Page 56 of Close Pursuit

After that, it was pretty straightforward. They were ordered out of the car, thoroughly searched, and their passports examined. The Americans were not particularly amused to find Alex’s Russian passport—in his original name—along with his U.S. passport, even after he explained he was a dual citizen.

An assistant attaché eventually declared them non-hostile, although the woman threw a suspicious look in his direction when she when she said it. She acted as if she recognized the Koronov name on his Russian passport.

Katie was shown inside separate from him, the attaché already making baby noises and cooing at Dawn before they hit the door. As for him, he was poked in the back none too gently by an assault rifle and escorted to an interrogation room in the bowels of the embassy.

A Marine officer joined him eventually, a fat dossier under his arm. “You’re a famous guy, Dr. Peters.”

He shrugged. “My father is famous. Or infamous, as it were. I merely stand in the edge of his dubious spotlight from time to time.”

“What are you doing in Tashkent?”

He told the story of working for Doctors Unlimited and their tent being overrun by rebels. He left out the bit about stabbing the American dressed as a civilian, and the bit about the secret Russian supply bunker, or that the cargo plane that airlifted them out had been a Russian military aircraft. He picked up the tale in Osh and finished it with their rather spectacular arrival at this embassy.

The Marine was not a professional interrogator, but Alex was a professionally trained prisoner of war. His father had drilled him for hours on end as a kid in techniques of resisting interrogation. It was one of a spy’s most powerful and necessary weapons—the ability to deceive, evade, and lie with complete conviction.

The Marine didn’t ask about the American he’d stabbed in Zaghastan, which told Alex the American had not been CIA. Embassies were hotbeds of CIA activity, and news of an American operative stabbed in Zaghastan and badly wounded would have made the rounds of the embassies in this part of the world.

He really did hope the American hadn’t died. But the guy had been stubborn and held out till the very last moment to trade information for that pressure balloon in his wound.

“What is your intent to do next, Dr. Peters?”

“Travel back to the United States by the most expeditious means with Miss McCloud and her baby.”

And find out if she’d been sent on the D.U. mission by Uncle Charlie...to do what? Seduce him? Recruit him for the agency?

Or more likely, toentraphim into working for the American government. What were the odds that her being assigned as his nurse was pure chance? His mind shied away from that math. The numbers did not look good for Katie.

“About that baby,” the Marine interrupted his grim train of thought. “How is it your names are on the child’s birth certificate?”

“I’m the physician of record at the birth. I’m legally required to sign the birth certificate. As for naming us as the parents, Zaghastan has no system of adoption. Parentless children are informally passed around until they land with someone willing to raise them—or until they’re drowned, suffocated, or simply starve to death. Rather than throw a helpless newborn on the uncertain mercy of strangers, we chose to declare ourselves her legal parents. Plus, it helped get Dawn through Customs in Osh.”

“Being a parent is a big responsibility.”

“Yes, it is,” Alex replied evenly.

“Kids need a home. Parents who are around. A steady environment.”

“I’m aware of that, Major. Do you have a point to make?”

Instead of answering, the Marine changed subjects abruptly. “What are you planning to do when you reach the States?”

Jesus.Were they all going to try to recruit him? Did this guy want him to work for military intelligence or something?

He snapped, “I’ll continue practicing medicine. I am a doctor, after all.” No sense mentioning that he was wealthy enough not to have to work for several lifetimes. That would bring up all sorts of awkward questions about where his money came from.

So. Sweet, innocent Katie wasn’t so sweet and innocent, after all, was she? And here he’d been, all worried about protecting her purity and naiveté. Damn. He should have taken her up on that pleading request of hers to debauch and corrupt her. At least he could have had a little fun before she blackmailed him, or whatever she had in mind to force him into the CIA fold.Bitch.

“What do you want from us, Dr. Peters?”

“I would like the embassy to help me purchase three plane tickets to Washington, D.C. Both Miss Mc Cloud and I will need to check in with Doctors Unlimited, which is headquartered there. Then we’ll need a ride, and I imagine armed escort, to the Tashkent International Airport at your earliest convenience. I expect you’d like to get me out of here nearly as much as I’d like to be gone.”

The Marine smiled a little unwillingly. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to your room.”

Interesting. The guy never asked why the FSB had been chasing them so aggressively. Did the Marine know something he didn’t? Or was it just so blindingly obvious who’d been in that Chaika, and why, that the guy didn’t have to ask?

He followed the Marine to a hotel-like room. A wired and fully surveilled hotel room, no doubt. Would Katie be allowed to join him? Would she try to seduce him before they got back to the States and her opportunity to entrap him slipped away?

Was this room specifically set up to film the two of them having raunchy sex? Did any of these people seriously think that a honey trap would embarrass him into caving in to them?

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