Sudden Deception (A Jill Oliver Thriller) (13 page)

“See over there,” he pointed, whispering. “See that café? That is where he is supposed to have coffee in the evenings.”

“Do we have a name?” Jill asked.

Zayed didn’t answer.

They stopped twenty or so yards from the building when a man in a dishdasha stumbled out of the door, leaned up against the side of the building, and attempted to steady himself. A minute later and the drunk was staggering down the street.

Zayed’s hand shushed her as they approached the door. Without hesitation, Zayed walked in. Posturing, wishing she had a shot of testosterone, Jill followed. Inside, the café looked more like an old biker bar you would find behind a gas station somewhere on Route 66. The walls were covered in chipped orange paint in an attempt to mask the cement, which Jill could barely make out through the cloud of cigarette smoke anyway. To the left were a couple of stools at a makeshift bar. A large cracked mirror hung behind it extending to the right corner where two men sat smoking. They looked up through the smoke. She waited by the door and Zayed walked across the ten-foot-long room.

He mumbled something in Arabic and then, “Hamrain?” The sound of this name punched Jill in the gut. Adrenaline began to rush through her. It was the name that was on David’s notes back at the house. Poker face on, she tried not to show her interest or elation that they were getting closer to finding her husband. Focus. She rehearsed scenarios while watching Zayed. She scanned discreetly.

Three o’clock. Two Afghanis smoked, uninterested.

Six o’clock. No one was standing behind her. She began reciting the rules of engagement. You have the right to use force to defend yourself against an attacker. Hostile fire may be returned to stop a hostile attack. Use minimum force necessary. Check. She knew these rules, studied them. A thought flashed into Jill’s mind. She wondered if her potential opponents followed the same rules.

Nine o’clock. A blank wall.

Twelve o’clock. Zayed again. The man who sat in the corner responded in an Arabic dialect, slowly leaning back in his plastic chair. An automatic rifle rested leisurely on the man’s lap. Two men stood behind him in the shadows. One of the men glanced Jill’s way and she tilted her head down. The sound of a chair slowly scraping across the floor signaled cautious movement. Jill took one small step in the direction of Zayed. The men shifted and Jill noticed they were wearing worn leather army boots similar to hers. The two seedy men turned and walked back towards the wall. Zayed moved in unison and Jill followed past the man sitting in the chair. They followed the men through a door and stepped into an attached room that looked more like a store than a back room. To her left was a long glass door, something you would see in a retail strip mall, but it was tinted black. Bulletproof was Jill’s first thought. You could barely see out and you most certainly couldn’t see in. The two men stood on the right against a cement wall. The room was virtually empty except for short storage shelves in the middle of the floor and a desk. The light from a desk lamp failed to illuminate the face of a dark figure sitting behind it. The sound of a grunt greeted them. Zayed took a step toward him, and Jill stood on the left side of the storage shelves. She scanned the shelves filled with army munitions boxes. Reading text on the boxes, Jill began to head around the other side of them but their escorts immediately cocked their guns. Jill stopped. Zayed held up his hands, palms facing the man in the shadow. “Mahaba, hello,” Zayed said in Arabic.

All eyes now on Zayed, Jill slid her hand into her side pocket and closed her grip on the gun. Zayed said something in Arabic, then slowly pulled out an envelope from the front of his jacket. He placed the thick envelope of cash on the dark table. On top of it he placed David’s photo. The room was tense, the air stale.

Jill saw the dark shadow’s nod when he looked at the photo. Her stomach flipped. Sliding the money-laced envelope into his top drawer, he shuffled through some papers on the cluttered desk and handed Zayed a torn post-it note. Zayed read it, and then tucked it into the top pocket of his black jacket.

Jill’s instinct tapped her on the shoulder. Something didn’t feel right. She stood silent. Then it happened, a loud crack. What had to be an armor-piercing bullet broke a sharp hole through the glass.

“Khalas, khalas!” one of the men screamed.

Zayed turned suddenly when one of the men cocked his rifle, aimed it at Zayed, and started yelling. At the same time, the door behind the group splintered open. Jill ducked behind a shelf and pulled out her gun. She heard shouts in what sounded like Russian from the back of the room. Gunfire burst around her. Jill aimed at a figure and shut one of her eyes for focus, but the figure moved out of sight. Ducking down again, she could only hear gunfire and the sound of anguished screams. There were more men in the small room now, different men. Then more gunfire, and she felt shattered glass rain down around her. Struggling to make out anything in the dust from the shattered glass, she looked across the floor where, not more than four feet away, Zayed was lying motionless. Tiny glass shards sparkled in the blood pooling around his head. Jill crab-walked over to him with bullets whizzing around her. Full of adrenaline, she dragged him back behind the storage racks of ammo.

“Zayed?” She shook him. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not, and there was no time to check in this chaos. Run, Jill, run, and without further thought, she reached into Zayed’s pocket and snatched the post-it note.

Lifting her gun hand above the shelf, she fired, giving her enough time to escape the room. A man began shouting in her direction and Jill turned around and fired directly into his belly, gutting him and knocking him backwards. She could not see how many others remained. “Nyet, nyet,” was all she heard. Jill had no time to think as she ran ducking in and around and between cars. She didn’t know the direction of the sniper, who was clearly firing to distract the assault coming in from the rear door.

Then a lull—the gunfire had stopped! In a leap of faith, she ran and crouched along the backs of cars until she hit a break between two buildings and sprinted through.

Behind her, a man yelled something in Russian. Did he see me? Shit. Her boots smacked the ground hard, and the pace reverberated through her knees. Only the moonlight and smattering of shop lights were lighting her way.

Ducking into an alley, Jill glanced back between breaths and saw shadows along the buildings across a small parking lot. With that as her cue, she sprinted down into darkness. Rounding two more corners, she stopped fast when she noticed some stairs behind a glass door. Grabbing the handle hard, she shook it open. The door was not locked. She pulled herself in and ran up the two flights of stairs, only to find there was nothing at the top but a single door. This time the door was locked. She looked at the gun in her shaking hand. She looked back to the door; it had a small window and only darkness on the other side. This door must lead to the roof. Panting hard, she looked back down the dark stairwell, but no one had followed her. Not that she could see anyway. The sound of her heart pounding was loud. Jill let out a deep breath, satisfied she was alone. She clicked on the safety and put the gun back into her pocket.

She couldn’t believe what had happened. One minute there was a meeting going on and the next second, everyone was shooting. She’d shot a guy, but she didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t believe she had got out of there alive, or that Zayed appeared to be dead. Who wanted to kill him? And who were those Russians? Chechens? She could swear she heard two different Slavic dialects.

Anxiously, Jill reached her still shaking hand into the pocket and pulled out the crumpled note. Holding the note up to the moonlight, Jill tried to read it but the writing wasn’t English or Arabic. It looked Russian. The way the words were formatted, it must be an address. There was no mention of David on it; at least nothing looked like his name. The feeling of her heart thumping faded as she contemplated what to do next.

She slowly descended the stairs, carefully peering out the windows for any more shooters in the dark. The streets seemed quiet, despite some of the shops still being open. Across the small side street was a dress shop. The bright sign lit the dresses cascading like a curtain in the window. She could not see inside but the lights were on. Suddenly she remembered—she looked like a man! Could I be this lucky? Jill reached the glass door at the bottom of the stairs and looked one way and then the next. No one. There were cars along the main street, but the backstreets were silent. Where were the police? Surely someone must have heard all that shooting and reported it?

Jill fled across the abandoned parking lot, past a mini-mart, and into the dress shop. The bell jingled as she shut the door behind her. She knew no one could see her in here unless they looked closely through the bright garments that served as curtains. Full hangers were squashed with an assortment of different patterns. The walls were lined with long abayas. One wall was piled high with folded clothes in lopsided piles. An old bearded man looked up at Jill from behind a counter. He didn’t seem to know whether to smile or yell at her to leave, as she probably looked more like a gay male model.

Thick white eyebrows arched over the man’s eyes and she instantly recognized something she saw in Grandpapa’s eyes. She smiled and said, “Hello, marhaba.” The white-haired man said hello back. His accent was thick.

“I need dress,” Jill said, pulling off the cap and shaking her short hair. She spoke slowly, in the hopes that he could understand. His arthritic hips hobbled over to where her finger was pointing and he happily began to pull a dress down. Jill shook her head.

Jill wanted a common Afghan abaya. The rods bowed slightly with the weight of the jammed clothes. Jill was drawn to a bright blue dress. Although she hadn’t seen too many women wearing them here, she wanted to blend in as best as possible.

The old man shuffled through the tight gowns to find the right size for her. He pulled one out and held it up to her. “Good, good, khalas.” Jill reached into a money belt under her shirt, pulled out some green paper, and paid for the dress. She then plucked out the treasured piece of paper and asked the old man if he knew what it said.

“Russia, Russia,” he babbled. “La la, no Russia, no Russia.”

He looked up and said, “Wife Russia, grocery,” and walked out the back door.

Before Jill could go after him he returned with a pudgy old woman. Trustingly, she held the note up for the old woman to see. Her aged hands shook slightly as she gently took the note from Jill and held it out far from her face, scowling intently. She was dressed in a drab polka-dotted outfit that fell to the ground, cinched tightly at her overgrown waistline. Her gray curly hair, uncovered, disclosed she was not Muslim. Jill thought that to marry a Muslim one had to be Muslim, but she quickly pushed the curiosity away as the woman began to speak a form of Arabic to her husband.

“Address, village,” he translated back to Jill. His worn spotted hand pointed at a name on the note. “Petrovich, name Petrovich.”

“Petrovich,” Jill repeated, and the couple nodded. Jill needed to find a phone. She needed to call Karine and have her run this name in association with LSA. Maybe there was intel on it. Maybe Karine had found information on Zayed? But that didn’t matter now, did it? Jill also needed to get to this place written on the paper.

Jill held up her hand and mimed holding a phone. But the old man slowly shook his head. Turning, he pointed to the left window and said, “Typing shop, go, typing shop.” Jill stood for a moment remembering how lucky she had been to have Zayed with her, and then pushed the thought away. Right now she needed to get in touch with Karine. She would have time to think about Zayed later.

With excitement and apprehension, she slipped into the abaya, complete with the burqa over her face. She waved a thank-you to the old couple and moved slowly towards the door. She looked out the glass at a dark and empty street. The doorbell jingled as she walked out.

18:33 Zulu Time—KUSHKA, AFGHANISTAN

Once outside, the part of her dress that crisscrossed over the eyeholes obstructed her view, causing her to miss a stair. Her body lurched forward and her boot smacked pavement, saving her from tumbling into a tangled ball of robe. She tried to get some bearing on where to go. From what Jill could translate from the old man's flurry of hand gestures she was to go out the store, go left down the side road for a ways, then turn right and it would be there on the right side of the road. He then ended the gestures with “Insha’allah.”

“Typing shop,” she said to herself. Moving in the direction suggested to her, Jill attempted to blend in as a local woman. She rounded the next corner and saw through her imprisoned view several shops with lights on. Jill thought she could see the outline of a typewriter in the shop at the end, but it was still too far away to make out and the burqa was not helping matters. Just as she was about to step down off the curb, intuition stopped her. Jill placed her foot back onto the curb and warily looked around. In an effort to appear that she had dropped something, her head tilted slightly down as she further scanned her surroundings—first to her left and then back towards the typing shop. As her eyes passed along the street, she saw it. There, directly across the road to her immediate left, was the café where the gunfight just happened. Instantly, Jill became apprehensive and backed slowly into the closed doorway of an abandoned shop. She patted her right quad to gain comfort from the gun. Could this really be the same café??

She peeked out from the dark doorway and looked up and down the street. Two men were standing a few shops up to the right across the road, smoking. Luckily they weren’t looking in Jill’s direction. She looked back over at the café, which was now dark. Shattered glass gleamed in the bright orange light of the sign above the café.

It’s the same café, she thought and wondered where everyone was. It couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes since she escaped the attack. How could it be cleared away so fast? Where are all the men who were killed or wounded? For a second, Jill wondered if she was in a dream, still sleeping snuggled somewhere between hell and back. In the States, crowds would have gathered by now. Police tape would be up. At least two black-and-whites holding the crowd back waiting for CSU to show up. There seemed to be commotion on the back side of the café as there were several cars stopped in disarray with their headlights on, but it was too far away for her to see any details. Jill mulled over her escape that led her to the dress shop. She couldn’t seem to retrace how she ended up so close. “Shit,” she muffled under the burqa.

Then her thoughts turned to Zayed. She considered going back into the café to see if there were any signs of his body, but the sound of footsteps stopped that thought short. A man walked past the café, his shoes crunching the shards of glass. Oddly, he didn’t glance at the shattered window. He simply walked in Jill’s direction. His gait seemed harmless enough, strong, but not determined. Out for a night stroll perhaps? He wasn’t wearing army boots, just thick-soled sandals. She stood in the dark, almost holding her breath. Frozen, Jill allowed her eyes to follow him as he passed the doorstep where she stood, crossed the road, and disappeared into some sort of mechanical supply store.

Jill’s brain spun. She needed to get to the typing shop, but the only way for her to reach it was to walk past the café. She hesitated; she needed some nerve now. She also needed to find a damn phone. Another scan. Nothing. She clenched her hands and huffed, then walked out from the dark doorway and started towards the shop.

Down the street men were moving about. She knew it was uncommon for a woman to be out alone at night, but she hoped no one would notice. She suddenly began to feel very hot under the abaya. Adrenaline mixed with apprehension and intent. She walked towards the first corner of the café and made a split decision not to look inside. Breathe, Jill, breathe. Just a few more steps. Glass crunched under her boots. Shit. She stepped lighter to avoid attracting attention. She had no peripheral vision when she walked past the broken window. Jill let out a long breath at the sound of her boots slapping clean pavement. She kept moving at the same pace and her heart rate began to slow.

Three doors past the café, and there was the typing shop on the right. Light shone through the bars in the windows. Jill opened the glass door and a musty smell greeted her. The breeze from the opening door ruffled the edges of the papers tacked to veneer wood paneling. Inside, a herd of old dusty computer screens faced her.

Shelves were crowded with an array of paper, ink cartridges, books, and a round alarm clock that read 20:57. Seated at desks were three men and one woman, heads tilted down, concentrating on the glowing screens in front of them. The wood paneling was warped, the bend forcing a cobwebbed shelf away from the wall. The head of the man closest to her lifted. Jill detected annoyance as he got up to approach her from behind the cluttered counter. Jill looked around and noticed a phone/fax machine in a makeshift phone booth to her right. She pointed to the phone and pulled out a one-hundred-dollar US bill. The Afghan man looked at it, and then back to Jill. He said something in a language Jill did not understand, then he examined the bill and said, “You call US?”

Jill nodded.

“Twenty minutes khalas.”

Khalas must mean finish—she had gathered that much on this trip by now.

A small table holding a dirty cream-colored phone sat in front of a raggedy chair. The numbers on the phone were in Arabic and she hoped they were in the standard order. Arabic was written in the opposite sequence from English—right to left—so numbers in Arabic were written from left to right. A cloud of dust rose from the chair as she sat down, and Jill suddenly realized that the old woman in the dress shop made no mention of David.

She picked up the cruddy phone and dialed zero-zero-one and then the number. The sound of a phone ringing reassured her that she may have gotten the number right. The sun should be up by now in Tucson, Jill thought.

“Boy, I sure am happy to hear from you,” Karine said.

“Same,” Jill replied quietly.

“Jill, you alright?”

Jill’s hand had a slight tremor. She was trying to hold the phone away from her head for fear of getting who knows what disease from it. “Five-W,” Jill whispered. That was the code for Karine to know that Jill couldn’t talk and that something was urgent. Who, what, when, where, why, and of course how—the fundamentals of clear and concise communication. At least that’s what David’s mantra was. And that was exactly what Jill needed.

Focus, Karine. Jill and Karine had rehearsed this over a bottle of wine one evening. They never thought they would ever use it, but they had prepared for this moment. Please focus, Karine.

“You can’t talk?” Karine asked fast.

“No.”

“Okay, you hurt?”

“No.”

“You need something?” Karine realized before she finished asking that it was a dumb question. As rehearsed, Karine continued, “What do you need, Jill?”

“Research.”

“Where—Kushka?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I guess the when is now, eh?”

“Yeah,” Jill said with annoyance.

“Who?”

Karine tapped on the keys as Jill answered, “Petrovich,” She look up at the people in the typing shop to see if anyone had flinched with acknowledgement. No one did.

Karine repeated the name and told Jill she would run it alongside LSA and the unknown village outside Kushka. “I’ll also run it against your friend Zayed,” Karine said as if she just scored a goal. Jill didn’t respond. No need to tell Karine she thought he was dead. Besides, she was curious to find out who he really was.

Jill twisted her head toward the computer geeks. No one seemed to notice her. She still whispered, “The old man said it was thirty minutes from Kushka,” Jill said hurriedly. “David?” Jill said with hope. Karine’s sigh answered her question.

“Wait, what? What old man?” Then Karine finished her own question with, “Never mind. You can tell me later.”

After several minutes on hold, Karine came back almost out of breath and sounded excited. “I had to run to the central computer system for this guy since the name sounded Russian. Jill, Petrovich’s name is Vladamir Petrovich. If it’s the same guy, he is a former Soviet Navy captain who broke into a nuclear storage facility several years back at Murmansk. That’s a shipyard.” Karine gasped for air. “He took five pieces of a reactor core containing six kilograms of enriched uranium.”

“Is there any connection to LSA or David?” Jill whispered, looking through the grate at the uninterested people.

“Well, when I first ran the name there were over six hundred and fifty responses to Petrovich. But when I added anything with nuclear weapon jargon, I came up with five, and then when I added Kushka, this is the only name that came up.”

“He must be the one,” Jill whispered excitedly. “Did you get any information on the town outside Kushka?”

“Does the name Towraghond sound familiar?”

“That’s the name.” Although to Jill it sounded much different when spoken by a woman with a cowboy Western accent than it did coming from a little old Russian woman.

“Well, it’s about twenty miles past the Turkmenistan border on the side of the mountain. It looks like a donkey trail. I heard they have wild donkeys there; have you seen any? Did you know that the donkeys came from Tennessee in the late eighties?”

Jill grunted at the trivia, a downside of any researcher.

“Never mind,” said Karine who got back on track. “The road is windy but it looks like a car can drive on it. But a four-wheeler would be better. They have those over there?”

“Karine, focus.”

“Right.” Karine gave map coordinates. “Not that this will help you unless you have a GPS. You have a GPS out there?”

“No,” Jill said between gritted teeth.

“Oh, and Jill, this guy is no boy scout. He was part of the Spetsnaz, the Soviet Special Forces, trained to operate and manage nuclear weapons. I don’t get a good feeling from this, Jill. Do you think David was following a story about stolen nukes or something?”

“Not sure. Anyway, thanks, I’ll call again soon.”

She was about to hang up when Karine said, “Jill—” and hesitated. “Well, um, well, there is some bad news … well, you’ll think it’s bad anyway. It’s about Matthew McGregor.” Jill winced. “He’s getting a book written about himself, and, well, I got a call from the writer wanting to interview you. Just thought it’d be better I told you before you saw it on the news. Worst torturer of women before he killed them an’ all, ya know?”

There was silence for about thirty seconds while Jill wondered if Karine had actually just said that to her. “Crap, like I need this now,” Jill responded ambivalently. And with that, Jill hung up and turned around, hoping no one had been listening. There was no sound of a typewriter, something you might expect in a typing shop. But nobody was looking her way. There was just the odd click-clack of the mouse and keyboard strokes. The woman at the desk lifted her head, more out of curiosity than suspicion, Jill figured.

Exiting the shop, her eyes swept the street and noted no more headlights behind the café. Jill stood there unmoving. She was in over her head and she knew it. Damn.

She needed a minute to go over her thoughts about Petrovich, David, and what the hell to do next. Jill moved to the doorway of the closed shop next to the typing shop.

She was no pushover. Well, at least not now, not after Matthew McGregor. Perplexed at what to do next, it was McGregor who now inspired her. She tensed just thinking about those last few hours with him. He had drugged her and for that she was thankful. It distorted her memory of the truth. She closed her eyes and tried to see.

She had to go back to the dress shop. She could trust the old man. That much she knew. As she wandered back, being careful not to draw attention, she thought of her belongings back at the hotel. The hotel might be easy to get to with directions, but she couldn’t risk being seen. It was bad enough she involved the man in the dress shop. Kushka isn’t that big, she thought. Her stuff would have to wait until she could get back there, if at all. At least her laptop was impossible to crack. The fail-safe mechanism would erase her hard drive if anyone attempted to break in. Then she thought about her numbers. Her notebook.

The old man smiled when she walked in, oblivious to the danger that surrounded her. She lifted off her burqa and smiled back. She walked over and held out five one-hundred dollar bills. The man looked at the money and then up at Jill. She held out the note in the other hand and said “Towraghond” as best as her American dialect would allow. “Driver, need driver.”

He didn’t touch the money or the note; his eyes met hers as if searching for a hint of no good. He held up his hands, palms facing her—a clear signal for Jill to wait. Seconds later he came back with his wife and pointed at the offering in Jill’s hands. The old couple’s native tongue filled the small shop with debate. From what Jill could gauge by judging the body language, the old woman wanted the money. The old man was hesitant but relented, and the old woman waddled out the back door. He shuffled over and Jill pushed the money in his direction, gesturing that she would keep the cherished note as he motioned her to sit on an old wooden chair next to the cash desk.

As she watched the old man fumble and fold clothes, her adrenaline began to ebb and she found herself drifting from alertness to thinking of the past few hours, the past few days. It was the adrenaline that kept her tiredness at bay. Jill wanted to think of David, but thoughts of Zayed took over. Questions about what had happened at the café raced through her head. Who were those men at the café, and were they there for us, or the money that we paid the shadow man? There was no answer to her questions, just more questions.

The door of the shop jingled open. Jill looked up but did not move. She had put the burqa back on, so she was not too worried. But still, after what just happened - the recognition of David’s photo from the shadow man, and the death of Zayed–she knew David had been here and she was determined to find him. Screw you, McGregor, her mantra continued.