Oath of Office

It was difficult to say if the row after row of whitewashed hotels and tapas bars spilled down from the cliffs of Carvoeiro or crawled back up from the sea.

Dominic Caruso and Adara Sherman sat together at a covered table at the Più Grand Café, one of many restaurants located along the road leading down to the beach. Mournful guitar chords poured from overhead speakers, traditional Portuguese fado, prompting Caruso to sigh.

“They must like to be sad here.”

“I like it,” Adara said. “They call it saudade—irreparable loss, longing.”

“No kidding,” Dom said. “It makes me long for some classic rock. Give me some AC/DC over this stuff any day.”

Though they were on surveillance, the chemistry between them was real, so they did not have to pretend to be a couple. Caruso was a credentialed special agent with the FBI, “on loan” to The Campus. He wore a loose cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up over strong forearms, khaki slacks, and comfortable lace-up Rockports that he could run in.

Adara Sherman was in her mid-thirties, with blond hair that fell just over her ears; her white shorts and navy-blue polo accented her propensity for CrossFit. She’d been Hendley Associates’ director of transportation, dealing with travel logistics as well as physical security of the company G5 when it was on the ground. It was the position now held by Lisanne Robertson, a fact that gave hope of eventual promotion to the latter. Sherman was a former Navy corpsman and always had at least a small tactical medic’s kit within easy reach. The relationship between her and Caruso had happened naturally, and, so far at least, they’d proven they could work together without any issues. Caruso told himself that at times like this the fact that they were a couple made the op even more believable. Clark and Hendley weren’t altogether happy about the work relationship, but neither of them tried to put a stop to it. The heart wanted what the heart wanted, even in the intelligence community. There were plenty of operational couples in the FBI and the CIA, though they rarely worked on the same cases. Even Mary Pat Foley, the director of national intelligence, and her husband had been spies together back in the day.

Their table at Più Grand gave Sherman and Caruso a direct line of sight to the covered balcony on the second floor of a tapas bar and restaurant called Casa Ibérica. There had been no time to put listening devices in place. In fact, it was little more than luck that they had such a good visual. The two Russians had arrived a half-hour before, first getting a table at a small restaurant across the street from Dom and Adara called the Bar Restaurante O Barco. John Clark had walked past, aware that they were probably checking for a tail. He was proven right five minutes later when the Russians stood and dropped their menus on the sidewalk table, apparently unable to find anything to their liking. They walked down the ramp to the beach, on the sidewalk just feet away from Dom and Adara, before returning to get a table at Casa Ibérica, up the switchback hill from the promenade of shops and restaurants above Carvoeiro Beach. Guarding against another turn-and-burn by the Russians, Clark sat down across the street on the same level as Adara.

“Eyes wide,” Clark said into the mic on the neck loop under his shirt, as if muttering at his menu.

Dom toyed with a shrimp in his cataplana, a seafood-and-pork stew. “Copy. Our friends are just sitting there, chatting over their beers.”

Adara paused for a beat, waiting to see if Clark responded or if Lisanne came back with a sitrep on where they were with the fleeing motorcyclist.

“I’m thinking they’re either in the dark about Gaspard,” she said, “or they are complicit to the hit.”

Jack’s voice crackled over the net. “She’s heading right toward you. Makes me think they’re probably involved.”

“Maybe,” Clark said with a whispered grunt. “I don’t see any countersurveillance, but guys like this will surely have some. We do.”

Adara took out her phone and raised it to take a couple of photos of Dom with the sea behind him. She handed him the phone and let him take some of her. Like a giddy couple on holiday on the Portuguese coast, they put the phone on the table between them and scrolled through the photos, paying special attention to anyone behind either of them that looked out of place. Two men behind Caruso caught their attention. Both were young, rawboned, with shaggy blond hair. Their clothing was just ill-fitting enough that it looked like it had been purchased by a distant aunt who’d never met them — or an SVR quartermaster. One of them hid discreetly behind a menu and the other turned his face.

“Watch this, John,” Adara said. She motioned a waitress over and asked her to take a photo before sliding her chair around beside Dom. Again, the men ducked their heads.

“Got ’em,” Clark said. “Somebody’s cage just got rattled.”

* * *