Heat silently blessed Steve Liebman.
“Okay, great,” Heat said. Then, before she forgot, she added: “Thank you.”
“And just so we’re clear, I also don’t want you telling this person where you got the number. And you—”
“Can’t use it to get a warrant. I got it. This conversation never occurred.”
“Attagirl,” Miksit said. “You always were a fast learner. Okay, here goes.”
Miksit began reading off the number. Heat began recognizing it the moment Miksit reached the end of the country code. By the time she had given the whole thing, Heat was quite sure.
The number belonged to Fariq Kuzbari, the security attaché to the Syrian mission to the United Nations.
Long ago, Heat’s mother had taught his children piano. More recently, he had helped Heat solve her mother’s murder—back when Heat believed her mother had been murdered. And Heat knew he was involved in any number of undertakings, most of them on the hazier end of legal, all things he wouldn’t have disclosed under the most intense torture.
“When did the five-minute phone call occur?” Heat asked.
“A week ago Tuesday.”
“And nothing after that?”
“Nothing,” Miksit said.
Heat couldn’t begin to guess why a New York Ledger Metro reporter had felt the need to contact the Syrian mission’s security chief.
But she was absolutely determined to find out.
Heat’s first call, after she finished with Miksit, was to Fariq Kuzbari.
He didn’t answer, naturally. He never did.
Heat tried another number she had for the man. Again, it rang through to voice mail. She left a message, if only to hear herself talk.
Then she tried the main number for the Syrian mission, where she eventually spoke with a gatekeeper, who assured her Mr. Kuzbari was out of the country and unreachable. Heat left another message, which she knew was heading for the bottom of a garbage can.
In her previous dealings with Kuzbari, the man had only been found when he felt like being found. As a rule, he was the initiator of contact, not the receiver of it. Even once he knew he was being sought, it was no guarantee he would engage.
That wasn’t good enough. Not this time. Heat didn’t have the twelve, twenty-four, or forty-eight hours it typically took for Kuzbari to suddenly materialize beside her on the street in his Range Rover HSE, as he had in the past.
Before she had a fully formed plan, she was on her way out of the office. She tossed an “I’ll be back” in the direction of Hamner, whose questions and then protests were already becoming distant background noise as Heat walked away.
Heat knew there were thousands of places on the planet Kuzbari might be, but one place that was more likely than others. If nothing else, a visit there could hasten the process of flushing him out.
The Permanent Mission of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations, which was getting a little less permanent every day in an increasingly fractured Middle East, was over on 2nd Avenue, a few blocks from the U.N. It was located in an office building that called itself Diplomat Centre—because Spy Centre would have been a little too honest for anyone’s taste—in a neighborhood filled with other consulates and missions.
Heat was soon zipping across the 79th Street Transverse in a marked patrol car. There was no sense in using an unmarked. Subtlety didn’t pay when trying to cut across town in 4:30 P.M. traffic.
With her siren going the whole way, forcing other travelers to the side, nudging through intersections no matter what color the light, she completed the trip in twenty high-intensity minutes.
Once on 2nd Avenue, she parked illegally and barged through the glass front doors of Diplomat Centre, flashing tin at a rent-a-cop on her way to the elevator.
That was fine in the lobby. Heat knew the Syrian mission itself was going to be a different matter. As the elevator doors opened, she was immediately confronting a pair of heavy wooden doors with a small buzzer next to them and a prominent security camera pointing down at her from the corner. She tried the doors, which were locked. Then she went for the buzzer.
She held her badge up for the security camera to see. Thirty seconds passed. She buzzed again. Still nothing. A minute this time. The people inside were either hoping she’d go away or drawing straws to see who had to answer. She buzzed again.
Finally, a slender man in a gray suit appeared at the door. He cracked it open just wide enough for half his body to show.
“May I help you?” he asked in accented English.
“I’m Captain Nikki Heat. I’m here to see Fariq Kuzbari.”
“Yes, I believe we spoke on the phone before. As I informed you then, Mr. Kuzbari is out of the country. Now if you’ll excuse—”
“You know what, friend? I’m not going to excuse you, and I don’t have time to play this game your way. So we’re going to play it like this.”
In one swift movement, Heat stuck her foot in the door, removed her 9mm from its holster, and thrust its barrel under the man’s chin. The man tried to slam the door on her arm, but Heat was too fast for him—and probably stronger than he expected a woman to be. She shoved him into the next room, which was really just a small antechamber with another set of heavy doors on the other side. The Syrian mission had been well-advised on security measures, most likely by Kuzbari.
She backed the man into a corner, the gun still digging into the soft flesh under where his tongue connected. Heat expected an armed response to emerge after perhaps a minute, perhaps less, and for some rather tense negotiations to follow that.
Instead, the door to the main lobby opened and just one man stood there. Fariq Kuzbari was fashionably dressed in a Western-style suit—Savile Row, if Heat wasn’t mistaken—with a matching turban on his head.
“Nikki Heat,” he said. “I was just getting ready to call you back, you know.”
Heat promptly holstered her weapon. The man she had shoved uttered what sounded like an Arabic curse.
“Sorry,” Heat said. “I’m on a bit of a deadline.”
“So it seems,” he said. “By all means, please come inside. Let’s not delay.”
Heat followed Kuzbari past four scowling security men, two of whom had AR-15s at their sides. He took her not to his office but to a conference room that overlooked both the United Nations and the East River beyond it. He gestured for her to take a seat, which she did.
“I have seen the most recent video, of course,” Kuzbari said. “I am very, very sorry. As you know, I have great respect for Mr. Rook and even greater enmity for any group that claims to be ISIS. I don’t believe I have to lecture you on the atrocities those barbarians are inflicting on my countrymen as we speak. How can I help you?”
“A week ago last Tuesday, you spoke to Tam Svejda from the New York Ledger,” Heat said, stating it as fact so they wouldn’t have to go through the dance of question and answer.
“I did.”
“What about?”
“She was looking for my help with a story. But I’m afraid I couldn’t give it to her.”
“What story?”
“It was about bullets,” Kuzbari said.
“Bullets?” Heat repeated. “What about them?”
“As you know, my country is fighting for its very existence against ISIS. We are carrying out that fight on every possible level. One of the things that has baffled us—and your government as well—is where ISIS is getting its stash of bullets from. We know some of it comes from enemy positions they have captured. The Iraqi Army had huge stockpiles of munitions, many of which it simply abandoned without a fight when ISIS first swept through the region.
“But that was by now more than two years ago. The guns would still be operating, of course. But the bullets? Even by the most liberal estimates of how many rounds the Iraqis possessed, ISIS should have long ago exhausted that cache. Whatever territory they gain now or positions of ours they overrun would result in little more than a trickle of new ammunit
ion, certainly not enough to meet their demand. And we know they do not have their own arms factories. So they have to be buying bullets from somewhere. They have the money, of course, primarily from the oil they are stealing and from the tributary they collect from their citizens. And they have the supply lines to get the bullets in. But someone still has to be willing to sell them the bullets. Who is that? We do not know.”
“And that’s what you told Tam?” Heat said.
“Almost word-for-word, yes. She seemed rather disappointed.”
“Why?”
“Because I wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know,” Kuzbari said. “Everything I’ve just said has been reported in the media already. They’ve even done studies of spent ISIS ammunition. The two largest sources are arms manufacturers from China and the United States.”
“So why haven’t the authorities just gone after those manufacturers?”
“Because they have plausible deniability. Ammunition sales are not tracked internally. I can buy from a legitimate arms manufacturer and then sell to someone else, and it is perfectly legal. It is only when I sell to ISIS that it becomes illegal. Who is doing the selling to ISIS? The question has been posed many times. It’s the answer that seems to be eluding everyone.”
“Did she mention any theories to you?”
“She seemed to have one in mind, but she did not share it with me. If I was to guess, I would say it was only partly formed in her mind.”
There was something partly forming in Heat’s mind as well. She thought back to the bullet she and Rook had found on Svejda’s desk. They had assumed someone was trying to threaten Tam, but she had told Liebman it was a souvenir.
Except, of course, it had turned out to be the slug that had been dug out of Joanna Masters’s back. When Heat first learned that, she couldn’t begin to fathom why Svejda had wanted to keep it. But now it was becoming clear.
It wasn’t a souvenir. It was evidence. For Tam Svejda, that bullet had been the starting point for a story about where ISIS was getting its bullets from.
“Did she mention the name Joanna Masters to you?” Heat asked.
“She did not. Our conversation was rather brief. Just as this conversation has been brief. Perhaps five minutes? Certainly no more than ten. Once she learned that I did not have an answer for her, she was determined to move on to someone who did.
“And now,” Kuzbari said, standing. “I’m afraid I must move on as well.”
They said their good-byes, and Heat was soon back in the patrol car, battling back across town.
This time, she went with the flow of traffic. She wanted the time to assemble what she had learned into a new narrative.
Two weeks earlier, Tam Svejda had written a story about Joanna Masters, who had been shot by ISIS in Syria. Like good journalists do, Svejda had let that story lead her to another.
By the following Tuesday—just a week and a day ago—she had learned enough about the world of international arms dealing to know that Fariq Kuzbari was the kind of man who tended to have a great deal of information. Except Kuzbari did not have any easy answers. It seemed no one did.
But that hadn’t stopped Svejda. By Wednesday, for reasons yet unclear, she had decided to book herself a plane ticket out to Cleveland the following day. By Thursday night, she was working the finer establishments of Lorain, Ohio, flirting with steelworkers.
That didn’t make sense. Bullets weren’t made of steel. And, in any event, what would steelworkers know about ISIS?
Was the Lorain visit for a completely different story? A side trip with no bearing on her ISIS investigation?
Possibly. But that didn’t seem to fit. Svejda clearly had her teeth sunk deep into this story, and it appeared to have sent her out to Ohio.
All Heat knew for sure was that, after eating breakfast Friday morning, Svejda never again used her credit cards. It stood to reason she was kidnapped sometime that morning—before lunch, when she likely would have used her credit card again.
Had American ISIS followed her out to Ohio and chosen to kidnap her there? Was she simply more vulnerable out in a place where she was staying in motels, eating in strange places, and talking to strange people?
There were still parts of the story missing. And by the time Heat returned to the Two-Oh, she had not been able to fill them in.
While still sitting in her patrol car, Heat called the number for Jen Forbus, the Lorain Police Department lieutenant, hoping she might have found something by then. But the call went to voice mail.
Heat walked back into the bull pen, heading directly toward the murder board. She drew lines from Tam’s picture and from the circles containing Lorain and Joanna Masters’s bullet. She connected them to a new circle, in which she wrote, Where did ISIS get its bullets?
It was the last question Tam Svejda had been asking—and the one, it now seemed, that had gotten her killed. Perhaps because the real ISIS learned of her investigation and sent some of its emissaries to dispatch her.
Heat returned to her office, closing the door behind her, her head awash in new thoughts. As she turned toward her desk, she saw Rook’s garment bag, still cluttering up the corner where he had tossed it that morning.
Suddenly, something inside her broke. All of those neat compartments in Heat’s brain, the ones she imagined being made of the stoutest brick—the ones that kept the investigation from her feelings and vice versa—were instantly blown away. They weren’t made of brick, after all, but of straw.
Before she even knew what hit her, Heat was on her knees in front of the bag, almost like she was praying in front of it. This lump of stuffed vinyl had, a few hours earlier, been like a piece of Rook, an object that had been almost melded with his body.
And now it was the only piece of him she had left. There were tears in her eyes, big enough that she couldn’t see all that well. She reached for the bag and clutched it to her chest, which heaved in silent grief for the man she loved, a man who might now be in the final six and a half hours of his life.
Then, slowly, she rose, still holding the bag. She wobbled unsteadily to the chair in front of her desk and dumped herself roughly in it. At least this way, her diminished mind reasoned, she wouldn’t look as ridiculous as she had when she was kneeling on the floor.
She looked down at the bag on her lap. The urge to be near him was as strong as she had ever felt it. Before she even knew what she was doing, she was unzipping the bag. She had to come to her senses soon, had to rebuild those compartments again—the part of her still corresponding with reality told her that—but first she wanted just one little reminder of him, even if it was just a small whiff of his clothes.
Ridiculous, maybe. But there it was.
She had reached the end of the zipper and was now opening the bag. She saw the suit that was neatly hung inside, the dopp kit that had sunk to the bottom, the shoes he had worn yesterday.
But then something grabbed her eye, demanding her attention. It was a flash of color from a piece of fabric that was instantly familiar, even if Heat didn’t immediately know why.
She reached into the bag and drew it out, at which point she was glad to be sitting. She was quite sure that if she had been standing, she would have fallen over.
It was the Laura Hopper scarf. The one from the video. The handmade, totally one-of-a-kind item. There was no doubt in Heat’s mind.
But what was it possibly doing in Rook’s possession?
Nikki Heat had never suffered from carsickness. She was a nut for roller coasters. She didn’t care how much a boat tossed in the high seas.
But in that moment, staring at the scarf that absolutely did not belong in her husband’s garment bag, her ironclad stomach lurched.
She dropped to her knees. She crawled to the trash can under her desk, reaching it just in time. Then she vomited what little was in her guts until she was dry heaving.
It had just been so unequivocal from the earliest moments of this case. The scarf had been in the vi
deo, albeit in a part the kidnappers had perhaps not even noticed. The scarf was unique. Only one of them existed in the world. Therefore, whoever owned the scarf had been in the room when the video was shot.
Had Rook been there? Rook?
Even if he didn’t participate in the plot, it would have meant he stood idly by as Svjeda was murdered, and then said nothing about it later—which, in the eyes of the law, made him just as culpable for her death as the person holding the machete.
It was not out of the question that Rook would have come into possession of the scarf. The item had been commissioned by a Saudi sheik, but Rook knew lots of those. His assignments had taken him to Saudi Arabia at least a dozen times, and Rook sometimes dined with members of the Saudi royal family when they made visits to the states. It was possible one of them had decided to give it to Rook as a gift.
But then, wait. If Rook was part of this, why had the terrorists announced they would seize Rook next? Especially when it wasn’t an empty threat. She had watched him be kidnapped with her own eyes. She had seen him struggle against the men who did it. It made no sense.…
Unless, of course, that was some kind of elaborate cover-up. What better way to deflect suspicion than to make it seem you were the victim?
Heat found herself shaking her head. No way. There was just no way Rook was involved in this as anything but a victim. He had been mixed up in some cockeyed things through the years, yes. His actions had sometimes seemed questionable until all the facts had become apparent. He had hidden truths from her when he felt it was in her best interest, or when the ethics of his profession had demanded it.
But this would go far beyond anything like that. There was no misunderstanding that could explain Rook’s participation in anything related to American ISIS. She could not square that idea with the man she knew and loved.
There had to be some explanation, something that would help this make sense. Heat had to believe that, as much for her sanity as anything.
High Heat Page 27
