by Mark Terry
Popovitch glared at O’Reilly for a moment, then grinned. “Didn’t know you liked it rough, babe. Maybe you are my type after all.”
Derek said, “Who’s been asking about a nuke?”
Popovitch turned to look at Derek. “Good cop, bad cop?”
“She will shoot you if you drag this out too long, Greg.”
Popovitch said, “About five, six weeks ago. A guy came around, asking for something special. Once we got past the foreplay, he asked me about suitcase nukes. How much and if I could get them.”
“And your answer?” O’Reilly said.
The guy on the floor finally clambered to his feet. The look on his face as he glared at Derek said paybacks would be in order.
Popovitch shrugged. “I told him that if I could get such a device, it would go about three million, that I would have to get half up front. But I’d have to know more about who wanted them than just handing over money.”
“A fine, upstanding citizen like you?” O’Reilly said.
Popovitch’s hands twitched, as if he were imagining strangling her. “Shocking as it might seem to you, I don’t think having a nuke go off in the States would be to my or anybody else’s best interest, money or not.”
“What happened?”
“He went away and didn’t come back.”
“Do you think there’s somebody else who could get suitcase nukes?” Derek asked. “Somebody in town?”
“Maybe, but I’ll tell you what, they’re pretty damned hard to come by.”
“What was this guy’s name?” O’Reilly asked. “What did he look like?”
“I was told his name was Abdul Mohammad. He was Pakistani.”
“Goddammit, Greg,” Derek said. “Abdul Mohammad is practically Muslim for John Smith. Who referred him to you?”
“None of your fucking business.” Popovitch made a gesture with his left hand. The guy who had attacked Derek lunged at O’Reilly.
She spun and brought her elbow up into his face with a crunch. Spinning, she struck him in the neck with her other elbow. The guy went down hard and stayed down, blood pouring from his nose.
Derek moved in on the other guy, who had remained seated and silent, hands on the table. Derek kept his gun trained on him.
A knock at the door preceded a heavily accented voice. “Meester Popovitch? Ever … thing okay?”
“Yeah, it’s just fine. Thanks,” Popovitch called. He shook his head. “You’re gonna get my ass kicked out of here and I like the food.”
“What was his name?”
“None of your fucking business.”
O’Reilly moved toward him. He scowled at her. “Don’t bother, Sandy. I’m not telling you. Derek doesn’t have enough money in his account to turn on this guy, and you don’t have enough balls to make me.”
She raised her gun, but Derek said, “Give us another name. Someone to talk to about al-Qaeda in L.A.”
Popovitch smirked. “An imam. Ibrahim Sheik Muhammad. He’s what you might call an al-Qaeda sympathizer.”
“How do we find him?”
Popovitch frowned. The guy on the floor groaned. Popovitch said, “You don’t need me for that. You need the goddamned Yellow Pages. He’s in L.A., Masjid al-Falah. And you didn’t get referred by me.”
O’Reilly headed for the door. “Come on, Derek.”
“I’ll be along in a minute.”
She glared at him. “I’m the—”
“Shut up. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
Her gaze was flinty, and she pushed her way out the door. Derek shook his head after she was gone. “That information’s worth ten. I’ve got a couple other questions, though.”
Popovitch said, “You were always a straight guy, Stillwater. What’re you doing teamed up with her?”
“I’m not. She was along for the ride. Tell me why you didn’t sell this guy a suitcase nuke?”
Popovitch laughed. “Because I can’t fucking get a suitcase nuke. If there are some out there, and I’m not completely sure there are, I don’t have access to them. They’re too hot for me. And despite what you and that bitch might think, I’m not crazy enough to want to try and get one into the States. That’s the kind of animal that bites back.”
“So what did you sell him?”
“Like I said, I didn’t sell him anything.”
Derek looked down at the guy on the floor, who was now sitting up, looking dazed. His face was a mask of blood. Derek said, “You know, I’m not sure I believe you about this. Tell me what you finally hooked this guy up with.”
“Why?”
“How much?”
Popovitch splayed his hands. “I’m telling you the truth, Derek. I sent him on his way.”
“How about medical supplies?”
“Ah,” he said, leaning back again, patting his belly. “Onto your specialties. Sorry, not much going on around here in the biological and chemical front. Also, they don’t need me for that. That’s what the Internet’s for. There might be some specialists in the area selling expertise, but that’s just a rumor on my part. I’m not privy to it.”
“Give me a name. Someone who might be able to connect me to someone with that expertise. Come on, Greg. You know everything that’s going on from Mexico to Vancouver. Talk to me.”
Popovitch seemed amused. “Sure. Robert Browne. He’s a professor of sociology over at UCLA. Studies terrorism. Has a particular interest in biological and—”
“I’ve heard of him. Thanks.” Browne was bullshit and Derek knew it. Browne was an academic with no particular real-world ties.
“You’re welcome.”
Derek flipped open his sat phone and made a call. “Francis? Derek. I heard about Dallas. Yeah, I need ten thousand operational capital transferred into this account.” He read off the number and clicked off the phone.
“Take care of yourself, Greg. And if I were you, I’d get out of town for a couple days.”
Popovitch leaned forward. “A word of advice?”
“Is it free?”
Popovitch grinned and again Derek thought of a baboon showing its teeth. “Yeah, it’s free. If you ever come back here, don’t come back with O’Reilly.”
Derek nodded and walked out. He found Cassandra O’Reilly pacing back and forth in front of the restaurant. “What did you get in there?”
Derek kept on walking, heading back toward his car. She set off after him. “Derek, talk to me.”
“Gee, Sandy, that was fun. I’m all for beating up people if it’s necessary. But it wasn’t necessary. You handled that all wrong. Greg’s not a bad guy. And you’ll never be able to utilize him as a source again. I was making sure that I can. You need to work on your interpersonal skills.”
“You don’t think Greg’s a bad guy? He’s a smuggler and an arms dealer and—”
Derek turned on her, snapping, “I don’t trust him. He’s greedy and unreliable and can be bought. But he’s not who we’re after.”
“You’re just pissed because that guy got the jump on you.”
Derek stopped, feeling his blood pressure rise. “Sandy, I’m not your partner. I’m not your employee, and I’m not your friend. Go talk to the imam. I’m going to work my own angle.”
He turned and started down the street. She called after him, “Ron and the kids live in Dallas, Derek.”
He stopped. Ron was her ex-husband. Kids? She hadn’t had any kids when they were in Iraq.
Derek turned to look at her. “Are they all right?”
“I don’t know.”
Derek nodded. “I hope they are. I really do. But that doesn’t mean I want to be partners with you. Good luck with the imam. You might want to take a man with you and let him do the talking. Or a Muslim, like Shelly.”
He headed for his car.
CHAPTER 10
Agent Dale Hutchins just finished reading through all the after-action reports when Firdos Moin walked into the office. The slender Pakistani smiled, though his eyes looked haunted. “Dale, you�
��re looking much better than last time I saw you.”
Dale reached out and shook Firdos’s hand, gesturing for him to have a seat. “That’s right. I’m much better looking now.”
Firdos’s smile widened. “Still not as good looking as me, but maybe the doctors can do something about that next time you visit. It is good to be back to work?”
Dale nodded. He gestured at the files scattered over his desktop. “I was just reading through the reports. How goes the hunt for Kalakar?”
Firdos’s smile faltered. “A dead end, I’m afraid. I’ve also been distracted by a new case. I apologize, but you understand, I’m sure. I was hoping you might help me with another set of eyes.”
“I’d like that.”
“Another look at the apartment?”
Dale nodded. Face your fears, he thought. He really didn’t want to go back to that apartment building. The associations with that place were only pain and death.
Firdos drove, his radio tuned to some local pop station that made Hutchins want to pull his own ears off. He kept his mouth shut, though. Firdos was unusually quiet. Something was on his mind, but Hutchins decided to wait and see if the Pakistani would share it with him.
When they arrived at the apartment, Firdos parked across the street and they walked over. The door had been fixed. Firdos unlocked it with a key he had on a separate ring and they entered.
A sensation like spiders slowly creeping up his back made Hutchins shiver. For a brief hallucinatory moment he smelled cordite and the distinctive, pungent stench of Semtex, then it was gone.
“Are you all right?” Firdos asked.
“Yeah, just had a moment there.” He walked over and looked at the bare floor. Someone had torn up the carpeting and not replaced it. The walls were scorched. A sofa that had been both burned and ripped by shrapnel still stood against one wall. The apartment smelled of mildew and something darker and gamier that Dale thought might be the residue of death—blood and torn and burned tissue and bodily waste.
He wandered the empty apartment, trying to get a feel for things. Pausing, he said, “In the after-action reports your recon team insists there were six people.”
Firdos seemed lost in thought. He looked up, startled. “Yes, six. I’ve looked at the photographs myself.”
“Do they have anything better than what you shared with us? The sixth man, Kalakar, if that’s who he is, is never clearly identified.”
“No. He was very careful.”
“But there were only five people in the apartment.”
“Yes. Did you watch their suicide tapes?”
Dale shook his head. “No. Maybe later. Did Kalakar have one?”
Firdos shook his head. “No, but perhaps he was planning to. Or perhaps he was just the person sending them out to end their lives.”
“You’re still interrogating the survivors?”
“Survivor. Yes. That is how we know he was called Kalakar, although the survivor does not know why he was called Kalakar. It’s not his name. It’s a label, a nickname of some sort. It means artist or artisan, or, I think in English another word might be craftsman.”
Hutchins thought: He was here and then he wasn’t. He must have split just before we arrived. Where did he go?
He thought also of something the new guy, Jason Barnes, had said in the locker room before the op: do you trust any of these people?
“Did you go back and look at the surveillance tapes to see if Kalakar got out of here somehow and they just missed it?”
Firdos gazed out the window toward the surveillance post across the street, another apartment building, four-stories, made of pink-gray stone. He shuddered as if startled. “Sorry. What?”
“Did you go back and look at the surveillance tapes to see if Kalakar somehow got out and they missed it?”
“Yes. Nothing. We think he left out the back and jumped the fence. There is a shopping mall over there and he could have parked there.”
“He had advance warning.” It wasn’t a question and Hutchins tried unsuccessfully to keep the anger out of his voice.
Firdos looked at him. “Come with me.”
They left the apartment, Firdos locking the door after them. He led Hutchins toward the back entrance, into the apartment building’s tiny parking lot. The back of the property was enclosed by a six-foot-tall un-painted wooden fence. It would have been difficult to climb, but not impossible.
“Did you guys examine the fence?”
Firdos shrugged. “It wasn’t our top priority. The forensic team may have. I don’t know.”
Hutchins started at the far left corner and studied each board in each section of the fence. He had no idea what he was looking for.
The sequence of events didn’t make complete sense to him. More than an hour before their dynamic entry, the surveillance team reported the complete terror cell was in the apartment. The surrounding apartments had been emptied earlier while the cell was gone. A loose tail had been placed on members of the team, who had been out eating lunch at a restaurant together. And yet no one had captured a clear image of Kalakar. Almost as if he knew he was under surveillance.
Hutchins’s FBI group and the Pakistani National Police group had stormed the apartment.
In the interim, the leader of the cell had left, disappeared. And if the surveillance team reports were reliable—Hutchins didn’t know if they were—then this guy hadn’t just left, he’d left in a way that the surveillance team couldn’t observe.
Two-thirds of the way along the fence, Dale said, “Hmmm.” He carefully pulled aside two boards, looking at Firdos. “I think we know how he got out. He planned it. He knew there was an observation team out front. He probably kept a car over here in this mall parking lot.”
A look of sadness crossed Firdos’s face. “That may explain it, then.”
Hutchins shot him a questioning look, eyebrows arched. “Explain what?”
“Two days after the operation, one of the surveillance team was murdered on his way home from work. He was found in his car on a side street, his throat cut.”
Hutchins stared at Firdos. Slowly he said, “You think Kalakar was tipped off that we were coming and left just before we got here? That one of your team tipped him off.”
“Perhaps.”
Hutchins let that sink in. There were many, many questions he wanted to ask. Where to start? He asked, “If so, why didn’t Kalakar get them all out?”
“That is a most excellent question, Dale. A most excellent question.”
CHAPTER 11
Derek walked back to his bucar from Kwan’s, lost in thought. He had been hit with a lot of things over the last few hours and his brain was buzzing. Not least of all was his concern over his own mental state. Upon walking through Helen Birch’s office door, her first comment had been about him shacking up with a Russian spy on his boat in the Gulf of Mexico.
In fact, he had spent two months on The Salacious Sally touring the gulf and the Caribbean, contemplating whether he was going to retire from DHS and take on a quiet life as an academic or consultant. Only two of those weeks had been spent in the company of Irina Khournikova, and she finally got fed up with his brooding and returned to Moscow with a final, “I don’t know where your head is at, Derek.”
He decided to return to work in Washington, but something was missing and he didn’t know what it was. And that guy at Kwan’s should never have been able to get a jump on him like that. Had he lost his edge? Where was his fire?
The bucar awaited him and he popped his key into the lock and was ready to climb in when Steven Connelly, the LAPD detective, melted out of the shadows. “Have a word with you, Stillwater?”
Derek turned to stare at the detective. “About what?”
Connelly waved him to follow and set off down the street. After walking two blocks in silence, they came alongside a white van parked at the curb. As they approached, the door slid open and Connelly jumped inside, gesturing for Derek to follow. Hand on his gun, Derek climbe
d in. Two men lounged in the van, which was crammed with communication equipment.
“Have a seat.”
Derek sat in the proffered chair and looked around. “You have Popovitch under surveillance?”
“Yeah. You and your partner walked right into a sting, which I suspect is blown now. Popovitch was waiting for a guy linked to the local Russians to show up and make the payment for a shipment of AKs. It might still go down, but I doubt it.”
