by Matthew Dunn
THIRTY-FIVE
Being a divorced father of two teenage girls was tough for Laith Dia. He had very little cash, was a man, lived alone in an RV amid a rolling, forested landscape with no close neighbors, and was desperate for his girls to come and visit. But that was Laith’s situation, and he wasn’t grumbling, though he was deeply sad that he was forced to spend so much time apart from his darlings. The former Delta Force and paramilitary CIA officer did what he always did when confronted by desperate situations—one foot in front of the other; get on with it; don’t fall; let the body do the hard graft even if the mind is baying for mercy.
He was busy at one end of the RV, painting over scratches on the bodywork. His home smelled of fried bacon, yet the place was clean and tidy and contained only a few mementos, including a photo of Laith free-falling from the edge of space, two photos of his daughters in pretty dresses, and a wall-mounted dagger that had been given to him by a World War II French Canadian commando. He was trying to adapt his small living quarters to hold his thirteen- and fifteen-year-old children who’d no doubt be partly repulsed by the idea but also excited by the prospect. These were the same girls who once would have followed their dad anywhere; they still would, but they were growing so fast and were evolving into women. Plus their bitch mom was filling their heads with crap about him. Thankfully, his girls took after him. They were independent thinkers and looked at life differently. Their mom hated that, and her reaction warmed Laith’s heart. Still, his kids had needs for privacy.
His ex-wife had told him yesterday that if he got his place in order, his girls could come visit this weekend. When the girls were under ten, they loved the adventure of being here. But now? He didn’t know. They hadn’t been allowed to visit for years, and in fairness to their mom, Laith had been traveling for work almost nonstop until recently. Everything had changed since he’d left the Agency.
He heard the sound of a vehicle driving over stones he’d long ago deliberately scattered around the perimeter of his lot. He’d been expecting the noise. It belonged to a car that carried a man who would ordinarily ensure he was a million miles away from anywhere like this.
Laith felt apprehensive. Not because the man intimidated him; rather, because their personalities were so different.
He washed his hands clean of paint and opened the RV’s door.
A tall, slender, blond Englishman in his mid-fifties got out of a Chevrolet rental car. “Mr. Dia,” the man called out. He wore a pin-striped suit and perfectly polished shoes. “I’m a tad early.”
“You’re never early or late for anything.” Laith muttered the words and stared with evident suspicion. “Did you drive here on the correct side of the road?”
“Ha!” The man clapped his hands once and looked around. “You live amid the bosom of a tamed beauty.”
Laith asked, “You sayin’ Virginia’s all tits and ass?”
“With nothing to differentiate itself under its blouse from others of its kind.” The Englishman smiled.
“A home’s a home, dumb ass.”
“Still—you are most certainly surrounded by beauty, and that says much about you.” Alistair grinned, his expression boyish and cold. “Your ambience instructs your character, does it not?”
“Actually, I live here because my permit to pitch my RV says I can.”
“Of course.” Alistair shut his car door. “I’m parched. Would you make me a cup of tea?”
Laith’s huge frame filled the entrance to his dwelling. “Coffee, Coke, beer—you choose.”
“Oh dear.” Alistair’s smile was gone as he strode toward Laith’s mobile home. “American hospitality . . .”
“My hospitality. Take it or leave it.” Laith moved out of the way as Alistair walked briskly into his RV. “Thanks for coming.”
“You’ve sold your car. What choice did I have?”
“I’ve got me a cabdriver. Well, at least a guy who has a pickup. He runs me around just fine when I call him.”
“But not today.” Alistair sat on a thin strip of seat along the inside edge of the RV. “I will have a coffee with a dash of milk and half a spoon of sugar.”
Laith made him the drink and handed it to him. “Try not to spill it. Got my girls visiting in a couple of days. Don’t want the place to be a mess.”
“What age are they?”
“Thought you knew everything about me?”
“I do.”
“Then you’ll know they’re teenagers.” Laith swept an arm around. “I’m trying to work out how to get this right.”
Alistair put down his coffee, his expression earnest as he said, “Most people think men like us are defined by our jobs. They forget we have other attributes.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, you have an attribute pertaining to parenthood.”
“So do you. Your two girls. Where are they now?”
“Both at Oxford University.”
Laith shook his head. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
Alistair replied, “It doesn’t surprise me, either.” He crossed his legs, somehow looking as much at home here as he did in London’s St. James’s Club. “The issue is one of expectations. They expect me to want them to be there, whereas the truth is that I expect them to be the same girls who sat on my back while I was in my suit and shuffling along the floor pretending to be a donkey.”
“After a hard day being grilled by the Joint Intelligence Committee.”
“Something like that.” Alistair took another sip of his coffee. It tasted foul, but he showed no indication of displeasure. “They’ve always displayed a flair for the theatrical. I’d rather they’d gone to drama school.” He looked around. “Pursued their own dreams. Not their false notion of mine.”
His comment surprised Laith. “You mean that? Or is this one of your MI6 mind games?”
“Sir, you are no longer of use to me. Why would I deploy mind games on someone like that?”
“Fair point.”
Alistair stood, took off his jacket and tie, and rolled up his sleeves. “Do you have a tent?”
“What?”
“And tarpaulin?”
“I got outdoors stuff. Yeah.”
“Your rear window opens, I note.”
Alistair was right. The window took up the entire back end of the RV.
Laith said, “You’re thinking, make this bigger?”
“And better, more nuanced, with adventurous private places—yet at the same time feminine. You must make sure you have a divider between you and them, but also a divider between the girls. Privacy and personal space are important at their age. As, too, is close proximity to the people they love. Let’s make this the best weekend they can remember.” Alistair rubbed his hands, a smile now back on his face, his tone of voice commanding. “Mr. Dia. Lay your outdoors items on the ground beyond the entrance to your home.”
Laith did so.
“Excellent.” Alistair looked at the surrounding forest. “We have much at hand, though we are still missing some items. Several sturdy poles would be helpful—your height, carved from trees. Some of the flora on the outskirts of the wood line can be carefully uprooted and replanted here.” He tapped his shoe on the ground close to the RV’s rear window. “They will be pretty, will they not?” Before Laith could reply, Alistair continued, “Window leads to a tarpaulin construction of waterproof and windproof ceiling and walls. It is a secret corridor, of sorts. And it is immaculately aligned and leads to your tent, where one or both girls can sleep, at the other end of which is another tarpaulin corridor where you can position your bathtub. And just beyond it, the replanted flora will be visible. There are other touches I will suggest, but that is the construction outline.”
One hour later, Laith had the grin of a man in heaven as he stood outside his RV and looked at the passageway he and Alistair had constructed and secured with twine and other supports. “I’ll be damned.”
“On the contrary, a king has constructed a palace for his pri
ncesses.” Alistair winked. “You will never be damned. Not now. Your girls will be proud of their father.”
“Didn’t expect this from you, of all people.” Laith felt emotional. He’d never had anything in common with Alistair. The Englishman seemed to have come from another planet. When he’d arrived here, Laith had expected the MI6 commander to ridicule his personal circumstances.
Alistair gently punched a fist against Laith’s huge chest. “We place one foot in front of the other. Yes?”
Laith wondered how Alistair knew his personal mantra. “Yeah, though that’s getting harder.”
“It is.” Alistair studied his former colleague. “As invigorating as it’s been to help you prepare for your weekend with your children, you know that’s not why I came here.”
“I know.” Laith looked southwest, at hills and forests that seemed to stretch on forever. Twenty-seven miles away, in the direction he was looking, was Roger and Katy Koenig’s home. “Are Katy’s boys still staying with their aunt?”
Alistair nodded. “Most likely she’ll keep them indefinitely. She’s adamant they must stay with family.”
Laith was glad, though at the same time felt the same burning anger and grief that had been plaguing him since he’d learned of Katy’s murder. “Are the police making any progress with their investigation into her death?”
“None whatsoever. Whoever killed her left no trace.”
“A professional?”
“Yes.”
“I’m thinking, someone linked to Roger’s past.”
Alistair followed Laith’s gaze. “As am I, though there are so many variables. Roger made a lot of nasty enemies in the course of his work. There’s a long queue of people who’d like to take revenge on him by murdering his loved ones.”
“One of those variables might be Gray Site.”
Alistair put his hand on Laith’s arm. “Roger killed his colleagues. You must let go of any other possibilities that might be running through your mind, because there are none that square with the facts. Katy’s death was nothing to do with what happened in Beirut. It was a tragedy that—”
“Tragedy?!” Laith stepped away from Alistair, his big frame shaking with fury. “A tragedy is when something real sad happens. Katy was butchered. It wasn’t a tragedy. It was a killing.”
Alistair was silent as he watched his former colleague move back and forth as if his body didn’t know what to do with the emotions coursing through it. The MI6 officer fully understood how Laith felt, because he shared the same feelings. He’d been horrified to learn about Katy’s death. And he was here because he needed to check that Laith was bearing up. He knew that the former Delta Force operative would be consumed with the desire to track down the murderer and rip his head off. The fact that he had no way of identifying the killer would be eating away at him.
Laith was still fuming as he pointed at Alistair. “Maybe it was payback for what Roger did in Beirut. The French, or Israelis, or maybe you Brit guys did it. Killed her. Revenge.”
“My dear, dear chap,” said Alistair softly as he walked up to Laith, uncaring if the former CIA officer might punch him off his feet. It pained him to see the normally composed and jovial operative like this. “You know that’s not what happened.”
The anger in Laith was swept away by sorrow. His body was shaking as he said, “It shouldn’t have ended this way—the section closed down, Will out, Roger killed, his wife murdered, you and Patrick sidelined in the agencies, me playing soldier in the Guard, and”—he tried to chuckle, but the noise came out all wrong—“Suzy learning to bake.”
Alistair patted his back. “We had a good run, my boy. And never forget that we made a difference.”
Laith pulled away, wiped his eyes, breathed in deeply, and regained his composure. Now, he looked every bit the former Special Forces and paramilitary officer who’d conducted some of the West’s most highly classified and risky missions. “Damn right. We did.”
“We did.” Alistair’s smile was one of complete warmth. He held his hand out. “It has been my privilege to have served alongside you, Mr. Dia.”
Laith shook Alistair’s hand. “And you, crazy Englishman.”
They stood in silence, looking out at the beautiful vista. Laith imagined his daughters arriving here and at first being repulsed by the prospect of being at one with the wilderness, but soon capitulating to the child within them and running around barefoot, shrieking with laughter as they played, explored their surroundings, got muddy, smelled their supper cooking on the barbeque, and realized that freedom didn’t get any better than this. Laith would watch them while turning meat on the grill and sipping a beer. And when the food was ready, he’d belly laugh and tell them that to hell with getting cleaned up before dinner—they could sit on the ground next to him and eat their meal with their hands. Maybe he’d make a fire if the evenings got chilly, and they could sit close to it, under a starlit night sky, telling stories and cracking jokes. He imagined them saying their city-based mom would never let them do anything like this. He’d make no comment. They loved their mom. So had he, back in the day. Doing was all that mattered. Putting one foot in front of the other. Bitching about life and everyone in it never achieved anything.
Alistair wondered how his daughters would fare staying here. He’d meant what he said when he’d told Laith that their natural inclinations were toward art and drama and that he’d hoped they would pursue a path that enhanced those attributes. He wished he could turn the clock back and ensure he was there on the day they made decisions about their future. They’d chosen to go to Oxford University when he was debriefing a Russian agent in Vienna. He only discovered their choices when it was too late to reverse them. “May I visit you with my girls?”
“What?”
“They, and I, would like that.”
Laith laughed. “You really are crazy.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a posh Englishman who owns half of Scotland. You don’t hang out with your overachieving girls at some American’s RV in the country.”
Alistair smiled while keeping his eyes on the horizon. “I am a spy. I seek the unusual.”
“Unusual?”
“The real things a gentleman like me isn’t expected to seek.” Alistair glanced at Laith, his expression warm and earnest, his tone of voice the most truthful he’d heard come out of his mouth in years. “I’d help you extend your shelter. My girls would adore the adventure. And it would do them a world of good.”
“You’re forgetting something.”
“What, may I inquire?”
Laith shook his head, though it was clear he looked happy. “If my girls are here as well, that would mean we’d have to survive our vacation looking after four adolescent girls.”
Alistair smiled. “It would be fine. My daughters are still young enough to reappraise their life choices.” He breathed in deeply through his nostrils. “This place would help them. Do you hunt?”
“Used to. Don’t seem to have the stomach for it these days.”
“I can see why, though one still needs to put food on the table.” The MI6 controller pointed at a cluster of trees five hundred yards away. “I have expert ghillies at my disposal in my Scottish estate. Some of them have been in my family’s employ since I was a boy. Over the years, they’ve taught me things about hunting deer, grouse, pheasant, and other game. If your stomach repairs, and you have a twelve-gauge, you could sit in that cluster without being seen. Beyond it is a nice area of marshland. Duck, geese, and wild turkey might congregate there. It would be easy for a man with your skills to supply our girls with a brace or two of good meat.”
“Yeah, I guess it would.” Laith added, “You’re welcome to visit anytime.”
“My sincere gratitude.” Alistair glanced at Laith. “You’ll be all right, won’t you, Mr. Dia?”
“I’ll be okay. And you?”
Quietly, Alistair answered, “I’ll be all right too. Nothing better. Nothing worse.”
Throughout their career of working together, neither man had spoken as many words to each other as they’d just done. On the surface, they were wholly dissimilar. Yet they were spies and parents. That made them more alike than most on the planet. Laith wanted Alistair and his daughters to come here. And when the men were reunited, they could look at each other with the unspoken knowledge that they’d spent a lifetime combating horrors that their daughters would never know about, let alone see.
“I have to go now, Laith. Remember what I said about that cluster of trees. It’s an excellent place for a huntsman to hide with a rifle.”
Laith placed his hand on Alistair’s shoulder. “I just don’t like being the huntsman anymore.”
“Nor me.”
The first sniper bullet hit Laith in the forehead; the second hit Alistair in the gut, dropping him to his knees; a third struck Alistair in the head.
More rounds were fired into the prone bodies.
In the distance, a tall man emerged from the cluster of trees and walked across the large area of scrubland toward Laith’s RV and the two bodies outside the vehicle. In one hand he carried a silenced sniper rifle.
When Colonel Rowe reached the bodies, he examined them for signs of life. There were none. Laith Dia and Alistair McCulloch were dead.
It was Suzy Parks’s favorite part of the day—6 P.M., a time when the countryside around her home seemed to become calm and peaceful, and sunshine would wane into a homey glow. Six P.M. was also the time that her toddler went to bed. She adored her little boy, but, as all parents with young kids know, there are times when it’s crucial to get adult time while the cherished little one is safe, warm, well fed, and asleep.
Her husband, Andrew, had returned home from work five minutes ago. Shortly, he’d start preparing dinner. But, as ever at this time of day, he’d spend thirty minutes with his wife. At this time of year, he could do so while they both sat outside on their porch—sometimes with a mug of coffee, more frequently in the last year, since Suzy had weaned her boy off breast-feeding, a drink that contained something stronger.