‘What you are doing does not matter?’
‘No. What I think about it.’
She looked at him, squinting. ‘Are you afraid?’
‘I don’t think so.’
She turned to look behind them. ‘They could be hunting us right now,’ she said flatly.
‘Keep in mind that the killings may be unrelated.’
‘How are they doing it?’ she asked. ‘What are their techniques?’
‘These might be random attacks.’
‘But you do not think so.’
‘Don’t I?’
‘Intuitively. Isn’t it that we always understand what is happening? Even if we are falling prey to a situation, don’t we know the truth of what is occurring, even if it is only at a level below that to which we can apply deliberate thought?’
‘What are you talking about, the subconscious?’
‘Yes, the subconscious. The low regions of being.’
‘You’ve given this some thought.’
‘I am only thinking about it now.’
They’d run out of reasons to explain why Protonic might be staying silent. They knew that he was living at the safe house. They saw him on its roof and in the streets around.
Daniel had now learned from Moore the story of Protonic’s recruitment: a walk-up, someone who’d appeared at the US consulate in Karachi, ready to volunteer his services on the proviso that he be paid ‘success fees’, small fortunes in cash. At last count it was said that his information was directly responsible for seventeen assassinations, including ranking lieutenants from al-Qaeda’s external operations arm—men who’d come to have very short lifespans under the US drone regime.
In Peshawar, Dupont had turned his investigations onto the house itself. Apparently it wasn’t in the hands of Wahhabi extremists any more but the Pakistani Taliban. What this meant precisely, Daniel had no idea. But together, Dupont and Raul had let Protonic’s silence drag on for almost a week before they’d decided, today, to provoke something.
They’d been present for just over an hour when they saw Protonic and another man, a squat person they knew as December, leave the house on foot. The pair went west into the flow and truss of walkers. The direction they took led them further into the old city, deeper into the maze. The sun was bright. Whenever they made a turn, Raul sent their vector to Dupont.
The drone stayed very high to see into the narrow alleys between the buildings. There was all kinds of activity, things being moved on small carts and trays, things being adjusted or manufactured, sparks flying.
Dupont waited for Protonic and December in an alleyway that had market stalls spaced along its northern side. The pair entered from the east. Dupont waited in front of a stall, pretended to be shopping. Daniel thought that the stall was selling spices or nuts.
The men approached Dupont’s position. Daniel wasn’t quite sure what the plan was or what would happen. Dupont must have been watching from the corner of his eye. When Protonic got close, the American turned from the stall and with one step crashed into him. Protonic had to stop abruptly.
Did his body jerk again with surprise, or had Daniel just imagined it?
Dupont made the stranger’s gesture of apology; continued on his way. Protonic watched over his shoulder, dead still; you had the impression he’d seen something shocking and unexpected. For several seconds he looked quietly dazed. For such an experienced and successful agent, Daniel thought the man wasn’t doing a very good job.
For a short time Protonic and December continued west. A mule or donkey was led past them and the drone said something, routinely calling its fuel. When Protonic stopped, an argument ensued. December gestured angrily with his arms and Protonic raised his hands in calm defence. A flow of people passed around them and moments later they each moved into it, going separate ways.
‘Target?’ said Ellis.
‘Follow December.’
But it was no use. They lost him in a market; he disappeared into it or through it, and they were left looking at nothing but a crowd.
The city’s shadows were flattening and it was nearing evening, drone time, when Protonic finally called home. Daniel had no idea what the means of contact was, but when Raul came back to the control station he’d had word from their man. He explained that their guess was correct: Protonic was in Peshawar with Abu Yamin—so close, in fact, that it had thus far been impossible for him to send word. He’d not managed to use the explosives on the plane because Abu Yamin had insisted, at the airport, that Protonic get onboard: he needed loyal soldiers, he’d said, in Pakistan and not the Maghreb. Exactly what their mission was Protonic did not know. But he was due to meet again with Abu Yamin that evening, and when he did he’d call the man’s position in.
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Gray said. ‘He tells you he boarded the light plane with Abu Yamin, but we watched him arrive on a flight from Oman.’
Raul thought about this. ‘Well, Oman is on the way. We don’t know for certain that Abu Yamin flew straight from Yemen to Pakistan.’
‘But is Protonic claiming that they travelled together the whole time? Because that doesn’t seem to be what’s happened.’ Gray paused. ‘And if he was outside Abu Yamin’s company, then why did he not call in?’
The moment of light. The drone had flown all night, the city pale and peaceful below, each man slipping into and out of full awareness, occasionally drifting into sleep.
It was a few minutes after the sky in their monitors began to brighten that Protonic came through. He was with Abu Yamin at a house in the north, a place that was half slum, where the streets did not have names. He’d been there all evening but hadn’t been able to get away. Now he was out quickly to find some breakfast. He’d just paid a street boy to go and stand outside the Pakistan International Airlines office and to guide back whoever approached him. He’d be wearing white sneakers.
Raul spoke to Dupont. They found the airline office on a map and the drone went to it. There was someone outside it in white shoes. He looked older than they were expecting, his frame that of a youth rather than a boy.
Dupont drove there in a dusty black Peugeot, what looked like a reclaimed taxi. The car appeared at the top of the street, matte in the cool light. It was an image that would later become seared into Daniel’s memory, haunting his recollection, and he’d wonder why his mind would choose to isolate that moment over all others—the car at the tip of the street.
The Peugeot came on. It crossed an intersection, slowed for another, drew level with the airline office and halted. Daniel recognised Dupont in the driver’s seat. Saw the man’s arm extend from the window towards the youth in a last gesture. Eyes down, the boy walked to the car and got in the passenger side.
The time between that event and the explosion was later measured as 3.1 seconds. Those who witnessed it could recall no such delay. The boy getting in and the car exploding seemed to occur in the same instant, the door closing then tearing half off with the blast that threw away light and dust. For those operating the drone, the explosion was soundless. It set the car at a strange, crooked tilt and flames began to rake through the broken windshield. The people who were very close rose halfway up from where they’d fallen and kicked away. A few failed to get off the ground at all. Others were coming forward, rushing out of the nearby streets to see what had happened In the control station, if there was no immediate cry for action, it was because nobody in the car down there could have or would now survive.
Daniel’s first thought was that a rocket had struck, so fast they’d not seen it. But of course what had happened had been suicide. Suicide and homicide in one. Yes, if he pictured the youth now, there had been something more than a shirt—a jacket that could have concealed a vest. Dupont had just been murdered. A man in his car on the edge of the morning, deliberately targeted for death.
9
Dozens of pictures of Protonic were stuck to the wall of the briefing hut: the agent who’d double-crossed them, the man who’d turned again.
Written large was the name he went by in the outside world: Abu Ja’far. There seemed no question that he was responsible for the killing. He was the one who’d arranged the boy and called them out. The only mystery was why.
The photographs showed him in profile, in portrait, in the middle distance: a man with a black-grey beard who was often smiling, who was skinny but looked in his prime, cheery, somebody it would be easy to trust.
The first men from Langley arrived at Creech within hours of the blast and more came in the middle of the night. They carried files in lock-up cases. When they weren’t whispering to one another they were talking on the phone.
By the fence line, Daniel saw what he thought was Raul calling Dupont’s family.
He wondered whether Dupont had realised what was about to happen in the instant before. Did the boy curse him as he got into the car? Did he recite a prayer? Did he just stare dead ahead while fingering the switch?
The car at the top of the road.
The flash followed by the burn.
Daniel remembered Dupont’s particular way of standing, elbow bent and hand to the back of the head, a wary slump. His death felt impersonal. Highly plotted. A death in the service of other currents and agendas, the raw pulp of history, hardly even his own.
Raul looked riven. He was in charge of the Protonic operation and he’d not seen this coming. Daniel felt it in the air carried by the people from Langley, on whose shoulders the blame was being apportioned. Things are never the fault of the dead. Perhaps as penance, Raul had promised to spend tonight at Creech before going straight to the theatre to take Dupont’s place.
Daniel went to the briefing hut, sat next to Gray, who was absorbed in reading a file. Wolfe was moving around the room, phone in hand.
‘Seventeen kills but I think he was never with us,’ Gray eventually said, raising the file. ‘We thought we knew who Protonic was, but something has happened. Now we are meeting Abu Ja’far.’
‘What has happened?’ asked Wolfe.
Gray paused, thinking. ‘Something’s changed. We’re winning, or we’ve already won. Who is al-Qaeda any more? A band of poorly trained illiterates and a leadership too afraid of dying to ever pick up a phone.’ He spoke as though testing his words. ‘What if Protonic’s . . .’ He corrected himself: ‘What if Abu Ja’far’s loyalties did not just switch? What if they have remained the same, were never with us. It says it here in his record of note: “Came to al-Qaeda through the Taliban.”’
Gray and Wolfe looked at each other. Gray said, ‘Abu Ja’far moves through the al-Qaeda network, slowly helping to kill them without being seen to raise a hand. We are the executioners and we pay him for the privilege. Handsomely. He makes sure of that because we must believe it’s what motivates him. But what if he is in fact not the mercenary he appears to be? What if this is the true believer’s contribution to re-establishing the Islamic state?’
‘Taliban,’ said Wolfe.
‘We know this about him, this connection, but we ignore it, we think it’s insignificant. The Taliban and al-Qaeda are not the best of bedfellows. Bin Laden brought America’s lumbering wrath down on their heads. The jolly green giant smashed their little unthinking Sharia empire to bits, and they’ve been at war ten years to win it back. They may well do it too. But if anything will keep America there, it’s al-Qaeda. This is what the Taliban know: take al-Qaeda out of the equation and the US will lose interest in the war. Take al-Qaeda out and keep them out and the US can tally a victory and give in as soon as it can save face. Unlike al-Qaeda, the Taliban does not want war with the West. It wants Afghanistan.’
‘The missiles.’
‘The missiles are going east, not west. They’re not meant for seven forty-sevens but for us. The war.’
‘Abu Ja’far.’
‘Having worked the situation to his best advantage, he is turning his gun our way.’
Wolfe said, ‘I think this is something we should be discussing with Raul.’
‘I think it’s something Raul should have been discussing with us.’
‘How embarrassing is this?’
‘Funding a Taliban spy.’
‘I’d call it an error of judgement.’
‘The enemy of my enemy.’
‘What about Abu Yamin?’
‘I’ll look it up,’ Gray said, ‘but you know what I’m going to find.’
‘“Came to al-Qaeda through the Taliban,”’ Wolfe said.
‘That or he’s a more recent convert.’
‘Do you think he knows about it, Abu Ja’far’s connection to us?’
Gray thought about this. ‘In that part of the world, I don’t think I’d tell anyone, would you?’
Cold air ripped through the car on the highway yet Daniel kept the windows down, felt numb. The roads all the way to the Strip were deserted. He hardly noticed. Thinking about Dupont and the explosion and what Gray had just said, he forgot to watch for pursuing cars.
When he stopped at the intersection of Spring Mountain Road and the Boulevard, a mob of tourists crossed in front. They were drunk and rollicking. He paid little attention until something banged across his windshield. He startled and the group jeered. A beer bottle?
The traffic signals changed and he threw the car angrily into the turn, inches from where they stood on the kerb. His wheels squealed and he heard the gang shout. There was another violent thud, something bouncing off his chassis, and this time he saw what they were throwing—plastic bottles full of water. The night had been hot, and the street vendors always did a good trade.
At the Nexus, Ania was home. She had bought pizza and an Australian shiraz she’d found in a liquor store up on Fremont Street, home of the first casinos and many vanished places, the Horseshoe, the Frontier Club, the Apache Hotel; there were only dead games there on Fremont, at Binion’s and the Golden Nugget.
She told Daniel she was now convinced that her husband was in Vegas. From a payphone, she’d called his cell phone and he’d answered. She’d then called the house on Fletcher Street and no one was home.
They sat on the sofa and looked at the city’s sea of lights. Ania asked him what was wrong.
He looked at her. ‘Someone died today,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Where?’
‘Not here. Over there.’
‘But you knew him?’
‘Of course I did.’
Ania said nothing. He realised he’d snapped at her. She looked away. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just nobody saw it coming.’
‘Alright,’ she said, reaching for the wine. ‘But you must have expected something like this. Isn’t it part of the game we have chosen to play?’
‘We?’
‘We,’ she said, ‘royally meaning you.’ She filled her glass.
‘Though I suppose now I am a player also, hiding out here as I am.’
A suburban street in North Vegas, rocky mountains in the distance. Peach’s home was small and cream-coloured. A satellite dish sat on the roof.
Peach had seen Daniel’s car and was waiting on the doorstep. They went inside to the kitchen. Peach began to make coffee.
‘So after I’ve been asking for more than a year, my ex-wife finally wants to send my boy over to visit me,’ said Peach. ‘Know why? Because she wants to take a week’s vacation to some place she won’t say.’
‘Oh.’
‘But can I have Jared visit now?’
‘No, you can’t.’
‘Fuck right I can’t. Can’t bring a kid into the zone. So instead I say that I’ll visit them. I’ll get four days’ leave, just give me time to go to war with unit command. But guess again, jerk, she’s had my restraining order extended. This is a bitch that does not miss.’
One of the neighbours had a radio on, not quite tuned, static rising through the sound. Peach waved a packet of sugar. Daniel shook his head.
‘So, you want this gun?’
There was a moment of silence. Daniel said, ‘Is . . . is that alrig
ht?’
Peach slapped him on the shoulder. ‘You’re a soldier, aren’t you?’
‘I’ll get a permit.’
‘They won’t give you one.’ Peach smiled. ‘Just don’t carry on base. Don’t take it anywhere dumb.’
They went out to Peach’s garage. It was full of clutter: paint tins, plywood, a surfboard. His truck was in the centre, a power drill on its roof. Peach stopped to point out something on the dash. ‘Cameras,’ he said. ‘Two forward, two back. I’m putting a laptop in. Contractor I know works in plate recognition, police software. We’re working it to watch for repeat numbers. People following. Anyone who stops to observe.’
Daniel looked inside. Peach wasn’t joking. He’d cut the glove box away and screwed a tray in place, wires running to cameras on the dash.
‘I’m going to park this in my street,’ Peach said. ‘Start cataloguing plates to build up some data for counter-surveillance.’
Daniel nodded. If the kill squad was real, this was a good idea.
‘Know how to shoot?’
‘Only rifles. A shotgun.’
Peach opened a plastic box and took out a small silver revolver. He opened the cylinder, explained that it was five shot, closed the cylinder and demonstrated the tucked thumb grip.
‘Don’t have your finger inside the guard unless you’re going to fire,’ he said. ‘Use two hands. Feet together, knees bent, head up high. This is a .38 airweight. It’s snappy and difficult to aim so lean into the gun to bring it to target. That’s hand to the gun, gun in front, sight to the target, one, two, three. Shoot for the centre mass. You’ll miss so don’t stop shooting until the body is on the ground.’ He paused. ‘If you want to, this is a gun that you can pocket holster. The shrouded hammer stops it catching in your clothes. Remember, five shots, and at the end of the fifth shot, run.’
Daniel felt the balance of the weapon in hand. It wasn’t cold or heavy. If it didn’t look so real it would have felt like a toy.
Peach gave him a small cardboard box with ammunition. ‘A thirty-eight has the stopping power of a lover’s whisper but these help—hollow points. You have five. The rest are target rounds from Walmart. My advice is drive up into the hills behind Indian Springs to practise some. You want to draw easy. The biggest danger carrying one of these is managing to shoot yourself.’
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