by Blake Banner
I closed the front door silently and held it in place with my foot, aiming the Maxim at the upper-middle of the living room door. It opened suddenly and there was a startled man staring at me. He was unmistakably Afghan, with a long robe, a hat and a straggly beard. I adjusted slightly to the right and shot him through the throat, dead center. There was a spray of gore out the back of his neck, but he remained motionless. I moved up fast, pushed him aside and stepped into the living room.
It was large, spacious and practically bare. The floors were carpeted in cheap synthetic fabric. There was an IKEA sofa, a couple of chairs and a freestanding TV. There was not much else besides, except another Afghan getting to his feet with wide eyes and flapping hands.
I didn’t stop moving. I reached him in two strides and, holding the gun in my left hand, I smashed a right hook into his jaw that sent him groaning to the floor. There I knelt on his right arm, which must have been painful, and stuck the big, ugly Maxim in his groin, which must have been alarming. He was whimpering, confused and very frightened. I said:
“Mohammed Ben-Amini, ‘ayn?” Which means, “where”?’
He shook his head feverishly, trying to brush the gun away from his groin, repeating, “Ana la ‘aerif! Ana la ‘aerif! Uqsim biallah! Uqsim biallah! Ashfaq! Ana la ‘aerif, uqsim. Arhamni ealaa Allah!”
All of which meant pretty much, “I don’t know, I swear by Allah, please have pity on me.”
I took his hat, stuffed it in his mouth and put a 9mm round through his knee. He screamed hard. His neck welled up and he turned very dark red. I wanted to feel compassion, but all I could think of was the children these bastards had raped and murdered in front of their parents; and the dazed, exhausted horror of the children’s eyes as they watched their parents butchered. The nightmares that did not let me sleep, now robbed me of my compassion. I leaned down into his face and repeated my question:
“Mohammed Ben-Amini, ‘ayn?”
He gibbered and shook his head. I took the hat out of his mouth and he sobbed.
“Ana la ‘aerif! Ana la ‘aerif! Arhamni ealaa Allah!”
He wanted me to have pity. Pity came, in the end, in the form of a 9mm slug between his eyes. Then his suffering stopped. I wondered for a moment, thinking about the horror those villagers endured, how much suffering has murder stopped? Theirs had ended with their deaths, but I carried their suffering with me, into every dark hour of the night.
I crossed the room quickly, back into the hall, wiped away my prints, pulled the door closed and slipped down the stairs and back out into the street. I was aware I was sweating and the air felt suddenly chill. I walked slowly, keeping out of the light of the streetlamps, with my hands in my pockets, and entered the Au Bois D’Acacia smiling like a man who has achieved something.
Mary had finished her swordfish but looked queasy. I offered her a big, cheerful smile, which she accepted only half-heartedly. I called over the waitress and told her we’d have two espressos and two cognacs. Mary looked like she needed one, and I knew for damn sure that I did.
“What happened?”
“You’d better get a grip, sister. You look like you just saw the ghost of my great-aunt Augusta.”
“Your who?”
“My great-aunt Augusta,” I said. “She was a bit like Obi-Wan Kenobi. Terrifying in life, but even worse after death.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Even so, you need to get a grip. Now smile and tell me you love me.”
She closed her eyes and after a moment opened them and sighed loudly. “Darling,” she said. “I love you far less than you might hope, but far more than you deserve, and I dearly hope I never have to set eyes on you again.”
The waitress delivered our coffee and cognac and I took a hefty pull on the spirit and smacked my lips.
“That is in fact the nicest thing anyone has said to me all day. He wasn’t there. There were two Afghans. They are no longer with us, and they were not able to provide any useful information. Did you hear from your people?”
She shook her head and drained half her drink. “I don’t think I can keep this charade up much longer. Can we leave, please?”
I leaned back in my chair, smiling like she’d said something cute.
“Of course, sweetheart, but I am going to give you one final warning. Get a grip. If anyone notices the state you’re in, fifty yards from where those guys are going to be discovered tomorrow, and they put two and two together, they will make four. So you’d better reframe, sister, and do whatever it takes to look normal. Start laughing and get some color in your cheeks, or I am going to have to give you a spanking.”
It did the trick. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes got bright.
“You are a Neanderthal!”
“Whatever it takes, honey. Now start laughing and we can leave here arm in arm, like a normal couple.”
It was hard, I could see she was struggling, but she leaned across the table smiling and put her index finger on my nose. “When are you leaving, dumpling?”
“I don’t know, sugarplum. I have to talk to Buddy.”
“I sure hope it’s soon.”
“Me? I’ll miss you and all the nice things you say. Let’s go.”
I paid the bill and we left, arm in arm like a loving couple. As we made our way toward her car I said, “Give me the keys.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you’re in shock and any minute now you’ll get very cold, start shivering and you’ll want to go to sleep.”
“I’m not in shock! I didn’t even see what you did. I just feel queasy, that’s all.”
“Keys.”
She must have secretly been grateful, because she opened her bag and put them in my hand. Then she squeezed my arm.
“Where are we going?”
“To my hotel room.”
“Why?”
“To talk to Buddy. Why else?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and sounded suddenly drunk. “You’re such a bad man, I thought maybe you wanted to have your evil way with me.”
“I do,” I said, and opened the car. “But I want you to be conscious when I do it.”
We climbed in and slammed the doors. “God I hate you,” she said. But she didn’t sound like she meant it.
Chapter Eleven
The concierge carefully studied his screen as I walked Mary through the lobby to the elevators. Once the doors had hissed closed on us she draped her arms around me and rested her head on my shoulder. Her breath was warm and slightly moist on my neck and my ear as she muttered, “What the hell is wrong with me?”
I didn’t tell her I was about to ask Brigadier Buddy Byrd the same damn question. The elevator doors hissed open and I half carried her to my door, slipped the key in the lock and bundled her inside. I transferred the key from the door to the housing on the wall that made the lights work, let the door clunk closed and picked her up bodily. I carried her to the bed, took off her shoes and slid her under the covers. She turned over and began to snore softly.
I pulled out the cell they had given me at Cobra and called the brigadier. He answered on the first ring.
“Yes, Bauer, report.”
“Before I do that, I need to ask you about Mary Brown.”
He was quiet for a minute, then, “What about her?”
“She’s passed out in my bed.”
“Have you had intercourse?”
“No. She freaked out when I went to do the job. I think she’s in shock. There is no way this girl is fit for field work…”
“She is a brilliant analyst. She is not supposed to do field work. Why was she with you?”
“She was showing me where the house was.”
“Couldn’t she do that on a map?”
“Sir, I expect that if I have a contact on a mission they will be professional.”
“She is, highly professional. But she is not intended to do field work. Has she compromised the mission?”
I thought about it, looking
out over the rooftops of Paris toward the Seine, and sighed. “No, but it came damn close.”
“Did you do the job?”
“No. And we have a problem.”
“Explain.”
“Mohammed Ben-Amini was not there. Two of his boys were. I killed both of them, but I had a talk with one of them first. I was persuasive, but he swore he had no idea where Ben-Amini was. Meantime, the Firm has been having some interesting visitors to the safe house, including two Yemeni businessmen in very expensive suits, and a Mexican…”
“The incident in the diplomatic car.”
“One thing Mary Brown did point out before she went to pieces, this could be al-Qaeda moving into a growing power vacuum. They have a strong base in Yemen, and as we move out of Afghanistan, we’re leaving a power vacuum there, too, which they may be aiming to fill. And like she pointed out, one thing Mexico and Afghanistan have in common is poppies.”
“All right, but that’s not your job, Bauer.”
“Whose is it,” I snarled, “the CIA’s? They are the guys providing a venue for these meetings.”
“We don’t know that.”
“But we do know that there were agents in the apartment when this guy showed up.”
“Do we know he went to the apartment?”
I hesitated. “No. But we don’t know he didn’t either. Mary sent the photographs off for facial recognition, but we haven’t had a reply yet.”
“I know, Bauer,” he said dryly. “I am in the loop.” He was quiet for a moment. Then said, “All right, I want you to stay on task. If we haven’t had an ID by tomorrow morning I want you on the next flight to LA. Meantime I’ll have a talk with Gina and see what’s going on with that apartment.”
“Gina?”
“The director.”
“Right. And sir, Mary…”
“You made your point, Harry.”
“Good. If I haven’t heard from you by nine AM, I’ll book a flight.”
“Good.” He chuckled then. “Enjoy your night on the sofa.”
He hung up and I leaned my ass on the windowsill while I watched Mary sleeping comfortably in the middle of the bed.
Then her phone pinged.
I went to her bag and pulled it out. It was an iPhone 11. I showed it her face and it unlocked. It was an e-mail from somebody called Pete. It just said:
“Mustache, Hussein Saleh, board of directors Consolidated Yemeni Oil; clean shaven, Captain Jaden Abdullah of the Yemeni Air Force; non-Arab, Bernardo Muller, Mexican Embassy attaché, known to have connections with ‘El Mayo,’ Ismael Zambada, head of the Sinaloa Cartel.”
That was the extent of the e-mail. I closed it, marked it unread, wiped my prints and slipped it back in her bag.
I grunted and made my way to the bathroom where I had a cold-hot-cold shower, dried myself off and pulled on my shorts before returning to the bed. There I shoved Mary over to one side, muttering, “Make room,” at her. Finally I pulled the covers over me and switched off the light.
After a couple of minutes I heard a comfortable sigh and Mary Brown turned, grabbed me and put her head on my shoulder.
“You’re a son of a bitch,” she muttered.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“It’s OK, I sobered up.” It was a statement that should have been comforting, but wasn’t. She squeezed tighter and whispered in the dark. “I think you were right. It was mild shock combined with alcohol. But I feel a lot better now.” With that she gave me a kiss on the neck and said, “I can’t sleep dressed.”
Then she was sitting up and pulling off her small black dress, and underneath it there was just the soft luminescence of her pale skin.
* * *
In the morning she smiled at me from the bed as I stepped out of the bathroom, toweling myself dry.
“Good morning, you son of a bitch.”
“This is why Freud called you the Dark Continent.”
“Yeah, but what the hell did he know?”
I sat on the bed and started pulling on my socks. “You got a ping last night.”
She sat up and draped herself over my back with her arms around my neck.
“I got more than that, as I recall.”
I kissed her and stood to pull on my pants. “On your phone. It might be a response to the facial recognition request.”
She regarded me with baleful, hooded eyes and reached for her bag.
“Wham bam, thank you ma’am, huh?”
I gave my head a small shake and pulled on my shirt. “I spoke to Buddy last night while you were sleeping. He said if we had no response by nine AM I should get the next flight to LA.”
“Oh…” She watched me in silence for a moment, then unlocked her phone and opened the e-mail.
“What does it say?”
“You were right. They’re Yemeni, big shots too. The guy with the mustache is Hussein Saleh. I know the name. His full name is Hussein bin Saleh Al-Saud. He’s related to the Saudi royal family. He’s also on the board of directors of Consolidated Yemeni Oil. The other guy is Captain Jaden Abdullah, he’s Yemeni Air Force. The third guy is Bernardo Muller. Shit! I thought I recognized his face. He’s a recent Mexican Embassy attaché, known to have connections with Ismael Zambada, ‘El Mayo,’ the new head of the Sinaloa Cartel. He’s the liaison between Zambada and the national government. He rarely leaves Mexico. Now suddenly he’s here in Paris.”
She swung her legs out of bed and stared at me. For a moment it was hard to focus on Zambada. I picked up her dress and threw it at her.
“Get dressed. Let’s have breakfast.”
“What the hell are they doing?”
“A deal. Drugs for arms. It has to be something like that.”
“Yemen has no drugs production capability, and it has barely enough arms for its own conflict.” She stood, apparently unaware that she was stark naked. “Which brings us to Afghanistan, but then why was Mohammed Ben-Amini not there?”
“I don’t know. Get dressed, will you?”
“What’s the hurry? We got our IDs.” She went to the bathroom and stopped in the doorway, turned back and pointed at me. “I’ll tell you why Ben-Amini wasn’t there. Because the CIA were speaking on his behalf.”
“What? That’s insane…”
“Is it? Does the name Oliver North ring any bells?”
She closed the door and a moment later I heard the water hissing. I went to the window and stood looking down, unseeing, at the street below. The CIA speaking on behalf of Mohammed Ben-Amini in a deal with al-Qaeda and Sinaloa. It made no sense. What benefit did the Agency get from such a deal? It was hard enough to see the gain to either al-Qaeda or Sinaloa, but it was impossible to see the benefit to the CIA.
Unless I was missing something.
She came out of the bathroom ten minutes later, still naked and toweling her hair. I turned back to the window and spoke to the rooftops.
“What am I missing?”
“Why won’t you look at me? Was last night such a big mistake?”
“I’m trying to focus. I haven’t much time and this looks like a big deal. No, it wasn’t a mistake. But this isn’t the time.”
She didn’t answer, but I could hear the rustle of clothes. Finally she said, “On the face of it, al-Qaeda needs weapons, but not drugs. Sinaloa has a lot of drugs and a lot of weapons. So there is no immediate marriage of supply and demand there. It’s true that if they joined forces, they could cause a lot of damage to the USA, and the rest of the Western world, but where is the benefit to Sinaloa? Sinaloa needs a rich, prosperous USA to buy its drugs, right? I would need time to think this through.”
I turned to face her. She was dressed and was combing her hair. She was no less distracting.
“Are we talking about weaponizing drugs?”
She shrugged. “It’s possible. The Russians contemplated it during the Cold War. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. Apart from a handful of drugs like heroin, most substances are not that addictive, un
less you have an addictive personality. Also, it’s a slow, pervasive attack on the fabric of society, rather than the big, dramatic kind of violence that al-Qaeda likes to go for. I don’t think this is about weaponizing drugs, and I don’t think it’s exactly a drugs for weapons deal. Obviously drugs and weapons are going to play a part, but that is not what this is about.”
“What is it about, then?”
“I don’t know. I need to talk to somebody…”
“Who?”
She took lipstick from her bag and started painting her lips. “Need to know, cowboy.”
She was mad at me and hiding it badly. “You can’t talk to the Agency about this, Mary. We don’t know who’s involved, or how.”
She put away her makeup and came over to stand in front of me, real close. “You do your job, Harry, and I’ll do mine. If you have to leave, give me a call before you go. Otherwise, we’ll meet this evening. I think we could both use some distraction.”
She kissed me on the cheek and walked out, closing the door behind her and leaving the smell of her perfume and a very empty space.
I checked my watch. It was nine thirty. I’d had no word from the brigadier. He must know by now that I had the information about the people at the CIA’s safe house. So why wasn’t he giving me instructions? Did he want me to go after Hussein Saleh, Captain Jaden Abdullah and/or Bernardo Muller? Did we have a change of target? Or was he leaving it up to me?
I felt a sudden flush of anger. It was unprofessional. And lack of professionalism led to people getting hurt and killed.
I picked up the phone and called the brigadier again.
“Yes. Don’t do this too often.”
“I need instructions. Are we changing targets? Should I go to LA? This feels sloppy.”
“Do nothing. I’m making inquiries. You’ll get instructions.”
“When?”
“Today. Take the day off. Relax. Enjoy Paris. Take Mary to lunch.”
“She’s making inquiries. She still consults with the Firm. I don’t like this situation, sir. It’s a mess.”
“No. Tell her not to do that. Call her. Tell her to stand down and do nothing. Get out of Paris for the day. Go to the beach or something.”