?”
“It is. And it feels good to be useful again. To know there’s still juice in the old engine. To know I can make a difference. While I was planning this op, it took me right back to the game. The sense of purpose, the challenge, the thrill. I’d almost forgotten that.”
“And you miss the excitement.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “Don’t you miss being young, taking risks?”
“I may have been young once, but I never took risks. And now that I have, I’m not sure I see the attraction.”
She smiled. “I love you for that.”
“Look, Ingrid, I know I’ll never be like you and Rodrigo. It’s as if I married into a different species. But for the sake of our marriage, I’m ready to do anything. Just tell me what it is. Tell me what I need to—”
Ingrid’s cell phone rang. She looked down at the display. Rodrigo.
Lloyd sighed. “Go ahead. I know you want to answer it.”
She picked up the phone. “Yes?”
“We have their location,” said Rodrigo. “The drone followed the van nine klicks northwest. It’s a detached residence, no nearby neighbors. We’re pulling the team together now.”
“When do we move?”
“We wait till nightfall. About three hours. Meet you back here.”
She hung up and looked at Lloyd. She felt as if she were being torn apart, wrenched in half. Duty lay in one direction and Lloyd in another. “I love you,” she said. “But I need to finish this.” She stood up.
He stood up too. “Then I’m going with you.”
“Since when did this become Take Your Husband to Work Day?” asked Rodrigo as he and Ingrid crouched behind a hedge.
“Lloyd wants to be part of this. What’s the harm?
We can always use another pair of eyes, and I promise he’ll stay in the car and watch the road for us.
” She raised her binoculars and peered over the hedge at the house at the top of the hill.
Night had fallen two hours earlier, and in the darkness, a chorus of insects chirped.
The house’s elevation gave its occupants a commanding view of any approaching vehicle on its winding driveway.
It stood alone, surrounded by a sloping field of tall weeds that served as a haven for biting insects.
Ingrid ignored the occasional sting of a mosquito, the rustle of unseen creatures in the grass, and she stayed focused on the house, where every window was brazenly lit up.
This was where they would have brought the real Beatriz, had they managed to snatch her.
That house was where they would have tortured and killed her, as a warning to anyone tempted to betray Moscow.
Ingrid lowered the binoculars. “I don’t see movement in any of the windows. Are we sure they’re inside the house?”
“There are two vehicles parked in the driveway. Someone’s at home.”
The voice of one of Rodrigo’s men came over their headsets. “We’re approaching the rear entrance. No sign of life yet.”
“This is strange,” said Ingrid, once again raising her binoculars. “Is there a cellar? Could they be down there?”
“Now at the back door,” the man said. There was a pause. “It’s open.”
Ingrid stiffened. “Pull them back. It’s a trap.”
“There’s blood. I see blood on the floor!”
Ingrid and Rodrigo glanced at each other. “Status?” Rodrigo snapped.
Over their earpieces they heard a sharp intake of breath. A shocked epithet.
“Status?” Rodrigo repeated.
“Shit,” came the terse reply. “You need to come up and see this.”
Ingrid and Rodrigo stood at the back entrance, staring through the open doorway into the kitchen.
The floor was tiled in a black-and-white checkerboard, a pattern that was echoed in the backsplash behind the sink.
It was a bright and modern look that went nicely with the new induction stove and stainless steel refrigerator, but some of those floor tiles would now need to be replaced.
Once blood seeps into grout, it can never really be removed.
And there was a lot of it in this kitchen.
Enough to tell Ingrid that despite the bullet in his brain, the man had lived for at least a minute or two, long enough for his heart to keep pumping as he lay dying on these pretty black-and-white tiles.
She recognized the victim as the man in the gray hoodie who had moved in on her this afternoon in Plaza de Agustín Lara, the man who’d been about to shove her into the waiting van.
This house was where they would have killed her.
Somehow, though, the tables had been turned on him.
Instead, he was the one who’d met death in this house.
“There’s more upstairs,” Rodrigo’s man said ominously.