Page 13 of Cry Havoc (Tom Reece #1)
Maryland, USA
ALLISTER DESMOND WAS NOT going home. Instead, he called his wife, Brenda, telling her that something important had come up at work, that he would be in meetings for the next few hours, that she shouldn’t wait up, and to please give their newborn daughter a kiss for him.
He did not do this with any regularity. Maybe it would be different if Clara Müller lived in the United States.
Brenda could call the NSA switchboard at Fort Meade and be patched through to his cubicle to check on him, but the operator would tell her that her husband was unavailable.
Such were the perks of working in the national security space.
He pulled out of the large parking lot and onto Savage Road thinking of the evening ahead.
His wife did not know exactly what he did.
Top secret and all that. She was proud and somewhat in awe of him.
She was quite content to care for their young daughter in suburban Maryland and keep a tidy home.
She even pretended to like the spy films to which he dragged her on date nights, or had before their daughter was born.
Allister checked his sideview mirror and eased the 1965 Ford Galaxie 500 onto 295 North toward Baltimore.
Luckily, he had made the purchase before the birth of their first child.
The car was only a year old when he had found it at the local used car lot.
Brenda had been so proud when he pulled it into their driveway.
As the man of the house, he handled the finances, and she had absolute trust in him.
If Allister thought the new car fit their budget, it must be so.
He had opted for the Raven Black paint job on the Galaxie, the four-door version to keep it a little more practical.
The only hint of excess was the red interior, which also happened to be the only option available on the lot.
At $2,815 it was a bit of a splurge, but not enough to raise any eyebrows in the office of counterintelligence.
He had taken Brenda to the Volkswagen dealership when they discovered she was pregnant. She looked so happy behind the wheel of the 1967 baby blue VW Squareback station wagon, a car that was now parked in their garage. As far as she knew, they were living the American dream.
Allister sighed and checked the speedometer running the length of his dashboard.
His eyes dropped to the clock, centered below the speedometer and just above the steering wheel.
He was late. That was okay. Running late would just make him seem more important to Clara.
Held up at the office. Matter of national security. Yes, that would impress her.
She would be waiting for him at the Lord Baltimore Hotel’s Diamondback Lounge, where they had met a few times over the past two years when she had business in the area.
It was convenient because she would already have a room paid for by her German technology company.
He pictured her there now, dark hair styled into the fashionable “beehive” made popular by Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood.
He thought of the men of the after-work crowd noticing her and starting to chat her up or buy her drinks.
His foot pressed down a bit harder on the accelerator.
He wasn’t betraying his country. West Germany was an ally after all.
It’s not like he was giving secrets to the Soviets.
It was just pillow talk, or so that was how it had started.
But pillow talk would only take him so far.
He knew that if he was to continue to spend time in bed with someone as stunning as Clara Müller, he would have to give her more.
Allister wasn’t a fool. He knew he was no Sean Connery, but now he was having an affair that made him feel as though he was.
He also knew that she did not lust for him because of his looks or physique, or lack thereof, but rather for his keen mind.
When they discussed the future of technology, Clara got a ravenous look in her eyes.
To her, when they talked computing, no one else mattered but Allister Desmond.
He had never had that effect on another woman, not even his wife.
The importance of technology went right over her head.
Not Clara’s. She spoke his language. She understood him and the importance of his work.
And when she invited him back to her hotel room after an intense discussion on the opportunities presented by cryptology in the public and private sectors, Allister was hooked.
Once in her bedroom she had taken control, doing things to him and taking him to heights of pleasure he never knew existed.
She had blown his mind. European women were different.
What would she be wearing? A cocktail dress? A miniskirt that had become so popular a few years ago? Or maybe the more subdued Jackie Kennedy–type Chanel suit with matching hat? She tended to deemphasize her stunning figure. Knowing what was under those conservative clothes turned him on even more.
He knew she must have other boyfriends in Germany, but she never mentioned them and Allister never asked. He preferred the fantasy that she only had eyes for him.
Thinking that he would soon be enjoying what lay hidden beneath her Chanel suit made him start to perspire.
He removed his brown felt trilby hat and set it on the passenger seat.
It was from Dobbs of Fifth Avenue in New York.
He had purchased it in 1963 after seeing From Russia with Love.
Even though it had fallen out of style, he still liked it.
If it was good enough for Connery, it was good enough for Allister Desmond.
At the time he bought it, the hat had covered a head of thick brown hair.
Now, the well-worn fedora concealed the bald spot that ran from his forehead to just below the tips of his ears.
The hair that still grew on the sides and back of his head resembled a horseshoe.
A supervisor had once called him Friar Tuck, and Allister remembered the laugh of the attractive secretary who had overheard it.
Allister did all he could to hide his embarrassment, knowing his face had flushed a bright red, his humiliation on full display.
He had tried for months to impress that secretary, replicating the hat trick from the Bond films, lobbing his trilby onto the dusty and unused communal tree each morning on his way into the office, but she never responded with so much as a smile.
After the Friar Tuck comment he had stopped.
He had a much sexier prize now. That it was an illicit rendezvous made it even sexier.
He had thought of getting a toupee but then reconsidered; it would be just one more thing for his colleagues to gossip about behind his back.
Clara also called him “Des.” He had always wanted to be called the more masculine “Des” or “Al,” but Allister had stuck early on in life, and he had never managed to shake it.
He did not dislike his wife. She was the homemaker, plump and plain.
He did feel guilty knowing he had betrayed her, but there was an excitement to living two lives that he couldn’t deny.
Sex with Brenda lacked the enthusiasm that Allister desired; lights off in the missionary position during which she hardly moved.
It was done more out of a sense of marital duty than any physical attraction or animal magnetism.
Clara was a different beast altogether. The interest in his work, the passion with which she took him in the bedroom, in the shower, on the floor, or on the hotel room sofa, drove him wild.
Afterward she would light a cigarette, making no attempt to cover her naked body.
She was completely at ease walking around the hotel room in nothing at all, windows open, unafraid of her sexuality, perhaps even flaunting it.
Allister had not told her what he did for a living when they had first met.
That came later, after they had met for a second time.
Clara had been even more impressed as he held her in his arms, her perfect breasts pressed against him, sweaty and exhausted after the most intense sexual experience of his life.
That was when he told her of his work at the National Security Agency.
He passed over the Patapsco River, fighting the urge to drive faster imagining what awaited him after a drink or two at the bar.
Slow down. No sense in getting a speeding ticket.
His right foot, encased in a black leather Sears “Mile Hi” casual shoe, let off on the accelerator.
The shoes were advertised as having extra thick, extra bouncy Searofoam soles, which supplemented his height.
A man as vertically challenged as Allister needed all the help he could get.
At $5.77 from the Sears catalog, they would not break the bank.
He also liked how comfortable they felt on his pudgy feet.
They complimented his dark gray worsted wool trousers and charcoal Harris tweed jacket.
Both items also happened to be featured on the same page of the Sears catalog, which meant they must pair well together.
Allister loved spy novels. The British authors were particularly good: le Carré, Fleming, Deighton, O’Donnell, Greene, Ambler, Clifford, Hall, Gainham, Williams, MacLean, and Lyall.
Having read all of le Carré and Fleming, he knew, as much as he tried to fight it, that he was more Smiley than Bond.
Le Carré just depressed and confused him, though he suffered through the stories all the same.
He shuddered at the notion of Brenda becoming Lady Ann Sercomb to his Smiley.
Well, not tonight anyway. Tonight, he was going to be Bond with Clara Müller as his Daniela Bianchi.