Cold Snap (43 page)

"That's not my doing. Must've been the
hacker."

"Ethan must have been planning to charge them
an extra fee for each page," Ari swore. "He was begging to have his
throat slit."

Abu Jasim had crawled back onto the cushioned
bench and was snoring loudly.

"It will be up to you to find accommodations
for the night," Ari told Ahmad. "Do you have money?"

"I'll rob my uncle."

"Good lad." Ari left the highway and pulled
into a strip mall parking lot. "Abu Jasim must have a knife
somewhere in here. Go back and free the boy's hands."

Ahmad's eyes widened when he found the K-bar
in the glove compartment.

"What does he use this for?"

"It's best you don't know."

Ahmad got out and opened the panel door.
Rhee's nephew got out. The moment the zip tie was cut the young
Korean took off.

"Shit!" Ahmad charged after him and both of
them disappeared up the delivery lane. A few minutes later, Ahmad
returned, alone. "Man, he's fast!"

"No matter," Ari sighed. "He's probably safer
away from our company."

"Don't you want to park closer to home?"
Ahmad asked when Ari stopped at the Manchester Docks entrance a
half hour later.

"I have to make a visit," Ari answered,
getting out. When Ahmad took the wheel, he cautioned, "Be careful
driving. Your uncle will persecute you for any added scarring."

"I'll be careful," Ahmad said tentatively
before driving off.

Ari walked over to the cat colony. The
concrete rubble was barely perceptible in the light reflected off
the river from condos on the opposite bank. Small shadows scurried
to and fro.

"Here kitties," he said, drawing the plastic
bag and its remaining cat food from inside his jacket.

None of the cats approached. Perhaps the time
of night made them more wary than usual. Nor had the drop in
temperature made them any more convivial. Ari placed handfuls of
food at intervals along the base of the pile. The gratifying sounds
of crunching reached him and he backtracked, hoping to see
Hector.

A raccoon was gobbling up the food. On Ari's
approach, it eased back on its haunches stared at him, all the
while reaching down and searching out additional bits with its
remarkably hand-like forepaws. The only raccoons Ari had seen had
been roadkill. He did not know how one should react in one's
presence.

"You're a base thief," he said, turning away.
As he made his way home, he pondered the fact that bait did not
always attract the visitor the hunter was expecting.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Ari slept well, a great relief. He did not
rise until almost noon, and only because an ache in his midriff
refused to let him go back to sleep. He had been punched harder
than he liked to admit, and dragging himself off his mattress
proved a chore. He froze in the middle of a tentative stretch. He
smelled coffee. He did not recall preparing his new timer coffee
maker the night before.

He had left the gun he had confiscated from
Mohammed in the Sprinter. Abu Jasim would know where to sell it,
once the cobwebs had cleared from his head. His own Glock was in
its usual hiding place under the kitchen stove.

He was in no mood for hand-to-hand combat,
but if some intruder was making himself at home in Ari's house
there might be no way to avoid it. He cracked his knuckles and went
downstairs.

Karen Sylvester and Fred Donzetti were
sitting at his new dining room table, coffee mugs before them.

"Not much of an early bird, are you, Ari?"
said Karen.

"There's still coffee in the pot," said Fred.
"It's pretty good."

"From Africa," said Ari, dragging himself
into the kitchen and pouring a cup. "You should fly off to Burundi
immediately and buy some. What are you doing in my house?"

"We're always coming into your house, Ari,"
said Karen. "We deliver these Aegis flash drives on a regular
basis, remember?"

"It's trespassing."

"We're your landlords. It's perfectly legal."
Karen paused and frowned. "I think."

Easing himself into a faux leather dining
room chair, Ari waited expectantly. He had not heard these two
enter his house, and it dismayed him. If they had been assassins
they would have had him dead to rights. That the previous day had
been physically and emotionally exhausting was no excuse. He was
losing his warrior credentials.

"There's been some complaint about your
output," said Karen, glancing away.

"I thought I was putting out very well," said
Ari.

"You party...you stick your nose in other
peoples' business...and it looks to me like you generally mope
around. All of that takes time away from your primary task, which
from what I understand is identifying bad guys and their victims in
Iraq."

"It causes me great inner turmoil," Ari
reasoned. "I need to relax, sometimes."

"Was that beating you took relaxing?"

"I explained, I fell down..." Crap, he
couldn't remember what he had told her. He had fallen down the
steps? An elevator shaft?

"Just apply yourself to your job a little
harder, all right?" Karen said, tossing a folder on the table.
"Otherwise, we'll have to send you to the Home for Recalcitrant
Iraqis, which I hear is already overcrowded. You probably wouldn't
enjoy the clogged toilets."

"Dreadful," said Ari, thinking that, in one
form or another, such places actually existed.

"Now this..." Karen planted the tip of her
finger on the folder and pressed down, rolling her hand in comical
emphasis. "This is sort of none of our business, but it's even less
yours, so I thought I'd clue you in so you'd have a better idea of
what you're getting yourself into."

"I'm amazed with confusion," said Ari. "My
ears are hanging on your every word."

"This is a little file we made up about your
neighbor, Ethan Wareness."

"Where did you get it from?"

"I just said we made it up."

"It's fiction?"

"No, I mean we put it together. Compiled it.
Are you really this dense?"

"And who gave it to you?"

"Didn't I just tell you—"

"Why would you make up such a thing? Someone
gave it to you."

"I got curious about what you were talking
about at the party. About Ethan's disappearance. I did a little
research."

"Is your source reliable?"

Fred burst out laughing. Shooting her partner
a deadly look, Karen turned the folder around and shoved it over to
Ari. "You don't even know what's in here. Don't you think you ought
to look inside before spouting stupid accusations?"

"I was not accusing you of anything, Deputy
Marshal. I was just verifying the reliability of the information
you are presenting me."

Karen gave him a long look with a long face.
"You want me to give you a verbal synopsis?"

"That would be most useful, if you have read
it yourself."

"I wrote it, goddammit!" She kicked Ari under
the table. She smiled sweetly. "Very well, then...Ethan Wareness,
alias Edmund Truman, alias Donald T. Bain, alias Gifford
Trelayne...you get the idea...is a charmer of the first water. Did
you know he has three wives? What does that make him? A
'trigamist'?" She glanced at Fred, who responded with a shrug.
"He's actually a pretty good father, faithfully supporting so many
kids he could start a village. But of course, a schmuck like him
couldn't afford more than cakes and ale without added income.
Second and third jobs, call them. And those jobs happen to
include—"

"Fraud and computer blackmail."

Karen sat back. "Internet blackmail...but
right. Good guess."

"A cursory examination of the evidence—"

"Did you know about the wives?"

"No."

"Well thank God I'm good for something," said
Karen, pulling the folder back to her.

"Please, leave that with me."

"But you already know you're dealing with a
third-rate scumbag who doesn't deserve all the attention you're
giving him, not to mention the risk to your cover."

"My junk is impermeable," said Ari.

Karen and Fred stared at him.

"My cover is perfectly safe," Ari clarified.
"There is no rhyme or reason to your endless fretting. However, I
believe your file might prove useful."

"But aren't you going to drop all of this?"
Karen fretted.

"My research?"

"Your search."

Ari put his coffee aside and put his finger
on the file, sliding it under his eyes.

"We can't wait all day for you to read it. We
have to hit the road."

"And how long have you been malingering in my
house?"

"And here's your Aegis."

"I am assuming you don't want to leave this
here." Ari flipped the folder open and quickly began scanning the
pages.

"It isn't an official document, but there are
certain things mentioned—"

Ari looked up. "He is being investigated by
ISAF?"

"Of course not," said Karen. "ISAF doesn't
have any authority here. But they've alerted some agencies that,
for some reason or other, Ethan Wareness' name has cropped up in
the middle of Afghanistan. And your CENTCOM pals have also given us
a heads-up for Iraq. Your glorious neighbor seems to have some
dubious overseas connections. Let the authorities deal with him.
He's a cheat. He deserves what he gets."

"He has an impressive work history." Ari ran
his finger down the CV.

"So do I," Karen asserted. "Do you know I was
runner-up in the Manakin-Sabot Beauty Queen Contest?"

"An honor, to be sure," Ari nodded. He was
thinking that he had made a mistake in judgment. Another mistake in
judgment. He had assumed half the things Bruce Turner told him at
the ballpark were lies, as was only to be expected of a cat
killer—though in fact Ari belonged to the school of thought that
anyone not lying was lying by other means. It was probably Ethan
himself who dropped hints that he worked for the government.
Something like ISAF would be perfect: c'est pour brouiller les
pistes. After all, one would hardly call Kabul to confirm someone's
credentials. And even if an enterprising HR employee did, he or she
would not expect a direct answer, or any answer at all.

So who had answered with "ISAF" when Ari
called that night from the Cumberland State Forest? Whoever it was
had sent a warning to Uday to escape before the authorities
surrounded his compound. Ari had tried calling that number again,
only to get a recording that it was no longer in service. He did
not swallow Karen's assertion that Ethan's name was floating around
the Middle East. It was beginning to seem to him that someone was
using ISAF as a phony cover. Sort of like crooks pretending to be
cops, but on an industrial level. Common enough in Iraq, and not
unheard of in the States. Some form of black flag operation?

Ever-helpful Fred took his and Karen's cups
into the kitchen for refills.

"I notice you mention Sayed Technical
Solutions as one of his recent employers," said Ari.

"Sort of an Arab-sounding name, don't you
think?" Karen said with a sharp twinkle in her eye. "That was their
top guy at your party the other night, wasn't it? Bristol
Turnbridge?"

"Did you happen to look into the company? You
don't supply any details in your report..."

"They're the victim," Karen shrugged. "I
don't know what Wareness did to them. So far as I know, nothing's
been reported. But look at his previous jobs. Only one report,
where Ethan, as Joe Schmo—I forget the name—stole several thousand
credit card numbers, including CVV codes. The other
companies...well, none of them will ever admit that they fucked up
by hiring such a goof. What I'd like to know is how he managed to
get so many quality positions with jobs so hard to come by."

Ari recalled the sterling reference Bruce
Turner had told him Turnbridge had given Ethan. Had he been
blackmailed into giving it? And didn't all those phony identities
signal a talent for manipulating records? Ari possessed a similar
aptitude, well demonstrated when he re-jiggered the identities of
top Iraqi officials—including himself.

"One more thing, Ari," said Karen, looking
embarrassed.

"Yes?"

"There's some talk upstairs about..." She
stared at her refreshed coffee. "Remember that time I talked about
tagging you? You know, putting a tracing device on your person—your
ankle—so that you couldn't go anywhere without us knowing?"

"A putrid idea."

"I've come around on that, too. You really
are a guest of this country. But..."

"This is all from upstairs," Fred interjected
as he returned to the dining room. Ari thought it odd that someone
so adverse to unpleasant scenes had chosen law enforcement as a
career.

"Listen, Ari, it seems you aren't always
where we think you are, or where you should be, or..."

"I appreciate your delicacy," said Ari, "but
perhaps you should stop beating the bush about."

"There's been talk of issuing a Federal home
detention warrant on you. Our supervisor was pretty cagy about it.
He doesn't like to admit he's being pushed around. But I think you
were right about someone else having access to your GPS log. They
are apparently convinced it's only half of your story, and they
want to know where else you've been going. There's even talk of..."
Karen held her breath a moment. "...of giving you a bracelet that
includes transdermal alcohol monitoring capability. Which would
mean no more JD."

"But this is repulsive!" Ari protested. "I
have gone, and I have come back! I have been, and now I am home! I
have not fled the country to join the insurgents. I am like the
rock thrown in the air. I always land!"

"I guess these unknown parties want to know
where you land, Ari."

"You have no idea who these parties are?" Ari
asked, watching her closely.

"It could be a glitch," she shrugged. "Maybe
someone in CENTCOM heard something about you, saw that a certain
box was unchecked, and decided to check it."