by Dana Haynes
The pill dissolved, the effervescent water masking the chemical reaction.
When the last residue disintegrated, Will Halliday pulled out a cell phone—prepaid, not his own—and hit speed dial 1.
“It’s done.”
He listened a moment, then hung up and slipped the phone into the trash can near the restrooms. He carried the tray of drinks back to his buddies.
Brooklyn, New York
Asher Sahar heard Will Halliday of the Secret Service say, “It’s done.”
“Understood. Thank you.”
Asher spoke softly into the phone. He wasn’t being covert; he was by nature and by injury a soft-spoken man. Almost fifteen years earlier, a tiny fragment of a plastic clasp, the remnant of a cheap, vinyl suicide vest, had clipped his neck and damaged his vocal cord. Asher Sahar could no more shout than he could sing an aria.
Will Halliday hung up before Asher could confirm the next stage of the operation. But that was okay. Halliday was not an X factor. Asher was sure Halliday would carry out his end of things.
Just like the rest of Asher’s team. Everyone would do his job. Admirably. Asher Sahar had many skills but chief among them was the ability to pick the best people and to inspire them to greatness. One of his secrets was demanding near perfection and total dedication from his people, then praising them when they achieved it. The combination tended to inspire true loyalty.
Asher adjusted his round, wire-rimmed eyeglasses, then hit his own speed dial on the disposable, prepaid phone. The message was being routed eastward like a rock skipped across a pond: from Denver to Brooklyn, Brooklyn to Tel Aviv.
The line was picked up after one ring, despite the time difference. He spoke in Hebrew. “It’s time to alert the CIA. Set it up.”
The man who answered responded in English. “You are sure about the names?”
“Yes.” Asher spoke only slightly louder than a whisper. “Belhadj is—hold on.”
His other cell phone, his regular one, danced a little jig on the cheap bedside table in the motel room. Asher noted the readout, turned his attention back to the burner phone. “Sorry. Belhadj knows more than he should. We need to distract him.”
“And the Gibron woman?”
Asher paused. “We have our orders. Her as well.”
“Very good.”
The line went dead.
Asher set down the burner and picked up his regular phone. He punched in a nine-digit security code and a text popped up on the screen.
YOUR PARENTS HEADING TO LONDON.
Asher smiled at the text and deleted it. Good for them, he thought.
He stood up from the saggy bed and walked to the cheap bathroom with its peeling tile floor and mottled gray-black shower grout. He peed, carefully washing his hands with the pump bottle of antibacterial soap he had picked up at the store. He stood a moment, his knuckles resting on the bathroom counter to either side of the sink, staring at his own reflection in the mirror.
I look tired, he observed with a clinical neutrality. It wasn’t a complaint, it was an observation. I look forty. When the hell had he started looking forty? He remembered his adopted parents at forty—they were my age!—hosting barbecues and laughing about kosher dogs and his adopted mom joking, “Should I serve dessert or wait for the barrage?” and his adopted siblings snickering and elbowing one another.
He remembered the siblings’ funerals. He remembered the barrages.
Asher turned his head twenty degrees to the left, twenty degrees to the right. Hair beginning to gray over each ear. Face thin, his cheeks hollow. The old, comma-shaped red scar on his throat—a decade and a half old—was still the first thing that caught his eye. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.
He wondered if getting Daria Gibron involved in the next stage of things was downright brilliant or downright stupid. Or a little of both. It didn’t matter much. The woman who had issued the order had been specific. She wasn’t just his superior. She was among the most noble, heroic, and brilliant people Asher had ever known. And it was an honor to follow her.
Even where Daria was concerned.
Costa Rica
Daria Gibron rose out of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the Nicoya Peninsula. The water was deliciously warm and azure blue, the sun sparkling on the waves. She shoved her goggles and snorkel up into her slicked-back hair and reached for the lower rungs of the Belle Australis’s ladder.
She stripped off her flippers and quickly climbed the ladder to the burnished wooden aft deck of the seventy-meter megayacht, salt water cascading down her long, nut-brown legs. She wore a black, front-zip wet suit vest and bikini bottom. She was aware that two of the Jamaican crew were watching her and smiling. She didn’t mind in the slightest.
Daria didn’t enjoy much about her work as a translator, but every now and then an assignment surpassed her expectations. This was one of those jobs. Daria had been asked to be an interpreter for a set of negotiations taking place on board the yacht of an oil magnate, off the shore of Costa Rica.
Nice work if you can get it, and a change of setting was definitely called for. Especially since she’d left four bodies in her wake back in Los Angeles.
A Jamaican steward had left a fresh terry cloth towel on her chaise longue and Daria toweled herself dry. He’d left a Grey Goose martini with olives, too. She slipped on the knockoff designer sunglasses she’d picked up at the Tango Mar resort and took a half hour to absorb both the sun and the martini, reveling in both.
The job had started the day before. Job being a relative term, when compared to, say, spying or soldiering. She spent much of the previous day in a sundress and gladiator sandals, translating between the oil magnate, a Saudi petroleum wholesaler, and the Salvadoran buyers. The work was untaxing and diverting. She spent part of the afternoon in the cabin and the bed of the magnate. Again: untaxing and diverting.
The Jamaican steward—all knowing smiles—brought her a second drink. “Is there anything else, madam?”
Daria beamed from behind her shades. “No, thank you.”
“Madam was up very early. It is important to get your rest, yes?”
Very early. The steward must have passed by Daria’s room around four in the morning and heard her moaning, or the scream she stifled into her pillow. Daria didn’t mind the Jamaican’s smirk or the innuendo. She lowered the sunglasses down her nose and batted her eyelashes at him.
“Early to bed, early to rise…?”
The Jamaican laughed. “Yes, ma’am. Very good ma’am.” He hurried away, shaking his head in amusement.
* * *
After sunbathing and the martinis, Daria returned to her cabin and booted up her laptop. She checked her e-mail, deleting everything unopened and unread. She checked the Web sites for the BBC, al-Jazeera, Haartz.com, The Wall Street Journal, the International Herald-Tribune, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. She lingered over the LA Times, which had a story about four bodies discovered in and around a Los Angeles commercial building. The killings were described as “gang related.”
Satisfied, she logged on to her private, password-protected Web site, which she did once per day, every day. Only friends had access to Daria’s Web site and its encryption security. She found one pending message. At first, she assumed it was a message from Ray Calabrese.
Then she remembered: Ray no longer was her handler. He was simply …
… her friend?
Daria had been a bit unsettled at first but, as days passed, she became more comfortable with the FBI’s decision. Ray Calabrese was a truly great man and an inspired criminal investigator. He was dogged, determined, patriotic, and loyal. The problem, of course, was that he saw Daria as being very similar.
Daria smiled at the notion. She had once assisted the FBI in stopping a plot by Northern Irish terrorists. Another time, she had saved the lives of two of Ray’s friends. Ray, ever willing to see the best in others, had written up official reports in both instances that painted Daria as some sort
of heroine.
Heroism hadn’t played much of a role in either incident. But try telling Ray Calabrese that.
No, Daria thought. I’m an adventurer. At worst, an adrenaline junkie. Best to sever official ties with the FBI before Ray discovers the truth.
Turns out, the online message wasn’t from Ray after all.
Chatoulah. Must meet with you soonest. Flying to NYC. Life and Death. CBS.
The message went on to list a day, time, and venue: uptown Manhattan.
CBS was Colin Bennett-Smith. An old friend, a crazed Brit, and ex-spy, Colin had been one of the few people on Earth to still call her Chatoulah: Hebrew for cat.
Bennett-Smith was often drunk but rarely melodramatic. Life and Death?
Brooklyn, New York
In a hotel room, Asher Sahar touched the shoulder of his team’s hacker. “She has opened the message?”
The hacker gave him a “did you ever doubt me?” shrug. “Moments ago. The bitch just responded. She thinks I’m this Bennett-Smith. That was a nice touch, by the way. Chatoulah. How did you know what he called her?”
Asher slid on bifocals with curved earpieces. They made him look academic, he knew, and he was self-conscious about it. The cardigan and the neatly trimmed beard didn’t help. “I used to call her that, as well. I think Colin heard it from me first.”
“What if the bitch—”
“Could you do me the kindness not to refer to her as that?”
The hacker looked up. Seated as the hacker was, the overhead lights glinted off Asher’s round glasses, obscuring his eyes.
“Yes, sir. I was going to ask, what if she tries to contact Bennett-Smith, to confirm their appointment in New York?”
“Another team killed him, two hours ago.”
“Ah. Good.” The hacker liked that the boss saw all the angles, accounted for everything. “Can we trust this American Secret Service agent?”
“Halliday? Yes. He is motivated by a perfect cocktail of hatred and greed. That makes him predictable.”
“Then the only question is: will Gibron go to New York on Wednesday?”
Asher wondered the same thing. “Absolutely,” he replied.
They were interrupted by a pounding on the door. The hacker almost toppled out of his chair in shock.
“Asher!” A baritone voice boomed in Hebrew. “Get your ass out here!”
Only one man on earth ever talked to Asher Sahar like that. Eli Schullman. The men had been fellow fighters and friends for years. They had started out in the Air Force then joined the Mossad. Then four years in a prison that didn’t officially exist. They had emptied many bottles together and each had saved the other’s life frequently but neither knew who had saved whom the most.
Asher tapped his hacker on the shoulder and adjusted his bifocals. “Keep me posted on her moves.”
Asher grabbed a plastic bottle of water—the water coming from the bathroom sink smelled of rust—and stepped out on the long railed breezeway that linked the motel rooms. The rooms were cheap and shabby but perfectly fine as a staging area.
Eli Schullman had the next room over, and he had left his door ajar. It was identical to Asher’s room down to the cigarette burns on the furniture and odd stains in the aging, industrial carpet. Schullman sat on his bed watching CNN.
Asher sat next to him on the bed and cracked open the seal on his water. “What is it?”
CNN was covering a bombing. The setting was urban and definitely Middle Eastern. Smoke billowed from a storefront and the cars in front had their windows blown out. A ticker on the bottom of the screen read, AMMAN JORDAN.
Schullman’s voice was a deep rumble. “It’s started.”
Schullman was a giant of a man, the apparent size of a bison. Since his release from the prison, he’d gone back to shaving his skull daily. Asher was slim with pianist’s hands. He favored cardigans. Almost no one had ever heard him raise his voice. Schullman was loud and gruff. They made an odd combination.
“They targeted a Jordanian hard-liner.” Schullman grumbled. “He had just sat down with two of his lieutenants. A small, shaped charge, likely under their very table, went off. Semtex, I imagine.”
That was a lot more information than CNN currently had, but Schullman was an expert with explosives. He eyed the blast radius on the TV screen and derived the rest.
Asher sighed. “Israel.”
“Who else? When it’s confirmed, the Americans and Europe will go insane.”
Asher looked around to see if Schullman’s room had a coffeemaker. It did not. “In two weeks, the Palestinians go to the General Assembly to petition for statehood. If they can prove this was an Israeli raid, the Palestinians will get a much warmer reception.”
Schullman grimaced. “Our traditional allies are going to become very quiet. All because some vantz in Tel Aviv got a hard-on for a Jordanian.”
“Yes.” Asher shoved his round, wire-frame glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Our intelligence services have been taken over by fools. So. It is up to us to give our allies something to get behind. We go with the plan as it is.”
He stood and crossed to the door. “I need coffee. Are you coming?”
Schullman rose and the bed groaned in relief. “And food. I need food.”
“Of course you do. Come.”
They stepped out on the walkway. Schullman threw on a military-style jacket. “Does Hannah Herself still want to implicate Daria?”
Asher smiled. Schullman always used the full nickname: “Hannah Herself.” He used it reverentially.
“She does. The Group does. Daria and the Syrian, both.”
“Daria is living in California. Did it ever dawn on the Group that if we leave her alone, maybe she’ll leave us alone?”
Asher smiled up at his old friend. “The Group knows what it’s doing.”
Schullman said, “And the genie?”
“The genie, as you say, will be ours to command.”
The big soldier grimaced. “Sure, sure. Because fairy tales that begin like that never end badly, do they?”
Asher laughed. “We will control this particular genie.”
“Which will kill thousands.”
Asher said, “Yes.” The sun glinted off his flat round lenses.
“Indiscriminately.”
“No. Very, very discriminately. More’s the pity.”
Langley, Virginia
The CIA breaks down into roughly two camps: operations and analysis.
John Broom was an analyst.
A thin man with narrow hips, standing five-ten, he looked slighter than he was. He had a bachelor’s degree from Columbia in political science, a master’s from the Kennedy School of Government, and a law degree from Harvard. He had joined the agency two weeks after passing the New York bar and had proven adept at reading foreign crises. In a little less than ten years, he had become one of the agency’s premier crystal ball gazers in the arenas of foreign military endeavors and weapon development.
Now, however, John was ready for a change. In a week, he was leaving to join the staff of the long-standing chairman of the Congressional Joint Committee on Intelligence. Such was John’s reputation as a guy who could deliver reliable intelligence that the director of Central Intelligence himself had dropped by his cubicle to try to talk him out of leaving.
* * *
It was going on 9:00 P.M. Eastern, on a Monday, his last Monday at the agency, as John hauled his fatigued body out to the underground parking lot and the tunnel that led to the metro. He’d spent hours holed up in a cubicle, peering at computer monitors. He longed for a good jog.
A Lexus pulled in, half a row ahead of John. Stanley Cohen, assistant director for antiterrorism, or ADAT, struggled out of the car and set his attaché case down on the hood.
John approached him. “Mr. Assistant Director.”
“Mr. Broom.”
John loosened his Italian silk tie. He looked around the underground garage. Without moving his f
eet, he could see no fewer than seven CC cameras.
“So. You’re moving to Congress, huh?”
“Better cafeterias.”
“Can’t argue that.” Stanley Cohen was a waspish man who squinted and held himself in tight check, shoulders always slightly forward, his head moving only when necessary. It made him look volatile or vigilant when, in fact, it was the result of a lifetime of back pain.
Cohen said, “You have a certain flair, John.” He pulled a pack of wintergreen gum out of his pocket, pulled out a stick. He waved it toward John, who shook his head. Cohen slid the gum into his mouth in lieu of the cigarette he so wanted. “You should hang around. You don’t completely suck at this.”
“Thank you. But I resigned.”
“You could unresign.”
“Yes, but—”
“Bullshit. You’re a natural. You are hell on a pogo stick. You are exactly the guy we need doing exactly what you’ve been doing.”
A couple of cars exited the underground lot, their tires screeching despite their low speed.
“Senior Adviser for Foreign Affairs and Intelligence,” John Broom spoke the words reverentially. “Senator Singer Cavanaugh. Chairman of the Joint Committee on Intelligence, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. First elected to Congress about the time King James was having the Bible rewritten. War hero. Former FBI director. The guy’s a legend. How could I turn down that job?”
Stanley Cohen said, “Cavanaugh’s, what? A hundred and thirty years old?”
“He turns seventy this year and have you met the guy? God willing, I should be so healthy. My job will be to consult and advise. That’s it. Consult and advise. Period. No more…”
John let the sentence peter out.
They were silent for a while. Stanley Cohen checked his watch. “That thing in Switzerland…”
John said, “Yeah.”
“It’s the CIA, John. Most days, we get three tragedies before lunch. That one went south but it wasn’t your fault for—”
“Yeah,” John exhaled. “It was. I should have pulled her out. She asked to be pulled out. I made the call to ignore her gut instincts. It was my fault.”
