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© 2012 by Birgit Von Schondorf. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means

without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/14/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-8598-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-8599-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-8600-8 (ebk)

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CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

This is a true story, gleaned from a compilation of interviews and dialogue that took place over several years. Names of persons and details of situations have been altered in the name of safety and national security.

Chapter One

__________________________

Muffled sounds of a third-world country coursed through the wretchedly polluted, bluish air that hung over Islamabad. Mingled with the stench of garbage and excrement, the combination made this city of 1.2 million souls an open-air sewer for anyone unlucky enough to live or have business here.

On this particular day in mid-December, Penn Adams, a CIA operative working undercover, was among the seething mass of people. In an instant, all hell broke loose, and the hunter became the hunted. It was all so surreal, as if the events were happening in slow motion. A violent ballet of chaos—shoving, running, the cacophony of rattletrap automobile horns, shouting. Penn knew he was in imminent danger, and he broke into a sprint, his heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was going to burst through his chest.

This can’t be happening! his brain screamed out.

His survival instinct kicked in, and he could feel the rush of adrenalin in his veins. He tried to control his breathing, but fear blocked all such efforts. The ringing in his ears made it hard for him to hear; close-range gunfire has a tendency to do that.

Penn wondered if he was injured. He couldn’t feel his feet or his bum right knee as he raced down a shitty little side street. Fifty paces behind him, several raghead assassins yelling in Urdu, the official language, pursued and shot at him. He had just jumped out of a third-floor window. Conveniently, a pile of sand being used by a construction crew cushioned his fall.

What an immensely fucked-up day, he thought.

He was certain it would be his last. By the time he had arrived in Islamabad, he already had used up more lives than any man was entitled to have. He was working on… five, or was it six? He had lost count. Segments of his life flashed through his mind as bullets whizzed past his head. The sound reminded him of a persistent mosquito hovering near the side of his head. He could hear the little bastard; he just couldn’t see it.

Up ahead, Penn spotted an old man tending an ice-cream cart adorned with a skirt that reached down to the unpaved street, boxes stacked to one side. Penn ran toward the cart and dove underneath in one motion, praying that the bearded vendor would not rat him out to the gunmen who wanted to kill him. Mercifully, they ran past the rickety cart that obscured Penn from their view. His breathing finally began to slow as he knelt motionless.

But Penn was pissed. The extraction team he had been expecting was nowhere to be seen. When he thought the coast was clear, and while still crouched under the cart, he placed a call to Langley on his small satellite phone. He swore at his handler, Clay, to get him the fuck out of Dodge. Sweat ran down his face and into his eyes. He wiped it away with the handkerchief he kept in a back pocket. Then he instructed Clay to relay a call to Aria. He felt like he needed to hear her voice.

In fact, Penn wasn’t supposed to be calling anyone in the midst of a mission. But he wasn’t sure he would ever get to talk to Aria or see her again. He had just dodged a proverbial bullet; in fact, by sheer luck, he had dodged a hail of them. As far as he was concerned, he had earned the right to break a rule or two.

Clay understood and put the call through without hesitating.

Thursday, November 5th

It should’ve been a normal day, a day like any other. Get up, rush like hell, wake up in the shower, struggle for coffee, swear when you discover on the way to the car or the train that your stocking has a run in it and you know that you don’t have a backup in your bag.

This day should’ve been like a mediocre, whiny song on the radio that now passes for rock with the average fifteen-year-old in any suburban center in America.

But it wasn’t. This was his life, her life, their life, the country’s life, and the agency’s life, and there was nothing normal, standard, or typical about it.

There is no graph or book or sign or special handshake that ensues when people like them find each other, sleep together, and fall in love. There’s even less to go on when people like them discover they’re far more connected than meets the eye. So says the day when they met.

Let’s backtrack a bit and talk about when they hadn’t yet met. That could be described easily. Madonna. Whore. She was Madonna, and he was a whore. She was now single after being a child bride in an abusive relationship. She had not been with anyone for a long time. She was not hot to enter into the bonds of matrimony—ever again! He, on the other hand, was married and had stayed as such out of guilt, because of their two lovely daughters. He was married to their mother, whom he did not like, much less love or sleep with. He was a whore, getting some on the side like everyone else in his profession—up to double digits a week from a revolving door of four steady women and fillers whenever and wherever. Sport-fucking was his only MO. He was what she now affectionately calls a himbo. A male bimbo.

Then came that faithful day. That summer day in New York that felt like a blast a of winter. To this day, it still doesn’t seem real, but surely it is. It’s real. At times too real. Real all over the world. From the Kremlin to Karachi, from Washington and marble halls to sunny beaches. From big rooms with too much technology to men who only have one name and have a closet full of trench coats.

The stakes are so much higher on a normal day than regular people could ever imagine. Doesn’t everyone’s boyfriend, best friend, soul mate, possible future husband bolt out of bed to take a call in the middle of the night from Karachi? No. No they don’t. This is reality, his reality and hers. Aria McConnell remembered what it was like before she met the group, before they knew her and she knew them. Before the meeting that day in New York. She knew everything… and Langley knew that, but everyone was doing a damn good job of being in denial. She used to pretend that she was just some girl. She had gotten the calls years before from family and friends… So sorry—can’t make dinner or I’m gonna be late . . . and then an embassy blows up. Total denial.

But back to the day one of the governor’s boys, a lawyer, a good for nothing, had the hots for her and facilitated this meeting with him. It was destiny; it had to happen. They would work together. She had already been recruited and had taken on the project. She had given her word. She was the one traveling from the farthest away, but she arrived early. Up at the crack of dawn, a flight to LaGuardia, and a cab into the city.

Security was a pain in her ass. She wished at other times they would be so vigilant. They put some little chicklet through everything short of a full-body cavity search. She felt like she was flying El Al. Or going to Canada, again. Treated like an Escobarian drug lord, you would have thought she was just another hussy blowing someone’s boss, but she wasn’t.

She was there because of a nun. If anyone would have bothered to ask, she would have been happy to tell them that she was there because of a nun.

When she finally got upstairs to Penn Adam’s office, he wanted to jump her, and she knew it. Months later, he confessed that when she walked around the desk, he had the hardest time not manhandling her, deep kissing her, and pushing her down onto the desk. She had him. He was both cocky and scared.

Little did he know, Aria knew who she was dealing with. The only thing she didn’t understand was the hug after the business lunch. That was him trying anything to get near her—short of clearing the table there in the steak restaurant and doing her in front of the lunch crowd. They were hot, out of the shoot from the very first moment, and despite the fact that he was so very tuned in because his life depended on it, every minute of every day, he was sunk.

But he was safe because he was with his ultimate match. Like a sidearm that they built for him at Langley. They fit better than a glove. They were twin cells from different times and of a different sex. Like mirror image, twins inside and out on a metaphysical level. It was like two beings existing in one skin. Even standing up was the best sex, times ten. It was all theirs, and no one else ever had a clue.

It was mind-blowing no matter how you looked at it. She was good with all of it by then. She would have been his biggest fan if he would have pulled a Clark Gable. She could do Scarlet! Probably more Johansen than O’Hara. He told her a month ago that he would have run off to hotel with her that very moment that lunch was over if she would have given him a sign. Ah, then she would have been like the other tarts he was banging from all over the world that were hoping their husband-shopping would come complete with US citizenship.

The animal had stolen the hotshot lawyer’s potential girlfriend that he had been bragging about for months. He had not gotten the memo, that this would take time, several months and two trips to the Middle East, one to the Med, and one to the Ottoman Empire, and lastly one moment in Washington. The kicker was getting his chops busted for a relationship with a little blue pill that jumped out of his pocket and onto the carpet. Jumping the gun a bit, no?

They would be very busy for the next few months while he learned about himself, walking into rooms that he’d never known were in the mansion in the first place. In the dark, with no flashlight, he roamed, by braille. Hands first, he bumped his head and toes every day. She watched and tried to be gentle and not giggle. It was hard; he was so very cute all the time. Bet he never thought of himself as cute. But she thought so.

He left her alone on that first trip, alone in Washington. He was busy freaking out. Completely freaking out. Run away . . . Run away. He was used to not caring about anyone. They didn’t even have sex, but they wanted to. Aria was glad that they had not yet slept together. Surely he would have broken her heart, and of course he did. All she remembered was being on the treadmill afterwards, feeling terribly hurt, tears streaming down her face while he drove back to NYC. She knew he was scared but couldn’t believe that he actually left her there, alone. She wasn’t sure right then that he could make the jump. That he had the emotional and mental capacity to be able to handle her. At least he still had no idea what handling her was really about, thank God. He was the one with handlers, but she was the one who needed them. Given the time and the headspace, she was hoping he’d figure this out. That she wouldn’t need to hold his hand too much. She didn’t want to be the strong one, the boy. That always made her feel so unfeminine. She hated it when she had to take the lead. People were generally so wishy-washy now, and so ill informed. She hoped that he would be so wildly intelligent that after he saw things for himself, and experienced it time and time again, that he would understand. Telling her that it was okay. Putting it all together on his own.

She already knew his story. There were just some details to be filled in. But he might think he was completely out of his mind if he really started to understand hers. She hoped not, because she knew this day that she loved him.

Chapter Two

__________________________

September 14, Tennessee

Underground bunkers, engines, skeezy, low-end VC guys and weapons, big money, and men that only have numbers as names. What am I supposed to feel? My life is like the movies, only much more real. When I don’t brush my teeth, I need a lot of mouthwash. That does not happen in the movies, or in the books that I read. The spies in the movies never have bad breath or worry about it. Things always go well. Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig are always perfect. Every minute of every day, no basis in reality. The real deal is prep… fingers crossed, swear, pray. Closely followed by breathing, amazement, and sleep. This is the real world, not Pinewood. Her Majesty sold separately.

His name was Penn, and he was perfect. At least he was my version of perfect, and that was all that mattered. In a perfect world, I could spell, and my ass would not be broken. That’s not so Hollywood. Belly problems based on field stress. Yeah, that’s one thing they don’t ever show. The big dilemma of the week is how the hell do I introduce all these people to each other without blowing protocol so they can all help each other? Everyone is so sensitive, understandably. I feel like the colorblind kid with the Rubik’s cube in my stocking. Duh.

August 16th

Sitting here, and it’s late. Watching one of my favorite movies, starring one of my favorite actresses—Angela Bassett in How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Boy did I need this tonight. We are all alive and intact after these past two weeks… amazing!

I am safe, but I have a headache. It’s mostly from stress, from having one hell of a night and day and traveling a lot, but I also did something that I don’t ever do: I drank. I’m a lightweight to the extreme. An eighth of a glass of red to calm me down and take away the pain in my head and neck. It worked, making me dizzy and providing some necessary relief.

Safety has become an issue again, this time at a really serious level. I get truly dizzy worrying about it. People I love and need at the highest levels, and my abilities at tapping into the brains and energy of the world as I do is very draining and causes me to be dizzy. The noise level inside my head is currently deafening on a worldwide scale. For months, I have been amping up without trying to be able to really tune in. Apparently to be applied, right now. I have something to contribute, and even if I did not want to participate, it lands in my lap.

So here I am this night… running again, flanked by more Kevlar than anyone should ever have to wear. You are hunting high-threat scumbags around the globe. Like Indiana Jones, bounty hunter, you appear. You are asleep in a military bed, surrounded by guns and planes and missiles, safe as bug in a rug after three whole weeks of being anything but. I have heard two nights of extreme, primal panic in the dark marred by foreign languages and threats of a terminal nature. This kind I have felt before; most people don’t even know it exists. Thank God for them and blissful ignorance. They are the kind of happy that allows a normal life without any real mental maintenance or malady. They watch the news and 30 Rock, and everything is just fine. They take safety for granted. They are clueless. They think it just happens. Kumbaya. Lucky them.