"Not until you're out of the lot. Now git!"
Ari had no choice but to let his prisoner go. Mohammed ran back to the first van, the targeting light on him the whole way. The other vans were already roaring out of the lot.
Ben and Ahmad ran back to the second room to retrieve Ahmad's laptop and external hard drive.
"You'll have to sleep somewhere else," Ari called out to Abu Jasim.
"All right," said Abu Jasim, who began to lie down in the parking lot.
"But I paid for the room," he protested when Ari ran to him and hauled him to his feet.
"No you didn't, I'm the one out $39." He turned to Rhee's nephew, looking wan and helpless, his wrists still flex-cuffed. "Get in the Sprinter! Now!"
Seeing no other options, Rhee's nephew obeyed.
The van carrying Sayid Mohammed and the mysterious observer pulled out.
"OK, boys, move out," Lawson said into his phone. "I'll see you tomorrow. And thanks. You saved my half slice of bacon." He nodded at Ari and went to the Land Cruiser.
"Ben, I apologize—" Ari began as the veteran raced past him towards his truck.
"Later," Ben said briskly. "You'd better hurry."
Ari had flung Abu Jasim willy-nilly into the back of the Sprinter, ignoring his death threats as he slammed the panel door shut. He jumped in the driver's seat. Ahmad was gripping the overhead passenger handle, anticipating a speedy and precarious escape.
The entrance to Route 288 was only a short distance down Route 1. Before speeding onto the highway ramp, Ari glanced in his rearview mirror and saw a host of flashing lights flying into the motel parking lot. There was some thudding in the back as Abu Jasim and Rhee's nephew were bounced around, but after a mile down the highway he slowed to just above the speed limit.
"You're a very lucky young man," Ari called back to Rhee's nephew. "What is your name?"
"They're all dead," the boy moaned.
"Did Mohammed tell you that? No, your uncle and his bodyguards are still alive—I hope that makes you happy. Those idiots back there expected to meet with Koreans. Your friends are still out there."
Ahmad turned in his seat and looked at the Korean. "You password protected every page? That's kind of a pain, isn't it?"
"That's not my doing. Must've been the hacker."
"Ethan must have been planning to charge them an extra fee for each page," Ari swore. "He was begging to have his throat slit."
Abu Jasim had crawled back onto the cushioned bench and was snoring loudly.
"It will be up to you to find accommodations for the night," Ari told Ahmad. "Do you have money?"
"I'll rob my uncle."
"Good lad." Ari left the highway and pulled into a strip mall parking lot. "Abu Jasim must have a knife somewhere in here. Go back and free the boy's hands."
Ahmad's eyes widened when he found the K-bar in the glove compartment.
"What does he use this for?"
"It's best you don't know."
Ahmad got out and opened the panel door. Rhee's nephew got out. The moment the zip tie was cut the young Korean took off.
"Shit!" Ahmad charged after him and both of them disappeared up the delivery lane. A few minutes later, Ahmad returned, alone. "Man, he's fast!"
"No matter," Ari sighed. "He's probably safer away from our company."
"Don't you want to park closer to home?" Ahmad asked when Ari stopped at the Manchester Docks entrance a half hour later.
"I have to make a visit," Ari answered, getting out. When Ahmad took the wheel, he cautioned, "Be careful driving. Your uncle will persecute you for any added scarring."
"I'll be careful," Ahmad said tentatively before driving off.
Ari walked over to the cat colony. The concrete rubble was barely perceptible in the light reflected off the river from condos on the opposite bank. Small shadows scurried to and fro.
"Here kitties," he said, drawing the plastic bag and its remaining cat food from inside his jacket.
None of the cats approached. Perhaps the time of night made them more wary than usual. Nor had the drop in temperature made them any more convivial. Ari placed handfuls of food at intervals along the base of the pile. The gratifying sounds of crunching reached him and he backtracked, hoping to see Hector.
A raccoon was gobbling up the food. On Ari's approach, it eased back on its haunches stared at him, all the while reaching down and searching out additional bits with its remarkably hand-like forepaws. The only raccoons Ari had seen had been roadkill. He did not know how one should react in one's presence.
"You're a base thief," he said, turning away. As he made his way home, he pondered the fact that bait did not always attract the visitor the hunter was expecting.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Ari slept well, a great relief. He did not rise until almost noon, and only because an ache in his midriff refused to let him go back to sleep. He had been punched harder than he liked to admit, and dragging himself off his mattress proved a chore. He froze in the middle of a tentative stretch. He smelled coffee. He did not recall preparing his new timer coffee maker the night before.
He had left the gun he had confiscated from Mohammed in the Sprinter. Abu Jasim would know where to sell it, once the cobwebs had cleared from his head. His own Glock was in its usual hiding place under the kitchen stove.
He was in no mood for hand-to-hand combat, but if some intruder was making himself at home in Ari's house there might be no way to avoid it. He cracked his knuckles and went downstairs.
Karen Sylvester and Fred Donzetti were sitting at his new dining room table, coffee mugs before them.
"Not much of an early bird, are you, Ari?" said Karen.
"There's still coffee in the pot," said Fred. "It's pretty good."
"From Africa," said Ari, dragging himself into the kitchen and pouring a cup. "You should fly off to Burundi immediately and buy some. What are you doing in my house?"
"We're always coming into your house, Ari," said Karen. "We deliver these Aegis flash drives on a regular basis, remember?"
"It's trespassing."
"We're your landlords. It's perfectly legal." Karen paused and frowned. "I think."
Easing himself into a faux leather dining room chair, Ari waited expectantly. He had not heard these two enter his house, and it dismayed him. If they had been assassins they would have had him dead to rights. That the previous day had been physically and emotionally exhausting was no excuse. He was losing his warrior credentials.
"There's been some complaint about your output," said Karen, glancing away.
"I thought I was putting out very well," said Ari.
"You party...you stick your nose in other peoples' business...and it looks to me like you generally mope around. All of that takes time away from your primary task, which from what I understand is identifying bad guys and their victims in Iraq."
"It causes me great inner turmoil," Ari reasoned. "I need to relax, sometimes."
"Was that beating you took relaxing?"
"I explained, I fell down..." Crap, he couldn't remember what he had told her. He had fallen down the steps? An elevator shaft?
"Just apply yourself to your job a little harder, all right?" Karen said, tossing a folder on the table. "Otherwise, we'll have to send you to the Home for Recalcitrant Iraqis, which I hear is already overcrowded. You probably wouldn't enjoy the clogged toilets."
"Dreadful," said Ari, thinking that, in one form or another, such places actually existed.
"Now this..." Karen planted the tip of her finger on the folder and pressed down, rolling her hand in comical emphasis. "This is sort of none of our business, but it's even less yours, so I thought I'd clue you in so you'd have a better idea of what you're getting yourself into."
"I'm amazed with confusion," said Ari. "My ears are hanging on your every word."
"This is a little file we made up about your neighbor, Ethan Wareness."
"Where did you get it from?"
"I just
said we made it up."
"It's fiction?"
"No, I mean we put it together. Compiled it. Are you really this dense?"
"And who gave it to you?"
"Didn't I just tell you—"
"Why would you make up such a thing? Someone gave it to you."
"I got curious about what you were talking about at the party. About Ethan's disappearance. I did a little research."
"Is your source reliable?"
Fred burst out laughing. Shooting her partner a deadly look, Karen turned the folder around and shoved it over to Ari. "You don't even know what's in here. Don't you think you ought to look inside before spouting stupid accusations?"
"I was not accusing you of anything, Deputy Marshal. I was just verifying the reliability of the information you are presenting me."
Karen gave him a long look with a long face. "You want me to give you a verbal synopsis?"
"That would be most useful, if you have read it yourself."
"I wrote it, goddammit!" She kicked Ari under the table. She smiled sweetly. "Very well, then...Ethan Wareness, alias Edmund Truman, alias Donald T. Bain, alias Gifford Trelayne...you get the idea...is a charmer of the first water. Did you know he has three wives? What does that make him? A 'trigamist'?" She glanced at Fred, who responded with a shrug. "He's actually a pretty good father, faithfully supporting so many kids he could start a village. But of course, a schmuck like him couldn't afford more than cakes and ale without added income. Second and third jobs, call them. And those jobs happen to include—"
"Fraud and computer blackmail."
Karen sat back. "Internet blackmail...but right. Good guess."
"A cursory examination of the evidence—"
"Did you know about the wives?"
"No."
"Well thank God I'm good for something," said Karen, pulling the folder back to her.
"Please, leave that with me."
"But you already know you're dealing with a third-rate scumbag who doesn't deserve all the attention you're giving him, not to mention the risk to your cover."
"My junk is impermeable," said Ari.
Karen and Fred stared at him.
"My cover is perfectly safe," Ari clarified. "There is no rhyme or reason to your endless fretting. However, I believe your file might prove useful."
"But aren't you going to drop all of this?" Karen fretted.
"My research?"
"Your search."
Ari put his coffee aside and put his finger on the file, sliding it under his eyes.
"We can't wait all day for you to read it. We have to hit the road."
"And how long have you been malingering in my house?"
"And here's your Aegis."
"I am assuming you don't want to leave this here." Ari flipped the folder open and quickly began scanning the pages.
"It isn't an official document, but there are certain things mentioned—"
Ari looked up. "He is being investigated by ISAF?"
"Of course not," said Karen. "ISAF doesn't have any authority here. But they've alerted some agencies that, for some reason or other, Ethan Wareness' name has cropped up in the middle of Afghanistan. And your CENTCOM pals have also given us a heads-up for Iraq. Your glorious neighbor seems to have some dubious overseas connections. Let the authorities deal with him. He's a cheat. He deserves what he gets."
"He has an impressive work history." Ari ran his finger down the CV.
"So do I," Karen asserted. "Do you know I was runner-up in the Manakin-Sabot Beauty Queen Contest?"
"An honor, to be sure," Ari nodded. He was thinking that he had made a mistake in judgment. Another mistake in judgment. He had assumed half the things Bruce Turner told him at the ballpark were lies, as was only to be expected of a cat killer—though in fact Ari belonged to the school of thought that anyone not lying was lying by other means. It was probably Ethan himself who dropped hints that he worked for the government. Something like ISAF would be perfect: c'est pour brouiller les pistes. After all, one would hardly call Kabul to confirm someone's credentials. And even if an enterprising HR employee did, he or she would not expect a direct answer, or any answer at all.
So who had answered with "ISAF" when Ari called that night from the Cumberland State Forest? Whoever it was had sent a warning to Uday to escape before the authorities surrounded his compound. Ari had tried calling that number again, only to get a recording that it was no longer in service. He did not swallow Karen's assertion that Ethan's name was floating around the Middle East. It was beginning to seem to him that someone was using ISAF as a phony cover. Sort of like crooks pretending to be cops, but on an industrial level. Common enough in Iraq, and not unheard of in the States. Some form of black flag operation?
Ever-helpful Fred took his and Karen's cups into the kitchen for refills.
"I notice you mention Sayed Technical Solutions as one of his recent employers," said Ari.
"Sort of an Arab-sounding name, don't you think?" Karen said with a sharp twinkle in her eye. "That was their top guy at your party the other night, wasn't it? Bristol Turnbridge?"
"Did you happen to look into the company? You don't supply any details in your report..."
"They're the victim," Karen shrugged. "I don't know what Wareness did to them. So far as I know, nothing's been reported. But look at his previous jobs. Only one report, where Ethan, as Joe Schmo—I forget the name—stole several thousand credit card numbers, including CVV codes. The other companies...well, none of them will ever admit that they fucked up by hiring such a goof. What I'd like to know is how he managed to get so many quality positions with jobs so hard to come by."
Ari recalled the sterling reference Bruce Turner had told him Turnbridge had given Ethan. Had he been blackmailed into giving it? And didn't all those phony identities signal a talent for manipulating records? Ari possessed a similar aptitude, well demonstrated when he re-jiggered the identities of top Iraqi officials—including himself.
"One more thing, Ari," said Karen, looking embarrassed.
"Yes?"
"There's some talk upstairs about..." She stared at her refreshed coffee. "Remember that time I talked about tagging you? You know, putting a tracing device on your person—your ankle—so that you couldn't go anywhere without us knowing?"
"A putrid idea."
"I've come around on that, too. You really are a guest of this country. But..."
"This is all from upstairs," Fred interjected as he returned to the dining room. Ari thought it odd that someone so adverse to unpleasant scenes had chosen law enforcement as a career.
"Listen, Ari, it seems you aren't always where we think you are, or where you should be, or..."
"I appreciate your delicacy," said Ari, "but perhaps you should stop beating the bush about."
"There's been talk of issuing a Federal home detention warrant on you. Our supervisor was pretty cagy about it. He doesn't like to admit he's being pushed around. But I think you were right about someone else having access to your GPS log. They are apparently convinced it's only half of your story, and they want to know where else you've been going. There's even talk of..." Karen held her breath a moment. "...of giving you a bracelet that includes transdermal alcohol monitoring capability. Which would mean no more JD."
"But this is repulsive!" Ari protested. "I have gone, and I have come back! I have been, and now I am home! I have not fled the country to join the insurgents. I am like the rock thrown in the air. I always land!"
"I guess these unknown parties want to know where you land, Ari."
"You have no idea who these parties are?" Ari asked, watching her closely.
"It could be a glitch," she shrugged. "Maybe someone in CENTCOM heard something about you, saw that a certain box was unchecked, and decided to check it."
"Heard what?"
"How should I know? You're a mystery to us. Maybe someone said you like to carry nukes in your backpack. Sounds farfetched, but it also sounds like you'd be someone
worth tagging." Karen hid her face in her cup. "Hell, maybe they just figured out that you should have been tagged in the first place."
She noted Fred giving Ari a bland, friendly smile.
"Look at that," she snapped, slamming the cup on the table.
"This is new," Ari said, giving the table a fond brush of his palm. "Don't damage it."
"I didn't hurt your precious pine."
"Southern yellow pine," Ari amended.
"Hell, I know it's new. I helped carry it in!"
"The cup is new, too."
"Crap." She gave Fred a kick under the table. Karen knew exactly how to strike the tender spot on the ankle bone.
"Yow!" shouted Fred, crossing his legs and massaging his ankle. "Why'd you do that?"
"Because you're disgusting! You take everyone at face value."
"Yeah. You know, until proven guilty."
"You can't go on like that," Karen continued. "You even take him at face value."
Ari quickly dropped his smile. Too late. Karen had noticed.
Ari was a little surprised by Fred's placid acceptance of his innocence. It was not long ago that Ari had harangued the young man at McDonald's regarding the suitability of this very Karen to be a deputy marshal. Ari had gone so far as to display his gun to him in the middle of the restaurant. Fred must have great faith in the Iraqi after all that. Or, Ari thought sadly, he was a bit on the stupid side.
"You have to be more suspicious of people, or you'll be a sucker all your life," Karen concluded.
Ari, who agreed wholeheartedly, said, "But certainly, you don't believe such a thing!"
Karen sat back, stared at Ari, and began drumming her fingers on the southern yellow pine.
"But you're not the only one I don't trust, Ari."
"I am most relieved," said Ari.
"We're not slaves to bureaucracy. We can actually be useful, sometimes."
"This is a wonder."
"Shut up. I don't like this other party tracking you any more than you do, especially when we paid for the goddamn tracker."
"They are expensive?"
"You have to pay people to monitor the damn thing."
"Such an investment...in me!"
"Uh, Ari, have you forgotten who's footing the bill for this splendid house you live in?"
Cold Snap Page 32
