by Greg Rucka
Bell shakes his head. “If he has all this reach, why are you even here? Why didn’t you know we were coming? If he has all this reach, why don’t you already have a bullet in your head?”
“New guy.” Tohir looks at him with patent disappointment. “It’s coming. This is what I’m saying, listen, fuck you, listen to me! He doesn’t want to free me. He doesn’t have a choice now. He knows you have me and he knows I am talking to you right now, because he knows it is my only option. I still breathe because he hasn’t done it yet. Why do you have me at all? Because you got fucking lucky. You had Elisabet, and she gave me to you, and that’s all. You got lucky. Your good fortune and my bad. But that is not enough; it will run out. It is running out even now. He will find me and he will kill me. He’ll kill everyone here if he has to.”
“That doesn’t sound smart,” Bell says. “That sounds insane.”
“No, not insane. Pragmatic.”
“And if we just leave you here?” Wallford asks.
“Don’t insult me, don’t bluff with me. I have told you I am willing to trade. You want what I have.”
“We may not actually need you.”
“You do. You have nothing without me.”
“We have Chalus,” Bell says. “We have La Trémoille.”
“Yes, because the lying cunt told you, of course. And you know how I take my coffee and that I enjoyed fucking her ass and that I have an aversion to avocado. You know some names I deal with, even some names I’ve used. You know lots of little things, and all of it equals nothing, because it is all in the past, and the past is gone. I see the future.”
“Then give us a prediction.”
“I’ll give you a prophecy, how about that, new guy? I’ll give you a prophecy, and once you get me fucking out of this fucking not-safe house, I’ll give you more. How about that?”
“We’re listening.”
“The theme park, WilsonVille, it was the primary job, but there was a contingency in place. The same thing, but different.”
“Explain.”
“No. No, that is all I give right now. You stopped the thing in California because Elisabet knew enough to warn you. And after this you will go to her and you will ask her what else she knows, and she will tell you she knows nothing, and you will not know whether to believe her or not. But in this, she will be telling the truth, she will not know. But I know, and I can warn you.”
“That’s not enough,” Wallford says. “We need a proof, Vosil.”
“July twenty-eighth, Lufthansa one-six-nine-seven, Prague to Munich, connecting with Lufthansa four-ten, Munich to Kennedy. You are looking for a passenger by the name of Zein.”
“And why are we looking for him?”
“No; you answer that yourself. Then you move me, you make me disappear, you take me someplace truly safe, someplace nobody knows about. Someplace secure. You do that, I will give you more, I will give you the rest, every detail of the operation, the timetable, all of it. But I would do it quickly, Jerry. I’d put it at the top of your to-do list, I’d do it right fucking now.”
“Zein,” Wallford says, noting it down. “Is that a surname or—”
“No. We’re done. My hip hurts. And you’re wasting time.”
Chapter Nine
NESSUNO FEELS THE foam peel from her ears as she lifts the headphones free, sets them down on the long table in front of her. On the flat screens, three views of Vosil Tohir as he’s cuffed up again and escorted out of the makeshift interrogation room by two of the undercovers. She focuses on their faces, the way she’s focused on every face throughout the safe house since she and Heath arrived. She doesn’t recognize any of them, not from Tashkent, not from Vienna, not from Moscow, not from Cairo, not from London, not from any of the places she traveled with Tohir on “business.” She stares at the flat screens and, doing this, she doesn’t have to look at the others in the room, the ones who’ve heard everything Tohir has said, just as she has. She tells herself it doesn’t matter what they think, that she served her country, that she did what was required to earn his trust.
She thinks all this, but she cannot keep herself from remembering Poland, almost a year and a half prior. She cannot keep from remembering the sounds and the smells and the sights of the farmhouse outside of Prague, the bitterly cold predawn, when Tohir tested Elisabetta Villanova for the final time. He had put a gun in her hand and told her to kill two men kept inside, two broken, beaten, tortured men. The first known to Elisabetta, the same man who had put her and Tohir together so many months prior in a hotel in Moscow over a stolen painting. Elisabetta had never seen the second man before in her life.
CW2 Petra Nessuno, if asked, could not say the same thing.
Heath is already on one of the secure telephones at the monitor station, demanding the passenger manifests for Lufthansa flights 1697 and 410 this past July 28, for anything in the system on the surname Zein. She’s not swearing, which makes Nessuno think she’s dealing interagency, perhaps, or more likely with someone who outranks her.
Wallford and Bell are still on the flat screens, Wallford writing in his leather portfolio, Bell pulling the earbud free. She’s gratified by the partnership, by how easily he took her commentary and cues during the course of the interrogation, made them his own to redirect and prod Tohir. All the same, she has to wonder at his presence here. He’s a shooter, not a thinker, not a planner, and his appearance at the safe house surprised her. She thinks he looks weary as he rises and turns past one of the cameras. Weary and worried, perhaps.
All her time with him, Tohir had demonstrated caution, deliberation, was ever the pragmatist. It was, she had concluded, one of the reasons why Echo trusted him, why Tohir had been so useful. It was one of the reasons, she knew, that Tohir had grown to trust her as well. While Tohir’s respect for—if not fear of—Echo had always been evident, it had also always been well controlled. That had been slipping from the first moments of the interrogation, had erupted near its end. For that reason, if none other, Nessuno knows that he’s telling the truth, that the lead he’s offered is good. To bargain it must be, and Vosil Tohir needs this bargain.
It occurs to her that if Echo can find Tohir here, it’s just as likely that Echo can find her as well.
Heath hangs up. “It’s going to take a bit. Zein isn’t exactly an uncommon name. Sounds German.”
“Might be Yemeni.”
“And it doesn’t ring any bells for you?”
“Not that I can recall. You’ve already got everything I have on his Yemeni dealings.”
Heath looks at her for a moment longer, just long enough for Nessuno to wonder about the seeds of suspicion Tohir was working so diligently to plant. She matches the gaze, doesn’t flinch, back-brain conscious of her own expression, of what she’s showing her handler.
“You think it’s legit?” Heath asks. “You think we’re going to get hit again?”
“Count on it,” Nessuno says.
Wallford crawls into a phone as soon as he and Bell are back in the room, and for a few minutes there’s nothing to do but verify the transcript of the interrogation and double-check that all security is still in place and doing exactly what it should. Tohir is back in his room and under guard once more, and Bell leaves to go walkabout, saying he’ll double-check the perimeter. Nessuno turns her attention back to the paperwork, the previous interview transcripts, the background data and briefs that have been compiled. The binders are multiplying. She adds her own notes, punches the new pages and fits them to the rings, then hands everything over to Heath.
She does this, concentrating on the work, aware the whole time of the eyes stealing in her direction, and for an instant she feels such a spur of anger she wants to whirl and confront the room. To shout at them, to say, If there is an accusation, make it. If there’s a polygraph, hook me up and let’s get started. But even as she thinks this, she feels Elisabetta’s manner settling on her again, feels her posture shift just that much, just enough to cock her hip, to brush
her hair aside. There is nothing to see in her, just a body men find beautiful, a manner that is self-assured, self-confident, professional. Show no hesitation, Elisabetta reminds her. Show no fear.
Show no guilt.
By the time Bell has returned it’s become clear that they’re done for the day. Wallford hasn’t indicated one way or another if he’s going to move Tohir, but Nessuno thinks it’s a done deal. Tohir opened the door, and if Wallford wants what the man is offering, then Wallford will have to walk through. Every couple of minutes his phone rings and he goes off to one of the far corners to speak before coming back, looking less and less cheerful than before.
“Are we done here?” Nessuno finally asks. She directs it to Heath, who is currently bent over one of the laptops, but Wallford answers before she can.
“You can roll.”
He stares a moment too long, and she sees him weighing what Tohir has said about her. She wonders if she should worry about him, if she should try to work him, to put him at ease, but this is not the time or the place. She wants to believe that everyone can see this for what it is, their prisoner playing power games, trying to turn the tables.
Wallford looks at Bell, then back to her. “Take the master sergeant with you; he’s making me nervous.”
Heath gives Nessuno her car keys, so she climbs behind the wheel of the black Civic, waits for Bell to buckle up beside her. He’s tall enough that he has to slide the seat all the way back, and it still doesn’t look like he’s got enough room. It was easy to lose track of time inside the house, but as they turn onto the road it’s already dusk. Nessuno heads them the wrong way, into Leesburg and then stair-stepping them through town, and neither of them speaks, the head checks on automatic, and while they do this, she’s trying to get a sense of Bell, trying to read him. He’s barely looked at her since coming up from interrogation, and this is different. She suspected his attraction to her on the flight, aboard the Lear, was all the more sure of it when she saw his reaction to seeing her for the first time today. She resents Tohir for poisoning that well, and now she has time to slowly fuel the resentment she’s feeling, to argue with herself. She knows it’s not valid. She knows she’s being paranoid.
Once she’s satisfied they’re clean, she whips the Honda into one last abrupt U-turn before pointing the nose onto the Harry Byrd Highway and back toward the capital.
“The same thing but different,” she says.
“That’s what the man said.”
“So he has knowledge of an imminent terror attack on American soil, that’s what he’s offering.”
“He’s playing games,” Bell says. “He played games the whole time.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“Do you?”
“About that, yes.”
“He was offering anything to get out of that room. Hell, he offered you up.”
“That why you’re here?” She makes a point of not looking at him, still with eyes on the road, eyes on the mirrors, and she’s pleased that she asks it without any of the rancor she’s feeling. Heath would be proud.
“You think I bought that line?”
It’s a redirect, turning the question back to her, and she gives Elisabetta’s answer. “He was spewing a lot of poison, and you can’t fault his logic, can you? Some of it must have made it into your ears, that CIA man’s ears. Whoever’s going to end up reading that transcript at DIA and in Bethesda and who knows where. They don’t know me any better than you know me. I’d have doubts.”
She glances at him, the hint of a smile; it’s an Elisabetta move, but it comes as easily as the words.
“Give yourself a little credit even if you don’t give it to us, Chief. I say again, Heatdish was offering anything he could to get a leg up. You were the cheap shot. Easiest mind game in the world to play.”
The Honda eats another mile, both of them silent.
“So what do you think?” she asks, finally.
“I try not to.”
“Shooter answer.”
“Easier that way. I go through the door and try not to worry about why. I leave it to you brainy types to figure out what’s really going on.”
She almost laughs. “You think I’m management?”
“Wouldn’t dare insult you like that, Chief.”
“Then don’t play the dumb grunt line on me.”
“I think that Zein will lead to more questions, and that’ll bring Wallford back to the table with Tohir, and Tohir will try to bargain for more.”
“Everything Tohir was involved with came down to only one thing the whole time I was beside him,” Nessuno says. “Just one thing. Money. No politics, no religion, no philosophy except long daddy green. That’s all it was ever about. If Echo has an agenda beyond that, it’s a mystery to me. These are criminals who’ve monetized terrorism.”
“So they’re both.”
“Exactly. But if Echo’s selling a service, who’s buying it?”
Bell is silent for several seconds, and when he speaks again, Nessuno expects a theory, a guess, speculation, something, but he surprises her.
“I don’t believe in much,” he says. “I believe in loyalty. I believe in honor. I believe in this country, for all its many, many flaws. I’m a patriot to my peril, I suppose. I believe deeply in duty, and in self-sacrifice in the pursuit of something greater. Maybe because of that I can understand the mind of a jihadi, or of the enemy, or I can at least try to. I believe in myself. That’s the framing.”
“God?” she asks.
“How’s it go? There’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole?”
“And outside a foxhole?”
“Too dark to read?”
She laughs again.
“I don’t know,” Bell says quietly. “You travel the world, you see a lot of things, and some of them defy rational explanation. I believe in spirituality, how’s that?”
“But personally?”
“Personally? If there is a God, he, she, or it has a lot of explaining to do.”
She checks the mirrors again. The last daylight has gone, and everything is headlights now. The Saint Nicholas medal shifts against her skin when she moves, making her aware of it once more.
“Where am I taking you?” she asks.
“I just need a room for the night.”
“Someplace with a bed and bathtub’s all right?”
“And a deck of cards to play some solitaire, yeah. What about you?”
“I don’t want to be alone,” Nessuno says.
The management at the Courtyard by Marriott in Gaithersburg did not take kindly to the damage to the mirror in her room. Nessuno gathers her things, settles her bill, and then she and Bell take the Civic south again, back into D.C. and down Massachusetts Avenue until they find the Hotel Palomar on P Street. It’s expensive, and definitely above their combined pay grades, but Nessuno thinks that the salary she hasn’t spent for two years might as well go to something she’ll enjoy. They valet the car and Bell takes his duffel and she takes hers and she beats him to the front desk by a step. She sends him to find a table at the hotel restaurant, Urbana, where she joins him five minutes later. It’s western Mediterranean fare, and goes with the style of the hotel, the food self-important and expensive and good. They share a bottle of wine and talk about anything they can think of that isn’t work, and she’s not surprised he played football, though he is surprised that she wanted to be a nun.
“Every good Catholic girl wants to be a nun at some point,” Nessuno says.
“You were a good Catholic girl?”
“I was a very catholic Catholic girl. That’s why I never became a nun.”
They finish their meal and linger over coffee, and when the check comes, she’s quicker.
“Stop doing that.”
“I want to.”
“I can get a room of my own,” Bell says.
“Do you want to get a room of your own?”
He doesn’t look away, silent for several seconds. There’
s a melancholy in his eyes, and it makes him all the more attractive to her.
“You still have the bends,” he says.
She gets up from the table. “Like you don’t?”
She heads for the lobby, the elevator, and their room without looking to see if he’ll follow.
He does.
Another hotel room.
They start awkwardly, almost clumsily, each of them undressing without pretense or modesty or expectation, standing opposite one another. They’ve left the lights off, the curtains open, and the city glow shows her his body, his scars. She likes his shoulders, his arms, the slope of his hips. His legs are long and strong, like the rest of him, which is what she imagined when she had allowed herself to imagine them like this. She moves first, closing the space between them, meeting his mouth with her own, tastes him tentatively, then again, and he kisses her in return just as gently.
“Is this Petra?” he asks. “Or Elisabetta?”
“Elisabetta is better in bed.” She grins.
“That’s not what I mean.”
She touches his face, traces the concern at his mouth. She takes hold of his hands, places them on her hips, moves them along her body.
“It’s all right,” she says. “I’ve had the shot. I’m not going to get knocked up.”
“Don’t mean that, either. I mean you.”
“I’m not crazy, Jad. You know I’m not crazy. This isn’t multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia or Stockholm syndrome or sex addiction. Just us. It’s just us.”
One of his hands slips from hers, draws a line between her breasts. Touches the Saint Nicholas medal on its chain. Looks her in the eyes.
“It’s all right,” she says again.
She kisses him once more, and this time, he answers. She can feel a passion in him warring with restraint, and she seizes it, draws upon it, returns it. His hands move, a caress, then a hold, then a grip that delights her. He lifts her, and she wraps herself around him, the stubble at his throat scraping her cheek. He sets her on the bed, lays her down, moves along her body, exploring, touching, and she pulls at him, hands at his arms, at his shoulders, at his hips.
