by Shamim Sarif
“The journalist?” Kit asks.
“How many Jake Grahams do you know?”
“Bloody hell,” Kit sniffs.
“He trashed you!” I remind her—as if she wouldn’t remember.
During our last mission in Belgrade, Kit went undercover and gave a performance for the human trafficker Gregory Pavlic. It was purely as a distraction so that Caitlin could break into Gregory’s office and find the evidence we needed to bring him down. Despite our best efforts to keep the concert quiet, the story hit the press, and it was written by Jake Graham, the crusading social justice reporter. And so it looked like my mother was a money-grabbing has-been singer who’d played a gig for a scummy criminal. It turned public opinion against Kit, but she shook it off, deciding it was a good thing. Nobody would suspect a sell-out singer of running a secret agency to help women.
The bell rings again. Long and hard. I stay quiet and wait, watching the wheels turn in Kit’s mind.
“Stop worrying,” I tell her. “Jake has no idea that Athena exists.”
“I know. But it’s just better that he doesn’t connect you to me,” she says. “Just in case.”
“Then don’t answer it,” I suggest.
But she takes a step toward the stairs, toward the door.
“I need to find out why he’s here.” She flicks on the recording app on her phone and pockets it. “Listen from up here, Jess, and stay quiet, okay?”
I nod. Kit disappears down the stairs while I stay out of sight at the top of the landing, sitting comfortably so that I won’t have to move a muscle.
Kit opens the door and there’s a wary exchange of pleasantries. Like the pushy reporter that he is, Jake asks if he can come in, but Kit doesn’t let him past the threshold.
“What do you want, Jake?” she asks.
“Look, Kit, I know my piece about you and Pavlic must have hurt, but people have a right to know the truth,” he says.
“Do you make a point of apologizing in person to everyone you expose? Or is there something else you want from me?”
I smile. I can just imagine Kit’s steely stare.
“I want to talk about Cameroon,” Jake says.
That wipes the smile off my face. I lean forward, straining to catch every word, to sense Kit’s response.
“The country in Africa, you mean? Isn’t that where Cameroon is? Or is it the Caribbean . . . ?” wonders Kit.
Jake makes a slight noise—maybe a laugh, maybe a snort of disbelief.
“What do you know about those schoolgirls who were saved by an unknown private army a couple of months ago?” he demands.
“Unknown private army.” That would be us. For a moment I’m a little bit flattered that just the three of us agents on the ground in West Africa gave someone the impression of a whole platoon.
“Jake, I’m busy and you’re talking in riddles. If you have something to ask me, contact my manager or my PR firm. Their email addresses are on my website.”
“You’re friends with Peggy Delaney, right?”
Another left-field question. And I’m sure Jake has noticed that it’s keeping the front door open and Kit planted on the step. She makes a sound of acknowledgment. There are pictures of Kit and Peggy everywhere, from the White House to Pakistan, so there’s no point in denying it.
“Peggy was helping the Cameroon government take care of those girls. I bumped into her at the embassy.”
That freaks me out even more, because I was with Peggy when Jake spoke to her at the embassy. I am 100 percent sure he wouldn’t remember me, though. I bite tensely on a nail. Okay, 95 percent sure. Jake’s still talking:
“That was right after the operation in Cameroon. The attack on Ahmed.”
Boy, he’s really smart. Planting a name that we know well, just to see if it sticks. But my mom is smarter.
“Who is Ahmed, for Christ’s sake?” Kit sounds exasperated.
No explanation from Jake. A bit of shuffling. Then:
“Here. This is a female soldier. Do you know who it is?” Jake asks.
There’s a short pause, during which I imagine Kit is looking at whatever image he’s showing her.
“Are you serious? It’s grainy and—well, it’s not even in focus. Jake, I’m sorry. Even though you made sure I can’t walk down the street without someone spitting at me, I kind of respect your reporting. But you’re really pissing me off right about now, and if you don’t take a hike, I’ll call the police.”
“I can’t tell if you’re for real,” says Jake.
“Trust me, I just need to push this panic button and the cops will be here in three minutes.”
“Not about that,” Jake continues, perfectly cool. I really want to run downstairs and punch him. But I sit on my hands and make myself breathe (quietly).
“About Gregory Pavlic,” continues Jake, and his voice has dropped now, like he’s trying to genuinely connect with Kit. “Your whole women’s rights campaigning thing, all these years? It always struck me as, well, honest. And then you go and sing for a notorious trafficker. It doesn’t feel right, Kit.” There’s a long pause. I lean forward, straining to listen.
“With Pavlic—I’m not proud of it, but I needed the cash,” Kit lies, managing to sound broken by the admission. “That’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it? Now go to hell,” she says, her voice quavering.
The door slams, cutting off Jake’s reply. I wait where I am. Kit stands silently by the front door for a moment then trudges up the stairs and jerks her head for me to follow her into her bedroom. It overlooks the back garden, not the street, but we both stay far from the windows in case Jake is still hanging around, sniffing for scraps.
Kit paces up and down the pale wooden floor by the side of her bed, staring at the planks beneath her feet. She’s literally wringing her hands together. I can understand why. Nobody sanctions what we do at Athena. If we’re found out, it would mean jail time for all of us; not to mention an end to our work. Something has clearly spooked my mother. I can guess what it is too:
“That picture he showed you? The female soldier? Where was it from?”
“From the mission we ran in Cameroon.”
My stomach drops. “Was it me?”
There’s a brief moment of relief when Kit shakes her head. But then my mother looks up, her face pinched with worry. She brings a hand up to rub her forehead and the hand is trembling, just a bit, as her gray eyes meet mine.
“It was Caitlin,” she says.
3
THE AIR UP HERE IN the northern hills of Pakistan is fresh and touched with scents of pine and herbs. It’s also pretty damned cold, especially when you’re at the open door of an airborne helicopter. I scan over the landscape below, green and vague through the night-vision contact lenses that are irritating my eyes. There’s certainly not much down there at 3 a.m. in the way of lights, or vehicles, or factories—but there could be people, hidden, watching. This particular region isn’t under the control of religious extremists anymore, but there’s no reason why insurgents and fighters might not still be living in the tiny hamlets and caves that dot the barren countryside. The cold grasps at me, eating into my bones, as Hala and I crouch at the door of our stealth copter. Caitlin lowers the aircraft, carefully, painstakingly, close enough to the rocky ground that we can both jump down and start running.
Our chopper is so quiet that we can barely hear the soft whirr of the blades whipping the air as Caitlin flies up and away from us. We’ve landed about a mile from Imran’s village so that we don’t attract attention, and we race over the rough landscape on foot, our pace steady, our feet hitting the ground together. We are late. Not by much, but we still have very little time left to mine Imran for information.
“Hey,” I say to Hala. “Shall we go a bit faster?”
All three of us are connected to each other for sound, so a whisper is all it takes to communicate.
She just nods but picks up speed.
“I didn’t think it would be this col
d,” I add.
“Hmm.”
I decide not to bother with any more attempts at conversation. The fact is that even on a good day, Hala isn’t the world’s chattiest person—in her native Arabic, or in English. I’ve seen professional mime artists that have better small talk. Anyway, we’re nearly there. The village begins with a long straggle of homes built along the dirt track that passes for a main road.
“I’m a hundred yards due north of where I dropped you. Let me know when you’re five minutes out for pickup.”
Caitlin’s Kentucky drawl is so full and warm in my ear that it’s like she’s standing right next to me. The sound of her instruction, the knowledge that she’s back there, waiting, with her hand on the helicopter controls, ready to spirit us out of here, calms the rising tension I feel as we move toward our target.
As we run through the village, we circle past the main cluster of houses and huts—and then I see it. Hala follows my gaze to a patch of empty land that holds rows and rows of small clay pots. Each one is filled with oil and each one burns with a small, persistent flame. Flames of remembrance. We both slow down for just a moment, out of respect, watching those oil lamps cast their tiny sprays of light into the black night.
This is the place where the village school used to stand before the twenty-three young girls and two teachers inside it were killed. These gentle lights are a memorial, one for each death—but the flickering fires only remind me of the brutal arson attack that took those lives. I try not to, but I can’t help but imagine what it must have been like to be inside when the doors were nailed shut. Maybe those kids and teachers heard some hammering, but thought it was the last bits of building work, and just carried on with a math lesson. Maybe they ignored the soft slosh of kerosene on the outside walls and didn’t even hear the fizzing strikes of the matches that followed. Beside me, I feel Hala shudder.
A noise attracts our attention. Someone’s approaching through the solid black of the night, emerging from among the main cluster of homes. Hala and I step behind a wall and pull up the scarves that are swathed around our necks, masking our faces. We watch as a man pauses, looking around. Through my night lenses, his outline is clear, despite the black clothes he wears. He carries a long, thin knife in his hand and, by the stretched skin of his knuckles, I can tell that he’s grasping it hard. The darkness is too thick for him to see us, though he seems to sense us as we circle closer. But by the time he turns, my hand is on his knife, my foot has kicked up behind his knees, and he drops to the ground while I press his own blade hard against his throat. Hala is right behind me, ready to help, but I’ve got this.
“State your name,” I whisper.
“Mary Poppins,” he whispers back.
Really, I don’t know where Amber comes up with these code words. Maybe it livens up her desk job at Athena. I lower the knife away from the man’s throat and Hala shines a tiny LED flashlight into his face. It is the face we were expecting. His eyes widen as he takes us in. My guess is that he wasn’t expecting two young women to be the ones dropping in to help him take back his village. He rises to his feet, then shakes hands with both of us. It’s a polite gesture and somewhat rare in this part of the world where, sometimes, men don’t think it proper to touch a woman who isn’t their wife.
“Asif,” he whispers, giving us his real name.
We just nod mutely in return. Turning away, Asif leads us off into a tight alleyway between small wooden pens where goats and donkeys are tethered up for the night. As we approach the end of the narrow lane, he points to a stone building with barred windows.
“This is the village jail,” he explains. “When you are finished with Imran, we will keep him here and put him on trial.”
Imran was arrested at the time of the arson attack—the international uproar meant that the police could hardly leave him untouched. But news cycles move on fast and forget even faster. With extremists’ money and weapons backing him, the police didn’t have the courage or inclination to press charges against Imran, and he was released within weeks. He returned to his big house here in the village and nothing changed. The villagers who lost their daughters swallowed their rage, fearing their sons might be next. But now, the fundamentalists have retreated north and Imran’s power base has crumbled. And so, Asif and the others are willing to take back their village and rebuild what was burned. Some justice for the loss of those young girls with big dreams of going to school; the girls whose hopes, and bodies, turned so quickly into dust and ash.
“We’ll deliver him as soon as we are done,” I assure Asif. “Thank you for your help so far.”
“There are three guards outside his house,” Asif tells us. “Once you get past them, the housekeeper will let you in the kitchen door.” Using his phone, he shows us a picture of the housekeeper so we don’t trust the wrong guy.
“Got it,” I confirm.
Asif points us on our way but Imran’s home is not hard to find—a sprawling, whitewashed house that squats heavily on a plot considerably larger than any of the others in the village. A forbidding wall at least twelve feet high and two feet thick forms a protective square around the dwelling.
I extract a small dart gun from the holster that clings to my body armor. We pace with light steps along the outside wall of the house. As we reach the front, I take over the lead position from Hala and sneak a look around the corner. Two men in white robes lean against the wall, smoking, looking more than a little bored of guarding the place. Concerned, I turn back to Hala and indicate that there are two guards there, not three, as Asif said—when the third man materializes like a specter, out of the darkness behind her. He advances on us, a crowbar raised high over his head. In a flash Hala ducks, giving me a clear shot. My dart fires into his neck and he falls like a stone before he can bring the weapon down. But the sound of his body and the crowbar crashing to the ground has alerted the other two. Their steps pound toward us, and I move out quickly from my cover behind the wall, and shoot again, twice. They both drop, drugged into unconsciousness that will last for a couple of hours at least.
Within moments, Hala is high above me, scaling the smooth surface of the wall as easily as if it were a staircase. Only once does she slip, but she rights herself, and makes the summit in seconds. She carefully slices away the curls of barbed wire that festoon the top, then drops a climbing line down to me. Quickly, silently, we use the line to make our way down the other side, into the heart of Imran’s home.
We find ourselves in a wide, open-air courtyard that clearly forms the entrance into the house, which lies ahead of us, looming darkly in the night. The word “courtyard” always feels kind of romantic to me—it makes me think of cool shadows, high pillars, maybe candles. That’s definitely not happening here. For a start, a stench of raw sewage wafts up from a blubbering drain to our left. And the only light source is a lurid fluorescent bulb dangling by a wire inside a wooden outhouse across from us. The scent of jasmine wafts past for a second, but it’s soon lost under the odor from the drain. Light glimmers in a room at the far end of the courtyard, sending a splash of white onto the rough concrete floor before us. Through those lit windows we can see the outline of cooking pots hanging from the ceiling and, against the wall, a wood-burning stove. Harsh bulbs give the white walls a greenish glow, and inside, a tiny old man moves about—the housekeeper. Through Asif, we’ve learned that there’s not much in the way of nine-to-five hours in Imran’s house—if you work for him you can rely on being on call twenty-four/seven, and he has a habit of staying up most of the night, plotting and planning with his cronies, and then sleeping through much of the day. What we’re expecting tonight is that Imran will indeed be awake, anticipating the attack that’s due to happen in less than forty minutes from now. And what we really want is for him to talk to one of his buddies about it, preferably in exquisite detail, giving the London team the details they need to alert the Indian police.
Hala taps lightly on the back entrance to the kitchen. The housekeeper start
les, then scampers over to open the door with quick, neat movements. For a moment, he stares, stunned by the fact that we are women; then he gets over it. He looks at us questioningly, like he’s awaiting instructions. Hala turns to a platter of crisp pastry samosas sitting ready on the table and she sticks a clear, wafer-thin microphone dot onto the base of the plate. She shows the housekeeper, who nods, impressed that it’s invisible. Then he pulls us into a dark corridor and indicates that we should wait there. The passageway that we stand in leads directly into the living room, where we can now hear Imran and his comrades chatting. It’s good to be out of the coarse, bright light of the kitchen—I feel less visible out here, even though we are closer to Imran. But now, I use sign language to urge the housekeeper to get going. It’s driving me nuts that Imran is jabbering away and we’re not picking up the conversation.
The old man hurries down the long, dark corridor to deliver the plate. Within seconds, in our left ears, Amber’s super-cool tech feed gives us a constant translation of the Urdu conversation that the mic is now picking up between Imran and his friends. There’s a delay of about three seconds, no more. I glance at Hala, relieved. But if we were hoping for high-level terrorist discussion, we’re out of luck. Right now, they’re taking turns complaining about their families and how the first wives are so jealous of the second and third wives. Everyone has their cross to bear, I suppose, but somehow, I can’t get there with the sympathy. I check my watch, which has a handy countdown timer that only makes me more stressed. Only thirty-five minutes to go. We have to get the information soon for Peggy’s contact to have any chance of mobilizing the police and evacuating the potential victims. In our ears, the chatter from the living room pauses. Then, finally, Imran speaks:
“Not long now,” he says. He sounds pleased with himself, his tone arrogant. I glance at Hala. She looks hopeful. Please, I pray, let this be it.
“Four thirty in the morning, everyone will be sleeping,” says one of his guys, like he’s congratulating Imran on his genius.
