“Your father was my friend, but the why doesn’t matter — not in the end,” he said finally, his fingers smoothing back a lock of golden hair, touching her cheek lightly. “Just know that I’m here for you — we’ve come this far together. Not going to leave you now.”
She nodded, glancing up into his eyes. “I know.”
So beautiful, he thought, the voice within whispering, Don’t get involved.
“Han got in around three,” he announced, more for his benefit than hers, his hand falling away from her shoulder. Reminding himself that they weren’t alone, strength to his resolve. “He was able to find a van.”
The moment passed and he left her standing there in the doorway as he moved into the bedroom, buttoning his shirt. “When all this is over — what will you do?”
Something he hadn’t given much thought. “Don’t really know,” he replied, reaching for his 1911.
He flashed her a grim smile. “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.”
The call log had confirmed his worst fears. Lasker rubbed the bridge of his nose, his eyes scanning the op-center. What Kranemeyer had asked him to do…well, “illegal” didn’t even begin to cover it.
Rumor had it that Carter had overstepped the boundaries of the Agency’s charter, and now he was under house arrest, in joint CIA/FBI custody. He had no desire to follow him down.
An uneaten bagel still sat in its box beside Lasker’s keyboard. His appetite was long gone.
Six calls over the course of three weeks, none of them lasting longer than four minutes. All of them made within CONUS, likely by an American citizen. Illegal territory without a FISA warrant, and he was operating without any written authorization at all. Quicksand.
The SIM card didn’t belong to your average Joe Sixpack. The owner was a player — all six calls had been made to the same number. No one did that.
The target number was…another prepaid cellphone, purchased in Manassas around the same time and activated by an A. Smith.
Lasker sniffed. Why people couldn’t show some imagination with their aliases…
A shadow loomed over his workstation and he nearly came out of his skin, tapping his mouse to minimize the open window. He looked up into the coal-black eyes of Bernard Kranemeyer.
“Any results, Danny?”
When all this is over — what will you do? Carol’s words came streaming back through his mind, the one question he didn’t want to face.
Harry pushed his chair back from the table, walking over to the refrigerator. Barring a miracle, there was no going back to the Agency. He’d been burned.
The reality hadn’t really sunk in yet, he hadn’t permitted himself to consider it. Out of a job, out in the cold.
He’d spent every last year of his adult life hunting men. Hunting them down and killing them. As cold as it sounded, those were his skillsets.
As he buttered a piece of toast he glanced into the safehouse’s living room to where Han sat, poring over the laptop. Perhaps it was time to hang it up, while he still had a life, a future. Before he was broken.
A future. It was something he had never really considered before. Before what…Carol?
As if on cue, she appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. “Toast will be ready in a few minutes,” he announced as she came up behind him. “Alexei will be here by nine to go over his plan.”
“He has a plan?”
“Yeah.” Harry nodded, turning to face her. “And I doubt you’re going to like it.”
“The call came in four hours ago — and you have yet to send anyone to the scene?” Marika Altmann leaned back against the door, folding her arms across her chest.
The police chief got up from his chair and came around the front of his desk. He was just tall enough to look her in the eye, white hair swept back from a receding hairline. His face spoke of a man who had seen it all.
In five years as Dearborn’s chief of police, he probably had.
He shook his head, gesturing out the window toward Michigan Avenue. “We can’t do what we once did, Special Agent Altmann. I’ve got three bureaus: Detective, Traffic, and Juvenile. Less than thirty officers in each one. Just over eighty police in a city of ninety-nine thousand.”
Taking in her look of surprise, he continued. “Budget cuts. We’ve all seen our salaries slashed — can’t even keep the streetlights on at night. This city’s in bad shape. I’ve had seven homicides in the last twenty-four hours. The fire department didn’t find any bodies in the ruins of the apartment building, so it’s been low on the priorities list. If we’d known that an FBI confidential informant was living in the building…”
No way that would have happened, Marika thought, her mind already moving on to the next question. Too much risk of a leak when you brought in the local LEOs. “So, when did the fire department receive the call about abu Rashid’s apartment being ablaze?”
The chief let out a weary sigh. “Five-thirty this morning. Well over an hour after they believe it started. A cleaning crew working at Parklane Towers spotted the blaze on the horizon and called it in. By the time the fire department was able to mobilize, the building had burned to the ground.”
Nothing he said was making sense. She shot a look over at Russell, who was nodding — as if he understood. “So you’re telling me that, what…fifty or more people evacuated a burning building and no one thought to dial 911?”
He shook his head. “Oh, they thought it, ma’am. They thought it. But no one acted on the thought.”
“Why?”
“The estimates vary, but I’d say 45–50 % of them are illegals. Many of them don’t even speak English. You go into their communities, and it’s like visiting a foreign country. It is, really. They only come out for work, if that, and we don’t go in.”
“What you’re saying is that you don’t patrol?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. These people have no loyalty except to themselves. If a crime happens, they mention it to their imam and it’s handled in-house. Should we happen to find out about it, everyone develops a sudden case of ‘see no evil’.”
“Then — our CI…what are you telling me?”
His eyes narrowed as he stared across the room at her. “The only way you’re ever going to find him is if he wants to make contact. If he can make contact. As for any investigation of your own, he might as well be on the far side of the moon.”
The silence was unnerving. Nasir blew gently across the surface of his tea, feeling the black man’s eyes on his back. His brother had been gone for the better part of two hours.
He willed his fingers not to tremble as the negro paced back and forth, like a huge African cat.
The last time he’d been this frightened…he’d been hiding under a fire-gutted Hyundai in Beirut, Jewish bombs raining down. Each one closer than the one before it. The bombs that had killed his father.
His mortality had been inescapable in that moment. The helplessness. It was the same feeling now.
Though we know death is certain, we have not prepared ourselves for it.
Words of truth. He was in the hands of Allah now.