NORTHERN PAKISTAN
“You son of a bitch,” Kealey whispered. He was only dimly aware of his surroundings. Fahim was standing nearby, the gun leveled in his direction, and the rain was streaming down his face, but everything else had faded away. Just one thing was stuck in his mind, and that was that he had missed something big. He was frantically trying to figure it out, but nothing was coming to mind, and the anger was threatening to drown out his rational thoughts. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? I swear to God, I’m going to—”
“I told you to listen,” Machado snapped over the line. “Where is Marissa? Can she hear you?”
Kealey looked over, but he already knew the answer. Pétain was only about 20 feet away, huddled against the transformer to which she was handcuffed, but even at that short distance, the driving rain and the thunder pounding overhead were enough to obscure anything less than a shout. “No, she can’t hear us.”
“Good.” Machado’s tone seemed to ease a little. “But we’re not going to take any chances. If you refer to me by name, you will not leave Pakistan alive. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” Kealey hissed, unable to hide his anger.
“Good,” Machado repeated. “Now, listen to me. Despite how this looks, I did not mislead you. Fahim, as you may have already guessed, was one of my Afghan agents when I was stationed in Pakistan. He was the first man I recruited in-country. He is very reliable, and he can lead you directly to Benazir Mengal. Everything I told you before was true.”
“Then why all the bullshit? Why is your daughter handcuffed to—?”
“¡Cállate!” Machado shouted. “I told you not to use my name!”
Kealey hadn’t done so, not in so many words, but he understood what the Spaniard was driving at. “She can’t—”
“Stop talking,” Machado said calmly. Kealey couldn’t help but lock on to the sudden shift in his tone. The man’s emotions were all over the place, but Kealey could detect an underlying, unmistakable tone of pure guilt. It was as if the Spaniard had done something wrong, something besides the obvious. Or was about to, Kealey thought.
“I’m going to instruct Fahim to help you,” Machado was saying.
“He is part of a larger network, a group he formed—with my help, of course—in 1988. At that time, they were primarily concerned with transporting funds and weapons to the mujahideen during the SovietAfghan war. Now, they’re more concerned with . . . Well, let’s just call it private enterprise.”
Kealey saw it immediately. “They’re smugglers.” Then he saw the other part. “And Mengal is their primary competition.”
“Exactly,” Machado said. “So you see, it’s in his interest to help you. His men are watching Mengal right now, and he will take you to that location once you have carried out your end of the bargain.”
“And what is my end of the bargain?”
There was a quick intake of breath on the other end of the line, and then a long pause. Kealey sensed that the older man was steeling his resolve. When he finally spoke, his voice was laced with guilt and despair, but that did nothing to lessen the shock of the words.
“I need you to shoot my daughter.”
For a long moment, Kealey couldn’t reply. It was hard to believe he had heard correctly, because the words just didn’t make sense. On some level, he knew they combined to form a perfectly grammatical sentence, but the overall meaning, the very implication, was just too far-fetched to believe. Somehow, he had walked into something he didn’t fully understand. Finally, he managed to find his voice. “I don’t understand. You want me to . . . kill Marissa?”
“No! ” Machado blurted. With that single word, Kealey heard all the certainty, strength, and confidence drop out of his voice. He hurriedly regained control, but the younger man had caught the slip, and he was already thinking about how he could use it to his advantage. “God, no. I only need you to . . .”
“To what?”
“To injure her. To take her out of the field,” Machado said. There was a long pause. “Kealey, there is more to this than I can really—”
“No,” Kealey said.
There was an uncertain hesitation on the other end of the line.
“What do you mean no? What are you talking about?”
“I won’t do it. I won’t shoot her. You must be out of your fucking mind.”
Kealey heard a long, weary sigh, and then Machado spoke in a voice devoid of emotion. “You don’t understand. I knew you wouldn’t understand, but it needs to be done. It’s the only way.”
“The only way to what? ” Kealey demanded, his frustration rising to match his anger and confusion. “Why are you asking me to do this?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Then explain it.”
The pause lasted much longer this time, and when Machado finally spoke, Kealey was caught off guard, his attention divided between Fahim, the gun in his hand, and the blurred form of Marissa Pétain in the near distance. “You know about Caroline? Did Marissa tell you about her?”
“Yes, she told me what happened.”
“Then you know how she died. You know what the Colombians did to her.”
“They tortured her,” Kealey said uneasily.
“No,” Machado said. “You’re wrong.”
“What?” Kealey was confused; he remembered every word of what Pétain had told him in Cartagena, and while she hadn’t delved into the details of her sister’s death, she had made the graphic nature of the incident reasonably clear. “I thought—”
“You’re wrong,” Machado repeated quietly. “You see, it’s a matter of degree. They didn’t just torture her, Ryan. They started with her toes, so she wouldn’t try to run. Once they had them off, they began removing her fingers. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Do you understand the severity of what I’m saying? They took her apart piece by piece. That is not torture. That is something else entirely.”
Machado stopped talking, and Kealey decided to venture a few words. “Look, I can understand how you—”
“They gave her a mirror,” Machado continued. His voice was unnaturally calm and casual. “Did Marissa tell you that? They gave my firstborn child a mirror so she could see what they had done to her. Once they had taken her fingers, she obviously couldn’t hold it up for herself, so they did it for her. Very courteous people, the Colombians, and very thorough.” Machado let out a low, mirthless laugh.
“You can say what you like about them, but they are devoted to their work, and they certainly like to be recognized for it.”
And to that, Kealey had no response. Suddenly, it was clear to him just how far gone Javier Machado actually was. His daughter’s death—not to mention the nightmare he’d walked into when he’d opened his front door eight years earlier—had clearly pushed him over the edge, and there was no bringing him back. The only thing Kealey could do now was try to talk him out of the bizarre demand he had levied a few moments ago, but for that to happen, he had to know how Pétain figured into the story.
When he asked the question, though, Machado merely offered a short, hollow laugh. It was a deeply unsettling sound, and Kealey had to pull the phone away from his ear just to get away from it. “You still don’t get it, do you, Kealey? Marissa joined the Agency because of Caroline. I’m sure she told you that.”
“Yes, she did.”
“Did she tell you that I did everything I could to stop her from joining? That I used every ounce of my influence to keep her away from Langley?”
“No,” Kealey said. He remembered thinking the exact opposite, that Machado had used his pull to get her into the Agency. “She didn’t mention that.”
“And why do you think she did that? Why do you think she ignored me when I pleaded with her to reconsider? Why do you think she ignored Élise when she begged her to stay in Spain?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because she wanted revenge. She wanted to find the people who killed Caroline, and she wanted them to suffer. And now she’s just a few months away from getting her wish.”
Kealey went suddenly cold. “What are you talking about?”
Machado laughed again, but it was a bitter, angry gesture. “Didn’t Harper tell you? Of course he didn’t . . . That isn’t his way. One hand never knows what the other is doing. That’s how it is at the Agency, though . . . I only wish I had known that sooner.”
“What do you mean?”
“Two months ago, Marissa was selected to participate in an upcoming op in Colombia. And by ‘participate,’ I mean she is the op. Once she lands in Bogotá, she’s on her own. No control, at least not in-country, and no support from the embassy. Nothing but biweekly reports to Langley. The target is the NVC, otherwise known as the North Valley cartel.”
“The same cartel that killed her sister,” Kealey murmured. He was speaking more to himself than anything else, but Machado had heard him over the line.
“Exactly. The same people who butchered my Caroline. Marissa is going after the same bastards, but it’s not going to work, Kealey. She has minimal experience working undercover and almost no experience working without a team. They’ll weed her out in no time, and when that happens . . .”
Kealey let the silence linger as he thought it through. Perhaps Machado wasn’t as mentally unstable as he’d initially thought. But then again, what he was asking was just . . . As if sensing the younger man’s second thoughts, the Spaniard hurried to fill the dead air. “You know as well as I do that they’ll kill her. I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried arguing with her, threatening her, and I’ve tried pulling some strings at the Agency to keep her away from this. Nothing has worked . . . Not even Élise can talk her out of it, and Harper seems intent on sending her. The Agency is desperate to get a foothold in Colombia. But if, for some reason, she wasn’t physically able to go into the field . . .”
“Then Harper would have no choice but to scrap the op,” Kealey concluded. He didn’t know what to think about what he had just heard, but for the first time, he had a glimmer of understanding. He had to admit that in some ways, what Machado was proposing made perfect sense. At the same time, there was nothing rational or even sane about what the older man was asking him to do. “At the very least, he’d find someone else to send.”
“Exactly,” Machado said. He sounded resigned and despondent, but also resolute. “This is the last thing I want, Kealey, believe me, but it’s for the best. She will still be able to stay at Langley. She has exceptional skills in other areas, and she’s a brilliant girl. Much too smart to be wasted on an operation like this. It is destined to fail . . . Believe me, I know. I spent some time in Medellín when I was with the DO. I know what it will take to infiltrate the cartels, and one person with limited experience is not the answer. If she goes, she’ll be dead inside a week. I guarantee it.”
Kealey looked over at Pétain, who was standing in front of the transformer, her left wrist cuffed to the access door. Her head scarf had come loose and was blowing across the gravel footpath. Her pale face was blurred by the rain, but he could tell that she was staring in his direction, waiting for some kind of sign. As he watched her, something clicked in his mind, and he made his decision.
“I understand what you’re saying,” he said slowly, “and you’re probably right about what will happen if she goes, but you’re going to have to figure out another way to stop her. I’m not going to do it, Machado. If you have to call off our arrangement, then so be it, but I won’t do it. She deserves a chance to take those fuckers down, and I’m not going to take that away from her. I can’t take that away from her.”
There was a long, tense pause, and then the Spaniard came back on, his voice tight and insistent. “Kealey, perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. This isn’t a choice. You can’t decide one way or another. You’re going to do it, and that’s final.”
“Hey,” Kealey snapped, his hand tightening around the phone. He had tried letting the man down easy; this was something else entirely. “Fuck you. I don’t have to do a fucking thing you tell me. Who the hell do you think you are? Now, listen—”
“No, you listen. In case you’ve forgotten, I want to remind you of something. When you flew to Pakistan, you left someone behind.”
Kealey closed his eyes and bit back his instinctive response. Suddenly, it was all clear, but he tried not to let his emotions cloud his judgment. There was no way that Machado would go that far . . . would he? “Naomi.”
“That’s correct. I talked to your employer a few hours ago, and he’s brought me back into the fold, in a manner of speaking. He asked me to help get her out of the country. In other words, she’s with me for the foreseeable future.”
“You wouldn’t hurt her,” Kealey said. He was fairly confident that he was right. He had misjudged the older man in Spain, but he didn’t think he’d gotten it that wrong. “You spent thirty years in the DO. She’s one of us, Machado. If you hurt her, you’ll be throwing away everything you ever did with the Agency, not to mention the fact that they’ll track you down in a heartbeat.”
“What is your point, Kealey? Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear when we last spoke. I’m seventy-two years old, and the doctors are not optimistic when it comes to my health. I have very little to look forward to. Marissa is my youngest daughter and my only living child. She is everything to me, and I would do anything to keep her out of harm’s way.”
“Machado, if you—”
“Anything, ” the Spaniard repeated, “even if that means sacrificing your girlfriend. For eight years, Kealey, I’ve had to choke on the memory of what the Agency did to my daughter. Eight years! ” His voice was trembling with rage and something else that Kealey couldn’t identify.
“I understand that, but—”
“No, it is something you can never understand. I will not let it happen again,” the Spaniard continued. His voice had dropped into a frightening monotone, a fact that had not escaped the younger man’s attention. “And I don’t care what I have to do to stop it. Not anymore.”
“Listen, Naomi has nothing to do with this. You have to let her go.”
“I wouldn’t have to kill her, mind you.” The older man was already working it out, Kealey realized, figuring out the best way to pull it off.
“She’d simply . . . disappear.”
“People would know what you did, Machado,” Kealey said. He tried to sound sure of what he was saying, but he couldn’t entirely disguise his rising panic. The man sounded completely sincere; clearly, he was not moved by the fact that Naomi was as innocent as his daughter. “I would know.”
“Maybe, but you’d never be able to prove it. You know the record I have at Langley, and the investigation alone would keep Marissa tied up in congressional hearings for the next eighteen months. That would serve my purposes just as well.”
“You sick fuck,” Kealey said. It was all he could manage; he just couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and he couldn’t pretend any longer. “You sick fucking bastard. Why me? Why not your man Fahim, or whatever the hell his name really is? Why can’t he do it? Why didn’t you turn to him in the first place?”
“I thought you might ask that, but the answer is simple, Kealey. Fahim is a good man, but his loyalty has its boundaries. You were in the right place at the right time. Marissa is an active operative with the CIA, a covert employee of the U.S. government. Were he to pull the trigger, the Agency would track him to the end of the earth. They would never stop looking.”
There was a brief pause, and then Machado continued. “You, on the other hand, are known for your somewhat . . . unorthodox methods. You’ve survived some very controversial incidents over the course of your career, and you’ll survive this. Given your admirable record, the worst they’ll do is kick you out. Besides, you need something from me, and I need something from you. Believe me, I will keep my end of the bargain.”
“It’s no fucking bargain,” Kealey snapped. “Not from my point of view.”
“Yes, it is,” Machado insisted. “Think of Fitzgerald. If you do this, you’ll be saving her life. You’ll be a hero to every American man and woman, and to many others around the world. And in the long run, you’ll be doing the right thing for Marissa as well.”
“That isn’t for you to decide. She’s a grown woman. You don’t have the right to decide her future, and neither do I. If I go through with this, I’ll be taking away the one thing she wants most in the world. Have you thought of that? Have you even considered what she wants? What’s best for her?”
“Enough,” Machado snapped. Kealey knew he’d hit a nerve, but it was too little, too late. “It’s time for you to make a decision. Now, what will it be? And just remember, at this particular moment, I’m less than twenty feet from your little friend. Her life is in my hands.”
Kealey restrained his instinctive reply, but only just. “How do I know you’ll let her go when it’s done?”
“You don’t. But I have no desire to hurt her. The only way that will happen is if you want it to.”
“Fuck you,” Kealey spat. He shut off the phone and tossed it back to Fahim without warning. The Afghan caught it awkwardly. Ten seconds later it started to ring, and Fahim lifted it to his ear. He spoke a few words, listened, then spoke again and ended the connection. Walking over, he reversed his grip on the gun and held it out to Kealey at arm’s length.
Kealey wrapped his hand around the warm plastic grip. He could tell from the weight that the Makarov 9mm pistol was fully loaded, but he pushed the slide back a couple of centimeters, anyway. When he saw the brassy glint of the chambered round, he released the slide. Then he took a few steps back and raised the weapon. When the muzzle was level with the other man’s face, he said, “What’s to stop me from shooting you right now?”
The Afghan appeared unconcerned, his swarthy face fixed in a neutral expression. “I expect you already know the answer to that,”
he said calmly.
Kealey shook his head in frustration, but the man had called his bluff. He flashed on Naomi, the way he’d seen her the previous day: leaning against the door frame of her borrowed bedroom, clear droplets of water on her shoulders and tears in her eyes, her skinny arms wrapped round her lean, undernourished body. He was torn by the image in his mind, just as he was torn when he was in her presence. It was clear that she wanted nothing to do with him, but he couldn’t abandon her. He’d heard everything he needed to hear in Javier Machado’s voice. In Kealey’s mind, there was no doubt that the Spaniard would carry out his threat, but either way, he wasn’t prepared to risk double-crossing the former case officer. There was just too much to lose if he was wrong. And that left just one alternative.
His legs felt like concrete blocks as he crossed the gravel, his feet sinking into the loose, rain-soaked pebbles. He couldn’t believe it had come to this; in a thousand years, he never would have made the connection. He just didn’t see how he could have known what Machado was up to. Pétain’s participation in the upcoming op was highly classified information, and there was no way he could have known about it, mainly because he didn’t have to. Even with that piece of information, though, he didn’t think he would have been able to spot Machado’s true intentions in Cartagena. There were just too many links to follow, and his attention had been focused on other things, all of which took precedence over Marissa Pétain’s family history.
In the end, though, Kealey knew that these thoughts were meaningless. There was no point in deluding himself. He could try to rationalize it for as long as he wanted to, but nothing would change the fact that he had missed some crucial developments, and now Pétain was going to pay for his mistakes.
As he crossed the last few feet through the driving rain, Pétain started to speak, clearly anxious to learn what had happened. Then she saw the gun in his hand. She met his eyes, and she must have seen the truth behind them, because her face went completely white, and her knees seemed to buckle. She wrapped her hand around the handle of the access door for support, but she managed to stay on her feet.
“What are you doing, Ryan?” Her voice carried a slight tinge of hope, but only a tinge; on some level, she already knew what was going to happen. “Why did he give you the gun?”
“Marissa,” he began woodenly, “I have to do something. You won’t understand now, but in time, I—”
“Why did he give you the gun?” she said, cutting him off. Her voice was rising with each word, climbing into hysteria. She was stalling, that much was clear, but she was also desperate for answers, even at this late stage of the game. “Who was that on the phone?”
There was a bright flash of lightning overhead. The thunder followed a split second later, the sound like that of a tire shredding at high speed on the interstate. As the noise ripped over the gray black sky, parts of Kealey’s words were drowned out, but he didn’t notice. They were all platitudes, anyway, and they wouldn’t change a thing. He felt sick for even saying them, but he had to say something, and nothing worthwhile was coming to mind.
“I have to, Marissa. I know you don’t understand, but I can’t get around it. Believe me, I tried. . . .”
“What do you mean, ‘you tried’?” she screamed. “This is my life you’re talking about! Who was on the phone? Who told you to do this?”
“Marissa, I can’t—”
“Who was on the goddamn phone, Ryan?” She was struggling now and crying freely as she tried to pull away from the handle. It wasn’t going to happen; she was secured too well, but she kept trying regardless, fighting for all she was worth.“Who was it, you bastard? Why do they want me dead? What did I do to them?”
“They don’t—” Kealey stopped himself before he could say the rest. Clearly, she hadn’t heard him before. He wasn’t going to kill her, but if she thought he was going to, it might make the next part easier. “Close your eyes, Marissa. Turn around, close your eyes, and face the door. It won’t hurt, I promise.”
“You can’t do this,” she moaned, tears mingling with the rainwater on her face. The fight had drained out of her without warning, leaving behind the empty hope for some kind of last-minute salvation.
“You can’t do this.”
“I have to,” he said, the words catching in his throat. Christ, he thought bitterly,how did it come to this? Goddamn you for making me do this, Machado. Goddamn you. “Now do as I say. Face the door, and close your eyes.”
Her legs gave out, and she dropped to her knees, her face clearing of all expression. Her eyes were wide and vacant as she stared ahead, shaking her head slowly from side to side. Kealey couldn’t help but wonder what she was seeing in that strange moment. Was it her whole life flashing before her eyes? Or was she simply wondering how it had come to this, as he was?
“Marissa,” he said gently, prompting her.
After what seemed like an endless pause, she slowly turned, her knees making a curved groove in the wet gravel that bordered the transformer. Resting her forehead against the steel access door, she began mumbling something under her breath. Moving closer, his footsteps masked by the sound of the storm, Kealey leaned in. As he braced himself to do what Machado had ordered, the gun like a lead weight in his hand, he couldn’t help but overhear what she was saying, and the words caused him to freeze in his tracks. She was praying. Not for redemption, not for absolution, but for her parents’ forgiveness. She was praying that they might understand—that in time, they might forgive her for causing them so much pain.
Hearing this, Kealey stepped back and took a deep, shaky breath. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to kill Javier Machado: to put a gun to his head, pull the trigger, and send him to a hell more real than the one he had created for himself. For a split second, he considered abandoning the whole thing and telling Pétain the truth: that her own father was entirely responsible for what she was going through now. That he would rather see her crippled and safe behind a desk than living her own life, risks and all. But then Naomi’s face reappeared in his mind, and he remembered the Spaniard’s grim, resolute tone when he had issued his threat. Kealey knew that the man had deluded himself into thinking that this was the only way to protect his daughter, and that meant he’d do anything to accomplish his goal. As long as Pétain was walking, Naomi wasn’t safe, and that was all it took to convince him he had to act. That was what it came down to accomplish his goal. Kealey could see the irony; both he and Machado were intent on doing the wrong thing to keep the people they cared about “safe,”
which was a relative term for both of them. At the same time, he just couldn’t see an alternative.
Pétain was still mumbling to herself, her prayers interspersed with deep, gut-wrenching sobs. Taking a deep, steadying breath, Kealey moved forward quickly. He couldn’t think about it anymore; he just wanted it over with. In one fast movement, he pinned her to the door with his left forearm, his right hand moving between her legs. Before she could realize what was happening, he glanced down to get his bearings, jammed the muzzle of the Makarov into the back of her left knee, and prepared himself to pull the trigger. . . . And nothing happened. All he had to do was squeeze, but . . . He was hesitating. Why? he wondered. Why am I waiting? In his peripheral vision, he saw Fahim moving across the gravel, following the footpath to the right. With the dark, shapeless raincoat and the hood pulled over his head, he looked almost unreal, like a ghost drifting through an unmarked graveyard. But he was real, Kealey reminded himself, and he was waiting. Presumably, he was moving to get a better look at what was happening. Pétain was still frozen with fear, but that wouldn’t last; Kealey knew he was running out of time. He had to act. Steadying himself, he wedged the gun harder against the back of her knee, willing himself to pull the trigger.