“Anybody claim the hit yet?”
“Nothing credible. Right now, the evidence points to a lone nutcase, another loyal reader of Inspire.” She paused and narrowed her eyes. “Unless there’s something more you’re not sharing. Was there a reason you happened to be at the scene?”
Nick hesitated, considering the oddly timed chess invitation. His subconscious told him that it could not be separated from the attack, but he refused to accept the resulting conclusion. If the chess invitation and the suicide bombing were connected, then the attack was personal. The implication, the responsibility for all that carnage, was too terrible to acknowledge. “No. I was off duty, just coming from the train station on a personal errand.”
CJ nodded. “Then go home. Kiss that beautiful wife of yours and tuck the baby into bed.” She looked him up and down, wrinkling her brow. “I’m sure your family is worried sick about you. Call me in a few days when things settle down and we’ll do lunch. Until then, I don’t want to see you, hear from you, or even hear about you.” She guided him toward the edge of her platform. “You’re not the only game in town, Nick. Let the rest of us do our part.”
Nick did not make it home in time to tuck Luke into bed as CJ suggested. The sun had set long before he reached his house in Chapel Point, Maryland, south of DC. Katy understood. She was not happy with his long absence or his refugee appearance, but she understood. After suffering through a home invasion and a subsequent kidnapping by Chinese operatives the year before, she had been read-in to Nick’s unique line of work. She knew why he stayed at the scene of the bombing.
Nick’s father did not.
“What makes you so important that you had to abandon your family in the middle of a terrorist attack?”
“I didn’t abandon them. I left them in your care.”
“I was wounded.” Nick’s father raised a hand to touch a wide bandage on the side of his face.
There were also bandages on his neck and his forearm. Nick shuddered to think what all that flying glass would have done to his son if his dad hadn’t been there. He was grateful, but he was too busy defending himself to say it. “That’s funny,” he argued, “because I distinctly remember you telling me that you were fine. You just got a few scratches, Dad. People closer to the blast were dying.”
“I have training too, you know. Or did you forget that I spent thirty years in the reserves? I was flying jets before you could spell the word. You could have left me there and focused on your wife and child. At least I would have known when to quit and come home.”
Nick clenched his fists and took a breath. “Dad, I…” But he couldn’t frame the words.
“You what? You had to putter around the aftermath like an amateur detective, bothering the FBI? You don’t have the right to do that just because you’re military, Nick. A good officer knows to stick to his own job. You’re a technical adviser, a pilot flying a desk, not a supersleuth.”
Nick did not dare glance over at Katy, who was likely becoming dizzy with the awkwardness of the confrontation. His wife did not know every classified detail, but she knew enough. When his boss finally let him confide in her, she had become his lifeline. Over the last year she had kept him from drowning in the memory of a friend bleeding out in his arms.
Katy was dragged into her clearance by circumstance; she was not made for it. She had no poker face. If Nick met her eyes now, her expression would spill it all. His dad would suspect that they were hiding something and start to dig. The retired colonel would emerge from beneath the archaeology professor and interrogate them both until he got to the truth, the same way he used to get to the truth when Nick came home late after curfew. Nick could withstand drugs and torture, but he couldn’t withstand the man who used to change his diapers.
Nick shut down the argument the only way he could. “You’re right, Dad. Of course. I’m sorry.” All their arguments ended like that, no matter the topic. It was the natural order of things — father over son. They shared a tepid hug. The professor retired to the guest room.
Katy moved into the kitchen and Nick closed himself in his office to check in with his boss, an Army colonel. The old man was at work as he suspected, monitoring the aftermath of the attack. To Nick’s frustration, the colonel sounded just like his dad. “Stick to your own job and let the FBI handle it. Let this one go. This is a simple case of wrong place, wrong time.”
“Yes, sir,” Nick replied, but an insistent voice in the back of his head told him that the colonel was wrong.
CHAPTER 5
Footsteps in the hallway — the distinctive clop of boots on polished concrete.
Kateb set his heels on the desktop, leaning precariously back in the rolling chair and placing his hands behind his head. He gave a carefully choreographed indifferent nod to the guard as he passed.
The guard knew little of Kateb, a lowly second-assistant security clerk, but Kateb knew everything about him — Azzam Safri, identification number 5975. Azzam’s information was the key to Kateb’s financial freedom.
The guard paused long enough to snort derisively at the clerk’s lazy pose and then continued on his beat. Kateb resisted the urge to sit forward again. He counted the echoing footsteps as they faded down the hallway, five… ten… fifteen… When the count reached forty-three, he stood up, started the timer on his wristwatch, and quietly peeked out into the hall. Azzam had disappeared around the corner. His normal routine would not bring him back this way for another seven minutes, give or take.
Kateb grabbed a leather satchel from under his desk and hurried down the hall in the opposite direction, the soft rubber soles of his sneakers hardly making a sound. Fifty seconds later, he stood in front of a black door protected by a keycard lock. He passed a blank white card over the sensor and entered the code he had created for it.
Nothing happened.
Kateb cursed his sweaty palms and rubbed the card dry on his shirt, glancing over his shoulder at the empty hall. On his second attempt AZZAM SAFRI passed across the digital screen in green block letters, followed by ACCESS GRANTED. He could have accessed the door with his own card, but his supervisor might notice the entry log and ask him why a second-assistant security clerk had cause to enter the giant storage locker. Azzam, on the other hand, routinely accessed the room as part of his guard duties. No one would notice an additional entry on his account, not even Azzam.
Beyond the door, a short alcove gave way to a large warehouse. The air was cold and dry, the temperature and humidity tightly regulated by an isolated environmental-control system. Kateb descended a short flight of corrugated steel steps to a floor lined with row after row of barrels stacked eight feet high, all made of a roughly polished alloy and all marked with red and yellow warning labels.
The American president’s infamous “red line” statement had created this giant cache. In exchange for a small extension of Syria’s current missile-acquisition contract, the Russians had readily agreed to allow Assad to retain a portion of his chemical and biological weapons. Unfortunately, the UN inspectors were not so malleable. Weapons from all over Syria were brought here to be concealed from prying eyes. Speed and secrecy were paramount, and cataloging was less than efficient. That inefficiency would make Kateb’s fortune. He checked his watch. Five minutes and eleven seconds remaining. He had to keep moving.