Veil of Civility: A Black Shuck Thriller (Declan McIver Series)

by Graham, Ian

  Castellano took a breath and seemed to be fighting back a smile. Was he enjoying this? Declan looked down at the white bedding that was covering his legs and fought back a surge of anger.

  "I did look it up," Castellano said, "along with some other things. There are no bodies to back up your assertion that you killed two of these men."

  Declan looked up remembering the two men who had run towards the garage to investigate the gunshots and had returned in one of the SUVs. Had they taken the bodies with them? That was the only explanation.

  "They must've taken them."

  "I see," said Castellano as he looked down at the paperwork in the folder on his lap. "And this leader, the bald sickly man, you told the locals he spoke with a Slavic accent and that you believe he could be a man named Ruslan Baktayev. Is that correct?"

  "Aye, that's right."

  "But you don't know for sure?"

  "I've never seen him, but Kafni told me he'd escaped from a Russian prison and that he had a personal vendetta. It seems like a reasonable conclusion based on the accent, but no, I'm not sure it was him."

  Castellano nodded. "Well, let me tell you the problem I have with that and see if maybe you can help me. Abaddon Kafni passed off his suspicions about this Ruslan Baktayev to people in our State Department and they've been in contact with the Russian government in Moscow recently, and they told us this Baktayev is dead. He has been for weeks now."

  Declan shrugged. He knew that Kafni had told him the Russians were lying and that there had been someone inside the prison sympathetic to Mossad, but Kafni's first career as a spy was not public knowledge. "Then it wasn't him," Declan said, unwilling to discuss Kafni's connections with Mossad.

  Castellano looked up from the folder and stared in Declan's direction. Meeting his gaze, bells again sounded in Declan's subconscious. What exactly was this agent's angle? Why had he been combative from the beginning? Was he not interested in finding the men responsible for the bombing of an American university and the assassination of a man who had tirelessly defended both his adopted home in America and his native land?

  "And what about you, Mr. McIver, how exactly do you know Abaddon Kafni and his entourage?" Castellano asked, suddenly changing the subject.

  "I worked for him for six years."

  "Right," Castellano said closing the folder. "Let's cut the crap. I don't believe this story you've given me that an escaped Chechen terrorist with ties to the Mujahideen somehow made it into the United States and took out a man as well protected as Abaddon Kafni. Islamic radicals have been trying for nearly two decades to kill Kafni and so far every one of their mediocre attempts has been foiled by his security."

  "I know. I was his security and was personally involved in stopping three of those attacks."

  "Which leads me to more questions," Castellano said smugly. "Your immigration file indicates that you arrived in the U.S. from Galway, Ireland, in 1995 and that your occupation there was fisherman, a role you briefly continued in once you arrived here in the U.S. Would you mind telling me how an Irish rodman came to be employed as muscle by a Jewish firebrand?"

  Declan had expected this line of questioning to come up at some point, but the confrontational position adopted by Castellano surprised him. He'd been interviewed by federal agents before when he'd been involved in stopping the assassination attempts Castellano had referenced and each time the agents had readily accepted his statements. The fishing industry was rough. Men were employed for long periods of time aboard vessels with less than desirable facilities and forced to endure some of the most vicious weather cycles on the planet. To most it hadn't taken a big stretch of the imagination to believe that someone with that background could end up as a bodyguard, but Castellano didn't seem to be buying it. And, of course, Declan knew he was right not to, the background story was a fabrication. While he'd certainly spent some time fishing as a boy and time aboard fishing trawlers in the waters around Ireland, the trawlers hadn't been bringing in hauls of tuna or lobster, but munitions and armaments intended for use in the IRA's war for independence.

  "I met Kafni in Boston in ninety-seven," Declan said. "Some of the Islamic radicals you mentioned made one of their attempts at a restaurant in Beacon Hill. The leader of that group was a man named Deni Baktayev, Ruslan Baktayev's older brother."

  Castellano looked up from the file and raised an eyebrow.

  "And you rushed in like the boy wonder and saved the day," the agent said in a monotone and looked back at the file.

  Declan nodded in confirmation though he knew the question had been rhetorical. It was the truth, or at least partly so. He'd left out the bit where he'd met Kafni a few years earlier in Belfast when he'd still been working for Mossad and that the assassination had been orchestrated in part by Declan's Boston-based employer, a surly maggot named Lorcan O'Rourke who ran a smuggling operation in the American northeast and who'd been paid handsomely by a Palestinian named Hashemi to arrange Kafni's demise.

  "So one thing leads to another and you ended up as part of his detail?" Castellano said, looking up again.

  "Aye, that's it."

  "Let me speak plainly for you, Mr. McIver," Castellano said, standing up, "I—don't—believe—it."

  Declan flashed him an amused look as if to say No kidding.

  "The events at La Jetée in April 1997 are well documented and say that you took out eight Palestinian gunmen who were holding Kafni and his family in the restaurant. It goes on to say that none of Kafni's security was able to return fire because they'd been incapacitated and that you were armed only with a pistol," the agent said, placing his hands on the railing at the foot of Declan's bed. "Now, I'm no military man, but a little bit of experience makes me think that the odds of a fisherman taking out eight heavily armed terrorists are pretty damn lousy."

  "I don't gamble," Declan mused, but again he knew the agent had him dead to rights. He'd taken out the gunmen as he moved systematically through the restaurant like the trained soldier he was. One had died in the alley watching the back door, two more in the kitchen, another on the second floor, three on the third floor, and the last one, Baktayev, on the roof.

  Drawing himself up to his full height with a deep breath, Castellano said, "You're hiding something, Mr. McIver, and I'm going to find out what it is."

  Before Declan could respond the door to the room opened. Constance entered, followed by Okan Osman and Altair Nazari, Abaddon Kafni's remaining bodyguards. Castellano buttoned his suit coat and straightened his tie as the twisted expression he'd been wearing melted away, leaving only a youthful charm.

  "Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. McIver," he said in an entirely different voice. "I'll be in touch if I have any more questions."

  "I'm sure you will be," Declan said, watching him as he strode from the room with his folder under his arm.

  Sensing the tension in the room, Constance looked anxiously at her husband. "Is everything okay?"

  Declan smiled and said, "Of course, love. It's grand."

  As Castellano clicked the door closed, Declan knew it wouldn't be the last time he saw the agent and that he would probably like their next meeting even less then he'd liked the first. Whether it was bureaucratic ambition or something more sinister he couldn't be sure, but for some reason the FBI's lead investigator on the case of Abaddon Kafni's assassination and the bombing at Liberty University had pegged him as public enemy number one.

  Chapter Thirteen

  "Did you make a new friend?" Okan Osman said, as he and Altair Nazari walked the rest of the way into the room after following Castellano out with a cold stare.

  "Yeah, I think so," Declan answered.

  "He's a real charmer, isn't he?" Nazari said, as he took the seat where Castellano had been sitting. "We had the pleasure of his company earlier this morning."

  "Seems to think the world of me," Declan quipped dryly.

  "What's going on?" Constance asked, her face still masked in concern. "What are you talking about? They
don't think that you had something do with this whole thing, do they?"

  She looked from her husband to Osman and Nazari and then back to Declan.

  "It would seem that Agent Castellano certainly wants to believe that," Declan finally answered. While he and the two bodyguards were used to handling bureaucrats like Castellano and tended to do so with a bit of adolescent satisfaction he knew that his wife was a different matter. Raised in a conservative home by an authoritative father, she took people at their word and became visibly upset whenever someone became confrontational with her. She stood solemnly next to the hospital bed with her hands on the railing.

  "Hey, it's grand," Declan said, smiling up at her from his reclined position in the bed and placing a hand over hers. "I'm being released this afternoon and we'll straighten this entire thing out. Would you do me a favor?"

  "What?" she asked, without the concern leaving her face.

  "I could really use a cup of coffee."

  Osman and Nazari both agreed audibly and Constance said, "Fine."

  It was obvious that she knew the three of them wanted to talk about what was going on and didn't want her to hear. Withdrawing her hands from under Declan's, she walked towards the door. He grimaced as he watched her leave.

  As soon as she'd closed the door Declan said, "You have to stop anyone from delivering anything to—"

  Osman raised his hands to signal Declan to stop. "We've already intercepted it, Declan. The FBI is supposedly questioning the guy who tried to deliver it but it doesn't look like he knows anything, just a paid delivery boy with no clue what he was carrying."

  For the first time since they'd arrived Declan took a moment to take stock of the two men. Neither looked like they'd slept and Declan knew that looks, in this case, probably weren't deceiving. If it hadn't been for the heavy medication he'd received, he likely wouldn't have slept either. He'd witnessed violence before; at times in the past it seemed as though it would be a staple in his life. Having buried many friends over the years, he was no stranger to death. Growing up in Northern Ireland during the thirty year conflict known as the Troubles he'd seen many people die, some at the hands of the British Army, others killed by loyalist paramilitaries and still more in operations run by the Irish Republicans he'd once called friends. Each time the effect was the same, a realization in the pit of his stomach that a person he'd walked and talked with was gone and he would never see them again.

  He could remember vividly the last times he'd spent with all of them, and the last minutes he'd spent with Abaddon Kafni haunted him. Had the leader of the group he'd seen at the Briton-Adams mansion really been Ruslan Baktayev? If so, then Kafni had been correct in assuming there was someone else besides Baktayev involved. While it was certainly possible for terrorists to enter the United States, the idea that someone with Baktayev's history could enter a mere two weeks after escaping from a Russian prison and still have time to plan an assault as audacious as the one that had just occurred, certainly supported the theory that a larger network of some sort was involved. And as Kafni had pointed out, whoever they were, they had to be well connected and very powerful, both politically and financially. That fact, coupled with Castellano's confrontational interview, weighed heavily.

  "Where were you guys?" he asked. "What happened to you in the Barton Center?"

  "Locked in a basement storage room," Osman said. "Led there by one of the security guards who said he'd found something suspicious. Once we were inside, he slammed the door and locked us in. It took the emergency crews hours to find us."

  "It was one of the security cars parked outside that exploded," Declan said.

  Osman and Nazari both nodded. "It was an inside job," Osman said.

  "Aye, who was the security company?"

  "We don't know. Their uniforms and vehicles didn't have a name or logo and the investigators are keeping everything very close to their chests. The local police have been completely shut out. The FBI is handling everything and our friend Castellano is in charge."

  "It was the same company that was guarding the mansion. You guys didn't vet them?"

  "Levi handled all of that. They must've checked out or else they wouldn't have been there."

  Declan shook his head. "The FBI has to know it was the security company. They have to be following up on that."

  "We assume they are, in addition to giving us a hard time," said Nazari.

  "We brought you something," Osman said, handing Declan a manila folder before leaning against the room's waist high armoire.

  Osman was tall for an Israeli, mostly owing to the fact that his family was of Arabian descent. With a shaved head, a tightly cropped goatee, a broad chest and an intensity in his eyes that radiated a preparedness found only in a professional soldier, he was an intimidating sight.

  Declan took hold of the file and laid it in his lap.

  Inside the file a photograph was paper-clipped to a dossier that was written in Hebrew. Although he couldn't read what was written, the picture said enough. A thin man with pale, coarse skin stretched over a bald head stared back with a look only a Russian could muster, coal black eyes staring directly into the camera as if intensely willing the lens to break. Beneath his nose, an untrimmed black beard masked the rest of his face, reaching down out of the photograph.

  "That's him," Declan said, closing the file. "That's the guy at the mansion."

  "You're sure?" Nazari asked.

  Nazari was Osman's polar opposite. Always well-dressed and without so much as a strand of his curly black hair out of place, he looked more like he belonged in front of a television camera reading the nightly news than standing guard. The only evidence of the ordeal he'd been through were the dark circles underneath his eyes, betraying a lack of sleep. Declan knew his employment as Kafni's security wasn't because of his operational prowess, but his intuition and mechanical genius. If it floated, flew or could be driven, Nazari could operate it, fix it or destroy it in a matter of minutes.

  "Yes. I'm sure. He didn't have the beard, but it's him."

  "How could Baktayev have possibly gotten into the U.S. without Mossad picking up on it?" Osman said. "They've had agents investigating every known connection he has for two weeks and they've turned up nothing. We were beginning to think maybe the Russians weren't lying, maybe he really was dead and we needed to reevaluate our agreement with our man inside the prison."

  "They can't be everywhere at once," Declan said. "If the CIA and NSA believed what Moscow said and they weren't keeping an eye out for him, then he could have easily slipped past Mossad."

  "He's right," Nazari offered. "Even with the intelligence sharing between our two countries it would have taken a combined effort. Mossad could never track him over U.S. soil without help from the American intelligence community."

  "Abe said he had to have had a pretty serious player in the terror world helping him in order to get out of that prison," Declan said. "If that's the case then it's possible that that same person helped him get into the U.S. But why? Has Mossad found any connections powerful enough to accomplish this?"

  Osman shrugged. "The only person of any real wealth that we're aware of was Sa'adi Nouri, but he's dead and so is his network. But who knows? Al Qaeda or someone else could easily be involved."

  Declan shook his head. "None of this makes any sense."

  "There's more," Osman said. "We've been ordered to leave the country. Our visas were pulled before Abe's blood was even cold. As soon as the coroner's office releases his body, we're to be on the plane back to Tel Aviv."

  "Why? By who?" Declan asked.

  Osman shrugged.

  "So what do we do?" Declan asked, somewhat rhetorically.

  Osman leaned forward, clearly agitated by what he was about to say. "We keep our heads down. We've told them what we know and now it's up to them."

  "What other choice do we have?" Nazari said. "In America we are not operators. We're security guards. Kafni gave everything he had on Baktayev to the Americans tw
o weeks ago. It's up to them to act on it."

  Declan grimaced and ceded the point. Nazari was right. There was nothing they could do.

  "Look," Nazari said, standing. "The coroner is releasing Abe's body to us this afternoon. There's an Israeli C-130 already waiting at Lynchburg Airport to take him home and Mrs. Kafni and the children are being transported here. We're taking both him and Levi back to Jerusalem for burial. You should come with us. We will bury them properly in the land they fought so hard for and loved so much."

  Declan paused at the thought of burying his friend. Kafni's death was still sinking in.

  "No," he said shaking his head. "I've got to stay here. I'm going to try to get the police on the right track. I saw what I saw, whether Agent Castellano wants to believe it or not."

  Both men nodded.

  "We'll see what we can do on our end once we're home," Osman said, as he followed Nazari towards the door. "Watch your back, Declan. We're already burying two friends."

  Declan watched as they left and as the door clicked closed, their words echoed through his head. He didn't like the picture that was forming in his mind. The law enforcement agencies investigating the matter were looking in entirely the wrong direction and they didn't seem to be interested in being pointed in the right one.

  Chapter Fourteen

  2:35 p.m. Eastern Time – Saturday

  Lynchburg Federal Building

  Lynchburg, Virginia

  Senator David Kemiss buttoned his suit coat as he stepped out of the rear door of the black Lincoln Town Car driven by his government appointed chauffeur. Pushing his thick-rimmed glasses up on his nose like an aging Clark Kent, he prepared for a media onslaught as he walked towards the front door of the non-descript four story building that housed most of the federal offices in Lynchburg. In the twenty hours since the bombing outside of a Liberty University building and the subsequent murder of Abaddon Kafni, the mostly vacant building on the corner of 12th and Court Streets had become a hub of activity. Federal law enforcement officers from every agency under the banner of the Department of Justice and a legion of national news media had descended upon the quiet downtown block like a squadron of flying monkeys.