Red Midnight

  Red Midnight

  Heather Graham

  For my aunt, Eleanor, who has always been there for me, and for the Russian people, the ordinary people, who made our trip so very warm and extraordinary.

  Contents

  Prologue

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  Interlude

  V

  VI

  VII

  Interlude

  VIII

  IX

  Interlude

  X

  XI

  Interlude

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  Epilogue

  A Biography of Heather Graham

  PROLOGUE

  THE HALLWAY WAS LONG and white, white walls, white tile flooring, evoking complete sterility. The man who walked down the corridor was a dark and compelling contrast. His height of six feet two was amplified by a slender physique, broad shoulders tapering to wire-muscled trimness. His suit was of dove gray and he wore it well, its finely tailored angles emphasizing the toned quality of a body well fit for action. His appearance of casual and understated elegance was deceptive: he could turn on a dime and demolish distance in seconds, endure fearful rigors of cold and heat, and tangle with the best, be it a duel of fists or tongue. Ice-blue eyes that never betrayed an emotion were a point of beauty in a face not particularly handsome but ruggedly arresting. Forty years of character were etched into that strong face, capable of compelling great trust—or great fear. The direct gaze of his extraordinary blue eyes could instill chills that raced inexplicably up the spine. Women shivered deliriously at his glance, wondering later what had been the great attraction while still dreaming about feeling that strange caress of piercing blue again, imagining the vital touch of the enigmatic man behind the eyes—a man who exuded a quiet power that was only a hint of what lay beneath the surface.

  His footsteps brought him swiftly and quietly down the long hallway, where the white sterility ended in a mass of silver-gray machinery. From floor to ceiling, wall to wall, disks, reels, keyboards, exhausts, and drives exhibited an overwhelming display of man’s ingenuity. In front of the mass of gadgets and technology was a single chair, its metal frame and upholstery gray. The chair awaited the man, and when he was seated, his first action was to slip his hand into a pit below the computer’s screen. Cogs whirred, a light flared. The screen above the man lit into action.

  HELLO, JAROD STEELE.

  Jarod smiled a bit wryly. Even the computer was sociable and courteous. He punched out a return.

  GOOD MORNING, CATHERINE I.

  He made no effort to add to his greeting, because he knew the next message coming.

  THE DATE IS MARCH 2. TIME, 10.03.28 AM. OUTSIDE THE UNITED NATIONS BUILDING THE TEMPERATURE IS 60 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT, 15.6 CELSIUS. NO RAIN IN FORECAST. NICE DAY, SIR, FOR NEW YORK THAT IS, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

  Great! Jarod thought, nothing like a highly technical piece of machinery with a sense of humor. But then Catherine I had been programmed by Neils Weir, who was a genius and a little crazy. The Catherine I and her counterpart across the seas were very lovely ladies. Jarod lifted a brow at the screen and waited. It was sometimes incredible. Catherine I would continue a social commentary on his welfare, monitoring his moves by the laws of probability. Within her memory banks Catherine I knew all there was to know about Jarod Steele.

  But this morning Catherine had nothing else to say. Jarod started to punch in a thank you for the information, then remembered a bit sheepishly that he was dealing with a computer, nothing more than machinery. Catherine would not be hurt if he didn’t express his gratitude. He repunched the keys.

  “A” PROMPT, PLEASE. READ FILE. MERGE ALL PERTINENT INFORMATION. FILE NAME HUGHES, SAMUEL, #34ABB277. RETURN.

  In a split second the screen was filled with information. When the computer had completed the file, a command request appeared at the top of the screen.

  SUPPLY ADDITIONAL DATA, PLEASE.

  Jarod touched more keys.

  MERGE FILES. HUGHES, SAMUEL, AND PROJECT MIDNIGHT.

  A screen of new information appeared, but Jarod felt an uneasiness in the pit of his stomach as his lips tightened in a grim line. What he now saw was not what he had expected. Where had this new information come from?

  Jarod punched in a new question based on the data that had appeared on the screen.

  PRESENT LOCATION, SUBJECT HUGHES?

  The answer flashed back immediately.

  UNKNOWN

  Frustrated, discouraged, and now concerned, Jarod sat back in the chair, staring at the screen with a frown lining his forehead in deep furrows as he waited. Suddenly he hunched intently over the keyboard, his long fingers fringed at the joints with lighter tufts of the silvering jet hair on his head, with nails short and bluntly cut but immaculate, coursing over the keys as he filled in further information for assimilation. Then he repeated his question, only to receive the same answer. The nagging question of where the new data on Project Midnight had come from remained a mystery.

  Baffled, he leaned back in the chair once more, his blue gaze staring at the computer with reproach, as if once again forgetting that Catherine had no human qualities and couldn’t be shamed into answering him. Jarod ran his fingers over his temple, then thoughtfully rubbed a freshly shaved chin. Damn! he thought with disgust. The computer wasn’t human, but he was, and he was making mistakes.

  Catherine was a fantastic piece of machinery, but she was only machinery. He was seeking intelligent answers based on assumption: unless he asked for assumptions, she could give him nothing but facts. And now with these recent revelations, the matter had become more complicated.

  But if you fed her all the pertinent information and requested the probabilities, Jarod thought, a slight smile flickering across his lips.

  Jarod quickly punched the new command.

  PROBABILITY FACTOR, ENGAGE NEW INFO.

  Having given Catherine the new data, he reworded his question.

  WHERE IS SUBJECT, HUGHES, SAMUEL?

  The answer was the one he had feared. He winced as feelings of both sadness and disgusted resignation at Hughes’s probable death made him suddenly tired, very tired. He closed his eyes for a moment and it suddenly became clear to him what might have happened. Sam Hughes had always seemed like such a nice guy around the embassy, but apparently he had got a little more involved in Project Midnight than he should have. He had fallen to the age-old allure of easy riches to be made through treachery. But somewhere along the line he must have panicked. Or maybe he wanted something to hold over the head of someone else, which is what could have accounted for the new information Catherine had acquired. Whatever his reasons, Hughes had fed her with clues, leaving Jarod more confused.

  If I could discover what happened, I would have the answer, Jarod thought dryly. But he didn’t have any answers, and so Project Midnight had to remain his first concern. Because if he could trust this new data from Hughes something very dangerous was going on—just how dangerous, Sam Hughes had discovered too late.

  Jarod reopened his eyes to the screen, and smiled with little humor. Catherine was apologizing for the information she had been forced to supply.

  Jarod began to punch keys, stupidly assuring Catherine it wasn’t “her” fault. He requested another “A” prompt.

  HUGHES’S SPECIFIC ASSIGNMENT, PROJECT MIDNIGHT?

  Jarod read the file information again, most of which he already knew. But the tail end of Catherine’s listing was useful. A description of someone had been cleverly filtered into the routine information. A description and some kind of a key code. Mc … the letters M and c, as in a name … Jarod tensed as a creeping sensation came over him. Hughes had ad
ded these clues, which pointed toward something happening soon. Jarod was more distressed by this information than by any of Hughes’s previous clues. He punched more keys.

  VISAS PLEASE, REQUEST FOR RED ZONE, PRECEDING TWO WEEKS.

  Catherine efficiently replied.

  ADAMA, JOHN

  BENTON, THEODORE

  DAYTON, ANGELINA

  LYDELL, HAROLD

  LYDELL, MARIE

  MCCABE, ERIN

  A look of chilling intensity filled Jarod’s ice-blue eyes. He punched the stop key, and zeroed in on the last name, the only Mc in the grouping. He requested the file on her, his well-wired muscles taut as he waited.

  SUBJECT, MCCABE, ERIN.

  Jarod read on, requesting a portrait. He punched in the necessary color key codes to give the proper hues to the graphics.

  Once more he leaned back in the chair, his long, fingers idly brushing his chin as he looked on.

  He had seen her before: most Americans had seen her face and figure. Not even the distorted colors and graphics of the computer image could take away from the elegant beauty of her fine bone structure, her liquid eyes, her full pouting lips. Her face was a classic oval, her cheekbones high, her eyes large, wide, well set apart. Winged brows gave her a look of both delicacy and spirit: she could pose as angel or devil. In her career, he knew, she had appeared as both.

  It can’t be her, he thought. She can’t be Hughes’s contact. But she could be. He would have to watch her, and it might prove interesting. It was usually the least suspicious person one needed to suspect.

  “What the hell would a woman like that be doing going there anyway?” he wondered aloud. “It’s not exactly the place for social butterflies.” Damn! he muttered. It looked like trouble either way. She was going to be his responsibility, just like every American citizen who crossed the border. Even under normal circumstances, he would have noted the name skeptically, bemoaning the fact that he was responsible for watching the antics of this whimsical beauty out for a careless lark. He couldn’t think of her visit as a lark. He had to watch her very carefully, because all the clues pointed in her direction. It seemed incredible.

  Or was it? What if she were in on Project Midnight?

  Such a beautiful face … And body, he reminded himself dryly, which only served to increase his irritation. Erin McCabe was packaged merchandise; she was a lie, created by those whose products she advertised. What a damn complication.

  It could be her—five feet nine, blond, blue eyes …

  No, they weren’t blue—the computer showed them as blue. They were actually somewhere between blue and gray, a glistening, beguiling silver. He could see the real Erin McCabe, just as he had seen her on the cover of a magazine recently, hovering over the computer image. He hadn’t realized until now how closely he had looked at that cover. Yes, her eyes were really silver and her hair was a shade between burnished gold and softest platinum, not that common yellow.

  She’s packaged merchandise! he reminded himself dryly, and they had packaged her quite well. He gave himself a little shake. She could fit the bill, Jarod thought. Wasn’t she just the type? She could look into a man’s eyes with that liquid enticement that made the blood race. She was an angel; she was a sensually seductive woman.

  Recently divorced, Jarod noticed, arched brow winging as he pondered his subject. Yes, of course. She had been married to a photographer. Time had run the story.

  Jarod found himself wondering what she would look like without her makeup, without that wealth of gold hair floating about her features with abandoned but dignified beauty. She was very, very elegant.

  It’s going to be interesting, he consoled himself. Madam Elite is going to be in for a few surprises when she crosses the border.

  He moved his fingers to clear the screen, then hesitated, fascinated by the face that so enchanted. She was incredibly beautiful, and he was human and certainly male.

  Erin McCabe. Was she as innocent as a man believed when staring into those silver eyes? Or was she playing the perfect game of treachery? But she was simply too stunning to be so treacherous, to live that type of devious lie.

  What a fool you are, Steele, he berated himself.

  Impatient, Jarod hit the keys. Catherine, he thought, you’re the woman I give my heart to…. Never any trouble … never any back talk! … Of course, I doubt you’d be much in a bikini….

  But a computer also couldn’t feel; it couldn’t be soft and fragile; it couldn’t falter when confronted with a smile of sunshine and a will of steel.

  “Yes, Catherine,” Jarod murmured. “You are the only woman in the world for me….”

  He cleared the screen, and checked out.

  THANK YOU, CATHERINE.

  YOU’RE WELCOME.

  He retraced his footsteps down the long hall, his dark, silvering head slightly bent in meditation, his hands thrust in his pockets. The blue ice of his lowered eyes seared to a cold flame with his contemplations.

  There was a static aura to this man. He was dangerous, compelling. He played for high stakes. He was cunning; he was cautious, tenacious, vibrantly involved. And at the moment, very angry. People so seldom recognized the games they played. Perhaps Samuel Hughes had, but apparently too late. And now he had Erin McCabe to worry about. Devil or angel.

  If she were just vacationing, why the hell couldn’t she vacation in Paris or Madrid?

  In Jarod’s eyes, the woman already had a few strikes against her. Was she devious beyond belief? Was she simply a pawn in a great board game? Or was she merely getting in his way when things far more important than the welfare of a foolish model were at stake?

  He hadn’t met her, but he knew her type. If he had his way, she’d be sent packing so fast she wouldn’t need to open a suitcase.

  Strange, though, he couldn’t shake the image of her face—the computer image, or that which he had discovered he knew so well superimposed over the graphics in his mind’s eye. She was incredibly, incredibly beautiful … incredibly, incredibly sensuous.

  Damn butterfly, Jarod thought with annoyance. That he thought of her as alluring and desirable infuriated him. He was entranced by her image, just as any man would be. That was natural. He could usually afford to humor himself for following normal male tendencies. But this was different. He couldn’t afford to humor himself where Erin McCabe was concerned. She was not just a suspect, but at the moment the only suspect.

  I

  HEADS TURNED WHEN SHE walked into the room, and not because she was recognized. Her hair was pulled into a severe chignon, and her navy business suit, though expertly tailored to the trim lines of her form, was strictly conservative, offset only by a wide silk ascot that hinted at an inability to hide completely her femininity. Finely etched matching gold bracelets on her wrists—her trademark, a personal whimsy—might have identified her as one of the world’s most seductive models, but at the moment they were concealed by the sleeves of the shirt and blazer.

  Heads turned because in three-inch heels she was a sleek six feet, and she carried her height with grace. No severity of hair style could hide the exquisite angles of her china fine features, nor the unaffected assurance that made her seem to glide across the room.

  As she walked into the handsome lunchroom of the St. Regis that afternoon, Erin McCabe was totally unaware of the appreciative glances she received. She spoke quietly with the maître d’ for a moment, then her quicksilver eyes began to seek a certain face as she followed the man to a table in the sunshine-lit rear of the room. Seeing her friend Mary Terrell waving, she smiled, her brows raised in anticipation and query.

  Mary laughed and nodded as Erin was seated, then lifted a glass of wine and waited until Erin’s was poured to clink a toast.

  “You’re all set!” Mary said excitedly. “Two weeks from today you fly out of JFK for Oslo. That first week you can do whatever you want, but Erin, you must be at the train station in Helsinki on time on the fourteenth. Russian trains are never late and they leave on
time!”

  Erin laughed and sipped her wine as she accepted the black leather visa and passport Mary handed her. “Mary, I’m always on time. Oh, Mary!” Her famous silver eyes blazed enthusiasm and warmth. “I do appreciate this so much! It’s going to be wonderful.”

  Mary grimaced. “I hope so, Erin. I still wish you’d reconsider. Think of Paris in the springtime! The Côte d’Azur, Nice, Monte Carlo—London is beautiful in the spring—”

  “Mary,” Erin murmured, shaking her head with a smiling determination, “I’ve been to all the above—”

  “Jeez. Hard life!” Mary interrupted dryly, but immediately regretted her outburst. She might be the one person in the world who was fully aware that Erin McCabe had endured a hard life. No, not for all the beauty and glamor and travel could Mary really envy her childhood friend. She had watched Erin bury both her father and mother and then her beloved fiancé, a victim of a cerebral hemorrhage at twenty-two. She had seen Erin leave college to support her aging parents until their deaths, and give up her simple dream of becoming a teacher of social sciences and government.

  Mary had also watched Erin rise to the top of the modeling field, work she had chosen when she was desperate for income, work which had become habit. And then Mary had shared her friend’s happiness when she had fallen in love with Marc Helmsly, the handsome, charming, world-renowned photographer. She had laughed and cried at the wedding that had made front-page headlines, so pleased that Erin had finally found happiness.

  She had also been the one to receive Erin on her doorstep in the dead of night three months after the fabulous wedding, an Erin in shock, so profoundly hurt and disillusioned that to this day Mary didn’t really understand fully all that had happened.

  Marc Helmsly had spoken to the papers; he had labeled Erin a beautiful and charming woman unable to accept the commitments and responsibilities of marriage.

  Erin had made little comment. She had pursed trembling lips that would never falter again; her silver-blue gaze had become opaque, forever hiding her secrets and emotions. Her words to the press had been simple and noncommittal: she and Mr. Helmsly had made a terrible mistake—their differences were irreconcilable.