"Oh, my God. What happened? Did the men who did it get away? Were they captured?"
"They're dead," Caitlin said.
It was Mirsaad's turn to look worried.
"Oh, my. Is Bret okay? Really?"
"A few wounds, but he's fine. He's being looked after. Look, I don't want to intrude on your family here. Sadie, is there somewhere we could talk, where we're not going to wake your kids? If that's okay, Laryssa."
Caitlin had quickly scoped out where resistance was going to come from in this arrangement. The German woman looked like it was a thousand miles from okay, but Mirsaad, who had completely regained his faculties, simply nodded.
"Laryssa," he said in a very serious voice. "These people helped us after the war. I would not have escaped the Middle East were it not for Bret Melton interceding on my behalf." His eyes narrowed slightly. "And you, too, I suspect, Caitlin. You are something more than a police officer, are you not? You are someone with influence inside the British government quite obviously. And with Seattle, too. While Bret, like me, is a mere journalist. I doubt his lobbying alone would have secured my transit out of Kuwait after the Holocaust."
She smiled, tired. "Sadie. You did my husband a big favor once. That means I owed you one as well."
"And so now I am in your debt," Mirsaad said in a tone of voice that signaled he would not be dissuaded. "Laryssa, mind the children. I will not be long. We shall discuss what help I might be to Caitlin. We shall be down in Ahmet's."
His wife's threat detectors were all pinging wildly, but before she could object and turn it into a marital issue, the baby stirred and began to cry.
"Oh, just go and don't be more than fifteen minutes," she said.
"It will take me three minutes to change and five for us to walk there. I shall be back soon," he said.
But Laryssa had turned away and was lifting the child from the crib. Ahmet's was a small coffeehouse and smoking room on the same block as Mirsaad's apartment. Caitlin left the X5 in the basement garage of Sadie's building, secure in the knowledge that Echelon's unique antitheft technologies were more than a match for any would-be carjackers. Even so, she checked the LED on her key ring before they left Emser Strasse just to be sure she'd be alerted if anyone attempted to interfere with the vehicle. The tiny light was glowing green, powered up and hotlinked.
Ahmet's was a brief walk though an unseasonably chilly night, although the weather was so unpredictable these days that the idea of seasons had little meaning. Caitlin maintained her situational awareness, scoping out the street and the surrounding buildings as they walked. Emser Strasse had been blessed with good tree cover once, but the canopy had apparently not recovered from the pollution storms in '03. The trees, which should have been lush with early summer foliage, were still looking sick and straggly. Not unlike Mirsaad himself.
"I'm sorry to turn up unannounced like this, Sadie. But it's better, believe me."
The reporter frowned and burrowed further into the old brown coat he had donned for the brisk walk.
"There will be a price to pay for this with my wife, but for Bret I am willing to pay. For you, too, if it is true you helped get us all back here. He intimated as much at your wedding. For which invite I must thank you. It is a lovely farm you have there, and we were made very welcome. Laryssa was worried."
"Because of you?"
"Because of the government. This Howard fellow is very hard line, no? Much harder than Blair was."
Caitlin rubbed her hands together against the cold as her breath plumed white in front of her. It was hard to believe the weather was still fucked up so long after the Wave. She had indeed been instrumental in clearing Mirsaad's passage to the EU from Kuwait, back to his wife and two children, as they were then. Even though he was married to a German national, there was no guarantee he'd have been allowed back in during the insane time after the Disappearance. And Bret had been insistent that they help him after the Jordanian had done so much to pluck him to safety from the chaos of the American retreat. But of course, mere philanthropy and favor trading would not have been enough for Caitlin to secure the Jordanian's travel permits. Not in the toxic atmosphere of 2003. She had lobbied on Mirsaad's behalf because she knew there was a chance that one day he might be useful as an asset.
That day was upon them.
None of this did she say aloud, of course.
"The Brits aren't so bad," she said, replying to his complaint about the Tory PM. "You have to remember they could have gone down the tubes like France. Looked like they would for a few weeks there."
"But the forced deportations, Caitlin? The Enclosures? Surely these things are excessive. Certainly now, if not then. The moment of crisis has passed. There cannot be any real chance of that sort of violence breaking out again, can there? Have they not got rid of a hundred thousand of these so-called jihadis and their sympathizers? Pure ethnic cleansing if you ask me."
"Probably more than a hundred large," she admitted. "But I won't argue with you about British policy. I can't vote. I'm still a guest there. How they run their country is up to them."
Mirsaad halted at a corner from where she could see the coffeehouse. It was gaily lit, with crowded tables clustered around charcoal burners. The clientele seemed a mixed bunch: old German and Middle Eastern, men and women, some of the latter wearing scarves and some not.
"Ah, but you are not just a guest, are you, Caitlin?" Mirsaad ventured before they got any closer. "And you are not a police officer. In my experience, in Europe at least, police officers do not flit about on their own in the dark."
She smiled. "No, Sayad. I am not a police officer. But I am looking for the man who came after my family and your friend. And I need your help to find him. Or at least to start looking."
"And what about my family, Caitlin? Will they be safe if I help you? I can make decisions for myself, but I cannot recklessly endanger my wife and children with a clear conscience."
She regarded him dispassionately. He was a very intelligent man and street-smart with it. There would be no bullshitting him.
"There is some danger, Sayad. The man I'm after, he's a bad motherfucker. But so am I."
"I believe you are, Caitlin. But Bret loves you and trusts you as the mother of his child. For this reason, because you are a mother and not just a bad motherfucker, I will trust you, too."
"Let's get a coffee," she said.
"Yes," he agreed. "The coffee is good here. Ahmet the Turk is away much of late, but he sends good coffee back to his relatives."
32
Texas Administrative Division "You can't do this to us, mister. We ain't done nothin' worth a hangin'."
Miguel paused as he made to slip the noose over the man's head. It was the plaintive, pitiful appeal in his voice that nearly stayed the vaquero's hand.
Then he shook his head angrily. "You are a rapist, a slave trader, a murderer, a cattle thief, a taker of land, and a destroyer of good families… I could go on, but we shall just skip to the hanging, I think, my friend."
The road agent's eyes frosted over like a poison lake on a hard winter's morning as the noose went around his neck. He was not long ago a boy, with fresh acne on his cheeks and the full head of thick and springy blond hair that had been washed an hour ago for his execution. That had been his only request of them. There was none of his youth left in him, however, and precious little of the rest of his life in front of him. There could be no doubt he had walked a vicious and depraved path these last few years, and whatever innocence he might have been born with, poor choices and ill circumstances had pressed it entirely from his existence.
"Vete y chinga a tu madre," he hissed, spitting the words in Miguel's face.