Marline Williams
Washington, D.C., October 1965
I must have missed the Agency training about how to sneeze in a full-face latex mask without blowing your cover. Literally.
“Gesundheit. And pardonnez-moi, mademoiselle, but your face seems to have parted company with your neck. Très Marie Antoinette.” My temporary partner draws his finger dramatically along his collar, chuckling. The handkerchief he offers me is immaculate, with sharply pressed folds.
“Do you iron these or send them out? The only other hankies I’ve seen with edges this crisp were my granddaddy’s, and I pressed them myself.” I try to blow my nose without making things worse. Which makes him laugh, which makes me laugh. That’s happened a lot on this assignment.
He waves off my attempt to return his property. “Military brat, by any chance?”
“Whole family of ’em. Practically since the Civil War.”
“Here, too. Weren’t you surprised to learn other kids’ socks didn’t have creases?”
I stifle my giggle when the Secret Service man in the front seat glares at us over his Ray-Bans.
For a CIA operative, my partner has a wacky sense of humor. No complaints—it’s kept us sane over the last two weeks as we secure world peace by pretending to be a key French ambassador and his faithful secretary. Sure, cruising downtown D.C. in a limo seems like a pretty cushy job. Glamorous, even. A long way from the Agency steno pool where I spent my first five years at Langley. But there are downsides to decoy work.
For starters, who knows when some nut with a gun and a grudge will start taking pot shots at us, thinking we’re the real McCoys. Then there’s these dumpy dresses, the suffocating mask, itchy bouffant wig, and ugly cat-eye glasses. So much for famous French chic. And all right, the lean man sitting beside me looks and sounds exactly like the suave, jet-setting attaché whose picture is plastered all over the newsstands. But, there’s no telling what’s under that mask. Field work teaches you to question everything. Like, why does this phony Frenchie seem—feel—so familiar? He reminds me of . . . No. Couldn’t be.
He cautiously runs his hand over the hairpiece, careful not to disturb the Brylcreemed curls. “Before we get to the embassy gala . . . Well, it’s our last night and now that the assignment is practically over—It’s not protocol, Mademoiselle Danvers, but . . .”
Ray-Bans hears him and shoots us another deadly stare. The hulking driver grins sympathetically in the rearview mirror. My partner thumbs some doohickey beside him, and a glass partition goes up. So does the radar of those apes in the front seat, but they feign indifference.
I hide a triumphant, tell-tale grin behind my clutch purse. “So, it IS you! It’s been a long time, Ambassador Fitzpatrick. How’ve you been, Gene?”
“What gave me away, Clare?” The soupy French accent disappears, and the rumbling Texas twang I remember surfaces.
“That scar on your thumb.” I can’t resist touching it.
“The one you put there when you threw the chessboard at me?”
“I didn’t like being called a cheater.”
His laugh runs through me like whiskey. “Then you shouldn’t have kicked the board over. Ain’t you ashamed of yourself, a lady like you, hollering your head off in the student union?”
“You know perfectly well I wouldn’t have . . . Ooh, you rile me up so easy! Hold on a minute. How did you know it was me?”
“That kitty-cat sneeze of yours. Sneezes are like thumbprints—no two alike.”
“We shouldn’t be talking like this. You know the rules.” I slide my fingers out from under his, and pay attention to a bright orange leaf stuck to the rain-streaked window.
“Since when do you and I go by the rules?” Same lazy, coaxing drawl that almost made me run off with him ten years ago. “Remember the night I asked you . . .”
“We better change the subject,” I say. The leaf’s edges flutter like it’s ready to fly off into the darkening October twilight. I turn to him. “Oh, Gene . . .”
From behind the mask, his eyes light up.
My heart and the limo accelerate simultaneously at a bullet’s unmistakable whine. Gene bangs on the partition, and we take the next corner like a Mercury rocket, the force of the swerve flattening me against him. I squirm loose from those iron arms and peek out the rear window. The car tailing us is gaining. We pull our service revolvers. Look at each other for one stolen second.
“I’ll take the driver. Got the tires?” His eyes revert to the car behind us.
“Got ’em.”
A dozen blocks later, the limo dives down an underground parking ramp and fishtails into a deep corner. The driver kills the engine. “We’ll take it from here, Fitz,” Ray-Bans says after a silent, nerve-wracking wait. “You two scram.”
Gene rips off his mask and hairpiece. Why am I so happy to see that his crazy, crow-black hair still sticks up in all directions? Mask and wig discarded, I shake my hair free, touch up my lipstick, change into silvery pumps, and reverse my sensible wool coat to the dressy satin side. I’m aware of his watching eyes, and my heartbeat quickens again.
By the time we emerge onto Pennsylvania Avenue, we’re just another couple strolling to the Willard Hotel for a nice dinner out. But his arm around me feels like so much more than camouflage.
“You’re still wearing the ring.” He rubs it with his scarred thumb.
I catch a scarlet leaf twirling down in front of us. “Never felt like taking it off.”
The kiss he gives me on the hotel steps would convince anyone. Including me.
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