Instinctively Kasim hesitated until he felt Nurmamet Tuman’s hand touch his arm reassuringly.
“Relax,” Nurmamet said softly in Uygur. “We are just visiting the bar. It is done here all the time.”
To the man in the blue coat, Nurmamet spoke in gently accented English. “Good morning. Where is the bar please?”
The young man pointed over Nurmamet’s shoulder. “It’s that way, sir. But I’m sorry, they’re not serving.”
“That’s all right,” Nurmamet replied, “we are just looking for a quiet place to sit for a few minutes.”
Kasim nodded and summoned a smile as he passed the man in the blue coat, following Nurmamet’s lead, and turned right. In this direction lay another set of double doors, this time of hand-carved wood, that opened on an opulent bar of gleaming wood flanked by deep-cushioned stools. Across from the bar, squads of tables guarded by leather chairs formed a small army. As the hotel employee had said, the bar was not open and the room was empty except for a man sitting at one of the tables, one leg crossed lazily over the other, a newspaper laid out before him and half lifted in his hands. He seemed not to have noticed the two men enter.
Undaunted, Nurmamet walked over to him and sat down, indicating that Kasim should do likewise. The man in the chair did not look up from his newspaper. He wore a blue silk suit with pinstripes so thin Kasim had not seem them from a distance. His tie was light green and knotted into a perfect triangle. In that opulent hotel, sitting across from the man in the expensive suit, Kasim felt uncomfortably under-dressed, but Nurmamet had assured him that in Los Angeles it was sometimes fashionable to dress poorly. Attitude, he said, counted almost as much as appearance.
Kasim watched Nurmamet, who for the first time seemed the slightest bit nervous as he recited awkwardly: “Is this your first time at the Four Seasons?”
The well-dressed man let the newspaper fall flat and looked up at the two newcomers. His eyes bulged slightly, his lids were heavy, and there were small bags of skin beneath each one that gave him the look of someone who had recently been crying. “Enough of the code words,” he said dryly. “It’s not necessary.”
Nurmamet looked flustered. “But Mr. al-Libbi made it clear that we needed to identify ourselves.”
“You are not the FBI,” the man said with a smile. “I know this because you have not arrested me.”
“We could be agents,” Kasim blurted. “We could be trying to get to your employer through you.”
The well-dressed man turned his sad eyes toward Kasim. “Are you?”
Kasim fidgeted and the man laughed again. “I did not think so. If you were the FBI, I would already be somewhere very unpleasant being asked questions in a very unpleasant way.” He held out his hand lazily and when, after a moment, Nurmamet and Kasim each shook it, he said casually, “I am Muhammad Abbas. If you have the rest of the money, then I can take you to Mr. al-Libbi.”
Kasim was baffled. This wasn’t right. He looked at Nurmamet, who appeared equally confused. “This is not right. I understood that we were to meet Mr. al-Libbi here, not his assistant.”
“Yes, but you are amateurs. Ayman al-Libbi does not take chances with amateurs.”
“We are not—!”
“Don’t deny it,” Abbas said calmly. “You are rank amateurs. You tell me that you might be agents. What about me? I could be an agent trying to trick you.”
Kasim stared at him, willing his heart to stop pounding. “Are you?” he said, his voice almost steady.
This amused Abbas. “Not bad! This one is good, Nurmamet. He is a leader where you come from, eh?” Nurmamet nodded. “Well,” he said to Kasim, “don’t be insulted. Mr. al-Libbi had urgent business to attend to, something that will make all this go more smoothly.”
Jack woke, feeling as though he had overslept and urgently needed to be somewhere. A moment later he remembered a glimpse of a red pickup truck hurtling toward him, the spine-shivering sound of metal contorting metal, followed instantaneously by the pop of his air bag and then white blindness.
He opened his eyes, or thought he did. He was in complete darkness. He was lying down on a hard, cool surface, rough with pebbles and coarse dirt — a concrete floor. He sat up, carefully reaching his hands outward, upward, backward into the blackness. Wherever the ceiling was, it seemed high enough, so he stood. His knees wobbled a little beneath him. Jack used his hands to give himself a cursory search — he didn’t seem to be bleeding, although his face felt tender, probably from the air bag. His left shoulder and his abdomen ached, most likely having been pressed into the seat belt during the crash. He felt another pain, this time on his left arm, but this was different. It was extremely localized and sharp, like a dime-sized bruise at the crook of his elbow.
Okay, Jack thought. A car crash. Now I’m here, and “here” definitely does not feel like a good place. He reached for his handgun but found that the SigSauer 9 mm was gone from his shoulder holster.
“Your weapon will be returned to you before we are done, Agent Bauer,” said a firm but polite voice.
Who are you? Where am I? These were the questions that popped instinctively into Jack’s mind. He didn’t ask them. The person who had put him in a dark hole would not be inclined to answer either question. Jack chose one that would get an answer. “What do you want?”
He heard a short grunt — somewhere above him — a sound of approval. “Right to the point. I like that. The truth is, Agent Bauer, I want nothing. I mean that literally, I want nothing. To be more specific, I want you to do nothing… for, let’s say, the next twenty-four hours.”
I’ve been kidnapped, Jack realized. Stuck in a hole somewhere. Shit.
“So I guess I’m staying here for a while?” Jack stared up, although he could see nothing. He was trying to gauge the height from which the voice originated.
“No,” his captor replied. “No, although I confess I considered it. It was tempting, but not really workable. I suspect that if you go missing, people will come looking for you. So I’m going to have to release you in the next few minutes.”
“Good,” Jack said.
Who was this guy? Unconsciously Jack recorded information gathered from the man’s speech: he was educated, confident, forward-thinking; his English was perfect, but there was a slight cadence to it, as though he was accustomed to speaking a different language.
Holding his hands outstretched, Jack took a step forward, trying to stay light on his feet. The room did not echo, which meant it wasn’t very large. If he could find a wall, then he could find a way out.
“Before I release you, though, I’m going need a guarantee that you do absolutely nothing for the next day.”
“Okay. I promise.”
The man laughed. “In a better world, that would mean something, wouldn’t it? But I’m afraid we live in this one, so I’m going to need some more assurance. Your reputation with the Counter Terrorism Unit is that you are tenacious. And I suspect you are not the kind of man who can be intentionally assaulted and kidnapped, and then simply forgive and forget.”
Jack allowed himself to laugh. “It does put a crimp in our relationship,” he quipped. His captor was urbane and seemed to appreciate dry wit. Jack would have preferred to put a bullet in his brain, but that could come later. He took another step, then another. His shoes crunched lightly on the dirt-sprinkled concrete.