Jihad (11 page)

Bing had to be cut off quickly. Rubens had seen enough of these political maneuverings to realize, however, that it would have to be done delicately. The first thing he would have to do was take a sounding.

George Hadash was the person to turn to for advice. Thank God he was back on his game. Surely he’d return to the administration in a few months; he and the president had been close for years and years. They worked well together, Hadash’s pragmatism tempering Marcke’s enthusiastic idealism.

“You should all go home and get rest,” Rubens told Telach when he realized she had finished speaking.

“I’ve already sent the Art Room team home. They’ll be back at midnight.”

“I would suggest you go as well.”

“You should sleep, too.”

“Thank you, Marie. I will try to find space for a nap.”

Rubens turned to his e-mail after Telach left, making sure he had nothing major pressing. Then he called over to the hospital, using the direct number to Hadash’s room. The phone rang and rang without being picked up.

Thinking Hadash must still be undergoing tests, Rubens turned his attention to other matters. He tried again around six, surely late enough for the tests to be over. But he got the same response. He hung up, worked through some of the memoranda on his desk, then tried again. This time a woman picked up the phone.

“I was looking for George Hadash,” he told her. “Have I got the right room?”

The woman hesitated, then said she really didn’t know anything. Before Rubens could ask anything else, she hung up. Rubens put the phone down and drummed his fingers on the desk. Then he grabbed the handset and called information for the hospital’s general number. He was connected with a rather officious young man who told him that federal law prohibited the hospital from giving out any information about a patient.

“You don’t have to give me any information.” said Rubens. “Just connect me.”

“I’m sorry. That’s not possible.”

Rubens hung up. Hadash had been divorced for years, but his daughter lived near Washington. Rubens looked the number up in his Rolodex—he hated computerized phonebooks—and called. The answering machine picked up.

“Hello, Irena. This is Bill Rubens. I realize it’s rather silly of me, but I seem to have forgotten your father’s phone number at the hospital and the boobs there won’t give it to me. Would it be possible—”

The phone beeped as Irena picked up on the other end.

“Oh, Bill, it’s terrible,” she said. “Daddy died of complications a few hours ago. I just got back—I can’t believe it.”

“No,” said Rubens. “Oh, no.”

CHAPTER 32

LIA HAD LAST seen Terrence Pinchon three years before. A pair of women who had been working for the International Red Cross had been kidnapped by a group of local thugs. Two separate three-member Delta teams had been tasked to work with the CIA and a Russian intelligence officer to extricate them. Lia, posing as another relief worker, went into the village where the women had last been seen to gather information.

The Russian’s intelligence was less than helpful; he hadn’t even gotten the names of the local government officials right. Sent on a wild goose chase to locate the kidnappers’ hideout, Lia found the real location: two doors down from the aid center.

The local police, with Delta backup, set up a raid. The thieves’ lair turned out to have been abandoned about a half hour before they arrived. The local police chief claimed to be amazed by this unlucky coincidence.

It turned out that the women had been handed over—“sold” would be a better description—to a neighboring warlord, who offered them to the local government in exchange for the release of several prisoners. The prisoners were being held for drug trafficking; the locals were willing to let them go but the regional government was not. Lia found out where the women were being held, organized a reconnaissance with the two other members of her team, and suggested an operation to free them—without help from the locals this time. The operation was vetoed by the CIA paramilitary officer.

So Lia and the Delta boys went ahead with it on their own. It wasn’t exactly Guadalcanal: they drove up in two cars, overpowered the single guard at the isolated house where the women were kept, and drove off with the two women. Not a single shot, not even a warning round, was fired.

The CIA paramilitary officer was livid and insisted that they go ahead with a plan to pay the warlord ransom money.

Was the para getting a kickback? Lia thought so, and told him that to his face. She could still see the red rings around his eyes—she’d nailed him.

Pinchon, though, didn’t think so. With a few months’ seniority over Lia, he was in charge of the detachment, and he bought the argument that the warlord would cause trouble if he wasn’t paid off properly.

“Two months from now we’ll be back to pull out two more people, only they’ll be better protected this time,” said Pinchon. “And maybe we’ll find them dead.”

Lia and the Russian intelligence agent handled the payoff. It was a drive-and-drop operation, with Lia and the Russian driving to a deserted curve on a dusty mountain road, dropping the plastic bag of money, and skedaddling—plenty of sweat but no real hassle. Lia thought the hardest part was surviving the Russian’s vodka breath, fanned by the finicky heater in the small car.

Mission accomplished, she hooked up with the rest of the team and headed out to the local airport. Three miles away, they were ambushed by a rival warlord’s group. Pinchon’s vehicle was destroyed by a massive bomb.

There was no question the Land Cruiser was destroyed—even now Lia could see it burning, the stench of flesh in the air. Her vehicle had been more than a hundred yards farther down the road, and by the time she managed to fend off the gunmen and get to the wreck, Pinchon’s body had been burned to a shriveled black twist. Still taking fire, she and the others had had to retreat; the body wasn’t recovered for two more days.

Lia could still feel the tears from the funeral. And yet it had been a sham.

A sham.

Organized by the CIA, no doubt, since he was working for them now. But why?

LIA COULDN’T SLEEP. She got up and began pacing the hotel room, the adrenaline practically pouring from her sweat glands. She wanted to talk about Pinchon and what had happened—but the person she wanted to talk about it with was Charlie, and he was the last person she could discuss it with. You couldn’t talk about an ex-lover with a present lover, no way.

Terry Pinchon was an ex-lover. A brief lover, definitely ex. Even though her heart had jumped at seeing him.

Even though it jumped now, thinking about him.

How could he let her think he was dead?

And what the hell had she seen in him? He was a jerk.

But her heart was racing, even now.

A handsome jerk.

Lia looked out the window. The sky remained dark black, the stars twinkling brightly. She went back to bed, knowing she needed to rest, also knowing she wouldn’t get any.

CHAPTER 33

IRENA HADASH MET Rubens at the door to her condominium in her stocking feet.

“Thank you for coming over,” she said, reaching to hug him. She smelled of cigarettes—and a little gin, Rubens thought

Certainly she was entitled to both.

“There’s so much—I can’t process it all,” she said.

Rubens followed her inside to the kitchen. Irena had reclaimed the family name after her divorce a year before, and the condo dated from then as well. It was a small, one-story unit in a development that would not have been considered fancy even outside the Beltway.

“I have to find a funeral home to send him to,” said Irena, stacking forms to one side of the table before sitting.

“He’s still at the hospital?”

Instead of answering, she told Rubens that her father had begun to bleed uncontrollably during the operation. “That’s not supposed to happen, is it? It’s not.”

“No,” said Rubens.

“They want to do an autopsy.”

“They should.”

“The president—” Irena stopped. “Do you mind, would it be okay if I smoked?”

“Of course not. It’s your house.” Rubens tried to smile, but even to him his voice sounded awkward and not particularly consoling. He wasn’t good at this sort of thing, but he felt as if he had to do something, had to offer some consolation. He owed George Hadash so much, he had to do something, even if it was inept.

Irena got up and went to the counter, grabbing her pocketbook and struggling with a Bic lighter before getting the cigarette to catch. “I’m out of practice.”

“What were you saying about the president?”

“He said—he told me he thought...”

The phone rang. Irena jerked around to grab it, but then hesitated.

“Do you want me to screen your calls?” Rubens asked.

“Maybe. Yes. Please.” Rubens got up and took the phone off the hook on the third ring.

“Ms. Irena Hadash’s residence,” he said.

“Who the hell are you?” demanded a male voice.

“This is William Rubens. I’m a friend of the family. What can I do for you?”

“Tell Irena her daughter’s father wants to know when he can drop her off.”

Rubens cleared his throat. “There’s been a death in the family.”

“Yeah. Put her on.”

Rubens cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. “Your ex, I believe.”

Irena nodded, took a long puff of the cigarette, then got up again and took the phone, walking with it to the far end of the kitchen before talking. He pretended not to hear her discussing whether or not the kindergartener could stay for a few days; the ex was clearly giving her a hard time. Well, there was no mystery there why she got divorced; the only question was how she could be so even tempered with the jerk.

When she finally hung up, Irena stubbed her cigarette out in the sink and got another.

“I can help arrange for a sitter,” said Rubens, though in actual fact he had no idea how this was done.

“No. John will take her. He just wants to make it as miserable an experience as possible, on the theory that I’ll be less likely to ask in the future.” She smiled faintly. “It’s standard operating procedure. Do you want something? A drink?”

Rubens shook his head. “You started to tell me about the president.”

“He suggested a state funeral. In the Capitol Rotunda. I—he said it was up to me.”

“You don’t want him to have one?” Rubens couldn’t hide his surprise. “It’s an honor due your father.”

“I know. But he was such a private—he didn’t like the pomp and circumstance. You know that, Bill. He...” Her voice faded, but a smile came to her lips. “He didn’t live his life in quotes.”

She made quotes in the air—just as her father might have.

“Yes,” agreed Rubens.

“I remember one time, he’d just come from a meeting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I think, and he had two big stains on his tie.” Irena laughed again, this time much more deeply. “And the tie—I swear I gave it to him for Father’s Day when I was twelve, so it
had
to be fifteen years old. At least. That was my father.”

“He also wrote the definitive book on Asian-American relations in the 1990s,” said Rubens. He stopped himself, cutting off what could have been a long list of Hadash’s achievements.

The thing was, his daughter was right. George Hadash wouldn’t have wanted a state funeral.

They sat silently for a moment, neither one knowing what to say.

“He does deserve to be honored,” said Irena finally. She reached her hand toward Rubens. “You’ll help figure this out?”

“Of course.”

“I remember the first time I met you—Daddy was so careful. Call him Bill, not Billy. Not Billy. But you don’t seem like a Billy. More a William, I think.”

“I’m used to Bill.”

Irena nodded. The truth was, she could call him anything she wanted and he wouldn’t have minded.

CHAPTER 34

“FA
-SHONE!
” KARR SPREAD his arms wide as he approached the short man standing in front of the bubble-front helicopter. “Nice cap you got there, dude. Met fan, huh? You got a hangover, right?”

The pilot—his real name was Ray Fashona, though Karr pronounced it right perhaps one time out of ten—grunted and finished his walk around of the helicopter. A rather old though serviceable Bell 47, it had a towline at the rear with a banner advertising “Turkey No. I Tours” in Turkish and English.

“This part doesn’t say, ‘Hey, look at us, we’re spies,’ does it?” Karr asked, pointing at the banner as he followed Fashona around the rear of the aircraft.

“Wasn’t my idea,” said Fashona.

“Got a hangover, huh?” said Karr. “You drank that raki stuff, right? What is that, like licorice-flavored white lightning?”

“Make sure your seatbelt’s tight. If you fall out, I’m not picking you up.”

A pair of laptops were lashed to the dashboard in front of Karr’s seat on the right-hand side of the chopper. He opened the top unit and turned it on; ninety seconds later he was greeted by the opening screen of the program controlling a boost unit for the eavesdropping device implanted in Asad’s skull. The unit, mounted in the helicopter’s boom tail, was considerably more powerful than the ones they had left on the roof yesterday; even so, its range was only about five miles.

“Good to go,” Karr told Fashona, pulling on his headset.

“Yeah,” said the pilot, cranking his engine to life.

They took a pass about two miles from Asad’s house, confirming that the unit was working and allowing the Art Room to run a full set of diagnostics with the master receiving unit, which was a specially equipped 707 flying at forty-five thousand feet over the Sea of Marmara, ostensibly on a NATO training mission.

“Everything looks good, Tommy,” said Rockman, who’d just come back on duty in the Art Room. “Unit B is going off duty. You guys are it.”

“The A Team is ready,” Karr said, his voice booming over the engines.

“It sounds like Red Lion is getting ready to go for a ride. Remind Fashona he doesn’t have to get too close. We have plenty of tracking units scattered around the city now.”