by AJ Stewart
Fontaine wandered down the alley, thinking about the psychology of a staff sergeant who was the center of a wheel of contraband. He knew the pressure was mounting on everyone as the withdrawal deadline raced ever closer, and he was confident that the man would not be able to resist one last score. He was into the dark end of the lane when he heard the voice.
“Hey, you.”
It wasn’t loud but it was firm. Most notably, however, it was not the kind of voice heard out loud outside of the souk. It was a woman’s voice. It was that fact and that fact alone that made Fontaine pause. He felt his sidearm in its holster. It was a PAMAS G1, a French clone of the Beretta 92. A version of the same weapon was also the preferred sidearm of the US Army, where it was known as the M9. Fontaine kept his hand by his hip.
“Hand away from your sidearm,” said the voice.
“Not a chance in hell,” said Fontaine as he searched the dark space for a body. There was a doorway in there somewhere, but no light shone from within. Fontaine stood in the only bright spot in the alley. It was not a good place to be. He flicked his holster open but didn’t put his hand on his gun.
“I have a weapon pointed at you, so please put your hands in the air.”
Fontaine listened to the voice. Yes, a woman. An American woman. And polite, too. The please was an unexpected courtesy. Military personnel were some of the politest people on the planet. Armies liked to train their people that way. In the US it was as much a political exercise as a logistical one, but in Fontaine’s experience they tended to act that way when they dealt with civilians, not necessarily with each other. Chatter between soldiers was usually direct and to the point and what civilians considered brutal. So this voice was either not military or they saw Fontaine as not being military.
“If you have a gun on me then you don’t need me to raise my hands.”
“Do it anyway.”
“No.”
Impasse. Fontaine knew two things. If the woman behind the voice wanted to shoot him she would have done it rather than alerting him to her presence, and having not shot him she was clearly not planning on doing so. Regardless, he wasn’t taking his hand away from his weapon. Giving up your gun was no kind of play. Your chances of survival dropped to pretty much zero once you did. Fontaine stood still and watched the dark space form into something vaguely human. He saw a black gun appear from the dark background. It was held in a two-handed style, good position. The body behind the arms stayed hidden.
“Hands behind your head.”
Fontaine looked at the gun. The boxy casing was a giveaway for a Glock. The weapon was steady in the hands, but the hands were small. That suggested the compact Glock. He looked hard at the nozzle, which was a greater diameter than he expected. That suggested it was the .40 caliber G23 version rather than the G19 which was designed for the thinner 9mm round. And that narrowed the field some.
“You’re FBI,” said Fontaine.
There was no reply, as expected. It took time to think these things through.
“How the hell do you know that?”
Fontaine lifted his hands slowly away from his hips. Not all the way, not above his head. There was no way he was doing that. They were far enough for a barrier to be created, a level of comfort to be established.
The woman stepped forward from the shadow. She didn’t drop her sights from his chest. He recognized her. The woman he had seen on his first day. The one McConnell had told him was FBI.
“Special Agent Hutton,” he said.
He saw the wrinkle appear between her eyes. How the hell do you know that? She didn’t say it again but he could see it doing cartwheels through her mind.
“Please turn around and place your hands against the wall.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
He stood his ground and looked her over. She was only 170 centimeters. She would have said five-seven. She didn’t look a drop over fifty kilograms.
She said, “I know you are an American. And you’re not US military, not anymore. You might think being a PSC makes you such but it does not. You are a civilian, and you fall under my jurisdiction. Now please comply. I really don’t want to shoot you, but I will.”
“I thought this was Iraqi jurisdiction?”
“Until we pull out you can consider us one and the same. Now.”
Fontaine shook his head. He knew she wasn’t going to shoot him. “Let’s put the guns away and talk like civilized people.”
Then she fired.
The bullet exploded into the structure behind him and he was showered with clay fragments. The sound of the discharge was loud but was absorbed by the porous clay walls, and didn’t even make it back to the market.
“The position,” she said.
Fontaine wasn’t particularly keen on going deaf so he turned slowly and faced the wall. He placed his hands on the hard clay. He felt the woman lift his sidearm from his holster. Then she patted him down. It was cursory and full of assumption. She figured that he wouldn’t have a hidden weapon. She figured he had no need for one. Open carry was the accepted norm. No need to hide your weapon where you couldn’t get at it fast. She shouldn’t have bothered. No doubt her 110 pounds packed a lot of punch, but getting close enough to pat him down put her close enough for him to take her down. He figured he’d mention it later, when she was in a more approachable mood. He felt her stand back.
“Who do you work for?”
“I’m not going to tell you that.”
“Do you realize how much trouble you are in?”
“Not much, as I see it.”
“Think harder. You’re doing business with a known criminal go-between and suspected terrorist.”
“Of course I am,” he said. He pushed gently off the wall and turned around.
“Don’t turn around,” said Hutton, but he did anyway. Then he leaned back against the wall and looked at her. Her features were small but strong. She had a determination about her. The kind of woman who got pegged in a bar as too hard or a lesbian because she didn’t stand for the crap that guys liked to dish out, never expecting to be called on it.
He said, “It’s my job.”
“Your job?”
Fontaine nodded. He waited for her to think it through and see where she landed.
“Who are you?”
“Fontaine. Jacques Fontaine.”
“And who do you work for?”
“You’re going to have to get used to the fact that I’m not going to tell you that.”
“CIA?”
Fontaine shrugged.
“What does the CIA want with drug runners in Baghdad?”
“What does the FBI want with them?”
“We’re here to train the locals. We’re here to investigate crime. What’s your excuse?”
Fontaine looked at her. She was a tough woman doing a tough job. Working in what amounted to a war zone wasn’t just physically taxing. It wore on a person mentally. He could see why McConnell had said she was hard work. It was the only way to cope.
“I’m looking for an arms dealer,” he said.
She nodded softly and looked him up and down.
“I know you from somewhere,” she said.
“The hotel.”
He saw the wave of recognition.
“I remember. You were with that Scottish guy, McConnell.”
Fontaine nodded.
“He’s a PSC.”
Fontaine nodded again.
“You work with him?”
Fontaine shook his head.
“All right, Mr. Chatty. Let’s go back to the hotel and have a little talk.”
Chapter Four
They returned to the hotel in Hutton’s SUV and Fontaine directed his driver, Yusuf, to follow them. Hutton was out before the engine stopped ticking over. She marched through the lobby and past the check-in desk and the stairs and down a corridor that had double doors evenly spaced along one side and a wall of windows open to a small courtyard on the other. There was a variety o
f succulent plants growing in the courtyard, and a sad, solitary palm tree. Hutton stopped at the last set of doors, unlocked them with a key she took from her pocket, and held the door open for Fontaine.
The room was a small conference room, the kind of thing used for business lunches and corporate training sessions. Tables were set up in a U-shape, open at the far end to a lectern. There was seating for twenty, but otherwise the room was empty.
“This is our workspace,” she said, by way of explanation.
Fontaine looked at the empty tables and vacant chairs.
“We don’t leave anything here,” she explained further. “It’s not secure.”
“No,” said Fontaine.
“Take a seat.”
Hutton took a seat on the left side of the U, so Fontaine wandered around to the right side and sat.
“So are you going to tell me why you were at the café today?” she asked.
“I thought you knew.”
“I just want to hear it from you.”
“Investigating.”
“What will I find if I run your fingerprints?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing of interest or nothing at all?”
“Nothing.”
Hutton sat back in her chair. She looked like she ran a lot, which seemed an unlikely pastime in their current location. She wore tactical body armor over her shirt which rode up on her small frame and made it difficult to sit comfortably. Fontaine wore a similar body armor, just bigger, but ten years of marching with a pack left him with an upright posture when he sat. Hutton wriggled to get comfortable.
“Why don’t you take it off?”
“Excuse me?”
“The vest. It’s uncomfortable. You should take it off.”
Hutton frowned. “You’re not taking yours off.”
“Mine’s not uncomfortable.”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay,” he said. “So why were you at the coffeehouse?”
“I told you.”
“But you didn’t tell me the truth.”
“You calling me a liar?”
“Don’t worry, I don’t take it personally.”
“I do take it personally.”
He sat forward, put his palms on the table and spread his fingers.
“You said you were training locals and investigating drug runners.”
“Right.”
“But you were alone. You weren’t training anyone, and if you were after local drug runners then you would have brought the local boys with you.”
Hutton frowned.
“And I’m willing to bet the farm that it isn’t FBI standard operating procedure for agents to wander around Baghdad alone. In fact, I’d bet that it’s a big no-no.”
“You going to tell on me?” She sat forward and stared at him.
“No, mademoiselle, I’m not.”
“Mademoiselle?”
“You prefer madame?”
“So who are you going to tell?”
Fontaine shrugged. “No one.”
“Langley?”
Fontaine shook his head.
Hutton watched him for the longest time. It didn’t make him uncomfortable. He’d had much worse-looking people stare him down for hours on the parade ground at Castelnaudary. He just waited for her to get it out of her system. She was working on something alone, something that may or may not overlap with his operation, so she could be a useful ally. And she didn’t seem to have too many friends helping her out. Eventually, she finished watching him and came to some sort of conclusion. She lifted her hand to pull at the body armor around her neck, but then stopped herself.
“Why would the CIA be interested in a few guns?” she asked. “We’re all going to be gone in a few months.”
“I can’t imagine why that would be of interest.”
“So it’s not a few guns?”
Fontaine shrugged.
“It’s more than that.”
He shrugged again.
“Something that would be of interest to our government even after we’re gone.”
He shrugged once more.
“Okay. Can we do something? Can we set aside the interdepartmental rivalries for a second? We’re both here in the desert and we have a job to do.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Okay. So I’ll tell you something, then you tell me something.”
“It’s a plan.”
“I told you the truth. I am here to train local law enforcement. But in the process of doing so, I came across some intel that I wasn’t ready to share with my local colleagues.”
“Being?”
“Being rumors of US involvement in arms dealings. Possibly providing US munitions to insurgents who may be building a cache, to be used once we pull out.”
“Okay.”
“Now you.”
Fontaine looked at her. Up and down, from the top of her head to where her torso disappeared behind the desk. She waited for him. He was certain she hadn’t spent time on a parade ground, but he suspected she had been looked up and down more times than she could count. She didn’t seem concerned with it one way or the other.
“I’m doing the exact same thing,” he said.
“So are we working across purposes, or are we working together?”
Fontaine had a meeting with the seller set up. He had a solid idea of who was doing what. What he didn’t have was the authority to do anything about it. He couldn’t touch Staff Sergeant Dennison. Even if he was aiding terrorists. And he knew the US Army would cover it up as soon as they got wind of it. All armies were like that, especially today. Everything was a PR exercise. But maybe a US law enforcement officer could do something about it, when the time came.
“I don’t like conflict,” he said.
She frowned. “You might be in the wrong business.”
“Not at all. My job is conflict resolution.”
“You make it sound like you’re an HR manager.”
“Of a fashion.”
“So are we working together on this?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay,” she said.
“So where do we start?”
She paused for a moment. “Let’s have dinner.”
Dinner wasn’t very good. The food supply was one of the last things to improve in Baghdad. But the coffee was thick and black, and the company more interesting than Fontaine imagined it would be. She sipped on a beer and gave him her potted history—college, grad school and then recruited straight into the Bureau. Local offices, and then New York City, and then she volunteered for a tour in Iraq. She didn’t say it, but he could tell she was something of a rising star. New York was a big office, maybe the biggest outside of DC. Operationally maybe even bigger. And a tour of duty would look very good on a jacket when it came promotion time at the pointy end of her career.
“So what about you?” she asked as she sipped a Heineken.
“I went to New York as a kid. Never been back.”
“Really?”
“Surprised?”
“You seem kind of, I don’t know. Worldly. Cosmopolitan.”
“New York isn’t the only cosmopolitan city in the world.”
“True. There is Baghdad.” She smiled.
He held up his coffee cup. “Cheers to that,” he said.
They touched glasses and looked at each other. He believed it was a test of character. He never completely trusted people who averted their eyes when toasting. She took his gaze and held it. She didn’t look away when she spoke.
“You don’t drink.”
He frowned at his coffee.
“You know what I mean.”
“Only on special occasions.”
“Weddings?”
“And funerals.”
She dropped her eyes and put her beer down.
“So what’s the plan?” she asked.
“We wait to hear back about a meet. Take it from there.”
; “You’ll keep me in the loop.”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “You’re very direct.”
“Am I?”
She shook her head. “Yes, you are.”
They finished their dinner and their drinks but stayed at the table. He asked her about New York. She told him about her favorite spots—Union Square market, and the bagels on the Upper East Side, and the north end of Central Park by Harlem Meer. He told her about Paris. The small cafés and restaurants in the less-trafficked arrondissements like the 17th and 20th. The art that hung in museums that appeared in no tourist guidebooks. When they finished, the restaurant was empty and the staff were noisily stacking chairs and sweeping floors. The bar in the next building was going strong. They both stood, on opposite sides of the table.
“So,” said Hutton.
“Until tomorrow,” he said, and he walked back to his room.
Chapter Five
The following morning they headed out in a three-SUV convoy. Babar had received word from his contact, and had directions in lieu of an address. Fontaine introduced his team to Hutton. The men gave her nods, except Gorecki, who offered an enchanté. Fontaine traveled in the first Highlander, being driven by Yusuf. Hutton was in her vehicle with Babar. Gorecki, Manu and Thorn followed in the third. Everyone was dressed in body armor and helmets that Thorn had procured. Yusuf looked over the directions and said he knew where the building was.
“This is not a secure place, sayidi.”
“Where would the secure places be, Yusuf?” asked Fontaine.
“It is true. But this area, it was once a very nice place. Many rich families lived here. Friends of Saddam. But it was bombed in the war. Not many people stayed.”