The Operative

by Andrew Britton

  Bishop felt a chill. In his nineteen years with the Bureau, the former field operative had learned to respect his intuition almost to the point of obsession.

  She knows who they are, who they were, he thought. She would not want to go back to Baghdad with them. Any prisoner would rather die. It was a dangerous game they were playing now, but if it worked, the payoff would be considerable.

  The terminal was a barracks-style concrete structure with a small functional waiting area and a corridor running back along one side of the unattended reception desk. On her arrival at the terminal that morning, Muloni had picked a small boxy storage area at the end of the corridor for the holding room. She directed the others toward it. Javert entered the corridor first, followed by the other Mounties and Veil. The black-clad men from the Gulfstream came next, with Bishop and Muloni in the rear. She shut the door behind her and locked it.

  “He’s not going to like this,” she warned as they lagged well behind.

  “I know. But what’s he going to do about it? Quote regulations at us? We’ll be done before he can even start to explain this to his commander.”

  “Our boy here can still shut down the tower,” Muloni said. “Veil’s got to be airborne before it hits the fan.”

  “She will be,” Bishop promised. “Remember what Harper’s buddy Ryan Kealey did to that United Nations security guard in oh-seven?”

  She grinned. “It’s legend among those who knew what went down. Said he mistook a walkie-talkie for a gun. Threw the guard across the room. And he wasn’t even the target—it was the diplomat who was crossing behind him. The guard got credit for the takedown.”

  “Classic,” Bishop said. “I’ll make sure only Javert comes in, and make it seem like it was his idea.”

  Muloni was still smiling. “Perfect. My move, if it comes to that.”

  Bishop nodded as the group clustered tightly around the door.

  “You can stand by in the corridor,” Bishop said, reaching for a doorknob. “We’ll let you know when we’re set to roll.”

  “No,” the inspector said. “We will observe all of it.”

  “All right,” Bishop said. He pretended to consider his options. “But just you. Nobody else. And no talking. Take it or leave it.”

  Javert’s jaw muscles were working. He nodded once, sharply.

  “Who has the key to the prisoner’s restraints?” Bishop asked.

  Cosette came from behind Veil and flicked her right hand up from her side. The key hung from a steel-plated bracelet locked around her wrist.

  Bishop extended his hand, but Javert inserted himself between them.

  “I’ll take it,” the inspector said.

  The woman unclasped the bracelet and gave it to Javert. Bishop nodded to Muloni. She entered the office first. Javert grabbed the prisoner’s handcuffs and, walking behind Veil, guided her in. The Pakistanis went next, followed by Bishop. The American shut and locked the door behind him. It was a solid oak door with a shoulder-high dead bolt. While Javert watched Muloni, Bishop slid the bolt into place.

  The room was empty except for a small card table against one white cinder-block wall. On the table were a folded tracksuit, a digital camera, and a scalpel. Surrounded by her captors, Veil took notice of the surgical implement for scarcely an instant before letting her eyes move on to study the rest of the room. Bishop felt an uncharacteristic edginess as her roving attention fell on him again. Muloni had examined the room personally, so he was confident no one had hidden a weapon where Veil could grab it. Perhaps it was because this was the first time a woman had been rendered with his direct involvement. If anything definable was bothering him, he supposed that explained it.

  Bishop watched as one of the men in black coveralls took the scalpel from the tabletop. He was tall and square-shouldered, only his eyes visible through the balaclava that concealed his features. Bishop was assured that he had been cleared by voice recognition, as had all the others. The FBI phones had an XApp for that as well. The Pakistani looked at Bishop.

  “Let’s get it done,” the American said.

  The hooded man crossed the room to the prisoner with two large strides, raising the scalpel and then sweeping it down the front of her skirt. The skirt came apart with a whispery shredding of fabric and dropped over her ankles, revealing her bare thighs underneath as he brought the blade up again to slit open her blouse. For a moment she stood, shackled, in her bra, panties, and the plain low sneakers. Another swipe of the blade sliced the bra in half, leaving her nude from the waist up, the limp remnants of her blouse hanging from her arms and wrists above the cuffs.

  Bishop wasn’t sure who was more surprised by the act, the prisoner or a visibly horrified Javert.

  The photos came next, a second man in black rapidly snapping pictures of the woman with the digital camera. Bishop caught himself looking at her tanned, nude flesh and guiltily lifted his gaze. When he did, she was staring back at him, her dark, bright eyes steady, burning into his own as they had on the tarmac. There was no trace of embarrassment or submission in her expression, nothing to indicate she was at all intimidated. Just her seething anger and steadfast eyes.

  Bishop could tell she was thinking. Hard.

  “What’s the need for this?” Javert asked, frowning unhappily.

  Bishop was glad for the distraction. “Remember our agreement, Inspector? No talking.”

  “Yes, but you go too far,” Javert replied.

  “You think so?” Muloni cut in. “How would you ID her if you found her dismembered body in a Pakistani street?”

  Javert’s mouth snapped shut, audibly.

  “Okay, Inspector,” Muloni went on. “We’ll need her out of those arm and leg cuffs.”

  Javert stepped forward. The man with the scalpel backed off to make room for him. The inspector bent and opened the ankle restraints, then straightened, slipped the key into the handcuff lock, and gave it a three-quarter turn. The manacles clicked open and came loose in his hands. He took two steps back, holding them with both hands.

  The man with the scalpel nodded to his teammates. “Check her. Everywhere inside,” he said in Arabic.

  Bishop recognized the words. He’d heard them in more rooms like this than he could remember. They were not really instructions, since his companions knew the drill. They were meant for Veil, designed to cut away her dignity the way the surgeon’s blade had slashed away her clothes. This repatriation unit of the Pakistani Quêl Affada intelligence division had been active for twenty-four months, its members handpicked from Saddam Hussein’s disbanded Mukhabarat. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations insisted the infamous secret police were the wrong people to rehabilitate criminal Pakistanis operating abroad, but the FBI had gone ahead with the plan. Part of the QA charter was to prevent Baghdad from exporting terrorists and criminals. The threat of being turned over to a unit comprised of professional torturers was credited with helping to discourage black market operators and the export of terrorists.

  For the masked men, the routine was familiar. For Bishop and Muloni, it was necessary. For Javert, it was a new experience, and as two of the masked men closed on her, he let his eyes drop.

  That was when Veil struck. Her left hand shot out in a palm-heel strike. It connected with Javert’s chin, causing his teeth to clap shut on his tongue. Blood oozed from the sides of his mouth as he stumbled back, dropping the shackles. Veil remained in motion. As the nearest of the Pakistanis moved forward, she sidestepped him and made for the man with the scalpel. Her right hand formed a tiger claw and raked laterally across his eyes. He screamed, temporarily blinded. As Muloni stepped toward her, Veil was already pivoting and struck her in the gut with a perfectly executed backward kick. She reached for the blade in the blinded man’s hand.

  Fists pounded on the door.

  “Inspector? Is everything all right?”

  Cosette’s cry went unanswered as Bishop and the other masked men rushed to form a tight circle around the prisoner. Sh
e ignored them, fighting with the Pakistani for the scalpel. Veil grabbed his wrist in an effort to twist it from his hand. Before she could successfully apply the wrenching kote gaeshi maneuver, Bishop grabbed her from behind, pulled her back, twisted, and threw himself atop her body, both of them facedown. He easily outweighed the killer, but she hadn’t relented and was thrashing wildly on the floor, arms and legs flailing, her gums peeled from her teeth, trying to turn and bite the hands pressing down on her shoulders.

  “Somebody get the goddamn chains!” Bishop yelled.

  Recovering from her blow, Muloni spotted the shackles on the floor. She grabbed the hand restraints. The key was still in the lock as she wrestled one of Veil’s wrists into the iron band and snapped it shut. Bishop moved slightly so Muloni could get to her other arm. After some fierce wrestling, the woman’s arms were once more immobilized. Breathing heavily, Bishop sat up, still on her back. Meanwhile, one of the Pakistanis had found the ankle restraints and was working to clamp them on while Muloni held down her legs.

  Five of us, Bishop thought. Five of us to bring her under control.

  Cosette was still pounding on the door. Muloni opened it, disdainfully pushed the bloodied Javert out, then closed and locked it behind him. He had wanted to see the examination, and he had. What he had missed, because he wasn’t looking for it, was the start of the breaking of a high-value prisoner, one who had killed energy officials and politicians the world over but would soon be asked to kill Iranian politicians and the sons of oil sheikhs. The struggle proved that the FBI was right about her: she’d be a hell of an asset. Soon she’d be conveyed into a purgatory inhabited by other malign ghosts like herself. Confined, interrogated, if she refused to work for the good guys instead of the Iranians and oil sheikhs who had trained and paid her, she’d be eliminated.

  But Bishop didn’t think that would happen. No human being who operated solely as a mercenary would endure what lay in store when the option was simply to shift their loyalties. And they still had one more card to play.

  Bishop was still kneeling over Veil when Muloni crouched beside them. The agent leaned close to the Pakistani woman.

  “I have some information for you,” she said, snarling.

  Veil tried to spit, and Muloni punched her in the nose. There was a loud, ugly crack.

  “You’ll want to listen,” Muloni said.

  “Dozakh,” she cried.

  “Jannat!” Muloni hissed back with a wicked smile.

  Addressing her in Urdu got Veil’s attention. Bishop could see the assassin’s shoulders relax slightly.

  “You will want to hear the reason we brought you in here,” Muloni continued in English. “It involves your daughter, Kamilah.”

  Veil’s eyes instantly lost their fire. It was the first time Bishop had seen anything get to her.

  “What about her?” the assassin demanded in thinly accented English. “What have you done?”

  “What have you done, ma’am?” Muloni corrected her.

  Veil stared at her. She didn’t spit. She didn’t struggle. She was already starting to understand. The American would tell her nothing and would hit her again, and again, until she did what she was told.

  “What have you done, ma’am?” Veil asked.

  “Nothing, yet,” Muloni said. “But we know where she is. We’re watching her.”

  “No one knew,” Veil muttered.

  “Akila did,” Muloni said.

  The name drained the color from Veil’s face.

  “If you want to keep her safe, you’ll do everything you’re told, starting now,” Muloni said. “You’re going back to Pakistan, where you’ll tell these boys everything you know. Names, contacts, safe houses, everything. The interview will be taped, a copy given to us. If we like what we hear, Kamilah will be fine.”

  Veil did not move. Jessica Muloni rose slowly. She swiped a hand across the orange suit folded on the table. The outfit landed on the floor next to Veil.

  “Help her up,” she told the Pakistanis.

  They did. She stood unsteadily, blood flowing from her nose.

  “Forget the cavity search,” Muloni said. “Help her get dressed ASAP.”

  The group leader, the one who had been holding the scalpel, translated for the others. Bishop rose, and they got to work. Muloni was obviously on the clock now, trying to get the jet off the ground before Cosette or Valjean got in the way.

  “You got anything to add?” Muloni asked Bishop.

  “I’m good,” he said.

  There was no point telling her that this was a shitty business. They knew it, the Pakistanis knew it, and now a small group of Mounties knew it.

  The team escorted the prisoner back down the corridor. Javert, Cosette, and the Mercedes were gone by the time they reached the tarmac. Valjean looked shaken. He told Bishop they went to the hospital. There was a bloody handkerchief on the tarmac beside him.

  “These individuals are free to depart without the RCMP contingent,” the Mountie said of the Pakistanis and their prisoner.

  “Understood,” Bishop said. His voice was matter-of-fact, as though it had been a tactical decision and not the result of the team leader nearly biting off his tongue.

  “I’m to remain with you until you leave,” Valjean added.

  “Of course,” Bishop replied. He looked at his watch. “Our flight home’s not for another ninety minutes. Can we buy you coffee?”

  “If we can find an open bar, I’d prefer a scotch,” he answered.

  “Sounds good,” Bishop replied.

  Within five minutes, Bishop was driving the three of them to the terminal building. The Gulfstream IV, with Veil and the Pakistanis on it, was just one more rolling boom in the succession of jets leaving the runway. Bishop relaxed a little. Muloni was calm.

  “I didn’t realize you knew Urdu,” Bishop said.

  “Women who work for the Company need an edge,” Muloni told him. “Farsi and Urdu were mine.”

  “Impressive. What did you say to her?”

  “She started to swear at me. She only got as far as ‘hell.’ Probably going to tell me to go there. I said, ‘Heaven.’ The inflection suggested that was the only place I’d be going—unlike her.”

  “Crap. You did all that with inflection?”

  “That’s a lot of what language is,” she replied. “Language was my major. In the Semitic world especially, you find so much of language is just taunt and counter-taunt, with the ante constantly being upped. ‘Your father picks lemons.’ ‘Your mother sucks lemons.’ ‘Your sister is a lemon.’ That sort of thing.”

  “Only a little rougher, I’m guessing,” Bishop said.

  “Yes.” She smiled. “My father’s family had a Moroccan strain. They were Muslim traders. Very vocal.”

  “You get that in my Irish and Italian heritage, as well,” Bishop told her.

  “We’re all more alike than we care to admit,” Muloni said. “That’s the damned thing about us killing each other.”

  Bishop shook his head. “That’s what happens when you run out of insults, I guess.”

  “Screw you,” she said with a little wink.

  She was right. Inflection was everything.

  The man removed his black mask several minutes after the Gulfstream had taken off. He swept a gloved hand through his damp blond hair. He was Caucasian, with the hulking build of an American football player.

  He was clearly not Pakistani.

  “Close one,” he said, blinking sweat from his pale blue eyes. “I thought we were going to have to waste them.”

  The man sitting across the narrow aisle yanked off his own balaclava. He was an African American male in his thirties. He pulled off his gloves and tossed them, and the mask, on the table in front of him. This man was not Pakistani, either.

  “I wouldn’t’ve lost any sleep over it,” he said. “Javert. Valjean. What are they? Freakin’ librarians?”

  There was general laughter among the men. Across the table were two other deep lu
xury seats. The third man sat in the one by the aisle. Their prisoner sat by the window, her olive complexion ruddy in the sunset, her eyes narrow as she watched the last man unmask himself. He had Asiatic features, possibly Hawaiian.

  “All that matters is it worked out,” the first man said. The blue eyes settled on Yasmin. “You don’t look surprised, little lady.”

  Yasmin didn’t bother explaining. She didn’t want to provide information that might help these men or their handlers in the future. Their affected accents had been good, but she had doubted from the first that any of them were Pakistanis. Neither they nor the aircraft cabin smelled of cigarettes. She had never met a Pakistani agent who did not smoke. She had also noted the bulge of wallets in their pants. Pakistanis typically carried folded currency. They were not big on credit cards. These were mercenaries. Working for the highest bidder.

  “She’s got a good poker face, I’ll give her that,” the African American said.

  “But a looker,” said another.

  “Yeah, well, that’s all you’re gonna do,” the African American said.

  “I know. I’m just saying.”

  Yasmin was instantly tired of their locker-room banter. She had heard it in the barracks as a young girl; a world and a decade away, there was nothing different in their looks and remarks. It was pathetic.

  “What is going on?” she asked. She did not expect them to tell her much. But any information was more than she had now.

  “It’s a classic good news, bad news situation,” the man beside her said. “Do you understand that expression?”

  She nodded.

  “The good news, as you’ve probably figured out, is that we’re not taking you to Islamabad.”

  “Where, then?”

  “That’s a secret, I’m afraid. But that’s also good news. You won’t be cooped up here for the better part of a day. We’ll have wheels down in—”

  “Two hours or less,” she said. “In New York, I think.”