"Hurt me?" He sounded almost disinterested. She couldn't see his eyes behind the sunglasses, and she wanted to snatch them off his face. "The truth is the truth."
His hand was so warm and so strong, wrapped around hers, but the strength in his fingers was controlled so he wouldn't hurt her. He had never hurt her, she realized. Even when faced with her distrust and hostility in Iran, he had taken care of her, saved her life, held her in his arms while she grieved.
"Sometimes the truth is the truth, but sometimes it's something else. What really happened? Was she a double agent, the way I've heard?"
He made a noncommital sound. Growing exasperated, she squeezed his hand. "Tell me."
He stopped and turned to face her. "Or what?"
"Or nothing. Just tell me."
For a minute, she didn't think he would. Then he shrugged. "Yes, she was a double agent. She did it for the money. There weren't any extenuating circumstances; she didn't have family in the Soviet Union, or in East Germany, that was being threatened. All her family was American, and they weren't involved at all. She simply wanted the money."
So there was no excuse he could give his wife; he'd had to face the truth that she was, simply, a traitor.
That would have been devastating for almost anyone; what had it been like for him, after he had dedicated his entire life to the service of his country?
"How did you find out?"
He began walking again. "There wasn't any one big moment of truth, just a lot of little things that began adding up and made me suspicious. I set a trap for her, and she walked right into it."
"She didn't know you suspected?"
"Of course she did. She was good. But I baited the trap with something she couldn't resist: the names of our two highest-placed moles in the Kremlin. Aldrich Ames never came close to this information, it was so restricted." His lips were a thin line. "I was almost too late springing the trap. This was during the height of the Cold War, and this information was so crucial, so valuable, that she decided not to route it by the usual method. She picked up the phone and called the Soviet embassy. She asked to be brought in, because she knew I'd be after her, and she started to give them the names right there over the phone."
He took a long, controlled breath. "I shot her," he finally said, staring off at the massive wall that surrounded the estate. "I could have wounded her, but I didn't. What she knew was too important for me to take the chance, the moles too important to be brought in. They had to be left in place. She had already told her handler that she had the names; they would have moved heaven and earth to get to her, no matter what prison we put her in, no matter what security we put around her. So I killed her."
They walked in silence for a while, going from flower bed to flower bed like bees, ostensibly admiring the landscaping. Niema still clung to his hand while she tried to come to grips with the internal strength of this man. He had been forced to do something almost unthinkable, and he didn't make excuses for himself, didn't try to whitewash it or blur the facts. He lived with the burden of that day, and still he went on doing what he had to do.
Some people would think he was a monster. They wouldn't be able to get beyond the surface fact that he had deliberately killed his wife, or they would say that no information, no matter how crucial, was that important. Those who lived on the front lines knew better. Dallas had given his own life for his country, in a different battle of the same war.
John had saved untold lives by his actions, not just of the two moles but of the ensuing events to which they had been critical. The Soviet Union had broken up, the Berlin Wall had come down, and for a while the world had been safer. He was still on the front lines, putting himself in the cannon's mouth, perhaps trying to balance his own internal scales of justice.
"Why didn't she sell you out?" Niema asked. ""You're worth a pretty penny, you know."
"Thank you," he said dryly. "But I wasn't worth that much back then. I had high-level security clearance, so I was of some use to her, but she had her own clearance and access to a lot of classified documents."
"I can't imagine what it must have been like for you." Ineffable sadness was in her voice. She squeezed his hand again, trying to tell him without words how sorry she was for ever opening that particular can of worms.
He glanced down at her, then his head tilted up and he looked beyond her. He drew her closer to a huge flowering shrub, as if he were trying to shield them from view. "Brace yourself," he warned and bent his head.
His mouth settled on hers, his lips opening, molding, fusing. She put her hands on his shoulders and clung to him, her pulse pounding in her ears, her heart racing. Her entire body quickened with painful urgency, and she stifled a moan. His tongue was doing a slow, erotic dance in her mouth, advancing and retreating. He put his hands on her hips and drew her to him, lifting her, holding her so that they were groin to groin. She felt him getting erect, and she shivered with pleasure even while her inner alarm began clanging insistently. She fought to keep her legs under her and not sag against him like a limp noodle, which he definitely wasn't.
He lifted his mouth, holding it poised over hers. She stared up at him, dazed, and wished he wasn't wearing sunglasses so she could see his eyes. Still clinging to him she whispered, "Who's there?"
This time he did smile, his mouth curling upward. "Nobody. I just wanted to kiss you for being so damn sweet."
Violently she shoved away from him. "Sneak!" She stood with her lungs heaving, glaring at him. She really, really wanted to punch him, but instead she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.