He didn’t think it was the cops. If they suspected he was the guy who had killed two of their own, they’d have come down on him like an imploded casino. And it wouldn’t be just one guy tailing him. They’d have his toilet wired for sound and they’d be on him like ugly on an ape. Lewis had access to computer stuff; she could maybe do something with the license plate.
He pulled the throwaway phone from his belt and thumbed in the number for Lewis’s one-time cell.
Pentagon Annex
Washington, D.C.
As Lewis sifted through the mounds of information—here in her VR scenario represented as dirt and crushed ore from a gold mine, being washed through a huge strainer—she came across a fist-sized nugget. She looked at it.
The “nugget” popped open and a voice started talking from inside it. She listened for thirty seconds or so. . . .
Oh, crap!
“End scenario,” she said.
In her office, she took several deep breaths, to calm her racing heart. The information was ugly—and in more ways than one.
Carruth’s call about the shadow had been bad enough when she hadn’t known anything about who it might be. Now it was a real can of worms.
Her new op had run the plates on the car. Fortunately, the driver had been dumb enough or confident enough not to swipe a clean plate or use a rental car. Her op figured out who he was, and then a connection that was surprising—and dangerous.
It had been a surprise. Even if she’d suspected, and if she’d had to guess between the two trying to talk to her, she’d have picked Ali bin Rahman bin Fahad Al-Saud. She’d have been dead wrong, too. No, it was Brian Stuart, the “Australian.”
She shook her head at the stupidity of her mistake. Could have been worse, but fortunately, Carruth had spotted the tail, and she had checked it out.
They were also getting into dangerous territory with her new hired op—information that she didn’t want him to have might come up, and if it did, then eventually he was going to have to go to that great detective agency in the sky. At this point, one more death wouldn’t make things any worse, and they had to start covering their asses now. She hadn’t set out on this path with the intention of killing people, but that’s how things went. Then you had to deal with it.
Next to the surprise about the “Australian” was the general crappiness of the situation itself. “Brian Stuart” was not a viable buyer for her data. His real name was Yusuf bin Abdulla Al-Thani, a Qatarian? Qatarite?—whatever, he was from Qatar—and, if her investigator could be believed, was the older brother of a man named Mohammed bin Abdulla Al-Thani. Which hadn’t meant anything to her, until her op had passed along that Mohammed, who had recently left the land of the living to join Allah in Paradise, had used the alias “Mishari Aziz.” Like his brother, Aziz/Al-Thani had been a terrorist of some note.
Him she knew, because she had shot him dead in a park in New Orleans when he had gone for a gun in his pocket.
Shit, shit, shit—!
The Al-Thani brothers were Tamim Arabs, and distantly related to the rulers of Qatar, if no longer included in polite family company because of their most radical beliefs. Not the most reliable of customers, terrorists.
It was pretty obvious why Yusuf/Brian was looking for her. She’d killed his brother and he was understandably pissed off about it. But that he had gotten as far as he had bothered her no end. How far was that? She was pretty sure that Yusuf and a friend or two had somehow backtracked their way to Simmons, her former sub-rosa investigator, and killed him, trying to find her. Unless Simmons had an old enemy who’d happened to find him, that was the only thing that made sense.
How?
It didn’t really matter how the tiger got into your house until after you got rid of it, but she was curious nonetheless.
She didn’t know how much they had gotten out of Simmons, but they probably would have determined that she was a woman. If the two men killed with Aziz/Al-Thani down on the river in New Orleans hadn’t been the same two who’d followed her to a mall in Florida after their first meeting, then it was likely that big brother Yusuf had a better description of her than that she was just a young, blond woman.
Of course, knowing what she looked like was not the same as knowing who she was, and it was a big country. Still, it was a rock in the road and she didn’t want to hit it. . . .
How ever had they found Carruth? It didn’t seem possible. And yet, according to her op, the car belonged to a shell company that was run by Al-Thani, and what were the chances of that being a coincidence? That somebody was following her guy and that the somebody was connected to the man she’d iced in New Orleans?
Shrugging that off wasn’t going to happen.
This was bad. Having a terrorist actively looking for you to exact revenge for killing his little brother? It would certainly throw a big bag of sand into the gears if he showed up. Not to mention into her personal life.
So, what was she going to do about it?
He might not have a clue as to her identity. Simmons hadn’t, and no way to directly connect to her. But that Yusuf Al-Thani had gotten this far already meant he had damned good resources—either Simmons had screwed up, or not, and if not, how Al-Thani had wound up on his doorstep was troublesome in the extreme.
Simmons maybe stepped on somebody’s telltale while checking out Aziz? Possible.
But even so, Simmons hadn’t known who Carruth was.
And yet, there Yusuf was—him or one of his people, dogging Carruth.
She scanned the rest of the file the new op had sent. Well, at least she knew who he was now, and what he looked like. Might not do her much good if he was waiting in her bedroom with a big sidekick and weapons when she got home one dark night, but it was something.
She thought about it. Once you started down the violent road, it was hard to step off it; she had killed the man’s brother, and there wasn’t any way to downplay that if he ever did find her.
He went for his gun first! probably wasn’t going to make much difference to an enraged and murderous brother.
So. What was the best way to protect herself? She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder for some fanatic bearing the sword of retribution, looking to lop her head off.
She dug out her current one-time phone and manually tapped in the number for Carruth’s current one-time.
“Yeah?”
“I found that information you requested. Meet me at the place, tonight, seven P.M.”
“Copy.”
She discommed. Shut off the phone and stuck it into her purse. She’d lose it after she left work, and pick up a new one at home. She had a dozen of them, all identical. The guards never checked the numbers, only to see if it was a real phone, which it was.
Carruth had his uses, and this would be right up his alley.
Dark Horse Restaurant
Richardson, Maryland
“You’re shittin’ me,” Carruth said.
“Would that I were.”
He shook his head. “Damned ragheads are thicker than fleas on a camel in this deal, ain’t they? How’d they find me?”
She said, “I don’t have any idea.”
He shrugged that off. “So, what’s the plan?”
“We set up a meeting with ‘Brian.’ You and some of your men will be there and when he shows up—probably with some of his men—you erase them.”