Jonah didn’t look away from the Macedonian TV show he had on. He liked this kind of living very much—nice hotel room, entertainment, and the dish he was eating, something calledgyuvech, some kind of tasty chicken stew. He’d have loved to have some of that wine on the menu too, but his monitor didn’t allow it, of course. He really didn’t want to leave Velesta. Thosekafenas...he had soaked in all that energy available there. Full. His stomach and his little cache of treasure. He listened attentively while he flipped to yet another channel.
“What? Greta failed? Five-One here saw her talking with Dilaver.”
“They hadn’t left for the drop-offs in time. I bet COMCEN has something to do with it. The instructions said that Plan B has been activated and we’re to go to Skopje and wait for the Noretski girl.”
“Llallana Noretski? Isn’t she supposed to be our very own Project Gem baby?”
“Which just tells you that I was right about all this mind control and remote-viewing bullshit, doesn’t it? We’re supposed to be in control, but look at what happened. We’re being ordered to go here and there, and with nothing to show at the end.”
His monitor threw his magazine down on the table. “We’re always one step behind, that’s all. The other side has a remote viewer too and they’re getting their hands on the targets first.”
“Well, we keep letting them beat us. We had the list before they could even sort out Gorman’s damage. We had knowledge of where each shipment went while they were busy going through red tape. We even had a head start with our testing of the serum on the remote viewers, and yet their operative managed to get to the target in Frankfurt. If we don’t get to the trigger before they do, we’re going to be replaced.”
Jonah reached for the soup.Chorba.He liked to remember the food items in foreign countries because food was the most important thing after sex. This was a country he would like to visit again. Beautiful young girls. Good food. If he ever escaped these assholes, he definitely would return. But how could he escape when they had what he wanted most?
He was beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together by just listening to his CIA handlers whenever they had their little arguments. Greta was the double agent in charge at the CIA division in Washington, D.C., before that big recent scandal, when everything went south. He had kept up with it while he was slaving away in his CIA cubicle, feeling envious his security clearance wasn’t that high. And yet here he was, part of a clandestine team, trying to get hold of some important weapon from a double agent. From what he’d read, this Greta, foreign agent that she was, must be a hell of a spy, having managed to work inside the CIA for ten years.
He realized now he must help these bastards retrieve the device or he was going to lose them. Obviously, there was someone higher than them pulling the strings and if his handlers were taken away, so would his serum. No, he couldn’t have that. He didn’t want to go back to living in that place, feeling empty, missing the rush of power from the serum. He shivered in anticipation of slipping into the energy of more of those little whores. They must have at least a dozen men a night, the way their energy pulsated and called to him. And in that onekafena, with so many of them, he almost felt like he OD’ed, the sexual charge was so powerful. His cock had turned so hard he hurt. And then, he had found out something new.
Jonah smiled. Since they had live sex acts in thekafenathemselves, he discovered it wasn’t just memories he could record. The sexual charge given out by those people while they were doing it was stronger; to his delight, when he entered into their glow, it wasn’t just his feelings he experienced but theirs too. Every lustful thrust, every dirty fantasy of those men; and every time they came, it was like feeling two orgasms. He recorded them all. He loved every minute those girls felt powerless against him, or rather, the man with them—who the fuck cared—their fear, their drugged states, their having to please, all that made him feel like the most potent male in the world. He took all he wanted while he had spied on Greta for his handlers.
No, he wasn’t going to let that other remote viewer win this time. He must find a way to kill her if he saw her in Skopje. He hoped they would send him near akafenain Skopje. Now that he knew that it felt so much better recording live, he was greedy for more.
HELEN LOOKED UP ATthe sound of her suite’s main door unlocking. She glanced at the clock to verify the lateness of the hour. She heard the low murmur of male voices, the flick of some lights going off, andthe sound of people heading off to their respective rooms. She held her breath. Would he come in?
A few seconds later, Jed slipped into her room without knocking. He closed it quietly behind him. His jacket and tie were off. A few buttons of the shirt undone. Her hands curled a little tighter around the magazine she’d been aimlessly flipping. No man should have the right to look so damn tempting and sexy to any woman who had a headache that refused to go away. There was just no denying her acute awareness of him.
He came and sat on one side of her bed. He had a way of making silences linger. She turned her face up as his hands explored gently. His fingers soothed the back of her head; his thumbs worked circles over her brows.
“Have I told you you’re good with your hands?”
“A few times,” he murmured. With infinite care, he feathered kisses along the side of her face, tracing the soft line of her jaw, and then moving deliciously down the sensitive area of her neck.
“This can’t go on, you know,” she said. “You can’t keep babying me. I had to leave early tonight when my headache became worse.”
“Yes,” he said against her skin.
“Yes, what?” She wanted him to kiss her lips.
“Yes, if the serum is going to take away that headache, I’ll get you some.”
Helen pushed against him so she could look into his eyes. His silver eyes seemed to gleam with an inner fire in the soft lighting. Despite the soft caress of his hands, he looked hard and unyielding. She could tell he’d been spending time debating his decision with himself.
“I know you’re worried,” she told him, “and yeah, so am I, but I need this headache gone so I can perform.”
“I know.”
“So what finally made you change your mind?”
He sat up, one hand absently unbuttoning his loose shirt. “I talked to Dr. Kirkland about Armando. After he’d admitted to taking the serum without permission, Armando answered some questions during tests. The serum did help to block the migraines, but they have side effects.” He shrugged out of the shirt. “He claimed to hear voices sometimes. Dr. Kirkland is wondering whether our newest commando isn’t just bipolar and needs other medication. But the main thing remains that he had used the serum on the side enough times. He was able to finish his assignments, in spite of his hearing and seeing things.”
Helen tried hard not to be distracted as he continued to take off his clothes. He was beautiful to look at and she really would prefer todo other things than talk. She pushed the featherbed lower. It was getting warmer under the comfortable downy material.
“Did Dr. K. consult the scientists who gave me those lectures about the serum?”
“You really want to hear scientists getting ecstatic about quantum entanglement and Bell’s theorem?”
“Say what?”
