Viking Bay

by M. A. Lawson

  The next photo that appeared on the screen was of a young woman in her early twenties. She had long blond hair and blue eyes, and she looked . . . Well, the best word Kay could think of was mischievous.

  “Who does she look like, Hamilton?” Callahan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kay said. “Am I supposed to recognize her?”

  “She looks like you,” Callahan said.

  Kay looked at the photo again. The woman sort of looked like Kay, but she actually looked more like Kay’s daughter, if Jessica ever let her hair grow that long.

  “Her name is Carolyn Harris,” Callahan said, “and she was Ara Khan’s roommate at NYU for four years and her best friend. Harris is dead now. She was killed in a car accident a year ago, and Ara flew back from Afghanistan to attend the funeral. The other thing about Harris is she not only looks like you, but your personalities are somewhat similar. Harris was a bit of a wild thing. She liked to party, and she introduced Ara to Western decadence and dope and a couple of men Ara slept with while she was over here.”

  “Callahan,” Kay said, “I don’t know what that psychiatrist told you, but I was never a wild thing. That’s absurd, not to mention offensive. As for dope . . . I worked for the DEA, Christ’s sake!”

  “Hey, don’t get your panties in a twist. I’m just saying Carolyn Harris knew how to have a good time and so do you.”

  Before Kay could object again, Callahan said, “Okay, now you have the background on all the players. So here’s the job, and like I told you before, it’s complicated. We want—the president wants—two things. First, we want to get a company we control in place as soon as possible to start mining the lithium in Ghazni Province. The idea is since we control the mining company, we’ll be in a better position to control who gets the lithium.

  “But to do what we want is going to be tough politically. Really tough. The guys currently in charge in Kabul are going to be hard to manage and they’re going to try to shoehorn their way into any deal we make. On top of that, even if we are able to get the mining rights, it’s still going to be hard to get the stuff out of the ground, because they don’t have any real infrastructure over there and we’ll probably be fighting the Taliban while we’re going after it. We’ll also be competing with the Chinese, the Japanese, and half a dozen American companies who also want the lithium for battery production, and they’ll be trying to cut their own deals with the big boys in Kabul.

  “So the politics are going to be a bitch, and in order to better ensure that things come out the way we want, the second thing we’re going to do is support Sahid Khan to become the next president of Afghanistan. We know he’d like to be the top dog over there and his chances for being elected are going to increase dramatically because we’re going to give him a substantial war chest to fund his campaign. This political war chest is also a great big bribe to get him to play ball.”

  “You want to put a guy you say is a corrupt thug in charge of the whole country?” Kay said.

  “Hey, the guy currently in charge is a corrupt thug—but Sahid Khan will be our thug. The other thing is, Sahid Khan’s not a religious nut and he’s more likely to make Afghanistan into a secular country like Turkey, instead of a place like Iran that’s run by a mullah.”

  Kay was thinking that the United States had been down this path before—supporting handpicked dictators—and it often didn’t turn out the way we wanted. Like Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein. Or, for that matter, supporting the Shah in Iran—which was maybe one reason there was now a mullah in charge of that country.

  But before she could say anything else, Callahan said, “The main thing is, and the reason why you’re here, is I believe the key to convincing Sahid to play along with us is his daughter. She’s not only smart, but she’s progressive and leans toward the West ideologically. If we can make her believe that what we want to do will be good for her country, I think she’ll talk her old man into it.

  “The other thing about Ara is we think that she has even more potential than her father in terms of politics. Afghanistan is a long way from having a female president or even a woman in a powerful position in their government, but if there’s any woman who can get there, it’s Ara Khan. She could be like that woman in Burma. . . .”

  “Myanmar,” Mercer corrected.

  “Yeah, whatever. Anyway, we think she could be like that gal who was under house arrest there for a couple of decades and is now a major political force.”

  “Aung San Suu Kyi,” Mercer said.

  “Yeah, her,” Callahan said, irritated by the interruption. “Kyi’s smart, attractive, educated, progressive, democratic, all that stuff, and Ara Khan is the same type of person. What I’m saying is, if we can get Ara Khan into a leadership position in her country, it’s not only good for her country, but she’s a person the U.S. can work with.”

  Callahan’s plan sounded way too complicated to Kay—there were too many moving parts—and she had no idea if what he was planning could be done. But all she said was, “I don’t understand. How do I fit into all this?”

  Callahan smiled at her. “You’re the one who’s going to convince Ara Khan to do what we want.”

  “What?” Kay said.

  “We could approach this in a lot of different ways,” Callahan said. “For example, we—meaning the U.S. government—could send over a delegation from the State Department to talk to Khan secretly about allowing some U.S. company to mine the lithium, and at the same time tell him how the U.S. will support him politically. But we know if we did this, the guys in Kabul would find out what was going on and screw things up, and nothing happens fast over there if the government’s involved. Either ours or theirs. The other thing is, we don’t think that Khan would trust us if we went straight at him, and we don’t want to try to convince him using interpreters. So we’re going to approach this in a different way. You’re going to convince Ara, and then she’s going to convince her dad.”

  Now Kay didn’t know what to say. What Callahan wanted was a hell of a big order for anyone, but it was particularly a big order for someone with her background. She didn’t know anything about the politics of Afghanistan, mineral rights, mining, or the personalities of Ara Khan and her father. She couldn’t imagine why Callahan would think she could do this. Callahan, however, didn’t appear to notice any anxiety she might be feeling; he just kept talking.

  “Ara’s coming to New York in three weeks, and while she’s here we want you to get next to her and talk to her. We want you to pitch her. You’re going to sell her on what we want to do. We also want you to make a personal connection with her. What we’d really like, long term, is for you to become the new Carolyn Harris, her new American best friend, somebody she can trust and confide in.”

  “And I’m to establish this trusting relationship by pretending to be someone I’m not and lying to her?” Kay said.

  “Don’t be a smart-ass,” Callahan said. “And you won’t be pretending to be somebody you’re not. You’ll be representing the Callahan Group, which is partnering with a Swiss company to mine the lithium.”

  “A Swiss company?”

  “Yeah, but that’s a whole different story and I’m late for a call I gotta make. Eli can fill you in on the Swiss end later. What you need to do next is review the information we’ve compiled on Ara Khan. Anna will give it to you. Then you’re going to start practicing your pitch with Eli, Sylvia, and Anna all coaching you. You know, kind of like debate preps presidential candidates do.”

  Kay said, “I don’t know if . . .”

  “Hey, you’ll do fine,” Callahan said. He rose from the table, and Mercer scooped up Scarlett and followed him out of the conference room. As they were leaving, Kay heard Mercer say, “I don’t think this is going to work, Thomas. She’s . . .” Then the door shut and Kay didn’t hear the rest of what Mercer said about her.

  A moment after Callahan and Mercer le
ft, Sylvia Sorensen stood and said, “Uh, I have to get back to work, too.” She said this like she was apologizing. “It was nice to have met you, Kay, and I look forward to working with you.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Kay said, but she was thinking that this was just awful. She’d loved being in the DEA, chasing bad guys. And with the DEA, the rules were pretty clear: They were drug dealers, she was a fed, her job was to arrest them, and if they tried to kill her, she could shoot back. The job had sometimes been dangerous but had usually been pretty straightforward, and Kay had really enjoyed it, at least most of the time.

  But this thing with Ara Khan was a rats’ nest involving an unpredictable foreign government, trying to dupe a woman into doing something that might not be in her country’s best interest, and advancing the career of a crooked politician. Not only that, this wasn’t a job that was going to be over with in a couple of months. If things went the way Callahan wanted, Kay could be holding Ara Khan’s hand for years.

  This sucked—and it wasn’t at all what she had in mind when they hired her—and it sure as hell didn’t match the training they’d been giving her.

  Well, one thing didn’t suck, and that was Eli Dolan. He was still sitting at the conference table, an amused look on his face, like he understood what she was feeling and found the situation funny.

  “You wanna go get a drink and tell me about the Swiss end?” Kay asked him. She was curious about the Swiss end of the operation, but she was a lot more curious about Eli Dolan. She’d noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  8 | Alpha knew it was time to make a decision. It was time to act.

  Callahan’s plan to go after the lithium in Ghazni Province didn’t begin today, when he brought Hamilton into the operation. The plan had been set in motion more than eight months before. It had taken almost that long to get the Swiss company under Callahan’s big thumb, and there had been a tremendous amount of research to do with regard to the law, lithium mining, the politics of Afghanistan, and the actors involved. And eight months ago, when Callahan began putting his plan together, Alpha began to plan. Alpha knew, even when the operation was in the preliminary stages, that at some point a very large amount of money was going to change hands.

  Until now, however, it had been a theoretical exercise. But with Ara Khan arriving in New York in three weeks, it was either time to act or it was time to decide to never act. It was time to shit or get off the pot. And there was no time left for second-guessing the plan. There would only be six weeks to bring in the other players and for them to complete their tasks: the three weeks prior to Ara’s arrival and then three weeks, maybe just a little more, after Ara left New York.

  Alpha had identified the key person months ago: a twisted genius named Rodger Finley. Finley would have to be persuaded, but Alpha had no doubt that could be done. Alpha knew Finley. It wasn’t just his personal circumstances that made Finley pliable; his enormous ego was really the key. If Finley couldn’t be convinced, there were two other options, but Finley was the ideal choice. Alpha could fly up to New York tonight, talk to him, and be back in Washington early tomorrow. Callahan wouldn’t even know Alpha had been gone.

  In addition to Finley, three other men were needed, but only one would have to be recruited, the one who would become Alpha’s Bravo. Bravo would recruit a Charlie and a Delta, and they would never know who Alpha was. Bravo was a bigger unknown than Finley, however. Alpha knew he was in desperate financial straits—but was he desperate enough? And where Finley’s role would be bloodless, there would be blood all over Bravo’s hands. The good news was that if Bravo couldn’t be convinced, there were people he worked with who might be recruited. The bad news was that Bravo would have to be killed if he didn’t agree to participate, and Bravo would be very hard to kill.

  But convincing Finley and Bravo to help wasn’t the biggest problem. The biggest problem—and the one Alpha had the least control over—was Kay Hamilton. If Hamilton failed to sell Callahan’s scheme to Ara Khan, then the whole deal would fall apart, no money would change hands, and Alpha would lose the best opportunity that had come along in years. And although Callahan may have been impressed with Hamilton, Alpha wasn’t that impressed. Hamilton was bright enough, but she was basically a gunslinger. She was a weapon you pointed at a target. But what Callahan wanted Hamilton to do required diplomacy and finesse, and Alpha wasn’t convinced a blunt instrument like Hamilton possessed finesse. Alpha would do everything possible to help Hamilton succeed, but would it be enough? There was no way to know.

  So. Move forward today or never move at all? Alpha had no doubt the plan was feasible. The issue was really one of courage. Callahan would never stop looking for the person who betrayed him, and when Callahan found that person, there would be no arrest, no trial. There would be no mercy. There would be an execution.

  9 | Back in his office, Callahan made an encrypted call to a guy in Pakistan about something squirrelly going on over there. There was always something squirrelly going on over there. After that he made a few calls to people working the legitimate side of the Callahan Group to make sure the wheels were all turning properly, then poured himself a Scotch. As he sipped his drink, he thought briefly about what Mercer had said about Hamilton—how she didn’t think Hamilton was the right person for the job—but he decided to stick with the plan. Hamilton was going to do just fine.

  What he needed to do next was talk to Smee, something he hated to do, and something he’d been putting off for far too long. It couldn’t be avoided any longer, however; he needed to let his partners—who thought they were his bosses—know where things stood with regard to Ara Khan and his decision to use Hamilton. And it was time to line up the money he’d need if things went as planned, and he needed a lot of money.

  He called a number that went straight to voice mail. No one ever answered the phone, and Callahan had no idea where the phone was located or if there even was a phone. Somehow Smee would be electronically alerted that a voice mail was waiting for him and he would call the same phone number Callahan had called, and retrieve the message. The message itself was one word, and in this case the word was Cylinder.

  Cylinder was a code word designating one of several places where Callahan and Smee met, and Smee would be there in exactly one hour. Callahan didn’t know for sure where Smee was located physically; all he knew was that in nine years Smee had never missed one of their rare meetings and was always on time. He had this impression of the man standing in a glass case like a fire axe just waiting for Callahan’s call.

  If Smee wanted to meet with Callahan the same procedure was used in reverse: Smee would call a phone number, leave a code word designating the meeting place, Callahan would be electronically notified, and he’d retrieve the message. Unlike Smee, however, Callahan wouldn’t necessarily arrive at the meeting place in an hour because he might be busy. Sometimes he didn’t arrive within an hour just because he didn’t feel like jumping through his own asshole to meet with Smee. So when Smee wanted to meet with Callahan he’d designate the meeting place and wait for Callahan, and if Callahan didn’t show up in an hour, he’d return to the meeting place every four hours until Callahan arrived.

  Smee’s name, of course, wasn’t Smee. That’s just what Callahan called him. Smee was a character in Peter Pan, Captain Hook’s obsequious, sneaky lackey. Smee’s real name was Peter J. Meece. Callahan occasionally called him Pete, as he knew that Smee hated to be called anything but Peter. In fact, he’d told Callahan once that he would really prefer that Callahan address him as Mister Meece—like that was ever gonna happen.

  Smee/Meece was a walking tape recorder, an answering machine with feet. He had the ability to remember conversations verbatim, no matter how long those conversations might be or how long ago they had occurred. And that was Smee’s only function, as near as Callahan could tell: to pass messages between Callahan and his partners.

  The reason Smee was used as a conduit was simple
: Callahan’s partners refused to talk to Callahan on the phone, no matter what assurances were given that the phone calls were secure. Even though they routinely used encrypted communication systems during the normal course of their jobs, they were unwilling to take any chance whatsoever that a call to Callahan could be recorded or overheard. They never, of course, committed anything to writing, and all three of his partners considered e-mail the most insidious method of communication ever devised. They would talk to Callahan face-to-face, but only on rare occasions, and usually only when things had gone very badly. And thus the reason for Smee’s annoying existence.

  —

  THE MEETING PLACE designated as Cylinder was an apartment near Mount Vernon Square that the Callahan Group used occasionally as a safe house and as a place to put up visitors from out of town. It was swept on a routine basis to ensure it wasn’t bugged, and Callahan had chosen it simply because it was close to his office and convenient for him. He didn’t care if it was convenient for Smee.

  Callahan arrived at the apartment first and, while waiting for Smee, poured himself another Scotch. Smee unlocked the door ten minutes later and walked into the apartment, although in Callahan’s mind, Smee didn’t walk—he slithered.

  Smee was of an indeterminate age, maybe forty, maybe sixty, and blessed with a face so devoid of character and so nondescript as to render him virtually invisible. He was average in every way: medium height, neither fat nor slim, a nose that was neither short nor long, a chin that made no impression. His hair was the drabbest of browns. Callahan was convinced, even as many times as he’d met with the man, that he wouldn’t be able to describe him to a police sketch artist.

  “Would you like a drink, Smee?” Callahan asked. He only asked this question to annoy Smee, as he knew Smee didn’t drink and didn’t like that Callahan drank.

  “No. Why did you want to meet?”