‘And yet he knew somebody else was present at the scene,’ Mickey pointed out. ‘So he must be connected to the murder somehow.’
Hannah rubbed her temples wearily, her back still aching from the commercial flight that they had taken in order to pursue her wild hunch that they had all been missing something important that would tie all of the disparate threads together. Warner. Lopez. The Meyers, and the unknown killer she felt sure was …
Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket and she answered instantly.
‘Tell me you’ve got something.’
‘I’ve got something.’
The excitement in Special Agent Emma Granger’s voice made Hannah sit up straight in her seat and switch the phone onto conference as Mickey glanced across at her.
‘Tell me.’
‘There’s a common theme in the travels of Stanley Meyer and this Ethan Warner guy,’ Emma reported. ‘I’ve been reviewing CCTV footage from any locations that we can be certain they have travelled through within reasonable time — frames, and then cross — referencing those with … ’
‘Stop pulling my chain, Granger, what have you got?’ Hannah snapped impatiently.
‘A Saudi security specialist,’ Emma replied, ‘by the name of Assim Khan. I’m sending a picture over to you right now.’
Hannah looked down and saw an image of a Middle — Eastern looking man, his hair graying slightly at the temples and a broad jaw beneath dark eyes.
‘What’s his story?’ Mickey asked.
‘Former Saudi Special Forces,’ Emma replied. ‘He joined a Saudi firm that specializes in security but is suspected by the CIA of being a front for assassins for hire. Assim here has been implicated in a number of hits over the years but nothing’s stuck.’
‘What’s his connection to Stanley Meyer?’ Hannah asked.
‘Assim was hired by Seavers Incorporated to provide security during a visit to Saudi Arabia by none other than Ethan Warner and Nicola Lopez. I managed to find out that the Saudi’s suffered a major military setback in the desert while Warner and Lopez were in the Kingdom but off the radar, lost an Apache gunship to militants and apparently are now trying to extradite Warner and Lopez back to stand trial.’
‘They shot down an Apache gunship?’ Hannah asked in amazement. ‘What the hell for?’
‘Who knows with these two,’ Emma replied. ‘Their names are all over files attached to the Defense Intelligence Agency, but they’re so redacted that I can’t make head nor tail out of them. At one point or another, the CIA has had an interest in the pair of them, and so has the National Reconnaissance Office.’
‘Who the hell are these guys?’ Mickey uttered in amazement.
‘Assim,’ Hannah pressed. ‘Why is he so important?’
‘Because he’s here,’ Emma replied, ‘in America, or more precisely, he landed an hour ago in Las Vegas. More than that, I’ve got images of him showing up in Virginia at the hotel. Assim Khan may be our guy, and get this, since he showed up in the country, Huck Seavers and his family have vanished.’
Hannah and Mickey exchanged a glance.
‘If Assim’s the killer, then he’s probably targeting either Warner and Lopez or the Meyers,’ Mickey said.
‘Or Huck Seavers and his family, or even all of them,’ Hannah agreed. ‘Do we have a fix on Assim Khan yet?’
‘He hired a vehicle from a rental place down on the south side,’ Emma informed Hannah and passed on the registration. ‘Do you want me to alert the local field office and get you some support. Jenkins is still in the office and I’m sure she’d clear you to…’
‘Keep Jenkins out of the loop,’ Hannah snapped. ‘Contact the Las Vegas office and inform them of everything you just told me but keep local law enforcement out of it for now other than a BOLO for the rental vehicle. Any of them locates him, they’re to pass it on to the field office. I don’t want forty squad cars with screaming sirens letting this guy know we’re onto him.’
There was a long pause on the line. ‘Jenkins will be pissed at you cutting her out.’
That smile appeared again on Hannah’s face as she replied.
‘Let her get as pissed as she likes, this one’s slipped through her fingers because she was all for shutting it down. Send my number to the Special Agent in charge down here and I’ll liase directly with them. Let’s see if we can’t close this guy down before he kills any more Americans.’
Hannah shut off the phone and turned to her partner. ‘Any time, Mickey, you’re welcome.’
‘Damn, how the hell do you manage stuff like this?’ Mickey uttered as he pulled out of the air base’s gates.
‘I got a nose for trouble,’ Hannah replied gleefully as she looked at the image of Assim Khan on her phone. ‘Let’s hope this guy does too, and we’ll let him lead us right to everybody else.’
XXXVIII
The Las Vegas crowds were dense, rivers of humanity flowing between endless sparkling lights flashing in the darkness. The city was like that, built in the centre of a desert plain and glowing like a galaxy of stars amid the blackness of space. Noise, heat, light, vehicles rushing to and fro, laughter, and beneath the glossy veneer a grimy underbelly of crime and suffering.
Vagrants rifled through bins overflowing with the casually discarded detritus of a humanity that possessed far more than it needed. Young dudes in shades and hoodies surreptitiously exchanged wads of cash for small packages. Hookers lingered on the corners of the darker streets, not all of them women, some of them neither fully woman nor man.
Society at both its best and its worst, a modern day Sodom intoxicated by the heady elixir of unrestrained capitalism.
Mary Meyer walked through this gloating apocalypse of excess as though striding through a valley of death. She saw nothing around her that made her admire what humanity had achieved, a life where nobody cared, where nothing really mattered but the next drink, the next hit, the next woman or man for hire in some dingy low — rent motel. She glanced up at the towering casinos and hotels, magnificent in their glamor and yet rotten to the core with greed and the criminal foundations upon which they had been built. Her beloved, brave Stanley had hated this city with all of his considerable passion, and now those who had built it had consumed him and spat him out, dead and derided and forgotten. Tears blurred her eyes, the flashing lights smeared into a kaleidoscope of color that sickened her with its unnatural haze.
She forged ahead, pulled her baseball cap low over her eyes. She was hot and uncomfortable, and not just due to the heat of the Nevada night or the disgusting display of profanity all around her. The padding she had placed under the sleeves of her shirt and trousers bulked her out, changing her appearance to conceal her from easy identification. Hair dye and clothes that she would not normally be seen dead in that emulated those of the tourists oggling at the city around them completed the illusion.
Mary knew that the government possessed the ability to identify faces from the merest glimpse on a CCTV camera, so she kept her head down and hoped that the dazzling casino lights would help camouflage her appearance further and fool the cameras. In her hand she held a cell phone, purchased for cash in a store downtown as soon as she had arrived. Upon the phone she had installed an app, which she had created herself, and distributed to a small network of people whom she had confided in from the moment she had fled Clearwater.