“The Americans aren’t saying,” he responded, gesturing with his head toward the TV in the corner. “Looks like a car bomb to me.”
He would have known. Both young men had spent their childhood in Lebanon, dodging the bullets and car bombs of a bloody civil war.
“Maybe it was one of ours. Insh’allah.”
If God wills it.
“You shouldn’t talk like that,” Nasir began, glancing back at his brother. “If the wrong people heard you…”
His older brother snorted, picking up his jacket. “Pick up a case of Mountain Dew at the store when you go, will you? We’re almost out.”
Ignored. At the very least, it was better than one of Jamal’s typical rants.
“What time should I expect you home?”
“Classes until mid-afternoon, then I’ll be at the mosque. I don’t know, really.”
“I should be off the garbage run by five,” Nasir nodded, pulling the last saucer from the water and placing it on the rack to dry. He spent his days riding on the back of a garbage truck, a constant reminder that he, unlike his brother, wasn’t in the U.S. legally.
If he’d been able to get a student visa…things would have been much different. A lot of things.
He heard the outer door close behind Jamal and sighed. Something was going on at the mosque — had been the last couple months. And his brother was changing, this country had done something to him.
These United States.
Nasir snarled something profane under his breath and washed his hands, grabbing his jacket as he headed for the door himself. It was turning into a cold December in Michigan.
As he passed from one section of the building to the other, Harry displayed his security pass to the guard at the entrance and was waved through without so much as a second glance. Even on this day.
It wasn’t to be wondered at. He had spent the last fifteen years of his life working from the building.
Turning the corner, he quickened his pace, footsteps like handclaps against the tile as he hurried down the whitewashed corridors. A death march.
Just another few yards. Despite the slight chill in the building, his hands were damp with perspiration. In all those years, he had never attempted anything like this.
No illusions. He knew how his actions would be perceived. At the door of A-13 he spoke to the security guard standing watch, a man named Kauffman.
“Everything clear?”
Just a nod by way of reply. “Ron told me you were on the way.” A tall, muscular man in his late forties, his blond hair now streaked with gray, he’d been a part of Langley’s security force for as long as Harry could remember. Ex-military, and no one to be trifled with.
The guard’s face softened as he turned to swipe his passcard at the door. “Don’t take too long, Harry. She’s been through hell this morning.”
“I understand,” Harry replied with a grim smile of acknowledgement, reaching for the handle of the door.
One thing was certain. When he reemerged, he would be a fugitive…
Gone. It seemed almost impossible to comprehend. That after so long, he could be lost to her once more. A childhood spent longing for his presence, an adolescence feeling the pull of an absent parent. The bittersweet pain of their reunion.
All gone now. All for nothing.
An electronic beep signaled the opening of the door and Carol passed a hand over her eyes, angrily wiping away the tears. Her hand came away streaked with mascara, dissolving in the evidence of her grief.
She no longer cared.
The soundproofed door closed behind Harry with an ominous click. He turned, forcing all emotion aside. Calm. Become the eye of the storm.
His gaze swept the room, a threat assessment. Two guards were with Carol, both of them armed. Lopez and Hendricks, he realized, recognizing them both.
“Morning,” he greeted, a nod to the guards as he crossed the room, moving past them.
Hendricks gave him a tight smile. “Morning, Harry.”
“Ron says you need intel on Korsakov,” Carol managed, looking up as the NCS team leader moved toward the table where she sat, reaching inside his jacket. “Is he responsible?”
He seemed to hesitate, something unusual there in his eyes. He glanced from her to Lopez, the ranking security officer. “This discussion is well above your clearance, I’m afraid. Can we have the room?”
Lopez inclined his head toward the window covering one wall of the interrogation room. “We’ll be on the other side of the glass.”
It wasn’t the way he had planned it — but plans had to adjust to compensate for a situation that might best be described as “fluid”.
“Make sure the mikes are off.”
“Roger that.” He waited until the door had closed behind them before leaning toward her, his hands on the table. “This isn’t about Korsakov — this is about your father. He sent me.”
She flinched as if he had struck her, pain glistening in those eyes. “My father is dead.”
And my friend, he thought…but now wasn’t the time. Or the place. “I know,” he responded, glancing toward the window, the one-way glass reflecting his own image back at him. “And he believes that you’re next. I have to get you out of here.”
He had her attention now, a look of disbelief. “We’re underneath the CIA Headquarters Building, Harry. Shapiro has given me a protective detail. It doesn’t get more secure than this.”
“Your father was given the Agency’s protection as well.” It was a statement as brutal as it was necessary. “ ‘Evil in high places at Langley’, those were his words. We have to run.”
She lifted her head to look him in the face, some of her father’s defiance glittering in her blue eyes. “No, I don’t. The men who killed him are still out there. Finding them…that’s what I have to do. And that’s what I will do.”
“Not if they find you first.”
The trick to appearing stone-cold sober was not to spend too long in the presence of any one person. Thomas swiped his card at the door, straightening his jacket as he entered the op-center. Time to make this look good.
Harry’s workstation was unexpectedly deserted and Thomas hailed a passing Daniel Lasker.
“Harry’s down in Interrogation,” was the reply. “There’s a print-out of possible targets on his desk — said he wanted you to work up mission protocols.”
Busy work, Thomas thought, staring at Lasker’s retreating back. Working up mission protocols wasn’t his job. His job was to execute them.
A chill danced up and down his spine. Was he being sidelined already?
“So we’re done here?” Hendricks asked, re-entering the interrogation room with Lopez right behind him.
Done? Not so you’d notice it — only one thing seemed to matter to her, and it wasn’t her own life.
She was her father’s daughter, no question of that.
Harry nodded, reaching for the door — his face well-nigh expressionless as he slipped a hand into his jacket. “I believe so, thank you.”
And he saw it in her eyes, the sudden knowledge of what he was about to do. Her lips parted, as if to issue a warning.
His hand came back out, the Taser a blur as it swung up to eye level, aimed directly at Hendricks’ chest.
Shock and alarm on the face of his target and he squeezed the trigger, sending a pair of electrodes lancing in slow-motion through the air.
The guard cried out and fell back, his body twitching as he slid to the floor.