Pale Fire
Penny Ash
Pale Fire
Copyright © 2009 by Penny Ash
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Edited by Kathryn Lively
Cover Art © 2009 by Michelle Lee
First Edition January 2010
ISBN-13: 978-1-60659-549-7
Published by:
Phaze Books
An imprint of Mundania Press LLC
6470A Glenway Ave., #109
Cincinnati, OH 45211
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, Mundania Press LLC, 6470A Glenway Avenue, #109, Cincinnati, Ohio 45211, books@mundania.com.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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Prologue
Roswell, New Mexico, July 1947
The rancher looked out at the field of shiny debris. He spat, unhappy with what he saw before him. Now he’d have to move his sheep to a different area. Damn Army and their weather balloons, don’t they know how stupid sheep are? Spooks the damn livestock every time one of the damn things crashes.
He gave a heavy sigh and whistled to the dogs. At his signal they began rounding up the sheep and heading off to the west range. Something made him pause and gaze at the glittering debris again. The rancher swore and spat again. The more he looked at the damn stuff, the stranger it appeared. He got down off his horse and collected a few pieces of the junk.
He examined a piece of the odd metal. It looked like tin foil, shiny on one side and dull on the other. The thin stuff crumpled with ease but when he opened his hand the metal flattened back out as if it had never been crushed. The hair on the back of his sunburned neck stood up. This was no Army weather balloon. He mounted his horse and headed for the ranch house. This would be worth an early trip into town.
***
The Army officers looked at the damaged craft and then at each other. When this news reached him, the president would hit the ceiling. They walked over to the man dressed in strange clothes. He looked up at them and squinted in the hot, bright New Mexico sun. A truck rumbled up and several soldiers jumped out of the back.
The beautiful alien bowed his head and awaited his fate. Perhaps he could make himself understood. Eventually. Perhaps he could bargain for his life with technology; these beings that inhabited this pretty blue planet seemed very backward. He hoped the distress call had made it to someone who could help.
One of the human soldiers nudged his arm with the barrel of the weapon he held. He struggled to his feet and took the time to brush the dust from his robes. They were torn and stained with dirt, machinery grime and the blood of his companions, but he would go to his fate in a dignified manner despite his circumstances. Universe defend us, we were only a simple scouting and observation team.
He blinked painfully. He had lost his eye shielding in the crash, and it would not be long before this world's sun blinded him. Fortune send, the diplomats got there soon. He glanced at his dead companions and began to recite the Ke Mira Esh'hev for them in his thoughts. It was all he could do for them now.
Chapter One
Moscow
Some things never change. Even with regular contact with extraterrestrial civilizations and major advances in technology, humans still felt the need to spy on everyone. I didn't mind—it paid the bills.
I sat back and enjoyed the hot tea served in small cut crystal glasses seated in fancy filigree silver glass-holders. Russian Caravan black, my favorite. I set the tea glass down on the snowy white linen of the tablecloth. I would miss this place; they made the tea like my mother had when I was a child. My name is Sasha Ivanov Taylor and I work for the Central Intelligence Agency. But I’m not a spy; we prefer the term “operative,” thank you very much.
With my film-star looks, I move with ease between the glittering world of the wealthy and the dark underworld inhabited by spies, traitors, criminals, and their hangers-on. I've been a lot of things, even passed for one of the alien Ke Mira a few times. This time, though, I appeared to be a simple tourist. I ran my hand through my long hair, a casual, unconcerned gesture belying my nervousness. Sometimes having physical beauty is a blessing. Most of the time, like my ex-partner and best friend Chris Rivera says, it's a curse. I needed a haircut.
Lighting a cigarette, I smiled, laughing at something the woman with me said. Irina, with her bleached blonde hair and heavily made-up brown eyes, made an excellent prop, a minor bureaucrat in a forgotten civil service office, useful because she had an apartment in the building we needed access to. She was pretty enough, I guess, though I preferred my women with a bit more curves.
Red hair and green eyes were lifelong attractors for me as well, even though I’d never run into a woman with the precise shade of either I looked for. I’d been flirting with her for several weeks and, she thought, sleeping with her for the last two. I reached over the table and stroked her hand in a slow seductive circle for the eyes that were everywhere. I always assumed the enemy had me under surveillance.
The early spring Moscow night was a bit chilly as I left the small restaurant with Irina, walking the four blocks to her apartment. Vareniki—boiled dumplings stuffed with meat, cheese, and potatoes—followed by a couple glasses of hot, sweet tea had me feeling pretty good. I slipped my arm around her waist and tossed my cigarette aside into the gutter, my signal to my partner that the mission was indeed on.
We walked into the lobby of her building, a dreary, generic Communist-era place that had one perk: It had an access hatch in the cellar that led to the sewer system of the city. And to the main phone lines that served the Chinese embassy two blocks away. This would be my last visit to Irina’s tiny apartment, the last time I would slip a nice fast-working hypnotic into her drink, and the last time she would see me.
I went to pour us another drink while Irina went to change into something more comfortable. I glanced back and pulled the tiny packet of powder from my pocket. I dropped it into the glass of clear vodka and swirled it around until the gelatin envelope dissolved and the powder disappeared. Odorless and tasteless, and best of all untraceable unless you knew to look for it, this would send her to sleep in a few minutes.
She walked back into the living area dressed in an eye-hurting pink negligee. I winked and handed her the doctored drink. She demolished it in about three large sips and pulled me into her arms. I avoided kissing her lips and dropped a kiss to her shoulder, walking her back to the miniscule cubbyhole she called a bedroom.
Her hands were clutching at me, her eyes dilating. She was having a hard time holding her eyes open as the drug took effect. Relief washed over me when I heard her start to snore. Time to get to work. I took a few minutes to remove the negligee and tossed the pieces around the room.
One last look around to make sure I had set the scene properly before I left, and it was show time. I sighed; with the bed rumpled, nightclothes draped over a lamp, she would wake and think she’d had a wonderful time with her foreign lover. I made sure to lock the door when I left.
I crouched next to the main trunk line of the Moscow phone service in the pitch blackness of the ancient sewer. The stench was close to unbearable. I resorted to an old plumber’s trick I learned years ago from my father and sucked on several menthol cough drops while I worked. I clipped the last wire into place and stood. We’d hear anything the Chinese ambassador said, at least until a routine sweep of the lines found my tap. I’d be long gone by then.
Shining my infrared point light back down the sewer tunnel, I traced my way back to the hatch that I’d slipped through some four hours earlier. I tried to breathe shallow, having run out of my cough drops. The infrared goggles were starting to fog up a bit around the edges and I knew I must reek. The first thing I wanted when I got out was to get far away from here. Then I wanted a long, hot shower.
Listening with great caution at the hatch, I signaled with my point light, flicking it on and off twice. An answering light blinked and I slipped back into the cellar I’d entered the sewers from. Lee took the goggles and light and I stripped off the rubberized plumber’s coveralls. The dank air of the old cellar chilled my sweat-soaked skin. I hoped I didn’t catch a cold as I bundled the suit into a duffel bag. Lee took the bag and we headed for the stairs that led back up to the basement and the building superintendant’s apartment. I looked at my watch. He would still be passed out, drunk from the spiked bottle of vodka my partner had gifted him with.
A sound came from above, one that shouldn’t be there. We both froze, unable to keep from glancing up at the ceiling and listening to the footsteps over our heads. Lee signaled, motioning toward a dark and dank little closet. I swore to myself and returned the hand signal, following my partner into the closet. I hated small, closed-in places like this; I had ever since I’d somehow gotten trapped in the attic crawlspace of the house I grew up in. I’d been there for hours before my parents had found me. I wedged myself into a corner and gritted my teeth, fighting the wave of claustrophobic panic that gripped me. I could feel my fingernails cutting into the palms of my hands and the cold sweat trickling down my back.
The sounds of the cellar became the sounds of a cramped cell in the Argentine prison. I saw my jailers coming for me again, the dim light of the cell glinting off the metal of the electrodes. Crude, but effective for delivering a shocking jolt of pain to certain sensitive parts of the human anatomy. Questioning methods didn’t have to be sophisticated like the ones they used. A long-suppressed memory of snake-like eyes glaring at me pushed out the recent memory of being tortured, and the thought of those other reptilian captors sent my heart racing painfully.
The hand over my mouth snapped me out of my flashback. I opened my eyes and peeked out of the closet. We watched the janitor, who should have been out cold, stagger back up the stairs to his apartment. Lee relaxed and we crept out of the closet, cautious, being even more careful than usual. I did not want to spend time in a Russian prison or, even worse, one of their notorious mental hospitals until someone in DC decided to make a trade for me.
Outside in the cool night air even the Moscow smog smelled fresh. I turned and walked away from the building, another person on his way home. I would take the subway, riding it around the city for a while to lose any tails before returning to my hotel where I would have my shower and proceed to the extrication point. I’d be home in about twenty-four hours.
Chapter Two
Washington DC
I settled back into the routine of going to work, attending meetings and debriefings, and waiting for my next assignment. They didn’t quite know what to do with me. Lee told them about the incident in Moscow. I didn’t blame him—I could have gotten us both in serious trouble—but I wished he’d been a little more selective in whom he told. It appeared he’d mentioned it to everyone, including the lady who did the floors in the cafeteria.
So now I had everyone in the Agency giving me funny looks when they saw me in the halls. It’s a good thing I hadn't ever mentioned the nightmares I had about the aliens. If my bosses knew, it would seriously hamper my career, labeling me a xenophobe. I did my best to block it all out.
Jamison Parker, my boss, called me into his office. The downhill slide into madness began with that meeting. I walked in and sat down in one of the fancy leather chairs that decorated his secretary’s domain. She gave me one of those professional, artificial smiles and informed me the meeting would be a few minutes late. I nodded and picked up a magazine to flip through while I waited.
The magazine was the kicker. I should have stared at the wall, but no, fate had other plans. The silly article, something about aliens using us for secret experiments and running the CIA, made me chuckle a bit. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Then I turned the page.
The huge black eyes staring up at me from the page suddenly became eyes that gazed at me from mere inches away. Eyes that belonged to the non-human faces that graced my darkest nightmares. I don’t know what I did for sure, made some sort of noise or something, but the next thing I knew Parker’s secretary stood in front of me and I knew she was the devil himself. I panicked. I went for her.
The embarrassing panic attack in the office of my immediate supervisor alerted the powers that be to the fact I had not fully recovered from the Argentina debacle after all. The head of the department I worked for visited me at my home. An unprecedented consideration, given to me because he had worked with my mother back in the days of the cold war. I’d heard rumors they had been an item, before Mom had fallen in love with the plumber and had me.
The suggestion that it would be a very good idea to accept counseling if I still wanted a career was the only reason I agreed to see Dr. Zaftish. I stood in the shadows watching the people coming and going from the professional building across the street. As I started across the street a movement caught my eye, a flash of silver. When I glanced to my right, my stomach clenched in a brief moment of absolute fear before I realized it had been the sun reflecting off a car windshield.