His Saudi contact took the call promptly, as he’d expected.
“Do you have an answer for me?” Koschey asked in Arabic.
“The answer is yes,” the man said, “provided you can guarantee that none of this will come back to our doorstep. You can guarantee it, yes?”
“Nothing will come out from my end because no one else is involved but me. But I can’t guarantee what slips out from your end.”
“Our end is secure.”
“Then there’s no problem. What about my package?”
“It should be with you within the hour. The other half will be paid on completion, as you proposed.”
Koschey smiled. The promise of a hundred million dollars tended to have that effect on most men. “Make sure it’s not delayed.”
“It’ll be there,” the man said. “Good luck.”
Koschey clicked off. Luck-he scoffed at the notion. He made his own luck.
He’d known the Saudi’s people would go for it. Not the government, of course. In his experience, governments were a waste of time. They made terrible partners. The decision-making process was slow and convoluted. Discussions and consultations had to be undertaken. Foreign pressures had to be taken into account. And decisions by committee were rarely unanimous, which meant there would be dissenters, and dissenters were prone to creating problems. To say nothing of leaks. Which, given how subservient the Saudis were to the Americans, would be immediate.
Fortunately, there were now people on the planet who made far better partners when it came to decisive action. Billionaires who were as wealthy, and as politically motivated, as any government. Oligarchs, oil sheikhs, media tycoons, and a varied collection of massively successful businessmen who held highly strung views about the world they lived in. Megalomaniacs with staggering riches had the means to fund their own initiatives and shape the world in their vision, whether by initiating advertising and PR campaigns to alter the course of elections, channeling weapons to opposition movements, or funding private armies of mercenaries to overthrow regimes. Bin Laden had been the most notorious of them all, but there were many others and they came in many guises. And Koschey had direct connections with several such players, in all corners of the globe, players whose agendas were as yet unfulfilled, players who could be tempted with the right offer. The kind of offer Koschey had made to his Saudi contact.
An offer that would cause huge problems for the Saudis’ archenemies-Iran-while giving Koschey the immense satisfaction of delivering a crushing blow to the Americans he loathed.
It was now time to make another phone call.
With another such offer.
This one would be to a Lebanese car dealer, in Beirut. A man who had a direct and secure pipeline into the upper echelons of Hezbollah, who in turn had a direct and secure pipeline to Tehran.
This man could take Koschey’s offer to the most radical elements among those in power there.
Koschey was about to make the biggest play of his life. But to do so, this call needed to be handled differently.
For this call, Koschey had to adjust some of the settings on his phone.
This was a call he needed certain people to hear.
He switched off the highest-level encryption, making it possible for his conversations with the car dealer to be picked up and deciphered by the NSA’s Echelon eavesdropping software. Not too easily, but possible. And highly likely, given the key words he was going to use in order to snare the attention of the server banks at Fort Meade. Then he added a layer of distortion to the outgoing segments of the call, giving his voice a new frequency range and ensuring it didn’t match any voice prints the Americans or anyone else had on record for him.
He also made sure his phone was set to record their conversation. Just in case the trail of evidence he was planting to implicate Hezbollah and their Iranian patrons wasn’t enough. Sometimes, more was more. Especially if you were trying to frame a foreign government for a major terrorist attack.
He made sure the settings were all in place. Then he made the call.
SHIN HADN’T MOVED FOR HOURS.
He was still there, curled up on a bench in Astoria Park, hungry, thirsty, scared, muttering to himself and eyeing everyone suspiciously. The schoolkids and the health freaks running around the track, the carefree dilettantes on the tennis courts, the chess players and the bums. They were all threats.
After last night, everyone was a threat.
After last night, his whole world had changed.
He still couldn’t make sense of what he’d witnessed out in Brighton Beach. Even with his extensive knowledge, even with his perceptive and analytical mind, he still couldn’t process it. Even worse was the shoot-out. Watching his friends die. And knowing that all the sinister forces of the world had to want this thing and would do anything to get their hands on it.
How he’d made it this far, he didn’t know. He couldn’t justify or rationalize it. Jonny and Bon hadn’t made it, and they were the pros. They had the street chops he never possessed, they were the cool cats, the survivors. And yet they were gone and he was still here.
What to do from here on, though, was another matter.
He hadn’t dared go home to Nikki. Sure, she had to be worried sick about him. But she was probably more angry than worried. She was already royally pissed off at him for going out to meet Jonny like that in the middle of the night. Nothing good could possibly come out of that kind of meeting, she’d told him. Jonny was nothing but trouble, they both agreed, and Shin had made her a promise, after all. A promise to drop a life that he knew wasn’t made for him.
She was right, of course. And he couldn’t face her. Not now. Not like this. Not when he didn’t know who might be waiting for him there, watching their place, ready to pounce.
All the sinister forces of the world had to want this thing, he reminded himself.
He didn’t dare go to the chop shop either. He couldn’t confront the others. By now, they had to know that Jonny and Bon were dead, and given the contempt they felt for him, something they’d never been shy about, there was no point in him going there. Hell, they might even suspect him of having sold their buddies out. No, the chop shop was out of bounds. Besides, it was the obvious place for any agents to be lying in wait for him.
He had to keep his head down until things settled-if they ever did. Wait and watch from the sidelines, and hope that at some point he’d be able to resume his less-than-charmed life and act like last night had never happened.
One thing kept preying on his mind, though. The bad guy. The gaejasik who’d shot Jonny and Ae-Cha.
Shin knew where he was. Where he was last night, at any rate. But it seemed to be his hideout, his safe house. His lair. And Shin knew he might be the only one to possess that information.
Information that could lead to the man’s capture.
He’d been debating it all day, and had yet to reach a conclusion. He wanted to call it in, but at the same time, he didn’t want to get involved any more than he already was. An anonymous tip-surely, there was no harm in that. But with all the sophisticated tracking technology, nothing could be taken for granted anymore, and the last thing he needed was for them to figure out who he was and find him.
Better to keep your mouth shut, he told himself.
Then Ae-Cha’s smiling face assailed his mind’s eye, Ae-Cha whom he’d had a crush on from the moment he’d first met her when he was twelve, Ae-Cha who’d never taken notice of him but whom he still fancied nevertheless, and he wasn’t so sure of keeping silent anymore.
55
I landed at Reagan and was in a cab less than ten minutes later.
Since wheels-up, Ivan, or Koschey or whoever he really was, had receded out of my system, and my thoughts had zeroed in on Corrigan. I didn’t know how this thing with Kirby would play out. Either way, there were still several burning hoops to jump through, but the hairs on the back of my neck told me that I was about to be closer to him than I had been at any point since Corliss blew his own brains out.