Calculated Risk

by Stephanie Doyle

  “Step through the gate, ma’am.”

  She did so and Logan noted that she wore nothing to set off the metal detector.

  “Now, if you would step over here for a moment.”

  She didn’t hesitate and immediately raised her glove-encased hands out to her sides already anticipating that he would use the wand on her. It signaled to Logan that she traveled often and understood the procedures. It was also a signal that she was accustomed to drawing attention.

  For a moment, a wisp of guilt hit him. She hadn’t done anything wrong but had followed the dictates of her religion and for that she was a suspect? Logan decided to forgo the wand.

  “You can put your hands down, ma’am. I do need to see your passport, though.”

  He could see the question in her eyes, but she said nothing. Reaching inside her pale gray wrap she extracted a passport and showed him the picture, fumbling a little bit with the tiny book as the gloves appeared to be a little long for her fingers. In the picture her face was uncovered from forehead to chin. He noted the long lashes and a mole above her lip.

  “You’re going to have to let me see your face, ma’am.”

  She started to shake her head, then stopped. Instead she began to pull down the fabric that rested high on the bridge of her nose until she had revealed the dark mole just above her upper lip.

  Once Logan spotted the mole, he figured that was good enough.

  “All right, ma’am, you can be on your way. Have a nice flight.” He handed the passport back to her and it disappeared into her robes. As she walked away from him, Logan thought again about her lashes. They really were very long and very pretty.

  There were two things that Ali Kahsan knew about airplane travel. Women were always overlooked by security-at the gates, at customs, it didn’t matter.

  And the airline food was always prohibitively bad.

  He counted on the first being true, and he always ate before he flew.

  There were times when he wondered how the Western world, so intent on the safety of its people, could be so easily duped by a simple costume. Not that he minded. Still a challenge, just once, getting through what he loosely termed security, might have been interesting.

  For now there was no point in creating such a challenge. He had easily made his way on to the plane. Easily made it past the customs officers waiting in Boston who, because of his costume, didn’t notice his sneer as he read the large Welcome To America sign set against the red, white and blue background over the doors leading out to the airport. And easily made it outside the building to the rows of narrow busy streets where buses dropped off and picked up their charges, and wives and husbands and friends picked up their loved ones.

  Amidst the chaos he found the limousine he’d arranged for waiting for him.

  Once securely inside it, behind the tinted windows, he removed the abaya, revealing a very American-looking Polo shirt, complete with a pony rider over his heart, and a pair of khakis. He peeled off the fake eyelashes. Plucked off the mole. The gloves, a size too large because they made his hands seem smaller, were tossed aside, as well.

  Sitting back against the plush leather seat, dressed in nothing more than a short-sleeved shirt and lightweight pants, it occurred to him suddenly that it was cold. Damn cold. How people suffered through this thing known as winter, he would never know. He thought of his home in the desert and almost sighed longingly. Instead he turned up the heat.

  Speaking the clear refined English he’d learned well at Oxford, Kahsan asked the driver for the estimated time of arrival to their first destination. There was something that he needed to pick up before he could proceed with his mission. The driver responded in English, although with a heavier accent, that they had approximately a three-hour drive.

  “Have we heard from my men?”

  “Not for over an hour.”

  Past the designated check-in time. No doubt dead, he concluded. But that wasn’t his concern. Their mission was accomplished. He was in the country now, on the East Coast where he needed to be. He’d originally considered making the trip via a cargo ship, but had decided that the precaution was unnecessary and time-consuming. Given the success of this costume, his calculated risk had proven to be the right move.

  “Have we heard from her?”

  “Not yet.”

  Soon though, he thought. If he’d lost contact with his men that meant they’d been engaged. The government had finally moved on her and should be taking her to the final destination. If she hadn’t been lying to him, she would be able to give him the location within hours. The clock was on. Three hours was going to be a tight fit, but the detour was absolutely necessary. It was his contingency plan. For he was a very cautious man.

  “Excellent. Oh, and somewhere on the way if you spot a store of some sort, I think I’m going to need a sweater. Make that happen, will you?”

  The driver didn’t need to reply. He simply needed to make it happen.

  “You know there are times when you make it very easy to hate you,” Sabrina puffed out as she jogged the last few steps, finally catching up with Quinlan, who had stopped jogging as soon as the motel came into view.

  “I told you those cigarettes weren’t good for you.”

  She scowled at him. He wasn’t even breathing hard. It had been his idea to pick up the pace by jogging. Which, under normal circumstances, she might have been able to handle. On a flat road, in jogging clothes and socks. And after a full night’s rest. As of now, she’d been awake twenty-four hours and it wasn’t as though she’d done a whole lot of sleeping since the night she’d gotten Arnold’s e-mail. She was starting to feel it, but Quinlan looked as if he could jog another ten miles if he had to.

  Bastard.

  They made their way into the motel lobby where an older Indian man sat behind a desk with a bored expression on his face. A mini-TV could be heard but not seen leading her to believe it was situated somewhere under the counter. Sabrina heard Matt Lauer talking about the ramifications of computer viruses. Predictably, the name he invoked was Sal Ploxm’s.

  She huffed. This time not because she was out of breath. Ploxm’s reputation was getting a little out of hand. Whoever he was, he was just a hacker. Talented, sure, but the world was full of them. She wasn’t certain why she was insecure when it came to some quasi-mythical computer geek, but she was honest enough with herself to admit that she was. Maybe it had something to do with knowing that if she failed, he was only a step behind. But he hadn’t been Plan A. She was. She really hoped Krueger made the right call.

  “We need a room,” Quinlan told the man.

  The man took in the fact that they obviously had no luggage and smirked. “For an hour?”

  “For two,” Quinlan corrected him.

  “If you pay cash, I won’t need to see identification,” the clerk told him.

  “How much?”

  “A hundred.”

  A bold move Sabrina thought. The clerk was banking on the fact that Quinlan was really horny. Given her current appearance, which she was pretty sure bordered on sexless, it was an extremely bold move.

  Quinlan handed over the cash. “A hundred for three hours.”

  The clerk sneered this time, then stared at Sabrina, assessing her. Then he simply shrugged. “Have fun.” He passed Quinlan a large key with the number six embossed on the tag.

  They left the lobby and made their way down the paved walkway that ran the length of the motel and stopped at the number six door. Quinlan opened it and they stepped inside the nondescript room done primarily in a beige and brown color scheme. There was a door that led to a bathroom. A table with a TV on it. And one bed.

  Sabrina tossed off Quinlan’s coat, leaving her gun in the front pocket, and sat on the bed, testing its resiliency. There was none. It didn’t matter. That’s how bone tired she was. She lifted her legs up and lay back sighing in relief.

  “You’re soft.”

  “Like Carvel ice cream,” she admitted. “Fortunately for
you it isn’t my body that’s required for this particular mission. No brawn needed for hacking a password, for breaking a code or for being fish bait.”

  Quinlan was about to say something when he stopped and reached for his phone. He’d had the two-way set to vibrate as just one more precaution.

  “Quinlan,” he answered.

  Sabrina tried to read his face to determine the nature of the conversation but, as usual, that was impossible with him. Then she heard him say, “sir,” and knew that he must be speaking with a superior. More than likely Krueger.

  “Yes, I understand. Let me explain what’s she’s done.”

  Sabrina listened to the condensed version of how she might be the biggest traitor ever or the biggest hero ever. Q was giving a very neutral rendition of the tale. She wondered if Krueger was smiling knowingly on the other end of the phone. Probably not. Even with no one looking, the man would no doubt play his role to the end. But he had to be thinking, Yeah, I already know this. What else have you got?

  That was what she was thinking on most days. About everything.

  “You should know I think it’s possible that he is in the country. This may be… Yes. Yes. I understand.”

  Sabrina sat up, sensing a level of tension creeping into the conversation. It wasn’t evident on his face, but his back was a little straighter. Quinlan rattled off the address, which he’d ascertained from the motel’s logo on the back of the key and told him that they needed cold-weather gear.

  “We’ll be waiting.” He snapped the phone closed and carefully set it down on top of the TV. She had an inkling the reason he’d been so careful with the cellular was because he had wanted to throw it across the room. Possibly at her.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We sent agents to the last known location of the cell we’d been tracking via the satellite. They’ve moved.”

  “Do you think they know-”

  “No. Up until now there had been no evidence to suggest that they knew they had been tagged. Krueger thinks they might be preparing for a strike.”

  Sabrina processed that information, understood the message for what it was and tried to evaluate Quinlan’s tension.

  “They’re not going to let us finish,” she concluded.

  “They’re coming to get us now.”

  “Why? Why not at least let us try to finish this?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer.

  He didn’t so much answer as he explained. “Two agents are on their way. If Kahsan is truly ‘in-country,’ they can’t take the chance of having you anywhere near Arnold’s computer. The risk is far too great. They’re going to pick us up and take you to Langley. You can work there under the government’s protection to see if you have even a chance of breaking Arnold’s code.”

  “On what? Some prototype? Get real. The point of the prototype is that it’s a lesser version of the real thing. Breaking it could help or it could be a big waste of time.”

  “That’s what you need to find out.” He sat on the edge of the bed, looking away from her.

  Sabrina shuffled up next to him. This was it, she decided. Krueger had told her to expect it: the moment when he pulled the plug. It was about to come down to whether she would be going after Kahsan on her own or she was going to have help.

  She could do it on her own.

  But help wasn’t always a bad thing.

  Believe the story. It was the best way to sell a lie.

  “What about Kahsan?”

  Quinlan stood and made his way to the window that overlooked the highway. He pulled the curtains back far enough to see out.

  Typical avoidance tactics, she thought, but she wasn’t going to let him get away with that. She joined him at the window. Through the space he’d created all she saw were cars zooming past at high speed. There was only one other car in the lot, which Sabrina suspected belonged to the clerk.

  Quinlan was searching for enemies that didn’t exist. At least not here.

  “So we’re just going to let him go?” she asked quietly, knowing how the very idea would strike at his soul.

  “We don’t have a choice. Krueger was very specific. There’s no time for delays. We have to get you safe.”

  “Does he understand what it means to get this close to Kahsan only to let him slip away?”

  “We can protect you. We can get you to a computer where you can safely work. We can plan something else.”

  “I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to break Arnold’s test code,” Sabrina argued. “This is Arnold we’re talking about. If his code was simple to decipher, you sure as hell wouldn’t need me. Hoping that I can make some kind of progress in time to track down the people already loose in this country is a pipe dream and you know it.”

  That actually could be the truth. Or maybe not. If she had a chance… It didn’t matter, she told herself, cutting off her own ego. Her mission was clear.

  “Kahsan is expecting me to make contact. If he doesn’t hear from me soon, he’ll know it was a setup. The reason this guy has been around so long and has been habitually so hard to nail is because he doesn’t take risks. You know that. He always lives to fight another day. If I don’t make contact, if he thinks the CIA has me locked down in some bunker, he’ll assume that retrieving the data is a lost cause. He’ll leave the country.”

  “We hope he’ll leave the country,” Quinlan corrected her.

  “Is that what you want?” she questioned, confused by his quick acceptance of the situation.

  Quinlan let the curtain drop and faced her. His stoic do-your-job-at-any-cost expression also had been dropped.

  “No. I want him. But Krueger can’t take chances. Not with your life. Not with innocent civilians’ lives. He’s the one who’s accountable, Bri. If something happens and higher-ups realize it was because he was trying to set up a sting operation, then it’s his neck on the line.”

  “Isn’t it the whole world’s neck on the line if we let Kahsan walk away without even trying to take him down?” Sabrina uttered the words and listened to them, as well. That had been Krueger’s point and it wasn’t altogether wrong. Risky yes, but not wrong. It was a bold offensive gesture and if it worked-if she made it work-then the world would be a safer place.

  “Geez, Q, you said yourself you’ve been chasing him for fifteen years and you’ve only gotten close three times. If we’re right, and he’s as close as we think he is, one e-mail can have him here at our freakin’ doorstep. Possibly within hours.”

  She could see Quinlan was tempted. She could see the need to hunt in his icy gray eyes. Then suddenly that need was gone.

  “I have orders.”

  Sabrina threw up her hands in disgust, knowing for now the debate had been closed. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that. Because we all know you’ve never disobeyed orders.”

  “With good reason,” he countered.

  “This isn’t the army,” she disputed, knowing where his ironclad allegiance to orders stemmed from. “This is different. You’re an agent. You can think for yourself. Analyze each situation as it arises. I don’t know why this cell suddenly picked up and moved. It could be as simple as they spotted their government surveillance. God knows they must have been dripping with Feebs, who aren’t always the subtlest bunch. It might have nothing to do with a strike.”

  “But it might and if you have even the slimmest chance of breaking that code in time to get us their location, we have to take it. There is no other option, not when we’re playing with lives.”

  Sabrina fell back down on the bed. There was no point in arguing any further. He wasn’t going to quickly decide to counter a direct order-if he did it at all. She would work on him again in a while, try to wear him down. However, if in the end she had to break away from him and work alone, she would do it. She had orders, as well.

  There was only one last point she wanted to make.

  “I meant what I said before. I have no idea how long it will take to decipher Arnold’
s prototype encryption codes. It could be weeks, months. And only if that works will I be allowed to move on to the real thing. Which means we could let Kahsan walk away, fly back to Europe, whatever, and it is possible that this ‘lost’ cell is still going to have the time they need to do whatever monstrous thing it is they’re planning on doing. Are you willing to take that chance?”

  He didn’t reply. She didn’t think he would and she didn’t lift her head to see his reaction. Instead, she kicked off her sneakers. “How long until the goon squad arrives?” She needed to start planning.

  “Shouldn’t be more than two hours,” he replied.

  “Just out of curiosity, how long would it take us to get to Arnold’s place from here?”

  He didn’t answer immediately, but eventually said, “Forty minutes.”

  That wasn’t such a shock. Arnold didn’t know his exact location. It had been part of the agreement he’d made with the CIA. They picked the remote location, then blindfolded him, transported him by what was no doubt a circuitous route and eventually dropped him off on the island, preventing him from even accidentally giving away his location. He agreed to stay put and was more than happy to do without any contact from the outside world.

  But based on the weather patterns, the transitional seasons, the position of the stars in the sky, he determined he was somewhere on the East Coast in one of the centrally located states. Forty minutes could mean Maryland, Delaware or back toward central Pennsylvania.

  Arnold had also written her that he was on a small island in the center of a river. He talked about fishing to clear his mind. He talked about a rowboat. There were only a few choices of a river that wide that it could support a string of islands within it. The Susquehanna, maybe the Monongahela. Possibly the Chesapeake.

  Somehow she would need to get the actual location before the goons arrived. Either willingly or unwillingly. She didn’t look forward to the latter.