Hidden Threat

by Anthony Tata

  Thursday, Amanda flowed through her classes, settling from a boil to a low simmer over Tuesday night’s revelation about Riley Dwyer and her father. The woman had violated her trust. “See what we’re saying, Amanda? This is all a sham,” her mother had said.

  “Your father is manipulating you from the grave,” Nina had added.

  Her sleep had been restless, which set the tone for an anxiety-ridden day. Only learning that her grades were good enough that she wouldn’t have to take any finals had put the Dwyer issue on a back burner.

  She was surprised, however, that she was slowly becoming preoccupied with the insurance payout from her father’s will and sensed she was beginning to question a few things. In class she found herself attempting to recall memories of her father, but kept coming up blank. She thought to herself that it was like when she would try to pull up a Web site and would get the “cannot find server” page instead. No information, just frustration.

  She contemplated what she was about to do with some deliberation. Where she had, in recent memory at least, never questioned the women who raised her, now she was beginning to feel a need to at least explore the possibility, however remote, that her father’s last request merited consideration. There was one way to find out.

  “Jake, I need to talk to you.” Amanda was surprised at how agitated her own voice sounded.

  “I can be there in fifteen.”

  “Okay, that’s good,” she said. Walking to her window, she looked outside where she saw Nina’s van parked. “Pack an overnight bag. This thing might be getting out of control.”

  “Just hang tight. I’ll be there soon.”

  Amanda hung up her cell phone and walked to her door. She opened it partially and could hear Nina talking in a low whisper to her mother.

  “Well, this has gone too far. I’m surprised you’re not more aggressive about this. If you’re not careful, all this money could get away from you.”

  “Mama, I’m just trying not to be too obvious. Zach’s up to no good, but I’d rather let this play out a bit.”

  “Play out?” Nina scoffed. “They’ll be dancing all around you, shaking fistfuls of money at you while you stand there like a lost kid on the playground.”

  “Mama, come on. I told you. I’ve got a plan, but you’re wearing me down here, making me tired.”

  “You’re too tired to go after a half a million dollars after all you did to raise Amanda? After all I . . .”

  “After what, Mama?”

  “Nothing, forget I said anything.”

  “No, after what?”

  Nina didn’t take the bait.

  “After all that you did? Is that what you’re all hot and bothered about?”

  Nina crossed her arms and fumed.

  “Besides, I’ve got someone coming to see the house soon.”

  “The house?”

  “I’ve got a plan for the money. It’s a good investment. Trust me.”

  Nina studied her daughter for a moment.

  “Okay, I’m listening,” Nina said.

  Amanda had rarely heard her mother challenge Nina the way she did tonight. It occurred to her that the money was having an impact on her family that worried her. She remembered reading an old John Steinbeck book called The Pearl in high school English. A diver in Mexico finds the mother of all pearls, as he describes it, and suddenly everything changes in their family, their village, and their lives.

  Was that happening here? Or was that what had been happening all along? Like a focusing telescope, was she beginning to see things more clearly? Or was it her father playing tricks on her from the grave?

  She backed quietly into her room and shut her door. Before leaving, she clicked on her e-mail account and sent a message to Len Dagus saying she would not be in class tomorrow. She copied Principal Rugsdale, thanking both men for giving her time to “grieve over the death of my father.”

  Grabbing her small satchel and cell phone, she opened the window that led to a terrace. She dropped it over the rail before she turned around and climbed backwards over the wrought-iron lattice. She hung on the ledge, let go, and landed nimbly as a cat just behind the mulched boxwood hedgerow. She picked up her satchel and, staying low, jogged to her car, backed out with the headlights off and drove to the high school parking lot.

  Sure enough, his truck rounded the corner as she locked up her car. She flagged him down, jumped in the passenger seat, and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  “Hi, handsome.”

  “So, where we going?”

  “Gotta map?”

  “Sure, why?”

  “I think we need to get on 85, then from there, we can find Sanford.”

  “Your dad’s house?”

  CHAPTER 20

  Dubai

  Friday

  The Scientist’s two messengers, Mansur and Kamil, took extra precaution in Peshawar and linked up with their pilot who flew them to Karachi. There wasn’t much to worry about, but the two men loved their families and they knew that Mullah Rahman would absolutely follow through on his promise to kill them if they weren’t back in a week.

  Once in Karachi, they maneuvered through the chaotic port and linked up with a contact who demanded double the payment. “ISI is turning up the heat, my friend.” Mansur, who carried the money, paid the man, who led them to a rusty merchant ship headed for Fujairah, an Emirate on the Gulf of Oman and geographically opposite the seven others on the Persian Gulf. Their barely seaworthy vessel had moved quickly though and magically weathered the seas. By docking in Fujairah they had avoided the contentious Straights of Hormuz. Sometimes the Iranian patrol boats sank merchant ships, sometimes they just shot at them, and other times, rarely, they let them pass unmolested.

  In Fujairah, they picked up an old Chevy Blazer with tinted windows and drove across the peninsula toward Dubai, but stopped short in Al Dhaid, an Emirate capital town about 30 miles from Fujairah and 30 miles from Dubai, perfectly centered in obscurity.

  Pulling up to the compound, Kamil slowed the Blazer and flicked the headlights twice. Night had fallen but it was still over 100 degrees outside. They had kept the air conditioner blasting during the short trip, as the ship’s engine had been overheating and the sun had beat upon them without mercy.

  “Gate is opening,” Mansur said to Kamil. The two Pakistanis talked about how this was the time when they both got nervous. The information controller for Al Qaeda lived inside the compound. When there was word of a high priority piece of usable information, the Technician, as he called himself, required personal delivery. Certainly Mullah Rahman could have fired the digits over satellite and the Technician could have downloaded them. There would have been no certainty, though, that he was the only one with the information.

  Thus, the need for Mansur and Kamil, who had proven very reliable so far. They pulled into the circular drive beneath video cameras and floodlights brighter than a Friday night football game in Texas. The two messengers stepped from the vehicle, knowing the drill, held up the DVD for the camera to see, and, presumably for the Technician’s recognition software to do its magic, confirming their identities.

  Soon, two guards with Uzis came out and whisked them inside through the stucco façade of the house and all the way into a secure chamber in the basement where the technician was waiting.

  “What do you have for me, boys?”

  “Sir,” Mansur said. “We have a special video from Mullah Rahman who reports that progress is going very well.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” the Technician said. “How much is he asking for?”

  Mansur and Kamil exchanged glances, a bad move they knew.

  “How much?” This was another voice, from the recesses. Mansur knew this was the voice of the man who handled the finances. He was rarely seen in public and even Mansur and Kamil had only seen the back of his head in the dark. He was even now seated in a high back chair facing away from them apparently staring at a bookcase full of bound volumes.

  �
�Two million,” Mansur said. He choked out the words though, as if he couldn’t even believe them.

  The Technician laughed.

  “Really?” It came out more as a sneer. “And what might Rahman have captured for two million?”

  Mansur felt a flash of anger, as he knew that at least Mullah Rahman fought for the cause while these men lived in plush homes like this one, sending young Muslims from around the world to their deaths.

  “I will let you be the judge, sir. Mullah Rahman believes you will be fully satisfied, in shallah.”

  The Technician snatched the DVD from Mansur’s hand and said, “You are dismissed for now.”

  Mansur and Kamil were escorted by the Uzi carrying bouncers into an anteroom filled with a fully stocked bar, a large cigar humidor, and a large screen television. They waited fifteen tense minutes, wondering if they were going to be shot. The Uzi men reappeared, not that they had gone far, and brought the two men back into the basement library, as Mansur called it.

  “Here is one million,” the Technician said, handing a bag of U.S. dollars to Mansur. “Is this the only copy?”

  Mansur grasped the bag, feeling the heft of one million dollars.

  “The only DVD. Of course, Mullah Rahman has the original.”

  “Of course. Tell Mullah Rahman he did well and that while the video may well be worth two million, all we had available for now is one million and we will take the second million under advisement.”

  Mansur knew that this meant Rahman would not get the second million, but one million was twice as much as they had ever carried, so this was new territory for them.

  “I will pass the message.”

  The Uzis escorted Mansur and Kamil back to their Chevy Blazer where they would reverse their route.

  Then Mansur spoke.

  “I have a better idea.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Spartanburg, South Carolina

  Thursday Evening (Eastern Time)

  “Your plan might work, but you better watch your ass,” Nina Hastings spat. She was walking now, bright yellow blouse shifting against the white clam diggers, sounding like the rustle of insects on a tile floor. “You let this get away from you, it will all be for naught.”

  “I’m already ahead of you on this, Mama.” Melanie Garrett stood her ground, perhaps out of pure exhaustion. There was the possibility that she was afraid to back down. Her mother was a violent person, though not physically so. Mental torture and gamesmanship were her areas of expertise. And while Melanie had willingly been the alternate cop to whatever her mother had chosen with respect to Amanda, eighteen years of shifting personalities and roles had taken their toll. She was, in fact, tired of the game, though still in it, still alive with the passion for making money the easy way.

  “How so?”

  As if on cue, the doorbell rang. Melanie smoothed her pink jumpsuit; had it been orange she may have been mistaken for an escaped convict. The white coral necklace hanging loose around her neck accented the outfit.

  Opening the door, Melanie saw a tall, handsome man with blond hair, a strikingly pretty woman with hair the color of a setting sun, and two children who appeared to be twins.

  “Hey, y’all, come on in.” Melanie was cheerful. “I’m glad you could see the place before it goes on the market tomorrow.”

  “Hi, I’m John and this is Laura. This is Sam and Sally.” Nina watched the husband speak and then look at his wife, who spoke next.

  “Well, we have the same agent, it appears. Tad Johnson gave us a heads-up you might be selling. We are interested in a premarket viewing.”

  “Hi, I’m Nina, Melanie’s mother. We’re so happy to see you.” Two good cops, a role they could both play until the time was necessary to mix it up, get them off balance.

  After thirty minutes of touring the house, the yard, the garage, and back through the house, the children were already picking bedrooms.

  “We’re ready to make an offer. We understand that you’re asking three hundred and ninety thousand, is that correct?”

  Melanie paused, looking at her mother. “Well, we hadn’t actually listed a price yet. I think the assessment is going to come in more around the four hundred and twenty thousand range,” she countered.

  Melanie watched the husband and wife look at one another with a knowing glance, as if they’d been down this road so many times. Before they could think, Back to the drawing board, Nina intervened. The real-estate markets in the greater Charlotte and Spartanburg areas seemed to be bouncing back and getting in premarket was the way to go, for sure. But it gave the seller some leverage.

  “So I think we can reach some kind of agreement between what you heard and what we think the assessment will be,” Nina offered.

  New life came to the couple’s eyes. “We can’t go over four o five.”

  “We really need four ten,” Melanie countered again.

  The twins came running into the house from the backyard. “Mommy, Daddy, you have to see the pool in the back! I want to go for a swim right now!”

  Resigned, Laura looked at John and said, “I’ll probably be able to get a raise after six months of teaching. Coke promised you a review after a year.”

  He nodded, and then she turned to Melanie and Nina. “Four ten it is, but we want to sign a contract right now. We will put down the earnest money today, and we want to close in a week.”

  Melanie and Nina exchanged glances. They had made $15,000 more than they thought that they could get on the house, and it was just too easy, like everything they did. Closing within the week, no problem. They had bigger plans. Doing the math, Melanie calculated that with the money they would net on the house after paying down the mortgage plus the $500,000 from Zach’s life insurance, she was $240,000 away from owning a mansion on Lake Keowee. She determined she could do that with some effort.

  “Tad gave us these papers to sign if we got a quick contract. We can give him a call and get him over here, if necessary.”

  “I don’t think it will be a problem. Tad said that if you made an offer we could sign the contract, and that he would expedite everything from there,” Melanie said, taking the documents. She spent about five minutes reading through the offer. In big, bold letters on each page were the words, “This contract is binding and irrevocable upon signature of both parties and transfer of good faith earnest money equal to 10% of the agreed upon price.”

  No getting out of it, but she didn’t think she’d be able to get a better price for the house.

  “You’re ready to give me $41,000?”

  “Checkbook right here,” Laura said, retrieving the billfold from her purse. Placing the checkbook on the kitchen island she pulled out a pen. “Make it out to?” she asked with gritted teeth. She held the top of the pen in her lips.

  “Melanie Garrett.”

  She finished signing, tore the check from the book, and handed it to Melanie, who studied it for a second. Laura handed her the pen as if to say, “Okay, it’s your turn.”

  Melanie took the pen, looked at it, and then said, “Well, here goes.”

  After filling in the blanks for the agreed-upon purchase price and what appliances would convey, she signed the document, and handed the pen back to Laura. John and Laura completed the transaction with their signatures.

  The deal was done.

  Nina watched her daughter follow the couple out of the house and walk them to their car. Nightfall was approaching with a gray hue. Melanie waved as they departed and then opened the door to her Mercedes. The top pulled back on the car to reveal her daughter looking in the mirror, smacking her lips, and then inserting the key.

  Nina knew exactly where she was going. It would be about an hour roundtrip, at least, for Melanie to go to the mansion on Lake Keowee, stare at it for a while, and then return.

  She walked into Amanda’s room and called out her name. After checking the entire house, she became concerned. Returning to Amanda’s room, Nina entered the password to her computer and scanned he
r e-mail inbox. Seeing nothing of import, she clicked on the Sent folder. Immediately she saw written in bold black letters, “Tomorrow.”

  She opened the e-mail that Amanda had sent less than an hour ago.

  After reading it, she quickly retrieved her cell phone. Punching speed dial, she listened as Del Dangurs picked up on the first ring.

  “How soon can you get here?”

  “I’m about five minutes out, why?”

  “It’s happening.”

  She hung up the phone without saying good-bye. She turned and looked in the foyer. She would have many memories from this house, though none that would matter much to her. Life moved along objectively for Nina Hastings. One chess move at a time.

  She looked up at the second-floor landing and knew what she was going to do. Swiftly moving upstairs, she changed into something more provocative and came back down about the time Del Dangurs was ringing the doorbell.

  “Come on in,” she said in a hoarse Mae West voice.

  “Whoah, Gabrielle, not here! What are you thinking?”

  “Just do what I say, slave.” She grabbed him by his lapel and kissed him hard on the lips. She may have been fifty-nine years old, but she could turn it on when she needed to. “You said you wanted some risk in your life. Well, here it is.”

  “I just usually prefer women much younger,” Del responded, Nina still holding on to him.

  She smacked him across the face. “I can see you want to play it rough. Is that what you want?” Again, she smacked him and then ran her hand up his thigh. “You like that?” she whispered in his ear, then bit his lobe hard.

  “I do,” he said with a smile.

  She guided him upstairs into Melanie’s bedroom and pushed him down on the bed. Pulling down the bustier she had snatched from her daughter’s bureau, she disrobed. She fumbled with Del’s belt buckle and then made quick work of the rest of his clothes. For thirty minutes she pleased him in every way possible.