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Khan considered pointing out that Masters talked too damn much for a spy, but thought better of it and instead absorbed what he was being told.
“I will get it, though?” he asked when Masters stopped to take a breath.
“You will.”
“And I will make sure you get your money.”
Masters raised his glass and toasted Khan. “Even better. In the meantime, you need to deal with our new friends. We need them gone as soon as possible.”
“Don’t worry,” Khan replied. “I’m already working on that.”
CHAPTER SIX
“The Man isn’t going to like this,” Brognola said. “Hell, I don’t like it.”
“None of us do, Hal,” Bolan said. “It is what it is.”
“Hell of a time to get philosophical on me, Striker.”
Bolan allowed himself a smile, his first since he and Grimaldi had returned to a safehouse owned and operated by the U.S. government inside a walled community located in suburban Dubai. The place was three stories high, stuffed with luxurious furniture, surrounded by iron gates and bristling with tall iron fences topped with concertina wire. It was surrounded by other, similarly luxurious homes, most occupied by foreign executives working inside Dubai who made tempting targets for Islamic terrorists.
“Where’s Jack?” Brognola asked.
“In the shower,” Bolan replied. “Or maybe one of the pools. I’m not sure.”
Brognola laughed. “How is it to sit in the lap of luxury?”
“Not a bad place as far as safehouses go,” Bolan said. “I’ve definitely slept in worse. Did you send a clean-up crew to the address I gave you? I’d like it if we could recover Lang’s body and send it home.”
“We’re on it. We have guys from the local FBI office on detail there. The local police are none too happy with us, obviously. First, we pull a covert move in their town and then we lock them out of a crime scene. But they are cooperating, which is about the best we can hope for. You already met Potts?”
“I did.”
“He’s handling things on our end. He’s really got the touch with the locals.”
“What about Lang? At least in some circles, he was a high-profile figure. He can’t just disappear.”
“Right. Fortunately he was a private pilot. According to a press release that should be going out within the next few hours, he died in an accident. His plane crashed while he was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv to conduct an interview.”
“Sounds plausible.”
“The family will issue a press release, too. Because he worked in a nonofficial cover capacity, his family has no idea that he was an espionage agent. They think he was just a reporter, which is just as well for all involved. I guess everyone is sitting on the story until the next of kin are notified. Once that happens, the story goes out, runs a couple of days and should disappear after the family has a funeral for him.”
“And since the plane was lost at sea, there’s no need for them to ever see his body so they’ll never need to know that he was tortured to death.”
“If everything goes to plan,” the big Fed said.
“We’ve had such good luck so far.”
“Cynic. Look, I’ll stress to Potts that if he or any of his crew find anything, they should pass it along to you.”
“Good,” Bolan replied. “I may need him to dig up some other information, too.”
Bolan paused and tried to gather his thoughts. “Let me ask you something, Hal. What else do we know about Lang? I mean, about the guy.”
“What are you driving at? Do you think he’s dirty?”
“Not necessarily. Frankly, I’m not sure what to think. But I do wonder how the guy got so over his head in this whole thing. And I have to wonder whether everyone’s telling us everything we need to know, including our friends in Washington.”
“Do they ever? Brognola replied.
“Think about it. You have an experienced agent who goes up against Nawaz Khan, a major weapons dealer. And he does it all by himself? No support? Nothing? I have an arms-length relationship with the government and can do that stuff. But I can’t envision Lang doing the same thing. I’m sure he wasn’t stupid. But was he enough of a cowboy to go out and get himself killed? And he took important information with him to the grave.”
“I don’t like where you’re going with this,” Brognola said. “But damn it, I also can’t refute it. Let me rattle some cages here and see what else I can learn.”
“Thanks.” Bolan raised his mug to his lips and slurped some coffee.
“Look, Bear has been looking through Lang’s phone records, trying to chart out who the guy was talking to and when. The rest of the cyberteam is working through the guy’s bank records and whatever else they can get their hands on. Maybe we’ll know more later.”
“Keep me posted,” Bolan said before terminating the call.
SEVERAL MINUTES LATER Bolan’s cell phone rang again. He took the call.
“Go.”
“Jesus, Cooper, that’s how you answer the phone?” It was Potts.
“You get the building cleaned out?”
“About fifty percent. Not too bad, considering the mess you left behind. It was like the Valentine’s Day massacre on steroids. The harder part was convincing the state security forces that they needed to let you go about your business and ignore the death of an American journalist and several Pakistani nationals. But I think we’re in the clear, at least for the moment.”
“How’d you manage it?”
“Would you believe I’m a good diplomat?”
“No.”
“Would you believe I dropped some names of people in Washington? The kind who approve arms sales to the United Arab Emirates?”
“That I believe. You have that kind of clout?”
“Nah, I just said I dropped names. I didn’t say I knew them.”
“Just the same, thanks for sticking your neck out.”
“Don’t mention it. Hey, the real reason I called was to let you know a couple of things. First, I got a phone call from a reporter, a lady named Tamara Gillen. She left me a message, said she’d heard through the rumor mill that Terry Lang may have been lost in an airplane crash. She said she might have some important information about that.”
“I guess I don’t need to tell you to ignore the call.”
“Aren’t you a genius? Thanks for the tip. Maybe if the bottom falls out of the paramilitary business, you can jump over to public relations.”
Bolan grinned.
“Anyway,” Potts continued, “she said she thought that the whole notion that Terry died in a plane wreck was bullshit.”
“She say why?”
“Negative. Probably because she doesn’t want to believe the guy’s dead.”
“That a theory?” Bolan asked.
“Call it an educated guess.”
“Based on?”
“On the fact that Terry boned everything in a skirt in Dubai. You call five people who knew him, and they’d tell you the same thing. The bastard couldn’t keep it in his pants to save his life. I barely knew him, but he was notorious among the reporters, politicians and government people for screwing everything he could get his hands on,” Potts said.
“Good to know,” Bolan said. “You know anything about this reporter?”
“She’s little more than a name to me. I went back through my Rolodex and I had a card in there from her. She probably interviewed me at a press conference or some such. I try to avoid the press like the plague, but sometimes it just can’t be helped.”
“You think she knows anything about Lang?”
“She probably knows a lot about him. Whether any of it’s useful is another matter.”
“Maybe it’s time I checked.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I can’t stay here! The thought boomed in Tamara Gillen’s head and jolted her into action. She stepped away from her window and grabbed a handful of the curtain, ready to pull it closed. She stopped herself.
React and they’ll know you’re on to them, she thought. If they know that, they’ll move and be on you in a heartbeat. Then what?
She glided away from the window, and made her way down the hall to her bedroom. Inhaling deeply, she held the breath for a couple of seconds, exhaled heavily, hoping it would calm her racing mind and equally rapid heartbeat. It did neither.
Concentrate on what you know, she told herself. When she’d arrived home earlier, she’d spotted two men positioned on the sidewalk across the street from her building. She’d recognized the bigger of the two immediately. She’d seen him skulking around Lang’s building on at least one occasion. The man looked like he’d come straight from central casting for a thug—wide shoulders and chest, thick hair gleaming from hair gel, and a white scar that bisected his forehead.
“He shouldn’t be here,” Lang had told her at the time.
“Who is he?”
“Never mind,” Lang had replied through clenched teeth. “Just take my word for it, he shouldn’t be here.”
But her instincts had told her to press him. “What do you mean, Terry? Who is he?”
“Just trust me and stop with the Q&A.” His voice had sounded strange to Gillen, a quiet menace tinged with fear. Uncharacteristically, he’d avoided looking into her eyes. The memory caused a shiver to travel down her spine. She’d heard Lang angry before. In fact, he often seemed to swing between a boisterous charm that attracted people to him and a righteous anger that made him an unwavering opponent in an argument, even when he was dead wrong.
But the fear, that was seared into her memory. Lang never, ever, showed fear. Sure, a shrink may have argued that his in-your-face confidence masked a hurt, vulnerable little boy, provided a bandage for his wounded psyche. And Gillen would have told that shrink he was full of it, right up until she’d heard the fear and the distress in Lang’s voice.
So, yeah, she’d dropped the discussion at the time. Now she regretted it.
Lang was long gone and this creep had found her. She had no idea who he was, what he was capable of or why he wanted anything to do with her.
“Thanks, Terry,” she muttered.
Inside her bedroom, she made her way to the dresser, yanked open the top drawer and rummaged through bras, panties and socks stuffed inside. Where the hell was it? Finally her fingertips grazed smooth, cold steel. She hesitated for a moment, but then used her fingers to rake back the clothing until she could see the gray metal box at the bottom of the drawer. Taking the box from the drawer, she carried it over to her unmade bed, swept aside the wadded sheets to clear herself a spot and sat on the edge of the mattress. Perching the box on her knees, she used her thumb and index finger to work the dial on the combination lock until the final tumbler fell.
The lid came up and she studied the contents of the box. A small stack of bills—mostly U.S. dollars—secured with a rubber band lay at a forty-five-degree angle on top of her passport. She removed both items and set them next to her thigh on the mattress. A .25-caliber automatic pistol was the next item she took out, along with two clips for the weapon. She balanced the gun in her palm and scowled. It wasn’t much, but it fit her hand well and was easily hidden. Finally she removed a silver key and slipped it into the hip pocket of her snug jeans. Sealing the box, she set it on the bed and stood.
The cash, gun and passport all were items she’d started keeping years ago, a ritual that began when she’d been a foreign correspondent in Sierra Leone and again while covering clashes between the Israelis and Hezbollah. When she’d been a green reporter, an editor had told her to carry enough cash to bribe public officials or to buy an airline ticket. And if that didn’t work, well, that was why she’d carried the gun, though she’d never used it on anything except tin cans, paper targets and an occasional watermelon.
She scanned the room. Should she pack her clothes? No time. It was best for her to simply get the hell out of the apartment, get out into the open where people would see if something happened to her. She could take a cab to the Messenger’s office and surround herself with colleagues and friends. It may not make her safer, but it at least would make her feel safer, which was no small thing. And she might be able to dig up some more information. Maybe someone had heard from Terry or they might know something about the key.
Her cell phone beeped and the sudden, sharp noise in the midst of silence caused her heart to skip a beat. By the third ring, she’d regained her breath and shook her head disgustedly at her edginess.
“Tammy, it’s Kellogg.”
It was Mike Kellogg, the Messenger’s bureau chief. The sound of a familiar voice should have relaxed her. But she heard the tension in his voice and it only stoked more fear in her.
“Mike, what’s going on?”
“Terry’s gone.”
She hesitated for a moment and said, “I know.”
“You knew? What the hell. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“What’s the big deal? You know Terry. He’s like a cat. He disappears, and you don’t see him for a few days and then he resurfaces.”
“This is different,” Kellogg said.
“Different how?”
“Couple of guys came around looking for him. They asked a lot of questions.”
“Questions? Like?”
“Like, had we heard from him? Did we know who he’d been talking to? Where had he gone? They took Bonham into his office for a while and grilled him. He came out of there red-faced and sweating, like he’d run a damn marathon with these bastards.”
“They didn’t identify themselves?”
“Not to me they didn’t. I’m sure they told Bonham who they were, but he wasn’t in the mood to talk after they left. He shut his door and turned on the Do Not Disturb light on his phone. But he looked pretty shook up when it was all said and done.”
“Damn,” she said.
“What?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Last I saw Terry, it was two days ago. He was acting nervous, almost scared.”
