Double Down

by Gabra Zackman

  Forty-five minutes later, Mahmoud approached Tyka with a determined look on his face. Grabbing her hand, he led her downstairs and into a small office. He pressed a button underneath the desk and a painting slid to the side to reveal a small safe. “Think you can crack it?” he asked quietly.

  “Oh, Mahmoud. Please tell me this is not how you choose to challenge me.”

  “Why not, Ms. Tyka?”

  “Far too easy.”

  Her first teacher had been a master of espionage, a young street-rat-turned-genius. Spliff was British, nicknamed for selling pot, and he had found Tyka in London after she had run away from her mother. She had hitchhiked from Paris to London with a wad of cash she’d found in her mother’s makeup kit, grabbed one of her mother’s spare guns as well, and was sitting in a pub drinking a beer when Spliff sat next to her. He was just twenty at the time, and they spent five years working together before he was gunned down by one of Bruni’s men—killed by the Marconis just like Chuck Palmer, Chas’s father; and now Gabriella. Gabriella had meant the most to her, but Spliff had taught her everything she knew, not the least of which was breaking into anything, anytime, anywhere. She hadn’t done a safe in many years, but this one didn’t look too tough. If she only had a hammer and a tire iron—it would take her less than two minutes.

  “Do you have a hammer and a tire iron?” she asked Mahmoud, careful to keep her voice barely a whisper.

  “Sorry?” he asked. “Are you being serious?”

  “Of course not,” she said, a scowl on her face. “Don’t you know a joke when you hear one?”

  “I should have known,” he said with a smile. “You’ve seen enough to know what I am and am not hiding beneath my clothes. But thank you for the compliment.”

  “Stop distracting me,” she said. “Do you want me to open this or don’t you?”

  “You’re the one distracting me, Ms. Tyka,” he said. “Now I can’t stop wondering what you might have hidden under your clothes.”

  She gave him a playful shove, then turned to hide the smile on her face. “I can do it. It will just take a bit of time.”

  “How long?”

  “I won’t know until you stop talking and give me some room.”

  “As you wish, your majesty.”

  Mahmoud stepped back and waited, allowing her some space. Thank Christ! She was beginning to spontaneously combust just being close to him. The safe had a combination lock—Spliff’s specialty—and it looked like one of the easier ones. Tyka started by moving the dial clockwise several times to reset it. Then she stared for a moment at the safe. “What I wouldn’t give for a stethoscope,” she muttered.

  “Sorry?” Mahmoud asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, “just give me a few minutes.” It was really her own fault for not having brought a proper tool kit along. She had lock picks in her backpack, but those wouldn’t help here. She put her ear against the safe and turned the dial counterclockwise, slowly, listening for two clicks near each other, one fainter than the other. Spliff had actually taken a safe apart and explained all the pieces and how they fit together; he had shown her exactly what was going on inside at the same moment that she was turning a dial on the outside. She knew about drive cams, notches, and lever arms, and how they all fit. As she turned the dial, she could see Spliff’s crooked smile in her mind’s eye. She reset the lock and listened closely several more times.

  “You’re awfully sexy when breaking and entering, Ms. Tyka,” Mahmoud said softly. “Frankly, you’re awfully sexy doing most anything.”

  “Stop it, Mahmoud, you’re interrupting my work,” she said, pressing on. What she wouldn’t do to stop the blush that rose up from her chest all the way to her cheeks! Keep it together, tatou doux! Spliff loved that her last name meant “armadillo” . . . he used to call her mon tatou doux, his sweet armadillo, gentle like an armored tank, he’d say. Oh, was she distracted! Mahmoud was really heating her up from the inside. When she was sure she had figured out the total number of clicks, she knew how many numbers she was looking for. Five. Worse than three, but better than seven.

  “Grab me a piece of paper and a pen,” she said.

  “Only if you ask me nicely,” he said wryly.

  “Might I have parchment and quill, your highness?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Ms. Tyka, your vast knowledge of the English language threatens to give me heart palpitations.”

  “Really,” she said sharply, a grin she couldn’t seem to fight away imprinted on her lips. “Can we get on with it?”

  In about thirty seconds he had something for her to write on, and seemed to be behaving himself, though he did have quite a provocative look in his eyes. Dammit. She quickly plotted two lines to form a graph and labeled them T and M. Then she reset the lock, put it at zero, and began again to listen. Once she’d figured the numbers out, she had to play with the sequence, though Spliff had shown her some tricks that made that easier than randomly choosing. Combination cracking was a bit like counting cards, he’d taught her, something he was exceptionally good at.

  In about fifteen minutes she had it. She looked up at Mahmoud with pride. “Well, I’m not as good as I used to be, but not so bad, either.”

  “Fifteen minutes? I thought it would take you under five.” At her expression he laughed and said, “I’m joking. Very impressive. Remind me to have you check my safe in Tangier if we have a chance.”

  “You should be so lucky,” she said with a wink. “I reserve my safe-cracking skills for potential mass terrorists.”

  He laughed again. “Well, Ms. Tyka, you don’t know me that well yet. I shall have to do my best to catch your eye. By the way, what were the T and M for on the graph?”

  “They were for Tyka and Mahmoud.”

  “Yes, I was hoping as much. I mean, what was the difference between the two lines?”

  “The M line is the steady one you measure everything against, and the T line is the complicated one you have to work to figure out.”

  Mahmoud laughed again. Tyka could feel the sound like a whisper upon her skin. “Very accurate. So . . . what have we got?”

  The safe held a large stack of euro bills, a pouch that contained some very fine-looking diamonds, a handgun, and an envelope. When Tyka opened the envelope they both gasped.

  Inside was a file on every member of the Bod Squad, including Gabriella—including Tyka—with phone numbers, home addresses, known locations, and work contacts. There was even a section on Mahmoud’s family and the bombings in 2003. At the very back was a torn sheet with the word Casablanca handwritten on it. Mahmoud looked at Tyka, his face twisted into a scowl. “Dammit,” he said. “How the fuck did we get made?”

  ‡‡‡

  In the Quantico boardroom, Lisa Bee caught up the rest of the team about Birdsong’s villa and the possibility that he might actually be Baba Samka. Everyone looked to be some combination of impressed and frustrated, none more so than Susannah and her mother, who’d both been put through the ringer about Buzz and now were wondering if they’d been wrong all along. AJ “Fingers” Jones, the best hacker among them and a rare giver of praise, was impressed enough to say, “Damn, sis! Now I’m gonna have to up my game.”

  “Fine intel, Bee,” the Boss said admiringly. “High time I stop asking you for coffee and copy paper and allow you to do what you do best.”

  “Toldja so,” Jackson said to Lisa Bee, who was blushing a bright red.

  “Wait a minute,” Susannah said, standing up in a tight pair of dark blue jeans and boots, her auburn hair flowing beneath a white cowboy hat. Susannah went by the nickname Legs, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why at the moment. “Are you saying it’s possible that my dad had nothing to do with this? That we’ve all implicated the wrong man?”

  “Now, calm down, Susannah,” Fritz said. She looked frustrated as well, but as always was clearly in
control. She tucked a strand of frizzy brown hair behind her ear and leaned forward in her chair, her power suit and low voice giving her an instant air of authority. “We had plenty of intel linking Buzz to the crimes. How else do we explain the codes we found in your house? Or the information my team found that linked him to Bruni, to Morocco, and to several of the crimes on Baba Samka’s list? He’s part of this; I’m now just wondering if perhaps he’s not the only part.”

  Chas jumped in with his slight Southern accent, frustration in his voice. “I feel like I missed something huge here. Birdsong has been a contact of mine for years, all through the time I worked for Bruni. I never knew his allegiances, but I also never thought he could be part of something like this. I pegged him for a low-level criminal, in it for the excitement and not much else. But now I’m wondering what I might have missed . . .”

  “That’s not the issue, Chas,” the Boss replied. “You’ll be of greater use to us now, since you have an established connection to him. Give us something about his background, his habits, known locations. Tell us what you know.”

  Chas took a breath and shrugged. “Well, there’s not a heck of a lot,” he said, standing and beginning to pace the length of the room as he spoke. Chas Palmer was tall, good-looking, and well put together. He had dark hair and blue eyes and was sharp as a tack. He and Susannah made a beautiful couple. Their romance had begun when she was investigating him for his role in a white-collar criminal operation. As it turned out, he had been in deep cover for years with a different branch of the FBI than the one Fritz headed, hunting his father’s killer. When Bruni had been taken out by Gabriella, Chas had believed his search had ended. Now he found himself digging deeper and deeper into a nest of vipers.

  “Birdsong was always the go-to person for information you couldn’t find anywhere else . . . You went to him because somehow he got it.” Chas rubbed his chin as he thought. “Bruni used to say they called him Birdsong because he was like a bird—he’d fly in when necessary, and could never be caught. And he managed to keep his pro soccer cover through all of it. Even knowing all I know, we’d never be able to catch him on anything—he’s too damn smart.”

  “So what can we do?” Fritz asked.

  “I could ask him for something,” Chas said. “But I have no idea where he is right now. Johannesburg? Italy? Also, it’d have to be really solid—like I said, he’s way too smart for any kind of con.”

  At that point Lisa Bee spoke up, zipping up her light-pink sweatshirt. “Um, Fritz? Well, what if we’re somewhat honest with him and tell him that Buzz has escaped? Then he’ll either lead us to Buzz or maybe we’ll catch him throwing us off. Either way it’s helpful, right?”

  “An excellent idea, Lisa Bee,” Fritz said, then looked over at the Boss. “I must say, John, I’m continually impressed with your team. Every one of them has surprised me with their skills. You did a good job, putting the Bod Squad together.”

  “Well,” he said, “I vetted them all and taught the members of FTP from the ground up. I just got lucky that they turned out to be so skilled. All except for Jackson, that is.” Everyone shared a laugh at that; they all knew about the ongoing battle of wits between the Boss and Jackson. They also knew that after Jackson had proved to be such an extraordinary agent during the last leg of their journey, the Boss was more impressed by him than he’d ever been before.

  Jackson leaned forward to respond, but was interrupted by his cell phone ringing. Seeing it was Mahmoud, he picked up. “Yeah, M? Whatcha got? I’m here with Fritz and the Bod Squad.” He listened for a moment, his forehead creasing with concern. “Ah, shit. Okay. But at least you’ve got good timing—Chas was just about to send a message to him. I’ll call you back ASAP.” He hung up, and they all looked at him expectantly. “Mahmoud and Tyka found a file in Birdsong’s villa with information about all of us, including you, Chas,” he said with frustration. “He knows who we all are and who we really work for, and he knows the code five. We’ve been made.”

  There was a collective pause. “But,” Chas said, “we’re still no closer to knowing what connection he has to Baba Samka, right? I mean, he’s a brilliant seeker of information; he could have been doing research on me and through me discovered all of us. I mean, what do we really know?”

  “Well,” the Boss said, “that seems to be the issue. I second the Bee’s idea. I say you come clean and ask about Buzz. Say you’re working with the FBI. Tell him he’s not under any threat, that we’re just looking for information. Be totally up front with him. And see what he says.”

  “Okay,” Chas said. “I have to contact him through a website to get his number—he uses burner phones he recycles every week or so. And he works through a site that can’t be traced. Let me get the details and we’ll go from there.”

  “Great,” the Boss said. “Let’s reconvene here in a couple of hours.”

  ‡‡‡

  Everyone collected themselves and made their way out. Fritz went back to her office, where she popped open a Red Bull, poured herself a coffee, and lit a Parliament. She wanted to assign a new team; the Bod Squad shouldn’t be involved anymore, they were no longer safe. She was frustrated that she was failing to keep them out of harm’s way, and she still felt unsettled about using them on this job. It had all become much larger than any of them realized.

  She was just lighting her second Parliament when Rafael knocked on her door, then walked in. He was her right-hand man, “on loan” from the Israeli secret service in an exchange plan with the FBI; he’d worked with Fritz on and off for the past five years. He had a bulk of knowledge that was very helpful to her, and contacts that were exceptionally useful.

  “Fritz,” he said carefully. “I just got word from one of my contacts in the counterterrorism unit of Mossad. Baba Samka is back. He just blew up a target in Morocco.”

  3

  Tyka and Mahmoud were back at Mahmoud’s pensione, sitting on the bed, the files they’d collected from Birdsong’s estate spread out before them. Tyka was smoking a cigarette and Mahmoud was looking through the collected information, searching for clues. Neither of them spoke.

  Mahmoud turned a page and sighed. He was looking at pictures of his family, at collected information about the Casablanca bombings of 2003, and wondering if the killer he sought was right under his nose yet again.

  He looked over at Tyka sitting on the bed next to him, smoking cigarette after cigarette. “What’s bothering you?” he asked. “You look upset.”

  “Nothing,” she quipped. “It’s been a perfect day.”

  “My sentiments exactly. Not the best moment.”

  “Yes,” she said, standing up and moving over to the window, clearly beginning to tense up further. “I’m not used to being made. That doesn’t happen to me. Not ever. I’ve flown under the radar all my life.”

  “You and me both.” How could he get her to relax? To open up to him? Maybe if he revealed more about himself, she would do the same. “Did I tell you that I used to work for the local Moroccan police?”

  “Really?” she asked. “I thought the local police were for shit.”

  He laughed. “They are. At the time all I was interested in was a desk job, and maybe having a family. But it all changed with the Casablanca bombings.”

  “Changed how?” she asked, settling down a bit. How honest should he be? he wondered. Should he tell her everything about his past? Or just some of it?

  “Well,” he said, “my whole family was in Casablanca that day, except for me. I was in Tangier, following my sister’s husband, who was abusing her.” At this he swallowed hard, and Tyka nodded at him to go on. “She was murdered before I could help her . . . I never could get her out of it. After the bombings, I helped my friend Amal set up a safe house for women in Johannesburg . . . this was where Chas and Susannah stayed when they were searching for Buzz.” He’d tell her some of it, but not all . . . he’d hold back abou
t how he’d hunted his brother-in-law down and killed him in cold blood, how it was his first murder, how good it felt to take his rage out in blood, and how that set him on an entirely different path. No, he mused, some things were best kept secret.

  “How did you get into this line of work?” she asked intuitively.

  “Through Amal,” he replied evenly. “She connected me to some higher-ups in the Moroccan secret service and I went on from there. The secret service, unlike the police, are quite sharp.” He’d had hard-core training in the slums of Casablanca. Surprisingly thorough, given the atmosphere. That was where he’d learned the craft of being an assassin, how to master disguise, how to handle various weapons, and the finer points of infiltrating gangs. He left the secret service five years later as one of the finest snipers they’d ever employed, and they still occasionally called him in on a job. But the contacts he had made over those five years, not only in Morocco but in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Israel, France, Italy, and the States, gave him more work than he knew what to do with. He could pick and choose his jobs; he made plenty of money and only worked hits that led him closer to finding the man he sought. “I just can’t understand,” he said, revealing a glimpse of the deepest part of him, “how BS remains so goddamn elusive. How he manages to destroy all I have loved.”

  “I know how you feel,” she said, putting out her cigarette and laying a hand on his arm. For the first time, he thought he saw a real openness in her eyes. “He has done the same for me. He has somehow managed to kill almost everyone I’ve ever gotten close to.”