Five past midnight, a quiet Saturday. Jackie sat and drank the shot of vodka neat. The alcohol stung the cuts in his lip but he didn’t care. He closed his eyes and let them water, then blinked.
He’d escaped from the delivery van, easing out at the first stop when the deliveryman busied himself loading an oven onto the dolly. Jackie had crawled out of the truck, unseen. He spotted a busy thoroughfare a block away, which saved the trucker’s life-Jackie didn’t need to kill him to get away, and disposing of a full furniture truck would have been a hassle. Jackie walked a quarter mile, until he reached a gas station and called Hector to come pick him up.
Hector wasn’t happy that Ben was free and Jackie had lost a car. Jackie didn’t care.
He peered out the window, bored, restless, ready to hurt someone. Hector had well over a dozen security personnel-as arrogant as the British Army had been, he thought, in the Belfast of his youth-wandering the property. The men made Jackie feel safer, but their presence was a pain; he and Teach had to be kept out of sight. Hector did not want to explain to his squad of respectable former policemen and ex-military why a woman was being held against her will. No one was allowed in the main house but Hector.
Jackie downed a second shot of vodka. He got up and went downstairs to the conference room. Teach and Hector sat at the table, scribbling on a chart drawn on a plain map of the United States and Europe. It showed names connected by colored lines, notes penciled in, and Hector had taped pictures to some of the names.
“That the whole Cellar, then?” Jackie asked. “All your little spies?”
They both looked up at him.
“I have ears,” Jackie said.
“If only you were as good at the rest of your job,” Hector said. To Teach, he pointed at six names. “These six, they’ll do fine. Call them, tell them to get to New Orleans by this afternoon, come to your safe house there tonight”-he tapped an address written on a notepad-“and await further orders.”
“You said you wanted to kill people in New Orleans,” Jackie said.
“The Cellar’s going to continue its good work, Jackie. I’ve found a cell of young Arabs in New Orleans who have all snuck into the country under false ID. They’re terrorists planning to launch an attack here. You and me and our friends in the Cellar are going to kill them.”
Jackie laughed. “I’m surprised by the altruism. I don’t figure you do nothing without getting paid for it.” He smirked at Teach, who had been mostly silent, speaking only to answer questions.
“Believe me that when I say killing this group of guys is the right thing for our country.” He pushed the phone toward Teach. “Make the calls.”
He listened while she did, following his orders to the letter. She hung up.
“Very good, Teach.”
“If you know of a terrorist cell, why not simply call Homeland and tell them, let them take the risk of taking the cell down? You’d be a hero,” Teach said.
“I don’t need acclaim to be a good citizen.” He stood. “Jackie, put Teach back in her room.” He walked down to his office, closed the door. The day had not gone perfectly-nothing had since Nicky Lynch, damn him to a thousand hells, missed his shot-but the situation was salvageable. He was going to win.
He checked his messages. One from his assistant, saying an Agent Vochek with Homeland was very eager to speak with him. He deleted the message.
An array of photos stood on his walls: Hector shaking the hand of the President of the United States, posing with his contractors in the Green Zone, touring a mountain stronghold in Afghanistan. Now he would truly make his business grow again.
Hector’s cell phone buzzed. “Yes?”
“Mr. Hector? This is Fred Espinoza.” Fred was a Hector Global employee who handled the security account for Blarney’s Steakhouse.
“I’m busy, Fred, this isn’t a good time.”
“I know, sir, what with our men dying in Austin… I’m real sorry about that, sir… but given what happened in Austin I figured you might want to know about any breaches at any client companies. We had a break-in at Blarney’s corporate headquarters tonight.”
“Details. Now.”
“Sir, well, I’m not sure how he did it. At 9:30 this evening we had a guy deactivate the alarms. Caught him on the videotape system. He broke into a keypad and hooked a PDA into the system; it read the codes and gave him access.” Espinoza stopped. “Not a typical burglar.”
“No.” He ran his fingers along the abacus’s beads. “What did he do?”
“I have the video footage, sir, posted on our internal Web site.”
Hector found the page with the video. Randall Choate, now known as Pilgrim, the pain in my ass that must die, he thought. Pilgrim hurried through the darkened halls into the CEO’s office. He flicked on a penlight, scouring the room. The scene was then picked up by a hidden camera in the CEO’s office. Pilgrim tested the file cabinets, found them locked, stopped and stared at the wall. The video showed Pilgrim bending close, shining his pool of light on a framed photo. The ribbon-cutting of the first Blarney’s- Hector remembered it, a happy day.
Pilgrim removed the picture from the frame, tucked it into his pocket. Then put the flashlight’s glowing circle on his hand and raised his middle finger for a good five seconds. The rest of the video showed his exit from the building.
“Have you informed the client yet?” Hector asked.
“Yes, sir. It’s bizarre, the intruder doesn’t take anything of value.”
“Given the one-fingered salute, it must be a prank.”
“A rather elaborate prank, sir.” Espinoza sounded doubtful.
“Well, like computer hackers wasting their intellect on defacing a company’s Web site.” He slid all the abacus beads to one side with a clatter. “We need not report this to the police.”
“Sir?”
“This might be a gentleman hungry for attention, to hurt the Hector Global name. We’ve already had one facility attacked and now this intrusion. The last thing we need is the police getting ahold of this video, and a joker leaking it and putting it on YouTube. This guy’s just trying to show that Hector Global’s not doing its proper job, and he’s gone to great lengths to prove it.”
“Yes, sir,” Espinoza said.
“We cannot handle more bad publicity regarding our security services. Cut a deal with Blarney, tell them we’ll give them six months of free work. Just keep them calm and keep the police uninvolved.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Fred? Thanks for alerting me to the situation, you’ve done me a huge favor.”
“Yes, sir, good night.”
He watched the video again. Choate, stealing an old picture of him.
He didn’t know you as Sam Hector. Now, for sure, he does. He had not assumed that Choate knew of his rise to the pinnacle of contracting work; he’d thought Choate was dead. Only a few days ago he had learned that Choate was alive. So… now he knows you by your real name.
The next time I see that finger, I’ll shoot it off, he thought. So Pilgrim was still in Dallas. Maybe he had cut Ben Forsberg loose, maybe they were working together. That last thought did not appeal; but he was smarter than both of them. There was little they could do to him, hiding like the rats they were, but they needed to be stopped. Put down.
The phone rang. It was the contractor he’d asked to notify him of any charges on the James Woodward credit card. “A charge came through at a Blarney’s Steakhouse. I called the restaurant. Four martinis, two appetizers. The server said there were two men in the party.”
“Thank you.” So they were together. Ben and Pilgrim, drinking and snacking and breaking into offices. Weren’t they the confident bastards? He would end their arrogance.
He slid a fingertip along the abacus on his desk, moving beads from one side, whittling the top rod’s value. Ben. Stupid-he slid the last bead to zero. He’d been an economic soldier of value, helping with the business deals, putting money into Hector’s pocket, a workaholic easy to exploit because he had no life of his own to live since Emily died. He’d been useful until now he wasn’t. Just like every other person.
He hurried to the room where Teach slept, handcuffed to a bed. He kicked the side of the bed and she awoke with a jolt.
“Up,” he said. “I want to know where they’re hiding.”
“Who?”
“Pilgrim.”
“I gave you every Cellar account, every safe house we have… I gave you everything…”
“You kept Barker near an airport hub in Dallas, same with De La Pena in Chicago, with Green in Denver. It’s your pattern, your method. Pilgrim would copy it here if he wanted a hidey-hole.”
“Then it’s his and not mine, and I don’t know about it.”
He put his face close to her. Her breath was sour; he hadn’t permitted her the dignity of a toothbrush. “Dallas is close to his kid.”
Teach didn’t flinch. “He doesn’t have a kid.”
“Yes, he does. Tamara Choate. Her name’s Tamara Dawson now. Her new stepdad adopted her. No reason not to, what with her good old dad dead and all. She’s fourteen. She lives in Tyler, eighty miles east of Dallas. That’s why you give old Pilgrim all the jobs in this corner of the country. Lets him swing by and goggle his kid from a distance. I don’t wonder if he might have a place nearby so spying on her is easier, gives him a pillow to lay his head after a job.”
She shook her head. “He has no children.”
He slapped her hard. “Tell me where he’s hiding. Or I’m going to have Jackie pay Miss Tamara and her mommy a call.” He leaned down to her. “Don’t make the man’s daughter pay.”
Her lip bled. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.” She gave him a look he didn’t like, the fear ebbing, pure hatred firing into her soft, pale eyes.
“Give me his address or I’ll encourage Jackie to spend quality time with his daughter.” He stroked her chin with his fingertip. “I like kids. Don’t want to hurt them. But if you don’t help me, I’ll hurt her and she’ll never, ever be the same. I won’t kill her. I’ll leave her alive. It will be the worse of the two fates.”
She gave no answer, her bowed head hanging over her lap, as though lost in prayer.
“Are you holding out hope that Pilgrim’s going to rescue you? Give it up.”
She raised her head. “How many dead men you got?”
He went to the door, favoring her with a remorseful sigh. “Jackie, come in here for a minute, please.”
Jackie stepped inside. His face was terrible: the bruising from his broken nose, the bandages crossing his face. Hector touched Jackie’s jaw.
“If you’re a fourteen-year-old girl, and you wake up in the middle of the night to find that face above you-no offense, Jackie-you’re going to piss yourself in sheer terror.” He turned to Jackie. “Pilgrim’s got a fourteen-year-old sweetie pie of a daughter. I’m going to give her to you. Tell Teach here what you’d do to her. Don’t leave out any details.”
Jackie glanced at him, reading the other man’s need for calculated savagery, then smiled and sat on the edge of Teach’s bed. “I don’t normally contemplate hurting girls, but Pilgrim’s daughter, wow, okay, I’d have to get inventive. I’d start with giving her a fierce poking. I’d let her feel a bit of good before she felt no more pleasure, ever again.”
Teach didn’t flinch.
Jackie pulled the knife from its leg sheath. “Let me tell you some of the ways my da got the Proddy bastards and the traitors in Belfast to talk when they were sure they wouldn’t. See, they’d get brought down to his basement for a cup of tea and a nice long chat. If the chat went bad, Da would get out the knives.”
Teach didn’t move. Jackie thought if he leaned forward and kissed her he’d feel the fear in her lips.
“But see, it’d be worse for Pilgrim’s girl. Back in Belfast, when the stupid men started talking, my da stopped cutting their faces and their privates. The knife’s work was done. But I don’t want her to talk. There’s nothing she can tell me to save herself.” He turned the knife and its glint caught the dim light above her bed. “I only want her to hurt.”
Jackie began a recitation that chilled Teach’s blood, painted horrors in her mind so that she flinched from his soft whisper. But still she shook her head.
So Jackie started to demonstrate.
Khaled’s Report-New Orleans
On Sunday, we start our work. If I have not ruined everything.
I am terrified because I fear I have jeopardized all my training, all my sacrifice. I was unprepared for random chance. Today I walked through the French Quarter on one of my exercises, trying to determine who is following me and how I can lose them in the crowds. I am sure that the crowds are smaller than normal, since Katrina, but the streets still throng here with happy Americans, hazed on their crimson hurricanes of liquor and fruit juice or their canned beers.
I entered my own haze today. Halfway through my exercise with my trainers, I saw someone I know, from home in Beirut. A girl, named Roula, a cousin of a good friend. I remember hearing that she was studying architecture at Rice University in Houston. One would hope she would be hard at her studies. But no, here she is, walking with a trio of blond American girls, looking very American herself in jeans and a sky blue polo shirt and a set of bangle bracelets. She is lovely, walking with these American beauties, tucking a lock of her dark hair behind her ear. I glance at her twice, once in shock and the second time to be sure it is her. I turn my head but she has sensed my stare and she turns.
She won’t recognize me, I hope, and I duck my head and turn away abruptly to study a display of junky T-shirts for tourists in a store window.
“Khaled?” I hear her voice call, rising in surprise at the end.
No.
I turn and start to walk away and then she says it again, loudly, so I stop. Glance back at her. She smiles at me in recognition.
“Khaled, hello, how are you?”
“Fine,” I say. “How are you, Roula, what are you doing here?” The words all feel woolly in my mouth.
“I’m visiting for the weekend with school friends.” She gestures back at the American beauties, who look at me and through me, a skinny Arab boy with the awkwardness of an engineering student and therefore of minimal interest to them.
“Ah,” I say. My watchers-I can see them now, they don’t even try to hide from me-are watching me talk to this girl. I wonder what that will mean for her. I have an urge to run.
“What are you doing here?”
I am supposed to be in Switzerland, studying finance. “Ah, well, my advisor at my school-I’m at the University of Geneva-is giving a speech at Tulane, and I came with him.” The explanation rings hollow to me, but I force a smile behind it and gesture at the window full of junky T-shirts. “You caught me in an unacademic moment.”
Roula laughs. “Well, how long are you in town?”
“I leave Sunday.”
“So do we.” And then, of course, in the manner of my people, she begins to inquire about my mother, my cousins-she knows my brothers and my father are dead and she says nothing of them.
I answer quickly, ask after her own family, then take refuge in consulting my watch. “Well, this was a lovely surprise, Roula, but I must get back to the campus. I didn’t give myself enough time to explore.” I tender an awkward grin.
She gives me a bright smile. “Well, it was nice to see you, Khaled.”
“Good to see you, too.” I turn and walk away and I don’t look back. My outing, my training run, is ruined. Two blocks further I risk a glance. There were two trackers following me, and now there is only the one. The other tracker is, of course, now shadowing Roula.
I am brought back to the house, questioned thoroughly. I explain she is a friend from home, studying architecture in America. That she is harmless.
“But you are not supposed to be here,” the masters say to me. “What if she mentions to her family, to her friends, that she saw you here?”
“I gave her a story consistent with my cover,” I said, and they laugh, not because it is funny. I keep hoping they will tell me this is a test, that Roula is part of the organization. But they give no such reassurance.
“What should I have done?” I say, miserable.
“You don’t talk to her. You walk away, you get away from her.”
“But she knew it was me. To run would increase her suspicion-”
“But she would never be sure it was you. You spoke with her. She knows too much.”
Coldness touches my heart. This is not how it is supposed to be. I have come here to learn how to do good work, how to kill those who must die, not innocents like Roula. “What will happen?” I finally say.
My masters exchange a glance. “Her family’s phones in Beirut will be tapped; their e-mail and physical mail will be monitored. We will listen and see if she mentions seeing you here. If she does not… fine. If she does… well. Then we shall see. This is on your head, though-let it be a lesson you never forget.” As though I was a prankster schoolboy, fresh from a whipping.
I am not sure I believe them. I am sick with fear they will have Roula killed tonight. I return, at their orders, to my room. I lie on my bed and study the ceiling. I feel they are watching me; this is a test, and I am failing.
The door opens. I sit up. One of the masters, the one called Mr. Night, enters and closes the door behind me.
“Are you going to kill her?” I ask in a rush.
“No,” he says. “You must think us rather impulsive. Or cruel.”
“I’m a realist about our work.”
Mr. Night nods at me. “But, if necessary, someone will speak to her. Impress upon her, forcefully, the need for silence. Your presence here must be kept secret.”
I swallow. Forcefully can cover many options. But if he says she will not be killed, I believe him. My life is in the hands of these people; I have to trust them. “I understand.”
“If she is unable to keep her silence…” He shrugs.
“She will,” I assure him. “She is a very sensible girl from a good family. Perhaps someone in her family could be recruited as well.”
“Perhaps.” He clears his throat. “I need to know if you’re truly ready for the job, Khaled.” (It is painful for me to record his words, but in fairness I must.)
“I am. I am. Please.” I have a sudden fear that I might now be expendable. But they need us… there are so few of us willing to do the work, to take the enormous risks. I had already risked so much in coming forward, in making it here.
He studies me for a long while, saying nothing, and I compose myself and don’t plead my case further. I have to be strong now.
“You are still one of us. Here is your assignment.”
I nearly collapse in relief, but I do not let emotion cross my face. I read the file they hand me, see what my first battle in the war will be.
I am more eager than ever to do my job. They release me from my room. I drive over to the shooting range and start putting bullets into the targets, each squeeze of the trigger a relief.