Ronnie rubbed her eyes, picking up the stapled document of forty-one pages from her nightstand. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well make a plan. She looked around the cluttered bedroom, littered with laundry and dry-cleaning bags. Boxes from takeout pizza and Chinese restaurants perched on stacks of books and magazines. Housekeeping definitely wasn’t her strong suit, but she was a hell of a planner.
Palmer had set her priorities, beginning with the circle of employees closest to the president-and that put the United States Secret Service at the top of her list.
Ronnie was instructed to pay attention to key personnel, particularly the protective details of the president and vice president. Between the special agents and the Secret Service Uniformed Division, the lists contained over two hundred names. At first, she’d suggested it would take her a week per background. Palmer had countered, kindly but firmly, that she needed to review two per day, clearing these to assist her in her efforts. If she came across something out of the ordinary, she was to call him-and him only.
He stressed the fact, at least a half dozen times, that there were very few people she could trust.
The special agents in charge of each protective detail had been cleared already by Palmer himself. They would conduct personnel reviews of their own. Ronnie would provide an independent analysis as an extra precaution.
Scanning the entire document before she made a concrete plan, her eyes fell to a name at the bottom of the seventh page-Nadia Arbakova, a special agent in the Protective Intelligence Division at Secret Service Headquarters in D.C. Arbakova listed a Special Agent James Doyle as her emergency contact. Ronnie remembered the name and flipped back through the previous pages until she found it. Just as she suspected, Agent James Doyle was the whip on the vice presidential detail. An experienced agent, the whip wasn’t a supervisor but took charge when the shift leader wasn’t around. Doyle’s connection to Arbakova and his relatively powerful position made the two agents a natural place to begin. She could knock two investigations out in half the time and give herself a little breathing room.
“You just got yourself moved up to page one, Comrade Arbakova.” Ronnie did her best to imitate her father’s thick tones. A note beside Arbakova’s name indicated she was a second-generation American who spoke fluent Russian. Her home address was in Rockville. Ronnie would pass right by it on the way into the city.
With a more concrete plan, Garcia gave a shuddering stretch, raising both arms high above her head. Maybe sleep wouldn’t prove so elusive. She’d stop off tomorrow morning and chat with Nadia Arbakova, catch her while she was getting ready for work and wasn’t suspecting a visit. Maybe she could practice a little of her rusty Rusky. And, if everything in Arbakova’s background came back clear, maybe they could even become friends, even if she was in law enforcement.
CHAPTER NINE
Rockville, Maryland 0130 hours
A predatory expedition. Turcoman slavers-the bane of Central Asia in the 1800s-called it alaman. Russians had been their favorite prey. Mujaheed Beg took a comb from his shirt pocket and ran it through thick black hair, making certain the high, Elvis Presley pompadour was in place. He smiled at the notion that he was up to the same work as his Turcoman ancestors-on American soil. A heavy black brow over a hooked nose gave him the air of an extremely dangerous man. An American professor at Berkeley, where he’d received his undergraduate degree in marketing, had dubbed him Evil Elvis. Instead of taking it as an insult, Beg reveled in the reputation.
He had been born near the ancient Silk Road city of Merv, and Turcoman blood coursed through his veins. Predation came as naturally to him as it had to his merciless forbearers. He smiled when he thought of the old Silk Road axiom: If on your path you meet a deadly viper and a man from Merv-kill the Mervi first.
Beg drove his rented Saturn past the row of untrimmed shrubs and trees in front of Nadia Arbakova’s house for the third time. The whitewashed brick appeared to glow under the hazy sliver of a crescent moon. It was set well back from the road, providing the perfect cover. Had his attack been destined for a trained CIA operative, he would have been more careful. Counterintelligence agents were, as a rule, much more wary than law enforcement. Even the potbellied bureaucrat handcuffed and lolling in and out of unconsciousness in the seat beside him had installed CCTV cameras and a decent security system in his home. Spies, even the fat ones, took precautions against people like Mujaheed Beg-but they were never quite good enough.
Nadia Arbakova was no spy. What’s more, her personnel file ranked her as only a mediocre police officer. At heart, she was an analyst, much happier working puzzles than arresting criminals.
Her scant record showed she qualified twice a year with her handgun, but her shooting skills were average at best. She would be easy to kill.
Beg gave the unconscious boob in his passenger seat a lopsided smile. There was yet much to do before he killed anyone.
The cell phone in his jacket pocket began to buzz.
“It’s the boss,” Beg muttered to the drooling Arab beside him. “He always bothers me when I’m working.”
He answered curtly. “Yes?”
“Peace be unto you,” the voice said with the rapid click of Pakistani English. “I trust God has preserved you…”
“Peace be unto you as well, sir,” Beg said. He held the phone away from his ear and whispered to the unconscious man beside him, as if giving an explanation. “The boss always has to be so forward…”
There was a pause on the line. “Are you with someone?”
“I am,” Beg said.
“Very well.” Dr. Nazeer Badeeb continued clicking away. He never seemed to care if Beg was busy doing his work or not. “I am concerned about this woman. She is beginning to share her theories. I fear she will… up some eyelashes.”
The doctor firmly believed American intelligence services were less likely to eavesdrop on conversations in English-though, Beg thought, what this one spoke could hardly be considered English.
“Eyebrows, not eyelashes,” Mujaheed sighed, correcting his employer’s idiom. “You mean to say raised some eyebrows.”
“Of course,” Badeeb rambled on. “As you say. But I am nervous nonetheless.”
“I will take care of that very soon.” The Mervi’s eyes shifted to the fat Arab, who snored fitfully in the pale green glow of the dashboard lights.
There was the distinct metallic clink of a lighter on the other end of the line as Badeeb lit a cigarette before he continued his staccato whining. “We wish them confused and frightened. Disorganized, not fortified. They must not connect too much too soon.”
“I understand,” Beg said. “I should begin my work then.”
“Of course.” Dr. Badeeb released a long sigh, sounding like a windstorm over the phone. Mujaheed envisioned the cloud of cigarette smoke enveloping his employer’s sweating face. “You will find out how much she knows?”
“With great pleasure,” the Mervi said. He looked through the foliage at the pool of yellow light spilling out Arbakova’s bedroom window and put the car in gear.
Parking in a deserted alley behind the house, Beg roused the snoring Arab next to him with a stiff elbow to the floating ribs. A heavy dose of Rohypnol-roofies-had made the man pliable, but dazed. It had also caused him to spill the contents of his bladder all over the passenger seat. The man, whose name was Haddad, yowled in pain. His cry trailed off in a pitiful whimper.
“What do you want from me?” he sobbed.
“Whoa!” Beg said, tossing his head in a passable impression of Elvis. “You’re all shook up… What do you think I want?” Beg sneered. “Half the world knows what you do for a living. It is not the secret you believe it to be.” He turned, holding up a black box the size of a garage door opener. Haddad’s eyes flew wide. He began to fling his head from side to side.