Liquid Gold

by James Phelan

  “And you really believe you can unravel this, expose this project in Kashmir—through their water company?”

  Fox nodded. “It might be enough to force him to the table—put pressure on him, get him to talk.”

  “You know how many safeguards Babich will have in place?”

  “I reckon he’s pretty near the head of the organisation,” Fox said. “The days of these ex-spooks scratching each other’s backs and making each other rich, beyond ordinary law—it’s over. I can feel it, we’ll get the proof.”

  “Proof.” Hutchinson’s eyes searched Fox’s face. “Europol and Interpol have been chipping away at Babich’s business dealings for more than a decade. He’s got a wall of lawyers and limited-liability companies, not to mention all his subsidiaries.”

  “Show me a billionaire who’s not a crook.”

  “Fox, my team investigating US connections to Umbra has grown steadily in size since your Patriot Act thing.” Hutchinson didn’t need to remind Fox about the story he’d been working on that had resulted in uncovering the fact that Kate was being worked by an undercover French agent intent on hacking into government files. The FBI may have got their man but Fox had lost it all. “We know Umbra funds thugs and wars and finances politics and all the usual mafia-type shit, not to mention our suspicions about them being responsible for the deaths of over two hundred intelligence assets since the end of the Cold War—but we’ve had nothing to get us in the door—”

  Hutchinson’s BlackBerry vibrated and he checked the screen. “I’ve got to leave for Washington,” he said, pocketing the phone. “Keep that,” he said, motioning to the paperwork he had brought, “and call me on my cell when you’re at work, before you head off.”

  Hutchinson and Fox walked to the door and shook hands.

  “Stick with my guys, do what they say,” said Hutchinson.

  Fox nodded.

  “Keep your head, Lach, for all our sakes. I believe you can do this, I think it’s the beginning of the end of these Umbra guys, too, but you have to take this threat seriously, don’t take any—”

  “I’ll be right. You just hold up your end when we get more dirt on this son of a bitch.”

  Hutchinson smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ve got good cops and prosecutors all around the world waiting in line to take a shot at Babich.” Hutchinson watched Fox’s face as he moved out the doorway.

  Then he turned back. “Lach?” he said. “Don’t trust anyone out there.”

  “Does that include you, Andy?”

  Hutchinson gave him a hurt look.

  “Don’t worry, mate, it’s my nature,” Fox said with a smile. “I believe little of what I hear, and only half of what I see.”

  Hutchinson smiled and departed. Fox closed his apartment door and went to pack. He didn’t have much time and one thing was for certain: this was going to be a tough match.

  12

  TRIPOLI, LIBYA

  “This game—”

  “It’s not a game.”

  “Oh, yes. This match is from last night?” Hasif asked as he and Broseph sat in leather recliners and sipped German beer.

  “Yes—and don’t tell me who won,” his brother-in-law said, jumping in his chair as his team’s striker missed a header right in front of the goal.

  “You’re sure?” Hasif joked. “I heard the result on the radio coming over here…”

  Broseph gave him a look that he usually reserved for his underlings in the customs bureau.

  “Okay,” Hasif said over the top of his drink. “But if you get bored by half-time, I can tell you.”

  They laughed and drank and talked about Gaddafi and sport and stock prices.

  “I might get a new car like you then, hey?” joked Broseph.

  “We have not bought it yet—we are testing it over the weekend, but my wife seems in love with it, so I’m sure I will sign the papers on Monday,” said Hasif. “I just hope that she does not crash it while I’m away.”

  “That would be expensive,” Broseph said. “If she does, say that I was driving—as a government employee I get good cover, much better than any woman.”

  “You remind me that this country still has far to travel in some areas,” Hasif said and drained the last of his beer; the lager wasn’t entirely non-alcoholic—it was 0.1 per cent. His wife entered the room and passed them each a dolmade.

  “Don’t tell your wife,” she whispered to Broseph and he laughed while he ate. Hasif patted his lap and when his wife sat down he cradled her in his arms.

  “We need goat’s curd, lemons, and ice-cream for the kids,” she said. “Shall I drive to the shops?”

  “No, I’ll do it,” Hasif said, making to get up.

  “You’re my guests, I will go,” Broseph said as he stood.

  “Here.” Hasif fished around in his trouser pocket and pulled out the Audi key and tossed it to him. “Just don’t get me a speeding fine.”

  They could see him through the lace curtains as he walked down the front stairs and through the garden to the kerb-side SUV. Hasif muted the television’s half-time commentary.

  “Have I told you how much I love you?” Hasif asked, nestling his face in the nape of his wife’s neck.

  “Not today,” she replied, and lifted her chin to let him kiss her neck. She smelled of jasmine oil and her short dark hair of cooking spices. He kissed along her jawline and nibbled on her ear—

  The front windows of the house blew inwards at them with devastating ferocity. Hasif leaned to cover his wife and spun the chair so that their backs faced the blast. A thunderclap and orange flash filled the street, followed by a whoosh and a sucking noise—then he couldn’t hear anything but the ringing in his ears. He looked into the frightened face of his wife and held her head. She looked down at him with a little blood on her cheek and nodded she was okay.

  “Wasim,” she said faintly.

  He got out from under her and ran through the open doorway and down the front steps, holding his arms up to stop the intense heat from scorching his face.

  Where the Audi had stood a massive fire raged. The timber garden fence was in a million pieces. Car alarms sounded along the street as Hasif’s hearing slowly came back. He heard a cry to his right and he ran toward it.

  His son lay on his back, blown into the bushes, the neighbour’s brick fence blocking the worst of the blast. Wasim looked up into his father’s eyes: he looked okay but blood poured from one of his ears and his clothes smouldered in places. The neighbour’s child was nowhere to be seen. Hasif picked up his young son and walked to the neighbour’s large circular fountain in the middle of their paved driveway. He climbed in; the water was knee-deep and the mosaic tiles were a brilliant blue. He held his shaking son in the water and repeated that it would be all right, that everything would be all right. As he washed his face he heard screaming and crying all around him.

  13

  NEW YORK CITY

  Fox swung his backpack over his shoulder, scanned his apartment and then pulled the door shut as his phone rang. He saw the caller ID and considered bumping it, but pressed answer.

  “Hey, Jane,” Fox said as he followed the hulk of an FBI agent downstairs.

  “Hey, you,” she replied. “We’re meeting for breakfast, yeah?”

  “Jane, I’m sorry, something’s come up,” Fox said, following the Fed out the front door to the waiting FBI sedan. “I’m headed to the airport—”

  He looked to his right and saw Jane standing at his buzzer. She looked quizzically at him and then at the Fed who had stepped between them.

  “It’s cool,” Fox said to the man, then walked over to Jane and kissed her cheek.

  “What’s going on?” asked Jane, looking over his shoulder at the agents: one stood scanning the street; one was in the double-parked car with an NYPD sedan pulled up behind it—Fox had never seen cops more alert, and he couldn’t help but tense up. He had played down the idea of a threat with Hut
chinson, but he knew the reality: if they wanted to find him, they would.

  “Look—we’re going to swing by GSR,” he said. “Do you want to ride with me?”

  She searched his eyes, saw the uncertainty he tried too hard to mask. “Sure.”

  The Fed stood guard as they climbed into the back seat, then closed the door and moved quickly to the front passenger seat. The cars rolled on, the NYPD sedan taking the lead.

  “Lachlan—”

  “It’s something I’m working on. There’s been a threat against Al and me and some sources I used.”

  Jane’s face showed it all: anguish, concern, regret. She knew the score—she was a journalist, too, but of the feature-writer New Yorker breed. Since the Conde Nast redundancies she had been freelancing, even writing a column for GSR’s online magazine, applying her sprawling style to observations about being a thirty-something-single-mum-divorcee in America today; observations that generated more blog comments than any other column on the site.

  “Is this about the Kashmir water story?”

  “Yeah, partly,” Fox said. “Look, Al and I are headed back to India today to follow up more leads. It could be big—bigger than I’ve already reported. There’s got to be more … I might be gone for a bit.”

  He looked forward as the NYPD car whooped its siren short and loud to get a few cabs out of the way.

  “How long?”

  “However long it takes,” Fox said, turning back to Jane. “Depends what we find, how far it goes.”

  “But this threat—”

  “I’ll tell you more when I know more,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Sorry, all I know is that our names came up in a thing and these guys are going to look out for us.”

  “Who are they?” She motioned to the guys in the front.

  “FBI.”

  Her alabaster-pale face went a little whiter, highlighting the stark contrast to her dark hair, which was cut into a fringed bob with the barest hint of red highlights—all part of her cleansing move after being made redundant. Jane was pretty in a PBS kind of way—pretty for a smart writer. Fox missed her long hair, missed her moods that so easily turned to laughter even when she was under deadline pressure. They’d had a few months of laughter and comfort, but now—now she had time to burn and things had changed. It wasn’t the carefree relationship they’d initiated. Far from it, he guessed.

  “Will these Feds take care of you and Al wherever you travel?”

  “We’ll be fine,” Fox said, smiled. “Al can look after me.”

  The look in her eyes told him she wasn’t sold, and he smiled in a way that used to make her laugh. Nothing.

  “I’m feeling the way you should, Lachlan.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Someone has threatened to kill you, the FBI are your bodyguards—and you’re smiling?”

  “It’s my default position.”

  She searched his face.

  “Look, Jane,” he said. “I’ve been through this kind of thing before.”

  “So, you’re invincible?”

  “No. Lucky, I guess.”

  “Lucky? On what planet is being on some kind of hit list a lucky thing?”

  “At least someone wants me,” he replied.

  She turned away and watched wet snow fall on her window, spoke softly: “You know?”

  “I guessed,” Fox said, looking out his window.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Fox spoke quietly to the glass: “He who knows how to speak, knows also when.”

  “We—we have a daughter, he and I,” Jane said, facing Fox. “I—we—owe it to her to try again. Can you understand that?”

  Fox nodded.

  “But what?” she asked.

  “I seem to recall you wanted your ex-husband on a hit list.”

  “I wanted him hurt, not dead.”

  “Maybe I can hang out with him,” Fox said. “He might get caught in the crossfire.” He turned to her, held her gaze, saw the tears damming in her eyes. “Jane, I’m joking.”

  “I don’t know how you can joke about this. They might kill you!”

  He turned back to look out his window. New York traffic, perpetual magic hour. Park Avenue at 7.30 in the morning was not quite gridlock, but almost. Horns, cabs, vans and town cars were all settling into the commute and no one was happy about it—

  Suddenly there was a bang on the back of the car and in the same second the agent in the passenger seat was up with a Sig pointed at the threat—

  A courier on a bike flashed by the side windows, didn’t bother stopping or waving.

  “Jesus,” exhaled the agent, turning back around, looking at the driver.

  Jane’s hand had dug hard into Fox’s knee at the sudden noise and the appearance of the gun. Fox glanced at the passers-by behind Jane’s head; he knew any one of them could pull a nine mil and start blasting … He pushed the thought from his mind, looked at Jane, held her hand.

  “Look, I agree you need to do this, for Gabriella,” he said. “She’s that something special you two will always share, your whole lives. And who’s to say it won’t work out for you this time around? It’s all right, I’m cool with it. And if you need a friend, I’ll be here.”

  The NYPD sedan bleeped its siren and blasted a hole through some stationary traffic across 34th. Jane jumped at the sound and squeezed Fox’s hand, then let go quickly; it wasn’t meant to be like that anymore.

  “He wants to make it work,” she said, then paused. “People change.”

  “That much?” Fox searched her expression—she had never been so unreadable.

  “And you don’t believe in forgiveness, redemption?”

  “I want to, believe me.” Fox almost laughed. “I’ve wanted that so badly in so many ways. I don’t know what to believe any more; I’m close, but I haven’t quite figured it out.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “I believe in the truth.”

  “And you search so hard for it that it keeps you imprisoned. Can’t you see that? This obsession of yours—look what it’s doing. People want you dead!”

  Fox stared at her. He understood it easily enough, wouldn’t question her motivation further. She knew what he did in the line of work and how so much of what he’d seen haunted him at every turn. His eyes showed the slight edge of a smile that came with awareness: “You know who I am.”

  “But I need more,” she said. “I need someone who’s here, with me. You’re so closed, you won’t let me in. I don’t need that, and I don’t want it. It wears me out.”

  He faced her. “And if I could be who you wanted?”

  Her tears fell.

  Fox’s gut twisted. He looked away. He just couldn’t seem to make it work with women. Before Jane was Kate. It had rained the night she died, and it was grey for a long time afterwards. Months of befriending bartenders and drug dealers ended with the presence of Jane Clay. She had helped pull him through all that, and now here they were, with nothing left to say.

  Jane looked out her window, talked to the glass again. “You’ve worn me out,” she whispered.

  “You saved me,” he whispered into her ear.

  She faced him. Her eyes searched his.

  “We found each other at the right time,” Fox said. “We gave and we took, and it’s meant to be like this. It’s okay.”

  The agent in the passenger seat cleared his throat: “Ah—we’re here, Mr Fox.”

  Fox looked across to Jane, apologetically. “Jane, I’ve got to get to work.”

  She bit her bottom lip, something resolved. Sleeved her tears away. “Right.”

  “Ah, Mr Fox?” said the same agent, looking straight ahead. “We have to get you moving.”

  Fox nodded as another Fed sedan pulled up in front of their car: Gammaldi and his protection detail.

  Jane leaned over to Fox and kissed his cheek; he held a hand to the side of her face. She left befor
e she regretted it all.

  Alister Gammaldi stood on the grey granite plaza of the Seagram Building at 375 Park Avenue flanked by three FBI agents. He watched Jane climb into a cab and take off, then motioned for them to get going.

  “What’s with—”

  “Al, I don’t think we’ll be seeing much of Jane anymore.”

  They were shepherded towards their building by six Feds and two cops, the group weaving around pedestrian traffic like a Porsche turbo on the autobahn.

  “I never really got Jane,” Gammaldi said.

  Fox looked at his friend, and Gammaldi looked back sheepishly.

  “Too complicated?”

  “Too … New Jersey.”

  Fox smiled and shook his head as they walked into the Seagram, the top five floors of which housed GSR. The cops remained by the doors, the Feds followed close by, and a couple of GSR security staff, Eyal Geiger and Rob Goldsmith, waited in the lobby, their faces more serious than usual.

  “Too New Jersey?” Fox asked Gammaldi as they waited in the lift lobby. “What does that even mean?”

  “Stuffed if I know,” Gammaldi said. “Let’s just go with ‘too complicated.’”

  Fox laughed.

  “Let’s make this quick,” Gammaldi said as they walked into the lift foyer and pressed the call button.

  “Why? Do you have to be someplace else?” Fox asked as they entered the lift and pressed 37.

  “I’ve got to eat some real American food before we fly to India.”

  14

  FBI, QUANTICO, VIRGINIA

  When he joined the FBI after 9/11, he was a poster boy for recruitment. When he joined the ranks of their elite Hostage Rescue Team and participated in a high-profile mission, USA Today described him as an Olympic athlete who killed for a living. He liked to think his job was about saving lives, but the press weren’t that far wrong.