Retribution (19 page)

“You have Moncrief with you.” Parker didn't pose it as a question.

“Yes, sir, he's already at Lakenheath.”

Parker nodded, heartened by the news. So Gunny had already arrived at the RAF air base in eastern England.

“How will I know the tent's location?”

“When we sight you and know you're in range, we'll flash a light for two seconds.”

“Won't they see it?” Scott asked the question.

“Well, they may see it,” Parker answered for Furlong, “but they won't register it. The difference is that I'll be looking for it. They won't.”

“We just need to make sure you're looking in the right direction when we flash it.” Furlong's look was deadly serious.

“If I'm not, your Windrunners need to take everyone out.” Parker said, equally grave.

“Yes, sir.”

“That's not a request, Captain.”

“No, sir, I didn't think it was.”

“Give me your hand, Captain.” William Parker reached for a handshake, and Furlong took it. “The next time we shake hands, this will be over.”

Furlong met his eyes and offered his first smile of the meeting. “Yes,
sir
!”

CHAPTER 32

 

T
he cold rain was beginning to wash the remaining leaves of autumn from the trees, leaving only the bare skeletons. It had started last night. With the wind, the temperature was starting to descend down into the thirties.

Under the reading light in the rear of his executive Yukon, Robert Tranthan scanned the short articles in the
Early Bird
. The e-mail was a cut-and-paste condensation of important stories from newspapers and magazines from around the world. Somewhere the Pentagon had a staff of people who spent their days reading the publications of the world, cutting them out, and copying the composition. Its daily message was delivered to Tranthan's laptop no later than 5:00
A.M
., seven days a week. He scanned the laptop before he was picked up at exactly 5:15
A.M
. every morning, seven days a week.

One article caught his attention.

He saved the article.

Crown prince involved?
He smiled at the thought. The Bay'ah Council had, for the first time, overtly allowed politics to enter the process for the selection of the next king. There were thirty-five votes up for grabs. And the losers would not go quietly into the night.

The Yukon stopped at the entrance to WRNMMC.

“I won't be long.”

“Yes, sir.”

He now knew the way to her room. Across the lobby, up the elevator to her floor, and third room on the left. She was still in the intensive-care unit. She was still isolated from others. And her visitors were still restricted to only one. It didn't matter, as Maggie had no surviving family.

“Hey, Maggie.”

She smiled, the narcotics clearly still flowing. It was a dazed, sleepy smile. The heart monitor continued to beep in the background.

He squeezed her arm. It was cold.

“Mr. Tranthan?”

He turned to see the nurse standing at the door.

“Oh, hello.”

Nurse Billie Cook.

He walked to the glass sliding door that separated the room from the hall. Tranthan stepped out into the hallway and pulled it closed behind him.

“You don't have to do that.” Billie Cook's voice clearly told Tranthan that she didn't like what was going on.

“What do you mean?”

“She has substantial hearing loss from the bomb, and if she could hear you, she wouldn't be able to remember it five minutes later.”

“Then why in the hell is she yapping about stuff that she needs to forget but not a damn thing about what she needs to remember?”

“It's just the way the brain works, Mr. Tranthan.”

“Well, then tell me how it's going to work in a few weeks? Or months?” He paused. “Or years?”

“If she's really very lucky? Not much better.” Billie set her jaw, obviously growing angry.

“Will she ever be able to keep her mouth shut?”

“No.”

“Okay.” He turned, slid the glass door open, and stepped into the room. “Starting today, she needs a private room. In some quiet spot.”

Billie stared at him.

“You understand?” Tranthan issued the command in a low, flat voice, almost a growl.

“Yes, I understand.” Tranthan never understood how much he was underestimating the nurse from west Texas.

Tranthan stepped into Maggie's room, closed the glass door behind him, and sat next to Maggie on the bed.

“Maggie, do you remember the last e-mail?”

“Sure.”

“What did it say?”

She had a blank, confused look on her face. Short-term memory loss was the term that the doctors had used. But Tranthan could tell that it wasn't a short-term memory problem. She had seemingly no memory. Then suddenly, she would remember conversations from years ago. Or weeks ago. It was like herding cattle that all wanted to go in their own direction. With this herd nothing seemed to work.

“I don't know.”

“What was the password to your flash drive?” He tried to look directly into her eyes.

She looked toward the window, as if trying to remember.

“Which crown prince was behind the coup? Was it Salman or Mutaib? Or someone else?” He peppered her with questions in his frustration. All he drew in response was a blank stare. She was unpredictable. He would ask her a question and receive no answer, but then later she would tell her nurses everything. She would tell Billie too much.

His cell phone rang.

“Damn.” He looked down at the number.

Maggie reacted to the cell phone with the look of a child who thought her parent was angry with her.

Tranthan walked out into the hallway, looking for a place where no one could hear the conversation. There was a door marked EXIT that led to a stairway. He glanced up a flight of stairs and down a flight, seeing no one.

“Yes?” Tranthan was as impatient on his cell phone as he was elsewhere.

It was his secretary, Laura. She only called him when absolutely necessary.

“They sent a box over.”

 

 

Robert Tranthan stared at the pictures on the far wall of his office. In effect, they chronologically charted his career path. A younger man progressed up to the present one. He started with senators and occasionally cabinet members. At the end, an older Tranthan posed with the president in the White House, as he grew closer to the source of power. But now, Tranthan's world was closing in on him.

The computer tech George had laid out in front of him the remains of the CIA office in Doha. Burned-out shards of a computer, several cell phones, a broken pistol.

Tranthan put her in Doha for a reason. Purely personal. The affair was getting too much attention. And he knew she would not go away quietly. She wanted an important post. He wanted a safe place to store his secret. He sighed, spun, and looked at the small bar behind his desk. Laura restocked it weekly with a new fifth of Grays Peak. He kept the credenza equipped with the vodka, olives, extra-dry vermouth, and an ice maker. Today, he didn't fool around with the vermouth. Just two cubes of ice and vodka.

He took a large sip and hit his intercom.

“What do you have, Laura?”

She came in quickly, carrying a box. “The investigating team said they could release this to you.” She put it on the center of his desk directly in front of him. It had been sealed with a red plastic tape marked “Secret.”

“Thanks.”

Laura left equally swiftly, knowing he wanted to be alone.

As soon as he opened the box, the room filled with the odor of burned plastic and rubber from the explosion in Doha.

The one type of injury that Maggie hadn't suffered was burns. Apparently, the fire occurred sometime after she was evacuated from the rubble. Nevertheless, the items in the box had been singed. They included several loose reports, a small recorder broken open and empty, the keys to a Ford, and a blackened ladies' wallet atop them all. He opened the wallet and pulled out a driver's license from D.C. It showed the face that he had fallen for.

A small Glock pistol, missing its clip, lay in a pile of ash and cinders at the bottom of the box. He tilted the box and then set it back down on the desk.

As the ash and cinders shifted and settled, Tranthan caught a glimpse of a metallic, gold object at the bottom. He pulled it out from under the debris, finding a small tarnished gold photo frame no bigger than a man's wallet. It held no photograph. He weighed it in his hand. It had been bent and blackened by the heat.

He knew the missing picture well, a photograph that could have never been developed. The empty frame stood for their entire relationship, a symbol of pure impossibility.

“Fuck!” He threw it across the room. The frame struck the wall and fell to the carpeted floor. The room echoed the crash, then went silent.

Sighing, he got on his knees and looked for the frame. It had fallen behind a table next to the wall. In the small space he could smell the alcohol. It reminded him of a father he was born to hate.

There it was. Tranthan grabbed the frame and backed out into the light of the room. Its glass was shattered. But the back of the frame seemed to be missing, maybe somewhere still under his desk? He looked underneath and then he saw it.

Tranthan backed out again into the light, now holding in his hand a small flash drive, black, no bigger than his thumb. It was scorched, blackened by the heat and slightly deformed, bent like the frame it had been in. He reached over to the telephone and placed a call to the IT section.

“This is the deputy director. I need something checked out, and I need it checked out now. Call Mr. George.” A pause. “Yes, tonight.”

CHAPTER 33

 

T
he double-decker bus blew past William Parker as he started to cross over King Street to the newspaper. He stepped back, between a parked Mercedes and a small Fiat, as the gust of wind blew past him. Another van followed right behind the bus. As he waited for a third van, Parker noticed a
London Times
newspaper box in front of the Hammersmith city hall.

He shook his head. He'd known it was a mistake leaving Knez's body so close to his flat as soon as he saw the blue lights earlier that morning. The police cars had lined up on his street when he left for the newspaper. He was stopped twice, but the investigators had already made several assumptions, all of them wrong.

Apparently, this was the third death in the neighborhood in the last several weeks. A gang war had been raging for some time. It didn't matter, as Parker only needed a few days.

“Hello. It's Sadik.” He held down the button on the intercom for several seconds.

The buzzer to the door was slow.

He bounced up the stairs.

“
As sala'amu alaikum
, sister.”

“
Walaikum as sala'am
.” The woman behind the desk always smiled when Parker came in. “Did you see the
Times
this morning?”

“Just the front page in the box.”

“A man was murdered where you live.”

“Yes, the police cars were at my front door.” The word traveled very fast in London. It would be pointless for him to try to avoid the topic.

“Your poor wife must be horrified.”

“Yes.”

He had learned that the best way out of a conversation was not to have one. She meant well, but in the short time he had gotten to know her, Parker recognized why she had remained as a receptionist. She had the job because she was the editor's wife's cousin.

“There was a picture of the man.”

“Oh?” The British newspapers were not known to hold back the gory details.

“He looked like the man who was here the other day. The one who was looking for you.”

“Do you have it?”

“Sure.” She pulled out the newspaper. It was folded around the photograph. Knez's half-open eyes stared out into space. “Isn't that him?”

“I don't know. I never saw him. Did you say he looks similar?”

“Yes, and the man who came to see you, he was from Bosnia, wasn't he?”

“That's what the message said. But I have no idea who he is.”

Events were compressing the time available to him. Parker needed to get out of London soon.

“Oh.” She seemed satisfied. “By the way, Mr. Atwan asked to see you once you came in.”

“Is he in with anyone?”

“No. I know he wanted to see you. Something must be up.”

Parker didn't like it. Atwan generally left him alone.

The editor's office was in the very rear of the building. One of the coworkers had accused him of wanting to be as far away from the street as possible. Parker knocked on the door frame.

“Hello, Sadik! Come in.”

“Did you hear of the murder?” Parker thought he would preempt the conversation.

“Yes, and the girls said the man may have been here just yesterday. Did you know him?”

“No.”

“They are probably wrong. If you haven't noticed yet, they have a vivid imagination.” Atwan had this habit of pulling up his sleeves when he talked. He would do it repeatedly. “But, more importantly, I liked your draft on the BBC.”

“Yeah?”

“It will have the boys in White City boiling.” Atwan had several grudges against the BBC. He knew that they would ignore it, but with a few calls Al Jazeera would run the story as well. It would keep his little paper in the minds of the Muslim world for another day. It would help sales.

“How did you get those quotes and details?”

“I had a very good source.”

Atwan smiled. “You wouldn't consider sharing that source?”

Parker smiled but said nothing.

“I have something for you.”

Atwan handed a manila envelope across the desk. He didn't have a chair on the other side of his desk so that no one could stay long in conversations. The paper was too small and the budget too little.

“What is this?”

Atwan nodded his head as if to say
go ahead and open it
.

The envelope was not sealed. He looked inside, seeing a Lufthansa ticket jacket.

“You are expected in Peshawar in two days.”

“This is from Yousef?”

Atwan, beaming, nodded. “The interview of a lifetime.”

Parker stared at the ticket in his hand for a moment, trying to look properly overwhelmed in the moment.

“I have something else for you.” Atwan reached down to the bottom drawer of his desk.

“Here is a shawl that my father gave me as a young man.” He handed Parker a black-and-white checkered shawl. “May it protect you in your travels.”