My job involves walking around with weapons under my clothes (hell, next to my pecker) that would get me thrown under the jail if the local police knew I had them, and using them when I must in order to do the rest of my job, mainly getting other people out of trouble. So I'm sort of a crook, and sort of a soldier, and when I deal with people who are no loss to humanity, sort of a cop. Just some of the fringe benefits of working for the Directorate of Operations, Central Intelligence Agency.
But I digress. In the early fall of 1993, I was driving my "company" car (a Vauxhall Senator 4-door from the embassy's car pool in London 'officially' owned by a rental agency in Hertfordshire) through the pleasant country south of London. The car rolled quietly down tree-lined, bough-covered English roads fully big enough for two large go-karts. It was early in the afternoon, and the leaden sky had opened up with a driving, cold rain because it was late September, too late in the year for sane Americans to spend time in the British Isles. But I had an appointment to keep, and I was anxious to get on with it. You see, it involved paying back a long-overdue debt.
I pulled out onto a highway and a young lady waved at me from the left side of the road with a total lack of English reserve - the first woman in Great Britain I'd ever seen ask a stranger for a ride, even in a driving rain. I couldn't see much more than wet russet bangs and a pale, china complected face protruding from a under a sodden macintosh, but that's enough to get me interested, so I slowed down.
Even though I'd been in England for three months establishing a cover identity, it still jarred to drive on the left side of the road, so I took special care not to drive into the ditch as I pulled off to see what the young lady wanted. She didn't seem terribly surprised to see me pull over, and I wondered if she was one of the legion of hookers I'd seen dotting the A-roads north of London on weekends. That would have been unusual south of London, though, because that business was mainly "in-call" down in the wealthy southern 'burbs.
As she opened the passenger door and got in beside me (a touch of tentativeness there), the woman folded her wet raincoat over her arm with the curious gracefulness of English women, revealing a full, womanly build, nicely shaped legs and breasts that strained the fabric of her blouse. "Are you heading to Hastings, by any chance?" she asked expectantly, gazing into my eyes with an unexpected purposefulness.
I cleared my throat nervously and said "No, to Kemp Town. I've always wanted to know if the racetrack there is really five miles long." Looking directly at me again (in a way that almost made me homesick for American girls), she asked "Can I ride with you as far as Hastings, then? The water pump on my Jaguar (she pronounced it "jag-you-ar") gave up the ghost, and I have to visit my poor ailing aunt."
"That's really too bad," I said, trying to swallow discreetly, "I mean about your aunt. Has she tried tea with honey?" It was a foolish-sounding remark, as I told the ops people at Langley when they assigned it to me, but it seemed to set the woman at eas. She nodded, smiled, and without another word set her raincoat and bag on the back seat of the car and closed the door. I chuckled and pulled back out on the highway, and she eyed me curiously. We hadn't gone a mile before she spoke again. "Your targets actually ARE in Kemp Town, you know," she said with a hint of a chuckle. She reached behind her into her oversized bag and handed me a folder.
I pulled off into the first parking lot (all right, "car park") we came to, stopped the car, and studied pictures taken of two men, not typical Somalis in that they'd obviously been eating regularly for years, sleek and sound in the way that the corrupt ruling class of any country are.
The woman studied me as I studied the file, and I couldn't help sparing a bit of attention for her in return. Her features were soft but feminine, and strangely compelling. Her eyes betrayed an unusual intensity, not just intelligence or curiosity, but what I would have called passion if I'd been anywhere but England the past three months. As she tossed her shoulder-length russet hair, I could smell her earthy womanly sweat, which went well with the cologne she was wearing. My blood began to race, and I reluctantly forced my attention back to the two losers in the folder and the tawdry details of their lives. I didn't have time to see if my new friend was up for a bit of foreign relations - a real pity, because the boner of all time was firming up in my lap. I adjusted the folder to cover it and read on.
When I was happy that I knew what I was about to do and how to do it, I handed my new friend back her folder. "You won't need this?" she asked as we pulled back into traffic. I smiled at her and said "No, I think I can remember what I need to know. Now," and I turned to face her, "where can I drop you off?"
"You're not going to drop me off," she said matter-of-factly. "I'm coming along for the ride."
I stared ahead deliberately for ten minutes, composed myself, and gripped the steering wheel hard enough to leave fingerprints in the plastic. I'd anticipated that British Defence Intelligence would want their observer to tag along, and ordinarily I would have been fine with that - as long as the observer understood that when lead started flying I wasn't going to be responsible if he wound up catching a stray bullet. I hadn't anticipated that their man was going to be a woman. Call me sexist, but I didn't sign on in order to watch attractive young women go down in gunfights. Especially attractive young women whom I really wanted to fuck.
"That's not the deal, and you know it," I said, trying to bluff my way through what promised to be a horrible interdepartmental, international mess. "I worked alone for three months getting into position to take this target. I can't babysit you and I do what I have to." Her nostrils flared, and for a second I thought she was going to hit me, because I can't begin to describe what her eyes did. But Her Majesty's Secret Service is famous for the composure of its agents, and it was her turn to stare out the windshield of the car, her features hardening into a beautiful mask.
I wasn't ready for the large-frame automatic pistol she produced from the folds of her dress. I sensed the thing coming out before I saw it, and knew better than to make any sudden moves. "Pull the car into that next ramp," my irate hitchhiker ordered in a cold, clinical, Lady Diana Rigg-on-steroids voice. Sure enough, there was an exit ramp off to my left, next to a sign saying "Gipsy Rest Area." I pointed the car that way and slowed down while I pondered my next step. I was mentally framing a possible move when my captor barked "Pull over there. Now!" A nine-millimeter bullet trumps a karate chop, so I did what I was told. "Now shut the engine off." I turned the key off and looked at her.
