by RD Gupta
Like so many times before, Elbruk Matsil was befuddled by the behavior of these sadistic lunatics. The more time he spent among them, the more he became convinced the Russian invasion of Chechnya wasn’t the reason they engaged in terrorist acts. It was just the excuse.
But the laughter? What had triggered it? An al-Jazeera news report on the destruction of the Russian pipeline had aired, and everyone had watched intently. But when the screen cut to Turkish soldiers patrolling past a ragged station post along the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, Basayev and his cronies burst into convulsions of laughter.
What was he missing? Why the laughter? When Basayev had finally caught some of his breath back, Elbruk gently helped the terrorist to his feet. “Commander, forgive me, but I do not understand. Where is the humor in the Turkish pipeline?”
This sent Basayev into another convulsion as he leaned upon Elbruk for support. “D-d-don’t you see?” replied Basayev as he cuffed Elbruk on the shoulder. “They walked right past it, because it is hidden in plain sight.”
Elbruk squinted at the screen. “Hidden in plain sight? What is hidden in plain sight?”
The gleam disappeared from the Commander’s eyes as his body language shifted markedly. “In the fullness of time, as the British say. Years of planning are coming to fruition.”
Elbruk was lost.
*
Boston
The rapier-like fuselage of the Gulfstream 550 taxied onto the parking tarmac of Logan Airport’s general aviation terminal like a racehorse returning to its stable.
Sarah Kashvilli listened as the whine of the turbines spooled down and the aircraft halted. The words Blackenford Capital were painted on the side, and while jumping out of a plane at night over the wilds of Pakistan had its own brand of terror, her heart was now thumping from a different flavor of adrenaline.
The seal on the door was broken and the gangway steps deployed. She reached up and touched her necklace, gave her hair a quick pat, and realized her palms were sweaty. Nerve impulses were firing off within her like Roman candles and then —there he was.
He came down the steps with that athletic confidence that always dripped off him, and he flashed that grin of his. At the foot of the gangway, he stopped, and they both took each other’s measure in silence.
In one vein of thought, Jarrod was hoping that maybe the bloom was off the rose, that the updated version of Sarah Kashvilli was not as striking as the memory or that maybe she’d gotten fat. Perhaps some streaks of gray had appeared or a set of bifocals would be perched on her nose. But the fact remained she was still the dead solid perfect raven-haired beauty that was indelibly etched on his memory.
She was wearing a navy blue pantsuit with a single strand of pearls, and per his request, a rollerbag was parked at her side. Still all business, he thought.
The silence between them lingered until it became awkward. He stepped forward and took her into a politically correct embrace. Stepping back, he took both her hands and said “Hello, Kash. You are, as the trite saying goes, a sight for sore eyes.”
She cocked her head and gave him an impish smile. “Well, Mr. Stryker, it appears you’ve done well for yourself.”
“That was true on Friday. Today is another story all together. And in fact, that’s why you’re here.”
“Oh? So this isn’t a social call?”
“I wish it were, but no. We’d better get going. You bring your passport?”
“Would it be terribly rude of me to ask where the hell we’re going?”
“Not at all. You can certainly ask.”
A white-jacketed steward appeared. “Is this the lady’s luggage?”
“Yes, Osborne, thank you. By the way, Osborne, this is Miss Kashvilli. She has a taste for Beluga caviar and a well-blended Manhattan, easy on the vermouth.”
“Consider it done on both counts, sir. Miss Kashvilli, a pleasure. I’ll get this on board for you.”
Jarrod motioned with his arm, and Sarah stepped toward the plane, saying with a resigned sigh, “What kind of shitstorm are you taking me into?”
“Nothing a Blue Heart recipient can’t handle.”
The impish smile returned. “You have been out of the game for a while.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Classified. You’re a civilian now. Let’s see what kind of Manhattan Osborne can whip together.”
They mounted the steps and entered the main cabin as Jarrod said over his shoulder, “Let’s rock ’n roll, Hank.”
Hank Garvin, the pilot, raised his hand from the cockpit in reply and began his checklist.
Although she was comfortable in the cargo hold of a C-130 troop transport, Sarah found the luxurious appointments of the Gulfstream a little unsettling at first. She slipped into the glove leather captain’s chair that seemed molded just for her, while the teak paneling was inlaid with starburst patterns of real gold and silver. A lamp on the end table beside the couch was really an exquisite sculpture of some futuristic blue-and-white material. On the other table was a spiral of gold that held a candy bowl made of blue lapis.
Jarrod smiled as he saw the handcrafted finery was having the desired effect. As he slipped into the facing captain’s chair, he reached over and flipped a small switch below Sarah’s armrest. She gave a little start as the top of the armrest retracted and a tiny gantry arm rose up with a whirr to deploy an iPad in a cradle.
“For your in-flight entertainment,” Jarrod explained, not hiding his smugness very well.
Just then, Osborne appeared at her elbow with a Manhattan on a tray.
“Why, thank you, Osborne.” She took a tentative sip. “Perfect.”
“I’m so glad it is satisfactory,” he said. Now if you would fasten your seat belt, we’ll be taking off shortly.”
Over the rim of her cocktail glass, she eyed Jarrod warily and conceded, “It’s official. I’m impressed. So where are you taking me? ‘Urgently’ as you requested?”
Jarrod snapped his buckle. “We’re headed to Georgia. Specifically, Tbilisi, Georgia.
She almost spilled her drink. “What? What the hell is this all about?”
“As I recall, you speak the language, so I thought it might be a good place to start.”
“Well, yes, but I’m a little rusty. I have to say you’re going to extraordinary lengths to get a translator. Couldn’t you just point this bird to a Caribbean beach instead?”
“Afterward, that would be a great idea. But for now, we have a serious task ahead of us.”
“What sort of task?”
The Rolls Royce engines spooled up to full power, and in the blink of an eye, the Gulfstream was racing down the runway. He waited until they were wheels-up and she couldn’t jump out before he finished explaining.
“We are on our way to Tbilisi to find and neutralize Shamil Basayev in order to prevent him from destroying the oil pipeline that runs through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey. I need you along to provide me with access to Agency assets in the region so I can track him down.”
Sarah gaped at him. Then she stared at her cocktail glass. “What, exactly, did Osborne put in this drink?”
“Kash, I know this is quite the curveball, but I’m serious. Deadly serious. There is a king’s ransom riding on this enterprise; but beyond that, there’s someone in a hospital back in New York with a bunch of tubes running into him. I owe him everything. And to save him I have to keep that pipeline from being destroyed. It’s that simple. He gave me my life back after I fell on my sword for you.”
With that invisible slap in the face, Sarah straightened up in her chair and seemed distressed. Her eyes became glassy, perhaps with anger. “All right, Jarrod, that was a magnanimous gesture. I grant you that, and I will always be in your debt. But this sounds like sheer lunacy. Could you, perhaps, fill out the picture for me a little?”
“Fair enough.” He hit the call button and Osborne reappeared. “The lady will have another Manhattan and a spread of the Beluga would be go
od. Plus a Blue Label, double, on the rocks for me.”
“Very good, sir.”
Jarrod looked into her eyes and began. “Why don’t I pick this up where we split up in Beirut? That will give you the whole context.”
She looked out the window at the Atlantic and shook her head. “I believe the expression is that you have a captive audience. Proceed.”
As the Gulfstream cruised over the Continental Shelf and then into darkness over the Atlantic, he recounted his expulsion from the Agency, his first encounter with William Blackenford, his rise in the firm, how energy trades worked, how William imploded the firm with a bet gone wrong, and how he’d almost saved it. He then outlined the attack by Basayev, the threat to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, and how that threat had to be eliminated in order for oil prices to go back down.
By the time he’d finished, they were flying in darkness at forty-one thousand feet north of the Azores. She’d lost track of the number of caviar wafers and Manhattans she’d tossed down.
“So how, exactly, do you intend to neutralize Shamil Basayev and move world oil prices in the direction you want?”
Jarrod shrugged. “Like everything else, it comes down to information. Clearly, the Russians don’t know anything. Neither do the Turks. The Azerbaijanis tend to be insular. If anyone has touch points into the Basayev organization, it probably would be the Georgian intel people because they share a hatred of the Russians. So that’s where we start. Georgia wants to get into NATO, you know, so they’ll play ball with the Agency.
Sarah sighed. “And how do you propose to get the station chief to assist?”
“That’s where you come in.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You are to present yourself to him—along with me—as a special envoy from the deputy director of operations to assist in locating Basayev.”
She rolled her eyes. “And what makes you think he’ll buy that?”
“Because he knows me. I did some checking around. His name is Rick Edgerton. I knew him in Somalia. Not well, but I did know him. I remember I got a back channel congratulations message from him when I got my Blue Heart.”
“So does he know you were bounced from the Agency?”
“I hope so. Then I can confide in him—confidentially, of course—that I never left the Agency. My messy expulsion was to enable me to build a new cover as an investment banker, trafficking in the high realms of finance, looking for terrorist money flows. Even my employer doesn’t know.”
Sarah stared at him. “Wait, you never left the Agency?”
Jarrod couldn’t help but grin. “Of course I did. But tracking terrorism finance is our cover story. If nothing else, the Agency is about deception. Rick Edgerton will believe it, because for a split second, you believed it as well.”
She shook her head. “The operative words are ‘split second.’ All this Edgerton has to do is ping the DDO’s office for confirmation, and we are blown all to hell.”
Jarrod shrugged. “That’s a risk we have to take. I’m hoping two Blue Hearts walking in the door will provide all the credibility we need.”
“Three, actually.”
“Three? What do you mean three?”
Sarah waved a hand. “Jarrod, even if you could keep this deception alive for a few hours, or a few days, eventually it’s going to unravel, and we’ll be exposed. Possibly prosecuted. Certainly ostracized. Our careers would be toast.”
“Not if we’re successful.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. This is just too far out there. I can’t agree to your request.”
Stryker stared at her coldly. The silence held for a few moments, then he said with an icy softness, “This is not a request.”
Sarah’s eyebrow went up.
He leaned forward. “If you refuse to back me up on this, OK. I’ll tell the pilot to turn around and drop you at Boston. But then I go directly to New York and convene a press conference. With the Blackenford name, I can get access to all the major networks. There I will very publicly spill my guts on everything that happened in Beirut—how you came into the CIA to wage a personal vendetta to track down and kill the brothers of the 9/11 hijackers. How I took the fall for you. Maybe you’ll get a lucrative book deal out of it, but your life in the Agency is over. If you go with me, you have a slim chance—and I do mean slim—of keeping your life on the rails. Turn me down, and it’s over.”
She returned his cold stare, volt for volt. “It’s illegal to disclose the name of a covert CIA agent. Remember Valerie Plame?”
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. If I don’t nail Basayev, then I’m f’d anyway. So are you with me or not?”
She smoldered in silence.
Jarrod sighed, then leaned back and eased his tone. “Kash, let me put it to you this way. Say this wasn’t Shamil Basayev. Say it was another brother of a 9/11 hijacker. Wouldn’t you crawl across broken glass on your elbows to take his head off? Wouldn’t you lie, cheat, and steal to bring him to heel?”
She visibly softened, then turned her face to the window. He detected the trace of a nod.
“Well then, now you know how I feel about taking Basayev down. I cannot fail William Blackenford. I will not fail him. And at the end of the day, you owe me on this. You know you do.”
He saw her shoulders sag a little as the defiance went out of her, then her green eyes opened up and held his. “All right, Jarrod. You made your point. Let’s do this.” Jarrod couldn’t help but notice Sarah seemed quite emotional at his pitch. Perhaps he was more convincing than he thought.
“OK. Great. Let’s…wait a second. Sarah, are you crying?”
She quickly changed her expression and composed herself. “Of course not, you idiot…I’m just emotional. The last few years, it hasn’t been easy…thinking of my sister.”
She took a deep breath.
“Well, since I am going down in flames, I won’t have to stand for my annual polygraph test. I might as well bring you up to speed on certain elements of my Agency history. And besides, we need to flesh out your cover.”
For the next hour and a half, Sarah walked him through the last five years. After Beirut, she’d spent two years at the Agency’s counterterrorism center, sifting through files at night and on weekends, building the mosaic of data that would identify the brothers of the 9/11 hijackers. She found the best information centered around Ahmed Bannihammad, brother of Fayez Bannihammad and that he had been tagged several times in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, which was sort of like saying he was somewhere in Nevada, but it gave her the ballpark he was playing in.
Yet in the files she found those strands of information that might possibly lead her to her quarry. But in order to run those trap lines she had to be on the ground in country. So she volunteered for service at the Agency station in Islamabad. She did the Agency’s bidding in some of the most distasteful ways, pulling together the glimmers of information to illuminate her quest. The ISI—the Pakistani intelligence agency—was little more than an al-Qaeda annex, but within its members were those pearls that would lead to Bannihammad. She became the mistress of several ISI officers, wringing out the data until the golden thread emerged and Bannihammad’s driver was identified.
Then she swallowed her revulsion, put her charms on, and bedded the oily driver until he gave up the coordinates to put Bannihammad in the kill box.
Jarrod couldn’t help but squirm, his Southern gentleman sensibilities violated by the idea of some slimeball pawing her.
But when she related the story of her parachute improvisation-drop in-assassination of Bannihammad, he could only gape at her.
“And they gave me a second Blue Heart for that. I had some leave coming, and I was staying at my mother’s when you contacted me.”
It took Jarrod a while to absorb it all. Then after some quiet reflection, he said, “Shamil Basayev better watch out, is all I can say.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Tbilisi, Georgia
&nbs
p; Five Days until Options Expiration
Elbruk Matsil was brewing tea on the makeshift kitchen table when one of the terrorists emerged from the washroom, wiping his face with a towel. He did a double take, for it took him a moment to realize it was Shamil Basayev. The Commander had just shaved off his beard.
At that moment, one of the henchmen raised the overhead door and a pickup truck pulled in. The engine was killed and the overhead door quickly dropped. A skinny, middle-aged man with thinning salt-and-pepper hair exited and was greeted with an embrace by Shamil Basayev. A couple of the older cronies also embraced him as well, with a stream of Chechen to the effect of “Haven’t seen you in ages,” and gibberish of that ilk. One of Basayev’s henchmen threw a grip into the back of the pickup as the Commander made the rounds of saying adios to his compatriots.
When he came to Matsil, he took him into his embrace. “Elbruk, my brother, thank you for bringing me over the mountains. Now I must take my leave and complete our sacred mission. When I return, we will all make our way back to Chechnya. You remain here with the rear guard, and I will see you on my return.”
Elbruk feigned his disappointment that his Commander was leaving. “Will you be in danger? When will you return?”
The terrorist laughed heartily. “We are all in danger all the time. But I should return in a week or so.”
As Basayev grabbed his worn backpack and started towards the door, he motioned to Vaslav. “Why don’t you go with Elbruk to the market so we can make a celebratory meal for your comrades. Victory is within our grasp.” Elbruk humbly smiled and wondered why he was singled out yet again for such a menial task.
Basayev then climbed into the cab with the driver, and the door was raised again. Once they had driven off, the door came down and the rear guard of eight men settled into a bored waiting game. Four played cards, one surfed porn sites on the Internet, while another was lying on his bunk, reading a Japanese graphic comic book. Vaslav, who was nursing a bowl of borsht, promptly slammed his bowl on the table, causing some of the soup to spill over on the table. “Let’s go!” he barked as he grabbed his coat. Elbruk had no choice but to follow.