by Sean McFate
“No. Farhan escaped before we could snatch him and his assets.”
“So you hired me to find him.”
“Among others. But yes, I saw the chance to kill two birds, as they say: get the key and get you back in the game.”
I hated Brad Winters right then. For the smooth ease with which he made the pieces fit together. For the assumptions he was making about me. I hated him even more because they seemed true. I had been slumming it in Iraq, and for what? Saving one life while a hundred more are killed. Trying to get in bed with a bartender. Hoarding a warehouse full of cheap rugs. My efforts were pitiful.
But worst of all, I hated Winters because he reminded me of myself.
“So now you have the briefcase that activates the nuclear weapons, and the key card that activates the briefcase. But you don’t have the weapons.”
Winters held up a satellite phone. It was the one I had taken off Farhan in Sinjar. He had confiscated it from me at Camp Speicher. “In a few hours, the captain of the freighter will text this phone the exact location and time of the dropoff. Apollo teams are prepositioned, awaiting my orders.”
Now that I thought about it, the phone hadn’t been confiscated. Everything else I owned had, but Winters had pointedly asked me to give it to him. He was already thinking of this moment. He wanted me to realize that I was the one who had given him the vital missing piece. How little I had always understood. How easy it had always been to manipulate me, even now.
“Why do you need nuclear weapons?”
“Thomas,” he said, shaking his head like he was so disappointed. He took a puff on his cigar, for dramatic effect. Brad Winters lived for the dramatic effect.
Well, that and the power to control the world.
“Go to the window,” he said.
I stood up and walked to the windows. They overlooked Waterloo Gardens, catty-corner to the Duke of York Column. It was a leafy sanctuary available only to members of Pall Mall’s social clubs.
“What do you see?”
I scanned carefully, trying to puzzle out what he was after. It had stopped raining, but only just, so hardly anyone was out. Two gentlemen smoking cigars with tumblers in hand under a canopy, a servant carrying drinks, an elderly couple leaning on each other as they walked.
Farhan and Marhaz.
They sat on a bench beneath an ancient oak tree, Farhan with a trimmed beard, Marhaz with her nine-month belly protruding beyond her shirt.
“Let me share with you some wisdom,” Winters said, taking a drag on his cigar. “Loyalty is key, but sentiment is not loyalty. Sentiment kills.”
I stared at Farhan and Marhaz. He touched her belly.
“There can be no loose ends.”
Winters was right, of course. If his father found out Prince Farhan was alive, even ten years from now, the whole careful plan would collapse. But if he never discovered the deception . . .
That was when I realized, too late, that the merciful thing would have been to run, to leave the young couple in Sinjar to their own fate. I was death. I was the crushing power of the state. The final test of my loyalty, of my acceptance back into Winters’s family, would be killing Farhan, Marhaz, and their baby girl. But even if I didn’t do it, someone else would.
“Kill the sentimentality, Thomas,” Winters hissed. “Kill the weakness.”
I stabbed him. I picked up the steak knife and jammed it through his hand, cracking through his bones until the blade lodged in the leather upholstery and wood underneath. Before he could scream, I punched his larynx with a spear hand. His other hand reflexively went to his throat for protection, clearing my way to his torso. I dropped to one knee, pounding his solar plexus with a palm heel strike. He crumbled forward, making an exhalation-gasping sound. As he fell, I maneuvered behind him, wrapping my right arm around his throat in a vise grip and locking it in with my left arm, Marine style, and choked him out. His body flailed then went limp. I released him, unconscious, back into his overstuffed chair.
I relieved him of the satellite phone, his watch, and his cash. I straightened his tie and leaned his head against the chair’s upholstered wingback, as if he was asleep. I pulled an antique book off the shelf and laid it across his belly, as if he were reading it. I looked at the title: The Golden Woof: A Story of Two Girls’ Lives. Kinky. Carefully, I placed his left hand on the cover and tucked the right under the pages, hiding his injury.
“Sir, is everything satisfactory?” the servant asked, as I pushed through the golden door into the hallway.
“Let the gentleman rest,” I said. “He has had a stressful day. I am going to make a phone call outside.” I showed him the sat phone for effect. “Please don’t disturb him until I return.”
“Very well, sir,” said the footman, and he disappeared.
I saw Farhan and Marhaz as soon as I exited the club’s basement entrance to the garden. They were holding hands on a wooden bench, recessed in the shadows. Farhan’s beard made him stand out in the damp lushness of Waterloo Gardens, and the elderly English couple were eyeing him suspiciously.
“Come with me,” I said to them, barely slowing down. I saw Farhan start to speak, but Marhaz rose slowly to her feet, her hands on her belly, stopping his objections.
We walked swiftly across the garden to the far exit, as I contemplated my next move. I hailed a cab as soon as we hit the street, pushing Marhaz and Farhan in before me.
“The Harley Street Clinic,” I told the cabby.
“Aye sir.”
I stared out the window, watching the gardens recede. Farhan and Marhaz must have been in shock, because we had gone three blocks before they asked what I was doing.
“We’re going to the best private hospital in London,” I said. “You’re going to tell them you are having complications with your pregnancy. You are going to stay there—both of you—while they do tests. You understand that, Farhan? You are not to leave the hospital room. Not even for a sandwich.”
“Why?”
“Even if they say the tests are fine, Marhaz, and advise you to go home, you stay. Do you understand? You stay until you have the baby.”
“Winters?” Farhan asked. He knew a snake when he met one. Smart man.
I nodded. Then I smiled. “I stabbed the bastard through the hand.”
Farhan laughed.
“Anything else?” Marhaz interrupted. She was a doer. I liked that about her.
“Yes,” I said, turning to Farhan. “Call your father. Tell him what’s happened. All of it.”
“No—” Farhan said immediately, but Marhaz was there again, a hand on his elbow.
“Do we have to?” she asked.
I nodded. “He’ll forgive you,” I said, and I meant it, or at least hoped it, because I didn’t know Prince Abdulaziz. “He’ll be happy to have you back, because when you tell him what happened, he’ll have someone else to hate.”
We were coming to a busy intersection, with buildings along both sides of the road. Pedestrians flooded into the street, a dozen anonymous people hurrying God knows where, and God alone cares.
“What about you?” Marhaz asked.
“I’m walking,” I said, opening the taxi door and stepping out into the traffic. I didn’t look back. I just walked. There were cameras on every corner, security monitors on every inch of sidewalk, but I wasn’t worried. Winters would never report me to the police. And by the time he had spun up Apollo Outcomes to find me, I’d be gone. I wasn’t sure where, actually. I didn’t have a plan. But I felt better than I’d felt in six weeks, six months, maybe even six years. The divine sounds of Fauré’s Requiem filled my soul. The piece was a death mass that ended in a musical ascension, the sinner rising into heaven and God’s merciful grace.
Chapter 60
Winters’s bandaged right hand opened the warehouse door of the garage near the World Trade Center Apartments in Erbil. It was full of rugs, brass lanterns, and other junk.
“Ain’t that a sorry sight,” said the AO team leader.
God damn you, Locke, Winters thought.
The team overturned rugs and kicked open chests. They were a Tier Two team, a far cry from Campbell’s men. Normally they would be defending oil refineries in the Emirates, but they were the best Winters could muster on short notice. Campbell’s team had left Iraq shortly after Winters took Locke.
Six stories up, in an adjacent half-built building, Boon had Winters’s head in the crosshairs of his Dragunov sniper rifle. It was a clear 450-meter shot. He knew Winters would come back for the key, and he wanted to finish this. Not just for Kylah, but for the world. He was a mercenary. He didn’t need permission from headquarters to do the right thing.
He flipped the safety to off and steadied his breathing for the shot.
“Find anything yet?” Winters asked.
“Negative.”
“Keep looking.”
“No need,” an accented voice said. The men dropped what they were doing, red laser dots dancing across their chests. They raised their hands in surrender.
“Abdulaziz,” Winters said flatly. A Saudi black-ops team stood behind the prince. There was no escape.
“Did you really think you were going to steal from me, Mr. Winters? From me!” Abdulaziz struck Winters hard across the face. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
Winters spat blood. “I am working for you, my prince. I am here on your behalf.”
“My son called me.”
Winters didn’t flinch, although it was a devastating blow. Locke. That damn Locke. He was good. “Impossible,” he said smoothly. “I saw him dead.”
“I recognize my own son’s voice, Mr. Winters. All fathers do.” It was pointed. Abdulaziz looked down on men, like Winters, with no heirs. “He knew things only my son would know.”
“Then it was a recording. It was made before—”
“He told me you would say that. He also said you would have this,” the prince said, pointing to the wound on Winters’s hand. “You didn’t have that two days ago.”
For once, Winters was at a loss for words.
“He had a daughter, my former friend. Philomena. In a London hospital. He and his . . . wife flew there, I understand, on a private jet.”
Winters thought about running, but four laser sights danced across his torso. He wouldn’t make it two steps. He held out his wrists, and one of the black-ops operators flex-cuffed him.
“The first smart thing you have done since we met,” Abdulaziz said. “Take them away.”
The black-ops team marched Winters and his security detail out of the storage bunker.
“What now?” Winters said, as they shoved him into the back of a minivan.
Abdulaziz grinned. “I traded my son for this information. My son will call me every year to assure me he is alive, but otherwise we will have no contact. This is a grave sacrifice. I’m glad you aren’t going to make this harder on any of us.”
A hood went over Winters’s head. Blackness. And for the first time in his life, doubt.
Boon watched the ambush. He saw them corner the Apollo team, and the shock on Winters’s face. He could have killed Winters anyway, but he thought better of it. The Saudis knew what to do.
He stood up as the vehicles pulled away and yanked a chain out from around his neck. It was the key. He dropped it on the concrete floor, crushed it under his boot, then kicked the pieces into the wind.
Chapter 61
The Eleutheria bobbed off an uninhabited stretch of Yemen’s coastline. Captain Goncalves smoked his pipe while checking his watch. He had made this location fifty-five minutes ago. He had not gotten a return call. His instructions were clear: wait one hour for a response, and one hour only.
“Quite a night,” the mate said. In the calm of day, it was hard to believe he had come so close to murder and mutiny. It would be his secret to the grave.
“Aye.”
“I was certain that frigate would board us.”
“Aye.”
The mate paused to see if the captain would fill the void with explanation. Only silence.
“Why do you think the frigate pulled away at the last minute?”
More silence.
“How did you know?”
The captain continued to smoke his pipe, staring at the shoreline. Frustrated, the mate lit a cigarette and thought: Was the captain lucky or smart? He preferred lucky. Smart would make him too dangerous.
“Our hour’s up,” the captain finally said. “Something has gone wrong.”
“Can’t trust anyone these days.”
“Weigh anchor.”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” the first mate said, yelling out the order so the crew could hear. “Weigh anchor!”
“Heading?”
“South by southwest,” the captain said. “To our next port of call.”
“Make for Mogadishu!” the first mate bellowed.
“Prepare for the worst. We will be traveling through pirate waters. But I’ll be holding on to this,” he said, clutching the key to the armory with a wise grin.
The contraband was his now, Goncalves thought. That was the law of the sea. He would sell it eventually, whatever it was. But he wasn’t in a hurry. It was a clear night and an ebbing tide, and Capt. Emanuel Goncalves felt as he always felt when the sea breeze was finally pushing him away from the shore and all its problems and back to where he belonged.
He felt free.
Epilogue
Friday, January 23, 2015
I shrugged off the bone-deep chill of the Welsh winter and entered the pub. I noticed the eyes of several men following me. One even cleared his throat to attract my attention, but I ignored them.
“Finally came in out of the cold,” the bartender said with a smile. He was big and shaved bald, with a formidable beard and several tribal-looking tattoos on his arms. “Yeah, I seen you out there, watching.”
“Woodford Reserve,” I said.
“Never ’eard of it.”
I scanned the Scotches on the back bar. “Oban, neat,” I said. “And a Bell’s for my friend.”
“Bloody ’ell,” Wildman said, eyeing my jungle green camouflage jacket, threadbare slacks, and the dockworker black-knit cap I’d taken to wearing everywhere, even before the weather turned cold. Even the thrift stores had cameras these days. But not this kind of bar.
“I see you had your eye on something specific,” the bartender said, sliding us our drinks. “But this one ain’t worth it, I can tell you from experience.”
“Fock you, Bruce,” Wildman snapped. “He’s a mate.”
Wildman pounded his shot, while I sipped my Oban. It was a smooth Scotch, light with some smoke, perfect for this type of weather.
“How’d you find me?” Wildman asked.
“I figured you’d come home to see your mum eventually,” I said. “You always were a momma’s boy.”
He snorted. “Too true.”
“I remembered you got in a fight outside this bar a half decade back, and eventually I put the pieces together.” Took me long enough, but I was a dumb-ass, and selfish, too. I’d started to know myself, though, and that had to be a good thing, right?
“You still like the work?” I asked Wildman.
“It’s all right,” Wildman said. “But you heard Apollo went belly-up, I assume. Got a new name, Executive Actions, new bosses, but it’s bollixed.”
They hadn’t gone belly-up. They’d changed the name, ousted a few directors loyal to Winters to try to shed the disaster with Abdulaziz, but it was the same company. They were probably blackballing Wildman because of his part in the Saudi affair, but no sense telling him that. It was better that way. At least they weren’t coming after him.
“You in touch with Boon?”
Wildman nodded and signaled for another shot from the leering bartender. “I know where to find him,” he said. “Why? You got an
idea?”
I sipped my single malt. I could see men in the background, many built like Wildman and the bartender, checking us out. I didn’t like it, too public, but I had to trust them not to talk to the wrong people, or hopefully anyone at all. Gay bars were good for secrecy, though. Outside these walls, there was no incentive to talk.
“I’ve got a job,” I said. “My own operation this time, nobody to answer to.”
“It dangerous?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Borderline criminal, outside normal channels?”
“Of course.”
“So black my own mum would be ashamed to know about it?”
“I don’t know your mum, but it’s a safe assumption.”
He drank. “I assume there’s no money in it.”
“A bottle of whiskey or two at best.”
“Sounds perfect,” Wildman said, with a smile so big his missing teeth showed. “When do we start?”
Two hundred fifty kilometers and a world away, Sir Kabir Basrami-Heatherington was in his office late, writing at his antique desk. The desk had once belonged to Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to Queen Elizabeth I, who had risen from obscurity in the 1500s to become the shadow sovereign of England, entrusted by the queen to guide foreign, domestic, and religious policy, and to manage her most sensitive affairs. Walsingham was the man who kept order in a disorderly kingdom, and later in life he had formed a secret consortium, the House of Walsingham, to preserve that order. Sir Basrami-Heatherington was not only dedicated to the man’s ideas, he was also a member of the consortium, and he trusted in the old spymaster’s ways, both large and small. He never sent an e-mail, for instance. His offices didn’t have computers. If orders had to be written, he preferred the security of pen, paper, and trusted courier.
The further we advance, he thought, the more we go backward toward the truth.
Behind him, a fire was lit, a Scotch was poured, and a large monitor showed silent news coverage of the Saudi coronation. The banker spun around in his antique chair to watch the new king and, more important, his son.