by David Bruns
The level in the wine bottle dropped quickly as they started to get reacquainted. It was obvious Liz liked her work. She talked at length about her assignment as a special agent on the Minneapolis JTTF, and gave him some background on recent local news stories. A caprese salad arrived that Brendan didn’t remember ordering, and they both dug in while laughing at a Riley story.
The empty Prosecco bottle was replaced by a pinot grigio that Brendan also didn’t recall ordering. The chilled wine tasted sharp and clean. “Why did you choose Minneapolis?”
The smile on Liz’s lips froze for a split second. She shrugged. “It was the first transfer I could get out of LA.”
Brendan stayed silent, and Liz shifted in her seat. “That’s not true,” she said finally. “I planned my transfer for months before James and I broke up. I—I just needed to get away. He’s a good man, but I didn’t love him. Besides, I’m happy here.”
Brendan’s mouth went dry and he wished he hadn’t drunk so much wine.
“Everything okay here, Liz?” The voice was a warm baritone.
Brendan half-turned in his seat to see Tony, the bartender, in the gathering dusk. He’d changed out of his work clothes into a pair of trendy jeans and an open-necked silk shirt. His blue eyes gave Brendan a wintry look. He moved past Brendan to stand next to Liz and rest a hand on the back of her chair.
Liz shrank away from his hand. “We’re fine, Tony. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Tony gave Brendan a curt nod, then strode off.
Brendan sat rigid in his chair, his mind working. He flushed when Liz’s eyes finally met his. “Friend of yours?”
Liz shifted in her seat. She picked up her wineglass, then put it down again without drinking. “I’ve seen him a few times . . . nothing serious.”
“So you’re dating him?” He had a sudden image of Tony and Liz all sweaty and tangled up in the sheets of a massive four-poster bed like some cheesy telenovela.
Liz huffed. “I’m not a nun, Brendan! I’m a thirty-something, divorced workaholic who walked away from a man who loved her for . . . for . . .” She ran a folded napkin under her eyelids.
“For what?”
“You’re serious?” The light from the candle danced in her eyes. “That Thanksgiving at Marjorie’s when I threw myself at you? When I divorced my saint of a husband and moved to Minneapolis? Why would I do those things, Brendan? Are you that fucking dense?” Her voice rose and Brendan could hear the chatter on the patio die down as the other diners eavesdropped. The wine roiled around in his stomach like a sour mess.
Liz stood up. The heavy wrought iron chair stuttered against the stone patio, making a loud clatter. Her pale yellow dress seemed to attract all the light from the space around her. She placed her hands on the table and leaned toward him. The flickering candle softened the curves of her face, but her eyes glowed with fire.
“You’ve had some bad relationships—I know, and I don’t care. You’re going to deploy to someplace on the other side of the world—I know, and I don’t care.” Liz’s parted lips trembled and she breathed heavily. Her expression looked somewhere between wanting to cry and wanting to kick his ass, but her voice was steady.
“What I do know is this: once upon a time, I said having a relationship and a career was too hard. I pushed you away. I was wrong. Here’s the deal, Brendan McHugh: I love you. Always have. Always will.”
Brendan tried to swallow and found he’d lost the ability. Liz’s beautiful brown eyes flashed at him from across the table.
Say something, you idiot! Nothing happened. The connection between his brain and his body seemed to have shut down.
She straightened up, carefully folding her napkin, her eyes pinning him into his chair.
“I get that you’re scared, Brendan, I really do. But I have turned my life upside down to be with you. I need you to meet me halfway.”
Liz placed the folded napkin on her plate, slipped her handbag under her arm, and walked away. A table of three women off to his left clapped.
Brendan felt a burning flush creep up his neck as he stood, swaying slightly. He fumbled for his wallet and dropped a handful of bills on the table.
He looked at the doorway into the restaurant where Liz had disappeared.
Then he reeled toward the low railing and stepped onto the sidewalk.
CHAPTER 53
Lake Superior, Canadian waters
31 August 2016 – 0200 local
Rafiq stood at the rail of the Ottawa, squinting at the distant lights of Thunder Bay.
Barely a ripple disturbed the image of the half-moon reflected in the still waters of Lake Superior. Dead calm. If he believed all the songs these people sang about the Great Lake Gitchi Gumee, this was a rare condition indeed.
A flash of movement on the southern horizon caught his eye, and he snapped the binoculars to his eyes. A motor craft, running lights extinguished, was headed directly toward them. He breathed a soft sigh of relief.
The captain appeared at his elbow. “Is that him?” he said in English. The man’s hands beat a nervous tattoo on the railing. For him, this was the most dangerous part of the journey. Rafiq’s forged seaman’s papers showed him as Indian, and the captain could plead ignorance in the unlikely event they were boarded at sea. Smuggling a person across an international border was another thing entirely.
Rafiq nodded. “Calm yourself, Captain. I’ll be gone in a few minutes. You’ll be well paid.”
To be fair to the captain, this was a change of plans. The original plan had been for Rafiq to go ashore in Thunder Bay, but his last-minute contact with Charles Whitworth had changed the game entirely.
The luck of the draw had made Charles—he preferred “Chas”—Whitworth his freshman-year roommate at Carleton College. As the only son of a prominent Wisconsin real estate developer, Chas’s life was filled with expectations, which he’d spent the greater part of his eighteen years of life not meeting. His father had tried everything: counseling, military school, rehab, Outward Bound wilderness programs, anything to make his son take his responsibilities seriously. Carleton College was the last straw. Daddy had bought his way into the freshmen class with a generous donation to some building fund and Chas was given an ultimatum: graduate or be disinherited.
To Rafiq—he went by the pseudonym of Ralf Faber in those days—the answer was obvious. The only thing Chas wanted was what his father refused to give him: his love and respect. Rafiq/Ralf saw an opportunity in this broken, spoiled man-child. The money, the political connections, the access to powerful people at the state and national level—if he could make Chas successful, Ralf would be able to use those assets someday.
His training in Hezbollah and with Hashem had taught him to watch for ways to cultivate people, and the biggest bet of Rafiq’s many years of cultivation was about to reap a fabulous harvest.
To be sure, his time with Chas had not been easy. His roommate was a habitual drug user, a drunk, and read at barely an eighth grade level. Ralf got his friend clean, tutored him in his classes, and, when necessary, did his assignments for him. They were roommates and friends their entire four years of college. Chas gained the respect of his father and a fast track to becoming CEO when his aging parent passed away.
A week before their graduation from Carleton, Ralf produced a letter from a prestigious, and fictional, brokerage in London where he had landed a job. Chas’s face fell; he’d hoped that Ralf would take a job offered by his father and they could stay together.
On their graduation day, Chas hugged his friend Ralf fiercely. He was near tears at the thought of being separated from his friend. “If you ever need anything—anything—you call me. Anytime. Anywhere.”
Tonight, more than a decade later, Rafiq was here to collect on that promise.
He ran lightly down the ladders in the ship until he reached the small landing that jutted from the stern at the waterline. The boat approaching was a forty-footer, sleek, with a covered cabin—a rich man’s pleasure craft. He caught a glimpse of th
e name on the fantail: Marauder. How appropriate.
“Ralf? Is that you?” The voice was Chas’s, but coarser, roughened by years of smoking and drink, he suspected.
He slipped easily into his American accent, a vague Mid-Atlantic blend. “Chas? Toss me the line, buddy.” He caught the line on the first try and secured it to the cleat on the edge of the platform. Rafiq leaped into the boat.
The ladder creaked as Chas descended from the upper-level cockpit. Even in the shadowy light, Rafiq could see his old friend had grown obese. A hug confirmed it. Chas’s breath wheezed even when he was standing still. “God, it’s good to see you, buddy.” He paused for breath. “Why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff, anyway? I feel like a smuggler.”
Rafiq laughed. “Oh, funny story, you know. I’m a journalist now and doing a story on cargo ships and working conditions. Well, wouldn’t you know I lost my passport.” He lowered his voice and leaned in. “I’m thinking maybe one of these guys on the ship stole it. Passports go for good money on the black market, am I right? Anyway, the idea of landing in Canada without a passport and having to go to the embassy and all that. Then I thought about you and figured why not call Chas?”
Chas had reached behind him into a small refrigerator and pulled out two beers. He cracked one open and took a long pull. He handed the other to Rafiq, who opened it and pretended to take a sip.
“Look, this actually is illegal, so how about I get my stuff and we skedaddle?”
Chas nodded and drained the last of his beer. He threw the empty container over the side.
Rafiq ran back up to the main deck. The captain was looking down on the Marauder from the railing. Keeping back from the rail, Rafiq extracted a smartphone from his jacket. He logged into his account and did a wire transfer of $50,000 to the captain’s personal account in the Caymans. He showed the confirmation to the captain.
Rafiq could see the man’s broad smile in the dim light. “Go,” the captain said.
Chas was deep into another beer by the time Rafiq dragged his black packing case out onto the narrow platform. He surveyed the open water gap to the edge of the boat. It was large enough to allow the crate to fall into the water. He leaned back into the ship and called up the ladder. One of the cook’s boys, a Syrian refugee, was loitering a level above. With the boy’s help, he lifted the case across the gap and safely into the boat. Chas had not moved from his seated position.
“What language was that you were speaking?” Chas asked.
With a start, Rafiq realized he had spoken Arabic to the boy. He forced a laugh. “I travel a lot, so I pick up stuff here and there. Is that my beer?” He hefted the can toward Chas and took a long drink. The bitter liquid burned his tongue and the carbonation made him want to sneeze.
“Let’s take off, eh?” Rafiq said in a fake Canadian accent. They used to watch the movie Strange Brew almost every weekend at Carleton.
Chas heaved himself to his feet and started up the ladder—after he stuffed a beer in each pocket of his shorts.
The ride to Bayfield, Wisconsin, took nearly twelve hours.
By the time the sun came up, Chas was drunk enough that Rafiq took over the pilot duties. The sight of his old friend in the soft light of morning made Rafiq sick to his stomach. The Chas he knew from college had been a slim young man with wavy brown hair and soft hazel eyes. The beast that snored behind him was a mountain of sweaty flesh with heavy jowls the color of rust and wisps of gray-brown hair swirling around his face. The eyes—when they were open—were bloodshot pools.
They’d talked for the first few hours, before Chas fell into an alcoholic stupor. Rafiq found it surprisingly easy to fabricate a backstory about his life since graduation, mixing in facts about Nadine and the children with fictional elements.
Chas responded in kind with his own tale. Two marriages, two divorces, but the family real estate company was doing fabulously well. He lived by himself in the family mansion on the shores of Lake Superior.
Perfect.
But mostly, Chas wanted to talk about the good old days. Their time at Carleton, the trips during spring break and Christmas. Rafiq indulged the urge, rolling out half-remembered stories. He looked around at one point before sunrise, and Chas was sipping from a bottle of liquor. He swung the neck of the bottle in Rafiq’s direction, but Rafiq refused.
As the level in the bottle dropped, the stories became increasingly maudlin and less coherent, until Chas’s chatter was replaced by a bone-rattling snore. Rafiq threw the bottle overboard.
The motor yacht had a state-of-the-art navigation system with their destination clearly marked. Rafiq kept their speed moderate and waved cheerily to other boats they passed. During the midmorning hours, he put out some fishing lines with unbaited hooks, as much for something to do as the need to keep up appearances. He let Chas sleep until he had the estate dock in sight, then he tried to wake his friend.
Chas woke in stages as Rafiq brought the boat into the slip and secured it. He stumbled down the ladder from the cockpit and made his way slowly up to the house. Rafiq locked the packing crate in the cabin of the boat and followed.
The house was silent and smelly. Rafiq wrinkled his nose at the overflowing trashcan filled with takeout containers and the sink piled with dirty dishes. Chas ignored the mess, making his way directly to a stack of food delivery flyers on the counter. “Whaddaya want for dinner, buddy?” He rubbed his face and let out a belch as he pawed through the pile.
Rafiq touched him on the shoulder. “Why don’t you go fix us a drink and I’ll get us something to eat?”
Chas brightened at the thought of a drink, and ambled out of the kitchen. Rafiq smashed down the trash and placed the tied bag outside the kitchen door. Then he loaded the dirty dishes into the dishwasher and set the machine on a heavy-duty cleaning cycle. He laughed to himself; here he was, cleaning up after Chas again after all these years.
He surveyed the contents of the refrigerator, settling on an unopened carton of eggs and a steak. Rafiq rummaged through the cabinets until he found a frying pan. Soon the smell of steak and eggs filled the kitchen.
Chas appeared in the doorway, sniffing the air. “Hey, that smells pretty good, Ralf. I didn’t know you could cook, too.” He handed Rafiq a Bloody Mary in a pint glass.
Rafiq clinked glasses with him and pretended to take a sip. The drink was mostly vodka. Rafiq smacked his lips. “Mmm, that’s good, Chas.”
They ate in silence. Chas chewed with his mouth open and wheezed through the whole meal. Rafiq kept a smile painted on his face. “How about a tour, Chas?” he asked when they were done.
Chas walked him through the six bedrooms in the house and the assorted sitting rooms, study, game rooms, and so on. Everywhere they went, except for Chas’s massive bedroom, there was a heavy layer of dust. They ended up back in the kitchen, Chas puffing from the effort of walking through his own house. “That’s the place. Pick whatever room you like and stay as long as you like, Ralf. It’s good to have you here.”
Rafiq looked out into the gathering dusk. In this part of the country, it didn’t get fully dark until after nine this time of year. “Can we walk outside? I’d like to see the grounds.”
Chas made a pained face. “Whew, I’m pretty beat, buddy. How about tomorrow? I think I’ll have a nightcap and then hit the hay.”
“Good idea.”
It took another hour, and three drinks, before Chas finally stumbled off to bed. Rafiq turned off the TV and sat in the gathering darkness. The living room overlooked the lakeshore, and he could make out the boats on the lake. Lots more boats would be coming for the Labor Day weekend, the official end of summer.
He listened for the even rumbles of Chas’s snoring before he left the house. There was a large standalone structure, as large as a warehouse, a few hundred yards from the main house. He made his way to the unlocked side entrance, flipping on the overhead lights as he entered. The building was filled with different types of vehicles: sports cars, a pair of company pi
ckup trucks with the Whitworth Construction logo in bold blue lettering, a small tractor. He walked past them all until he found the one he was seeking.
The Ford Econoline Heavy Duty van did not have any windows, and it looked new. Rafiq ran his hand across the blue letters of the Whitworth logo. He jogged to the steel box next to the door and pulled a set of keys off the hook marked VAN.
CHAPTER 54
Maritime approaches to Helsinki Harbor, Finland
05 September 2016 – 0800 local
Reza watched the Lumba through binoculars from the bridge of the FNS Tornio.
The Hamina-class fast attack boat idled at bare steerageway, their camouflaged hull all but invisible against the backdrop of the rocky Finnish coastline. Through the light morning chop of the Baltic Sea, an identical craft mirrored their movements from a position a kilometer off their port side. The long sleek ohjusvene, or missile boat, designed as a stealth platform, looked deadly in the shreds of predawn mist that hung over the water.
Reza made a conscious effort to control the tapping of his foot against the composite deck, a nervous habit he’d rather not display right now.
A commander from the Erikoistoimintaosasto stood next to him. The ETO, as they were called, was the elite special operations branch of the Finnish Navy. The officer issued a sharp acknowledgment into the microphone of his headset and then turned to Reza. They spoke in English, their only common tongue. “We’ll be putting the pilot aboard in five minutes, sir.” The officer was built like a side of beef, and the heavy hands that gripped the binoculars in front of his chest were corded with muscle.
Reza felt a stirring of hope. The solidity of this man, this boat, these people, made him believe it was all going to be okay. They could take down this ship, secure the weapon, and no one would be the wiser.
The signing ceremony for the Iranian Nuclear Accord was scheduled for noon at the Finlandia Hall, the world-famous concert hall. He suspected the terrorist plot was simple: sail the Malaysian freighter into Helsinki Harbor and blow it up there. Even if they didn’t completely destroy the signing venue, the resulting political fallout would scuttle the agreement.
