The curtains are closed and the summerhouse door is locked. He uses his key and enters the darkness.
She is here.
He knows she is. He smells her perfume. Her body. Her hair. Being so close and not seeing her makes his pulse race.
‘Don’t speak.’
The voice is followed by an elegant female hand, cold and soft, that covers the heat of his lips. ‘I’ve been thinking all morning about what this was going to be like.’
Lance turns into her. Feels her soft body press against him.
She kisses his neck. His ear. Her hand stays across his mouth. ‘Don’t say anything. Not until you’ve finished making love to me.’
43
Aasif rolls up the suicide vest and slips it back into the black garbage bag that it had come in.
Nabil steers the big man to the door and the wooden stairs leading to the room where ‘the Chosen One’ is waiting.
‘Wait,’ calls Antun.
They stop and turn.
‘Let me.’
Nabil regards him with curiosity. ‘What?’
‘Let me wear the vest. It is why Allah saved me when the Americans came. My cowardice was meant to prepare me for this moment.’
‘No,’ says Malek, the bomb-maker. ‘Do not do this.’ He looks across at Nabil. ‘He is too valuable to make this sacrifice.’
‘Please,’ says Antun, falling to his knees. ‘Let me redeem myself by writing this page in our glorious history. Let me be the one.’
44
To Mitzi’s surprise, Irish is sat at a round table in the corner of the bar, with only a cup of black coffee in front of him.
No beer. No wine. No spirits.
Just coffee.
He’s deep in thought and doesn’t see her until she pushes back a stool opposite him. ‘Hi, how ya doin’?’
‘Good.’
‘To be honest, you don’t look good. In fact, you look so far from good I’m not sure Google Maps would be able to find you.’
‘Thanks.’ His eyes trip to the silver object in her hand. ‘Anything on the stick?’
‘Not that makes sense. I’ve copied it and uploaded it to my office to crawl all over.’ She holds it out to him. ‘You should keep the original.’
‘Give it me later. I have a history of losing things in bars.’
‘Like your reputation?’
He palms her off.
Mitzi slips the stick into her purse. ‘From what I saw, it’s like Sophie said: everything on it is in some batshit code.’
‘That’s an official type of cipher, is it? Batshit. Like Enigma and Caesar.’
‘How do we get food and drink in here?’
‘Old-fashioned way. I go to the bar and pay.’ He points over her shoulder. ‘There’s a chalkboard behind you with what might be edible. While you’re looking, can I get you a drink?’ He reads her mind. ‘Remember, you can have coffee, coffee or coffee.’
‘Then I’ll have coffee. I like mine big and black.’
He bites back a reply that would earn him a slap.
The bar is busy as hell and it takes an eternity for him to get her a drink and a refill for himself.
Irish’s hands shake as he carries the coffee back to the table and he hopes she doesn’t notice the spills as he puts the mugs down. ‘Waitress will be over in a minute for our food. Anything on the cross?’
‘Experts think it’s Celtic but not worth a lot.’
‘I thought it was ancient?’
‘Old doesn’t necessarily mean valuable.’
‘Tell me about it.’
She laughs.
Irish thinks back to what the girl told him. ‘Strange thing is, Sophie Hudson said Amir Goldman had been ready to pay thousands for it.’ He sips his refill and wishes he’d left it to cool. ‘How much exactly did your expert say it was worth?’
‘A few hundred bucks.’
‘So why would someone kill for something worth so little?’ His phone rings and he glances at the display. ‘The office.’
She watches him take the call and scribble in a dog-eared pad he’s pulled from his crumpled brown jacket. He has all the hallmarks of someone who’s fallen hard and is still crawling the sidewalk trying to get up.
Irish clicks off his phone. ‘Vic in the woods was one James T. Sacconni. A twenty-six-year-old ex-con with a string of previous for aggravated assault with a knife.’
‘Where’s he from?’
‘Originated New York. Has a juvenile rap sheet from there. Did two years in a Big House in Chicago.’
‘Mob connection?’
Irish is impressed. ‘Were you listening in?’
‘Italian-sounding name plus Big Apple and Windy City usually equals mob or gangs.’
‘Maybe both. He’s a known associate of Kyle and Jordan Coll, two brothers who head MS-13 — that’s the Mara Salvatrucha mob. It started independent but is now mafia-run.’
‘I’ve heard of it. They tangled with the Bloods back in Compton.’ Mitzi picks up her coffee. ‘You get a look at the plate on the SUV he was in before he got whacked?’
‘Yeah. We ran that. Came up cloned. Some whiter-than-white businessman out in Annandale owns the original and an Escalade that’s never seen anything dirtier than the paws of his Labrador.’
‘So let’s summarize what we’ve got. A missing Escalade that’s probably in the Potomac. Two dead guys — one an old antiques dealer, the other a known mob affiliate.’
Irish chips in. ‘A religious cross of indeterminate value and a memory stick full of “batshit code”, if I remember your words correctly.’
‘The code’s the clue,’ says Mitzi. ‘No point using batshit unless you want to hide something. And you only hide what’s valuable.’
‘Then we have the Lincoln, driven by a British consular official who follows our mobster’s SUV and the next day flies out of the country.’
Mitzi puts it together. ‘So, we need to talk to this George whatever-he-was-called.’
‘Dalton,’ says Irish. ‘But he’s back in London and will have diplomatic immunity.’
‘He’s key, though. Question is — do we make the approach through your boss or mine?’
Irish drops his head in his hands. He knows what the answer is. It’s his case. It has to come through his boss. And his captain is gonna love him for it.
45
Outside the building, the young woman breaks down and sobs.
Not out of disappointment that she can no longer be a martyr, but because by some incredible twist of fate she’s been saved.
She falls to her knees and kisses the ground.
Unbeknown to her, the man she will forever thank in her prayers is standing nervously in a ‘clean room’ above the basement.
After washing, Antun and the three others roll out prayer mats. They face Makkah and perform Salat al-’Asr, the afternoon dedication that is fourteen hundred years old.
Nabil leads the prayers by raising his hands to his ears and praising God. ‘Allahu Akbar.’
The others respond and follow him as he runs through Takbir, Qiyaam, Ruku, Sujud, and Tashahhud. Each stage is marked with readings, prayers and exhortations.
As they near the end, they turn their faces, first to the right and then to the left. Each movement sees them address the angels that follow all Muslims and record both their good and bad actions with the exhortation, ‘Peace be upon you, and the mercy and blessings of Allah.’