by Zoe Sharp
“For fuck’s sake, I know you’re being loyal, and any other time I’d admire the hell out of you for it, but I’m not the only one who’s looking for him, understand? I’ve got to find him before they do.”
“What flight are you on?”
I told her, gabbling the information as the first safety announcement blared over the speakers and the plane began to roll back from the gate.
“OK, got you. Via Jordan, yes? Call me as soon as you land.”
“Madeleine—!”
But she’d already gone, and the flight attendant was standing over me, glaring while I not only powered down the phone but zipped it into my bag, which she shoved into an already-full overhead locker, just to be on the safe side.
“I don’t think you’re getting any free pretzels on this flight,” Dawson observed. She leaned closer, face sober. “Now, you going to bring me up to speed?”
I did so, quickly filling in my encounters with Hamilton and leaving out the one with Woźniak in the interview room. It didn’t take long.
“So who’s this Madeleine?”
“She used to work for Sean when he ran his own close-protection agency just outside London. When we went to the States, she took over the UK operation. Parker said Sean was in touch with her before he disappeared. That’s how he tracked down Clay—or rather, she did it for him. She always was good at that kind of thing.”
“What did she say just now?”
“Nothing that helped, other than telling me Sean isn’t in Iraq anymore.”
“She must have heard from him then. Maybe she even knows what he’s up to. Be nice if somebody did.”
“I would say so. But she didn’t want to share, more’s the pity . . .”
“Give me her address.” She grinned. “When I get back to London I can go round there and make a bloody nuisance of myself if you like—see what she has to say face-to-face.”
“It might come to that.”
She eased the sling around the back of her neck, carefully rolled her stiffened shoulder. “Charlie, when we left Basra you were afraid Meyer might have killed Clay as some kind of weird revenge kick, but now we find out Clay was being watched because of antiquity smuggling, and Meyer seems to have taken it up as a new hobby, too. What the hell is going on? Where do a load of looted relics and US spooks come into it?”
“I don’t know how Sean got involved with the relics, unless it was something he picked up on from Clay,” I said, keeping my voice too quiet to be heard by the rows behind or in front. “Hamilton more or less admitted that the good professor’s on their payroll.”
“Ah, so as soon as Meyer buttonholed Lihaibi, Hamilton and her bunch of cowboys took an interest.” Dawson nodded. “Explains why they jumped on us so fast, I s’pose.”
“Yeah, and she said they wanted to talk to Sean about Clay. It sounded more like they don’t know what happened to Clay, but they think Sean might. If he was involved in any kind of illegal trafficking, that opens up the field of suspects quite a bit.” I shrugged helplessly. “Then again, I don’t speak much spook.”
That earned me the vestige of a smile. “You and me both. Just enough to order a beer.”
“From what Madeleine just told me, Sean must have left the country before Hamilton’s merry band managed to catch up with him—if the information she gave me was true, that is. And I don’t see why she would lie about that.”
“Uh-huh,” she agreed, somber. “I wish they hadn’t caught up with us, either.”
We sat in silence through more cabin announcements as the plane taxied out onto the runway and lined up for its takeoff slot. As the big jet finally lumbered into the air, I glanced across Dawson at the view out the window, watching the burned landscape drop away beneath us.
I was not sorry to be leaving.
THIRTY-FIVE
AS SOON AS WE TOUCHED DOWN AT QUEEN ALIA INTERNATIONAL IN Jordan, I switched the sat-phone on again. I’d retrieved my bag as soon as we were able to move about the cabin in midflight and shoved it under the seat in front of me.
It took a while for our plane to crawl to its assigned gate, by which time the phone had acquired a satellite. I redialed Madeleine’s UK number.
Her first words were not the ones I expected.
“I’ve spoken to Sean,” she said. “Look, Charlie, he . . . wants you to stay out of this.”
“Tough. I’m already in it.” Up to my neck and sinking fast. “You know Michael Clay is dead?”
“Yes . . . yes I do know.”
“Do you know how he died?”
“I . . .” Her voice trailed away. I could picture her slim figure behind a sleek modern desk, manicured fingers gripped white around the receiver. She had never been a field operative and didn’t have the stomach for it. Since she’d taken over Sean’s agency, it had progressed more toward cybersecurity than real-world. Profitable, certainly, in these times of mass hacking attacks, and it meant she didn’t have to risk breaking a sweat, never mind a nail.
There had been times when I’d found Madeleine’s innate sense of calm irritating. To misquote Kipling, if you can keep your head when it all goes to shit around you, the chances are you don’t have a clue what’s really happening.
“He was tortured, Madeleine. Drugged, burned, ripped, sliced—”
“I know what ‘tortured’ means, thank you very much. You don’t have to spell it out for me.” Was that a hint of temper I heard in her voice? “But there’s no way Sean is responsible for something like that. It’s unthinkable.”
Madeleine claimed to know him well. Clearly, not as well as she thought.
“Just because you can’t think it doesn’t mean nobody else can.” And when she would have protested further, I added, “Our friends at . . . let’s call them Croydon Internal Auditors, shall we? They’re looking to bring him to account for this, so to speak. And they’re hunting for him right now.”
A slight exaggeration, maybe, but I wasn’t in any doubt that Sean’s interrogation would be a lot less gentle than my own, if and when Hamilton’s crew got hold of him.
There was a puzzled pause for a moment before Madeleine caught on to the initials with a soft, “Ah!”
I waited. One beat became several. Impatience got the better of me. That and the fact that the aircraft had come to a halt and the jet bridge was already snaking out toward the front doorway. If Lurch’s warning that we would be met at Amman was on target, his counterpart would be waiting for us as soon as we stepped off the plane. I was fast running out of time.
“Come on, Madeleine. He may not want help, but you can’t deny he bloody needs it. Talk to me!”
“Look, I gave him my word I wouldn’t tell you where he is,” she said. “So, please, Charlie, take some advice. Don’t continue any further along the road you’re on, and don’t ask me again.”
She cut the connection, leaving me frowning. Not at the words, but at the oddly placed emphasis and inflection. I was still frowning when I switched off the phone and stowed it in my bag as passengers began to surge toward the exit. I eyed the crush and, almost as an afterthought, pulled out my crumpled sling again, slipping it over my head and under my left forearm.
“Well, come on, what did she say?” Dawson demanded. “Where is he?”
“She wouldn’t tell me, just kept saying . . .”
But as I spoke, it hit me like one of those pulled zoom shots in the movies, where the camera rushes into extreme close-up while the background recedes. I could almost feel it physically as I was yanked out of reality, and time went into a kind of weird slow motion around me.
“. . . take some advice. Don’t continue any further . . .”
With it came the realization that however loyal Madeleine might be to her former employer, she was also worried about him as a friend.
“Oh, Madeleine,” I murmured under my breath. “You little star.”
“What?” Dawson looked ready to slap me, or shake me, or both. “Charlie—!”
“He’
s here,” I said. “In Jordan.”
“She said that?”
“She didn’t have to.” I glanced at the passengers still shuffling past. The plane was emptying quickly, and we didn’t have much time.
“Look, Dawson, I need you to do something for me . . .”
I explained, too briefly for her to be at all convinced.
“This is going to get us both into deep shit, isn’t it?”
“Very probably, but me more so than you. I just have a feeling that once I set foot back inside the US, Hamilton has the kind of pull that can stop me leaving again. Otherwise I’d turn around at Newark and be straight back on the first flight.”
“You do have a point there.”
“And if it doesn’t work, claim I threatened you.”
“Now that they’ll have no trouble believing.”
I flashed her a quick grin as we slipped out of our seats and joined the stragglers. The flight attendant waiting by the aircraft exit blinked at the sight of us. I thanked her cheerily as we passed and she smiled automatically. The jet bridge was a corridor of heat after the cool of the plane.
“Of course, if there are two of them, we’re screwed anyway,” Dawson muttered.
“And if they haven’t bothered sending anyone at all, we’re home free.”
“We aren’t that lucky. Ah, there you go—the Arnie look-alike in the dark glasses. It’s got to be him.”
I followed her gaze and spotted the tall Caucasian in a pair of wraparound shades. He wore a pale blue suit that didn’t fit well around his overdeveloped muscles, and he stepped forward the moment we emerged into the gate area. It didn’t take much of a guess—we were the only two unaccompanied Western women on the flight.
“You must be Fox and Dawson,” he said in a voice disappointingly devoid of Germanic accent. “Come with me, please.”
I didn’t miss the way he looked straight at Dawson as he spoke, and I began to hope we might just have a chance of this working.
When Woźniak had dropped us at Baghdad, he’d identified us to Lurch solely by the fact that one of us was wearing a sling and the other one wasn’t. I assumed, therefore, that our minder in Amman had been briefed in the same offhand manner.
There was no way, under normal circumstances, anyone would ever confuse me with Dawson, on hair color alone. I was fair, she was dark. But I was gambling on the fact they hadn’t bothered sending visual ID on the pair of us.
So, as we left the plane, I was the one now wearing a sling and Dawson had both arms free. It had caused the flight attendant to pause, but only for a second before she accepted that her memory of us must have been incorrect.
When people wear glasses, it becomes their identifying feature. I was hoping that in the same way, Arnie would not begin to question which of us was which until it was too late for him to do anything about it.
THIRTY-SIX
“SO, WHAT’S WITH THE ARM?” ARNIE ASKED, DUCKING HIS HEAD in the direction of my sling.
I eyed him just long enough to see the lack of guile behind the question. Maybe he was simply more of a people person than his colleagues over the border.
“Busted collarbone,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t ask to see scars I didn’t have. I nodded toward Dawson. “And that’s before I started working for her. Since then I’ve been ambushed, shot at, and hit by a car.”
“Yeah, well.” Dawson gave a casual shrug. “You knew the risks.”
I felt my eyebrows rise a little. Was I really so offhand with the people I worked alongside?
Arnie held out a meaty paw, and for a moment I thought he was intending to shake, but he merely said, “Your tickets, if you please, ma’am.”
I fished into my jacket pocket for Dawson’s boarding pass—a straightforward flight to Heathrow. She in turn handed over mine for the onward leg to Tel Aviv and then to Newark.
“I just hope your boss at that snazzy New York outfit has good insurance cover,” I said, meeting Dawson’s eyes with a challenge in mine. “Soon as I get back to London, you can bet I’ll be putting in a personal injury claim.”
Dawson glared back at me. “You can try it, but it won’t get you far.”
“Ladies, please. Let’s try to keep this civilized, huh?” Arnie stepped between us, palms raised, barely treating our paperwork to more than a superficial glance. He’d checked that the names and destinations matched those he’d been given. What more did he need to do?
I turned away so he wouldn’t see my smile.
Dawson sniffed and said, “If we must.”
He handed back our tickets without asking for the passports that went with them, said to me, “Looks like your flight leaves first, but if either of you wanna eat, we likely have time.”
“I’d rather just go and sit at my gate,” I said. I lifted my injured arm a little and gave Arnie what I hoped was a wan smile. “Who knows, maybe if I talk to them nicely, I might get a better seat.”
He studied me for a moment. I could almost see him weighing up the likelihood of me doing anything unexpected. I’d already laid it on that I was injured, little more than a hired hand, and slightly resentful of what somebody else had got me into.
His eyes slid to Dawson, who was standing with her arms folded, head on one side, regarding the pair of us in a wanna-make-anything-of-it kind of way. Funnily enough, now she really did look like me.
It only took him a moment to make a decision.
“Well, I’m not supposed to, but . . . you know which is your gate, ma’am?”
“I’ll check the departure screens,” I promised, leaning closer and adding in a confidential tone, “I need to find a loo as well. I think my period is starting.”
If he had any doubts about the wisdom of leaving me to my own devices, that sealed it. He almost jerked back from me.
“OK, well, um, you have a good flight now, ma’am.”
“Thanks.” I lifted my chin in Dawson’s direction. “I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure, but under the circumstances . . .”
“Yeah, I know. Look after yourself.”
“I will. You, too.”
I headed for the nearest restrooms without looking back until I reached the entrance. By that time, Dawson and her minder were nowhere to be seen. I slipped inside and locked myself into a cubicle, stuffing my jacket and the sling into my bag and rooting through it for a scarf to cover my hair. In an Arabic country, despite the tourists, anyone with pale hair still stood out too much for my liking.
A few minutes later, wearing a different color from the jacket Arnie might remember, my head covered and sling gone, I walked out of the restroom and headed for the passport control area. I didn’t have a visa for Jordan, but a previous job there had taught me I could buy one at the same time as having my passport stamped. It was still a relatively cheap and easy process.
Less than half an hour after parting company with the two of them, I was outside the arrivals hall with a wad of Jordanian dinars drawn on the company credit card and a freshly purchased tourist visa. I eyed the line of pale yellow taxis nearby and checked my watch. It was at least ninety minutes before the Heathrow flight was due to begin boarding, maybe another forty-five after that while they put out calls for Luisa Dawson before they realized she wasn’t coming. So, I had a good two-hour head start on Arnie and whatever backup he had at his disposal.
I allowed myself a brief regroup, walking out of direct line of the security cameras and digging the sat-phone out of my bag.
This time I had no qualms about dialing Parker’s number. He picked up almost on the first ring.
“Charlie! You OK? I heard things didn’t go . . . smoothly.”
“You could say that. Moe’s dead.”
There was a pause. “Moe?”
“The kid who was driving us.” He started to apologize, to sympathize, but I cut him off before he had me choking up. I couldn’t afford to remember too much about Moe right now. Maybe there would be time to weep for him later.
“Listen,
I don’t have much time. Your agency friends showed us the door in no uncertain terms and escorted us practically onto the plane in Baghdad.”
He swore quietly under his breath, a rarity in itself for my boss. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I made some calls. Next thing I know, I’m being given the runaround, and you and Dawson have been snatched off the street. If I’d had any idea—”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Where are you now?”
“Jordan. Still at the airport. I managed to slip the shackles, but I need to get away from here before they realize and send out search parties.”
“I won’t ask how you did it—not yet, anyhow. Do you need me to arrange a flight back?”
“You mean back to Iraq, or back to the States?”
“Well . . . either, I guess.” He sounded unsure of his ground. “Do you still want to go on?”
“Of course. And if I’d wanted to come back to the States, all I needed to do was take the ticket I was offered courtesy of Uncle Sam and save you the airfare. No, I have information that Sean is here, in-country.”
There was a pause, then a cautious question: “How good is your intel?”
I shrugged, a pointless gesture unless you’re on a video link. “Reasonably trustworthy, I’d say. And besides, it’s not only the best I have, actually it’s all I have, so what other choices are there?”
“OK, got your point. What do you need?”
More of Madeleine’s words came back to me, that strange emphasis:
“. . . I gave my word that I wouldn’t tell you . . . don’t ask me again . . .”
Picking my own words carefully, I said, “Can you think of any reason why Sean would come here?”
Parker didn’t reply right away. When at last he spoke, it was on a tired sigh. “I was hoping he wouldn’t—go to Jordan, I mean.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s where one of the other guys has been working for the past two years.”
I didn’t need to ask him what he meant by “other guys.” Of the four who’d attacked me in the army, only Donalson and Hackett still remained.
