Sympathy For the Devil

by Terrence McCauley

  The idea of drinking coffee plucked from cat shit would’ve turned off most people, but Hicks had eaten worse things and would probably do so again before he was through.

  They stood in silence while the coffee brewed.

  After the carafe was filled, Roger led Hicks through a panel of sliding Chinese doors at the other end of the room and into a small parlor with furniture that looked more suitable to Versailles than a sex club on the west side of Manhattan. Roger took two coffee cups and saucers down from a cupboard and set them on the table between them. He poured Hicks a cup, then himself. The aroma was enough to give Hicks a jolt, but the taste even more so.

  “That is good,” Hicks remarked.

  Roger agreed. “At over one-hundred-fifty dollars a pound, it should be.”

  Hicks set his cup down on the saucer. “I know we make good money from this place, but we’re not making enough for you to be pissing away one-hundred-fifty dollars on coffee.”

  “Don’t be such a Republican. I get it as a gift from a client in Jakarta who has his own civet plantation. His tastes are a tad on the eccentric side whenever he comes to New York, so he always makes it a point to send me a couple of pounds when he can as an expression of gratitude.”

  Hicks didn’t want to think about the kind of sexual eccentricity warranted free samples of one-hundred-fifty dollar a pound coffee.

  Roger sat on a velvet-covered Ottoman and set his cup and saucer on the glass coffee table in front of him. “I got your email alert yesterday and it was disturbingly vague. What happened?”

  He gave Roger a quick rundown on Colin and Omar and everything that had happened in the park.

  “But Colin didn’t use,” Roger said. “He didn’t even drink.”

  “I know,” Hicks said. “I think they shot him up full of heroin to get him to talk. I don’t know if he told them about anything other than me, so it’s best that everyone in the Office be on their guard.”

  “A wise policy.” Roger looked at him, but not like he’d looked at him before. “I know you two were close. How are you dealing with it?”

  Emotions were an expense Hicks couldn’t afford yet. “By trying to find out Omar’s game. Until a couple of days ago, I thought he was nothing more than an amateur, but he’s a hell of a lot more organized than I thought.”

  “If he caught on to Colin, then I’d say you must’ve underestimated this Omar by quite a bit. What does our beloved Dean have to say about all this?”

  Hicks gave him another quick rundown on how everything had unfolded with Russo, Jason, and the Dean.

  “Ah, the serpentine path we tread to protect our great nation,” Roger said when Hicks was finished. “Crafty move about the hundred-thousand-dollar buy in, though. You knew the Dean would rear up at the expense.”

  “He let me have my way,” Hicks admitted. “I’m sure Jason lobbied hard to run the whole op himself, but all the trouble I went through to get the money was worth it to keep Jason out of our backyard. I’ll be damned if I’ll let that asshole run an op in my own city.”

  “Our Jason does love his palace intrigue, doesn’t he? The little shit.” Roger sipped his coffee. “Is he married? Straight?”

  “He’d have to be a human being first. I don’t think they programmed him with a personality before they sent him to our planet.”

  “Interesting.” Roger smiled over his coffee cup. “A week here might do him some good, then. Help him get in touch with the more intimate aspects of his nature. By the way, any idea about who they’re sending up to work Omar? A familiar face, I trust.”

  “No. Jason just sent me the guy’s profile while I was driving down here.” Hicks saved the best for last. “I think he’s a jailbird from Army Intelligence.”

  Roger laughed. “Doesn’t Jason know the ones who stay out of jail are much better than the ones who get caught?”

  “Either way, I’m stuck with him. Omar is panicked, and I don’t have anyone On Staff right now who can serve as a convincing emissary in such a short amount of time. And there’s no guarantees that you’d be able to get Omar to talk in time if we grab him.”

  “Oh, honey, I always get them to talk,” Roger said. “But the open-ended time element is troubling. Trapping him with money is a wise tactic. Flush him out. Lower his guard and nail him.”

  Hicks began to grow aggravated again, so he took another sip of coffee. He’d spent the morning killing people. He wanted a drink. He wanted a cigar. But he wouldn’t allow himself anything until the Asset was in place. He needed to stay pure if this was going to turn out the way it needed to.

  “I need you to stay frosty until further notice, Roger. That means no booze, no nose candy. None of that shit until this is settled. If I call, I’ll need you to right away.”

  Roger threw open his hands. “Have I ever refused you anything?” When he saw the joke fell flat, he added, “Anything at any time. You know that.”

  Hicks had known Roger long enough to know what he could do when he put his mind to it. And it was a comfort to have him around. “In the meantime, I’ve got Russo’s kid in my back seat and I need him to get the Treatment.”

  “Getting people sober isn’t my forte, but we have all the necessary accoutrements to get the job done. What’s the boy’s poison?”

  “Heroin. I need him straight because, with all my other money men possibly being compromised, I need his father’s head in the game and I can’t afford to have him worrying about his son. I’d appreciate you taking a look at him while I review the package Jason sent me on our new jailbird.”

  Roger drained the rest of his coffee and placed it on the saucer on the table. “Then I’d best see what I can do for him. How old is he, by the way?”

  “Twenty, I think.”

  Roger’s eyebrows rose. “He cute? Corruptible?”

  Hicks took out his handheld. “Goodbye, Roger.”

  THE MILITARY cops who were transporting his new asset told Hicks they’d be at the rendezvous point by two o’clock. Hicks was there by one-thirty.

  The meeting point was a small parking area near Chelsea Piers at Twenty-third Street and the Hudson River off the West Side Highway. Hicks chose it because it was a public area, outdoors and popular with joggers and dog walkers, even on a cold November afternoon with piles of snow still on the ground. It was the last place a spy book or movie would pick for such a meeting, which made it the perfect place for exactly that kind of meeting. People were easy to spot in abandoned or industrial places. They stood out in deserted buildings, but not standing around a busy parking lot along the West Side Highway in the middle of the day.

  Besides, after reading the Asset’s personnel file, Hicks knew he had a hell of a lot more to worry about than being spotted by Omar’s men. His new operative’s name was Hasim Kamal, who’d changed his name to Hank Kimmel before enlisting in the Army ten years before.

  Now he was an ex-Army Intelligence operative; a Green Beret with a long rap sheet and a rotten attitude. According to his record, Kamal had breezed through the demanding Special Forces training regimen, but chaffed against the restraints of command. His personality tests showed that he had a natural resentment of authority but possessed a high level of self-motivation. That quality served him well running black bag operations in Afghanistan, but it had also landed him in prison.

  Men like Kamal had been trained to do much more than the Rambo guns and guts stuff they showed in the movies. Kamal’s high level of intelligence led his superiors to send him to Wharton to learn how business worked. He breezed through the courses as easily as he had the Special Forces program. Then Army Intel tasked him with setting up his own shop in Afghanistan to run guns and information to and from America’s allies. He’d proven exceptionally good at espionage and living a double life.

  He was so good that he’d managed to prevent his superiors from learning about the lucrative opium business he’d set up on the side. And the string of whorehouses for GIs in Karachi. The fact that Kamal had branched out
into the drug and flesh business didn’t bother the brass as much as the fact that he’d kept all of the profits for himself.

  During his court martial, he changed his name from Hank Kimmel back to his birth name of Hasan Kamal and claimed to be a pious Muslim persecuted in an infidel army. His sudden Islamic epiphany did little to endear him to the military tribunal and he was sentenced to twenty years hard labor.

  This was the man Jason believed was the best chance at reaching Omar.

  And Hicks had to admit that he was probably right.

  Hicks needed a man who Omar would believe was representing a wealthy financier who might support whatever he was planning. The operative had to be able to finesse Omar into believing the financier would fund it if it sufficiently glorified Allah. Hicks needed a man who could project enough authority to command respect from Omar and his people, but not enough to kill Omar’s confidence altogether. He needed to get Omar to spill his guts about whatever he was planning. Hicks knew the trick would be to get Kamal to tell him everything that he saw.

  When the black Explorer with Virginia plates, pulled up into the parking lot, Hicks knew he’d have the chance to ask Kamal in person.

  He watched the two plain-clothed MPs get out; one providing cover while the other opened the rear passenger door to let Kamal out. He was in federal prison blue pants and a threadbare green Army parka that was too small for him. His hands and feet were shackled and the MP discreetly unhooked him and let him loose. They pointed out Hicks to Kamal and watched their prisoner walk away. Both had their hands near their weapons. One deviation from the path and they’d probably put Kamal down.

  Kamal was about a head taller than Hicks—about six-two—and much broader. His official service picture showed he’d had a lean, trim physique once upon a time, but a year’s worth of prison chow had given him more of a sunken, fallow look. His eyes didn’t look as confident as they once did. They were wider now and far more intense. That was good. Hicks knew Kamal’s dark complexion and Islamic upbringing would help him fit in with Omar’s crowd. It was human nature for people to be more inclined to trust people to whom they could relate. It would just help convince Omar that Kamal was the real deal; the man with the cash to make all his dreams of death and destruction come true.

  In the latest pictures Hicks had seen of Kamal at trial, Kamal had a bald head and was clean shaven. The man who walked toward him now was still bald, but had a ragged beard streaked with gray. That was very good indeed, Hicks thought. That level of commitment would put him in solid with Omar’s crowd. They liked their lunatics scruffy.

  Hicks leaned back against the Buick as he watched Kamal approach. He didn’t move to welcome his new charge or shake his hand. But given the drastic size difference between the two of them, he was glad he had the .454 Ruger on his hip.

  When Kamal got close enough, Hicks let his coat fall open so he could see the grip of the gun on his hip. “You Hank Kimmel?”

  “That was only the name I took to blend in with my oppressors. My given name is Hassam Kamal.” He offered a hint of a bow. “As-salaam-Alaikum.”

  Hicks wasn’t impressed. “Save the ceremony for the shitbirds in the prison yard, ace. Last time I checked, pious Muslims don’t run drug rings and whore houses. That shit didn’t cut you any slack with the tribunal, and it cuts even less with me. Anybody tell you why you’re here?”

  “Broad strokes, but I guess you’ll tell me more, right?” Kamal blew into his hands and rubbed them together. “Shit, man. Couldn’t we have met inside where there’s heat and shit?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “All I know is that when I landed in Kansas, a white man in a black suit met me on the tarmac and told me there’d been a change of plans. He handed me off to two more white men who brought me here in chains.”

  Hicks looked back at the two MPs by the suburban. One looked Asian and the other was black. Neither of them had taken their eyes off Kamal. “Funny. They don’t look white to me.”

  “White isn’t just a matter of skin pigmentation. It’s a mindset of oppression.”

  “Well now you’ve got another white oppressor whose presenting you with two choices. The first choice is that you do a job for me and, if you follow orders and live, maybe earn yourself some good will from your Uncle Sam.”

  “I already got that part on the tarmac,” Kamal said. “How about you tell me what’s behind Door Number Two?”

  “I let those two nice MPs back there take you back to Kansas. No Dorothy and no yellow brick road for you, Toto. Just twenty years of hard time in a military stockade. I don’t give a shit about which one you chose so long as you chose right here and right now. What’s it going to be?”

  “I need to know more before I make up my mind.”

  Hicks shook his head. “You know that’s not how this works. You come on board, you’re in, and then you get briefed. You say no, your oppressors back there take your ass to jail for the next twenty years.”

  Kamal smiled. “Is it dangerous?”

  “We didn’t bring you here to sell Girl Scout cookies. Last chance.”

  Kamal looked around him. There wasn’t much of a view of the Hudson from where they were standing, but the sky was high and blue overhead. Cars sped by them in both directions on the West Side Highway. It wasn’t ideal, but it was life, and it was more of life than Kamal had seen since being in jail. It was a beautiful day to make a choice between bad and worse decisions.

  “What about when it’s all over?” Kamal asked. “Do I have to go back to jail?”

  “That depends entirely on you,” Hicks said. “You get results, you go free. Maybe even have a chance at a better life for yourself. But if you fail or lie to me or defy me at any time, even once, you go straight back and do every minute of your sentence.”

  Kamal shook his head. “Sounds like some real Dirty Dozen shit if you ask me.”

  “Oh, but I am asking you, asshole.” He made a show of checking his watch. “What’s it going to be?”

  Kamal looked up to the cloudless sky and closed his eyes. “I choose freedom.”

  Hicks gave a thumbs-up to the MPs and watched them climb back in the Explorer.

  Kamal turned and watched the men drive away. “Just like that, huh? You got that kind of pull?”

  Hicks opened the back door of the Buick. “Get in. We’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it.”

  Kamal clapped his hands and let out a whoop as he began to get in the back seat. “Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, I’m free at last.”

  Hicks knife-edged his left hand hard into Kamal’s throat. The move caught the bigger man off guard and at a bad angle. He dropped to the asphalt, dead weight, gagging. All of the advanced training in the world couldn’t prepare you for a quick punch in the throat.

  Hicks dropped and put a knee hard into Kamal’s gut and his .454 Ruger Alaskan under his chin. “Get this straight right here and now, asshole. This isn’t a fucking vacation, and you’re not free. Those men were the last chance you had to back out and stay alive. From here on in, I own your miserable ass. One false move, one fuck up, or step out of line...” Hicks pressed the barrel of the gun against Kamal’s left ear. “You catch two taps right there and dumped in the river. Understand me?”

  Hicks didn’t know what he expected Kamal to do once he got his breath, but he sure as hell didn’t expect him to laugh. And that’s just what Kamal did. A deep belly laugh from the soul. “You crack me up. You think this is the first time I’ve had gun at my throat, motherfucker?”

  “No.” Hicks thumbed back the hammer. “But it’ll sure as hell be the last unless you start taking this shit seriously. The second you think you’re indispensable, I’ll show you just how wrong you are.”

  “Killing me in a parking lot ain’t very subtle for the CIA.”

  “A dead black man in a parking lot ain’t exactly breaking news. And I’m not CIA.” He moved the Ruger back under Kamal’s chin. “W
e good?”

  Kamal winced as he tried to get up, but couldn’t. “Can’t get any work done by lying here, now can we?”

  HICKS DROVE, taking intermittent glances in the rearview mirror to watch Kamal rubbing his throat.

  “You slammed my head good when you took me down, man. Got me all fucked up. Might have a concussion.”

  Hicks focused on the thickening crosstown traffic. “I thought you Green Berets were supposed to be tough?”

  “Fool me once shame on you,” Kamal said. “Fool me twice, it’s your ass.”

  Hicks smiled. “Yeah, I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

  “Hey, what’s that gun you pulled on me anyhow? Looks like a .38 but felt a whole lot heavier.”

  “That’s because it’s not a .38. It’s a .454 Ruger Alaskan. Range isn’t great, but up close, it’ll core a charging grizzly bear.”

  “Fuck you mean ‘core a grizzly bear?’”

  “You ever core an apple? Same thing. Except it could do that to a charging grizzly. Put a hole in him from crown to culo and stopped him cold, even at a dead charge.”

  Kamal blinked his eyes clear. He looked out the window at the growing lunchtime traffic and Hicks saw him mouth the words ‘core a grizzly bear.’ Hicks knew he’d made his point.

  Given the traffic, the drive out to the apartment in Queens could take a long time, so Hicks decided to strike up some conversation. Maybe get to know him a bit before he started briefing him. “I read your file and it looks like you were a pretty good soldier. How’d you go from being G.I. Joe to being the Birdman of Alcatraz?”

  “You don’t know how it is, man,” Kamal said. “They train you to serve and they train you to kill, but they don’t train you how to live with it afterward. To handle all the shit you see and keep it from eating you up inside. It’s hard to maintain, man. It’s damned hard.”