“Phil,” Nick muttered.
Jackson nodded. “Yes.”
Nick pointed to the man next to him. “Who. .”
“Don’t recognize him yet?”
Nick shook his head.
“Keep watching.”
Nick studied the man’s face. He wore a beard, sunglasses and a wide brim hat you might see on a tourist, yet there was something familiar about his mannerisms. The way he carried himself, full of confidence and bravado.
Jackson punched a couple of keys on his keyboard and the figures came to life.
“This is seven hours ago,” Jackson said. “About two-thirty in the morning, Vegas time. It’s a surveillance recording from the Rio. I understand Phil frequents the place quite a bit.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed as he struggled to make the man next to his brother. There was no audio, but it was obvious the two men were having fun. Phil’s normally bloodshot eyes were in full bloom. The man elbowed his brother as if they were old buddies while Phil tossed back the last of his rum and coke with a flip of his wrist. The drink was so fresh it still had a full complement of ice cubes. It was his brother all right, Nick thought. He’d never seen Phil allow a drink to linger.
Now, Phil raised his hand to a cocktail waitress. The tourist pulled Phil’s arm down and raised his own hand, waving a wad of folded bills. Phil made a half-hearted attempt to decline the offer, but the tourist seemed determined to buy Phil a drink. By the way Phil swayed, it wasn’t the first drink he’d accepted.
Nick breathed a sigh of relief. Phil must have gotten swindled by a pro and Walt was offering to keep it confidential. Let the FBI handle it in house. It was something Walt would do. It made sense now why Nick was called in alone.
Except he was wrong. Dead wrong.
“There,” Jackson said, stopping the playback. In the frozen image the tourist had lowered his sunglasses and seemed to be looking directly at the camera. His expression transformed into a sinister glare. His eyes were like black holes and his smile was pure acid.
Nick’s tongue instantly dried up.
“Recognize him now?” Jackson said.
Water spewed from Nick’s plastic bottle as he clenched his fists. Sitting next to his brother was the face of death. Kemel Kharrazi. Nick stared so intently at the image that he tried to will himself into the scene, or better yet, suck Kharrazi out of the image and pummel him from head to toe.
“Nick, what exactly did Rashid say to you during the arrest?”
Nick noticed that Phil was wearing his lucky shirt. The Preakness Stakes shirt that he wore the day he hit the pick-six for fifty thousand. Nick never had the heart to remind him that he wore the same damn shirt every day for the next three months until he relinquished every last penny back to Pimlico.
Nick looked at up at Jackson and said, “He’s got four kids.”
Jackson nodded. “I know.”
The silence was filled with a heavy sigh from Jackson and the crumpling and uncrumpling of Nick’s water bottle.
“Rashid asked me if I knew who would come after me,” Nick finally answered.
“I see.”
Nick stared at the image. It was the most incongruous pairing he’d ever seen. Like Hitler next to a ballerina.
Nick tried to remove emotion from the equation and mine the analytical side of his brain. He sensed Jackson watching him and he was careful not to overreact. He didn’t want to give Jackson an excuse to keep him off the case. “Tell me about it, Walt. What does he want?”
“He wants to trade your brother for Rashid.”
Nick kept his voice even. “We’re going to trade an alcoholic gambler for a known assassin? That’s the deal?”
Jackson nodded deliberately, as if he were measuring Nick’s reaction before continuing the discussion.
“All right,” Nick said. “Exactly how many nanoseconds did you wait before you said no?”
Jackson frowned. “He’s still your brother, Nick.”
“He’s dead already and you know it.”
Jackson squeezed the back of his neck like he was juicing a grapefruit. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We just received the fax an hour ago. I’m still trying to assemble a strategy.”
Nick placed the deformed, half-empty water bottle on the corner of Jackson’s desk, leaned forward, and stared hard at his boss. “Now tell me what’s really going on here, Walt.”
Jackson stood and began a slow pace. He carried his large frame smoothly, like a cougar on the prowl. Back and forth he strode. Nick’s eyes followed him like match point at Wimbledon.
Jackson flipped off the overhead lights and pulled a remote control device from his pants pocket. When he clicked a button on the remote, an illuminated image was projected onto the white wall behind his desk. The faces of more than twenty Kurdish terrorists came to life. Some were grainy surveillance shots, while others were clear mug shots. Although their names were unknown to the American public, they were as familiar to Nick as Babe Ruth was to a Yankees fan. They belonged to a militant faction of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party known as the Kurdish Security Force. The name was a direct response to the Turkish Security Force, which had been tormenting the Kurds for more than two decades. They were better known as Kharrazi’s death squad. When President Merrick ordered troops to the area, his intention was to prevent Kharrazi and the KSF from dividing Turkey along ethnic lines.
Jackson passed a laser pointer over the medley of terrorists. “Langley has reported these soldiers missing from Kurdistan. More importantly, three of them have been sighted illegally entering the country. One was detained in a Miami airport. One spotted departing a cruise ship in San Diego. Plus, we already know about Rashid and Kharrazi. I suspect the cockroach theory might be applicable here. For every one we know about there are probably twenty more that have evaded our intelligence.”
Jackson clicked off the projector and turned on the lights. He sat down and kept a careful eye on Nick.
“I’m okay,” Nick said, clenching every muscle that was undetectable. “I need to know everything. Don’t skip a comma.”
Jackson hesitated, then lowered tired eyes. “The CIA had an agent infiltrate the KSF in Kurdistan a couple of months back. Ten days ago he arrived in Toronto with two groups of soldiers, including Kharrazi. He was with the lead group as they were about to enter the United States on horseback. Somewhere in the Canadian Rockies. The agent was with them up until 2 AM Tuesday morning. At that time they were five miles from the border. That’s when Langley lost communications. Kharrazi discovered the plant.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because Thursday morning the agent’s family received a package. The agent’s six-year-old daughter anxiously opened the box she thought was a present from her daddy in Turkey.”
Nick held up his hand to prevent Jackson from finishing the story. He already knew the ending.
Jackson nodded. “That’s right. The agent’s severed head stared back at his little girl.”
Nick covered his face with his hands and took deep breaths. He imagined the look on his niece’s face as his brother’s head was delivered to their home.
“I’ve been going to too many funerals, Walt.”
“Let’s not bury Phil just yet. There’s still reason for hope.”
Nick looked up to catch Jackson’s expression. It was sincere, without pity.
“Why?”
“Because,” Jackson said, “we’ve got explicit directions. There are timetables to be met and corroborating evidence of his health included in the demands. Kharrazi wouldn’t throw those in if he were going to bluff us into believing Phil’s alive.”
“Okay,” Nick said. “Now tell me why we’re just hearing about this plant. Kemel Kharrazi is in Canada with a couple of dozen KSF soldiers-the best trained infantry in the world, and Langley waits until they’ve breached our border before we’re notified?”