Girl of Rage (29 page)

It was fifteen minutes later when he pulled up to the gate of Prince Roshan’s property. He slid down the window as the guard approached. The guard—a man in his early thirties with cold looking eyes and a thick five-o’clock shadow, stared at Collins for fifteen long seconds.

Then he said, “Mr. Collins, please pull up the driveway. You’ll be met at the house.”

Collins was familiar with the Saudi’s routine. He’d been here as a guest many times before. As he parked the car and got out, he was startled to see that it wasn’t a guard who opened the front door—it was Prince Roshan himself.

Roshan, like Collins, was no longer a young man. In the early eighties, Roshan had been the unofficial leader of the small group of western intelligence agents working together in Afghanistan. Collins remembered riding together in a truck to Badakhshan province, at one point hiding under the floorboards with Thompson while Prince Roshan negotiated with the Russians.

That was a long time ago. Now, Roshan was portly, with prominent, almost puffy cheeks and a salt-and-pepper beard.

For official functions, Roshan wore robes and red and white checked
keffiyeh
. But at home, he typically wore blue jeans and a t-shirt. Roshan was a traditional Saudi man only when it came to how he treated his wife and his public appearance. In private, he indulged in all the luxuries Western culture could provide.

“Leslie!” Roshan said, a genuine appearing smile gracing his face. “Come in, come in! It’s been too long. How is Meredith?”

Leslie grimaced. “She’s fine, Your Highness. Just fine.”

“Come in. You know better than those niceties, Leslie. I won’t stand for titles.” As he spoke the words, Roshan rested a hand on Collins’ arm, as if to emphasize the words and his affability.

“Roshan. You’ve always been a good friend. How is Myriam?”

Roshan led him into the house mumbling meaningless platitudes about his wife. Myriam al-Saud effectively didn’t matter. Disenfranchised by the culture and law of her own country, she had less role in her husband’s life than the models who shamelessly accompanied him to expensive dinners and shows at the Kennedy Center whenever he was in Washington.

Roshan poured Collins a glass of Eagle Rare Single Barrel Bourbon. Collins sniffed it, the smell of charred vanilla and old oak and leather filling his nostrils.

He took the smallest of sips, then murmured, “This is very good.”

“Be my guest,” Roshan said. He poured himself a drink and tossed it back, then sat in the deep leather chair across from Leslie.

“My friend, we have a problem.”

“We?” Leslie replied.

“Yes.
We.
The problem has several heads, and any one of them could harm both of us, and our countries.”

“Thompson,” Collins said.

“Indeed. He’s sinking.”

“We need to make sure we don’t go down with him,” Collins said. “There are a lot of loose ends. I’m particularly concerned because it looks like the oldest daughter may have information about Wakhan now. They broke into his office in San Francisco. God only knows what he had in there.”

Roshan frowned. “Your people are responsible for the destruction of the home?”

Collins nodded. “Not agency. Independents.”

Roshan frowned and his eyes narrowed. He looked away from Collins for a moment, then looked back. “Leslie, I’m concerned you’ve lost your nerve. Not just attacking Thompson’s family, but by doing it so—ineptly. Letting a sixteen-year-old girl get away? What were you thinking?”

“You’re aware of who the girl’s father is?”

“Of course. He presents no risk to us.”

Collins rolled his eyes. “He’s the only person outside of our circle who knows what really happened at Wakhan.”

“If he knew, none of us would be in our positions.”

“He
knows.
”

“What makes you think that?”

Collins closed his eyes. “He confronted me about it.”

Roshan sat up straight. “
When?
And why didn’t you say anything?”

“I had it contained. That was in ’84.”

“Why is he still alive, then?”

“Are you serious? His cousin is the Queen of England. Besides, as I said, I had it contained. He was having his tawdry little affair with Thompson’s wife. We didn’t have to threaten him—we threatened her. That shut him up.”

Roshan shook his head. “Not good enough. What are you doing now?”

“I had a team try to get him, but they missed. We’ll try again. In the meantime, Thompson is thoroughly discredited, and Prince George-Phillip will be soon. Nothing they say will matter within the week. I’d expect the President to withdraw Thompson’s nomination any moment.”

“Good. And the rest of them? All this violence has done nothing but attract attention.”

“We’re backing off. Surveillance, but that’s it. We planted drugs and money in the Thompson condo, and we’ve registered several accounts at friendly banks in the Caymans to Thompson. The IRS will likely find those within a couple more days.”

Roshan nodded. “And Windsor? Do you really believe he is contained?”

Collins thought about it. The threat of killing Adelina Thompson was no longer going to be enough to keep George-Phillip quiet. That had probably passed years ago. Which meant they were going to have to find some new way of dealing with him. Or dispensing with him.

“I don’t think so,” Collins said.

“Leave him to me, then,” Roshan said. “I have assets which make more sense for this. You focus your efforts on discrediting Thompson.”

“Agreed,” Collins said.

Then he took another sip of his bourbon. It really was quite good.

California. May 2.

The campsite was bathed in red and orange light, slanting through the redwoods, as Nick Larsden drove his 2008 Hummer into the camp. He scanned the area. It was an out of the way campsite, the facilities neglected and worn. The camp office, next to the entrance, was old and the white paint was peeling, and except for the beat up rusted truck next to the office, there wasn’t a single vehicle.

Nick had been working his way up the coast all day, stopping at drive-thrus, campsites and any other likely place. An adult woman and her teenage daughter in a minivan shouldn’t be that hard to find, but so far, he’d not had any luck. And he was pretty sure he wasn’t the only person looking. The price dangled in front of him for finding the women was high.

Nick was a former soldier turned private investigator and later bounty hunter. Mostly he chased men who were on the run after not paying alimony for ridiculously low fees, so when the call came in, he didn’t question it. Especially when the caller, a stuck prig with an Irish accent, indicated he was willing to pay a significant deposit.

“Where do you want me to bring them?” he had asked.

“When you find them, contact me for instructions.”

That was more than a bit unusual. Nick suspected the caller wanted the women dead or missing. That was fine, Nick supposed, though he wasn’t a big fan of making war on women. But sometimes you had to do what you had to do. When it happened, though, he was going to insist on the money up front. The original price had been enough for him to retire from this business for good. Nick wanted a nice place in the mountains, paid for, where he could hunt and have his dogs and not have to worry about the stress of day-to-day bullshit.

He slid out of the cab of the Hummer. An old man approached. He was short and scrawny, almost diseased, and his clothes didn’t fit. Thick glasses revealed eyes that were oddly magnified.

“You looking for a campsite or a cabin? How long you staying?” the old man asked.

“I’m looking for two women,” Nick said.

He held out a sheet of paper he’d printed that morning. Two separate photos: the one of the older woman looked like it came from a newspaper, and the one of the teenager was a selfie from her Facebook page.

The old man’s eyes narrowed when his eyes hit the paper.
Bingo.
He’d seen them.

“I’ve never seen them,” the old man said.

Oh, ho. He was going to make things difficult.

“You sure, old man? They’re running from the law.”

The man’s eyes widened a little, and he sucked in a breath nervously. No wonder he looked so poor. Nick would have bet this guy played poker—and lost his shirt every time.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the old man said.

Nick sighed. He glanced around the campsite again, just to make sure. Not a soul around.

With violence so sudden the old man never saw it coming, Nick reached out and grabbed the old man’s hand and twisted it. The first bone in his wrist snapped almost instantly and the old man screamed.

“Now tell me the truth, you old fuck. Did they come through here?”

“Yes! Yes! They slept in Cabin 3 last night. Left early this morning, before sunup. The girl was drugged or something. They paid me an extra twenty dollars! Now let go!”

Nick looked at the old guy for a second and frowned. “What else can you tell me? Were they still driving a minivan?”

The old man nodded urgently. “Plates was covered in mud. I don’t know where they went. Headed north, I think, they turned right out of the camp.”

Nick looked around the camp one more time, still absentmindedly twisting the old man’s wrist, provoking moans from the man. He didn’t suppose he’d find anything in the cabin, but he should check.

“Did she show you her license or anything? You got any record?”

The old man shook his head. “No. I’m supposed to. State inspectors. But … Gawd,
please stop!
That hurts!”

Nick sighed. “You just failed your inspection,” he said.

Then he reached out with both hands, grabbing the old man by the neck, and lifted him into the air, one forearm across the man’s Adam’s apple. He squeezed hard, and the old man twitched several times, then sagged, already passed out. Nick kept holding him, blocking his windpipe.

“Sorry about this, man,” he said.

He held the man until he was sure. No pulse. Then he dropped him to the ground and walked to Cabin 3.

The door was unlocked. The old man hadn’t cleaned the cabin, of course, but he didn’t see anything of use. A woman’s elastic hair band. And that was it. He shrugged. At least he knew they’d been here. Headed north.

Canada? He guessed so. But the odds of catching up with them were slim indeed with the information he had.

He shook his head, eyes falling on the old man again. What a waste.

Adelina. May 3.

The pothole must have been large enough to swallow up a smaller car. As it was, the back end of the bus bounced in the air with a loud thump, and Adelina felt herself bounce right out of her seat for just a second. Jessica moaned and began to slide out of her seat. Adelina reached over and tugged her eighteen-year-old daughter back into her seat like she was a toddler.

The bus was crowded, and would have been reasonably well appointed, except that the air conditioning had failed sometime not long after Jessica’s birth. The upholstery in the seats was torn, and the baby two rows up from Adelina and Jessica had cried for the entire three and a half hour ride from Tacoma. The heat was a physical thing, alive with motion, like an unseen reptile under the surface of a Louisiana swamp, green and obscure, thick and dangerous.

The passengers were a mix. At least two dozen men and women Adelina judged to be migrant workers. Hispanic, poor and tired. Two rows in front of her and across the aisle, a man slept with his head thrown back in the seat, mouth open, completely ignoring the squalling baby directly across the row.

The man fascinated Adelina. He wore blue jeans, threadbare but not torn at the knees and leather work shoes which had been resoled more than once, apparently by hand. He’d likely done it himself—nowadays it was cheaper to buy a throwaway pair of shoes from Walmart, produced by near-slave labor in a third world country, than it was to have a pair of custom shoes resoled by a cobbler. The stitching along the edge of the leather sole was slightly uneven.

His sweatshirt was clean but old, the elastic near the wrists worn and loose, threads spreading apart, with deep stains in the elbows, which Adelina knew wouldn’t come out no matter what he did. But it wasn’t his clothes or his shoes that caught her attention. It was his craggy face, weathered, worn, his skin indistinguishable from the leather on his boots. Deep laugh lines radiated from his eyes and creases around his mouth. His mouth was open, asleep with the kind of abandon usually only seen in small children, despite the fact that the man was missing most of his teeth.

He looked not much different from her father, Juan Ramos, in the years before his death. Exhausted, yes. Tired from the weight of years of too much work and too much worry. But her father had also been content in the last years of his life. After he and her mother had separated, he’d been happy in a way she admired to this day. He laughed, he cried, and he loved life with an abandon she only wished she understood.

The man on the bus looked like that. He looked exhausted, and despite her poverty, her fear, her danger, she wanted to help him.