Isabella was impatient. “Yes.”
“Pinch the ash you see and smell it; taste it as well if you like.”
Isabella did so and shook her head in astonishment. “That can’t be possible.”
“What isn’t possible?”
“I smoked a joint that I rolled with cannabis resin inside. It turned out not to have resin in it, yet it produced ash that did.” She was flummoxed. “How is that possible?”
“It’s not. It’s magic.” Sahir tapped his empty glass. “Could I trouble you for another milk?”
Isabella burst out laughing. “Of course, sweetie. You know, you’re great company. Stay as long as you like.” She moved to the kitchen, holding Sahir’s glass.
“I can’t stay too long.” Sahir followed her into the kitchen, yanked back her head, held her tight, and plunged a tranquilizer dart into her neck. “Not long now,” he whispered. He dragged her backwards as she lost consciousness, then he forced her limp body into the black canvas bag.
Chapter 10
It’s an odd tradition to give a condemned man a hearty last meal before a rope is put around his neck or he stands in front of a firing squad. I’d have thought his nerves would benefit far more from a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of Scotch. It’s not as if he would need food to fuel his body, and I can’t imagine a man would be hungry before death.
I wasn’t hungry right now as I stared at my meal of steak, fries, and salad. No doubt the food in the diner was good. It looked good. But I just couldn’t eat any of it. Instead, I sipped my black coffee while trying to come up with an excuse for the rather scary-looking waitress as to why I’d not touched anything on my plate. I toyed with the idea of telling her that I was unwell, or alternatively telling her the truth — that my name was Will Cochrane and tomorrow she would hear about my death.
I decided to take the cowardly route; I waited for her to turn her back on me, left cash on the table, and walked fast out of the diner. I told myself I’d done this because I needed to retain every ounce of courage I had in case I needed to fight to save my life later on. It was horseshit. The truth was that nothing terrifies me more than scary women. That had been ingrained in me by, among others, a child-hating female instructor who’d taught me to swim by pushing my face in the water and pulling me out by my hair, Mrs. Eat Less, and an Irish woman from Killarney who’d loved making homemade bread and bombs.
It was raining hard and I was glad, because I didn’t want sunshine right now. Good weather makes people happy, and I didn’t like the notion that D.C. residents could be walking around with smiles on their faces on the day that I might die.
I got in my car, turned on the ignition, put my seat belt on, and muttered, “Fuck off” as the belt’s warning system started doing its thing.
It was nearly 9:00 p.m.
Trapper was due to call me in one hour.
I drove into downtown D.C., left my car in a parking lot, pulled my jacket hood over my head, and got on foot for no reason other than the fact that I needed some air and time to think. I walked along a broad avenue and passed a block-long neoclassical government building with an endless row of columns illuminated for dramatic effect. But the beauty around me didn’t register.
I wondered whether going after Trapper alone was the right thing to do when I could have easily availed myself of support from CIA paramilitary officers. But I was no different from most spies; we had to do things alone because it’s how we’d been trained. You put a bunch of guys together, and you inevitably have a weak link. You let loose a spy, and he or she achieves tremendous success or dies. There’s no in between, no weak link, nothing but uncompromising absolutes. And if you agree to accept a challenge and go out alone, there’s no turning back; you have to keep going to survive. You march or die, as my seasoned Legionnaires would yell at me every day during the brutality of my basic training. March or die; spy or die. I’d traded one for the other and in doing so had jettisoned camaraderie in favor of solitude. I’d sought this, and I was seeking it right now, because I felt very angry and needed to get up close to Trapper, with no witnesses, in order to kill him.
I’d just returned to my car when my phone rang.
“Mr. Cochrane?”
“Yes.”
“You recall we had an appointment to speak now?”
I placed my hand over my handgun. “I do.”
“Good.” As ever, Trapper’s English was well spoken, no hint of an Indian accent. Zakaria was right: Trapper came from a privileged background and had no doubt received his education at a school that believed that good intellect was impotent if combined with anything other than pitch-perfect diction. “Are you alone?”
“Always.”
“Always? Oh, dear.” Trapper sounded earnest when he said, “I know how that feels.”
I wanted Trapper to get back to taunting me, rather than finding mutual ground about our sad backgrounds. “I’m glad you do. Why do you want to kill me?”
“Because you killed a senior Taliban leader who…”
“Bullshit. You’re not Taliban or affiliated to them. This is cock and bull.”
“Cock…?”
“And fucking bull.”
“My goodness, Mr. Cochrane, your language… Are you alone?”
“I’m alone.”
“I do hope so, because if you’re lying to me, things will go bad for you.”
“I’m alone!”
“You’re in D.C.?”
“You know I am.”
“You have a vehicle?”
“I’m in one right now.”
“A road atlas or GPS?”
“I’ve got both.”
“Excellent. I want you to drive northwest, away from the city, and into the state of Maryland. Go to Germantown. Depending on your exact location in D.C., the journey should be no longer than one to two hours. When you reach Germantown, I want you to drive for another five or ten miles — I don’t care about the exact distance, just so long as you find somewhere deserted and then stop and wait for me to call you with further instructions.”
He hung up.
I drove out of the diner parking lot and headed out of the city on Route 270, while hoping I wasn’t making an awful mistake.
Seventy-two minutes later, I reached Germantown and drove for another six minutes before stopping on the side of a deserted highway, amid featureless open countryside and farmland. Rain continued to pound my vehicle. All I could see was the few yards of road ahead, illuminated by my headlights. Everything else was pitch black.
I knew this wasn’t the place where I’d die. Trapper had not been too specific about my route through Maryland and where I should stop. And I was certain I hadn’t been followed here. No — this wasn’t a kill zone; that place was somewhere else in Maryland. Soon I’d find out where it was.
I felt different from when I’d pursued Abram through the sewers. Then, I’d been totally unprepared for the possibility he wanted to kill me. But this was a premeditated moment. And though Trapper had the upper hand, we were both prepared for the probability that soon one of us would die. I’d been in situations like this before, and each time I had felt physically numb, mentally focused, and dislocated from everything that wasn’t going to help me survive. Tonight was no different.
I waited, my engine idling, my seat-belt warning system pinging.
Nearly one hour later, Trapper called. “Are you where you’re supposed to be?”
“Yes.”
He gave me precise details for my next stop. “I will meet you there.”
After covering an additional forty-two miles, I drove off the highway onto a rutted dirt track. More flat, open fields were on either side of me. There were no signs of any buildings, though it was so dark that it was impossible to know what lay ahead.