After the long haul from Singapore to New York, and after missing his connecting flight to Washington, Coburn had been tired before he’d arrived and, since then, he’d either been too busy, or had too much on his mind, to catch up on any sleep let alone adjust to the time difference.
So far he’d observed no obvious signs of life at the O’Halloran residence, an unprepossessing single-storey brick-faced house with nothing to distinguish it from other houses in the street except for it being a little run down and a path of decorative paving stones that looked as though it was still under construction.
Was there a Mrs O’Halloran, Coburn wondered? And if so, where was she? Would she arrive home before or after her husband — or was she already home?
He was considering whether to go and find out when an approaching Dodge Avenger started to slow down.
A moment later, triggered by a remote control, the garage door began to open.
Although Coburn was able to get a look at the man behind the wheel, so swiftly were things happening that he had little time to prepare himself.
He waited until the Avenger had pulled into the driveway and entered the garage, then got out of his car, waving a greeting for the benefit of any neighbours who could be watching, before he hurried over to the garage as though going to meet a friend.
He was barely quick enough. Already the door was closing, forcing him to duck beneath it and almost trapping him by one of his ankles.
Trying not to cough on the exhaust fumes, he stayed crouching behind the car until the engine was switched off and the driver’s door swung open.
O’Halloran never saw him coming. Before the American knew it, Coburn had him by the wrist, twisting his arm behind his back and slamming his face hard into the nearest wall.
The American froze, making no attempt to struggle. ‘Easy there,’ he said. ‘Billfold in my back pocket. Should be a couple of hundred bucks in it. Take what you want.’
Coburn used his free hand to pad down O’Halloran’s jacket, not expecting to find a gun, but wanting to be sure before he spun him round and let him go.
‘Surprise,’ Coburn said. ‘Remember me?’
The American’s reaction was mostly one of shock. He was astonished, massaging his arm while he stared at Coburn. ‘You’re dead,’ he said.
‘Who told you that?’
‘Armstrong. He sent me an email. What the hell’s going on? What the fuck are you doing in my garage?’
‘How did Armstrong know I was dead?’
‘Who knows? Maybe the same way he heard about that stuff on board the Rybinsk.’
‘From Sir Anthony Fraser?’ Coburn was relieved, guessing he had Heather to thank for communicating the news and pleased that her godfather had thought to pass it on to the IMB.
‘I don’t know where Armstrong got the information. He didn’t say.’ Now O’Halloran was recovering, his expression had become openly hostile.
‘Is your wife waiting for you inside?’
‘I doubt it.’ The American stopped rubbing his arm. ‘She lives with her boyfriend in Arlington. Why? What the hell has she got to do with anything?’
‘Tell you what,’ Coburn said, ‘we can either carry on standing here while you decide whether it’s worth trying to smack me over the head with that fire extinguisher you keep looking at, or we can go inside so you can listen to what I have to say.’
‘Why would I want to listen to you?’
‘Because if you don’t, you won’t know whose side you’re on, and if you don’t know that, and you’re on the wrong one, you’re going to be in the deepest shit you’ve ever been in.’
O’Halloran raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s why I get jumped in my own garage, is it — so you and I can find out which side I’m on? Haven’t you heard of phone calls and emails?’
‘If it wasn’t for phone calls and emails between your department and the International Marine Bureau, a whole lot of people wouldn’t be dead.’ Coburn kept his voice level. ‘Why do you think I didn’t visit you at your nice office? Until I hear what you have to say for yourself, I’m not trusting you, and I’m sure as hell not trusting the security of your department’s communication systems.’
‘OK.’ O’Halloran paused to think. ‘If you’ve got a story to tell me, it better be good.’ Collecting his keys from the floor where he’d dropped them, he went to unlock an interior door. ‘Next time you get resurrected and you want to say hello, try knocking on my front door.’
Coburn followed him inside, telling himself that things were going as well as could be expected, and that at least O’Halloran seemed willing to accept that there was a story to be told even if he showed no sign of comprehending what it might be about.
The house was untidy. Unwashed dishes were piled up on the draining board in the kitchen, numerous magazines were scattered around the place, and in the lounge where a number of pot plants were wilting from the heat and lack of watering, it had been some time since the windowsills and the shelves of a large bookcase had received a dusting.
Standing between a matched pair of porcelain deer on the bookcase, a framed picture showed O’Halloran sitting in a garden with what looked like twin baby girls balanced on his knees.
‘Yours?’ Coburn asked.
‘They live with their mother. If I’m not working or overseas, I get to see them at weekends.’ The American went to the kitchen. ‘Do you want a cold beer?’
‘No, thanks.’ During his flight from Singapore, when he hadn’t been thinking about Heather, he’d occupied himself by trying to decide how O’Halloran would react when he learned that, despite the best efforts of the US Government, another of their ugly secrets was no longer the secret they believed it to be. So this is where the crunch would come, Coburn thought. This is where he’d find out where the American’s sympathies lay.
O’Halloran returned carrying two cans of beer. ‘Sure you can’t use one of these?’ he said.
‘I’m sure.’
‘OK. Sit wherever you want.’ The American slumped down in a chair. ‘Are you going to tell me the Pishan was shipping fifty kilogrammes of enriched uranium from Pakistan to North Korea, but your pirate friends offloaded it and sold it on to someone else?’
‘Is that what Armstrong said?’ Coburn remained standing.
‘No. He said you didn’t find anything and that you’d run into some kind of problem.’
‘It was a trap. And the only people who could have set it up were you or the IMB. No one else knew about the raid.’
‘You’ve forgotten Heather Cameron. She knew.’ O’Halloran swallowed some beer. ‘What’s happened to her?’
Coburn shrugged. ‘No idea. Never mind Heather Cameron. I’m not here to talk about her, I’m here to talk about you.’
‘You’d better start then, hadn’t you?’
‘OK. What do you think about this? The day before you showed up in Chittagong, while I was driving down to Fauzdarhat I stopped in a lay-by. I’d only been there a minute when a truck pulled up behind me. It was the truck that half an hour later was used to cart the radioactive crate away from the Rybinsk. I got a look at the driver and I saw him make a phone call.’
‘So?’
‘The same guy turned up on board the Pishan. I saw him. He was the reason you couldn’t find out who’d phoned the Bangladeshi Army. It was him who made the call. He wanted the army to go to the beach.’
‘What for?’ O’Halloran frowned. ‘Why would he have wanted that to happen?’
‘Because your government told him to create as much mayhem as he could while he was there. That’s why he let his men go ape shit with their guns, and why he ran over those kids. The US wanted saturation media coverage so the whole world would think the Rybinsk had been transporting nuclear material to North Korea. You were part of the set-up.’