by Andrew Huff
Wherever the train had taken him, finding a way to get back to Christine was all that mattered. The thought of her in danger propelled him onward. Cross picked his way through the trees until they parted, and he found himself on a narrow street.
He moved down the sidewalk away from the train yard. A reflective sign on the opposite side of the road read BASHFORD LANE.
Bashford Lane. He knew that street. It’d been years ago, but he could recall a meal shared with a bespectacled yoga instructor. She was a redhead. They had dined on baked moussaka and baklava. That was it, a Greek restaurant. Vaso’s Kitchen.
His heart skipped a beat, and Cross broke into a full run down the sidewalk. Within seconds he reached the intersection of Bashford Lane and George Washington Memorial Parkway.
Cross knew exactly where he was. Alexandria, Virginia, 7.3 miles due south of the heart of the nation’s capital.
A couple of taxis drove by, but Cross chose to punish his repentant spirit with the chilly two-and-a-half-hour walk into Arlington. As he walked alongside the parkway, he pictured the face of the man from the train. His stomach knotted.
His rage on the train was unexpected and uncharacteristic of his life the past year and a half. The truth bore down on him like the freight train. All the pride of living in relative peace since his conversion was his downfall that night. He hadn’t really changed. Only buried what was destined to be eternally true about his heart.
He was a killer.
He would’ve murdered the man. He was convinced of that. And it soured him. In less than fourteen hours, Cross’s quiet, penitent existence had been upturned. Probably deserved.
New questions arose. The men were after Christine. They had to be. His tracks were too clean. It couldn’t be a coincidence they’d arrived on the same day. They’d followed her. But why?
Could they be connected to the men who’d held her in Jordan? It was the most likely scenario. But that didn’t add up. Christine was a journalist, not a high-profile politician. Why come all the way back to the States to get revenge on a botched media stunt? The Alliance of Islamic Military was reckless, not senseless.
They wanted her, the one fact he knew without a doubt. He replayed the man’s words over and over again in his mind, trading the rising anger for a resolve to answer the compounding questions. Why would they want Christine?
Entry into the country was not impossible for terrorists, though it required a wealth of resources funneled from sympathetic officials. With the right help, Cross could determine the origin of the hit squad and perhaps even the identities of each individual. Of course, that meant making a phone call.
The phone call he didn’t want to make.
Simpson would relish the return of the prodigal son, especially a son on his knees begging for the full force of Central Intelligence by his side. But it was the only play he had. Unless …
Simpson didn’t have to know. Cross didn’t need the entirety of CIA resources. A single person could access the databases needed to spot a sudden influx of cash into known terrorist markets. And no flags would be triggered. It would be a routine search.
The only caveat was if she would agree to be discreet.
Sometime after 3:00 a.m., the obnoxious tone of her smartphone rudely snatched a deep sleep from Guin Sullivan. In truth, early morning emergency phone calls were the norm. This particular early morning, however, the voice at the other end of the call proved to not be that of her superior.
“Guin, it’s John.”
A dream? The throbbing in her head said otherwise. Why would John be calling her? The beating of her heart matched the rhythm in her head, and she sat up in her bed. His departure from the building weeks before convinced her he was to be nothing more than a pleasant memory. But he called. Not something she’d expected.
“I need you to do something, and I need you to keep it quiet.”
Disoriented, she interjected with more emotion than was becoming of her, “Cross, what’s wrong. Are you OK?”
“I’m fine. Meet me at 1111 Lee Highway, Arlington. Unit number two thousand eight. Bring a computer.”
A soft beep echoed in her ear, and the call ended just as her mind cleared. She threw back the duvet and sped up her already quick routine. The car she hired arrived just as she shut the front door to her town home and finished pulling on her jacket.
She checked her watch after being dropped off at a beautiful thirty-story tower called the Waterview. A half hour since he’d called. He’d be grateful for her prompt response.
She entered the elevator and tapped her foot as it rose to the top floor. The elevator doors glided apart, and her suspicions were confirmed. This level of the Waterview was home to luxury penthouse apartments.
The doors slid apart. She stepped from the elevator and, confident the hallway was quiet, slipped her Glock 26 from the shoulder holster under her jacket and held it tight against her chest. She cradled her laptop in her other arm and held it over the handgun.
Turning a corner, she came to the door for unit 2008 at the end of the hallway. She stood still at the door as her finger casually disengaged the safety on the Glock.
No need to knock. He would let her in.
The door opened wide, and John stood on the other side, arms down, fatal target areas on his body exposed. His gray suit pants and white dress shirt reeked as bad as they looked. His face bore a handful of puffy black-and-blue bruises. That explained the damp dish towel in his hand. She noticed a blood stain surrounding a hole in the fabric on the right shoulder of his shirt.
She gave him a wide-eyed once-over. “You look like—”
“You should see the other guy.” He looked at the laptop in her hand, then back at her eyes and flashed a grin. “Would you like to come in or just shoot me in the doorway?”
Guin drew the Glock from its hiding place and pointed it at his forehead. “You tell me, Officer Cross. I get a phone call from someone who isn’t supposed to be calling, asking me to meet said retiree at a clandestine location and bring sensitive CIA equipment. I’m going to guess you don’t need help setting up a router for your home wireless network.”
John kept his hands down and eyes level, signaling cooperation. “Guin, you know me. This isn’t a setup.”
“Anybody can be turned, Cross.”
John sighed and brought the dish towel to his bruised eye. He turned and walked into the penthouse.
“John, I’m serious. Get back here,” Guin called out after him, pouring as much annoyance into her voice as she could.
“I’m not in the mood.”
Guin rolled her eyes and dropped the Glock to her side. She crossed the threshold to the penthouse and kicked the door shut behind her. Though of a modest size, the interior was an open floor plan with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides.
The eyesore of a partially constructed tower dissected the dark horizon and dashed the promise of a breathtaking view of the dormant capital lying just across the Potomac River. She nodded toward it. “Looks like the new INR construction’s going to lower your resale value.”
John gazed out the window. “Beats me how they even convinced Congress to let them build on Roosevelt Island.”
“Eh, that island is a big waste of space,” Guin said as she studied every detail of the penthouse, sparse as it was. The only furniture was a thick, plush couch in the center of expensive hardwood. To her left lay the kitchen. Track lighting over an island counter offered the only illumination apart from the glow of the city beyond the windows. John stood at the sink, water flowing from the faucet into a glass cup in his free hand.
“You can put the gun away. We’re alone.” He shut off the water and raised the cup to his lips.
Guin acquiesced and scoffed. “Not one for modern conveniences like a chair, are we?”
John laughed. “I never really use this place anymore, but it’s bought and paid for, so I’m not in a hurry to get rid of it. I consider it a safe house for emergency purposes. Like tonight.”
She examined his battered body again and nodded at his shoulder. “Yeah, about that …”
John took another gulp of the water. “Just a scratch. Seriously, you should see the other guys.”
“Guys?” Guin stepped up to the island countertop and set down her laptop. She walked up to him and forced him to turn his back to her.
“Yeah,” he explained while she removed his shirt. “Five or six of—” He winced as his arm rotated out of the sleeve. “Them,” he finished as Guin tossed the shirt into the sink. “They jumped me at a gas station.”
“That’s what that smell is.”
Cross grabbed his undershirt with both hands and lifted it. With a delicate motion, he pulled his injured shoulder out and let the shirt stay wrapped around his neck and opposite arm.
The life of a rural pastor apparently did nothing to hinder his physical fitness. Guin fought the urge to study his well-maintained core. She took the damp dish towel and dabbed the blood and dirt away from the wound. If it was painful, Cross didn’t let on. A fresh clot had formed over the “scratch,” as he’d put it. “You’re lucky he missed,” she said.
“I never said I was shot.”
Guin snorted. “Oh please, just because I spend most of my time picking up Al’s pants from Chinatown doesn’t mean I don’t know what a firearm injury looks like.” She stepped back to view her handiwork. “You got any alcohol around here?”
“It’s a little early for that, isn’t it?”
Guin didn’t bother with a response. Cross opened a red oak cupboard and retrieved an old shoebox. He placed it on the island and opened the lid. Guin shot him an amused glance as she sifted through the eclectic variety of drugstore first-aid paraphernalia.
He shrugged. “I figured a safe house needed supplies.”
“Remind me to avoid any of your safe houses if I’m ever in serious trouble.” She grabbed a half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol out of the box, popped the cap, and applied the liquid directly to the wound.
Cross responded with a yelp. “Watch it!”
“Quiet down and let me work. And stop stalling and tell me what’s going on.”
Cross steadied himself against the counter and let Guin proceed with cleaning out the trench in his muscle. “Remember Christine Lewis?”
“The reporter?”
“She found me.”
Guin’s hand jerked in surprise, a finger digging at the exposed muscle. Cross cried out again, this time with genuine feeling, and glared at her.
She glared back. “What do you mean she found you?”
“I’m delivering my sermon yesterday morning in church, I look up, and there she is. I don’t know how she found me, but she did.”
Guin shook her head and dug her fists into her hips to demonstrate her displeasure. She was mad at Christine for tracking him … No, she was mad at Cross for letting the woman … Wait. Her mind raced. Why was she mad about it? “You let her find you?” was all she could say, though she understood Cross couldn’t possibly have led the woman to him. He was too good for that.
Cross’s eyebrows knit together in the center of his forehead. “I thought you would be more surprised about the sermon part.”
Guin pressed her lips into a thin line and continued cleaning his shoulder. “Please. You worked for the most networked intelligence agency in the world. We knew you were a pastor at a church before you did.”
“Well, now Christine knows. And she showed up asking a lot of questions.”
“About what?”
“Me, mostly. My story. How I got there.”
Guin’s imagination went into overdrive. She pictured Cross and this Christine person sitting at a romantic restaurant, candlelight dancing off their pupils, sharing intimate details about each other. She didn’t like the image, so she set an imaginary fire to the dive in her mind.
Cross was still going. “I told her about everything that happened in my life. I spared her details about you or Al, or really anything about the CIA. Just why I got out. Then I took her back to her hotel and went home.” He swallowed and averted his eyes, classic deception tells. “I had to get gas on the way, so I pulled into a station. That’s when my friends arrived to show me a good time.”
“Any identification?”
“They didn’t give me much time to ask questions, but I can tell you for sure one of them was a Turk.”
“You said five or six of them. How did you even get away and make it all the way up here, for that matter?”
“One of them brought a gun to the knife fight, only he fired it too close to a fuel leak.” Cross mimed the explosion with his hands. “My ears are still ringing. I got away, but one of them chased me onto a northbound freight train. I managed to get him to talk, except …”
“Except what?”
“They weren’t trying to kill me, at least I don’t think. He had a chance to let me die, but pulled me back onto the train.”
Guin’s heart skipped a beat, and she swallowed the urge to respond in concern over his near demise. “What did he say?”
“That he knew where she was.’”
“The journalist? Why would they be after her?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Nothing I can think of makes sense. Unless there’s something she’s not telling me.”
“Or they’re using her to get to you.”
Cross pushed down the thought that he may have put Christine in danger. He needed to focus. “Right now, it doesn’t matter. What does is making sure they never lay a hand on her.”
Guin furrowed her brow. That was why he’d called. So she would help the journalist. For a moment, she considered a taxi ride back to her condo, but decided it would only betray her feelings about the situation. “All right,” she said. “This looks pretty good.” She tossed the dish towel into the sink on top of his ruined shirt and taped a square of gauze against the wound. “There you go. Good as new.”
Cross pulled his T-shirt back on and met her eyes. “Thank you,” he said, his face soft and lovely.
Guin only nodded, then broke away from his look and rounded the countertop again. She opened her laptop, and the bright screen greeted her with a blank log-in box. She typed her password in a flurry of memorized keystrokes. While the hard drive purred to life, she looked up at Cross. “So you hopped the next Amtrak to DC just to see little ole me?”
“I passed out on top of a boxcar. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in a train yard in Arlington and it’s Monday.”
The computer beeped a confirmation, and Guin turned her attention to the screen. Cross moved closer to look over her shoulder. “Here’s what I’m thinking,” he said. “If this group of guys is a revenge squad from AIM, they must’ve had help entering the country.”
“So we check for any flags on high-volume cash flows in and out of the country.”
“I also thought you could run a search on any recent identity theft tied to airline ticket purchases.”
Guin made a loud sniffing sound with her nose. “You know, if this is going to take a while, I think you’d better consider a shower. That is, unless you’re all out of clean clothes too.”
Cross pretended to smell an armpit. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He turned to leave, then paused. “Don’t try to get the drop on me with that Glock while I’m in there. I didn’t dispose of all my necessities.”
Guin smirked as he disappeared into another room.
He wishes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE ID PINCHED between two fingertips pictured his real face and listed his real physical traits, but George Carson was not his real name. The indigenous life of the Aegean still feasted on the body belonging to the real George Carson. And although the ID was necessary to the task at hand, it saddened him to have acquired it at such high a price.
Yunus Anar did not wish an early death upon Mr. George Carson in much the same way he did not wish an early death on those outside the central conflict, but he understood the complexities requi
red in a mission of such high priority. He coveted no death, but death was one of the tools by which a cause or goal could be achieved.
All peoples used the same tools and devices in the pursuit of goals greater than themselves. Not every person was honest about said tools and devices. Death realized many great causes, great ideas, and great advancements in the human existence.
The fight against cancer would flounder were it not for the fatalities. The civil rights movement in the United States of America benefited from the death of its spokesman. All dictatorships were sustained by the threat of execution.
A greater tool than just mere death, however, was one few were capable of: sacrificial death. Threatening death to achieve a goal was one thing. Willingness to die in the pursuit of the glory of others was something else entirely.
Yunus believed in balance. A life for a life. Nothing more. Not bloodshed just for its sake. One of Yunus’s countrymen paid for George Carson’s life with his own blood. Any life Yunus would have a hand in taking was a transaction for an imbalance on his side. He had lost friends, partners, lovers, but worst of all …
Yunus slapped the ID facedown on the side table and stood up from the uncomfortable chair. Even though the sun slept, plenty of light from the orange glow of New York City streetlamps flooded the window of his hotel room.
He breathed deep and stretched his sore back muscles. The cheap bed in the cheap room offered him little comfort in his recovery from jet lag. He preferred to keep to his internal clock, which meant it was time for his morning routine. Stretches, meditation, prayers. Then a hot shower and a greasy breakfast.
They had arrived two long days ago and would be waiting two more before they would finally be welcomed home with open arms. He didn’t need patience for the interval, another activity already planned and in its early stages of execution.
A flood of memories flashed before him. Playing with his nephews in a vain attempt to elicit genuine smiles. Arguing with their mother before finally pledging himself to her demands. The months in preparation, training for what would come next.