Much to Kealey’s relief, there was no mention of the name Benazir Mengal. Although he’d informed Harper of Mengal’s ties to the Algerian only the day before, Saifi’s name had been in circulation at the Agency for nearly two weeks, plenty of time for it to leak. Kealey was surprised it had taken this long to come out, but with the release of the tape, it was unavoidable. A quick check of the other news channels had been enough to confirm that Mengal’s involvement had yet to be revealed in the media. Possible involvement, Kealey reminded himself. He had yet to discover hard proof that Mengal had participated in Fitzgerald’s abduction, but he felt sure he was on the right track. With any luck, he’d know for sure in less than twenty-four hours.
Of all the major networks, only CNN had made an effort to report on the escalating situation in Kashmir. The network had dispatched Christiane Amanpour, its chief international correspondent, to Udhampur, where she was reporting from the Indian Army’s Northern Command headquarters. Kealey only caught the tail end of her report, but it was clear that the situation was escalating to the point of no return. More than 50,000 troops were now amassed in the region, in addition to an unknown number of Kashmiri insurgents, the vast majority of whom were affiliated with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. Shots had already been exchanged, and it looked as though India was preparing for a prolonged conflict, having moved supplies and additional support personnel into the region. The Indian Navy had also instigated a blockade of several strategic Pakistani ports, prompting Musharraf to appeal once more for U.S. intervention. The White House had yet to issue a statement, but it didn’t look as though Brenneman was prepared to reverse his stance.
A voice in Kealey’s ear snapped him back to reality. He recited an eight-digit number, asked for Harper, and was put on hold. Five seconds later, the deputy DCI picked up the phone.
“John, it’s Ryan.”
“Where are you?” Harper sounded like he was still half-asleep, but then Kealey remembered it was just after eight in the morning at Langley. If it wasn’t for the current situation, Harper wouldn’t have been there so early. “What’s happening?”
“We’re still at the house,” Kealey said. He shot a glance at his watch. “Our flight leaves at five this evening, so we’ll be out of here soon.”
“When do you land?”
“Tomorrow at one.”
“One in the afternoon?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Let me tell you what’s happening on this end. We’ve got a team en route to Pakistan. Obviously, they weren’t invited, so they’re traveling under false identities. I have a number for you to call once you’re on the ground.”
“Give it to me.”
Harper recited a long string of numbers, which Kealey committed to memory. He didn’t bother to tell Harper that he wouldn’t be making the call, at least not until he’d met with Machado’s man in Lahore.
“Your goal,” the deputy DCI was saying, “is to link up and start running through the list. Get eyes on all of them. Remember, these are known associates of the general, all with medical backgrounds, so we have no way of knowing which of them, if any, were brought in to work on Fitzgerald.”
“John, we don’t even know if she is being worked on,” Kealey reminded him. “All we have to go on in that direction is what the NTSB investigator put down in his statement. His preliminary statement.”
“We have the witness statements as well,” Harper said, “and there’s something else I forgot to mention yesterday. We got a look at the autopsy results on Lee Patterson. The official cause of death was the gunshot wound to the head, but there was evidence of serious internal injuries, all of which were sustained when the RPG hit the car. The medical examiner said he probably would have died even if they hadn’t shot him. So, in other words, it seems pretty clear that Fitzgerald was also injured in the attack, perhaps critically.” He seemed to sense the younger man’s doubt in the ongoing silence. “Ryan, this is the closest thing to proof we’re going to get.”
“Maybe,” Kealey said, “but assuming you’re right, Mengal wouldn’t take her to someone in the city. He’d want her in a rural area, someplace where he could set up a good perimeter. That way he’d have time to move her quickly if it looked like he needed to.”
“Well, that’s why we have to look at each and every one of these people. There are only four names on the list, so with six people, including you and Kharmai, you should have enough manpower to get it done in a couple of days.”
Kealey felt the anger stirring inside with the mention of Naomi’s name, but he pushed it down. He was 90 percent certain that Harper knew about her addiction to morphine, yet he’d dangled her in front of him, anyway, just to draw him into the hunt for Amari Saifi. By letting her participate in the surveillance of and approach to Kamil Ghafour, Harper had risked the lives of every operative involved. Kealey wasn’t about to forget or forgive what he had done, but now was not the time to confront him. That would come later, once this whole mess was sorted out, and he was back in the States.
He didn’t bother to tell Harper that he was leaving Naomi behind. He and Pétain would stick out in Pakistan, especially given the ongoing tensions between Musharraf and Brenneman, but that couldn’t be helped. Pétain would turn heads regardless, but her remarkably pale skin, which she’d obviously inherited from her French mother, would only increase their visibility on the ground. Worse still, neither of them spoke the local languages. In that respect, Naomi would have proved invaluable, but Kealey had made his decision. Besides, he needed to take Pétain if he was going to get the access that Machado had promised.
“Who are you sending?” Kealey asked, struggling to keep the anger out of his voice.
“You only know two of them, Walland and Owen. The rest were selected mostly for their physical characteristics—dark hair, dark skin, you know the drill—but they’ve all worked in Asia. Unfortunately, none have ever operated in Pakistan, but you know that we have limited resources in the area. Plenty of informants on the payroll, of course, especially in the north, where the Taliban are dug in, but no one we can use on this. We can’t risk local law enforcement getting an anonymous tip. If they come down on you, the fallout will be ten times worse than it was in Madrid. We simply can’t afford to get caught.”
“You’re sending Owen?” Kealey was surprised. Paul Owen was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. He’d served as Kealey’s commanding officer when they were both stationed at Fort Bragg with the 3rd Special Forces Group. A few years later, Owen had been reassigned to the 1st SFOD-D, better known to the general public as Delta Force. They had worked together the previous year in Iraq. Kealey remembered the operation well; it had ended with Owen swearing he’d never speak to him again. “How did he get involved?”
“We’ve used him on a few things before, as you know, and he’s always worked out for us, so I made a few calls. It helped that he was in Afghanistan already, so it was a short hop. He’s in-country now, and the rest should be landing over the next ten to twelve hours.”
“Does he know I’m on the way?”
“Yes, and he’s willing to go along with it. You and Kharmai can work on your own if that makes it easier. You can give control of the other three to Owen.”
“Fine. What about weapons?”
Harper let out an audible sigh. “You’re not hearing me, Ryan. All you’re doing is trying to learn which of these people, if any, are working with Mengal. If you get too close and he has spotters, which he will, the first thing he’ll do is call his contacts at ISI. If that happens and they come after you, you can’t afford to be carrying a weapon.”
“I can’t afford not to,” Kealey said angrily. “If they catch us, they’re not going to assume we’re fucking tourists, John. You know what they’ll do to get a confession, and once they have it, they’ll use it to put the clamps on Brenneman.”
“That’s why you can’t get caught. Look, if they figure out what’s going on, you won’t be able to fight your
way out of it, anyway. They’ll send every man they can spare after you, and the people they don’t send will be watching the airports and the border crossings. Having a weapon on you won’t make a bit of difference.”
“Fine.” Kealey was done arguing, but only because he could see it wasn’t getting him anywhere. Nothing—not even Harper’s half-assed rationalizations—could change the fact that he’d be looking for a weapon the second his feet touched Pakistani soil. “What happens if we find something?”
“You call it in, and I’ll take it from there.”
“John, you can’t—”
“This is the way it’s going to happen, Ryan,” Harper said, his voice turning hard. “There is a political element to this that we have to consider. I know you don’t give a shit about things like that, but it matters. If you find something, we have to make it look like it came through the Bureau ERT. Brenneman has already spoken to Emily Susskind about it, and she’s agreed. The Bureau will go along to get along, but we have to be sure that either Mengal, Saifi, Fitzgerald, or the other hostages are present. Preferably all of them. Once we know that they are, the White House will leak it, and Musharraf won’t have any other choice but to cooperate. So do it my way, okay?”
Kealey fought down another surge of anger. Part of him was wondering why he was going forward with this at all. Knowing now what he did about Naomi, he was tempted to call a halt to the whole thing. After all, he’d only come this far in an effort to watch out for her. He could tell Harper to go fuck himself, go inside, get Naomi, and fly her back to the States. Maybe he could convince her to come back to Cape Elizabeth. It wouldn’t be easy, but with time, she might be able to beat her addiction. He knew she could, and all he had to do was convince her to leave with him….
But at the same time, he was in too deep to back out now, and something had changed. Before, all he’d wanted was to keep her out of harm’s way. Now, having failed miserably in that task, he was set on finding Mengal and Saifi. He wanted them to pay for what they had done in Rawalpindi. He wanted them to suffer for what Naomi had been forced to do, and for what she was going through now. Most of all, he wanted to find Fitzgerald and bring her back. He wanted to find the other hostages as well. If he could do all that, then maybe it would lessen Naomi’s guilt. Maybe, in time, she would feel that some had died so that others might live. It wasn’t much to hope for, but better than nothing. Besides, at the moment, it was all he had to offer her.
“Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll do it your way, John. I hope to God we find something.”
“So do I,” Harper said. His tone was more congenial now that he thought he’d won. There was a slight, uncomfortable pause. “What about Naomi? How is she holding up?”
“Fine,” Kealey lied. His knuckles were white around the plastic housing of the phone; it was taking every ounce of his self-control not to unload his inner rage on the other man. “I think she’s still trying to sort it out in her mind.”
“Is she good to go?”
“Yeah. Just leave it to me.”
Harper gave a few more instructions, asked a couple of questions, then ended the call. Kealey lowered the phone and tapped it lightly against his leg, staring into the dark green mass of the trees. He stood there in the sunshine for a moment, sipping his watery tea, thinking about what he had just heard. It was clear that the whole situation was descending into a political nightmare. Brenneman was trying to balance two conflicting goals. He was trying to find Fitzgerald and appease Pervez Musharraf at the same time, and Kealey had seen enough political wrangling to know that it wouldn’t work. The problem was that Brenneman had burned his bridges by refusing to help Musharraf prevent the Israel-India arms deal, and now he was seeing the consequences of that decision.
Kealey still wasn’t sure why Musharraf had agreed to let the Bureau ERT into the country, especially given his earlier opposition to the idea. Perhaps he’d still been trying to curry favor with Brenneman at the time, hoping for a last-minute intervention. Or perhaps he was trying to be the bigger man, at least in terms of world opinion. Either way, Kealey knew he would be quick to take advantage if CIA operatives were discovered operating illegally in his country. Kealey and the others would be paraded in front of the cameras, and any hope of finding Fitzgerald—or the other hostages—would go down the drain. Under such circumstances, Musharraf would be insured against just about any outcome, even the discovery of Fitzgerald’s body.
Kealey didn’t care about politics, but he’d served as an army officer long enough to understand them. He agreed with Harper’s assessment of the situation, but that didn’t change the way he was going to approach the operation. He was going to find a weapon once he was on the ground, and if he could manage it, he’d arm the others as well. If Machado had been telling the truth about his man’s link to Benazir Mengal, they’d be able to avoid pulling surveillance on multiple targets, anyway. Instead, they’d have a direct line to the man they were looking for, which would help eliminate some of the risk.
A noise behind him caused him to turn. Marissa Pétain was standing on the patio, one hand on the door handle. She was wearing a pair of sleek cotton pants that ended at mid-calf, wedge heels, and a lavender blouse, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She had an incredibly feminine figure, Kealey couldn’t help but notice: generous hips, a narrow waist, and toned, slender arms. Despite the hot sun beating down, her face was noticeably pale, but not in a bad way. Her pallor was clearly natural, and it suited her, as it seemed to lend extra color and a strange vitality to her dark brown eyes and pale pink lips. Her shimmering chestnut hair, which fell to the middle of her back, was probably her best feature. It framed her face perfectly, and for a moment, Kealey couldn’t help but stare. It was the first time he’d noticed how beautiful she really was. Beautiful in an elegant, effortless kind of way. Beautiful like Katie had been.
Katie. He didn’t often think of her, but not because he didn’t want to. It was just so damn hard. He’d never actively repressed the memories, but he didn’t encourage them, either. She was the first woman he’d ever really loved. It had been difficult enough to get past her loss at the time, and he had no desire to experience that depth of despair on a regular basis. Even now, nearly two years after her death, he still felt her absence. Not all the time, but when it did hit him, it hit him hard. Something as simple as cooking a meal she had once enjoyed could bring it all back. When he felt her loss to that degree, he usually preferred to visit places that reminded him of her, places they had seen together, rather than her grave. He didn’t know why he did this, but he’d never examined it too closely. Losing her had been the worst thing that had ever happened to him, even harder than losing Naomi to her inner demons, and he didn’t want to endure that hell a second time. He supposed that was part of the reason he was so intent on keeping Naomi out of harm’s way, not that he’d managed to do it.
Pétain’s mouth was turned up at the corners, and Kealey realized he still hadn’t spoken. He tried to think of something to say, but nothing was coming. Clearing his throat, he looked away, feeling incredibly awkward. Sensing his embarrassment, she jumped in to save him. “I just wanted to let you know that the car is here.”
Kealey nodded. Javier Machado had arranged for a vehicle they could use to drive to the airport. Machado had told him to leave it in the long-term parking lot, and someone—the owner, Kealey guessed—would collect it in a couple of days. Pétain thought the embassy had arranged for the car. “Are you ready to go?” he asked her.
“Absolutely.” She hesitated. “What about Kharmai? Did you—”
“I don’t want to bother her. I think she’s sleeping, anyway.”
She looked doubtful. “Ryan, I think you should—”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said sharply. “When she wakes up, we’ll be gone, and she can do what she wants. If she wants to fly back to Washington, she can. If she wants to stay here, so be it. It’s up to her. All I know is that she isn’t coming with us.”
Pétain hesitated, then closed the door behind her. She walked over until they were just a few feet apart. Then she folded her arms across her chest and looked at him, her gaze curious, slightly reticent, but also intent. “Ryan, what happened to her?” she asked quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. I’m not talking about Madrid. I’m talking about New York. I know she was there when the attack took place. I know what Vanderveen did to her, but…It just seems like there’s something else. Something everyone’s missed, except for you, maybe.”
“She didn’t go through enough as it is?” Kealey asked tightly. She was probing, and he didn’t have the patience to deal with it. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“No.” Pétain wasn’t retreating. “It just seems that—”
“Well, that’s what it sounds like you’re saying,” he snapped. “Let me tell you something, Marissa. What happened to her is none of your business. I’m sure you’ve read the file, and you probably remember the media coverage. The networks never managed to identify her, but there were plenty of witnesses, and they all had something to say. So you know what she went through, and you know what Vanderveen did to her. If you know all of that, why are you bringing it up? What are you asking me?”
“It just seems like there’s something more,” she said in a low voice.
“There isn’t. Believe me, you know everything there is to know.”
“Okay,” she said, though it was clear she didn’t buy a word of it. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“Yeah, okay,” Kealey said distractedly. He pushed a hand through his hair and tried to relax. He reminded himself that she’d only been asking an innocent question, and he still had to work with her, perhaps for a long time. Besides, the strained conversation with Harper was the root cause of his bad mood; Pétain didn’t have anything to do with it.
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