the Second Horseman (2006) (20 page)

"Hey, Brandon?" Catherine cut in. "Didn't we get sour cream?"

Scanlon tried glaring at her again, but she saw it coming and averted her eyes.

"Oh, here it is. Never mind."

Chapter
TWENTY-THREE

Despite the thick down parka Jamal Yusef was wearing, he was forced to pace back and forth across the small chamber in order to stay warm. He stopped and held his hands up to the lightbulb hanging overhead, but it was too distant to provide any heat. Instead, it just swung gently from its cord, causing the stone walls to sway in time.

Yusef glanced down at the cot that was the only furniture in the poorly disguised prison cell, but then just pressed his back against the wall and stared into the black gap he'd entered through hours before. There were no bars like the ones protecting the warheads. Grigori had led him there through a mind-boggling maze of passageways that Yusef would have no chance of finding his way back through. Any attempt at escape would almost certainly end with his corpse at the bottom of a ravine or floating in an icy subterranean lake.

Not that he really had anything to escape from. The deal was done and Grigori was satisfied with the cash delivery plan they'd negotiated. Yusef would leave tomorrow to coordinate the details with Hamdi. Then it would just be a matter of Grigori living up to his end of the agreement -- something that seemed fairly certain at this point. A single, quick, megamillion-dollar sale was ideal for him. Every day he held those nukes, every time he contacted another potential buyer, he took an enormous risk. No, Grigori would be happy to see them go, to pay his men, and to disappear forever.

So why did Yusef want to run to the blackness beyond that gap and just keep going?

A few hours ago it would have been an impossible question to answer, but now, here in the cold silence, it was completely clear: He'd wanted the warheads to be fake. Or better yet, not to exist at all. He'd wanted this to be another one of the countless hoaxes that flowed from Eastern Europe every day.

He believed in Edwin Hamdi and knew from his own long, depressing experience that the destruction of Israel was the world's best chance of exchanging the existing balance of terror for an admittedly delicate balance of peace. In the long run, he believe
d t
hat millions would be saved -- making the limited casualties caused by his actions irrelevant.

The problem was that yesterday those limited casualties had been nothing but an abstract concept. Now they were real. And with every moment that passed, his imagination gave them just a little more flesh and bone, families and personalities.

When the perfect blackness he was staring into began to show hints of gray, Yusef took a hesitant step forward. A light. Someone was coming.

It occurred to him that he hadn't eaten in almost twenty hours. Perhaps Grigori realized this and was bringing him something? Best not to starve your best customer.

When instead Pyotr appeared, Yusef managed not to step back again -- less out of courage than the knowledge that there was nowhere to go.

The smears of dirt that had been so evident before were gone from the man's face, making the scar across his mouth glow white in the shifting light. His black hair was slicked back now, and he'd changed into a slightly less tattered jacket. Perhaps his religious convictions had faded a bit in light of the amount of money Yusef was offering.

That hope was quickly dashed when Pyotr began screaming again. The spit billowed from his mouth along with a stream of unintelligible words, though he was only jabbing the air with his finger and not the blade he'd had earlier.

Yusef stood completely motionless and silent, as though faced with a rabid dog. If he just didn't react, it seemed likely that Pyotr would quickly tire of shouting at a man who couldn't understand him.

Instead, his voice rose, and he began inching forward, motioning wildly with both hands. Yusef looked around for something he could use to defend himself, but there was nothing. The loose rocks that were strewn all over this godforsaken cavern didn't exist in here -- probably cleared out for the very reason that they could be used as weapons.

With his strategy clearly not working, Yusef began moving sideways, trying to keep as much distance as possible between him and the slowly advancing man.

"Calm down," he said smoothly. "This is just business. Business you'll profit greatly from."

Pyotr circled right, dragging his fist against the wall next to him, leaving a shiny streak of blood as the sharp rock cut his skin.

It occurred to Yusef that he wasn't really frightened. Not in the generally accepted definition of the word. His years surrounded by constant violence, cruelty, and fanaticism, had numbed him. Even in a place where life is cheap, it seemed that your own would be an exception. But it wasn't.

"What?" he heard himself shout. "What do you want from me? If you --"

"Pyotr!"

Grigori's voice. It was impossible to tell how close he was in the ambiguous acoustics of the cave.

"Pyotr!"

They both fell silent and stopped circling. Pyotr's eyes widened to the point that they were nearly perfectly round and, perhaps inevitably, the knife came out.

What the Ukrainian lacked in training, he more than made up for in experience. He came charging straight forward, anticipating his opponent's move to the right and cutting it off.

The time between the moment Yusef realized that he had nowhere else to go and the moment the blade began entering his chest seemed impossibly long. He thought about the people who had died in that Israeli theater, about the look of joy in Muhammad's eyes. About the warheads.

Oddly there was no pain, only a weakness that caused him to sink to his knees and then tip onto his back. He felt his head hit the edge of the cot and then he was on the ground, staring up at that single bulb swinging hypnotically above.

"Pyotr!" he heard again, this time louder but in a way more distant. A moment later Grigori's face appeared above him. He heard the ripping of fabric as his jacket was torn open and then more shouting in Ukrainian.

Yusef struggled to keep his eyes from closing but found himself blinking more and more slowly. At least he wasn't cold anymore.

Finally, the darkness came -- more complete even than the darkness filling the cave. And with it, the realization that he was no longer part of this. It was finally over.

Chapter
TWENTY-FOUR

Brandon Vale had never been much of a sleeper.

It wasn't that he didn't aspire to descend into dreamless unconsciousness every night, or to wake up in the morning with a cleared mind and rejuvenated body. It was just that there was always so much to think about. His past, how this job or that job could have been done better, what would happened if brain-eating zombies took over the world. And now, two days out from the Vegas heist, his mind was relentlessly turning over every misstep in the sixteen-hour training days he and his team had been enduring. Not to mention obsessing about nuclear warheads, Ukrainian psychos, and Catherine Juarez. He reached for his iPod and scrolled through the screens until he found the song he was looking for: "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." If you looked hard enough there wa
s a
sound track for every possible situation.

He kicked the blanket off and settled back into staring up at the dark ceiling. When the song was over, he scrolled through some more, finally finding one that was perhaps even more appropriate. "Alone Again Or."

The door to the room opened a few inches and he propped himself up on his elbow, squinting into the sliver of light. "Catherine?"

He didn't recognize the two men who entered, and neither of them said anything. One quietly closed the door and stood in front of it while the other dug clothes from drawers with a precision that suggested he'd been through them before.

Brandon swung his feet to the floor, catching a pair of jeans and a shirt as they were thrown at him. Before he put them on, though, he made a final adjustment to the iPod. The Dead Kennedys seemed to be the band that best captured this particular moment: "Forward to Death."

Sadly, it wasn't the first time Brandon had been shoved in the trunk of a car. Not even the second or third. At least it wasn't one of those subcompacts. Or one with the spare tire right in the middle. Those things could put a kink in your back that wouldn't loose
n u
p for days. Of course, rigor mortis would do the same thing.

He put a hand out and braced himself as the car accelerated around a turn and then closed his eyes in the darkness, wondering what had happened. Had Scanlon decided that he had enough information to pull this thing off on his own? If so, he was in for an unpleasant surprise.

Now there was a moral dilemma. Right before they shot him, should he yell "Wait! Before you kill me, let me write down the stuff I didn't tell you!" After all, a nuclear holocaust wasn't exactly the legacy he wanted to leave behind.

No, Scanlon was way too smart and not quite arrogant enough to make such an obvious mistake. Besides, if he had been planning this the whole time, what was all that stuff about wanting Brandon to join the team permanently? What possible benefit was there to be gained by making that offer if it wasn't real?

And what about Catherine? He couldn't quite read her. What he did know, though, was that she was very interested in protecting her mentor. Did she see Brandon as a threat? If she thought it was in Scanlon's best interests, would she go behind her mentor's back? No way.

And so he was left with the only remaining option: That he hadn't met all the players in this thing. And at this point, he didn't think he wanted to.

Edwin Hamdi had received two e-mails regarding the Ukrainian warheads. The first was the one he had been waiting so long for: a properly encrypted and authenticated message saying that the warheads were real, operable, and that a deal had been agreed upon. The second had come a day later from Yusef s account, but clearly not written by him.

In slightly tortured spelling, it told the story of Yusef s accidental death from a rock fall and suggested that it might still be possible to complete the agreed-upon transaction in the event that the hurdles created by his unfortunate death could be overcome.

Having no other contact information, Grigori had sent the e-mail to Yusef s account where it had then been read by Ramez, his second in command. It was he who had forwarded the e-mail to Hamdi's account, along with a passionate note stating his willingness to die if necessary to complete the transaction. It was, after all, the will of God.

Hamdi held a printout of the e-mail that he had unwisely made, running slightly shaking fingers over the black letters one more time before sliding it into a shredder.

Yusef had always been the weakness of the plan -- his uniqueness, his irreplaceability. Virtually everyone else involved was expendable.

Ironically, perhaps, Ramez was in some ways an acceptable, if unwitting, substitute. Based on the information Yusef had provided, his young protege was an educated, reliable man dedicated to the cause of peaceful Arab self-rule and not just senseless bloodshed. The problem was the Ukrainians. It had taken them a great deal of time to become comfortable with Yusef -- a man who had spent years carefully building his credibility. It seemed unlikely that this Grigori would be interested in beginning that courtship process all over again. Not when they could sell to other buyers.

Of course, that simply could not be allowed to happen. Hamdi had purposely hidden the existence of the warheads from the American government and, therefore, was solely responsible for the government's inaction. If these weapons were sold and used in an attack on the United States, it would be his fault.

He put his elbows on the desk in front of him and let his head sink into his hands. This plan had been so long in its development -- perhaps since he was a child, watching the newly christened Israelis march arrogantly through the land of his ancestors, taking what and who they wanted.

The sound of an opening door drifted in from the outer office, followed by a quiet knock. The only light in the room was provided by a small desk lamp, and Hamdi adjusted it so that it shone directly outward.

"Come."

The door swung open and Brandon Vale came through, prompted by a shove from one of the men behind him. He was wearing only a pair of jeans and a T-shirt with the slogan RUNS WITH SCISSORS.

"Have a seat, Brandon."

He didn't immediately obey, instead standing there trying to put detail to the figure behind the light. After a few seconds, he gave up and dropped into the chair in front of Hamdi's desk.

Despite the uncertainty of his situation and the hair still matted from bed, he appeared much more intelligent in person than in his photos. It was hard to quantify exactly -- something in the subtle shifting of his features as he took in what was around him. It was enough to cause Hamdi himself look around at the dim, empty office, to make sure there was nothing Brandon could use to identify it later. If indeed there was a later for him.

"I take it you wanted to see me?" Brandon said finally. He didn't sound or look afraid, but the overall effect wasn't bravado or even genuine courage -- more an acceptance of the fact that there were things he could control and others he could not. A very sensible philosophy.