The man frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘What if I do not find all these people?’ Kassim had considered at the start that many of the names in the binder might have moved on; as members of the military, their destiny was not their own.
Remzi scratched a note on a notepad, and passed the slip of paper across the desk. Kassim looked at it. Irina@hotmail.com. It meant nothing to him. He shrugged.
‘What is this?’
‘It’s the internet,’ Remzi explained, as if to a child. ‘Like a telephone. . but you don’t speak, and you can contact someone even when they are not there.’ He waved a hand and turned to a computer on the table behind him. ‘Watch — I will show you.’
Kassim leaned over the desk and gripped Remzi’s shoulder, his strong fingers digging into his flesh. Remzi yelped and sank back, scrabbling to get the hand off him. But it was like being held in a steel vice.
‘I know the internet, you fool!’ Kassim hissed. ‘You think I’m a cave dweller? Huh?’ He let the travel agent go. He had used internet cafes in Pakistan many times. It had been part of his training, to communicate with others through anonymous Hotmails that were rarely used more than three or four times before being changed. The Americans, through their National Security Agency and CIA, were constantly monitoring cyberspace for key words or coded numbers, and repetition of certain phrases or names in their hunt for insurgents and members of al-Qaeda.
Remzi apologized and rubbed his shoulder, his face pale. ‘Of course. I’m sorry. . I did not think. Forgive me.’ He gestured at the screen. ‘There is always someone out there to help you. You just need to reach out.’
Kassim sat down, slightly mollified. ‘Who are they?’ he asked, ‘these people who help me?’
Remzi stared at him, his blue eyes suddenly cool. ‘That is something you do not need to know. They do not know you, only that you have come. It is better if it stays that way. Then they cannot compromise you.’
A car pulling to a stop along the street brought Kassim back to the present. It was juggled into position and the engine died. The door opened, followed by a faint double-whoop of the electronic immobilizer.
Kassim shrank back into the shadows as footsteps came down the street and a man approached the door alongside the general store. He had a crew cut and a strong, tanned face, and walked with a firm tread. He was holding one of those large, brown paper bags Kassim had seen people carrying out of supermarkets. He mentally compared the face with the photo in his binder. Carvalho, one of the UN guards, according to the file, and a US Marine.
The door opened and closed, leaving the street empty once more. Kassim began counting and adjusted his breathing, feeling his body settle as he tried not to think of all the things that could go wrong. He’d checked the rear of the building for a fire escape ladder, but there were too many overlooking windows to use that way in.
Five minutes passed before he stepped from the doorway and walked across the street, checking both ways. A woman climbed into a car a hundred yards to his right and pulled away down the street, and a man walked a dog across the intersection to his left. The windows above him were blank. No customers from the general store on the street.
The door the man had gone through was old and warped out of true, and Kassim leaned his shoulder against it, testing its strength. The only point of resistance was level with the lock. He felt in his rucksack and took out a large screwdriver he had bought earlier from a hardware store. He had wanted one of the hunting knives on display in a glass cabinet, but the man looked suspicious, so he’d opted for the screwdriver and a grindstone instead.
He gripped the rubber-sheathed handle and inserted the point between the jamb and the door. It slid with little resistance through the wood until he felt it stop up against the metal latch. With another push the lock gave with a faint creak and the door opened.
The hallway was dark and smelled of mould. A corridor ran away from him towards a flickering flare of light and the sound of a television. He ducked until he could see the length of the floor, looking for obstructions. It would not help if he tripped over something in his path.
Slipping off his shoes, he crept forward until he breasted two open doors, one on each side. One was a bathroom, the other little more than a cupboard filled with junk. He listened, only moving on when he was sure the rooms were empty. A man was humming tunelessly barely six feet away at the end of the hall. Kassim breathed deeply and gripped the screwdriver. In his other hand he clutched the fragment of blue cloth.
SIXTEEN
There was silence at the table overlooking the East River as everyone digested the information that had gone round the room. Deane stood up and walked over to the window, chewing his lip.
‘It seems pretty cut and dried to me,’ he murmured. ‘Information on former and current personnel is lifted from our files, and within days, two of them are dead.’ He turned and faced them. ‘In line with what we’ve heard, someone — an Afghan — is going after the CP team and Orti and Broms were the first. Any guesses as to who’s next?’
‘If the same person killed both men,’ said Harry, ‘and he’s following a plan, then whoever is nearest. At some point he’s going to end up here.’
Deane nodded. ‘Makes sense. Let’s hope it gives us some time to prepare everyone.’
‘What about Special Envoy Kleeman?’ Karen Walters asked quietly. ‘Is he under threat?’
‘Unlikely,’ Deane said. ‘The stories doing the rounds say it was a soldier, and there’s evidence to prove it: part of a uniform.’
‘That lets me out, then,’ Walters said, with a pointed glance at Deane. ‘I hate to be sexist, but last I heard, women aren’t equipped for it. Rape, I mean.’
Deane’s look was several shades less than friendly for pointing out the obvious. He said curtly, ‘And Kleeman’s a civilian — we get that. Not that it matters; thanks to his status in the UN, there’s a tighter cordon around him than the President’s cat.’
‘It would help,’ Harry put in, ‘if we could speak to someone who knew the Demescu woman. Does she have family here? Was she part of this plan or was she pressured to steal the information? Where might she have gone?’
Deane said, ‘Her supervisor’s outside. His name’s Benton Ehrlich. I’ll get him in here.’ He went to the door and leaned out, spoke to someone. Moments later, a man entered the room. He was slim, bespectacled and nervous, and clearly uncomfortable outside the familiar confines of his department. He blinked rapidly when he saw the printouts on the table.
Harry caught the look. ‘You know what these are?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Ehrlich nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
‘Did you know Ms Demescu well?’
‘Sure, sir. Well, we worked together.’ He glanced around at the others, his face flushing under their scrutiny.
‘You had no idea she was accessing unauthorized files?’
Ehrlich shook his head. ‘No way, sir. Irina — Miss Demescu — always seemed real keen, sir, but she kind of kept to herself.’
‘You ever socialize with her, Benton?’ Karen Walters put in. ‘Did she ever talk about her family?’
Ehrlich shrugged. ‘Well, we had drinks a couple of times — I mean with other people, you know. But that was all. She didn’t drink alcohol and was kind of private. She didn’t say much, although I did hear her mention she had family in the Balkans one time. I figured it was best not to talk about that.’
After a few more questions Deane thanked Ehrlich and told him he could go back to work. The supervisor nodded and left the room as quickly as he could.
Deane thanked McKenna and waited until the door was closed before turning to Karen Walters. ‘What’s been the fallout from Kleeman’s press grilling?’
Walters leaned down and took a copy of the New York Times from her briefcase. She dropped it on the table. The front page was framed in red marker ink.