“Creative guy. Having a little fun. Got to like that in a spy.”
“What makes you think he’s a spy?” she asked.
“All these passports, what else? The guy’s a field operative. Slippery as an electric eel with twice the voltage.”
She leaned closer to the screen. Felt Sal staring at her inches away.
“You know you got your mother’s looks,” he said. “That smoky, pissed-off thing, like you can’t decide if you’re going to kiss the guy or scoop out his eyes with a melon baller.”
Harper shook her head, holding back the onset of a smile.
“You got lucky with the looks,” he said. “Don’t see a trace of your dipshit old man. I apologize if you’re close to him, which I doubt, ’cause somebody sure as hell fired a Colombian stink rocket up that guy’s ass.”
“I’m having trouble picturing you as a hacker.”
“I’m a beginner is all, but I’m getting better. Numbers were always easy, computing in my head, logic. Like the work I did for Tessalini, keeping his books.
“See what happened, I retired, moved to South Beach, next thing I know I’m looking around for a hobby, way to fill my days, turns out my next-door neighbor, guy you saw when you came over, Chinese guy, he writes code for video games, just a kid, nineteen, twenty, name is Kong, can you believe it? I should’ve introduced you, you would’ve liked him.
“Anyway, so we hit it off, Kong and me, he shows me a few moves, simple coding, Java, JavaScript, and bang, right from the get-go it seems easy, and I’m pretty good at it, which surprised the hell out of me. Like I woke up one day, I could speak German.”
With that, they ordered breakfast, and Sal laid out everything he knew about Spider between bites of Swiss breads, Zopf and Bürli, and a heaping plate of bratwurst, fried potatoes scrambled with cheese and eggs. Shoveling it in, backhanding his lips between bites. Caveman manners.
First, Nick had finagled a copy of the security video from the Aqua, captured a decent image of Spider and Harper entering the building together last week. Then Sal had used the same facial-recognition software to track down Spider’s name and online presence.
Harold Anderson Combs, thirty-nine, born in Indiana, graduated high school, dropped out his first year at a local community college, joined the army, flunked out of Ranger School at Fort Benning, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, two tours. Exited the service, joined Aegis Defense Service, a private military contractor headquartered in London, spent five years on its payroll.
“This is where it gets interesting.” Sal’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward as if about to whisper. “These Aegis people, their encryption is so shitty a grade-school kid could crack it on his lunch break. So I go inside Aegis, prowl around, get access to travel docs, payroll, the usual stuff. Looks like Spider was pulling down one hundred forty K, plus year-end bonuses in the ten-K range. Not bad for a douche bag. He floated around Europe, took trips to Jordan and Abu Dhabi, a week or two, and other hot spots in the neighborhood, went back to Baghdad for a month, Yemen, Libya. Short stay in Syria.
“Kind of work he did, they use weasel words for everything, don’t call anything what it is straight out, but it’s clear enough the guy’s a mercenary, a hired gun running interference for American GIs in the Iraq bullshit war, doing paramilitary actions too sketchy for straight military.
“Then, last year, our boy drops out of sight. Two months off the radar. Last seen in Yemen.”
With a few keystrokes, Sal brought up a short video.
“You’ve probably seen one of these. On the news lately they’re dime a dozen, jihadi propaganda, captured civilians held for ransom.”
Sal scooted back, let her step close to the laptop screen.
Three men sat stiffly side by side on a rough bench. Their hands and feet in shackles. All three were dressed in tattered fatigues and had sleep-starved eyes. Behind them hung a black tapestry decorated with white Arabic writing.
Gaunt but defiant, Spider and Naff sat upright, shoulder to shoulder, and beside them, hunched forward and hugging himself as if to hold his guts in place, was a third man Harper recognized but couldn’t place.
“Surprise, surprise,” Sal said. “These two butt munchers were both hopping down the same bunny trail.”
As the film played on, the third guy turned his head to the right, revealing a gaudy crucifix tattooed on his neck. Harper closed her eyes.
Jesus god. It was the man who’d lured Ross McDaniel to Denny’s in downtown Miami and sold him a tale of his wife’s murder in the African jungle and tricked him into launching a probe into the criminal activities of an international corporation. An act that resulted in Ross’s murder and the murder of his son. The same man whose body she’d seen sprawling in a recliner at the Edgewater Apartments.
Following an off-camera command, that third man raised his head and looked directly into the lens and spoke his name: Jackson Sharp.
“The fella my guys disposed of,” Sal said. “That apartment, Edgewater, it belonged to his mother. Old lady died a few years back; Sharp kept up with the rent. Probably used it as a safe house, though it didn’t turn out so safe. I didn’t get a chance to dig up much on him, but when I get a minute, I’ll keep trying, see where it leads.”
She shut her eyes, tried to fit the pieces together. These three knew each other, worked together. Soldiers of fortune. Hired guns.
Sal shut the laptop and swiveled around to face her.
“Let me ask something, sweetheart. It’s just the two of us, nobody listening in. I been giving you all these goodies you wouldn’t know if it weren’t for me. So in fairness, it’s time to reciprocate.”
“How?”
“Give me something.”
“Like what?”
Sal looked around the room, ran a stalling finger across his lips. “Now don’t get pissed,” he said, his eyes coming back to hers. “But what I want to know, how’s a smart girl like you get mixed up with a half-assed outfit like the CIA?”
She stepped away from the desk, took a seat in a leather chair. Her legs failing.
Sal dragged a chair over and sat knee to knee with her. “You’re mad. You’re upset. I blew your cover. Hey, what can I say, I’m a snoop. I got an incurable itch to learn about the people in my life.”
“I was never in the CIA.”
“Okay, sure, you want to split hairs, then it’s the DCS, Defense Clandestine Service, arm of the Defense Intelligence Agency, answers to the president, secretary of defense, senior policy makers. Other words, asshole buddies with the CIA. But okay, the difference is important to you, let’s call it DCS.
“So how’s that happen, a girl like you dabbling in espionage, a special operation, whacking that bag of pickled dicks, Jamal Fakhri? I pronounce his name right?”
She nodded.
“So how’s that happen?”
She said nothing, not believing this.
“You thought it was going to stay secret? Well, yeah, far as I’m concerned it stays that way. I don’t plan on telling anybody. I’m just curious. Indulge me. How’s it happen?”
“How did you find out about this?”
“It’s all out there if you know where to look. I searched your name, raided your e-mail, just trying to get a feel for this granddaughter I didn’t know. Then one thing led to another, before I know it, I’m seeing traffic between you and some jamoke inside the government. Classified stuff I can’t penetrate.
“So I go next door again, ask for help. Kong never asks why, bless his soul. Once I’m inside the servers at the DOD, I track down some back-and-forth between you and some person, sounds like he’s your handler. Had to read between the lines, guess a little. The two of you calling something ‘the main event.’ All very cryptic, but I saw it was going down in Italy in October, then you and Deena, there you are, the two of you shooting pictures in Rome in October, turns out to be the same time this Jamal character was knocked off. So, yeah, I had my suspicions, but I didn’t know for sure,
not till just now, your reaction.
“I’m sorry I broke into your e-mail, but honey, your protection’s for shit.”
Harper sat motionless in the chair, her breath fast and shallow, staring at this man who’d dredged up her inviolable secret.
“I was recruited,” she said.
“I figured. ’Cause of the photography business, the people you and Deena hung out with. You can walk into rooms normal spooks can’t. Hear things, see things.”
She nodded.
“Hey, don’t get offended, I’m on your side. What I read, this Jamal character, guy was worse than Ted Bundy and Charlie Manson rolled up together.”
“Much worse.”
“But the DCS people, they had to convince you, right? Take a chance, risk your life? So how’s that happen? They have something on you, something they held over your head, turned you into Mata Hari.”
“No.”
“So why’d you agree?”
“I wonder the same thing.”
“This was before you got together with Ross?”
“A couple of years, yes.”
“So you’re single, your mom is the international celebrity, you’re living in her shadow since forever. Maybe you were looking to strike out in a new direction, find something important, give your life some pop? These guys come along at the right time. That how it was?”
“Maybe a part of it.”
“They probably showed you pictures, piles of bodies. That’s how they work. Babies starving, flies on their eyes, like that. All the people Jamal wasted. They said you could make a difference.”
She looked away.
“They give you training? That place, the Farm, or whatever it is.”
“Six weeks.”
“And what, they trained you for this one mission, or were you planning to do this kind of work full time?”
She hesitated, looking off toward the rising light in the far window. It was the dark secret she’d harbored for years. But Sal already knew most of it, and there was something in his eyes, an empathy, a gentleness that melted her resistance, so in a breathless rush, she unburdened herself.
TWENTY-SIX
Early March, Zurich, Switzerland
In his twenties, Jamal Fakhri was a darling of the tabloid press. A wealthy playboy, educated in London and fully Westernized, he dated models and film stars and royalty and frequented swanky nightclubs in Monte Carlo and Paris. That’s when Deena met him and snapped the photograph that would make the cover of Time.
“The Next Wave of Arab Leaders.”
When his father died, Jamal grudgingly returned home, assumed the throne, and tried some halfhearted democratic reforms, but after a serious drought caused food shortages, and the shortages set off street protests that became riots, Jamal lost patience and, under the sway of his generals, began a series of ruthless crackdowns. In the next three decades of his reign, he became a merciless tyrant at home and a patron of jihadist groups abroad. Tel Aviv in his sights. Shopping for nuclear materials stolen from poorly secured Russian stockpiles.
The intel community viewed Jamal’s son as his nation’s savior. A temperate young man with democratic ideals and a strong following in the military. If the father could be removed, there was every hope Jamal Junior would step up and lead the country out of darkness.
“So let’s assassinate the dad,” Sal said.
“Except nobody had access. Jamal was never seen in public.”
“Until Deena lured him out.”
“He was a vain man,” she said. “Deena wanted him for The Last Bloom. She wanted to have another look at him, try to capture the essence of a despot who’d murdered thousands of his own people.”
“My daughter, the artist,” Sal said with a wistful smile.
“Deena got word to Jamal and he agreed to a photo shoot. An informant inside Jamal’s regime sent word to the Americans. The beast was leaving its lair. That’s when DCS came to me, made their proposition. After Deena and I finished the photo shoot, I was supposed to bat my eyes at him, flirt, lure him away, schedule a rendezvous. Jamal went for it, so there I was in Rome in the same room with the guy.”
“Took a lot of nerve, walking in there with a knife up your sleeve.”
“The knife was for protection, that’s all. I was there strictly as bait. Get Jamal alone in a hotel room, lead him on, maybe get him undressed, vulnerable, then a two-man team enters a front window, takes him down.”
Sal made a dubious grunt. “Doesn’t sound like much of a plan.”
She halted, shut her eyes.
On that sunny day the Rome hotel room had been harshly bright. That’s how she remembered it whenever the scene replayed unbidden. As it replayed now. A stunning, aching glare filling the room.
Jamal knocked on the door two hours early, wrecking the timetable. In that small hotel room, there was no way for Harper to notify the ops team. Jamal’s goons were stationed down in the street, others in the hall beyond the door.
As instructed, she’d tucked the knife beneath a bed pillow. Though she trusted her hand-to-hand skills, she had to admit that having the razor-sharp knife was calming.
Jamal came in, they brushed cheeks, then he wandered the room silently, checked the closets, the bathroom, even looked under the bed. He told her he’d arrived early because his desire for her was so great he could not wait another minute, then added with a rogue’s smile, “And for a man in my position punctuality can be fatal.”
Sweat began to trickle down Harper’s ribs. The clock on the bedside table seemed frozen. Jamal caught her glancing in its direction.
“You have other obligations?” he asked.
“Of course not. I’m all yours, as long as you’ll have me.”
Two hours to string him along. No way she could manage that except to take him into her bed, make it last. An intolerable thought.
So she talked, told him how well the photos had come out, how excited Deena was, how handsome he looked, far more striking than his younger self. Trying to keep the tightness from her voice.
She asked him to sit down, relax, but he refused.
Jamal was silent, listening, showing no interest in her rambling. He took off his coat, unslung his shoulder holster, hung the rig on a chair near the bed. He opened the wine he’d brought, poured two glasses as she continued her nervous chatter. She sipped her wine. He tasted his. It was three in the afternoon. The sun blazed bright. Its enormous orb seemed to be poised just beyond the hotel window.
She was dizzy, on the verge of panic. Her weeks of training seemed to have drained from her mind. This wasn’t one of the contingencies they’d prepped her for.
Jamal finished his wine, set the glass aside, and came to her, drew her up from her chair, took the goblet from her hand, flung it against a wall.
He clenched her in his arms, fastened a hand over her mouth.
“No more talk,” he said. “You want me. I want you. It is simple between us.”
He steered her to the bed with the arrogance of ownership.
At the bedside, she broke away, said she needed a bit more wine, keeping a purr in her voice, saying she was nervous. She apologized but said she needed more warming up.
He stepped back from her, peered into her face for a few seconds, a few seconds more, boring into her mask, until an ugly recognition seeped into his eyes. His shoulders stiffened.
She should have seen it coming but didn’t.
With a quick uppercut, he clipped her chin, and the room spun. He shoved her onto the bedspread, went to the chair, and drew his Glock.
Came back to the bed, pressed the pistol to her throat.
“What have you done?” he asked her. “What trap have you set?”
The pistol dug deeper against her throat, cutting her air.
She endured it as long as she could, her mind clarifying: he was making her choice unavoidable.
She gathered herself, sketched the move mentally, then, with the blade of her right hand, chopped his wrist
, broke the pistol loose. Grabbed it from the bedspread, flung it away, and twisted onto her side. Then, in one fluid motion, she drew the knife from beneath the pillow and came up slashing.
Gashed his cheek, redrew his mouth, and while he staggered backward, bloody and growling, opening his mouth to roar for his guards, she sunk the blade into his chest. Jamming it to the hilt. With her left arm she held him upright, not looking at his face but feeling his body sway, then loosen in her arms, and loosen some more until he’d sunk away.
Sal was staring at Harper with growing concern, waiting mutely for her to tell the story she could not speak aloud.
She said, “So I did it myself. I took him out.”
He nodded, approving. “Because you had no choice.”
Harper had told herself that a hundred times, for all the good it did.
“Does Nick know any of this?”
“Not unless you told him, Sal.”
“So what’s the problem? You did it, you escaped, it’s over.”
“When I did it, I felt nothing. It was just mechanical, a movie starring someone else. That’s what worries me.”
Sal watched her for several moments, then sighed.
“That’s how it works,” he said. “The body makes some chemical, it’s like moral Novocain. Makes you temporarily numb so you can do what’s necessary to save your ass. What you need to do now is get over it. The world’s a better place without that shit-breath.”
“Not really,” she said. “Jamal’s son took over, he’s not the savior everyone hoped for.”
“Well, listen, I for one got no problem, what you did. My view, best justice is personal justice.”
“It wasn’t personal.”
“Sure it was. You were defending your family.”
“What?”
He stood up, made a slow circle around the room as if to walk off some memory. He came back to his chair and sat again across from her.
“Look, sweetheart, I’m sure you’re as patriotic as the next person, ready to answer the call of your country, but I’m guessing in some roundabout way you took this on because of Nick. How his family was killed. Fakhri and his thugs raiding villages, burning, raping. Sunnis, Shi’a, Alawites, Christians, everybody killing everybody else. People say the Mafia’s bad. Mafia’s nothing next to those fucking religions.
When They Come for You Page 15
