“The…computer.”
“Take this in.” The voice intruded upon his thoughts and Nasir looked up as Omar pressed eighty dollars into his palm. He looked up at the lights of the Arco gas station and nodded.
As the day drew near, they were operating on cash only now. Untraceable.
With a brief glance into the backseat at his brother, Nasir pushed open the door of the van, walking hurriedly across the crowded plaza to the convenience store.
Alone. He was alone.
His legs felt as if they were made of rubber, threatening to give way from under him as he pulled open the door, moving toward the attendant by the register.
“Eighty on pump six,” he announced, shoving the wad of bills across the counter. He looked across at the dark-skinned attendant. Indian? Or Pakistani?
He couldn’t tell, and the moments were ticking away. He licked his dry lips, unable to hide his nervousness. “Can I use your restroom?”
The young man hesitated before shrugging. “It’s not supposed to be public, but you look like you’ve had a rough night already, man. Right back through there.”
“Thanks.” His heart pounding, Nasir made his way back along the shelves until he reached the small room, digging the phone out of the pocket of his jeans and reassembling it. The number…what was it again? A wave of panic nearly washed over him, his fingers fumbling with the lock on the flimsy door. He couldn’t have forgotten…
He leaned back against the sink trying to remember. There. He closed his eyes, the phone trembling as he pressed each button hesitantly.
And then it was ringing. Once. Twice. “Ya Allah,” he breathed.
Three rings. Just pick up.
Meetings. It was what the Bureau did best, Marika thought.
“This isn’t going to take long,” Greg Buhler announced from the head of the room. The S-A-C of FBI Denver, he couldn’t have been older than thirty-five. He smiled. “For the tech-obsessed among us, you’ll be reunited with your phones in under ten minutes. But we need to keep security on this one airtight. Understood?”
There wasn’t much to understand — their phones were under lock and key in a cabinet outside the soundproofed conference room.
“We’ve had several developments, most recently an hour ago — when we got a hit on the photo of Abu Kareem that we’ve been passing around. One of our field agents talked with the manager of a Mickey D’s in Grand Junction and he placed Kareem in his restaurant on the 19th. Remembered him because of his inquiry about a kosher meal. Now, this is dated, but we believe…”
Locked away outside, Marika’s cellphone began to pulsate. One, twice, three times. A fourth “ring” and it went to voicemail.
No. Nasir listened numbly as the voicemail rolled, a woman’s voice announcing his own fate. The realization sank in. She wasn’t picking up.
Despair closed over him like a wave, a drowning swimmer going under for the last time.
Panic. How long had he been in the restroom? It couldn’t have been more than a couple minutes, but it seemed like an hour. Omar was going to be asking questions. Questions he couldn’t answer.
He took the phone apart with sweat-slick fingers, cramming it back in his pocket as he tried to calm his heart rate.
His feet carried him out of the convenience store and into the Vegas night. Omar was already back in the van, the hose replaced in its holder.
“Where were you?” the negro asked, glancing at him as he climbed back up in the van.
“Had to take a leak.” The words came out of Nasir’s mouth almost unbidden, leaving him trembling, afraid to even look at the black man’s face.
But the answer seemed to be satisfactory — the next moment the van shifted into gear, rolling forward. Toward the end of his life…
He knew what he was looking at. It was leverage…against the most powerful man in the world. The FBI director had been nothing if not cautious.
Outside the study, sleet tapped against the window. The finger of an insistent Death.
“Dear God, Eric,” Kranemeyer breathed, scrolling down the laptop’s screen as he waited for the files to copy onto a portable USB drive. “What have you done?”
He had seen treachery in his day — thought he had gazed into its foulest depth when Zakiri betrayed his comrades. He hadn’t begun to suspect that it was only the beginning, that it could have reached this far.
The President.
“Why?” he asked himself, only realizing after the words were out of his mouth that he had spoken aloud.
A moan seemed to come in response and Kranemeyer looked over to the chair where he had propped the weakened, dying director.
“You…don’t understand,” Haskel gasped, struggling even to take a breath. “We were on the brink…of a new or-der in the Middle East. An end to all — of it. All the violence.”
Even as he slumped there in the chair, Kranemeyer could see the light in his eyes. The excitement. The lust.
“Peace in our lifetimes. A permanent end to…the energy crisis for America. It was going to be real — all we had to do was stand back.”
“And watch people die.”
Haskel coughed, spittle flecking his shirt. “Morality is a limiting thing.”
There were no words. A loud beep alerted Kranemeyer that the file transfer had been completed, and he removed the thumb drive from the machine, closing the lid of the laptop with a gloved hand. He tucked it within the pocket of his overcoat, picking up both tumblers and the bottle of whisky.
“I believe my work here is done,” he announced, glancing at the clock. Half-past nine.
Fear showed suddenly in Haskel’s eyes, a panicked desperation. “The…antidote, Barney. I — gave you what you wanted. All of it. I did.”
Kranemeyer paused, his hand on the door of the study. “Antidote, Eric? I’m afraid there is no antidote for that poison. Not yet, anyway, although I’m sure the boys in S&T are working on one.”
Disbelief.
“But — you promised. You said there was one. And…I gave you everything, I swear it.” He reached out in despair, suddenly overbalanced. The DCS watched in silence as Haskel toppled forward, landing on his side on the rug.
His eyes stared wildly up, eyes wet with tears. Pleading for hope. For life.
“I lied,” Kranemeyer replied, cold indifference in his voice. “Morality, Eric…is a limiting thing.”
And he was gone.
“Here you go.” Marika took her cell from the secretary, shaking her head.
Meetings. It had been a waste of time, she thought, flipping open her phone to check for messages. The Bureau’s most recent intel was forty-eight hours cold. Anything but operational.
There was a missed call, a strange number on-screen. She moved down the hallway toward the temporary office she had been assigned, pressing redial as she did so.
Nothing. It didn’t even ring. Just a mechanical recording announcing that voicemail was not available.
It might have been a telemarketer. Might have been a wrong number. Marika swore under her breath, cursing Buhler and his meetings. It might have been her CI.