by TJ O'Connor
Caine remained silent and shrugged.
The Foreigner cocked his head. “When the time comes, Saeed’s men will move the product to a staging area and he and you will join forces. You will all await my order to proceed to Baltimore. After that, Caine, you will clean up everyone behind us.”
“That’s all of it, then?” Caine asked, glancing from the Foreigner to Khalifah. “I thought there were more groups. I thought this was a larger operation.”
Khalifah raised a hand. “There is more in the works, shall we say. It’s not your concern. You focus on your task, and I will focus on Saeed.”
Caine shrugged. First a project manager. Then a babysitter. In the end, a cleaner. For all that, he would be paid two million dollars.
“Are you clear?” Khalifah didn’t wait for Caine’s response and turned to the Foreigner. “How long will the final preparations take?”
The Foreigner considered both of them in turn. “Operation Maya is not for the shortsighted. It will depend on the Americans, no?”
“If you say so,” Caine said. “I don’t understand all these small operations scattered about. They have no rhyme or reason to me.”
“Ah, but they do, my friend. They do.” The Foreigner smiled a broad, forced smile. “Sometimes, when you wish to pick your berries and a bear is in your way, you poke the bear from another direction. When the bear charges off in that direction, he will no longer be interested in your berry patch.”
Khalifah exchanged uneasy glances with Caine. “I don’t care about berries. I just care about—”
“Yes, of course.” The Foreigner removed two thick envelopes from his jacket pocket and handed them over. “You are both simple men, not confused by politics or ideology. That is how men such as yourselves should be.”
When Caine took the envelope, he noticed the accented man’s left hand was missing his ring finger.
The Foreigner noticed Caine looking at his hand. “Often when you poke the bear, the bear bites back.”
CHAPTER 16
Day 2: May 16, 2045 Hours, Daylight Saving Time
Winchester, Virginia
AFTER RUNNING THE hotel out of hot water and fresh towels, not once but twice, I tried to grab a quick nap, but sleep was elusive as ever. Visions of Kevin lying in the mud. The flash of the old pickup truck bursting into flames. The carnage at the mall—bodies, debris, blood—and the family in Manassas plagued me. It all plagued me. Every time my eyes closed, all I saw was guilt. Memories wouldn’t stop haunting me. Regrets wouldn’t exonerate me.
Time for that drink.
The Old Town pedestrian mall is a four-block area of central Winchester. The mall is frozen in time somewhere in the late 1800s. The black iron streetlamps, brick streets, and nineteenth-century courthouse looked like one of Mort Kunstler’s paintings. Framed glass windows and hand-painted signs lined the street where no cars had driven for decades. A couple shopkeepers wore white aprons and fussed over window displays. They waved and called for me to shop.
The Old Town Café was a cozy bistro in the epicenter of the pedestrian mall. It sat on the corner where both main streets, Loudoun and Boscawen, crossed south of the historic courthouse square. Across from the café, I took up a position in a doorway where I could observe. The large, front glass windows displayed hand-painted burgers and fries. Outside, a half dozen tables covered with the traditional red-and-white-checkered tablecloths were occupied by patrons or littered with dirty dishes. A cook lingered outside the Boscawen Street–side door nursing a cigarette. That exit would make an alternate escape if trouble found me inside.
Come on, Hunter, this isn’t Kandahar.
Since Abu-Bahoo the International Terrorist and his band of seven masked dwarfs weren’t hanging around polishing their scimitars, I walked over and went inside. To my surprise, Sam Mallory was perched atop a counter stool sipping a cup of coffee at the far end of the café. He was talking with a tall, robust man of perhaps sixty-five. The two were in deep conversation, and the older man was leaning on the counter and tapping it to make some point. He was balding and his remaining hair was thin and gray and curled around his ears. His frameless glasses were perched on a wide nose and his gray, tired eyes looked out from behind them. He wore a white dress shirt with a gold tie undone and dangling from his neck. His expensive-looking suitcoat lay over the counter, half-covering a briefcase.
I walked over to Sam. “Hi, Sam. How are you?”
He looked up and his face tightened. “You?”
“Sorry to disappoint.” I glanced at the older man. “Hello.”
“I’m Edik Yurievich Petrov.” The man jutted out a thick, meaty hand. “You are Jonathan Mallory, yes? I am sorry for your loss.”
Edik Yurievich Petrov was clearly not a native Winchesterian … Winchestrite … he wasn’t from here. He was Russian. Very Russian. His eyes were soft and friendly, and I took his large hand in what turned out to be a crushing handshake. I tried my best Russian greeting. “Dobryj večer.”
“Ah, yes. Zdravstvujte.” His eyes lit up, and he crunched my hand harder. “You speak Russian?”
I shrugged. “Not much. But I ran into someone this morning who did. Tell me, Edik, what does otyebis mean?”
For a second he eyed me. Then, with a big laugh, he slapped the counter. “Ah, you play with me. You know it means, ah, to ‘fuck off,’ yes? Forgive my crudeness.”
I winked. “I do. Are there many ethnic Russians here?”
“Some, yes. Why?”
“Just curious. You knew my brother, Kevin?”
“Yes, of course. A good man.” He handed me a business card from his shirt pocket so fast I thought it was spring-loaded. “I’m an entrepreneur. An accountant by trade. My partners and I own enterprises in the area. This is one.”
I pocketed his card. “How did you know Kevin?”
“From here. We have the best coffee in town.” He turned and snatched up his jacket and briefcase. “You speak with your uncle. I will not intrude.” He nodded to me, patted Sam on the shoulder, and wandered into the kitchen.
Sam didn’t waste a second. “You really upset Mom.”
“Sorry. Are you waiting for—”
“Bobby. The guy I told you about who found the first body at the river last night.” He ordered more coffee and a cup for me from the thin, blond waitress named Kelley. Kelley danced when he spoke to her and went for the pot, leaving another patron waving his cup in the air as she twice passed him.
I watched her go. “Is your mom okay?”
“Not really. She told me what happened. Thanks, I guess, for protecting her.”
I said nothing.
His mood turned darker. “She says you think I’m up to something. Everyone thinks stuff like that. I bet they’ll think I had something to do with Dad’s murder.”
“No, Sam.” I put a hand on his arm. “I don’t.”
“Right.” His face darkened. “I know what others say and think. Maybe you, too. I was born in DC. Mom was born in Sãri, north of Tehran. But she’s an American now. So—”
I threw up a hand. “Whoa. We’re family, and that’s what matters.” When Sam looked away, I added, “Do folks around here give you a bad time?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes. Heck, after the mall bombing today, it’ll be worse. Those who don’t think we’re terrorists think we’re refugees. Mom was a refugee once. She escaped when she was a teenager. Not me. I’m American.”
“Me, too.” I winked. “Small towns can be like that, Sam.”
Silence separated us for several moments.
Sam broke it. “Bond showed up after you left. He told Mom he was going to deal with you.” Something about that statement made him smile.
“I look forward to it.” I leaned on the counter. “You should be home with her. Just to keep an eye on the place.”
“Bond’s there.” He locked eyes on me. “Why should I trust you? I don’t know anything about you. You think you’re gonna find Dad’s killer?”
&n
bsp; Yes, I did. “I’m going to help you and your mom if I can. For a while at least. It’s the least I can do for your dad.”
“Whatever.” His eyes lowered to his coffee cup, hiding there.
Kevin’s den told me how much Sam meant to him. My memories of Kevin and my dad turned painful, knowing they were forever gone. My best memories were at our cabin in the mountains. That was gone, now, too.
“You know, Sam, your dad and I loved to fish up at the cabin. It’s the only place we got along sometimes.”
“Fool’s Lake.” He turned on his stool and faced me. The anger disappeared, and he smiled a faraway smile like a memory found him. “Dad and I went there a lot. But it’s been a while.”
“Too bad it’s gone.”
“It’s not.” His eyes went narrow. “Mom doesn’t know, but Dad didn’t sell it like he said. They fought about it for weeks last year. All over money. Then the money trouble stopped, and he said he sold it.”
Kevin lied? “How do you know he didn’t sell?”
“I followed him up there.” He folded his arms. “One night a couple months ago, he went there. I left after midnight, but he must have stayed until morning. He did that a lot. He was up there just last week.”
Why would Kevin do that? Nothing about his home suggested he had money issues. Nothing. If money was tight, how’d he fix that and not sell the cabin?
I asked Sam those questions.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. But things got better after he lied about the place. Anyway, he lied a lot.”
“He did?”
“Yeah, he did.” Something in Sam’s voice told me he had a litany of anger he wanted to unleash. “Plain and simple.”
“Come on, Sam. Say what you want. I’m listening.”
He returned to his coffee, and just when I thought he was going to unload on me, he threw a chin toward the café’s windows. “There’s Bobby Fischer.”
Bobby, whom Kelley explained was Bobby Kruppa, not like the chess champ, as Sam believed, was a round-faced kid of about twenty-two. He looked more like a recluse than a college student. His uncombed, sandy hair covered his ears. He wore a baggy t-shirt with the logo of some rock band I’d never heard of and didn’t want to. His jeans were shabby and old, and he’d lost his razor months ago. It was probably on his bathroom sink next to his comb. Bobby was about five-six or -seven and lumpy in places, but he carried himself well. He sat outside on the patio and set up a rolled chessboard and chess pieces.
“Introduce us, Sam.”
He grunted something and led me outside.
As I walked from the café, I noticed an attractive Middle Eastern mother and her teenage daughter at one of the outside tables. Mom was in her midthirties and had black hair and dark features. Her daughter, slim and pretty, was about seventeen or eighteen, I’d guess, and shared her mother’s beauty and buxom figure. Both were dressed casually with colorful scarves around their necks but not worn around their heads like traditional hajibs. Except for their Arab features, they fit into the café like the other few locals. Mom noticed me looking at them, smiled faintly, and politely looked away.
Sam dropped into a seat at Bobby’s table. “Bobby, this is who I told you about.” He looked over at me. “I don’t even know what to call you.”
“Jon is fine, Sam. Skip the uncle thing.”
“I planned on it.”
What a shit.
Before long, I sat across the chessboard beneath the corner streetlamp playing black. Sam sipped coffee next to us while Bobby maneuvered a white pawn into the center of the board. I knew I’d be little more than target practice, but winning was not my strategy.
Winners talk more.
Of course, I sucked at chess, too.
After he destroyed my opening moves, Bobby asked, “What do you want to know? I’ve told the cops everything. I’m not supposed to talk about it anyway.”
In three more moves, he took control of the board. My strategy was to run away and let him chase me. It would give me time to get every bit of information I could. Unfortunately, his strategy was my swift and total destruction.
It might take me a few games.
“Trust me, Bobby. No one will know we spoke.” I nodded confidently at him. “You found a body at the river last night, right? But it wasn’t Sam’s dad?”
“Yeah.” Bobby glanced at Sam in-between sacking one of my rooks and laying waste to a knight. “There’s not much to tell. Check in three.”
I stared at the board and saw nothing. “In three?”
He continued. “I was farther along the river with my girlfriend, Lacey. You know. We heard thunder and saw some lightning flashes upriver at the boat launch. She got nervous, so we left. She’s only seventeen and her dad would’ve had a shit fit. Driving out, we saw a pickup truck at the boat launch with its lights on. When we looked, there was a dead guy in the back.”
Sam listened to Bobby and twice looked away. It was churning up feelings, but he was handling it well.
I moved a pawn deeper into the board and swear it screamed in terror. “Kevin’s SUV wasn’t there?”
“Nope. Just that pickup.” Bobby took the pawn and lined his bishop on my queen. “Saw an arm draped out of the truck bed. Oh, and at the sheriff’s office, I overheard one of the detectives say the dead guy we saw was a snitch. That’s probably why he was killed.”
“An informant? Interesting. Did you see anyone else around?” Each sacrifice got an answer, so I moved another piece into the slaughter.
“No.” Bobby looked from the chessboard to me with a grin. I’d sprung his trap.
“What next?” I asked.
“I tried to call the cops, but I couldn’t get a signal. We drove toward Winchester and called from a gas station up the road. We waited there for them. I guess while we were gone, Sam’s dad showed up and got killed, too. By the time the cops got to Lacey and me, all that stuff happened to you. But I didn’t see Mr. Mallory or you. We were already gone.”
“That’s it?” Sam snapped back in his chair. “Come on, Bobby. I know there’s more.”
Bobby shrugged. “I was scared to death, man. Lacey locked the doors until I got back in.”
“Probably Dad.” Sam’s face paled. “Probably.”
Bobby’s words struck me. “Lacey locked the doors until I got back in.” I let the comment lie while Kelley refilled our cups with steaming, fresh coffee. She lingered to flirt with Sam. After a few coughs and grunts from me, it took a five-dollar tip to send her away.
Bobby killed off my remaining rook and glanced up. His face went from triumph to horror and his mouth slammed shut. He placed his captive down alongside the board and leaned back.
“Oh no, not them.” Bobby’s face was terror.
I followed Bobby’s stare across Loudoun Street. Two dark-skinned men headed for us. As they passed beneath a streetlamp, they would have been at home in Kabul or perhaps Tehran as much as here now. They walked confidently. They wore jeans and wool sweaters beneath old, tattered sport coats—common dress of the Iranian youth I’d encountered on my many jaunts around the Middle East. They laughed and gestured to us—and my Arabic is pretty limited like Salâm, shab bekheir—good night, asheghetam—I love you (don’t ask), and Ma’assalama—good-bye and some curses—but I doubt they were reciting Frost.
I was about to meet some out-of-towners.
With each step they took, Bobby sank. One of them gestured at him with a three-finger jab in some pagan gesture. It was bullets to Bobby. I watched him melt as they neared. He couldn’t break the larger Arab’s stare. Bobby had a death grip on the sides of the table, and I could see his pulse raging along his neck.
Sam sat back, unfazed, and sipped his coffee.
I tried to calm them. “Bobby, relax. Maybe they’re collecting for the local widows and orphans.”
Bobby didn’t even smile.
“It’ll be fine,” Sam said. “Trust me.” Bobby tried to stand, but Sam grabbed his arm. “It’s okay, Bobby.
”
I moved a chess piece—a pawn. “Everyone stay cool.”
The two Arabs strode onto the patio. They hesitated at our table, leered at Bobby, and sauntered over to the Middle Eastern woman and her daughter, who were still eating ice cream nearby on the patio.
“Look, I’m a lovable guy.” I tapped the table to break Bobby’s stare. “We’ll all make friends. You’ll see.” I turned to watch the two speak rapid Arabic to the woman. She nodded and kept a hand on her daughter’s arm. Her face showed something odd—not fear but obedience. She stared at the table and refused to look up.
The larger of the men suddenly slapped the woman on the back of the head and yelled loudly at her, pulling her hijab from her shoulders and forcing it over her head. The woman’s daughter quickly followed suit and repositioned her scarf in the traditional manner of modesty. Finally, the mother stood and pulled her daughter to her feet. Before they left the patio, the larger Arab slapped the woman again on the back of the head and bellowed profanities at her.
Mom and daughter hurried from the patio into the darkness down the street.
Bobby looked like he would vomit when the two Arabs strutted to our table and stood alongside it, hovering above him. They crossed their arms, kept their eyes on Bobby, and joked between themselves.
Steady, Hunter, steady. The weight of my .45 in the small of my back made me breathe easier. Don’t make things worse—widows and orphans.
CHAPTER 17
Day 2: May 16, 2045 Hours, Daylight Saving Time
Western Loudoun County, Virginia
LARUE STOOD AT the stair landing and watched the two men across the cement basement. There, Shepard stood above Noor Mallory’s assailant, who had tried without success to avoid his present predicament. Little had the man known that Tweety and two security teams had awaited him along a dusty country road five miles from Winchester. Adrenaline caused the man to attempt an escape. Resistance caused the bruises that began to show now.
The powerful assailant sat in a metal straight-backed chair. His arms were behind his back with his fingers and wrists duct-taped so as to be immovable. His feet were tightly bound to the chair legs, both secured with zip ties and more duct tape. His limbs and torso were also tightly bound to the chair, which was itself bolted to the floor. He was incapable of so much as a twitch. The only thing the man wore was a black hood, which was pulled securely over his head to ensure total darkness, and heavy, noise-canceling headphones deprived him of all sound. The ensemble ensured he was immobile, void of light and sound, and unable to receive any stimuli unless his captors wished it.
