Ethan turned back to Hazim. ‘Tell me about Abrahem Nassir. Everything you know; where he’s been, who’s funding him and what his plans are.’
Hazim sighed, his head hanging low.
‘I don’t know. All I can be sure of is that he is being funded by a wealthy benefactor, and that he is intending to travel to the United States. I overheard his people saying that they had allies, in Africa.’
‘Where in Africa?’ Ethan demanded.
‘Somalia.’
***
XX
American Consulate Building,
Garden Road, Hong Kong
The American Embassy in Hong Kong was perched at an awkward angle on a steep hillside surrounded by massive skyscrapers that overlooked the island’s north shore and Kowloon Bay beyond. It looked to Hannah as though it had been built as an afterthought, a subtle snub to the distant yet global power of the United States.
The FBI vehicle that had picked them up from Hong Kong International Airport on the island of Chek Lap Kok, a few kilometres east of Hong Kong, pulled into the Consulate Building and a set of steel gates opened to allow it through into the parking lot under the watchful eye of a security guard. Hannah got out, slightly dizzy with fatigue as she walked into the Consulate Building with Vaughn alongside her, and they were greeted immediately by an attache who guided them through the building.
‘You really think that these guys will have anything of use after all of these years?’ he asked Hannah as they walked.
‘The Chinese are voracious record keepers,’ Hannah replied, ‘and the offices here have paper logs going back decades. If we can link even a single operative to the abductions, we’ll have a lead. I guess it all boils down to the state of the remains.’
Director LeMay had provided them with a brief before they had boarded their flight from the United States. Although it had contained little in the way of details, Hannah now knew that a body had been found washed up on the shores of Kowloon a day before. That body belonged to a former National Security Agency officer who had been stationed in Hong Kong some two decades before and been missing ever since. Hannah did not know what the NSA’s operative was doing in Hong Kong at the time, but given that the territory had been handed back to Communist China by the United Kingdom in 1997, it seemed possible that the NSA and other government agencies had been clearing house of any sensitive documents and programs before the Chinese could access them.
The Consulate Building did not have its own mortuary – instead the local hospital where the autopsy had taken place under the Bureau’s control had shipped images of the remains to the Consulate for viewing purposes. Hannah and Vaughn were led to a small conference room on the second floor and sat down, the windows overlooking the road below and giving them a glimpse of the bay to the north between the high rise buildings glinting in the sunlight. The FBI had numerous offices worldwide situated in consulate buildings and US Embassies, termed legal attaches and used as staging posts for federal interests around the globe.
Within a few minutes, Special Agent Brad Hinkley strode into the room. A Texan attached to the Hong Kong office, he brandished his own swaggering style of greeting, all firm handshakes and hugs before he sat down opposite them.
‘So, what brings you folks all the way out here? Director LeMay said it was urgent and to do with the body we recovered yesterday.’
‘1997,’ Hannah replied. ‘Four computer experts from the National Security Agency were abducted from Kowloon Bay while on a boat trip to the islands, presumed held by the Chinese ever since. The event occurred just before Hong Kong was repatriated to the Chinese by the British, allowing Communist elements to move more freely through the city.’
Hinkley nodded. ‘The office at the time put everything it had into finding them, but they vanished without a trace. Of course China denied any involvement and put their disappearance down to drownings. The Consulate had been careful not to say how or where the operatives actually vanished from, so the fact that the Chinese were able to pinpoint the disappearances as being on the waters of Kowloon Bay said everything. I read the files and it was figured that in 1997, on the verge of receiving back their ownership of the island, China wouldn’t do anything rash with their new prize. Big mistake.’
‘Do you know anything about what these guys were working on?’ Vaughn asked.
‘Beats me,’ Hinkley said, ‘it’s all so classified that I can’t get close to it and neither could anybody here at the Consulate in 1997, but we do know that when they vanished they had something on their possession.’
‘How so?’ Vaughn asked.
‘Because half the damned US Special Operations Service descended on both this office and the NSA’s Hawaii base where the NSA guys were originally stationed. It’s a listening post that monitors China, Taiwan and some of Russia. They were looking for something after the abductions all right, but they never found it and left empty handed as far as I know.’
‘And now this body shows up,’ Hannah said. ‘What’s the story?’
Hinkley opened a file and spread it before them. Hannah looked down and saw images of a young man in his twenties, and the gruesomely decayed remnants of the corpse fished out of Kowloon Bay.
‘Stephen Ricard, age twenty seven years,’ Hinkley announced. ‘He was an analyst for the National Security Agency stationed at Hawaii and posted to Hong Kong to maintain an NSA watch station out of an apartment on the south shore along with three other agents. All were on the record as being employed by a local British IT company, and all attended work there while also performing their analysis of China’s growing computer and cell phone network. He vanished along with his three colleagues in 1997.’
‘Are you sure these remains are his?’ Vaughn asked.
‘The body was badly decomposed,’ Hinkley admitted, ‘and the teeth had been removed to hinder identification of the remains, something else that the Chinese would have reason to do and that wouldn’t occur in a straight forward drowning. However the autopsy confirmed that according to the Medical Examiner, despite appearances, Stephen had died or been placed in the water only a couple of months prior to his discovery due to the presence of marine growth inside his body tissue, specifically various kinds of algae and such like. Although his teeth had been yanked, four minor fractures in his tibia, fingers and ribs from a childhood accident remained visible under X–Ray and confirm the remains belong to Stephen. He also had a small tattoo of a Goldeneye logo, some sort of computer game based on the Bond movie, on his left shoulder which is also just visible in the images.’
Hannah nodded as she saw a dark smudge beneath the yellow and purple flesh, smeared with what appeared to be a mixture of foliage and raw sewage that had clung to the body from the bay’s frigid waters. The chances of the tattoo and the fractures both belonging to some other unfortunate soul floating in the bay were highly remote.
‘Cause of death?’ Vaughn asked.
‘Purportedly drowning,’ Hinkley said, ‘but several more things rule that out. Firstly, there was evidence of damage to the interior of the trachea, consistent with a tube being forced down Stephen’s throat to flood his lungs with seawater. Along with the limited level of decay, that supports a staged drowning. Secondly, it was the damage to the victim’s brain that the Medical Examiner believes killed him.’
‘The brain?’ Hannah asked.
‘Stephen had major trauma to his frontal lobes,’ Hinkley explained, ‘consistent with a foreign object being repeatedly inserted into his brain via his nasal cavity, which also showed signs of long–term damage. Whatever he endured at the hands of the Chinese it went on for a decade and a half and eventually killed him. The Chinese must then have dumped his body in the water and hoped the problem would float away and become fish food.’
‘Do we have any idea what they were putting into his brain?’ Vaughn asked, somewhat appalled.
‘No,’ Hinkley admitted, ‘but whatever it was left a basic impression on the interior of the nasal cavities,
which the Medical Examiner was able to scan and reproduce using a 3D–printer.’
Hinkley produced from his pocket a small plastic evidence bag, and inside it was a slim plastic cylinder barely an inch long. Hannah frowned as she looked at it.
‘Small, no identifying marks.’
‘Nothing that we could see,’ Hinkley confirmed, ‘but the brain’s tissue is not good at retaining impression from something so small. Still, whatever this is it seems to me to be central to what everybody’s out here looking for.’
‘Everybody?’ Hannah asked, confused. ‘I thought that we were the only people out here looking for this?’
‘There was some guy here this morning,’ Hinkley said, ‘big guy, African American. He was working for the FBI too.’
‘The FBI? But we’re here under LeMay’s direct orders. Who the hell else could there be working for the Barn out here?’
‘Beats me,’ Hinkley said, ‘but he was legitimate, had all the right credentials.’
Hannah shot Vaughn a concerned glance. ‘Do you have any CCTV of this person, a name? Anything?’
Hinkley shook his head.
‘The guy was an agency heavyweight, had priority access to the building through the car pool gates and carried enough authority to have the security systems disengaged down near the sally port. I had to meet him down there personally and talk this over with him.’
Hannah hissed a sigh out as she glanced out of the windows at the traffic outside.
‘What kind of vehicle was he driving?’ she asked.
Hinkley shrugged. ‘Limousine, private plates, tinted windows. Didn’t look like something the Barn would finance, but then this is Hong Kong. You kind of learn to expect anything.’
‘Mitchell,’ Hannah said to Vaughn. ‘He’s onto this as well.’
‘Could be a coincidence,’ Vaughn said without conviction. ‘But if he’s out here he may have the jump on us. He must be impersonating a federal agent.’
‘But then how would he get in here so easily?’ Hannah challenged.
‘If he’s high enough up the chain, he can go anywhere he wants,’ Hinkley said. ‘Who is he?’
Hannah stood up and shook Hinkley’s hand. ‘We’re working on that. If anything shows up in the paperwork regarding Stephen Ricard, please do forward it to us.’
‘Will do,’ Hinkley promised.
Hannah did not speak again until she reached the sidewalk outside the Consulate, the traffic noise helping to shield her conversation with Vaughn.
‘Mitchell’s chasing the same thing as us?’ Vaughn asked. ‘You think he’s on–side this time?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hannah replied. ‘If what Jarvis was suggesting is true then Mitchell is working for this Majestic Twelve, so presumably whatever the NSA lost out here will be something that they’re looking to acquire.’
‘So you’re buying Jarvis’s line now?’
‘Not exactly,’ Hannah replied, ‘but if Mitchell’s the enemy then it’s our job to get to this before he does.’
‘Or maybe he’s actually working for the FBI,’ Vaughn said, ‘which would mean that LeMay at the very least knows about him.’
Hannah stared at her partner. ‘Jarvis said we’d be hung out to dry.’
‘If Mitchell gets whatever it is LeMay wants first,’ Vaughn confirmed. ‘We don’t know that’s the case, but whatever the hell’s going on here our best bet is to beat Mitchell to whatever it is people are looking for out here.’
‘Mitchell must also have left the Consulate empty handed,’ Hannah said, ‘so what would be his next move?’
Vaughn glanced around them at the city and then toward Kowloon Bay.
‘If Stephen Ricard was only dumped a couple of weeks ago it’s possible we could find evidence of the boat that did it, although it’s a long shot with all the maritime traffic moving through the bay.’
‘We could check currents, work backwards from where the body was found to give us an idea of where the body was originally dumped.’
Vaughn winced. ‘There are too many variables and we don’t know exactly how the body was placed in the water. It could have been upstream somewhere on the mainland, not out in the bay.’
Hannah felt her shoulders slump as she realized that Vaughn was right. Without more details they couldn’t accurately plot the movements of the body, and that meant they couldn’t pinpoint where Stephen’s remains had entered the water. They had only one option left, and that was to let Mitchell do the work for them.
‘We’ll get traffic camera footage of the street out here and get the plate of Mitchell’s vehicle,’ she said finally. ‘Let’s find him instead and figure out what he’s got in mind.’
***
XXI
El Hur,
Somalia
‘Salaam, my friend.’
The old man greeted Abrahem with a warm embrace and held his shoulders firmly in his hands as he looked the younger man up and down in the darkness, the sound of waves crashing far behind them. Tariq Adel was elderly now but the fire of insurgency burned as brightly in his eyes as it had decades before in the killing fields of the Iran – Iraq war that had taken so many lives.
‘Every day, you make your father proud Abrahem,’ Tariq said. ‘He would have smiled upon you here as he smiles upon you now from Paradise.’
‘And I shall continue to do so, Tariq,’ Abrahem replied.
‘Come,’ the old man beckoned. ‘There is much to say.’
Abrahem followed Tariq up to the small village, an isolated group of low buildings huddled against the east African coast in the Harardhere District. Barren beaches stretched for miles to the north and south and there were no roads across the boundless desert wastes to the west. The village’s presence in the darkness was betrayed only by a handful of flickering fires, beacons in the absolute blackness around them.
Abrahem’s journey had been long, cramped aboard a tiny boat that had chugged its way out of the Persian Gulf and turned south along the coasts of Oman and Yemen, travelling through the night and all of the next day and then the following night also. The smell of grease, metal and smoke stained Abrahem’s clothes with the hated odour of western civilization, their love of oil and petroleum like an addiction surging through their veins. He was grateful for the fresh breezes billowing across the Somalian coast and rippling through his shirt as he followed Tariq to one of the larger buildings, built the old way from compacted earth that had been baked into bricks in the harsh sunlight. He wondered how many long centuries these homes had stood, lived in by people who had known nothing of the troubles that would face their ancestors.
Dark eyes watched him from the blackness, reflecting the firelight that glinted off the smooth metal of Kalashnikov AK–47 rifles slung over the shoulders of Islamist pirates. Their ancestors had likely also been men of the sea but fishermen, not the callous murderers who watched him now, devoid of any morsel of humanity. Abrahem could not say it out loud for he needed their assistance, but he despised their bigotry, their ignorance and their addiction to death and theft. To Abrahem they were no better than the infidel Americans.
The interior of the building was filled also with the smell of smoke, but this pungent cloud was wood smoke and seemed somehow clean compared to the chemical taint of the boat, which had sailed on south after delivering Abrahem at the pre–arranged location on Somalia’s dangerous shores. Fresh clothes awaited Abrahem and he changed eagerly as Tariq prepared food and drink for him nearby.
‘When will I be able to leave?’ Abrahem asked, and then realized what he was saying, offending his host. ‘I mean only that I have little time to complete my mission. The Americans will not be far behind me.’
Tariq smiled as he poured thick, sweet coffee and turned with a plate in his hand filled with meats, fruits and vegetables, the harvest of kings when compared to what little the unyielding soil of Somalia produced.
‘I know well what you mean,’ he replied as he handed the plate and the coffee to Abrahem.
‘As I know well what a rush the world is in these days, its people always thinking of tomorrow and never of today.’
Abrahem took the food gratefully as he sat down beside the fire, and with Tariq gave thanks to Allah for his safe journey and for the food before he began to eat.
‘The Americans never sleep,’ he replied, ‘they never cease activity, like machines. If I should falter or allow myself the comfort of sloth, they will be upon us.’
‘Then we shall deal with them then,’ Tariq replied without concern. ‘Now, it is time for rest. You have been successful so far?’
Abrahem nodded. ‘Everything is in place. The Americans will not know what has hit them. They will question everything that they are, all that they have become. They will never be the same again.’
‘Some would say that day has come and passed,’ Tariq replied, ‘during their World Trade Center attacks.’
Abrahem snarled.
‘Acts of cowardice! The killing of civilians, not soldiers. What men were they? They achieved nothing but to provoke America to rape and pillage across our lands in return! They claimed to have killed Americans in Allah’s name, but their own countrymen were bombed in their millions and all for America’s damned black oil!’
Tariq watched Abrahem for a long moment as he ate.
‘We strike back as we can,’ he replied finally. ‘We do not have armies and jets and bombs like the Americans. Open battle is not a possibility for us.’
‘It’s not the fight that matters,’ Abrahem smiled grimly, ‘but the outcome. The trade center attacks destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan. They provoked our own leaders to hunt down Al–Qaeda, to kill Sheik Bin–Laden, to persecute our people while they profited from the fruits of our lands. Our lands. Do you know, Tariq, how many children’s bodies I dug from the rubble of Basra and Baghdad after the American raids?’
Tariq closed his eyes and did not respond.
‘Babies,’ Abrahem murmured, his eyes glazed, ‘their bodies burned to powder or torn to shreds. My own family…’
The Identity Mine (Warner & Lopez Book 3) Page 13