Black And White Ops

“Business,” he told her. “I saw you looking up at me when I was talking to Tatiana, the woman I was with. Not that many Russians speak good English. I didn’t think you were from here, so I assumed one of the East African countries when I stepped in the door with her. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Do you work here or are you just visiting?”

He wore a leather jacket over an expensive pair of pants. Monique stayed on top of the styles in the US and noticed the label on his jeans. It wasn’t one of the cheap brands. His boots were tooled western wear, not cheap either. She saw a pair of gloves in his side pocket which matched everything else he wore.

“Working,” she told him. “I didn’t catch your name Mister….?”

“Rick,” he told her. “Rick Wilson. I didn’t get yours either.”

“My friends in American call me Monique,” she replied. “Monique Harrison. I teach English on the other side of St. Petersburg at a private school.”

Monique suddenly became aware of the condition of her hair. It was almost impossible to find a cosmologist in St. Petersburg who knew how to take care of African hair, so she was forced to do her own hair most of the time. The only one who knew how to cut and style her hair was around the corner. She had made and was going to keep an appointment at Mr. Serge’s in another hour. It was the one indulgent thing she allowed herself.

“So what kind of business are you in Rick?” she asked him, putting her cup down. He was leaning toward her, making Monique feel very sexy. A sensation she hadn’t had in a long time.

“Believe it or not, I deal in coffee,” he told her. “I hook up the small distributors in Russia with big suppliers in the gulf states. I can get them the best quality roasted coffee they can afford. I see you like your coffee strong. The brand you are drinking was supplied by my firm.”

Monique leaned back and gave him a sultry look. She hadn’t been with a man since leaving Philadelphia. The only time she had been back was for a family visit two years ago and didn’t have the opportunity to look up any of her old boyfriends. It appeared this man was being handed to her on a silver platter. But she had to be careful. Her momma didn’t raise a fool and the wrong decision could mess everything up for her.

“So, Rick,” she said. “How do you like your coffee? I like my coffee with lots of cream and sugar.”

“Black,” he told her. “I like my coffee dark roasted and with a flavor of rare oil in the background. I like to take my time sipping it too, that way I know I’ve got the full enjoyment out of it. I like to put the cup to my lips and slowly feel the flavor on my tongue. I like to use my tongue on my coffee to make sure I can tease the flavor out of it. I like my coffee strong too, so strong that it just swallows me up. How do you like yours?”

Rick Wilson had been in St. Petersburg for the past three weeks. The agency had contacted him last month about the latest job they had waiting. It would pay well and not involve the kind of risks he’d had to endure when he was in Argentina ten months ago. Rick didn’t care about the risk so long as it paid well. He was hoping for Brazil this time as the women down there were legendary. He’d never fallen in love once in his life and hoped it might change if he went down to Rio. But no luck this time. To Russia it was to be.

Rick had been recruited right out of college by someone with the agency. Officially, it was known as the National Agency of Inquiries, or the NAI. But everyone connected called it simply “the agency”. It served the purpose and got right down to the point. The agency was one of many small government offices most people had never heard about and fewer even cared if they did. The agency preferred to keep a low profile. It provided the executive branch of the government with all the information it needed to make the quick decisions. Maybe not always the best decisions, but no one had every called the agency’s intelligence reports into question.

And the agency had to carry out clandestine activities on occasion too. Since keeping a field agent active was so expensive, the agency had decided early in its fifty-year existence that the best thing to do was use freelancers. They didn’t su*k up taxpayer money when the mission ended and wouldn’t be adding to the expense account with pensions. Plus, there was always the ability to use “plausible denial” if anything did go wrong out in the field. The occasional archaeologist might need a grand to help him or her get through till the next paper was published. In return, they might have the chance to go check out what was happening in the military zone next door and let their casual employers know if the unfriendly government was buying surface-to-air missiles from a third party.

In Rick’s instance, he had been a foreign language whiz kid at high school with the ability to pick up a new tongue unequaled by anyone they had ever seen. By the time he was fifteen, Rick spoke ten major languages fluently. He had a working knowledge of another ten and was conversational in six more. It was a calling as far as he was concerned. The study of languages opened up the world to him. He had come of age in a household where every family member spoke a primary language other than English. His mother was German, his father Russian and his mother’s Ukrainian mother stayed with them. At age three, the Spanish grandfather on his father’s side moved into a spare room in the house. When he was five he asked his mother when he was going to get his own private language.

With such ability, he was bound to attract some kind of Foreign Service agency or international corporation. But Rick had decided to become an airborne ranger at eighteen after he qualified for jump school a few months into his army career. The international situation became very hot after he enlisted and Rick found himself flown to all kinds of remote places. His knowledge of languages was handy to have when the platoon found itself dropped into some area that spoke some version of a language hardly anyone knew. Within a few days, Rick would be the man they’d use to communicate with the elders at the village.