At least, that had been his initial, albeit reluctant, assessment. He had gone to Harper’s room just after midnight to accept the assignment, and evidently, the deputy DCI had relayed the information to Naomi shortly thereafter. She had banged on his door just after 7:00 AM, and when he’d pulled it open, he had found a completely different woman from the one he’d seen the night before. Despite the early hour, she was showered, dressed, and ready to go. She was smiling, alert—almost hyper, in fact—and she seemed to have forgotten all about their earlier confrontation. Not about to let it go that easily, Kealey had tried to get her to open up over breakfast in the hotel’s ground-floor restaurant, but she had ignored his attempts to uncover the past six months of her life. Instead, she’d abruptly shifted the conversation back to the task at hand. Kealey was frustrated by her closed-off demeanor, but, unwilling to provoke another argument, he’d followed her lead reluctantly.
Admittedly, the longer she had talked, the more the case began to seize his interest. It presented an interesting scenario, and now, as Naomi slept deeply on the other side of the narrow aisle, he thought back to the makeshift briefing she’d provided him with. It was mainly geared toward their sole lead with respect to the whereabouts of Amari Saifi. According to the Agency’s latest information, the person who might possibly lead them to the Salafist leader was another Algerian, a man by the name of Kamil Ghafour.
The details Naomi had offered were sparse, but they were enough to paint a general picture. Before his arrest in 2002, the twenty-eight-year-old Ghafour had been a committed, albeit low-level, member of the Armed Islamic Group. Otherwise known as the GIA, the group was committed to replacing the current government of Algeria with an Islamic state. The mandate was identical to that of the GSPC, which had separated from the GIA in 1998. The difference was that the GIA was still very much an active organization, whereas Ghafour had largely fallen off the grid.
He’d been released from prison two months earlier under an amnesty agreement for convicted terrorists. Following his release, he’d given an interview to the Algerian independent El Khabar. Even the journalist’s years of experience had not been enough to soften the rambling, incoherent quality of Ghafour’s antiestablishment diatribe, but the interview had included one salient piece of information. During their shared time in prison, Ghafour claimed to have forged a close association with none other than Amari Saifi, the former head of the GSPC.
Normally, it would have been a meaningless detail, but in light of the recent wave of abductions in Pakistan—as well as Saifi’s credible involvement—it had become the focus of the investigation, at least from the Agency’s standpoint. Saifi had not escaped from prison. Nor had he served his full sentence, which could only mean that someone had arranged for his release. The hope was that Saifi had confided in his fellow prisoner, Kamil Ghafour. Admittedly, it was more than a long shot, but Ghafour was the only verifiable link to Saifi, and that made finding him a priority. The Algerian government had basically stonewalled the State Department’s requests for additional information, which hadn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Ghafour, like any convicted homegrown terrorist, was an embarrassment to them. Nevertheless, finding him had not been as difficult as it should have been, thanks to the Operations Directorate at Langley and a well-placed source in the Spanish embassy in Washington, D.C.
According to the source, Kamil Ghafour had entered Spain on a temporary visa with an accompanying work permit less than a month after being released from prison. Incredibly, his ties to the GIA had been missed by Spain’s immigration officials, but the oversight didn’t last long. Ghafour was soon found working on a building site in downtown Madrid, exactly as he’d claimed on his application. Deportation proceedings were immediately put into effect, but Ghafour’s employer—another Algerian-born immigrant, who, since entering Spain twenty years earlier, had risen to a position of some wealth and influence—had called on his contacts to intervene. The result was something of an uneasy stalemate. Technically, Ghafour had served his time in Algeria, and since he wasn’t wanted by any other country, especially his own, extradition wasn’t an option. Even his worrisome interview with El Khabar hadn’t been enough to get him kicked out of Spain. Still, his name had been placed on a list that went out to every Spanish consulate. In the event that Ghafour left the country, even for a day, he would not be permitted reentry. It was a simple solution, and one that had worked in the past.
It was through this list of “undesirables,” as the briefing officer had put it, that Ghafour had been tracked down. From there, it was easy to trace him to the building site in Madrid. The problem lay in what to do next. The Spanish authorities had already made their ruling on Ghafour, and it had been determined in Washington that another official request for access would result in, at best, a long delay. The Spanish government’s failed attempts to deport the former Algerian terrorist were proof enough of that. Simply put, the man’s employer was connected in too many places, and the State Department couldn’t be sure of getting to him quickly. This explained why Agency watchers had been trailing Ghafour in rotating shifts for the past week. Before leaving for Keflavík that morning, Harper had given Kealey a phone number and the address of a hotel where the watchers were based. Upon landing in Spain, their first task was to link up with the other operatives and establish a plan for getting to Ghafour, preferably without alerting the Spanish authorities.
Kealey had been rolling several ideas around in his head, but after much consideration, he’d settled on one in particular. Usually, the least confrontational method was the best course of action, and while there were never any guarantees, he suspected that Kamil Ghafour would react favorably to a straight cash offer. With this thought in mind, Kealey decided to call Langley once they reached the airport. It wouldn’t take long to arrange the transfer, and with any luck, the money would be ready and waiting by the time they arrived in Spain.
A small movement to his left brought him back to reality. He glanced over but saw it was nothing; Naomi had merely shifted in her sleep. Watching her, Kealey felt the same warm feelings she always stirred in him, but also a growing sense of unease. While he was relieved beyond measure to see her again, he couldn’t help but feel a deep pain over her apparent ambivalence toward their shared past, as well as a lingering concern over her strange behavior. She was up one minute, down the next. There didn’t seem to be any middle ground, and her unpredictable behavior could only spell trouble once they were on the ground in Madrid.
Maybe it’s just a temporary shift in her personality, he told himself, desperately searching for some kind of rational explanation. Maybe she’ll get back on track in Spain. Maybe she’ll come back to you. Just give her some time, Ryan….
Catching himself, Kealey shook his head angrily. Deep down, he knew he was being naïve. He wanted to condone her actions, to fully accept her decision to resume working for the Agency, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. It wouldn’t be fair to her. Nor would it be fair to what he knew. In the months following the terrorist attack that had nearly claimed her life, he had personally cared for her at his home in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. She had spent part of the winter with him, and in that time, he’d come to understand how deep her issues actually ran. They certainly weren’t the kind of problems that could be overcome by six months of training at Camp Peary. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to give up on her. He’d made that promise to himself a long time ago, and he had no intention of breaking it now.
At the same time, he couldn’t speak for the operatives they were going to meet in Spain. He couldn’t make that decision for them, and if Naomi’s behavior threatened to put them at risk, he’d have no choice but to intervene and pull her out. Before accepting the assignment, he had made one simple demand of Jonathan Harper: he wanted tactical command for the operation in Spain. The rest of it could be decided at a later date, but he insisted on running things in Madrid. Harper had readily agreed. Naomi had been told as much the next morning, with Ke
aley present, but she hadn’t reacted in any noticeable way, and she hadn’t mentioned it since. Kealey wondered if she’d taken it seriously, but in the end, it didn’t really matter; he was in charge, and that was final. If he decided to pull her off, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Then again, doing so would almost certainly mark the end of their relationship. And that was assuming, Kealey reminded himself moodily, there was even a relationship to salvage.
He turned back to the window and stared absently out at the rain. He decided to wait and see. He wanted to give her the chance, but if she didn’t snap out of it soon, he’d have to make a hard, but necessary, decision. He had put her life ahead of thousands of others once before. He’d gotten away with it on that occasion, but he had no desire to push his luck. If she was going to see this through, she’d have to earn the right. It was just that simple, and just that hard.
CHAPTER 10
RAWALPINDI
When she blinked back to consciousness, Brynn Fitzgerald was momentarily confused as to what had happened. She could remember the first explosions, the sickening images of blood, smoke, and fire. She knew the driver had managed to get their vehicle turned around, but everything after that was a blank. Painfully turning her head to the right, she saw that the haze had started to clear, and she realized she was still in the vehicle. The front seats had been blown from their anchors and partially pushed back. She was lying on the floor, facedown. The driver’s seat was jammed against her right shoulder, or maybe it was the other way round. Either way, it hurt to move, and there was a weight on her back that could only be Lee Patterson. She said his name a few times, raising her voice each time in the hope he was merely dazed, but he didn’t respond.
Doing her best to push her way through the mental blocks of fear and confusion, Fitzgerald tried to figure out how serious her injuries were. Her limbs seemed to be moving well enough, but her chest felt tight, and it hurt to breathe. The pain was intense; it felt as if someone were pushing down on her chest with both hands, constraining her lungs. Her arms were pinned under her body, but she was able to feel around on her torso. There was a sharp pain on the left side, indicating that a few of her ribs were probably broken. Worst of all, no one was rushing to their assistance, which could only mean the attack had succeeded.
“Lee.” Fitzgerald was taken aback by how weak her voice sounded. She coughed involuntarily, then cleared her throat. She could taste blood in her mouth, and that frightened her more than anything else. “Lee, can you hear me? Say something. Please, just say something.”
There was still no response. A sudden flurry of voices outside the car jolted the secretary of state back to reality. She was hit by a wave of relief but then realized that the voices weren’t speaking English. There was a banging on the door, then a strange noise that she couldn’t decipher. It almost sounded as if something was being affixed to the exterior of the car, and if that was the case, it could only be one thing. She felt another sick wave of fear, but she just couldn’t move; there was nothing to do but wait for the end.
The voices moved away as suddenly as they’d appeared. Fitzgerald could hear running feet and the screams of injured civilians. She was trying to figure out what to do next when her body was wracked by a fit of coughing. Then she realized that she hadn’t made a sound; it was Patterson who’d been coughing on top of her. She could feel his chest rising and falling against her back, but his breathing was erratic and labored.
“Lee?” She tried to turn to face him, but the seat was wedged too tightly against her shoulder. It was almost impossible to keep the panic out of her voice. “How bad is it? Can you move?”
He muttered something she couldn’t understand. There was a flash of searing light, followed by a loud bang. Fitzgerald blacked out again, but only for a second. Coming back to herself, she realized that the passenger-side door—the door closest to her feet—had been blown off its hinges. Although she could no longer hear out of her right ear, the desperate screams of pain and fear were suddenly louder. There was a sustained rattling noise, the sound of automatic gunfire, and some of the screams stopped abruptly. Fitzgerald felt the weight on her back shift without warning, Patterson’s body sliding down her own. Then the weight was off completely, just as a pair of hands clamped round her ankles. She cried out and tried to kick the hands away, but it was no good. Arms were waiting for her as she was pulled roughly from the remains of the Suburban, and then she was dragged clear of the vehicle.
A pair of men hauled her across the road, supporting her with one arm on either side, their free hands gripping hers. As her feet scraped over the shattered glass that covered the asphalt, one of her shoes came loose. The splinters instantly tore through her nylons and into her foot. A scream rose in her throat, but she bit her lip and held it back in time, not wanting to give them the satisfaction. Turning her head to the right, she saw that Patterson was being moved by another pair of armed men. He was unconscious, his body limp, chin lowered to his chest. Once they were clear of the devastation, she was dropped into a painful heap on a patch of dead grass. Patterson was deposited a few feet away. The secretary of state looked back to the vehicle she’d just been pulled out of, and what she saw caused bile to rise in her throat.
The Suburban’s engine compartment was a smoking ruin. The reinforced windshield was completely opaque, damaged by the force of the explosion, but Fitzgerald could see through the passenger-side window, which had completely blown out. Mike Petrina’s head was partially caved in, covered in blood and lolling forward against the dash, which had been pushed into his chest. The man charged with her protection was clearly dead, and that was the worst blow yet. With Petrina at her side, Fitzgerald had never felt vulnerable; it had never occurred to her that something could happen as long as he was alive. He was just too capable. But now he was gone, and a man was walking toward her….
The tall figure was dressed in what appeared to be a Pakistani army uniform, but his head was covered by a black balaclava. All Fitzgerald could see was his eyes, which were a flat shade of amber brown. He was holding a gun in his right hand, and as he drew near, he slowed by the prostrate form of an injured woman. She lifted a bloodied hand and said something that Fitzgerald couldn’t hear, but she was clearly pleading for help. The man paused, looking down at her, then lifted the gun and fired once into her forehead. A fist-sized mass of bone, blood, and tissue spattered over the pavement. The man kept moving forward as if nothing had happened, impervious to what lay behind him, a nightmarish scene of burning vehicles, maimed people, and mangled bodies.
As horrendous as the sight was, Brynn Fitzgerald couldn’t look away. Her mouth was hanging open, a scream frozen in her throat, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the man who had just killed an innocent woman in cold blood. She had just witnessed—and survived—a brutal attack, but it had happened so fast that it hadn’t really hit her yet. None of it could compare to what she had just seen; the casual, routine way in which the man had carried out the act was simply overwhelming. Now the killer was walking toward her, looking right through her, and the gun was still in his hand….
“Brynn.” She swung her head to the right, gasping as a bolt of pain shot through her neck. Patterson had risen to his knees, and the two men behind him had their hands on his shoulders. Fitzgerald wasn’t sure if they were keeping him down or holding him up; she was just relieved to see he had regained consciousness.
“Brynn, don’t fight them,” Patterson rasped. He was bleeding badly from a cut beneath his right eye, which was swollen shut, and more blood was streaming down from a wound on his scalp. His suit was torn and stained, but he didn’t look scared in the least. “Help is on the way. A GPS signal went out to the backup team when the first rocket hit…The technology is standard issue for embassy vehicles. All the cars are fitted with it. Reinforcements will be here any minute.”
“They won’t arrive in time,” a voice announced in perfect English. It was the man who’d just killed the injured wo
man. He had stopped a few feet away, and his gaze was alternating between them. “You have no chance of being rescued. You have no chance of escape. At this point, I’m afraid you only have one option, and that is to cooperate.”
“What do you mean, ‘cooperate’?” the ambassador demanded, his voice getting stronger and more indignant with each passing syllable. “Who the hell are you? Why are you doing this? What do you want?”
“Nothing from you,” the man responded calmly. “In fact, we don’t need you at all.”
He nodded to one of the soldiers standing next to Patterson. The subordinate stepped back to allow for the length of his rifle, which he brought to his shoulder in one clean movement. The muzzle was aimed directly at the back of the ambassador’s head.
“No!” Fitzgerald screamed. She got to her feet and staggered forward, but she was quickly restrained on either side. Her heart was pumping so hard, she thought it would burst. She didn’t know exactly what was happening here, but she couldn’t let her oldest, closest friend die right in front of her eyes. Not if she could stop it. “Don’t hurt him! Please!”
The Invisible (Ryan Kealey) Page 8