JET V - Legacy (13 page)

“You mentioned the satellite footage. A plane?” she reminded him.

“Yes, but it hasn’t helped. It was owned by a corporation based in Nigeria, which not surprisingly turned out to be a shell. We nosed around and discovered that the pilot was a crazy Frenchman who was well known in the region, but he’s likely dead now.”

“Dead?”

“The same satellite detected an explosion near Yemen later that day. The plane was destroyed.”

“How good is the satellite coverage?”

“That’s one of the problems we’re having. Not very. If you asked for footage of any street in Jerusalem we would have it in seconds, but nobody really watches that part of East Africa. So it’s sporadic coverage, and only bits of it at that, on the periphery of whatever the bird is focused on as it orbits over it. For this region, it’s usually Iran, Iraq, Syria, and us.”

“Then there’s no chance of going back and doing a frame-by-frame analysis?”

“No. I mean, maybe NSA would have something, but they’re not going to share it with us until they’re done analyzing it and the CIA gets through with it. For something like this it’s still hit or miss. But we’ve requested getting several of our birds redeployed for our exclusive use from the military. We’ll have better visibility moving forward.”

“Hopefully that will translate into an advantage,” Jet said, as she took a seat in front of his desk.

“So far, we’re doing better than we could have hoped. This Weinstein made a mistake that with any luck will lead us to the bomb. That’s a significant break. We’re fortunate we’re dealing with amateurs. A trained operative would have never made that call,” the director said, lighting his tenth cigarette of the day. “If it’s someone here, we’ll drag them in and break them – the only reason I can think of that he’d have placed a call and then aborted it is because he was panicked, which is what we wanted. So he was either calling someone high up in The Council, or he was calling the operatives to warn them, and then thought better of it. Either way will lead us to them.”

“And once we know where they are?”

“Then, depending upon what country it is, you’ll be in the driver’s seat. If by some miracle it’s here, in Israel, we have the resources to deal with it, and you’ll be back on a plane to wherever you like in no time. If not, which is probably the case, I’ll work with you to come up with a plan. Nobody has the sort of field experience you have. Not since the team was wiped out…”

When the intercom sounded, the abrasive buzzing was jarring. The director lifted the phone handset and listened.

“You’re absolutely sure? Fine. Good. We’ll be right there,” he barked, then stood. “Looks like you’re going to be up at bat. We at least have a country now.”

Jet studied his expression and then rose to follow him.

“Where?”

He hesitated, his step slowing slightly before resuming its confident gait.

“Libya.”

Chapter 16

Bangkok, Thailand

Matt cleared airport customs quickly, answering the few questions from the officials in fluent Thai. His carry-on was subjected to a cursory search and then he was waved on. When he stepped out of the terminal he was immediately assaulted by the heat and humidity, a near constant in the capital city. Arriving passengers thronged the sidewalk by the taxi stand, and as always, pandemonium reigned, which he found strangely reassuring. Some things could be depended on, and Bangkok’s unending flirtation with chaos was one of them.

He chose one of the nicer hotels in the downtown area, having made his selection primarily for its convenient proximity to the bank where he kept the diamonds. Tomorrow he would arrive unannounced and pull a handful out, and then negotiate a deal with one of the numerous vendors he knew. He wasn’t going to try to sell them all at once – a million dollars would more than cover his needs for the foreseeable future, and the other nine million worth he was intending to withdraw would fit in his pants pocket. That would still leave him almost two hundred million in stones, counting the fifty Jet was holding for him – a king’s ransom, and more than enough to last him ten lifetimes.

Which got him thinking about her again, for the hundredth time since they’d said their goodbyes at the Mexico City airport. She’d been through so much over just the last weeks, never mind the rest of her life; and yet here she was again, pressed into a dangerous situation that had nothing to do with her, working on behalf of an agency she had faked her own death to escape from. He didn’t see how she maintained her sanity, much less the calm she exuded. And yet through it all, she remained rational, reasoned, and effective.

No wonder he was so attracted to her. Setting aside the obvious physical beauty, she had something inside her that increased her allure for him exponentially. A combination of strength and vulnerability that he’d never encountered before. And one that he was determined to explore, whatever the cost.

Matt was hardly a teenager in lust, but for the first time in his life he had the feeling that he’d met his match – maybe more than just his match, truth be told. And the attraction seemed to be mutual, so he wasn’t pining over unrequited love. But circumstances had again conspired to separate them, and there wasn’t much he could do about it at the moment but attend to his business and hope that Jet came through it unscathed.

Once in the hotel room, he quickly folded his clothes and stowed his valuables in the safe, then went down to the lobby and out onto the street. It was early afternoon, and he realized that he was starving. Fortunately, Bangkok was a town that catered to discerning appetites, and after years prowling the streets, he knew better than most where to find the best food. He walked slowly, easily, taking in the smells and sounds of the bustling metropolis, waves of pedestrians moving along the sidewalks like platelets in the bloodstream of a gigantic urban organism.

Four blocks away he arrived at one of his favorite Thai food places and took a seat at a table near the window, indulging in his customary people-watching as he ordered and then consumed his meal with an icy cold Singha beer. The heat from the spices made his eyes water – something he’d been missing since leaving Thailand, but for which his digestive tract had probably been grateful.

Matt wasn’t particularly worried about running into anyone he knew, but it was still in the back of his mind. His goal was to slip in and out of Bangkok with a minimum of drama. Even though the drug network he’d battled to bring down was now effectively in shambles, there was still a danger from his former colleagues in the local CIA station. For that reason, it was best to keep a low profile and avoid his usual haunts at night – the restaurant wasn’t a risk, but if he went to any of his customary watering holes, there was a chance that some enterprising snitch would recognize him and complicate matters.

He didn’t believe that the local Agency staff had been compromised by Arthur and his group, but he didn’t intend to stake his life on it. The danger had presumably died with the scar-faced miscreant, but enough stolen diamonds to buy a small country would still exert a magnetic pull, and he didn’t kid himself that he would ever be entirely safe. His customary field instincts were still sharp, and his eyes skimmed over the pedestrians as he munched, watching for any tell-tale signs of surveillance.

Once finished, he paid and then set out to get a cell phone and some other odds and ends. A mega-electronics store was all too happy to sell him a cheap Nokia, and after checking the new battery and verifying that it had at least a partial charge, he consulted his other phone, found the number he was looking for, and dialed it.

“Hello. Is Niran there?” Matt asked in Thai. After a brief pause, a male voice came on the line.

“Yes?”

“Niran. This is Ralph. I’ve got another bunch of stones I want to find a home for. How’s your cash position?” Matt asked, using the alias he’d adopted when dealing with the diamond merchants.

“Ah, my friend, it’s always too long since I hear from you. Business is challenging, but somehow I persevere. How large a transaction were you interested in?” Niran responded coyly. At no point in his history had the Thai jeweler ever admitted to doing better than scraping by, and yet he’d purchased tens of millions’ worth of stones from Matt over the years.

“Nothing momentous. I was thinking around a million dollars’ worth. Unless you aren’t in a position to carry that kind of weight. Given the fiscal environment, I won’t hold it against you if you can’t. I have several others who would snap these up, but I figured I’d come to you first…”

“Always a wise move. I shall find the money somewhere, even if I need to sell a few of my wives to do it. When are you thinking?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. Say, around three? It shouldn’t take long, and I’ll need to get to the bank to deposit the funds…”

“Three is perfect. I shall wait to see you then.”

As Matt slid the new phone into his shirt pocket, fatigue washed over him, and he realized he was beat – bone-tired from so many sleepless hours in the air. The combination of the food and alcohol had worked its magic, and it was all that he could do to get back to the hotel room before he collapsed onto the bed and was out cold, dead to the world until the following morning.

~ ~ ~

Moscow, Russian Federation

The drab gray concrete walls in the dank room reverberated with the screams of the naked man suspended by his wrists over a drain in the sloped floor, designed for easy hosing down following an interrogation session. Oleg Illyovich paced in front of the hanging figure, avoiding the congealing pool of fluid beneath him, smoke drifting towards the ceiling from his forty-seventh cigarette of the day, his suit rumpled from sitting slumped over for hours in the room behind the two-way mirror at the far end of the space as he watched the proceedings unfold.

The interrogator, Ivan Makarev, was taking a break, also smoking, having washed his hands in a steel laundry sink in the corner. He was leaning against the wall by the door, reading a gentlemen’s magazine, chuckling occasionally at the amusing anecdotes in the Letters section – some of the outlandish claims by the writers really did test the limits of plausibility, even if they were funny.

The naked man’s body trembled from the frigid temperature, the burns on his torso and legs heightening his sensitivity to cold. Illyovich stopped a few feet in front of the captive and spit a piece of tobacco on the floor – he preferred the non-filtered French cigarettes, raspy and strong, to the more civilized American brands that were now widely available. These were a throwback to the good old days when the Soviet Union manufactured its own cigarettes – vile-smelling creations, strong enough to etch steel; an acquired taste, and one he’d grown to enjoy.

“So you are going to stick with this absurd story of facilitating a sale to a group in Kuwait? If the devices went to Kuwait, then why aren’t they there now? Why was one used in East Africa?”

The captive opened his remaining good eye, bloodshot to the point where it resembled a tomato, and blinked the ruined lid a few times, trying to focus as he croaked a feeble response.

“Please. No more. I’ve told you everything I know.”

The words were barely distinguishable, most of his teeth now scattered near the drain, mingled with several pints of his blood. He convulsed after the last word and dry heaved. A yellow trickle of bile ran from the corner of his now-ragged mouth and down his neck, stopping on his chest near one of the ugly welts the soldering iron had seared into his tortured flesh.

“I do not believe you. You are lying. Protecting someone or something. Hoping that they will get you out of here. You have built yourself a nice network over the last twenty years, haven’t you? You are a big man now in Ukraine – a big swinging dick in the new regime, eh? I bet you think any minute one of your cronies is going to pull enough strings or pay off the right person and you will be released. Well, I hate to break it to you, but that is not going to happen. You belong to me. I own you. And I will prolong this unspeakable agony for days – weeks if necessary. You
will
tell me everything. It is just a matter of time,” Illyovich said, his voice harsh from forty years of smoking and prodigious quantities of cheap vodka.

“No. I swear. It’s the truth.”

Illyovich blew a stream of bluish smoke at the ceiling, stained yellow with nicotine from countless prior exchanges in the room, and shook his head, his wolfish features unnaturally pallid in the industrial fluorescent light.

“You have to help me. Give me something new. I have heard this story enough to last a lifetime. You are like a broken record,” he complained, as if the prisoner’s tortured confession was a personal affront, an insult to his intelligence.

“It is…the…truth…”

“Enough of this. Let us try the electrodes. Maybe our friend here will be more favorably disposed to veracity after a few hours of shock treatment?” Illyovich said to Makarev with a reptilian grin.

Makarev reluctantly closed the magazine and set it on the stainless steel rolling table next to the collection of saws, knives, and drills, which he then wheeled closer to the subject. On the lower shelf, next to an industrial grinder, a variable transformer trailed two wires: rubber-clad cables with an inch and a half of exposed copper at the tips.

The naked man’s eye roved over the device and he screamed in abject horror as Illyovich, a look of boredom on his face, left the room, a cloud of toxicity following him out the door.

Back in the observation room, Illyovich took a seat next to two officials and stubbed out his cigarette.

“Do you think he has told us everything?” the older of the pair asked, his gray hair clipped close to his head in a crude buzz cut.

“Probably. But it has not done us much good, has it?”

“Then that is the whole story, at least as far as he knows. They did a deal with Kuwait, sold them the nukes, and then six months later Iraq invaded on a pretense. Sounds to me like the Iraqis were tipped off that Kuwait had the bombs, and either wanted them for themselves or wanted to eliminate the threat of them. Then the U.S. jumped in almost immediately, after sending nothing but green lights to Iraq and rushed to Kuwait’s defense – but too late. So Iraq had the devices, but the U.S. could not say how they knew, because if Kuwait had had them, as a close ally, the U.S. probably had its hand in the matter.