Beirut File

The Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas

The Bellagio Hotel, Las VegasM

ike Stokey finally decided he could no longer ignore the phone ringing at a painful decibel level about eight inches from his throbbing head. The flashing message light was driving him into an epileptic fit and there was no way to get rid of it beyond ripping the phone out of the wall, which would add hundreds to his already hefty hotel tab. Pissing away a big slug of retirement back pay was one thing, but there was tomorrow—today according to his watch—which was something that he’d have to reckon if the party was to continue unfettered. And that was most definitely his intention.

Probably room service confirming the breakfast he’d ordered, Stokey reasoned, and fumbled for the handset. The woman he was certain at the moment that he loved above all others he’d met in his reprobate life—or at least in his reprobate life as lived in the past two weeks—beat him to the punch. “Hello?” Her voice was one of the things Mike liked most about the buxom blonde snuggled next to him. He glanced over at her with only one eye opened and admired the soft curve of her hips. Linda—a lovely name for a lovely woman who definitely warrants further attention. He’d determined sometime around midnight last night after nearly a week of her steady company that Linda just might be a candidate to help him set up a new life free from anything more risky than just growing old.

“Thanks. I’ll tell him.” The woman clicked a pen into action and jotted something on the nightstand tablet. She swung her legs out from under the covers and shivered. “Damn; they keep these rooms cold enough to freeze meat!”

Mike grinned and stretched, watching the sway of her hips as she headed for the bathroom. “Was that room service?” He was determined to do some serious talking with this woman over breakfast and see if it was as good a match as it seemed.

“Message for you,” she said and he heard the shower start. “There’s a guy trying to reach you and wants you to call back. Name’s on the tablet.”

Mike crawled out of bed and reached for his jeans. Glancing at the bedside tablet, he noted it was Shake Davis calling. They’d just spoken yesterday so something must be causing a flap. Chan probably surfaced, he thought as he pulled on his jeans and walked over to adjust the thermostat in the suite that featured a balcony overlooking the Bellagio’s luxurious pool. She probably tore him a new asshole and he’s looking for sympathy. Mike pulled his cell phone out of a pocket and noted three missed calls, all from Shake. As he hit the redial icon, Mike felt a chill that had nothing to do with over-amped air conditioning. If Shake’s call was a pitch for some new boondoggle, his old friend was about to be sorely disappointed and flying completely solo.

“About damn time! You finally sober up?” Shake’s voice was the familiar bog-standard growl but Mike detected an edge. “I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday afternoon.”

“Priorities, my man—in this case a very lovely one. You gotta meet her soonest.” Mike carried the phone out onto the balcony and slumped into a chair. It was a beautiful, bright day in Las Vegas; this was the perfect place for a lazy, intimate breakfast with a beautiful woman, and he was determined not to let anything disrupt that. “Just so we’re clear before you start running your suck, Shake Davis, if this call concerns anything more than a friendly sitrep, you can go piss up a picket rope.”

“I still can’t find Chan, Mike. It’s really got me worried.”

“Did you talk to Bayer, and did you tell him he can kiss my ass?”

“Yes—and no. I met him yesterday at Quantico. He swears he doesn’t know where she is. He checked and his sources indicated she was working on something to do with the situation in Syria, but he didn’t know where.”

“How about the kiss my ass thing? How’d he respond to that?”

“I didn’t bother. I think he knows well enough that you’re still pissed.”

“Next time you see that turd, tell him all is forgiven. I’m starting to like this retirement shit.”

“Can we talk about Chan?”

“Still no return calls or emails?”

“Nada. I’ve left a bunch of messages on her phone and sent a salvo of emails. No response. Bayer thinks she might be someplace where she can’t respond. You know, intentionally off the grid for security purposes.”

“Could be—or she just might be letting you sweat so you’ll behave in future. That girl you married can be willful and she’s not the type to take too much s**t, especially from you.”

“Maybe, but I don’t like it, Mike. Something doesn’t feel right about this. Making me sweat is one thing, but she’s never been out of contact this long before. And she’s never stayed mad at me longer than a day or two. It’s just not like her.”

“Shake, she’s in the business. You know who she works for and you know how they operate. Chan is an analyst and a good one. If it’s something to do with Syria, they‘ve probably got her over there listening in and playing what-ifs. This goddamn moon-pie administration is still trying to tell the bad guys from the good guys and there’s likely a full-on Intel effort to see who’s on first and who needs our support in the next fifteen minutes before they change sides. It’s a zoo and I’m betting she’s on some kind of team trying to sort it all out.”

“Couldn’t they do that from here?”

“There’s only so much you can do from a distance. It helps to be closer to your sources. Take a look at the map, Shake. There’s Lebanon and Israel to the south, Turkey on the north and Cyprus west of Syria. We’ve got listening posts all over those places. She could be at any one of them. I’m betting they’ve got her in Israel or Cyprus listening to the traffic and analyzing the stuff they’re hearing. Lord knows they’d need their first-string players to sort out that mess.”

“I guess that fits but I want to know where she is, Mike. You said it yourself; it’s a zoo over there. I mean, Arab Spring my dying ass. We helped some rebels trying to toss Assad out and we wind up in the middle of a full-blown civil war. Turns out the rebels trying to s**t-can a bad guy are worse guys. What the f**k, over? And there’s no telling what might happen in the next couple of weeks. For Christ’s sake, Mike, there might be a massive brain-fart in the White House and we wind up sending troops into that tar-pit. We’ve done it before. If Chan’s involved in something like that, she needs to get the hell out of it.”

“You know, even if you could find her and even if she’d listen to you crying for her to come home and stop doing what she does for a living, don’t you think that’s a little condescending? She’s a competent professional—just like you used to be—and she was one before she married you. This is not some little lost lamb that needs her bad-ass husband to shadow her every move.”

“Yeah…” There was a long pause as Shake digested an aspect or two of the situation that he hadn’t considered. “But I’d really like to know a little more and maybe I could sleep better, you know? Can you make some calls?”

“Leave it with me. I know some guys who know lots of other guys. I’ll call around and get back to you. Meanwhile, relax and visit the liquor cabinet more often—or come on out and spend a few days with me.”

“Nah, I can’t leave Bear. He’s missing her worse than I am.”

Mike Stokey heard the chime of the suite’s doorbell and watched Linda head across the room wrapped in a fluffy terrycloth robe that did nothing to hide her physical assets. “Have you talked to Tracey?”

“Would she know anything I don’t?” Shake hadn’t considered asking his daughter about Chan. He’d been more than a little relieved and gratified that his only child took such an instant liking to his new wife, but it had never occurred to him they might have become confidantes beyond the obvious familial relationship.

“Are you that thick, Shake? Those two might not be blood relations but they’re tighter than ticks. I used to hear them talking all the time—unfortunately, it was mostly about you. I think Chan was trying to pick up some pointers about how to deal with your dumb ass. You’d have thought they were best gal-pals or sorority sisters or something.”

“I’ll give her a call.”

“Do that. I’m out here, Shake. There’s a sumptuous breakfast that just arrived and we’re eating on a balcony overlooking the pool. It’s a b***h but somebody’s gotta do it.”