The Saffron Falcon (Transition Magic)

by Hopkins, J. E.

  “So you’ll return my father?” Tareef asked.

  Ahmed looked startled, like he’d forgotten Tareef was in the room. He glared at him, shaking his head. “He was only here for an hour, boy, before he was transferred. Forget about him; he’s dead to you.”

  He opened the door and faced Rahman. “I told you before. Get out of here.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Washington, D.C.

  The United States

  The brick shell of the two-story university building was intact, but the roof, windows, and doors had disappeared. Pieces of debris from the roof and interior walls were scattered across the surrounding grounds and nearby street. No piece was larger than a briefcase.

  John sent Stony to intercept the police and have them to throw a wide cordon around the scene to keep everyone—including the police—out. DTS credentials were the trump card in a city tuned to recognize power; her authority wouldn’t be challenged.

  He went looking for the leader of the fire crew and found a woman wearing a patch with the four crossed bugles of a deputy fire chief at the center of choreographed action. She shook her head at him as he approached.

  “You can’t be here.” She pointed vaguely up the street. “Get back and let us do our work.”

  A Brit, at least the accent.

  He flipped open his ID. “Senior agent John Benoit of the DTS, Chief. My partner and I were walking up to the building when it blew. You need to treat this as a possible crime scene. An FBI team has already been dispatched.”

  I hope.

  “Shite.”

  “Yeah. Lay off the water unless you see flames. And keep everyone away from the place, including your crew.”

  She shook her head. “We’ve gotta look for survivors.”

  “Sure, but only you and maybe one of your people. And I have to go along.”

  “No fooking way. You stay here. We check it out.”

  “I can have the director of national intelligence call your boss, but let’s not waste the time. I need a quick look, then I’ll pull back with you guys and wait for the FBI. A matter of national security.”

  “Shite. That’s what you agent-types always say.” She removed her helmet and ran her fingers through short curls as white as Gulf Coast beach sand.

  A Brit with Scandinavian roots.

  “Barnes!” she yelled. “Pass the word—no water on the scene unless we have to. And bring a full PPE rig over here. Now!”

  The subject of her bellow relayed the chief’s orders, pulled from the truck the personal protection equipment—boots, suit, mask, and tank—and jogged over to the site commander.

  The chief answered the question mark on Barnes’s face by nodding at John. “We’re going in, and he’s going with us. Suit him up. Be quick about it!”

  John didn’t ask any questions. Within a couple of minutes Barnes had him dressed in the protective gear. The three started toward the gaping hole that had been the front door, ventilator masks perched on their heads.

  “Shite. What a fucking mess. Did you see it go up?”

  John nodded. “Right after it went. First we knew was when the gust from the blast rocked us. We were about a hundred feet away and saw the smoke column rising over the building.” He pointed in the direction of the sidewalk where their suitcases still remained. “Could a gas explosion do all this?”

  “Yeah, but there’s no gas going into this building. So your suspicion that it’s a crime scene is dead on.”

  “Seems odd that there was no fire,” John said.

  “Not common, but not unheard of, either, even with gas fires.”

  They pulled their masks into place. Barnes double-checked John and said, “Probably don’t need these, but we don’t need to be aspirating dust either. There’ll be a lot of it since we can’t wet things down.”

  The chief climbed the three concrete stairs to the entrance. “We’re looking for any signs of life,” she told Barnes. “No hits, we get the hell out until Agent Benoit’s crash team gets here.”

  She and Barnes switched on their four-cell flashlights.

  They made it three feet inside the door. Clouds from the threatening weather swarmed low over the open roof. Mounds of splintered roof trusses and two-by-fours, twisted office panels, and the shattered pieces of college life were piled higher than their heads. A fine dust swirled through the air like spitting snow.

  “Shite. The second floor pancaked onto the first. We’re going to have to bring dogs and machines in, tear down the walls, and dig it out.”

  John couldn’t drag his eyes away from a piece of bulletin board the size of his hand lying on the floor. A single sheet of paper was still pinned to it. He tapped the chief on the shoulder and pointed. She shifted her light to the floor. A handwritten announcement was scrawled across the page. A bloodmobile was going to be on-site the day after tomorrow. Everyone was encouraged to donate. John fought the urge to vomit.

  “HELLO INSIDE. ANYONE HEAR ME?” The chief’s voice was sucked up by the wreckage. John strained to listen, praying for a whimper or a plea for help. Nothing.

  • • • • •

  “We have positive ID on ten of the eleven victims.”

  It was a little after ten p.m. the day after the explosion. John and Stony were in a conference room at the FBI’s lab in Quantico, where Special Agent in Charge Mike Piper was updating them on the FBI’s findings.

  All three of them had spent the night and much of the day in Georgetown, standing by helplessly as the building was picked apart and bodies removed. Piper’s bomb expert had explained that the blast was from a relatively small explosive—enough to destroy the building and kill everyone inside but insufficient to vaporize the bodies.

  While they’d watched, John had explained to Piper that he and Stony had been invited to a meeting about an archaeological find. John didn’t offer specifics about the discovery, and Piper, after staring at him for a few seconds, didn’t ask.

  John had ID’d Marva’s body. The weight of the collapsed structure had severed her right arm and crushed much of her torso, but her face had been recognizable in spite of several bone-deep cuts.

  “You were able to do positive ID’s on the other victims that fast?” John asked.

  “Yeah. We’ll need to do the traditional DNA analysis for final confirmation, but the new RapidDNA test is about 98 percent accurate, way better than when it was first introduced a couple years ago.”

  “What about the body you haven’t been able to place?” Stony asked.

  Piper shrugged as he connected his laptop to the room’s projector. “DNA says it’s a male. There’s not much left, so he must have been close to the point of ignition. We’ve learned nada from the bits and pieces of him that we’ve collected. No one has contacted the university admin about a missing student. Faculty is accounted for. It’s most likely an outsider who’s not in any of the usual databases.”

  “Check with the University of Chicago,” John said. “Maybe the antiquities specialist Marva invited brought someone with her. Or maybe it’s someone neither Akina nor Marva knew anything about.”

  “Good idea. We’ll check it out.” He finished connecting the projector and turned to face them. “I can show you the autopsy photos, but they are a mess and it takes a trained eye to tell much.”

  “Not necessary, at least for now,” John said. “You find the explosion’s point of—”

  The door to the conference room swung open. A middle-aged woman with FBI hierarchy written on her creased face leaned on the door handle and bobbed her head at Piper. “Need to see you in the hall.”

  Piper glanced at John and Stony with a “Now what?” expression on his face and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  John glanced at his watch—ten fifteen. The night was crawling by. He stared across the table at his reflection in the wall of windows that lined one side of the conference room. He could see nothing of the rural Virginia countryside beyond the glass.

  I look
like shit. Feel like it, too.

  Stony mumbled something that John didn’t catch. “What?” he asked, continuing to stare into the glass.

  “Nothing. Just wondering how long before I wake up from this nightmare.”

  “Uh-huh. I wish. How’s Akina doing?”

  Akina Pearl was more than Marva’s admin. She was—had been—the director’s Number Two for more than a decade, the archetype of informal power. John had observed Akina and Stony together. There was a personal bond between them that went beyond work.

  “She’s tougher than any field agent, but this is ripping her up. I wonder if she might resign after—”

  Piper strode back into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him with a click. He’d been gone for fifteen minutes. “You guys know a William Donovan?”

  John turned from the window. “No.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He’s the one we couldn’t identify,” Piper said. “Works for the NSA.”

  “Doing what?” John asked.

  “Who knows? They won’t say. But his DNA threw a flag when we searched the databases. And the phone call that came winging our way didn’t make my bosses happy.”

  “What the hell was he doing at Poulton Hall?” Stony asked.

  “Good question,” Piper said. “And that’s not the only mystery. I’m just getting started.”

  He punched a function key on his laptop and the ceiling-mounted projector whirred softly to life. “I was just getting to this when the assistant director interrupted.” He punched a couple more buttons, and an image of scorched concrete and pulverized building material popped onto the screen in the front of the room.

  “Based on the debris pattern and chemical analysis, we believe this is where the blast originated. It’s what’s left of a janitor’s closet in the center of the first floor. Maybe thirty feet from the conference room where we found Director Bentley’s body.” He shook his head.

  “What?” John asked.

  Piper sighed. “The device was maybe five pounds of C4. Easy to fit into a day pack. Not huge as these things go, and this was an old building with thick, sturdy walls. Most of the force went up and out through the roof. Except for the guy near the closet, the blast may not have been fatal. Anyone hiding under a desk would’ve been okay, at least from the explosion. In this case, it didn’t make any difference.”

  “Why? What are you talking about?” Stony asked.

  Piper punched a key and a close-up of a man’s forehead filled the screen. Two dimpled punctures pierced the skin above the brow. “Dr. Scholard was killed before the blast. So was the director, her security guard, and the University of Chicago expert. All the shots were from the same 9mm Sig P226; none were close range. It may have been fitted with a suppressor. The shots were all over the place. The shooter wasn’t all that good.”

  “Fucking good enough.” Stony leaned forward, folded her arms on the table, and dropped her head onto her arms.

  “You recover the weapon?” John asked.

  “No. We found the two Glocks that belonged to Director Bentley’s security team, but no Sig. We’re sifting everything a second time, but I don’t think it’s there.”

  “It was destroyed by the blast?”

  “Highly unlikely. A chunk of metal like that would survive the explosion. If it was in the building or the environs, we would have found it.”

  “So,” Stony said, not raising her head, “What are we thinking? The NSA sent Donovan to kill the director of the DTS? That makes no sense.”

  “Agreed. And, for what it’s worth, my boss’s boss—”

  “Wait,” Stony said. “I have no clue who you work for. You talking about the FBI director?”

  Piper nodded. “She took this to her boss, the director of the National Intelligence, who called the president. That resulted in a heated meeting in the Oval with the head of the NSA. The meeting finished a few minutes ago—that’s why I was called out.”

  “And?” John asked.

  “Adamant denial that the NSA was in any way involved and a solemn commitment to help us.”

  John nodded. “Makes sense. They’re a bunch of tech spooks, not wet work experts.” He paused. “So how about this for a working theory? Donovan was an agent for an enemy of the U.S., working undercover. He and some other bastard were ordered to destroy the building and kill the people in the meeting. Donovan had the bomb. The other one was the shooter. The shooter did his job and got away, taking the Sig with him. Something went wrong with the explosive and blew Donovan to hell.”

  The room fell quiet.

  “Fits the facts,” Stony said. “But who the hell did Donovan work for?”

  Piper scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “We don’t know. We’re digging, but we’ve found nothing so far. We’re confirming everything in his bio, including his parents, childhood, the works.”

  Piper sat down at the end of the table and stared at John. “Quid pro quo. I gave you some slack last night. We had our hands full with the scene, and whatever you were holding back wouldn’t have made any difference. But we’re past that now. If you want my help, I need to know what’s going on. I pulled the records for your recent air travel. You and Stony changed your plans and flew back in a rush. Why?”

  Stony sat up in her chair, fully alert. “Now there’s a question I’d like to hear the answer to, since you never told me, either.”

  John glanced at her and raised his hand. “Hang on.”

  He faced Piper. “Can you assure me this room isn’t monitored?”

  “What? Of course it’s not fucking monitored. You’re watching too much NCIS. That shit will rot your brain.”

  John pointed at a display monitor at the end of the room. “Can you get cable on that thing?”

  “Sure I can. I can even get the hidden camera in your bedroom, if you want.”

  “Then turn it on nice and loud, and both of you come around here.”

  Piper switched the display on, tuned it to CNN, and cranked up the volume enough that it would swamp any listening devices. He and Stony rounded the table and grabbed chairs, pulling them into a tight circle facing John. They had to lean toward him to hear his voice.

  John stared unblinking at Piper. “I asked for you on this investigation because I trust you. But this stays in here. No one else hears about it. Not your team. Not your bosses. Agreed?”

  “You know I can’t do that. I need—”

  “Huh-uh. You want in, you get all the way in. But no one else. I have your word?”

  Piper nodded, frowning.

  “Two things. Scholard apparently found an ancient book that eliminates the need for Transition uniqueness. So—if it’s true—kids could use magic at will. And he told a Pakistani professor about the find.”

  Stony jerked back, like she’d been slapped. “Jesus Christ, if that ever got out—”

  “You’re thinking Donovan worked for someone in Pakistan?” Piper asked. “You got a name?”

  John shrugged. “Pakistan seems like the obvious candidate. But I don’t have a name or anything else to go on. Did you find any evidence of an old document or a box or suitcase?”

  Mike got up, strode to the front of the table, picked up a multi-page list, and returned to their circle. He scanned the pages. “We’re double-checking the inventory, but, no. We found nothing out of the ordinary for a college conference room. A couple of textbooks on ancient languages. No computers. That’s it. If you don’t count the bodies, anyway.”

  “Can we get phone records for Scholard’s cell?” John asked. “Maybe we can track the professor he contacted that way.”

  Piper shook his head. “We’ll try, but we’ll need a miracle. Pakistan controls all the records for calls inside the country. They quit cooperating last year after the big drone strike brouhaha.”

  “Shit and shit,” Stony said. “Scholard and Marva are the only ones who could help us, and they’re dead twice over.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN
r />   Islamabad

  Islamic Republic of Pakistan

  The Inter-Service Intelligence director-general was brusque and abrupt. “Our friend has arrived. Join us in my private conference room.”

  “One friend?” Pasha asked. “Weren’t there two of them?”

  The ISI DG hung up before Pasha finished.

  It was Monday, mid-afternoon. News of the explosion in Washington had broken on CNN a little after six a.m. Saturday. Regular updates played throughout the weekend, offering little real news. There were casualties, but all information was being withheld pending identification and notification of relatives.

  Pasha pushed back from his grey metal desk. He’d been given a small office on sub-level four, the lowest level of the DG’s command bunker. He hadn’t thought he was claustrophobic, but his breathing felt forced, as if the weight of the earth around him squeezed his chest. The sour smell of wet dirt—an illusion, surely—never left him.

  He withdrew his Glock from a desk drawer, slipped it into an underarm holster, and pulled on a navy blazer. The compound’s security team had furiously resisted allowing him to carry a weapon on the premises, but they’d been overruled by the DG.

  He strode past the maze of offices and cubicles to the elevator, slipped inside its closing doors, and pressed the button for sub-level one.

  Still underground but better than the bottom of this concrete hole.

  The floor housing the director-general was far more luxurious than the other three levels. Plush carpet dressed the hallway floors, and subtle, rich wallpaper covered the walls. Tiny halogen spots hung from the ceiling, illuminating oil paintings of meadows and deep woods.

  Even the air smells better. Not just dirt, but scented dirt.

  He arrived at the conference room, knocked, and entered when acknowledged. The DG sat to the left of the door at the end of the polished wood conference table. At the opposite end sat a ferret of a man with a long oval face and small, dark eyes that twitched back and forth. A small aluminum briefcase lay on the table in front of him. The man rose and walked toward Pasha, hand extended.