The Blowback Protocol

by Lars Emmerich

  Hayward looked out the aircraft window and shook his head. His eyes burned, his skull pounded, and his broken arm throbbed. He was still having trouble digesting all that had happened over the past week, still struggling to view it as reality.

  Mild turbulence rocked the business jet as Kirksman guided it into a shallow, sweeping turn toward the runway. Hayward looked at his watch, willing it to stop, to just slow down a little, willing the rest of the world to hold still just long enough for him to reach Katrin before it was too late.

  Was it already too late? It gnawed at him, a jagged pain he felt in his gut that grew worse as the seconds ticked away.

  Another thought assaulted him. The CIA knew of his love for Katrin, and they had to know he might go to great lengths to find her. Would they have anticipated this move? Would they be waiting for him? His pulse quickened as he struggled with the implications.

  “Buckle up, big fellow.” Kirksman’s awful English sounded even worse over the cabin speakers. Hayward had no idea how the air traffic controllers understood the Malaysian man’s chirping, singsong bastardizations. “I can’t wait to find me a beautiful little Spanish lady,” Kirksman said. “Make big boom-boom, bro!” He cackled into the mic.

  Hayward wasn’t in the mood.

  Kirksman taxied the private jet up to a private terminal in a quiet corner of Seville’s international airport. Hayward disembarked and Kirksman promised to remain available should a hasty departure be required. For a price, of course.

  The rental car was waiting for him, just as Kirksman had promised. Hayward navigated the airport’s labyrinthine traffic pattern, found the exit, followed his internal map of the city and avoided programming anything into the rental car’s GPS device. It was always best to leave as little evidence as possible.

  He found a parking spot on a busy street in a rough part of town. From there he walked over a mile to a particular laundromat, where he met the proprietor in the back office. Hayward parted with several crisp hundreds—paper currency still went a long way in some places—and received in return an Android smartphone and a Beretta 9mm, a heavy, gorgeous, well-made pistol, this example lacking only a serial number. “Clean as whistle,” the laundry proprietor said with a proud smile, handing over a box of hollow-point rounds to finish the deal. Hayward nodded his thanks and left.

  He bought food from a street vendor, but he lacked the stomach to eat. He stopped and doubled back and looped around several times to be sure he wasn’t being followed, trying like mad not to allow the desperate hurry he felt in his gut to show through in his gait. Satisfied he hadn’t picked up a tail, he returned to his rental car and drove to the Ferdinand-Xavier residence.

  15

  The estate was sprawling. Hayward was astonished there was so much money in . . . chemistry. Not banking, or politics, or tech, or video games, or fashion, or organized crime, but chemistry. It seemed so yesteryear.

  But Joao Ferdinand-Xavier had certainly done well for himself, coaxing atoms to rearrange themselves into ever-more improbable and ever-more useful configurations. It struck Hayward as more than a little odd; Joao was a Portuguese man who co-founded a Spanish chemical company, which opened an office in Singapore. There wasn’t much connection between any of the countries, but he supposed that was how life worked. Plenty of randomness. But that randomness—a Portuguese nerd and a middle daughter from a line of fading Spanish aristocracy—had produced a staggeringly beautiful and fiery blonde woman named Katrin.

  It was that kind of randomness that had brought a newly sober American access agent into orbit around the burgeoning Ferdinand-Xavier empire, which, for no good reason Hayward could conjure, had meant the end of a perfectly good burgeoning empire.

  The estate was well lit, a distant glow emanating from what Maria, Katrin’s mother, referred to with gentle irony as “the garden.” Forest was a much more apt description. It was easily a dozen acres of mature growth, slightly overgrown in spots, but otherwise well-tended.

  The gate was closed. There was no one at the guardhouse. On one of his prior visits, Hayward had taken pains to discover the brand of the automatic gate opener, which also told him the universal override code. He attached an infrared converter to the portal on the Android, summoned an app with his forefinger, punched in the code, and waited for a very long second before the gate—“JFX” written in gaudy iron script—rattled and meandered from rest.

  Hayward knew that he was featured on numerous security camera feeds inside the guard shack and inside the main estate’s security room, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. There wasn’t a clear avenue of approach from any angle, as far as he knew, and traipsing through the forest in the hopes of achieving some small element of surprise was a non-starter. Too many hours had elapsed already and he couldn’t bear to waste any more time.

  He couldn’t bring himself to abandon all hope that Katrin and her family might be inside, but he knew the odds were slim, and he still hadn’t thought of a better starting point. The Ferdinand-Xavier estate was sprawling, isolated, and difficult to penetrate. It was a great place to keep hostages under guard, and perhaps the Agency goons had given in to the temptation to hole up there with their quarry. If so, maybe his grand entrance would prove useful as a distraction. Maybe the Ferdinand-Xavier family could use it to free themselves, or at least to gain some small advantage as he fought his way to them.

  And he had no doubt that it would be a fight.

  His stomach grew tighter as he steered the car along the narrow drive through the forest, light from the estate growing brighter, diffuse hues becoming discrete sources behind windows and glass doors and alongside balconies and verandas.

  Forest gave way to an expanse of well-manicured lawn. Hayward scanned for sentries. He held the pistol in his left hand, the one attached to his broken arm. His right hand worked the steering wheel. A futile gesture, really, holding a gun in a useless arm, and it would probably cost him extra time to switch hands if he suddenly needed to use the gun, but its cold weight and precise lines felt comforting.

  It was a calm evening with very little breeze, even atop the highest hill for miles, and no motion caught his eye. No people, no animals, no swaying limbs. Nothing but lights blazing away in what looked to be an otherwise empty house.

  He took the roundabout, the private road’s terminus, and stopped at the foot of the imposing concrete staircase. He left the car in drive, pressing his foot on the brake, and waited.

  Surely, someone would do something. Someone would emerge from the house, which would be far preferable to him knocking on the door and stepping inside into an unknown situation with an unknown number of assholes pointing an unknown number of weapons at him.

  But nothing happened, aside from the expiration of his patience. Operational caution lasted only so long in the face of Hayward’s desperation to find Katrin.

  He moved the shifter to park, killed the ignition, extracted himself stiffly from the car, took his gun in his good hand, walked up the stairs, took a steadying breath, and rang the bell.

  Three chimes sounded in succession beyond the door. He listened for the sounds of feet on floors or creaking stairs, but only heard the blood pounding through his body, his pulse at jackhammer pace.

  He was keenly aware of his recklessness. Showing up alone and debilitated, taking no time to reconnoiter or plan, ringing the front doorbell—it was all madness. But survival wasn’t his aim. Katrin’s survival was, and the odds grew uglier with each passing minute.

  He rang the bell again. Could it be that they didn’t hear the chimes the first time? Doubtful. They were making him come to them. They were controlling variables. It was what they did. It was what he did.

  He held his breath and tried the door. Locked. He took a few paces to the left toward a large picture window that presided over the forest and the lights of the city below. He listened again for signs of movement beyond. Still nothing.

  Time to make a move. He reared back, swung his cast like a
club, felt the glass give and shatter, and shielded his face from flying shards. He widened the hole by sticking his booted foot through and planted it firmly on the hardwood inside. Glass crunched beneath his weight as he stepped through the opening and darted to the far wall, gun raised, heart pounding, awaiting the inevitable onslaught.

  Silence. Hayward heard only the sounds of emptiness inside the house. It was well lit, well appointed, full of expensive and tasteful things, but empty of people.

  Hayward carefully searched the estate. Dozens of rooms. How many buckets of chemicals did it take to finance this joint? It wasn’t the first time Hayward had wondered. It wasn’t the first time he’d marveled at what Joao and Maria Ferdinand-Xavier had built together.

  He expected to find Katrin’s body at any moment, to stumble upon her, twisted and bloody and defiled and lifeless, and he opened each door with palpable dread.

  But he found nothing. There were no signs of struggle. Nothing missing, as far as he could tell, not that he kept an accurate inventory of the Ferdinand-Xaviers’ many possessions.

  Then it dawned on him that all of this made sense, on a certain level. They weren’t after Joao’s tchotchkes or any of his prized collectibles. Or even his bank account. They were after something much less tangible but much more valuable.

  Memories of stolen kisses and brief, affectionate touches assaulted him as he searched the mansion. Katrin was from a conservative family, and the pair kept their physical contact to a minimum under her parents’ roof, but she made her feelings for him quite clear during brief, furtive, private moments.

  Hayward had no idea how long it took him to search the mansion, but it was a long time, and he grew impatient as he rushed to finish the job.

  Almost finished the job. How could he have forgotten the wine cellar? Full of forbidden fruit, expensive vintages he’d never tasted or even sniffed, so tenuous was his hold on the straight-and-narrow.

  Hayward turned the handle to the cellar door. Like everywhere else in the house, the lights were on. He descended the curved staircase slowly, grateful for the silence of the solid stone steps beneath his feet.

  Then he froze. Crimson on the floor in the corner against the far wall. He could taste the metallic tang on his tongue as he drew nearer. Motherfuckers. Murderous rage threatened to erupt. His eyes darted, his grip tightened on the gun, his mind scratched and clawed for another explanation, any explanation other than the obvious reality: blood. It was still wet in spots.

  Hers? He struggled to keep his thoughts from going there, from imagining the dark and despicable things that might have drawn Katrin’s blood from her body and spilled it on the cellar floor. Did that mean he hoped it was her father’s blood? Or her mother’s?

  Of course. Without a doubt, that was his hope, and he held onto it as he searched the rest of the cellar. Then he spotted it. Just a glint, out of place among the orderly rows of floor-to-ceiling bottles coated with a trace of dust, a shiny gold-and-silver gleam winking out from beneath a rack full of a particularly pricey vintage.

  He kneeled down and recognized the object before his hand closed around it. It belonged to her. It came from her. It had been on her body, maybe even in her hands, maybe just minutes earlier.

  A brooch. Understated, tasteful, exquisite, just like Katrin. Gold filigree formed flower petals and diamonds sparkled in the flower’s center. He held it to his lips. It smelled like metal and something else, something that stirred the ancient places of his brain. It smelled like warmth and softness and seduction and just a hint of wild, reckless abandon. It smelled like her.

  And suddenly, he knew where he had to go.

  16

  Hayward wound his way back down the mountain, pushing the small car’s suspension and brakes at every corner, his jaw set, his teeth grinding.

  He recalled a particular weekend. He and Katrin had left her father’s house and taken the very route he was currently traveling, heading toward the A92 for the two-hour drive to the Costa del Sol. The glittering brooch had caught his eye; Katrin explained that she’d bought it specially for their trip, a kind of memento in advance, because she knew they were going to have an amazing time together.

  They’d spent full days touring Phoenician ruins and art museums in Malaga, long evenings sampling the city’s cuisine, and long nights wrapped around each other in a ravenous, frantic, reckless embrace. It confirmed what he already knew. He needed her like a drug, and it had scared the hell out of him, because he was having a difficult time imagining a scenario with a happy ending.

  Night fell. Hayward pushed the car to its limits, well beyond the 120-kilometer-per-hour speed limit, praying he wouldn’t be intercepted by a traffic patrol but thankful for once that he was in Western Europe’s most corrupt nation. Almost all situations involving the police could be resolved instantly by making an appropriate cash donation.

  He wondered what Katrin’s clue was meant to lead him to. He wondered if it was a clue at all.

  At last, he arrived at the beachfront apartment. He used a credit card to defeat the lock. The Ferdinand-Xaviers’ beach getaway was empty and dark. He wondered whether he had gotten it wrong, misinterpreted what she’d meant by leaving the brooch, if she’d meant anything at all. Was it a mistake, or had it fallen off during . . . he couldn’t bring himself to imagine what they might have been doing to her.

  Gun drawn, he searched the place, turning on lights as he went. It smelled musty, full of stale sea air. He saw the plush sofa in the sitting room where he and Katrin had made love in the afternoons, and the overstuffed bed in the master suite where they’d awoken tangled in the sheets and each other. He felt pangs of loss and guilt. She hadn’t known that weekend what lay ahead of her. But he had known. At least, he thought he knew. He sure as hell didn’t think it would ever come to this.

  A picture hung ajar in the study. It caught his eye because everything else was in order. Slightly disused, unvisited in too long, but in order. He lifted the picture away from the wall and found a small metal door with a keypad in the center.

  He fished in his pocket for the badge with the Chinese characters and the Westerner’s face—Katrin’s face—and, on a hunch, swiped it against the key reader.

  The device beeped once. He typed the memorized code and held his breath. The latch released. He moved his hand to pull open the safe.

  An electric explosion detonated inside his skull. He heard, felt, smelled the blow. He crumpled in an unconscious heap.

  17

  The recent attack on the American delegation in Benghazi, Libya, didn’t quite hobble the US intelligence apparatus’ Libyan contingent, but it certainly didn’t help their cause. Administrators were the same the world over, and the intelligence community wasn’t immune to the kind of sterility—castration, some would say—that came with increasing rank. Add in a credible threat to daily operations and many managers became white-knuckled doomsayers, reluctant to authorize all but the most necessary forays into the native wilds.

  But there were still some necessary forays to be undertaken in the Libyan wilds, and the US State Department—an auxiliary arm of the US Intelligence Apparatus, though few would admit it publicly—did have a functioning intelligence presence in Tripoli.

  As Sam arrived in Libya’s largest city after a lengthy and unpleasant trip from Izmir, she received a report from Dan of all the American businessmen currently residing in Tripoli and other parts of the country. Many were legitimate businessmen performing real functions for the benefit of the multinationals who employed them. But many were not.

  The list of names Dan extracted from the State Department computers didn’t contain asterisks to denote agents under non-official cover (NOC) status, but it might as well have. It was the job titles. Libya contained a large contingent of rabid Muslims, with a rabid hate of all things Western, a fact that had the effect of levying a very heavy burden of personnel security on the Western firms doing business in the country. Because each position carried an associated
security cost, companies pared down their employee populations to the bare minimum. There were no fluffy corporate functionaries and factotums on the ground in Indian country, except for the ones imposed by the Central Intelligence Agency. Those individuals were carried on the payrolls of the firms for whom they ostensibly worked alongside the real employees. But they had job titles like “Director of Corporate Engagement,” and “Vice President of Innovation,” and “Special Assistant to the Chief of Plans.”

  It wasn’t hard to pick out the players, and Sam tucked in beside them like a remora next to an oblivious shark. With Dan’s long-distance help, she read their emails, listened in on their phone calls, and quickly worked her way toward what she was after: a friendly Libyan with knowledge of Natan El Anwar’s whereabouts. If their analysis was correct, Natan El Anwar was slated to replace the late Tariq Ezzat in the Doberman group’s hierarchy.

  Tariq Ezzat. The name conjured instant bile even before the images flashed before Sam’s eyes of the vile man’s last act on Earth, firing the shot that ripped a gaping hole in a young girl’s tender body as her mother helplessly watched.

  As Sam watched, too, also helpless, but ultimately responsible. Those two words—the words that had changed everything—had come from her mouth: Take him.

  Sam shook her head, tried to clear the persistent nightmare from her mind, turned her eyes back to the café across the street. Her mark was inside.

  She watched, tried to remain present and focused, but her mind kept returning to her predicament. The CIA seemed to have taken an interest in her. Avery Martinson, former CIA goon and all-around terrible person, had rattled her cage in Izmir shortly after her meeting with Mehmet Kocaoglu. She had listened in on CIA man Jim Price’s phone conversation with an unknown party, a call that seemed to center on Sam and ended with chilling instructions to “stop her.” A surveillance team had picked up her tail shortly thereafter, and it had taken a bit of effort to lose them.