“A seat at the table.”
“You realize,” Marsh responded, acid dripping from his voice, “you could have simply answered that with ‘no.’”
1:27 P.M.
The safehouse
Rochdale, West Yorkshire
“What do you mean?” Harry asked, staring across the table into the imam’s eyes.
Besimi shrugged expansively, stirring his tea once more with the spoon. “You’re an American, in this country doing things which could result in you being sent to prison for the rest of your life. And you find it strange that I would ask why?”
Why, indeed. Questions became hard when you scarce knew the answers yourself. A dangerously vulnerable feeling of uncertainty.
Time to go on offense. “Tarik Abdul Muhammad,” he said finally, pushing his empty cup away from him. “That’s why I’m here. The Shaikh, as he is known to his fellow Salafi. What do you know of him?”
“Ya Allah,” the older man breathed, shaking his head wearily. Oh, God. “The name that seems to be on everyone’s lips…”
“So you know him?”
“I know that British intelligence is even more eager to learn of him than you are.”
Oh, I doubt that very much, Harry thought, but didn’t say—his eyes never leaving the imam’s face as he waited for him to continue.
“I was kept in solitary for three days at Leeds—I believe it was. Deprived of sleep, given only minimal food and water. All so that I would tell them what I know of this ‘Shaikh’, as you call him.” Besimi favored him with a rueful smile. “But as you and I both know—a man can only reveal that which he knows. And I know nothing of Tarik Abdul Muhammad beyond what I read in the news.”
The old man was telling the truth, Harry realized, unable to disguise the disappointment washing over his face as he leaned back in his chair. There was no doubting it—when you worked in a world where deceit was the currency of the realm, you soon learned how to discern truth when you found it.
Or you soon were dead. It was that simple.
Besimi drained the last of his tea and set the cup before him, watching Harry carefully. “I know that for the last few months, there has been talk in the mosque. Whispers among the young, the followers of Hashim Rahman, of a man who was to come. A wolf, like all those who preceded him. Perhaps they were speaking of the Shaikh…only God knows.”
A bitter laugh escaped Harry’s lips. “And He hasn’t been in the intel-sharing business of late.”
“And you are interested in Tarik, because?”
The imam was probing, his eyes seeming to look right through Harry. “The man killed hundreds of my fellow Americans in the attacks on Vegas,” he retorted, taken momentarily off-guard. “And escaped. I want to see him brought down.”
“No,” Besimi said after a moment’s reflection. “If that were the whole truth of it, you would be here with the rest of your countrymen. Working with the Security Service. Instead, you are all alone. Taking incredible risks. Would I be wrong in thinking there is something more…personal, to all of this?”
Deceit. If you allowed it to go on long enough, it became second nature. The urge to lie more powerful that any impetus to tell the truth ever had been. And yet…
“No,” Harry shook his head finally, finding it painful to even speak the words. “One of the Americans who died in Vegas…was a woman named Carol Chambers.”
“Ah,” the old man nodded, his voice soft as if with remembered sorrow. “And this woman—you knew her, no?”
Harry glanced toward the shuttered window of the safehouse, the faint rays of afternoon sun making their way in against all odds. “I loved her.”
More than life itself. That was the truth of it, raw and bitter. In a way he hadn’t loved anyone in a very long time.
“You can’t bring her back to you, no matter what you do,” Besimi said slowly. “No matter whom you kill.”
“But I can bring justice,” Harry shot back, feeling the old angers surge within him.
Besimi shook his head gently. “No. Only God can render justice. It is far beyond the power of you, or I. As He spoke through the voice of the Prophet Musa, ‘To Me belongeth vengeance and recompense.’”
Enough. Harry shoved his chair back in a rough motion, metal scraping across the floor as he rose, turning toward the door. “I will do what needs to be done.”
The old man just looked at him as he stood there, sadness filling his eyes. “I must warn you, those who seek to take that which belongs to the Lord of worlds…do so at their peril.”
Harry paused with his hand on the door, a bitter smile playing at the corners of his mouth. The Sig-Sauer visible beneath his open jacket. “You grew up among shepherds—you know what you do when a wolf has come to ravage the flock.”
He went on without waiting for Besimi to respond. “You bring in a hunter.”
A moment later, the phone in his shirt pocket began to vibrate with an incoming call…
1:35 P.M.
Leeds, North Yorkshire
“Pick up,” Mehreen whispered angrily, hearing Nichols’ phone ring through her earpiece as she spun the wheel of the Audi, backing into a side street.
The city center of Leeds was shut down by a protest—police deployed in full riot gear to attempt to forestall a riot. It wasn’t working, as the thin haze of smoke from torched cars bore painful testament.
She shook her head. As much as she had thought it could help—could calm their fears over Aydin, telling her brother and his wife of her employment by Five after all these years had been the wrong decision to make. “How could you do this to your family?” The pain in Ahmed’s eyes had been all too real, along with the anger. The betrayal.
“How could you lie to us all this time?”
Perhaps she had known that all along. Her family, like so many immigrants from Muslim countries, came from a world where intelligence services were tools of oppression, of terror.
Instruments by which many a man had disappeared in the middle of the night, never to be seen again by his family.
Nothing like the Security Service, but it was difficult for some to differentiate emotionally between the two. Particularly in the years since 9/11, as the Service’s resources had become increasingly focused on the Islamic community.
To have become one of them…it was an act of betrayal. Even more than her marriage to a British soldier.
A click as the phone was picked up. “Yes?” Nichols’ voice, careful not to identify himself. Cautious as ever.
She hesitated for a moment, still wrestling with the emotions of having seen her brother once more. Of having parted with him in such a manner.
“We’re on our own.”
Chapter 20
10:47 A.M. Eastern Time
Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C.
“That’ll be all for now, Mark,” Senator Roy Coftey said, handing a thick sheaf of papers from the upcoming appropriations bill to one of his staffers and placing a hand on the young man’s shoulder. Glancing past him to where Melody sat behind her desk in the outer office. “Please, give the senator and me the room.”
A nod, and then his aide was gone—the door closing behind him as Coftey turned back, his eyes falling upon the tall, muscular black man standing in the middle of the room—watching the exchange with an amused smile written across his dark face.
Senator Lamar Daniels. Perhaps more pertinently where Coftey was concerned—Captain Lamar Daniels, United States Army, Retired.
“Always underfoot, aren’t they?” Daniels asked, his voice thick with the drawl of his native Missisippi. His face breaking into a full grin.
“Always,” Coftey smiled, reaching out to grip his colleague’s hand in a firm handshake. “Staffers…they’re a lot like women, Lamar. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”
A laugh broke from Daniels’ lips, his dark eyes twinkling with humor. “You know, Roy—my grandmother had the same thing to say about men.”
&
nbsp; “Fair enough,” Coftey chuckled, opening his desk and retrieving a square box. “Care for a cigar?”
“In here?” Daniels raised an eyebrow in amused skepticism. The Russell Senate Office Building, like all federal buildings, had been smoke-free by law since 1997.
“That takes care of most of it,” Coftey said, indicating an air purifier sitting unobtrusively in one corner of the room. “As for the rest, well you know good and well I’ve always been one to make my own rules. Chew on it if it bothers your conscience.”
“My conscience has never been that frail,” the man smiled, reaching out as Coftey used a guillotine cutter to trim the end of the Romeo y Julieta, handing it over. “But you didn’t bring me here to discuss my misdeeds—so what’s this about? The President’s NSA bill?”
“After a manner of speaking.” Coftey fished an engraved lighter from the inside pocket of his suit, briefly touching flame to the freshly-cut tip of his cigar before tossing the lighter to his colleague. “I’m sure you’ve heard that I’m to be primaried.”
“No…” Daniels paused stock-still, his dark hand wrapped around the lighter, the cigar half-raised to his lips. A look of shock spreading across his face. “Are you serious, Roy? I had no idea.”
And he believed him, Coftey realized, fragrant smoke curling from the end of his cigar as he looked into the man’s eyes.
Even if he wouldn’t have believed it from anyone else.
Lamar Daniels was the closest thing he had to a friend in the Senate, ever since the man had come to D.C. back in ’98. Fresh off a victory over the Republican incumbent, in his early forties a decorated Gulf War veteran and the first African-American senator from Mississipi since Reconstruction.
And Coftey had found himself warming to the younger man, drawn together by their common brotherhood—despite the reality that Daniels had still been passing notes in grammar school when he’d been wading waist-deep through the rice paddies of Vietnam.
In 2002, they’d stood together leading the fight in the Senate against the Iraq War resolution. Arguing that the last thing the United States needed to do was embroil itself once more in the quagmire that had ever been the Middle East.
Well over a decade later, with the United States deploying more “advisors” with each passing month to combat the rise of the Islamic State—that argument was looking more prescient all the time.
He seemed to vaguely remember another war which had started with “advisors”…
“Dead serious,” Coftey said, rising from his seat. “The party wants me gone, Lamar. Put out to pasture? More like sold to the glue factory.”
Daniels shook his head, tendrils of smoke escaping from between his lips. “Who’s pushing?”
“Ian Cahill.”
A nod of understanding. You didn’t work on the Hill two months without realizing the influence the veteran party operator wielded there. “My guess,” the older man went on, circling the desk, “is that he’s been talking with the leadership. Feeling them out. Getting ready to make his next move. But I’m going to need something solid to work with if I stand a prayer of beating him—to say nothing of the NSA bill.”
“And that’s where I come in?”
“That’s where you come in,” Coftey nodded, leaning back onto his desk—the solid oak easily supporting his bulk. “I want to know who they’re going to try to use for the primary attempt. The shortlist at least, their choice if they have one. Can you find out for me?”
There was something there in the man’s eyes, a hesitation he hadn’t expected to see. Et tu, Brute?
“I know it’s not an easy thing to ask,” he began, his eyes searching Daniels’ face. Wondering if he had caved, if they’d gotten to him first. “Going up against Cahill like this. But—”
“No, it’s not that,” the Mississippi senator said quickly, the moment passing as quickly as it had come. “It’s just that I may not be the right person to ask, Roy. I’m too close to you—the people we need aren’t likely to let their guard down around me.”
“If you’d rather I…”
“No.” Daniels shook his head, the cigar still clenched in his left hand as he rose, offering his right to Coftey. “You asked me, and I’ll find out what I can. I give you my word.”
The word of a soldier, Coftey thought, clasping the man’s hand firmly. It would have to be good enough.
4:05 P.M. Greenwich Mean Time
Leeds
“Sierra, Echo Five, subject is a kilometer from your position. Maintaining following position—he just received a phone call.”
Thomas leaned forward in his seat, scanning the screens before him with weary eyes. Nothing.
Day after day of this—he had never been cut out for surveillance work. A necessary evil. He looked over the relevant screens once more to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. He wasn’t.
“I thought we were up on Rahman’s mobile?” he asked, turning to the British intelligence officer at his side.
“We are,” she responded, her brow furrowing as she reached forward, adjusting one of the microphones. “But we’re not showing any calls.”
“He must be using a burner.”
She shook her head in frustration, running a hand through her greying hair as she picked at the half-empty box of crisps beside her computer. “Another one…sod it.”
“Of course,” Hashim Rahman responded carefully, looking both ways as he moved onto the crosswalk, crossing the street as he neared his flat. There had been a woman behind him for a block or more, but now she was replaced by an older man in a business suit, eyes down on the phone in his hand as he hustled along.
Were they following him? Was it his imagination—paranoia overcoming him in the wake of the last few days’ events?
Impossible to say.
“The date of the wedding has been moved up…I understand. The suite will be prepared, as promised,” he said after listening a few more moments. Knowing only too well what the Shaikh’s words meant.
The boy was going to become a martyr. A young life, given in God’s struggle.
“Mash’allah,” he whispered beneath his breath, mounting the steps to the front door of the terraced house. How beautiful a thing.
Now all that remained was how best to take advantage of his sacrifice.
He closed the burner and turned it over, quickly stripping out both the battery and SIM before returning them to his pockets, the footfalls coming ever closer behind him.
Rahman half-turned at the door, watching as the man walked on by with no hesitation—his steps never slowing. Perhaps it had only been his imagination.
The door closed behind him as he entered, making his way up the flight of stairs and to the entrance of his second-floor flat.
He could smell the savory aroma of his wife’s cooking even through the door—heard the footsteps of his little daughter running to meet him as he removed his shoes.
The sound of her voice serving to wash away all the care. The stress of the last few days.
The imam smiled to himself there in the semi-darkness, feeling himself at peace. Mash’allah.
“Sierra, Echo Five, we have lost visual. Subject has entered residence.”
“Echo Five, Sierra—loss of visual confirmed. Establishing audio surveillance presently.”
“Are we getting anything?” Thomas asked, leaning forward in his chair as the woman typed another command into the workstation before her.
She listened for another moment, the frown deepening across her face until finally she removed the headphones. “Just our lad talking with his wife. He’s no longer on the call.”
That figured. Rahman was leading a double life. The family man, the good Muslim—the “pillar of the community.”
And the terrorist. Or the inciter of terrorists, which amounted to the same thing.
Not under UK law, he reminded himself. “What about the phone?”
“We can narrow it down a three-block radius,” she replied, favoring him with a
weary glance. “A city like Leeds? That’s easily north of five thousand calls at any one moment. If Rahman was careful to avoid keywords…it could take GCHQ days to identify his number.”
Intel. Anymore, it was an embarrassment of riches. The door of the van slid back unexpectedly and the figure of Darren Roth entered, clad in one of the Yorkshire Gas & Power uniforms they all wore.
“Thought we’d lost you,” Thomas said, eyeing his counterpart skeptically. “Where have you been?”
“Following up a lead on the Shaikh,” the British intelligence officer responded, but said no more as he took the empty seat at the back of the van before the surveillance feeds.
“Dry hole?”
It was a moment before Roth spoke, his hesitation palpable. Finally, “You might very well say that, mate.” He went on without giving opportunity for further comment.
“Is Rahman giving us anything actionable?”
5:31 P.M.
The safehouse
Rochdale, West Yorkshire
“You told your family what you really do,” Harry observed quietly. It wasn’t a question, just a sober assessment of the facts at hand. One bearing more than a hint of reproach.
She turned from the stove, her eyes settling on his face. “I did. What would you have done if you had been in my situation?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s been a long time since I knew anyone I cared about enough to tell them that much truth.”
There had been Carol, but she had already known more than he could ever have brought himself to tell her. Already a part of this world, no matter how much he might wanted to have kept her out.
No matter how high the walls he attempted to build between the two.
For in the end, all the walls had come crashing down. The rubble of dreams.
Mehreen swore softly under her breath. “That’s how things are for you, aren’t they? Truth is whatever you tell people—whatever you decide they deserve to hear. A web of lies, twisting and entwining about you until you realize that you’re trapped too. I can’t live my life that way.”
“Then you should never have joined Five.” And that was truth, cold and brutal. The way truth so often was.
Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3) Page 40