Jonathan fell back against the bulkhead wall. As clouds closed around the helicopter, his eyes remained glued to the clearing below, where Sultan Haq stood with a dead Marine’s hunting rifle at his shoulder. Haq was looking at Jonathan and Jonathan was looking right back. The warrior raised his arm and pointed a finger and its long curling nail at him. Then he put his head back and cried out for revenge.
White enveloped the chopper and Jonathan could see no more. But the warrior’s eyes stayed with him.
One day, he swore to himself. One day…
10
Frank Connor was still in shock.
“What the hell happened?” he demanded, spreading his arms wide.
Barely two hours earlier, he had watched his best operative being taken away to be murdered. The satellite link to Emma’s com unit had faded in and out, because of either a technical glitch or, more probably, a jamming unit at the airport. The last image he’d received of Emma showed her handcuffed and being forced into Rashid’s car.
Connor, director of Division, turned from the dark video screen and stared out the window. Seven thousand miles from the desert emirate of Sharjah, in Falls Church, Virginia, the afternoon was gray, damp, and bleak. The forested countryside had surrendered its last leaves a week ago. A vista of barren, spindly trees beckoned in every direction. Winter lurked at the door.
“Let’s go over this again,” said Peter Erskine, his deputy and the sole other occupant of the office. “All we can assume is that she’s in Rashid’s custody.”
“Really? I think we can assume quite a bit more than that.” Connor shook his head, dizzy with frustration. He knew full well that they could assume that Emma Ransom, in the guise of Lara Antonova, major in the Russian FSB, had been defrocked as a double agent in the pay of the United States of America, and his meticulously planned operation to assassinate Prince Rashid had quite literally blown up in his, or rather Emma’s, face.
“He knew, Peter. Someone tipped him off about our little gift.”
“We can’t be certain. He did take a shot with the rifle.”
“He had no other choice. He had to save face in front of his men.”
“How many people knew about the rifle?” said Erskine. “You, me, Emma, a couple of our transport guys, and the gunsmiths at Quantico. Rashid is rightfully paranoid. That’s all. Who wouldn’t be, after the close calls he’s had?”
Connor eyed Erskine skeptically. “You telling me it wasn’t you who gave him the heads-up?”
Erskine took the jibe in stride. “He’s on my speed-dial, didn’t you know?”
Connor thought about what he was suggesting. “I hope you’re right and it’s just that Rashid’s got a case of nerves.” He rubbed a meaty hand over his face. “Contact the CIA station chief in Dubai. See if he has any men in place that know the area. I want my girl back.”
“Sir, if I may be so bold,” said Erskine, “any action we take to find Emma will constitute an acknowledgment on our behalf that she’s one of ours. We might as well call up Rashid and tell him that the United States government tried to assassinate him.”
Erskine was tall, urbane, and handsome in the way that only third-generation Grotonians could be. He wore his father’s tortoiseshell eyeglasses and his grandfather’s navy blazer and spoke with his great-grandfather’s Beacon Hill lilt. At thirty-five, he was a young fogey in the prime of his life.
“I think the prince knows that by now,” said Connor.
“Even so, there’s a difference between knowing and knowing. Our two governments still have to do business. Then, of course, there’s the Russian angle. I don’t think Igor Ivanov will be pleased.”
“Screw Ivanov,” said Connor, referring to the chief of the Russian security service. “It’s my job to turn his agents and his job to do the same to mine. Five will get you ten that Rashid is on the phone to Ivanov right now, giving him the news. All I care about is finding Emma.”
“Rashid wouldn’t kill an American agent,” said Erskine. “He doesn’t have the guts.”
“Doesn’t he? He’s a ruthless bastard. I’ll give him that. Besides, technically Emma isn’t an American agent. She’s Russian born and bred, and an honor graduate of the FSB academy at Yasenevo. She might be married to an American, but otherwise she doesn’t have a single official tie to our country.”
Erskine nodded, pushing up his eyeglasses on his patrician nose. “And her years at Division?”
“I don’t think her time with us is on the record books, do you?”
Erskine offered a look of sheepish resignation. “That puts her rather on her own.”
Connor looked away, despising his assistant’s easy cynicism. The fact was, he owed Emma. He’d handpicked her from the open market in the days when Russia was in the tank and a bankrupt FSB had been forced to let nearly all of its agents go. Division was in its infancy then, a brand-spanking-new outfit set up in the deepest corridors of the Pentagon to do the things the White House wanted done but didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to carry out.
The first jobs were in-and-out affairs: assassinations, kidnappings, thefts of classified information. Muscle jobs that emphasized brawn over brain. Operatives were drawn from Delta Force, the Green Berets, and the SEALs as well as the CIA’s Special Operations Group. But as the successes mounted, Division grew more ambitious. “Proactive” was the watchword. More complex plans were drawn up. Even the most heavily protected targets were deemed game. Operatives were called on to assume false identities and spend long periods in foreign locales. To bolster language capabilities, Division began looking for talent outside the fold. Freelance personnel from Britain, France, and Italy were recruited. And from Russia.
Division was the president’s secret weapon and operated at his sole command. Covert foreign policy conducted at the barrel of a gun, with no congressional oversight allowed.
But times changed. The outrage that followed 9/11 faded. There had been no further attacks on American soil, though Connor knew firsthand that plenty had been thwarted. If Americans had a short memory, he liked it that way. It meant that his country was safe.
Connor looked at Erskine and made a decision.
“You’re right,” he said. “I was being hasty. We can’t go out there running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”
“I’m pleased you see it that way,” said Erskine. “The last thing this agency needs is to get into hot water again. As far as everyone outside this office is concerned, Emma Ransom is Lara Antonova, a card-carrying FSB spook.”
“You’re right, Pete. This is no time to get emotional.”
Erskine evinced a grimace, as if to say he shared Connor’s concern for her welfare. “Look at it this way. If anyone can take care of herself, it’s Emma Ransom. She’s one tough cookie.”
“That she is.”
“We have to tie this operation off at the source. There’s no other way. Don’t take it hard, Frank. The woman knew what she was getting herself into.”
“Did she, Pete? You really think so?” Connor shook his head ruefully. “And did your wife? Did she know she was going to be an intel widow, or did you wait till after the marriage to tell her?”
Erskine was a newlywed, six months in, and married to a gal who worked reasonable hours as an attorney over at the Justice Department. He was at the part where he had to call his wife every evening to explain why he wouldn’t be home at seven.
“Sometimes, kid,” Connor went on, “I wonder if any of us really know what we’re getting into.”
At fifty-nine years of age, standing five feet nine inches tall and weighing 260 pounds, Frank Connor was the poster boy for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and all the perils to personal health that accumulated after a life spent eating, drinking, and working to excess. His chin drooped over his collar. His thatch of ginger hair had thinned to a wisp, and his cheeks were decorated with enough broken capillaries to map the United States interstate system. His blue eyes, though, were still vital and stood ready for a challenge.