by Zoe Sharp
I shook my head. “You’ll have to give me more than that.”
His face gave a tic of annoyance, and he sighed. I guessed that despite his apparent eloquence, he was not a man for whom negotiation came as a first choice. Disagreements were no doubt settled quickly and with violence.
“Ask your questions. If I can answer them, I will do so. If not . . .” A shrug.
“How well does this man know me?”
If he noticed I was actually asking two questions in one, he didn’t make anything of it. But when he answered, there was something sly in his voice I didn’t like.
“Oh, yes, he knows you . . .”
So it is a man. Apart from that, you’re no help.
“Why does he want me to leave Kuwait?”
“Not just Kuwait. Iraq also. Because there is trouble on the way, and he does not want you to become . . . enmeshed in it. He is trying to do you a favor. Why not accept it and move on?”
What kind of trouble? The fallout from Clay’s murder? From whoever Sean might be after next? There was still a possibility Sean was indeed behind Clay’s death, although it felt all wrong. What had been done to the man was almost gleeful in its savagery. Sean would have found a more effective way to make him suffer, and he would not have enjoyed the process.
But Clay was tortured for a purpose. If Sean needed information from him—and needed it badly, urgently—how far would he really go?
Or was this all about the attack on Najida? For all their shameful, barbaric treatment of the girl, was her family now looking to take revenge on the men who, in their eyes, had ruined her?
“Has your employer considered that it might be too late for that? That I might be enmeshed already—and have been so for a very long time?”
“Of course. But he is hoping that you can be . . . persuaded to stand down.”
“And if I can’t be . . . ‘persuaded’?”
“Then that would be most unfortunate.”
“Define ‘unfortunate’ for me, would you? And just give me a straight answer for once. I’m getting bored to tears of dancing with you on this.”
Another shrug. An “if you insist” one this time. “I would be compelled to . . . incapacitate you, which I am sure you would agree would indeed be unfortunate,” he said, very matter-of-fact and utterly without regret. “Not difficult to arrange just across the border. Your coalition forces did not leave Iraq in a better state than they found it. Not impossible to arrange here, either. As you have seen for yourself, we have friends in many places.”
“Well, you’ve made one attempt already. Didn’t go so well for Comrade Kuznetsov, did it?”
To my surprise, he looked almost embarrassed. “That was an . . . unauthorized action. It should not have happened.”
“What makes you think you’ll be any luckier if you try again?”
“You were a soldier, Miss Fox, and you are now a bodyguard. There is an old saying that is true in both cases: To survive—to protect a life—you have to be lucky every day. But your enemies, they have to be lucky only once.”
FIFTEEN
POLITE TO THE LAST, THE RUSSIANS DROVE ME BACK TO WITHIN a klick of my hotel. That still left me farther to walk in high heat than I would have preferred, but there were any number of worse alternatives.
As I trudged the last few hundred meters toward the hotel’s shady portico, my shirt glued to my back, all I wanted was a glass brim-full of any kind of liquid so long as it also contained a lot of ice. They served a very refreshing mix of sweetened lemon juice and chopped mint leaves in the hotel bar. During the walk I’d started to fixate on it just a little.
Before I’d even made it to the portico, the glass doors swished open and Luisa Dawson hurried out.
“Charlie! Hey, I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again, except on a mortuary slab.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“No joke. Those guys meant business.”
“But they brought you back here all right?” I asked as we walked into the blissful cool of the lobby.
“Yeah. I kept my mouth shut and my ears open as much as I could. The one who did all the talking was called Al-Hasawi. The others were a bit pissed off that they didn’t get to escort you to the drop-off point—worried about him cheating them on the split of the money, I think.”
“Nice to know there’s no honor among policemen, never mind thieves.”
“Isn’t it just?” She paused, looking uncomfortable. “And, um, you need to call your boss—let him know you’re OK.”
“Parker? How did . . . ? Ah, you called him.”
She shrugged. “Wasn’t sure what else to do. No idea if you were coming back, and thought if they were intending to throw you in an Iraqi jail for shooting that guy who ambushed us, you’d need someone on the outside making plenty of noise A-SAP to get you released again.”
“Good thinking. Thank you.”
She grinned. “You’re welcome. After all, we do work together, however temporary that arrangement might be.”
Faces I’d come to recognize drifted into the lobby with studiously casual expressions. Groups of women might have a bad reputation for gossiping, but they have nothing on squaddies, or ex-squaddies for that matter, who seem to thrive on inference and rumor.
I stepped in a little closer to Dawson, asked quietly, “Did you tell anyone else?”
“No. But . . . Bailey saw me arrive back here with a police escort. Made a point of grilling me to find out what it was all about.”
“And you told him . . . ?”
“Jack shit,” she said with another quick grin. “Which made him come over all shifty.”
“Hmm. Actually, it might be worth mentioning to him in passing who we went to see this morning, just to see if he gets shiftier still.”
“You don’t think . . . ?” She swallowed her distaste, added reluctantly, “He was pretty tight with Clay, I suppose. I just don’t like to think I might have been working with not one but two of the perverted bastards.”
“I’ll go upstairs and check in with Parker without the flapping ears. Meet you in the bar in ten.” I flicked my eyes to a spot over her shoulder. “Meanwhile, how about you start spreading unrest among the troops?”
Dawson glanced up and spotted her erstwhile colleague lurking by the entrance to the bar. Good job Bailey was employed more for his obvious muscle than his abilities in covert surveillance.
Dawson grinned again, suddenly reminding me of the Russian with the MP5K.
“It would be my pleasure.”
It was two thirty in the afternoon in Kuwait, which made it six thirty in the morning back in New York. I called Parker’s office line from the satellite phone, knowing if he was at home it would redirect there or to his cell.
No surprises when he answered in three rings.
“Can’t tell you how good it is to hear your voice, Charlie. You OK?”
“Fine,” I said. While I filled Parker in on what had happened, I took advantage of the fact we were using voice-only communication to stand in front of the mirror and lift up the front of my shirt. Where the Russian had punched me, just below my sternum, was a fist-sized, bluing mark, already starting to spread. Fortunately, it was far enough away from the taped-up wound that he’d done no additional damage. “They wanted to emphasize how they had the local cops in their pocket, and tell me to go home. Other than that it was amazingly amicable, all things considered.”
Parker knew there was more to it than that, I could tell by his momentary pause. He chose not to call me on it. “Any ideas who they were?”
“My guess would be Russians again. But to be quite honest, I don’t really know. The guy who did all the talking said something in what sounded like Russian which translated to ‘that’s enough’—I think.”
“Kuchi sin?”
“Something similar. And he had a tattoo of a frog inside a bat on his arm, which signifies some kind of naval operations division of Spetsnaz, I believe?”
“Fro
gman,” Parker agreed. “The equivalent of the UK’s Special Boat Service or our Navy SEALs.”
“His English was excellent. No contraction of words, so he sounded a little wooden, but hardly any trace of an accent.”
“Hmm, Spetsnaz operate outside the Soviet Union, just like our own Special Forces guys. They probably crossed paths. No surprises he speaks a second language.”
Something jogged at the back of my mind. I tried not to grab for it, knowing if I left it alone, whatever it was, it might just float free.
“Charlie—?”
“Just a sec.”
What was it? Something Parker said . . . or something I said . . . ?
“English,” I said. “He was speaking English. Not American-English, English-English.”
“So?” Parker sounded nonplussed. “Doesn’t mean much on its own. In fact, it kinda makes things look worse for Sean. If an ex–Special Forces Russian speaks with a Brit accent, it increases the chances he had contact with the British SAS. And that—”
“Yeah, I know. That brings us back to Sean—maybe.”
“And I guess one of us has to say it, Charlie. The fact they didn’t kill you when they had the chance points in Sean’s direction, too.”
“Trust me, that had not escaped my notice.”
“What was it the guy said if you didn’t comply? He’d ‘incapacitate’ you. That doesn’t necessarily mean injure.”
“Or it could mean they’re going to break all my arms and legs.”
“OK. But who else would claim to know you well and want to keep you out of danger?”
“That’s not quite how he put it, Parker. He said ‘trouble’ was ‘on the way’ and he wanted to prevent me becoming ‘enmeshed’ in it. But trouble for me, or trouble for them? And what kind of trouble?”
“It may be time to call in a few favors with some of the three-letter agencies.” Parker’s voice was grim. “I’ll get back to you if they have anything.”
By “three-letter agencies” I knew Parker was referring coyly to the CIA or some similar black-site setup. I’d had dealings with them in the past. It rarely ended well, and every time we came into contact I had the uncomfortable feeling they owned another chunk of my soul.
“There’s something else you might want to get onto—if you haven’t already,” I said, reluctance like a bad taste in my mouth. “And that’s the current location of Donalson and Hackett.”
I heard his indrawn breath, heard the questions he wouldn’t—couldn’t—ask.
I swallowed. “I’m hoping Clay’s death is nothing to do with Sean, but . . .”
Silence hung expensively between us. After a moment or so, Parker sighed. “Dawson filled me in a little on your visit this morning to the Iraqi girl who was attacked. I guess she couldn’t make any direct connections to Clay?”
“No, but I don’t think it’s a dead end. Not quite yet, anyway.”
“Oh?”
I gave him a brief précis of the conversation I had with Dawson when I arrived back at the hotel, as well as her present task of spreading disinformation in the bar.
“It might shake something loose, you never know.”
“Sure,” he said, but I heard the doubt in his voice.
“I know it’s not exactly in my remit, but if testing a theory that someone else might have been gunning for Clay means Sean moves down the suspect list, I’ll do it.”
“I know you will. But . . . the Russians turning up kinda splits this thing in different directions. Sure you don’t need me to send you some help out there?”
“Bearing in mind the possible outcome . . . ? I’d prefer to work solo. Besides, I have Dawson.”
“Yeah, but she has only one arm that works.”
“Doesn’t stop her being able to speak Arabic. And occasionally it really does make sense to ask questions first and punch someone later.”
SIXTEEN
BY THE TIME I GOT DOWN TO THE BAR, LUISA DAWSON HAD CLEARLY unnerved Bailey to such an extent that he’d beaten a hasty retreat. I found her staring moodily into a small tonic water with a fruit cocktail on a stick floating on top.
“Why is it, when the guys order something nonalcoholic, they get it in a plain straight glass. I do the same and end up with a fancy thimbleful and a bloody side salad?”
I took the chair opposite. “Just luck, I guess.”
She pushed the offending drink away and sat back in her chair, unconsciously supporting the wrist of her injured shoulder with her good hand.
“I never ask for special treatment anywhere. I just want to be treated the same.” It was both frustrated and heartfelt at the same time.
“I’ll drink to that.”
“How do you manage it?”
I glanced at her in surprise. “What on earth makes you think so? I don’t, always.”
“Well, you seem to have more luck than I do.”
I shook my head. “Optical delusion. I just learned that making a big thing of it achieves nothing other than emphasizing the differences I’m trying so hard to play down.”
Dawson was quiet for a moment, watching her male counterparts as they cheered a football game on the huge flat-screen TV hanging at the far side of the bar. None of them, I noticed, had been given fruit salad in their glasses. I wondered if they ever thought it unfair that female patrons were.
“Did you manage to get anything out of Bailey?”
She pulled a face. “Not much. I laid it on with a shovel about the state the poor girl was in, and how they take the whole ‘dishonoring of women’ kind of thing so seriously in Kuwait that when they catch a perp, he’s likely to get bits chopped off in the traditional style.”
“How did he react to that?”
“He’s too much of a macho man to actually wet himself in public, but I suspect it was a pretty close-run thing,” she said with relish. “Then I asked him, all sober and ‘I’m-only-telling-you-this-because-I-know-I-can-trust-you’ bullshit, if he thought there was any possibility Clay might have been involved.”
“You have a real talent for the believable lie,” I said. “At which suggestion he no doubt pretended to be shocked and stunned?”
“Oh, completely so. Couldn’t believe his mate would have had anything to do with something like that, et cetera.”
“Which is, sadly, the obvious response—innocent or guilty.”
“Uh-huh. And that’s when I warned him it might not be a good idea to play up how matey he was with Clay, because from what the victim told us, her attackers obviously knew each other. And if—big if—it turns out Clay did have something to do with it, the first thing they’ll do is have a nice little chat with his pals.”
I laughed out loud. On the TV across the bar, one side or another scored, and half the assembled men performed some kind of victory dance that reminded me very strongly of a tribe of baboons. Only noisier and more vulgar.
I caught Dawson’s eye. She grinned and mouthed, “Vive la différence.”
A waiter came over. I ordered two lemon juices with mint. He inclined his head and went away again.
“When the boss told me Clay had raped a fellow trainee in the army, and we talked this morning about you being assaulted . . . well, I didn’t realize it was you . . . that Clay . . .”
Her voice trailed off. I didn’t answer, but she nodded as if I had.
“Is that how you got those scars?” She gave a jerk of her chin toward my open collar.
I put my hand up automatically. It was almost as if I’d forgotten the thin jagged line that circled my throat. I resisted the urge to button my shirt up another hole. Pointless now anyway.
Cursing inside my head, I wished the drink I’d ordered was spiked heavily with gin.
“No, that came later.”
“Unlucky,” was Dawson’s only comment.
“Not really. I survived. That time, the man who attacked me didn’t.”
We fell into silence, punctuated by the raucous shouts from the sports watchers at the bar.
“Najida’s not likely to see any kind of justice for what was done to her, is she?” Dawson said at last. “Not for any of it.”
“Realistically? No.”
“So, what do we do about it?”
I considered pointing out to her that it wasn’t our job to do anything about it, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to simply shrug off responsibility. The same way everybody else had.
“Well, we’re hardly likely to get a confession, are we? We’ve no forensics, no crime-scene photos, no means of tracking the van they used. And even if we did manage to identify the vehicle, we can’t process it or link it back to the men responsible. And if they’d any sense, they nicked it beforehand and torched it afterwards anyway.”
The waiter reappeared with our glasses—tall and plain—of lemon and mint that tasted almost like sherbet. Dawson waited until he was halfway back to the bar before she spoke.
“So, what it boils down to is that we’ve no way to tie in Bailey—or Clay, for that matter—to the rapes unless we just beat a confession out of him.”
I picked up my glass, took a long drink. It was cold enough to stab me between the eyes, make my teeth shiver, even if it did lack the gin I’d craved.
“Appealing though that is, I’ve never found the information you extract that way to be terribly reliable.”
“Which brings me back to my last question: what do we do?”
“What can we do?”
Her eyebrows rose sharply. “You want to leave it at that?”
“That’s not what I said. How would Garton-Jones react if you took this to him?”
She shrugged. “It might be better if you took it to him. If I do it, there’s always the possibility he’ll accuse me of having some other ax to grind.”
“Better still, how about I get Parker to put it to him as a working theory?”
“Yeah, that might work.” Her smile faded. “Although even if G-J keeps an eye on Bailey, unless the man’s an idiot or he’s caught in the act, there’s no chance of making anything stick, is there?”
