Rules of Betrayal (36 page)

“Frank, if I knew where Danni was, I’d tell you. She’s on leave. She could be anywhere. She has lots of miles racked up, you know what I mean? She’s due back in six days. The girl needs her rest.”

Connor hung up the phone, then placed a call to a closer destination: Fort Meade, Maryland, home of the National Security Agency, or NSA. The NSA was responsible for gathering signals intelligence from around the world. Essentially, this meant eavesdropping on every known mode of telecommunications, both terrestrial and satellite-based. His conversation was brief. He read off four telephone numbers and requested a log of all calls made to and from them for the past thirty days. The numbers belonged to Peter Erskine’s private cell phone, his company BlackBerry, his home landline, and his home fax.

Treason was a serious matter, and Connor was not about to point any fingers before marshaling his evidence. Until then, he’d have to do his utmost to restrict Erskine’s access to any and all information relating to Ransom’s search for the warhead. There was more to it than that. Erskine was only a pawn, a single node in a larger operation. Connor was more interested in discovering whom he worked for and breaking down the entire operation. Arrest Erskine now and his handlers would shut down and go into hiding. In six months’ time they’d be back, using new names and new aliases, with the same devilish intent of corrupting Division and its sister agencies within the intelligence community.

Connor followed the call to the NSA with one to an organization on his side of the Potomac, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN. FinCEN was one of the unsung heroes in the fight against terrorism. Created to investigate financial misdeeds within the United States, it had seen its portfolio increase significantly since 9/11 and was now the foremost actor in the international battle against terrorist finance.

Connor greeted his contact, supplied Erskine’s Social Security
number, and requested a full workup on his financial history. He was most interested in Erskine’s bank accounts and asked that statements from the past six months be scrutinized with a view toward determining the identity of any person or party who might have transferred monies into the accounts. Requests like this were FinCEN’s bread and butter. Information would be forthcoming within twenty-four hours.

The office phone rang. Connor finished with FinCEN and picked up. “Yeah?”

“I’ve found Colonel al-Faris.”

“Thanks, Pete,” he said. “Put him through.”

A pause as the call was transferred.

“Frank—it is Nasser. It is very late here. Please tell me how I can be of assistance to my American friends.”

“Hello, Nasser,” began Connor. “I was interested in—” He stopped speaking in midsentence. Something had caught his attention.

A red cursor flashed on the screen of his computer monitor. A window opened, and a prompt read, “Remora 575 Active. Currently downloading 1 of 2,575 files.” An IP address followed. “Time remaining: two minutes.”

“Frank … are you there?”

“Holy mother of God,” said Connor, his eyes glued to the screen. “I gotta call you back.”

Remora 575 belonged to Jonathan Ransom. With amazement verging on disbelief, Connor stood motionless, watching as the files from Lord Balfour’s hard drive were copied and transferred onto his own.

And sometimes your prayers are answered even as the world is falling apart around you
.

Sultan Haq woke, alarmed
.

Bolting upright, he stared into the darkness. A face stared back. Blue eyes. Blond hair. Heavy black-rimmed glasses. It was Revy, the Swiss doctor who had so freely insulted him and his country this evening.

Haq met the man’s regard, despising him, as he viscerally despised all men of the West. For his privilege and arrogance, but mostly for his false, ingrained superiority. The face stared back, saying nothing, yet demanding something of him nonetheless. Haq looked more closely at him, frustration welling up inside him. And more—a nagging certainty that he was being deceived. He looked past the glasses and studied the blue eyes.

His chief interrogator at Camp X-Ray had had blue eyes, and the same blond hair. Looking into Revy’s face, Haq felt himself drawn back into the interrogation room. He remembered the fluorescent lights, his captors’ greedy, dissatisfied faces, the rank breath and insistent questioning, and then the hood, the abrupt tilting of his head, the last desperate breath before the torrent of water. Water in place of breath. Water in place of light. Water coming as death to carry him away on its fluid, relentless waves.

And there, high in the corner, taunting him when the hood was removed and he could breathe again, the undying television, blaring on and on, playing the same dreadful images, the dancing sailors crossing New York City, belting out cheery, hopeful songs. American songs.

Haq closed his eyes to ward off the memories, but they persisted.
Images from a different world. A barbarous, deceitful world. A world Haq swore to end.

The interrogator was a soft, weak man, but the blue eyes staring back at him in the darkness were neither soft nor weak. They were formidable adversary’s eyes. And so Haq asked what it was that Revy demanded of him. For what purpose had he lured him from his sleep?

Haq believed in the power of dreams.

Revy didn’t answer, and Haq knew he was baiting him, daring him to guess his secret.

Sultan Haq stared into the darkness until the face receded and there was nothing but black, and a terrible gnawing settled on his soul.

Emma came to him in
his sleep. He felt her warmth beside him and his body responded. He touched her and she moaned. Jonathan was dreaming, of course. It was only there that he could see her as she was, or perhaps as he wanted her to be. He ran his hands over his wife’s body, and he stirred as if discovering her for the first time. He saw her lying on the grass beneath him. It was night in the green hills of West Africa where they’d first met and he’d fallen irrevocably in love with her. He undid her belt buckle, yanking the leather strap free, and slid her jeans over her strong, eager hips. She parted her legs and whispered his name.
Jonathan. Love me
. A warm breath caressed his ear, his neck. His heartbeat quickened. He met her eyes, and as he entered her, she nodded to say it was all right. More than all right.

“Jonathan.”

He woke with a start. Emma sat on the bed beside him, her hair down, shirt unbuttoned to the waist. “Shhh,” she said as she removed her clothing.

She pulled back the sheets and climbed on top of him, back arched, eyes locked on his as he pushed into her. He gasped, and she covered his mouth with animal swiftness. She said nothing but shook her head, always watching him, her breath quickening. Light from the approaching dawn fell over her breasts, which appeared fuller than he remembered, her nipples exceptionally pert. Grasping her hips, he drove into her and she fought back, their tempo growing more rapid, more violent, Emma lowering her head, letting her hair fall on his chest, sweating now, her breathing labored, hard fought, her motions unrelenting, urging him on, demanding his attention, until he could match her no more and he surrendered and allowed himself release.

A moment later her body began to tremor and a languorous moan issued from her clenched teeth and she buried her face in his neck and expelled a long, hot breath.

“Come with me,” she said, still gasping. “I’m leaving first thing in the morning. I can get you out.”

“No.”

“You’ll die here.”

“Maybe.”

She pushed herself off him. “For me?”

“I’m not on your team, Emma.”

“And for your child?”

Jonathan pushed himself up on an elbow. “What? You’re—”

“I’m pregnant.”

“How far?”

“Four months.”

Jonathan sat up, stunned. “London?”

Emma nodded.

“You’re sure that’s when it happened?” The words came of their own volition, a reminder of his distrust. Emma slapped him very hard and slid to the edge of the bed. Jonathan stared out the window. His room faced east, and he saw the first sliver of the sun edge above the horizon. “Then why are you here? Why are you doing all this?”

“To save myself.”

Jonathan caught something in her voice, an intimation of a task yet to be accomplished. “What does that mean?”

Emma met his gaze and held it. “Come with me and you’ll find out. But you have to trust me.”

Jonathan looked at her belly and saw that it was round where before it had been flat. Her breasts
were
larger, fuller. He reached out to touch her cheek, but she clutched his hand and turned it away. Joy and sadness filled him in equal measure. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Then you’re a fool.”

And she rolled off the bed and left as silently as she had come.

It was eight a.m. and
Blenheim was in full swing. In the motor court, the Range Rovers had been pulled from their garage bays and were being washed and waxed. The sound of horses being led to and from the stables carried in the sunlit air. The house trembled with the comings and goings of its many residents. Strangely, the area by the maintenance building was lacking any activity. There were no trucks nearby. No sign of the armed guards Jonathan had observed yesterday keeping watch on the entrance.

At first Jonathan surmised that the warhead had been moved. The previous evening’s attack had spooked Balfour, and he’d wasted no time in spiriting his crown jewel to a safer location. Then another idea came to him. It was precisely because the attack had spooked Balfour that he would not risk moving it. The calm was a facade, Balfour’s effort to avoid drawing attention to the shed. Something moved at the corner of his eye, and Jonathan gained proof that his hunch was correct. A pair of snipers lay flat on the garage roof, keeping an eye on the shed’s perimeter. Snipers did not guard an empty building.

All this Jonathan took in from his second-floor window. Freshly shaved and showered, and dressed in shorts and a T-shirt for a morning run, he felt himself in the grip of a feeling unlike any he’d known. Part call to action, part thirst for revenge, a manic desire stirred inside him to do whatever was necessary to see his job through. His own safety and well-being did not come into play. He would pass along the information he had gathered to Frank Connor. It was that simple. He wasn’t sure if it was a fool’s courage or a father’s first and last duty to
his unborn child. He knew only that actions defined a man, and that waiting was not an option.

It was Emma, of course. Her visit had awakened feelings he’d thought dead. Or maybe he had preferred them that way. The ego’s almighty and seductive trickery. No matter the scope of her betrayal, the enormity of her crimes, he could not rid himself of his love for her. She was poison, yet he tasted her incautiously. He was a man of discipline, yet she defeated his will. Her essence tormented him. Her competence inspired him. And now he had learned that she was the mother of his child. For that, he swore allegiance to her forever. Allegiance, but not assistance. If he could not defeat her in love, he would defeat her in war.

Turning, Jonathan strode to the dressing area and removed a platinum American Express card from his wallet. The card bore Michel Revy’s name but it was not a credit card, nor had it ever belonged to him. The card was one of Frank Connor’s neatest tricks. Embedded in its skin was a powerful counterjamming device capable of defeating the wireless cage Balfour had erected over his estate.

Connor’s instructions were clear. As soon as Jonathan came into possession of information relating to the warhead’s location and its sale and transfer to Balfour’s client, he was to transmit it to Division. This could be done in one of three ways. If Jonathan was able to free himself from Balfour and get liberty outside Blenheim, he could simply call the secure line programmed into the phone. If that were not the case (and Connor had been plainspoken about his belief that Balfour would not permit Jonathan to leave the compound), Jonathan could transmit the encrypted information to a secure site via his laptop. As there was no wireless service and no Internet connection in his room, the laptop was also out.

The last option involved activating the counterjamming device in the credit card. Once activated, the card possessed sufficient power to defeat the most robust jamming system for five to eight minutes. During that time Jonathan would be able to place a call to Division, transmit his information, and receive instructions as to his further actions. There was only one catch. Connor had been up front in explaining
that Balfour’s security team would immediately notice the disruption in the jamming system, and, as important, would be able to triangulate the location of the counterjamming device within sixty seconds. Use of the credit card meant certain detection, and thus certain death.

Jonathan slipped the card into his shorts along with his phone and quietly left his room. He paused in the hallway, looking left and right, and decided to use the back stairs, which passed adjacent to the kitchen. The hallway was empty, and with every step his confidence grew. Once outside, he would jog past the stables and across the meadow Balfour had named Runnymede to the farthest corner of the estate. The farther he was from the jamming signal, the greater the counterjamming device’s ability to defeat it. He passed the reproduction of
Blue Boy
and the framed collection of medieval fighting irons and wondered what was going to happen to all of Balfour’s possessions.

To his right a door opened and Mr. Singh stepped out, blocking his path. Jonathan offered a polite good morning and walked around the man-mountain, not slowing his stride. Mr. Singh’s phone rang, and Jonathan heard him say in the queen’s English, “Good morning, m’ lord.”

Reaching the stairs, Jonathan put his hand in his pocket, fingering the credit card for reassurance. As he descended the stairs, he was met by the smell of sausage and eggs and all the wonderful scents of a country breakfast. The chef stood by the stairs, clutching a basket of muffins. Jonathan was forced to engage her in conversation, politely declining the offer of a muffin, French toast, and eggs Benedict. He secured his escape by accepting a red apple from the fruit bowl and promising to return after his run. Mollified, the chef attended to her stove and he crossed the last few meters to the door.