Dead or Alive

  This door didn’t disappoint. At the halfway point the hinges peeped. Clark froze. Chavez scooted forward until he could see beneath Clark’s outstretched arm into the house. He pulled back and signaled clear. Inch by slow inch, Clark opened the door the rest of the way. With his gun leading, he stepped inside. Chavez took control of the door, then followed, easing it shut behind him and getting nothing worse than another metallic peep.

  They were in a kitchen. Wooden countertops, cabinets, and a sink to the left; round dining table in the center. An arched doorway in the right-hand wall led to another room. Chavez checked it and gave a thumbs-up. They moved through into what was clearly a sitting room. To the right, a set of stairs led to the second floor. Ahead, a short hall. This is from where the television sounds were emanating. Each taking a wall, they moved into the hall, stepping and pausing, stepping and pausing, until they were within ten feet of an open door. Inside, Clark could see the blue-gray light of a television flashing off the walls.

  Clark closed the remaining distance and took up position beside the doorjamb. He nodded at Ding, who came up the right wall until he had an angled view through the door. He stepped back a couple of feet and gestured: Two men in chairs. One nearest the door armed. Clark signaled back: I’ll take him; you sweep through.

  Chavez nodded.

  Clark switched his gun to his left hand and drew the cosh from his belt. With a curt nod, he leaned around the corner, picked his target, and wrist-whipped the cosh into the man’s temple. Even as he slumped sideways, Chavez was in the room, gun up. He stopped. His brow furrowed. He crooked his finger at Clark, who stepped through the door.

  Their man was asleep.

  Chavez woke him up with a light tap of the gun’s barrel across the bridge of his nose. As his eyes flittered open, Chavez said, “English?”

  The man pressed himself as far back in his chair as he could.

  “English?” Chavez repeated.

  “Yes, I speak English.”

  Clark said, “Make sure this one and Mr. Lawn Chair are out of action. I’ll take him.” Chavez shoved the guard to the floor, then grabbed his wrist, dragged him down the hall into the sitting room, and headed outside.

  “What’s your name?” Clark asked their host.

  No reply.

  “If you’re not even going to give me your name, we’re in for a long, ugly night. Let’s start with your first name. No harm in that.”

  “Abbas.”

  Clark pulled the now-empty guard’s chair out, spun it around, and sat down so they were knee to knee.

  The screen door opened and banged shut. Chavez came in with the first guard over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He unceremoniously dumped him beside his partner. “Found some duct tape in the van,” he told Clark, then went to work with it. Once done, he joined Clark.

  “Let’s make sure we’re getting off on the right foot,” Clark told Abbas. “You know what that means?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think your name is Abbas. I’m going to have my friend look around your house for anything with a name on it. If it doesn’t say Abbas, we’re going to start hurting you.”

  “My name is Obaid. Obaid Masood.”

  “Good.” Clark nodded at Ding, who went out and started rummaging around. “Do you want to change your answer while there’s still time?”

  “My name is Obaid Masood. Who are you?”

  “Depends on how you answer my questions. Cooperate and we’re friends. Don’t cooperate . . . Tell me about your security detail. Why do you think you need them?”

  Masood shrugged.

  “Listen, if your worry was about the police or the Army, they probably would have already been here, which suggests to me you’ve fallen into some bad company. Somebody you worked for, maybe?”

  Chavez reappeared. He nodded: He’s telling the truth.

  “Somebody you worked for?” Clark repeated.

  “Perhaps.”

  “The Umayyad Revolutionary Council?”

  “No.”

  “Do you watch baseball?”

  Masood’s brows furrowed. “I have, yes.”

  “We’re going to call your ‘no’ strike two,” Clark said. “One more and I’m going to shoot you in the foot. Have you bothered to ask yourself how we found you?”

  “The dead drops?”

  “Right. And who do you suppose we got those from?”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t think you do. We found you. They can find you.”

  “You’re American.”

  “That’s true. What you need to decide is whether you hate us more than you fear them. Because if we don’t start getting some answers, we’re going to drive you into the Hayatabad and dump you out of the car.”

  This got Masood’s attention. “Don’t do that.”

  “Convince me.”

  “I used to work for ISI. I ... moved people. Relocated them.”

  “Like a black-market travel agent?” Chavez observed.

  “Yes, I suppose. Eight months ago I was approached.”

  “By whom?”

  “I didn’t know him, and I’ve never seen him again.”

  “But URC, correct?”

  “I found that out later. He offered me a lot of money to move someone.”

  “How much money?”

  “Two hundred thousand, U.S.”

  “Did you ever meet this person?”

  “No.”

  “What exactly did you do for them?”

  “Passports, documentation, private planes. Making sure the right customs and immigration people are paid. It took me five months to put everything together. They were meticulous in their demands, having me double- and triple-check every arrangement.”

  “When did you hand over everything?”

  “Two months ago.”

  Chavez asked, “Did you give them everything?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you keep copies?”

  “Paper copies?”

  Clark put a little steel in his voice. “Any kind of copies, Obaid.”

  “There is a hard drive.”

  “Here?”

  Masood nodded. “Taped to the underside of the kitchen sink in a plastic bag.”

  Chavez headed out the door. He was back a minute later carrying a Ziploc bag. Inside was a drive about the size of a deck of cards. “Eight gigs,” Chavez said.

  “English, Ding.”

  “A lot of storage space.” He held the bag up toward Masood. “Everything you did for them is in there?”

  “Yes. Digital scans, e-mails . . . everything. Can you get me out? Out of the country?”

  “Might take a little time,” Clark said, “but we’ll get it done. Until then, we’ll get you out of sight. Stand up.”

  Masood did so. Clark clapped him on the shoulder. “Welcome to the good guys’ team.” He pushed Masood toward the door. Ding grabbed Clark’s elbow. “A minute?”

  “Go ahead, Obaid. Wait for us in there.”

  Chavez said, “You’re thinking about stashing him with Nigel.”

  “I was.”

  “Fifty-fifty chance somebody will track him down. If they do, that’s it for Nigel and his kid.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  Chavez paused. “We got the drive. Maybe we cut our losses and—” Chavez tipped his head to the side, looking over Clark’s shoulder. “Shit.”

  Footsteps pounded in the other room.

  “He heard me! Goddamn it!”

  Chavez darted out the door, through the sitting room, and into the kitchen just as the screen door slammed closed. “Ah, fuck me!” He was halfway to the screen when a crack brought him to a halt. In a crouch, he backtracked into the sitting room. Clark was already there, peeking his head above the windowsill. In the driveway a pair of headlights cast stripes in the dirt. Lying in one of the beams was Masood. A figure carrying a pistol walked up to him, knelt down, and fired two rounds into his head, then sto
od up and walked back into the headlights. A door slammed shut, followed by the crunch of tires on gravel.

  Silence.

  “What the hell just happened?” Chavez whispered.

  “He got the visit he was worried about.”

  “And us?”

  “They must’ve assumed he was running from them. Let’s get out of here before they think twice.”

  48

  JACK HEARD his computer chime, indicating a new e-mail message. He scanned it once, then again. “Hello there. ...” He picked up the phone, called Rick Bell, told him what he had, and a few moments later they were on a conference call with Sam Granger.

  “Tell him, Jack,” Bell prompted.

  “You know the guy we think might be a URC courier?”

  “Hadi?”

  “Right. Got something on his financials—a credit card. He’s moving—right now. An Alitalia 747 from da Vinci in Rome to Pearson outside Toronto.”

  “And from there?”

  “Chicago, but nothing beyond that on his credit card yet.”

  “It’s either his destination or a dry-cleaning stop,” Bell said, using the old CIA tradecraft term for an SDR, or surveillance detection run. “Chicago’s a hub; he could be going anywhere, in country or out again.”

  “How long do we have?” Granger asked.

  “Four hours,” Jack replied.

  Granger asked, “Rick, how solid are we on this guy?”

  “Seventy-thirty. He’s on a known URC distribution list, does a lot of shuttling: here, Europe, South America. Best guess: He’s either a full-fledged courier or a stringer doing logistics for them. Either way, I think he’s worth the effort. We’ve got him on a plane, with a known destination and time. Doesn’t get much better than that.”

  Granger was silent for a few moments, then: “Okay, get Kingfisher in the conference room. I’m coming down.”

  So what’s happening?” asked Dominic Caruso, walking into the conference room. Save Clark and Chavez, the others were already assembled: Brian, Rick Bell, Jerry Rounds.

  Jack explained briefly.

  “Holy shit.”

  “My words exactly.”

  “When’s the plane get in?”

  “Three-twenty, the schedule says,” Jack replied.

  Sam Granger walked in and took his seat at the head of the conference table. “Okay, it’s eight-forty here, figure seventy, seventy-five minutes to Toronto. We don’t have much time to do anything. Not without official support anyway. When are Clark and Chavez due in?”

  Rick Bell checked his watch. “’Bout forty minutes.”

  “Let’s see if we can get them in on this. Jack, you got Hadi’s pedigree?”

  “Yeah.”

  He handed out the documents, and there was sixty seconds of silence as everyone flipped through the pages. Brian asked, “Do we have a photo of this guy?”

  “Nope,” Jack answered. “No description at all.”

  “Rome to Toronto—on from there to Chicago and then . . . No information, right?”

  “Correct,” Jack confirmed with a nod.

  “If this was a Bureau op,” Dominic said, “we’d contact the RCMP and flood plainclothes guys into the airport and try to ID the guy, then follow him to wherever he’s going. But we can’t do that, can we?”

  “Fly to Toronto,” Jack said. “Use the Mark-1 eyeball and pray for luck. Let’s assume we can ID the bird. Then what can we do?”

  “Covert surveillance,” Dominic said. “Try to follow him to wherever the hell he’s going. Ain’t gonna be easy. Even if we succeed, we can’t arrest him, can’t interview him, can’t do much of anything, unless somebody wants to green-light a takedown.”

  “No chance,” Granger said. “He’s the only shot at a bird dog we’ve ever had with the URC. We either tail him, tag him, or snag him—in that order.”

  “We gather information,” Bell told them. “Whatever we get, it’s more than we have now. Small steps, guys.”

  “Let’s go see the boss,” Granger said.

  We have a bird in the air,” Jack told Hendley a few minutes later. “Subject name is Hadi, on his way to Toronto. His plane arrives after three Eastern Time.”

  “Want to try to eyeball the guy?” Hendley asked.

  “It’s a potential curveball hanging over the plate,” Rounds said. “But our subject information is a little thin,” he had to admit.

  “What, exactly, do we have?” Hendley asked. Jack handed over the printout, and Hendley set it on his desktop to read. “Good catch,” he said, looking up briefly. “Okay. Let’s send everybody—”

  “Clark and Chavez are almost wheels-down. Gonna see if we can intercept them.”

  “Good. Jack, Dom, Brian, draw credit cards and cell phones from the second floor.”

  They all drove together to BWI Airport in Brian’s Mercedes C-Class sedan. There was a 737 scheduled to leave for Canada in seventy-five minutes, Rounds told them via phone. Tickets were waiting for all of them. Once inside the terminal, they picked up their tickets, located Clark and Chavez’s flight on the board, and headed out.

  Brian asked Dominic, “How’re the Canadian cops?”

  “Brit tradition, and some of their own. The RCMP—the Mounties—go way back, and they’re pretty good at investigations, but I’ve never interacted with them.”

  “Bright red coats,” Brian said. “But that can make easy targets, especially on the back of a horse.”

  “They’re good guys, too,” Dominic reminded his brother.

  Brian chuckled. “Just a random observation.”

  Clark and Chavez came off the jetway, saw Jack and the others, and walked over. “Door-to-door service?” Clark asked.

  “We got something cooking. You guys up for a little tag?”

  Chavez said, “As long as you find me Starbucks first.”

  Jack explained the situation as they exited the security checkpoint and returned to the ticketing desk for Clark and Chavez’s passes. “So how do we do this?” Jack asked Clark, as they went back through security.

  “Look for a guy who looks like he doesn’t belong. He’s sort of a trained spook. He presumably knows how to be invisible. You look for that. He won’t be looking around like most tourists do, won’t be doing anything to call attention to himself, but he probably also will not be overly familiar with the location. So a business type who doesn’t know the turf. When he looks around, he’ll be doing it carefully. He’ll probably be careful—looking for surveillance. You’ve been taught how to do that. Look for somebody else who’s doing what you were taught. It’s more art than science.”

  “So what the hell do we do?” Brian demanded.

  “Look like an American tourist. Turn everything off, all the training. Just be a normal schlub. Nobody notices them. Unless you’re in Redland—in the old USSR, for example. You especially never smile. The Russians almost never smile, weird thing about their culture. It ain’t easy, I know. But I been doing it for almost thirty years. It’s a little easier to remember when your ass is on the line,” he concluded with a smile.

  “How many times?”

  “Russia? More than once, and I was scared every time. You went in naked, no gun, no place to run to, just a ‘legend,’ a little backstopped cover if you were lucky.”

  “‘Backstopped.’”

  “Background that would stand up to light scrutiny. The hotel you stayed at in the last city, employer’s phone number . . . Stuff like that.”

  “Been meaning to ask you,” Dominic said. “What about these guys, the current class of enemies?”

  Clark thought this over. “Part of me says they’re all the same—different motivation, different outlook, all that, but doing the same shit. But the other part of me isn’t so sure. This bunch at least believes in God, but then they violate the rules of their own religion. Sociopathic personalities? Hell, I don’t know. They have their version of the world, and we have ours, and the twain don’t meet.”

  The flight was c
alled, and they went aboard together. Five seats abreast, separated by the aisle, all in coach. Chavez, with his short legs, didn’t mind, though Clark did. As he grew older, he got stiffer. The usual safety routine. Clark had his belt on and snugged in. He’d learned over the years not to dismiss safety rules in any of their manifestations. The 737-400 taxied out and rotated off the ground as routinely as if the pilot were driving a car. Clark lifted the in-flight magazine and started flipping through the catalog section. He stopped, looking at a toolbox ad.

  “So how exactly are we going to do this?” Jack asked Clark.

  “Play it by ear,” Clark replied, then turned back to his catalog.

  The landing was almost as smooth as the takeoff, followed by the rollout and taxi trip to the terminal, and deplaning, and the usual shuffling walk-off. And the terminal was as nondescript as all the others around the world. They turned left and walked down the wide, anonymous concourse. Signs directed them to international arrivals, and it was just enough of a walk to get the blood flowing in their legs. Information TV monitors told them that the Alitalia flight was still ninety minutes out. A quick check of the area told them that it was easily surveilled. So much the better, there was a casual eatery in direct line of sight, with the usual plastic chairs surrounding plastic tables.

  “Okay, guys, we have maybe two hours, counting processing the mutt through customs,” Clark thought aloud.

  “That’s all?” Jack wondered.

  “Maybe they’ll have a dog wander past the bags, sniffing for drugs, but not much more than that. The Canadians aren’t being all that careful. Bad guys transit Canada. They don’t stay here to do mischief. Good luck for them, I guess. It allows them to save money on security expenditures.”

  “If the bad guys are casual here, you could bag a few fairly easily and put them on a boat to Buffalo.”

  “And then,” Dominic continued the thought, “they’d make enemies they really don’t need. It’s business.”