“Hi,” Coco said, then gave her code. She heard a click and a voice on the other end greeted her in a thick New Jersey accent.
“There is a problem in Paris,” Coco told her control. “A murder. Have you heard about it?”
“Only this morning.”
“Anything I need to know?” And why the hell didn’t you notify me?
“We have a report but it’s very brief. Perhaps you might visit your friends in Paris?”
Coco had to hold herself back from shrieking. “Who specifically would you suggest?”
“You have friends, colleagues in Paris. All of them useful.”
Coco winced. Her control was not being helpful. “A minister of culture. A designer. None are with the police. And I need someone on the force. I know no one. You’ll have to connect me. And speaking of that, I wonder what our friends in Jerusalem have to say about this murder?” Coco meant Israeli international intelligence, the Mossad. Those guys seemed to know everyone, good, bad or worse. “They must be interested in this tragedy in Paris. Do they have any ideas?”
“I’ll check and let you know.”
You do that. “Quickly, please.”
“I understand things worked out with the contract there in Venice.”
“With the security firm, yes.” Grant’s on board. More help than you, that’s for sure.
“Sheik Nasar is pleased then. Bravo.”
“Thanks.” I did it to expedite this hunt. I told you after Maria’s attack I’m leaving the Company. I’m not cut out for it any longer. “Anything else I should know?”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
Terrific. “Nothing about the theft from Sheik Nasar?”
“I can’t help you there. That’s your private business. Although I will say the Italian Guardia are not happy with Mr. Warwick’s nosing into the theft.”
Coco could hear the irritation in her control’s voice, too. “What’s that to you?”
“We try to keep Nasar happy—and he’s not what your boyfriend is investigating.”
Really? “Since Nasar hired him for security, don’t you think that he needs him to help find this stolen artifact?”
Control sighed. “It’s just a poem.”
“That’s all?”
“I’m just saying…”
“Saying what?” Coco persisted, unimpressed with control’s inability to connect the dots.
“Watch your step. Find Hakim. Get this over with and then you can go back to photography.”
And you? You can go back to incompetence with other agents. “Until next time, then.”
Coco cancelled the call. It was the first time she felt as if she’d been flicked off big time by her contact in Langley. Must be nice to sit in a cozy office with buddies tucked safely into cubby holes making calls out to the world.
Well, she was definitely not in a secure little office. She had to work hard out here in the cruel world.
She strode in to face Grant.
He stiffened at the sight of her expression. “What’s wrong?”
She shouldn’t tell him how deeply she resented her control. How useless the contact was. “I’m quitting once this is solved.”
He looked her over. Relief swept his features and he smiled slowly. “Good.”
“And Langley has no insight into Nasar’s stolen poem.”
“We don’t need their help,” Grant assured her. “I did the Italian Guardia a favor last year that they ought to repay. Meanwhile, what’s your call on our next step?”
Her heart swelled at his generosity and insight. “How do you feel about going to Paris?”
Without blinking, he said, “I’ll call my pilot and tell him to file a new flight plan. And I’ll call Jamal Husseini, too, and tell him we’ll postpone our arrival in Qunitar tomorrow.”
“Husseini won’t be happy.”
“I’ve texted Todd to get one of our forensics boys on one of our planes here today. I can’t do anything until I know what the facts of the theft are. And you and I have to learn what we can about Ahmed’s death.”
“Agreed.”
But that was not the end of the line for her. She knew it. She had to retrace her steps, her conclusions. That meant doing the one thing everyone said had been unnecessary. Go back to check the two suspects whom she’d cleared three years ago when she declared the Madrid terrorist a member of the radical group. True, the Israeli Shin Bet—their internal security—would not be happy campers to learn that she would open the case again. They liked monitoring their own problems. But monitoring was not her job.
My job is to solve this puzzle. Find the two other radical men still out there who attended that meeting. See if one of them claims to be Hakim.
She hit the redial on her phone to call control again. But she clicked off. She had the addresses for both suspects and she remembered how to get there. She needed no help from control. Hell, since when had she ever gotten any? Besides, the Agency might try to stop her.
She gazed at the one man who promised her help. And if she could find Hakim, solve this puzzle, she stood a chance of getting out of this mess. Stood a chance of living a normal life. Maybe even with Grant.
That’s what I want to do. Find these men, stop them and let the pros take over.
I have to do this. For my country. For Grant’s safety and any hope for me to get out of this alive.
Chapter Seven
She was still as tight as a drum when she and Grant arrived at Marco Polo Airport and took a shuttle out to the private jet hangar. When she caught sight of Grant’s sleek private flying fortress, she had to grin. “Money suits you well.”
He assisted her up the gangway into the main cabin. “Nothing like poverty when you’re a kid to make you appreciate a dollar.”
She did a three-sixty in the lobby of the plane. Well, she’d call it a lobby, but he might call it the entrance. The elegance of teak and ivory, gold trim, and woven carpeting that led from the cabin door straight back through a seating area made her smile. Dotted with huge white leather lounge chairs on bolted casters, the living area also sported a table for meetings or dining, a flat panel TV, galley and at the far end, a closed door.
“Love your taste!” she told him.
“Come meet the pilot.” Grant opened the small cabin door. “Mark Calderon. Coco Dalton. Mark is crackerjack, although he is very modest about it all. In 2004, he used to rocket diplomats into the Green Zone into Baghdad.”
“An artful dodger. That was a scary job.”
“You get used to it,” said the tall, dark man with a golden complexion many women would envy.
“Nice to meet you, Mark. Glad you’re taking us to Paris.”
“My pleasure, Miss Dalton. Weather’s good. No turbulence. We should be pulling into Orly in about two hours, give or take the tower’s routing skills.” He took hold of the cockpit door. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to file my plans.”
She nodded at him. “Former Marine buddy of yours, too?”
“Yep!” Grant led her back through the cabin toward the lounge chairs. “Plus Mark, Cord and Tate Ryder and I all played high school football together.”
“Once a team, always a team?”
Grant smiled at her. “Friends are hard to come by. You learn a lot about someone when you work with them. Would you like a drink? Water? Coffee?” He had led her to the galley and pushed open a mini-refrigerator stocked with every imaginable concoction.
“The Italian orange.” She ran her hands over the counter top, noted the microwave and the toaster oven as he opened her soda. “How long have you owned the plane?”
“Over a year. Bought it second-hand from a bank in New York. When the economy wobbled a few years ago, they had a fire sale. I offered them cash below asking price to help douse their flames.”
She chuckled and accepted the bottle from him. “Which bank?”
He named one.
She made a face. “Ouch. Your cash didn’t save them from death.”
“They didn’t plan well. They weren’t honest with each other. They deserved to fail.” He took her hand. “Come, sit and let’s talk.”
When they faced each other in separate chairs, Grant examined her features. “You’re worn out with this.”
“If I hadn’t known I was seeing you in Venice, if I wasn’t able to persuade you to stay and help me,” she admitted with a weary sigh, “I’m not sure I would have been able to see it through.”
“What about your control? Doesn’t he help?”
She shrugged. “She. And no, she’s not much of team player.”
“So I figured from what I overheard of your conversation. Why doesn’t she play well with others?”
Coco wiggled her brows at Grant. “She sees me as a threat.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.” Coco took a sip of her drink. “She knows about you helping me. I told her my plan a few weeks ago. She wasn’t happy, but I told her she hadn’t sent me any other resources so I was enlisting my own.”
“And did she run it up the chain of command?”
“I didn’t ask. Don’t know if I’d even get an answer if I had.” Coco shrugged.
“You’re probably right.”
Coco considered her soda for a minute. “I need to go to Israel and Naples, too. Will you come with me?”
“Wherever you go, I’m there.”
She let her gratitude shine in her eyes. “If I made a mistake in ID-ing any of the three under lock and key, I have to start somewhere. Hakim implies he is a brother of the man in Madrid. I need to return to Jerusalem to take one more look at the man Langley says is his older sibling. He lives in Jerusalem and teaches English at a college there. When I saw him three years ago, I didn’t think he was one of the men at the meeting in the desert.”
Grant nodded. “Do we have photos of this brother?”
“We do. I’ve seen them. All poor. Taken in little or no light. At angles that face recognition software cannot capture or analyze well. That’s one reason why Langley has needed me from the start of this. The technology of algorithms is not perfect. It cannot take measurements and determine if those fit the body language, the posture or the changes aging makes. I am not perfect either, but I can try. I need to.”
“I understand need.” He caressed her features with his silver gaze.
His sweetness on such a big, bold man always melted her down to a puddle of goo. “Thank you. Again.”
He took a swig of his own drink. “Tell me about all five men in that desert meeting whom you thought were radicals.”
Coco began a tale she’d rehashed so many times, it was now almost a litany. “From their arrival, their attitudes gave them away. The body language. Severe posture. Straight as a rod. And haughty. Above all others. The way they listened to those who were more moderate, debating the values of compromise and then dismissing moderation as a means to attaining anything in government. Their arrogance toward women was appalling, too, by our standards.”
“No surprise.”
“Right. They ignored our presence. There were three of us. The other two were Egyptian women. None of us spoke. Thank god. My Arabic is good, but it could never be taken for Egyptian Arabic or Palestinian or Saudi. Not anything in-country. You know what I mean?”
“I do.” He tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Can you describe to me what the two men who are still at large look like?”
“One was slim, elegant as a giraffe. For brevity, we call him Mr. G. Dark skin. Long beard.” She put her hand to her cleavage. “Down to here. But trimmed. Severely cut.”
“Wealthy?”
“Definitely. Manicured nails. Buffed recently to a high sheen.” She spread her fingers as she imitated their mannerisms. “A man used to refinements. Elegant fingers. Delicate touches to the tea cups.”
“Any jewelry? Any birthmarks? Moles?” Grant leaned forward.
“No rings. Nothing distinctive on the face. As for a marks on his body, impossible to tell. They were all wearing long white robes. Even their shoes were the same. Black leather. Polished to an inch of their lives. Wingtips.”
“And the second man? What was his appearance?”
“Shorter. Five- ten, maybe. Blue eyes. Round face. Overweight. Mr. C. for chubby.” She stuck her hands out, as if hers were the ones she’s she’d glimpsed long ago on a strange man. “Fat fingers, blunt. A silver ring with a vine carved in the center. Thick band. Left hand. Pinkie finger. A mole on the back of his left hand, smack dab in the middle.”
“And you have seen pictures of men whom they suspect is this man?”
“Only two possibles. Both suspects live in Naples up in the hills near Pompeii. No one is certain if either could be Mr. C. Especially me.” She searched her memory. “Both suspects are very reclusive and the photos I have seen are blurry, all of them derivatives from low rez mass-market video cameras. That face recognition software has not been helpful here, either. So I have never been able to declare if either man is Mr. C.”
“At the meeting in the desert, did C. speak? Say anything you can recall?”
“Quiet. Never said a word, this one.”
“Didn’t that seem odd? I mean, weren’t they there to share ideas?”
“True, they were. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I did point that out, but my control dismissed it.”
“I’m not. What do you think explains his lack of communication?” Grant asked in a tone that was almost rhetorical.
“He can’t talk. He shouldn’t. Or he can’t speak Arabic well. I wondered if Arabic is his second language or he grew up in another culture.”
Grant nodded. “Like France or Italy.”
“Right,” she agreed.
“Do you know anything about these two suspects in Naples?”
“Yes, one is a lawyer. International tax law. The other one owns an import-export company.”
“In Naples,” Grant said wincing, “export-import can only mean one thing. A connection to the mafia who control all trade in southern Italy. Even the garbage collectors belong! If this guy is connected to the other radicals in the desert, this means we have a hook up between terrorists with Italian gangs. Not good. Damn awful, in fact. And so similar to a situation I just helped Tate Ryder out of in Mexico. Give me these two names. I’ll see if I can get Todd to get a fix on them.”
She gave Grant a comforting smile. “I’ll give you addresses too. I have to take a look at all three. Closely. Again. Try to decide if one of them might be this man who threatens me. If I made a mistaken ID, I have to correct the error. As a woman I was kept well back at the beginning of that meeting in Egypt. When introductions were made, I wasn’t able to approach closer. I heard no names mentioned, if indeed they ever did that kind of introduction to each other. But after we began to serve refreshments, I did hear much of the conversation. Enough to be alarmed by the five who were fanatics. This Hakim the Judge, I cannot place which one he might have been. I go by faces.” She admired Grant’s, so solemn now, so attentive. “I see character in faces.” Like I see in yours.
Gratitude to him once more flooded through her. She slipped out of her chair and crossed the aisle to Grant. Falling to her knees, she meant only to kiss him, show him that in his features, she found strength and integrity. But when her mouth left his, he gathered her up to him and smoothed her hair from her cheeks. “We’re going to find this guy.”
She tried to smile. Knew there were two things she wanted in this life. Freedom from fear. And Grant. She’d known three years ago when they’d met that no other man would ever compare to him. She couldn’t tell him then how she’d grown to love him. Had no right to tell him that now either, unless and until she was rid of Hakim and the terror of him stalking her. “Grant, if we don’t find him—”
“Don’t say that, babe. Don’t even think it.” He sank his fingers into her hair, then seared her lips with his own.
Her fingers were busy pulling his polo shirt out of his trousers. “I
need something else to think about. Something scrumptious that feels and tastes like you.”
He pushed her off his lap, stood and grabbed her hand. Striding toward the rear of the plane, he yanked open the far door and pulled her inside. Whirling her back against it, he pressed her to the cool wood and sank his tongue inside her mouth. He broke away, both of them gasping. “You want mindless?”
Her answer was to hook a leg around his thigh and nibble her way down his throat. Her hands yanked at his zipper and she sank her fingers against the hard evidence that mindlessness could also be fun. She would not be the only one without a thought in her head. Mr. Security Guy went commando. Humming her delight, she stroked his length. “You are so wonderfully hard.”
“Ready, too.” He dug in his jeans pocket and produced a foil wrapper.
She giggled. “I like a man who’s prepared.”
He tore the packet with his teeth as he dragged her forward. “Babe, with you I walk around hard twenty-four-seven.”
In her peripheral vision, she realized this was a bedroom. She beamed at him. At the foot of a bed, she tugged at his shirt and whipped it up and off. She rubbed her nose in the hair of his chest. “The gray is here, huh?”
He snorted as he rolled on the condom.
She stopped him. “Give that to me.”
“What did you have in mind?”
She tilted her head, coy as a teenage girl with her hunky boyfriend. “If I told you,” she crooned as she pushed his jeans over his hips to the floor, “I’d ruin the fun.”
She licked her lips as her gaze traveled down the glory that was Grant. Beautiful pecs. Tapered waist, hard abs. Sinew and might all the way to his groin. No gray there. She grinned and wound her fingers in his black curls. “I think you’d better lie down for this.”
His silver eyes flashed wickedly at her. “I get a reward?”
“The sooner you go down,” she whispered, “the sooner I you will.”
His face went stark. Putting one calf to the mattress, he fell backward.
“Wow.” She knelt and noted the length and girth of him. “Rocket material.”
Tall, Hard and Trouble Page 17