KYLE AND SIR JEFF stayed up most of the night as the Vagabond worked its way through the sea. Neither was happy, because the target in Pakistan presented more questions than answers. The bridge stood there like a monolith, silent and brooding, and the mission to check it out was unlikely to resolve all of the riddles.
“There has to be something else in play, Kyle,” Jeff said. “There obviously is some connection between the structure and the multiple attempts on the lives of you and Beth. I like her, by the way. Do you?”
“I’m not taking her out on a date, Jeff. In answer to your point—the damned bridge—from what I can tell, it is just another pile of rocks and steel. We suspect there is a network of tunnels under it, but so what? Could be just for supplies and stuff.” Kyle had his shoes off, and his feet were propped on a low table.
Jeff shook his head. “That cannot possibly be the reason. If so, the medical team would just have been detained, maybe roughed up a bit, and turned over to the authorities. Instead, they were butchered. There remains some unknown linkage between all of that unpleasantness and a dangerous leak somewhere in Washington, someone who can summon professional killers.”
Kyle puffed out his cheeks, thinking. “Still have to go look at the place, so Beth can see whatever it was her brother saw.”
“So why don’t you ask her for a date? The recon mission will be over in two days. You can celebrate with a nice private dinner somewhere.”
“Like the Kandahar mess hall?” Swanson laughed. “No, Jeff. I tell you, though, that I have been impressed with her ability. She’s got a future in this game. Just needs some more training. Any relationship between us is going to stay professional.”
“Quite right. Your track record with women is abysmal. They fall into your hands, and you let them slip through your fingers like gold dust.”
“Bad things seem to happen to women I like,” he said. “Better to keep them at arm’s length.”
Jeff flipped the cover of his laptop computer and logged in to check his private mail. Pat and Jeff had known all of the serious women in Kyle’s life, and some sad times had indeed shadowed them, including some who had been killed or maimed by terrorists. What woman in her right mind would want to enter such a zone of danger? This little one, though, Beth, might prove to be the exception: She seemed to thrive on danger. “Confirmation here on the plane that will fly you from the Azores straight to Kandahar. All squared away.”
“Amazing what money and contacts can do, isn’t it?”
“Not really.” Jeff gave a low laugh. “That combination pretty much works every time.”
“Have you come across anything really unusual about the bridge, Jeff? Your people find anything?”
Jeff opened a file. “Not really. The engineering is quite sophisticated, and it is a sturdy bloody thing. That was shown when the floods hit. Although the power of that much water was an immense force, the bridge was still standing after the waters went down. Needed a bit of repair on the exterior, but the anchoring held, and the span itself survived untouched. Some fine work, that.”
Kyle drank some juice while he thought about it. Dams burst, thousands of people were dislocated, entire villages were swallowed, and this structure had held its own. Maybe they were using it to try out better building techniques so that thousands of Pakistanis would not die every time there was some natural disaster. “Who built it?”
“There we have a bit of a problem. This has been a hugely expensive and technical operation, millions of dollars, with an international consortium involved. With front companies and subcontractors and the foreign banks, it has created a financial thicket that is hard to penetrate. Haven’t figured out yet where it started, or where it leads.”
“Well, it must go somewhere. Have them stay on the money. I have a feeling that it may be important.” Kyle looked at the clock on the bulkhead of polished wood. Time to leave. The helicopter on the fantail was warming up, and Coastie was out there with the deck crew, talking about helicopter things. “We’ll take the first step and see what happens.”
As Sir Jeff started to get up, a leg muscle tightened in spasm and a flash of pain was painted on his face. He sat back down. “Go on, Kyle. I’ll see you when you get back. Take care of that girl.”
WHERE ARE THEY? UNDERSECRETARY Curtis rolled the thick glass in his hand, and good Scotch whisky swirled with the ice cubes. Beth Ledford and her Marine sidekick had disappeared so thoroughly that nothing was showing up in the databases. The need to find and dispose of both of them had increased, because they were not giving up. Maybe they were just hunkered down in some safe house on the outskirts of Billings or Tampa, waiting for the storm to clear. Curtis could not afford such a wait. He drank deeply, walked to the standing bar, refilled his glass, and resumed pacing the living room, half-watching a television documentary about the space vessel America, the first ship of a series that would eventually land astronauts on Mars. He paid little attention, for he already knew the rocket would never reach orbit; it would travel more than a hundred thousand feet straight up, then boom, and another space catastrophe would invade the placid worlds of television watchers.
Curtis still burned about being lectured by the director of the Diplomatic Security Service, who had snapped and threatened consequences if Curtis ever again attempted to use the DSS for his own purposes. Curtis had kept calm during the tirade, although his stomach had churned. Prison? Abuse of power? The man carried a pistol in a shoulder holster and made certain that Curtis had seen it.
Bill Curtis had carefully explained that he had acted fully within the law, as stated in the Patriot Act, and in his official capacity. Any citizen could be investigated on a whiff of suspicion of terrorist activity. No proof was needed. Beth Ledford had been acting very suspiciously, even disobeying direct orders in a politically charged situation that fell within the interests of the Bureau of American-Islamic Affairs. Her interference could further impede the already weak diplomatic relations with Pakistan.
That grain of truth had saved him, along with a contrite admission that he had overstepped his authority by ordering the full surveillance of the Coast Guard woman. Curtis promised never to do so again. The DSS man had not wanted the involvement of his own office exposed any further and chose to drop the matter. The book was closed with the security service, and Curtis would not reopen it. It was well that the man had not known the other half of the story.
He had arranged for the DSS only to track Ledford around the Washington area. For the direct attacks on Swanson and at Quantico, Curtis had turned to his contacts within a renegade element of the private security community, but the mercenaries had failed, and two of them had been killed. After that, the private firm was no longer interested in the job, no matter what the pay.
Curtis drank the sharp whisky and felt the burn go down into his stomach. So am I alone in this now? No. I have powerful friends all over the Middle East, many more than the U.S. government knew, and those friends have friends in the United States. Some would be more than willing to help track down this loose end. Unsaid was that Curtis, as the head of the BAIA, had granted favors before, and would do so again. No. All was not lost. This was just a temporary setback, and he would never be alone.
He emptied the glass, washed it in the sink, and set it on a towel to dry.
Curtis climbed into bed, turned out the light, and again weighed the entwined issues carefully: revenge against the possible charge of treason, and protecting the most wanted man in the world.
Before turning off the light, he picked up a framed colored photograph from his nightstand and set it up on a pillow beside him, as if the paper images could look back at him, maybe even talk. It showed a beautiful, young Iraqi woman with flowing ebony hair and penetrating eyes, clad in ski clothes and seated in a comfortable chair beside a roaring fire in a lodge in Aspen, Colorado. At her feet was a grinning boy who had inherited his mother’s good looks. He was missing a tooth. Bill Curtis had taken the photograph while the family was celebrating the child’s fifth birthday. He drifted off to sleep with the picture still propped up beside him.
Curtis had met Raneen at a garden party in Baghdad in the old days, when he was running an oil exploration operation for the Iraqi government and spent a lot of time there. Life had been quiet and enjoyable in the big polyglot city during those times, because Saddam Hussein kept religious extremists on a tight leash. Raneen was the daughter of one of the dictator’s reluctant generals, a professional soldier, and it took Curtis months of careful maneuvering to win the family over enough that he could marry his dark-eyed beauty. A year later, they had a child, a boy, and they named him named Cane. Life was golden, and stayed that way until 1990, when that fool Hussein decided to invade Kuwait.
Curtis was in Taiwan on business, and his family was visiting the grandparents in Baghdad. They were caught on opposite sides of a sudden and vicious war, and for the first time, Raneen and Cane were beyond his reach. When American bombs struck Baghdad, one landed squarely on the general’s home, killing the entire family, including both Raneen and their son. The picture on the pillow was all that was left, and Bill Curtis cherished it.
THE SEARCH OF THE wide valley below the bridge did not find the madman who had single-handedly wiped out the entire patrol of Taliban fighters, leaving four men dead and two more wounded. Only the ISI soldier who led the group had escaped the attack unharmed.
Sergeant Hafiz had taken command and organized the hunt all the way down to the fallen steel bridge, clearing it grid square by grid square on his map, but found nothing. He was disgusted with the Taliban. Not only were they poor soldiers, but after learning what happened to their comrades, some of the others were spreading a story of how an evil monster that dwelled in the darkness was chasing them. Hafiz would never be able to trust them. Real troops were needed to secure the area so he could send these mountain men back to their rocky wastelands. He sent out a replacement patrol but desperately wanted regulars here, now.
As dawn approached, a cleaning worker found Chief Engineer Mohammad al-Attas sound asleep in the bed of his underground apartment, still wearing the bloodstained clothes from his night of rampage. Sergeant Hafiz brought in three other large men and slapped al-Attas hard across the face, snapping his head to one side. The engineer awoke to a streak of pain, a scream ripping from his throat as he was snatched from the bed and roughly carried back to the infirmary, where he was lashed again to the metal rails of a bed with thick restraints.
“What are you doing to me? What is happening?” he yelled. The men left the medical center, and Hafiz appeared. “Sergeant… What is going on? Why am I being treated like this?”
Hafiz brought a chair forward and sat beside him, quietly studying him as if trying to see who was really inside the shell of flesh and bone. The face and other exposed areas were all covered in dried mud, which stuck in clumps between the toes and proved he was the Djinn. The eyes, however, were startlingly clear and free of guile, indicating that he was also the engineer. The split between the two personalities was sharp and complete. “Who are you?” the sergeant asked in a conversational tone.
“You know very well: Chief Engineer Mohammad al-Attas. Let me go. I demand that you set me free and explain yourself.”
“I’m afraid that is not possible right now. Where were you last night? What did you do?”
Al-Attas struggled against the restraints, which squeaked with the strain but held him firmly in place. “I was asleep, you fool. That is why I was in bed when your men assaulted me.”
A long period of silence stretched between them before Hafiz said, “You really don’t know, do you? Look down at your clothes, Chief Engineer. Tell me where all of that blood came from.”
Al-Attas managed to lift his head to stare down at his chest and legs. Huge caked splotches of maroon covered the long shirt, which was filthy. He could feel the stiffness of the dried blood on his skin. “What has happened? Was I in some kind of accident? I remember nothing like that. Am I going to be all right?”
Hafiz had heard enough; he pushed back the chair and stood up, crossing his arms. “I doubt it.” He pushed a button on an electrical cord, and a doctor came to the bed. “Give him a sedative to calm him, and keep him hydrated. I don’t want him completely unconscious, because I have more questions. Others will need to see him. Tend to this personally, Doctor. Then have him cleaned up and lock him back down tight.”
“Yes. I understand,” said the doctor, a small man with a well-trimmed beard. “Please leave a guard in the room with us.”
“Of course.”
“Why are you doing this? Why have I been taken prisoner?” The face of the man on the bed was twisted in confusion, and tears tracked down the sides of his face. He was sobbing like a baby, his body shaking in growing despair.
The doctor busied himself at a cabinet, tearing open a plastic bag to prepare a sterile syringe.
Sergeant Hafiz had moved to the foot of the bed. “I know you cannot understand this, Chief Engineer, but the reason that you are being restrained and kept under guard is very simple—you are one of the most dangerous men I have ever met. You are a ruthless and merciless and ingenious killer. Now go back to sleep while I decide what to do with you.”
“No!” The shout was hard and came from deep within. “No! I am the chief engineer! I am in charge here!”
“Not any longer, my friend. Now you’re just one more piece of paperwork for me.” He grabbed al-Attas by the left arm and held it steady while the doctor swabbed the skin clean with alcohol, found a vein, and worked the needle in. Within a few seconds, the heart distributed the strong liquid throughout the body, and al-Attas’s eyelids fluttered, then closed as the body went limp.
“I’ll send in the guard,” Hafiz said and left, looking at his wristwatch on the way through the door. Time was short, and he had work to do.
Al-Attas was not only a fiend but had been a well-protected one during the long months while the bridge and the complex of tunnels were constructed. Hafiz would not summarily dispose of him without first getting permission from General Gul of the ISI, a routing of messages that would take hours. Eventually, the result would be the same, a bullet in the head, but Hafiz wanted the execution order in writing before he murdered this peculiar genius. Otherwise, his own head might also be on a pike.
Even with all of that in progress, the advance team from the camp of Commander Kahn would be arriving within a few hours to inspect the facility, and Hafiz would provide the full tour. He understood that the inspectors would question the presence and condition of al-Attas in the infirmary. It would be best to simply tell the truth, including that the death warrant was in progress. The man had been crazy long before Hafiz ever arrived at the bridge. It wasn’t the sergeant’s fault. Better to prove that the lunatic was in custody by simply showing him off like an exhibit and letting the inspectors confirm his actions. The man was weak, tied down, drugged, and harmless.
Hafiz anticipated a pressure-filled few days of face-to-face meetings but was confident that the inspectors would approve the overall project. He would report that all of the important work was on schedule. The Commander could transfer to his new home before the first snows fell and closed the high passes.