by Trevor Scott
Kurt Jenkins had mentioned the price of doing business, and they both anticipated a pay raise.
“I’ll double your pay,” Jake said, loosening his grip somewhat but not letting go.
The Moroccan again went off on Jake in Arabic. This time Sirena straightened up her stance somewhat. Something wasn’t right.
“Spit it out,” Jake said. “Where do we find the worst of the bunch?”
“Not in the northern Atlas,” Mustafa muttered. “Look south by the Algerian border. But be assured, the Caliphate is coming.” His resolve was strengthened with his own words. “Jihad is the only way.”
“Watch out,” Sirena yelled.
But Jake had already sensed something coming. Mustafa drew a knife from under the carpet and thrust the curved blade toward Jake’s stomach.
Twisting to his left, Jake barely got out of the way of the stabbing knife. He quickly released his hand from the man’s neck, caught the old guy’s wrist and simultaneously twist the man’s arm to near breaking while he thrust a chop with his left hand into the man’s throat.
Mustafa dropped to his knees and Jake released the knife from the guy’s hand. Then Jake shoved his right knee into the man’s face, knocking him out.
One of the young men from downstairs ran into the room, but Sirena rushed toward the exit and caught the guy with her right foot in his groin, dropping him to the floor in pain.
“Let’s go,” Jake said.
“This room must have been bugged,” Sirena said. “Mustafa told them to come now.”
They both heard someone downstairs yelling in Arabic.
“He’s calling in more friends,” Sirena said. “We’ve got to move fast.”
When they got to the second floor room, another young man was waiting for them with a knife. The guy swished the knife, catching Jake on the leather sleeve of his left arm. Jake pushed back a couple feet. Then he threw the old man’s knife at the young guy. Instead of sticking the blade in flesh, the knife handle struck the guy’s forehead and bounced to the floor. The distraction was enough for Sirena to slip forward and plant her boot into the young man’s chest, sending him flailing backwards into a stack of rugs.
Jake and Sirena moved quickly but cautiously to the first floor, thinking there would be more targets in wait.
They ran out the front door, where others came at them from the left. Together, Jake and Sirena ran in the opposite direction.
Their path was cut off by more men, forcing them to run down a narrow alley. Jake tried his best to remember the map of the area. But in the darkness, all of the alleys started to look the same.
There was yelling in Arabic behind them, forcing Sirena to grab Jake’s arm and stop their retreat. They were at a junction where five alleys came together in one small courtyard no more than 20 feet wide.
“What?” Jake said, out of breath.
“They’re saying we killed the old man,” she said. “They’re calling the local police.”
“There were no video cameras,” Jake said.
“They’ll be looking for a man and woman. We should split up.”
“No. We stay together. I’m not leaving you alone here. This way.” Jake pulled her toward a narrow passageway wide enough for just one person.
Footsteps echoed through the Medina, along with yelling of directions from their pursuers. If they could get out through the south border of the old town, they could pick up a car, Jake thought. They had to be getting close.
A lone light ahead showed them the way out. Just as they exited the small passageway, three men blocked their escape.
Sirena went back to back with Jake and prepared for a fight. The three men converged at once.
As Jake took on two men at once, all he could hear behind him was the sound of punches and kicks hitting their mark, followed by groans and a body drop to the ground.
Jake took a glancing blow to the side of his head, but he shifted his body between the two men, kicking one man solidly in the knee and following that with a reverse fist to the man’s nose, dropping him to the pavement. As Jake turned to send a straight snap kick to the last man, Sirena beat him to it. Her high front kick caught the man under his jaw. He dropped like a bag of flour.
Without hesitation, Jake and Sirena ran again. Two blocks later they came to a main road at the edge of the Medina. Across from the road was a shabby park that looked like a great hangout for drug users.
To their right was a taxi. The two of them slowed their pace as they got closer to the taxi, Jake checking over his shoulder for more pursuers.
They got into the back of the taxi and Sirena told the man something in Arabic. Whatever she said worked. The man put the car in gear, pulled a U-turn, and nearly burned the tires off speeding away.
“What the hell did you say?” Jake asked her softly, his chest rising and falling from the adrenaline rushing through his body.
“I said we need to make the next ferry and you’d give him a hundred bucks if he could get us there in five minutes.”
“Is that even possible?”
“He thinks so.”
The car whipped around the corner and headed down the hillside toward the ocean.
The guy made it there in four minutes. Jake handed the man a hundred dollar bill and they walked quickly up the ramp toward the port terminal.
They were able to make it through security at that hour in just seconds. No line. But Jake was happy they had not brought their guns. They went through full body scanners and even endured a pat down.
Seconds later and they were aboard the ferry that would bring them back to Gibraltar in two hours.
Sirena found two chairs resembling first-class airline seats in an isolated area on the ferry. They plopped down and smiled at each other.
“What was that all about?” Sirena asked.
“I don’t know. But maybe the old man gave us more than we thought. Remember, someone was listening to our conversation the whole time.”
“Right. He had to know they would hear every word. What did he say again?”
Jake ran the conversation through his mind. “Something about the northern regions of the Atlas range was not a place to look. Head to the south.”
“That could have been disinformation,” Sirena reasoned.
Smiling, Jake reached into his left jacket pocket, retrieving a small folded paper. He opened the paper and tried to make sense of the letters and numbers. Then he handed the paper to Sirena. “Does this make sense to you?”
“No. But it’s coded. We’ll have to reach out to the man’s Agency handler to get the key code. Otherwise we could be stuck for days trying to figure this out.” She cocked her head to the side. “When did he give you this?”
“When I had him by the throat.”
“Then why did you knock him out?”
“Reflexes. He tried to stab me.”
“He was pretending.”
“I know that now,” Jake said. “But it worked out anyway. Finding him knocked out works for his story.”
She shrugged, unable to dispute Jake’s logic.
Both of them leaned back in their chairs and tried to rest.
“By the way,” she said, her eyes still closed. “You’re a good kisser.”
Wonderful, he thought. Sirena complimented him just as his mind drifted to his girlfriend, Alexandra, wondering how she was after the terrorist attack in Berlin. Jake was not one to hold a lot of guilt. It wasn’t worth his time to dwell on negativity. But he did have strong feelings for Alexandra. Was it love? Perhaps he wasn’t properly equipped to make that assessment. Being a bachelor for so long didn’t make him a great candidate for lasting love.
He opened his eyes and checked for cell service, finding a couple of bars. First, he took a photo of the paper he had been passed by Hesham Mustafa and sent that to Kurt Jenkins, saying he needed the code broken pronto. Then he fired off a quick text to Alexandra. She responded almost immediately, saying she missed him and wished he was there with her.
He reciprocated the sentiment and then asked if they had any leads. Just obscured images in video showing a man with a backpack. But no facial image so far.
Jake said he would be losing cell service soon, and she asked where he was. ‘The ferry from Tangier to Gibraltar.’
‘My God,’ she texted. ‘That place is like an open sewer.’
He laughed to himself. ‘Gotta go,’ he typed. ‘Call you tomorrow.’
Jake started to put his phone back in his pocket when it buzzed one more time. He expected it to be one last word from Alexandra, but it was from Kurt Jenkins.
‘What the hell happened in Morocco?’ Jenkins asked.
Typing quickly, Jake said, ‘Crapfest.’
‘What else is new? You’re like a shit magnet.’
‘Shut up and break that code. Losing cell service.’
‘Roger that.’
Now Jake put his phone away and closed his eyes again. He would have thought about how things went in Tangier, but his experience was nearly in line with what he expected. Almost nothing good ever came from covert meetings. Especially in third-world countries. He was happy he wasn’t in some Draconian prison scrounging for roaches to eat, like he’d done in Tunisia a few years ago. His experiences in Muslim-controlled countries were universally negative. Iraq, Turkey, Tunisia, Malaysia and now Morocco. Every one of those visits had ended in near-death adventures. Of course he could add dozens of non-Muslim countries to that list. So it wasn’t definitive scientific evidence.
He shook his head and tried his best to rest.
12
Tangier, Morocco
When the man first saw the European couple wandering through the dark alleys of the Medina, he thought they must have had a death wish, or were simply ignorant of this city’s less appealing underbelly. He was deep inside a shop with a clear view of Mustafa’s establishment across the narrow alley.
Once the man and woman entered Mustafa’s place, he guessed they were simply a couple of Spaniards who were making a last-minute shopping excursion. But moments later his mind changed. That was when he saw the brutal Berber, Ahmed. Of course that wasn’t the man’s real name.
This Ahmed seemed to simply appear out of nowhere and drift into Mustafa’s store. Seconds before entering the store, Ahmed had looked at his cell phone before returning it to his pocket.
Something wasn’t right. He had been working his contacts, establishing his cover, and now this butcher was going to ruin everything.
At first he wasn’t even sure it was Ahmed. But then he saw a small piece of the snake tattoo on his hand. Only once had he seen the entire tattoo, and that was in a small Berber camp during a hot day in the fall.
This man was a legend in the Atlas Mountains. A ghost. But an apparition that would strike like the snake on his arm and kill without provocation.
If he had gotten the proper sanction, he could have taken this man out in the mountains on that occasion. But, of course, that would have been suicide. That man was never alone. He traveled with a swarm of vipers surrounding him.
When the screaming started, he wasn’t entirely sure what was happening. He moved from the back of the shop for a better view, standing near a rack of trinkets as the European man and woman raced out of Mustafa’s shop.
Then came the men in hot pursuit.
Word spread instantaneously that Mustafa had been killed. So he took after those who were chasing the Europeans.
The chase brought him to more narrow passageways, until he came upon the fight. He was close enough now to see the European man’s face. His eyes must have been playing tricks on him. Remaining in the shadows, he followed the man and woman until they got into a taxi.
With the sirens and half the city of Tangier searching for those who had killed Mustafa, he also found a taxi and went directly to the ferry terminal. He had to know who these people were for sure, despite his potential recollection.
His hunch had been right. They had gotten on the last ferry to Gibraltar.
Woodbridge, Virginia
It took Kurt Jenkins nearly an hour to contact the CIA station chief in Morocco. Most of his people were now trying to work behind the scenes, without authority from Washington, to discover the whereabouts of the kidnapped relief workers taken from the medical ship days ago. Which is why Jake had not had help in Tangier from an Agency officer and had been forced into a cold meeting with an unknown asset—not exactly standard operating procedure.
He sat in his private office in his retirement home, not sure if he made the wrong decision to give up the game at such a young age.
When the station chief provided the code structure used by their Tangier agent, Hesham Mustafa, Jenkins had thanked the man and said he’d get back with him once he actually got the message. Jenkins hated to lie to a station chief, but according to the current stance by the U.S. government, including the State Department, the Agency was not supposed to be involved with locating the lone American relief worker. Thank God not all federal agencies followed orders blindly. But there was also no reason to get the station chief in trouble. After all, he was required to work in close proximity to the U.S. Ambassador in Morocco—a direct-line report to the secretary of state. That would mean a beeline to the president, who had explicitly ordered no action on the mission.
Once Jenkins had the key code used by the contact from Tangier, it took him less than an hour to decipher the code from Mustafa. This was old school technology, but somehow fitting, considering the state of the region.
Jenkins sat back in his leather chair in his home office and said out loud, “Holy shit.”
He looked at the clock on his wall and figured Jake would still be on the ferry to Gibraltar. The only thing he had to determine is veracity of the intel. Could he totally trust this Hesham Mustafa? This was rarely the case with running agents in the field. Every bit of intel had to be considered suspect until verified. As a great president once said, ‘Trust but verify.’ And the only person who could do that for him was his successor.
Berlin, Germany
Alexandra had spent the last twenty-four hours combing over security footage, individual cell phone videos and pictures, and CCTV camera feeds, trying to discover who had started the stampede at the anti-immigration rally at the Brandenburg Gate. She was not the only one going through these files. Others in the BND had helped. The Polizei also had their anti-terrorism task force thoroughly involved.
When she texted with Jake a couple hours ago that they had found the person who threw the flash/bangs, her statement had been partially true. With the depth of the crowd, the darkness, and the ensuing chaos, it was almost impossible to be certain.
The BND officer she had worked with the past few days sat next to her in a secluded office with a large flat screen LED TV on the wall. She kept pulling the video back and forth on the laptop computer, hoping that each time would reveal the truth.
“You should get back to your hotel for some rest,” her partner said.
Gregor Hayden was only 28, a six-year veteran of the BND, and probably would have been a fast riser if he cared to follow rules like a good German, Alexandra thought. But Gregor was a free-spirit who had no great affection for his so-called superiors. For Gregor, intelligence was the true superiority. Alexandra had also been told by more than one woman in the BND to watch her back. Gregor was a man whore.
“No, Gregor,” Alexandra said with a motherly tone. “I will not sleep with you. I have a boyfriend.”
“In a different country,” Gregor said, his hand touching Alexandra’s shoulder.
She glared at his hand and said, “My boyfriend will cut your nuts off for even looking at me.”
“Oh, yeah. The great Jake Adams. I’ve looked into him. Much of his file is incomplete. Are you sure he’s a real man?”
Alexandra set her hand on his. Then she twisted his pinky and nearly broke it, until he pulled his hand back.
“Jesus, Alexandra. I’m just messing around.”
“I’m not,�
�� she said. “If Jake hears you’ve made a pass at me, he will disappear you.”
Gregor shrugged. “What does that mean?”
“It means there will not be enough of you for identification purposes.” She hesitated with a serious expression on her face so the young man knew she was not kidding around. “Now, can we get back to finding out who killed all of these people?”
The young man sat in a chair at the conference table with a chair between them, trying to rub feeling back into his pinky.
“Good,” she said. Then she continued reviewing video footage. But her mind was clearly on her boyfriend, Jake Adams. She kept checking her phone for new messages. Nothing so far. Alexandra knew that almost every case Jake took could be dangerous. He didn’t take many cases anymore, so it wasn’t much of a problem. Of course, officially, she was retired from the BND just like Jake was retired from the CIA. There were times when the self was not as important as the whole. She still had a strong pull, like a magnetic north, to her Germany.
13
Gibraltar
Lightning lit the Rock of Gibraltar as the ferry slowed and crept toward the port terminal. Sirena was still dozing to Jake’s left when his phone buzzed. It wasn’t a text, though. It was a call from Alexandra.
Jake got up and wandered to an isolated area near a window, with a view of the city on the starboard side of the ferry.
“Yeah,” Jake answered, keeping his voice low.
“You have cell service again,” Alexandra said.
He checked his phone and saw that he had a number of missed calls and texts that had come in. With the sound of the engines, he had missed the update.
“Apparently,” Jake said. “What’s up?”
Heavy breath on the other end. Then she said, “I’m about to give up on this case in Berlin.”
“Why? I thought you had a lead?”
“The government here is not even calling this Islamic terrorism,” she confided, with a great deal of angst.
