The Guardian (2 page)

‘What are they after?’ The man’s voice was desperate. He grabbed Mustafa by the shirt collar and for just a moment Mustafa’s focus returned. He could see the man’s
face, and could sense his urgency. ‘What happened, Hassan?’

Mustafa struggled to make his lips form words. ‘They . . . must . . . be . . . stopped.’

‘Who? Who must be stopped?’

He could hear sirens in the background, growing in volume. Mustafa reached and took the man’s hand, gripped it for a moment as he fought against the pain – fought to get the words
out.

And then the fight was over.

Jack Saunders sat quietly at the table in the coffee shop, his head down, his jet-black hair damp. He was in his late-thirties, thin and wiry. So wiry that some mistook him for
slight, weak even. It was a mistake no one made twice.

Outside, the lights from the ambulance still flickered, flashing red off the wet pavement and the drops of rain that still clung to the window. The lights were just for show now. Hassan Mustafa
was dead before any of them arrived. His body still lay out there, underneath a sheet.

Saunders picked up the Styrofoam cup and took a sip of the coffee that was now stale and cold. He didn’t notice. His mind was racing, going over every moment from that evening, measuring
out his reactions in seconds and fractions-of-seconds, trying to gauge whether there was anything else he could have done.

He put the cup down, and a stain on the outer edge caught his eye – a dark red smudge near the rim. He wondered for a moment whether a woman had used the cup before and left a lipstick
smear. Then he realized it was blood. Looking down at his hand, he saw the dark wet patch near his wrist.

The door to the coffee shop banged open and Lawrence Ainsworth walked in with one of the local cops. Ainsworth was three decades older than Saunders. He was tall – over six feet –
and he carried with him the visible fatigue of a man who has seen too much in his lifetime. He paused by the cash register, whispering to the cop as the two of them looked over toward Saunders.
Then Ainsworth gave the cop a kindly pat on the shoulder and walked over toward the table.

He slid into a seat across from Saunders. ‘He’s the police chief out here,’ Ainsworth said, nodding to the man with whom he’d just been talking. ‘Name’s
Quentin. Former fed. They’ll do what they can.’

‘They won’t find anything,’ Saunders said. He took another sip of his coffee, avoiding the bloodstain.

‘No, probably not,’ Ainsworth agreed. He sighed. ‘Still, it’s good to know we’re not dealing with Barney Fife.’ He sat there in silence for a moment.
‘Did Mustafa tell you anything?’

‘Not much,’ Saunders said. ‘I talked to him on the phone last night. He said the message came in yesterday. Something important. He said he needed to talk in person.’

‘Why did you wait to bring him in?’ Ainsworth asked. His tone was sharp.

Saunders sat back in his chair and looked directly at Ainsworth. ‘I told you last night, this was how Hassan wanted it. He couldn’t get away until tonight, and he wanted me to put a
protection plan together for him. He wanted to see that the Agency would stand by him. That’s why I brought you in on logistics.’

‘Well, at least he died knowing how committed we were.’ Sarcasm dripped from Ainsworth’s words.

‘You think I should have handled it differently?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Then maybe you should have trained me differently. Maybe I should have been some pencil-pushing, ass-covering bureaucrat. The Agency can never get enough of those, can it?’

Ainsworth smiled in spite of himself. ‘Yeah, I know it,’ he agreed. He took a deep breath, motioned to the waitress, pantomiming the pouring of coffee. She went behind the counter to
get a cup and a pot. ‘Look, Jack, no one questions your contributions to the Agency – least of all me. I found you, for Christ sake, locked away at Harvard speaking dead languages to
the four or five other people in the world who shared your interests. Hell, I’ve got more time in on you than anyone else I’ve ever worked with.’

‘That’s why you need to trust me,’ Saunders said.

Ainsworth shook his head. ‘It’s not about trust, Jack. It’s about results. That’s why I had to pull you back from the field, and you know it.’

‘You didn’t approve of the results I got in the mountains?’

‘It doesn’t matter whether I approve or not.’

‘I did that for Sam, for Christ sake. You of all people . . .’

‘You disobeyed a direct order. What you did had political ramifications that—’ Saunders started to object, but Ainsworth held up a hand to keep him from talking. ‘You and
I may not like it, but it is how the world works. Now we have to deal with this issue tonight, or people are really going to start questioning your judgment. So let’s go back over this. When,
exactly, did Mustafa first contact you?’

Saunders shook his head in annoyance. ‘Two days ago. Nine a.m.’

‘Why you?’

‘I knew his brother when I was in Kabul. His brother trusted me, so Mustafa was willing to trust me.’

‘Did he give you any idea what this was about?’

Saunders frowned. ‘Not much. Not enough to be helpful.’

‘Anything?’

Saunders replayed his conversations with Mustafa over in his head as he spoke slowly. ‘He said he had information about an operation one of the Taliban splinter groups was running. He said
a message was being delivered that would give the details, but that the key was here in the States.’

‘The key to what?’

‘I don’t know. He didn’t get the chance to tell me.’

‘Did he say anything else?’

Saunders shook his head.

‘Did he have any idea where this key was?’

‘Boston,’ Saunders said. ‘The message was going to tell them more.’

‘Boston,’ Ainsworth said, blowing his breath out in frustration. ‘Well, at least that narrows it to a city of five million people.’ They lapsed back into silence.

‘I know a way we can get more information,’ Saunders said quietly after a moment.

‘Do you?’ Ainsworth sounded skeptical.

Saunders nodded. ‘You’ll have to trust me, though.’

Ainsworth thought about it for a moment. ‘You realize you’re already just barely hanging on here, right? One more fuck-up and even I won’t be able to protect you.’

‘I know that,’ Saunders said. ‘Just give me the men I need for two hours, and I’ll get some answers.’

Ainsworth sipped his coffee, staring out the window as the ambulance pulled away. ‘I guess I don’t have any choice, do I?’

Cianna Phelan sat in the passenger’s seat of a rusted Nissan Sentra on Reverend Burke Street in South Boston, staring out the window at Building 29 of the Old Colony
Housing Projects. A thick, late-September mist had rolled in off the harbor and hung in the air like an omen. In the driver’s seat next to her, Milo Pratt gripped the steering wheel
nervously. His normally weak chin had receded to the point where it looked like little more than a bump between his lower lip and his Adam’s apple, and she wondered for the thousandth time
how he’d ever come to this line of work.

‘It’s okay,’ she said to him. ‘It’ll be fine. Are you sure she’s in there?’

He nodded. ‘I followed her earlier.’

‘Okay, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s do this.’

She got out of the car and walked across the street. Milo followed. She had to give him credit, he didn’t back down, no matter how ugly things turned or how scared he got. She liked that
about him.

The three-story building was one of hundreds in the Colony, perfectly rectangular and devoid of architectural charm or individuality, lined up like some oversized trailer park cast in brick
permanence. The green door at the center of the building lolled halfway open, daring them. They paused on the sidewalk, regarding the gap in the entrance warily.

‘You ready?’ she asked.

‘I guess.’

‘Remember, show no fear.’

‘It’s all I’ve got,’ he said. She chuckled, and he gave her a weak smile.

The door creaked as Cianna pushed it all the way open, and she could hear Milo suck in a lungful of stale air. There was no one in the hallway that ran through the center of the building. Half
of the lights were out, adding to the gloom. Trash gathered in the corners. She stood there for a moment, and pushed away the blanket of childhood memories that tried to smother her.

‘Which apartment?’ she asked.

‘Last one on the left,’ Milo said.

She walked down the hallway, head high, shoulders back, wishing she had a gun. There was nothing she could do about it, but she wished it anyway.

She heard the music long before she came to the door. It was the bass-heavy, expletive-laden, misogynistic fare that seemed to echo through the hallways of too many places she’d been in
her life. The door was the same dark green as all the others, with several deep dents in the metal and chips in the paint where it had been struck throughout the years by angry boyfriends or
girlfriends or parents or children or enemies or strangers. In truth, anger didn’t need a reason in a place like this. Anger grew from the bricks.

She squared her shoulders once more and put on her game face. Reaching out, she slammed her fist against the center of the door.

The voices that could be heard over the music ceased for a moment before the stereo was turned down. A voice called out ‘Fuck is that?’ in a thick Boston accent.

‘Open up!’ she shouted back.

‘Who the fuck is it?’

‘Now!’ Never answer a question. It lets them think they’re in charge, and she aimed to make clear that
they
were not.

A moment later, the door cracked open, and a rat-faced kid of around twenty peered out at her. He was skinny and pale, with zits on his face and up the arms that dangled from his enormous
sleeveless Celtics jersey. He looked at her, and a wide smile broke over his face as he opened the door even wider. His teeth were brown and dying.
Four out of five dentists surveyed recommend
sugarless crack for their patients who smoke crack
, she thought humorously.

‘Shit, boys,’ the kid said over his shoulder to the others in the room. ‘Check out the fox!’ He stepped back and swung his arm inward, inviting her to enter. She had on
jeans, a dark T-shirt, and her black leather jacket, but from the way the kid was leering at her you’d have thought she was wearing a G-string and was leaning on a pole. It was a compliment
of sorts, she supposed, but one she would have preferred to forego at the moment. ‘Just what this fuckin’ sausage-fest needs.’ He licked his lips, and Cianna choked back a gag.
‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re doin’ here, but can I get you a fuckin’ beer, honey?’ All three ‘R’s in the sentence got caught in the kid’s
gingivitis. They came out as
yaw
,
heeya
, and
beeya
.

There were five young men in the apartment. Standing behind the toothless scarecrow in the kitchenette was a three-hundred-pound adolescent with a wisp of a beard and bulging eyes. He was
turning from the open refrigerator to look at her. That his attention could be diverted from any appliance dispensing food she took as another stunning, if unwelcome, compliment. Two identical
twins with crew cuts and piercings covering the outer rims of their ears sat at a battered card table in the living room, glaring at her with a disturbing mixture of lust and anger. On the card
table sat a glass pipe, a butane lighter, and several clear plastic bags of substances ranging in consistency from hard-white to powder-brown. The alpha male was in the corner, sitting with his leg
draped over the arm of a torn, half-reclined La-Z-Boy. He had long greasy dark hair and the sharp face of a hustler. She had little doubt that a decade earlier he would have been exactly the type
of guy she would have gone for. Thank God those days were behind her.

Cianna stepped into the room, looking around to see whether there was anyone else. No one. The place smelled of beer and chemicals, sweat and piss. The skinny crack addict started to close the
door and it banged off of Milo, who was moving in behind Cianna. The kid looked at Milo as though seeing him for the first time. ‘Fuck are you?’ he demanded.

Milo took a deep breath and said in a loud, clear voice, ‘We’re here for Jenny. Where is she?’ Cianna was proud of him. Not a single quaver. She’d taught him the
breathing trick a week ago, after his inability to control his voice had nearly gotten them shot.

The other four looked nervously at the young man spread across the over-sized chair. ‘Jenny?’ he said. ‘I don’t know any Jennys.’ He gave her a sickening smile, and
the others in the room laughed as though reassured.

She fixed him with a hard stare. ‘Does it look like I’m kidding?’ she asked. ‘Where is she?’

Just then a girl’s voice came from the back of the apartment. ‘Jesus Christ, Vin! There’s no fuckin’ toilet paper in here!’

Cianna raised an eyebrow at the young man on the chair. His nonchalance seemed shaken, but only for a moment. ‘Use the paper towels on the sink!’ he shouted back, turning his head
slightly, but never letting his eyes leave Cianna’s. It took a moment, but he forced the smile back onto his face.

No one moved or said anything else until a young woman walked out of one of the bedrooms. Her head was down, and as she pulled her eyes up and saw Cianna, she stopped in the doorway, completing
the frozen menagerie. She was wearing pink mesh leggings, a short skirt, and a tight long-sleeved white shirt. Her hair was pulled back and pushed up in a thick wave. Her cheeks were sallow and
sunken, and her eyes were red. She had the look of someone about to drive off a cliff.
Make the most of the good years, kid
, Cianna thought,
’cause it only gets harder from
here.

‘Jenny, I presume?’ Cianna said to her.

Vin, on the chair, spoke before the girl had the time to react. ‘Naw, that’s not Jenny, her name is Flower, right babe?’ The girl looked back and forth between Cianna and the
guy, the expression of confusion slowly morphing to jealousy and anger.

‘Who the fuck is she?’ she asked. She was talking to Vin, but staring at Cianna like she gave off a stench that was more than she could bear.