A Murder of Crows (39 page)

“Assumptions can be dangerous.”

“A lesson you’re about to learn well and soon. I hope you’re a quick learner because, like I said we don’t have much time.”

“You keep saying that.” Hicks kept eyeing the crowd as they walked. “Much time for what?”

She surprised him by giggling. “Before I die, silly. Arap’s death in England yesterday made my position in the organization untenable. I made a mistake which led to his death, so my life is in forfeit. Balance must be maintained. Which is why I decided to meet with you today so I could set you on the right path before I die.”

Hicks stopped walking and slipped his hand under his jacket for the Ruger.

Jabbar smiled at the gesture. “A gun won’t do any good here, silly man. I’m here to help you, not harm you, remember? Drawing your gun will bring a lot of unwanted attention and you’ll never know the truth. You see, I knew you’d want to take me for questioning, like you’d done to Bajjah. I couldn’t let that happen.”

She slowly eased an empty pill bottle from her coat pocket and handed it to him. “I swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills right before I walked over to you. I washed them down with an energy drink, which should delay the effects, but we don’t have much time before I get sleepy. I won’t be much use to you, and I’ll be dead soon after. Check the prescription. You’ll see I had it filled today.”

Hicks read the label. The name had been scraped away, but it was a prescription of sleeping pills that had, indeed, been filled earlier that day.

He’d worked too hard to find Jabbar to simply watch her die. He went to take her arm. “Come on. I’m getting you to a hospital and your stomach pumped right now.”

She twisted away from grasp. “No you’re not and if you try to touch me again, I’ll scream. How long do you think it would take before all of these chivalrous men come to the aid of a young girl in fear for her life, from an armed man nonetheless?” She giggled again. “Imagine. Infidels rallying to
my
defense. If they only knew. I’d bet a couple of them would be Jews, too, especially one of the doctors in the hospital. The irony of it all is so yummy, isn’t it?”

Hicks kept his distance and took his hand away from the Ruger. This young woman was smart. She had planned for every contingency and limited his options. He wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t led the most effective terrorist organization in the world by accident.

“So why did you call this meeting? You sure as hell didn’t do it so I could watch you overdose.”

“Of course not. I took the pills because my life is forfeit now. I made a mistake by not being aware Shaban was being watched. My mistake cost poor Arap his life. He was one of my closest aides and one of the few people who knew my true identity. When your people gunned him down yesterday, I knew either you—whoever you are—or the British would begin digging into his life. You might’ve gotten lucky and found something in Arap’s things belongings to lead you to me. My arrest would put my entire organization at risk, so my death is a necessity. But I also wanted to use the time I have left to explain how wrong you’ve been about almost everything practically from the beginning.”

Now Hicks knew the real reason of the meeting. A ruse. “I uncovered your network. I found Shaban and Shaban led me to you. Now you’re telling me I’m wrong? If this is wrong, I don’t want to be right.”

“Yours is a logical foundation built on sand,” she said. “A foundation built by information provided by Bajjah, which is your main problem. He is a born liar, or should I say, was.”

“He might’ve been a liar, but he told us the truth. I have some people on my payroll who can be pretty persuasive.”

“I’m sure you do, but I’m curious about something. Did he ever utter the name Jabbar once during all of your persuasive questioning?”

She must have been able to see the answer in Hicks’ expression. “See? I knew he was loyal, for the most part, anyway.” She looked up at the sky as though she was pondering a question no one had asked. “Let’s see. I bet he gave you the names of five men in the United States and another four throughout the Middle East. All the men were on watch lists, all with active ties to radical groups throughout the world.” She looked at him and smiled. “How did I do?”

“You missed one. He gave us Shaban.”

“Yes, I know he did.” Her smile faded. “The other nine other names he gave you were all part of an elaborate cover I created for our people to use if they ever fell into enemy hands. I’m sure you’ve discovered they’re all real people, but none of them pose any real threats to anyone. To borrow an American term, they’re ‘fall guys’ for the rest of my organization dedicated to doing the real work of Allah. By giving you those names, Bajjah proved himself to be a loyal soldier until the bitter end.”

Hicks leaned closer to her, but not too close. “Maybe the pills are affecting your memory already. You’re forgetting Bajjah still gave us Shaban.”

She looked down. “I know. I suppose it was his one act of revenge against me for believing I had forsaken him. Perhaps he was right, for I had forsaken him. He told you Shaban was someone high up in the organization, didn’t he? Like a money man or his lieutenant or something to make him stand out from the other names he offered you.”

Hicks didn’t say anything. She continued, “When I learned Bajjah had been captured, I didn’t try to find him. I didn’t even ask who might have him or where. I treated him the same as I had treated the hundreds of my other brothers who fell under the scythe of the Great Satan.”

“You’ve got a nice way of talking about betrayal.”

“Bajjah didn’t betray me as much as he made a fool out of you. For you see, my friend, Shaban and Bajjah hadn’t been part of my network for well over a year.”

“Bullshit.” He was careful to not allow his temper to get away from him and draw attention. “All ten names he gave us checked out as part of the same network. Shaban included.”

“Bajjah decided to separate himself from my cause over a year ago,” she said. “He had been a legendary fighter in defending our way of life against the infidels, but he had always lacked the patience to devise strategy. Over time, he became impatient with the pace of our attacks. He grew more bloodthirsty as the years went by. I suppose he wanted all of his personal sacrifices to mean something. It’s not easy to abandon one’s family for a cause greater than oneself, even when such a cause is Allah.”

Hicks saw his entire plan, all of the intelligence he had gathered and all of the theories he had formed, begin to unravel like a ball of string. No, she had to be lying.

She went on. “When I discovered his plans to wage his own
jihad
against the West in his own way, I had no choice but to exile him from the network.” She smiled. “As my death will prove, no one person is more important than the network or our cause.”

Hicks didn’t give a damn about her network. “But Shaban...”

“Bajjah took Shaban with him when he left us,” she explained. “Our organization has infighting like any other group, so Bajjah didn’t have much trouble getting others to leave with him. Shaban in London and Omar in New York helped Bajjah set up his new network.”

It didn’t make sense to Hicks. “Networks take money and our intelligence shows you keep a tight hold on the purse strings.”

“I do,” she said, “which means Bajjah had to find new backers, doesn’t it? Those same backers who paid Rachid Djebar to make introductions between Bajjah and the scientists in Madinha who crafted the virus used in the New York outbreak.”

“You’re not making sense. If you knew all of this was going on, why let him do it? All he would do is bring more heat on your organization.”

“We didn’t know exactly what he was doing,” she admitted, “but we’d hoped whatever he did would draw attention
away
from our organization. It worked for a long time, too, until he launched his silly bio-attack on New York. We knew such an attack would fail because there were too many variables and it was too limited in scope. But Bajjah was too stubborn to listen. He proved us right, didn’t he? The plot failed and he got caught, exactly as we had predicted. Since Shaban had been disloyal and was the only remaining member of Bajjah’s organization who could point back to us, I had to eliminate him.”

It was beginning to make sense to Hicks. “So you ordered Arap to kill him.”

“Shaban was a hot-head who would try to take revenge once he learned Bajjah was dead. So, I bought time by having Arap make contact with him and keep him calm. He promised Shaban he’d be allowed back into our organization and given a place of honor. I ordered Arap to kill him publicly, to show the others in my organization how much we cherish the loyalty of our followers and punish those who stray from the path. If I’d known Shaban was being watched so closely, I would’ve made other plans.”

“When I saw how your people searched Shaban’s body,” she went on, “and left the scene so quickly, I knew they weren’t British intelligence or undercover police. Not CIA, either. Then I remembered the mystery man who was frustrating their search for Bajjah. I took an educated guess you’d be watching the events at the port and have access to Shaban’s e-mail, so I emailed Shaban.” She opened her hands and smiled. “And here we are.”

“Yeah. Here we are. But you still haven’t told me why.”

“But I’ve already told you why, you silly man.” Another gust of wind picked up through the plaza. She turned so it was hitting her back, not her eyes. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? Bajjah wasn’t working for us. Any action he took, any attack he carried out, was without our permission or resources or our money. He was working for someone else.”

Hicks leaned closer. “Tell me who.”

Jabbar took a step back. “No. I’ll do what my uncle would have done and pose a question instead. Ask yourself who benefits from a biological attack on the United States. Iran? Al-Qaeda? ISIS?” She shook her head. “They would have done it themselves before they’d let an outsider do it for them, especially a zealot like Bajjah. They also would have taken responsibility for the attack, which they didn’t, did they?”

Hicks knew how Iran and the terrorist groups worked. He knew she was right.

She went on. “A question which only raises a whole bunch of other questions, doesn’t it? Like who could benefit from funding Bajjah’s zealotry? Who has the resources to finance Bajjah’s plans if we didn’t do it? Who benefits from American resources being diverted to fight an unseen, unknown enemy within its borders? Who has begun to rattle their sabers recently? I’ll give you a hint: they’re the same people who are benefitting from an American withdrawal from the rest of the world right now.”

Hints of those same questions had been rattling around Hicks’ mind since the day he’d broken Bajjah. Questions drowned out by the noise from his Carousel of Concerns.
Stephens. Jabbar. The Mossad. The University. The Trustees.
He’d been too busy focusing on the perceived threat of Bajjah’s network to focus on Bajjah himself.

He’d never asked the most important question of all. Where was Bajjah getting all of these resources?

He had assumed it was Jabbar’s network. But with Jabbar’s denial of involvement, there was only one group who could be.

And the prospect was far worse than anything he’d considered before.

“Impossible. If anyone found out, it would cause another world war.”

“Cold wars are easy to reheat, especially by outside players.” She smiled again. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Believing the Russians or the Chinese were funding Bajjah is a pretty big leap to take.”

“Not the Russians or the Chinese, my friend. Not officially anyway. Splinter groups in their intelligence organizations who want to push things along to further their respective countries’ interests.”

If what she was saying was true, it made sense. But it was a big ‘if.’

She seemed to read his mind. “I’m not asking you to believe any of this on blind faith. I know faith comes difficult to men like you. You’ll need evidence, which was why I wanted to meet you today. You’ll find proof for every statement I’ve made on the hard drive of the laptop in my bag. Don’t bother searching the device for other information on our organization. It’s a brand new laptop and only has the information I downloaded onto it from a thumb drive. It’s…”

Hicks watched her body flinch a microsecond before the left side of her head exploded outward. The report of a rifle shot echoed through the plaza half a second later.

Instinct and training caused Hicks to draw his Ruger as he dove to his right. Tourists in the plaza were already screaming and running in all directions as he rolled next to a trashcan at the edge of the path.

“Jabbar is down,” he reported to Roger and Weaver over his earpiece. “I repeat, Jabbar is down. Suspected sniper in the area.” He scanned the plaza for signs of a shooter, looking for a trail of gun smoke, movement, anything to show him where the shot had come from.

He focused on the direction of the shot—a row of planted trees on the other side of the park. But with dozens of people running in all directions, he couldn’t see more without breaking cover. With a sniper on the loose, breaking cover was a bad idea.

He hoped Roger had a better view from his vantage point. “Roger, do you have eyes on the shooter?”

Nothing. Not even static.

“Goddamn it, Roger. Report! Do you have eyes on the shooter?”