Джеймс Паттерсон - Killer Instinct

Elizabeth pushed herself up off the floor, stumbling as she began to run. She sprinted from the kitchen, the front door straight ahead down the hallway. On a dime, though, she stopped and looked back behind her. There was no time, she told herself. She did it anyway.

Are you crazy? Are you insane? What are you doing?

Elizabeth raced back to the bearded man in the kitchen. His gun would have his fingerprints. Better yet, was he dumb enough to have ID on him?

She riffled through his back pockets. He was wearing cargo pants. There was no wallet. There was no anything. One pocket, then the other, came up empty as she continued coughing from the gas, her eyes stinging and tearing so badly she could barely see.

Flipping him over in a pool of his own blood, she tried both of his pockets in front. Still nothing. She was about to give up when she spied another pocket—a small one on his T-shirt—with the slightest hint of a folded piece of paper sticking out. She grabbed it, checking to see if there was anything else with it. There wasn’t.

Instinctively, Elizabeth began to unfold the paper to see what it was when she caught herself. Now, you really are insane. Get the hell out of here!

She scooped up the AK-47 and raced down the hallway again. She could hear a siren off in the distance. A neighbor probably called 911 after hearing all the gunshots.

Oh, crap! The neighbors.

Flinging the front door open, she bolted down the steps and out to the street before turning back to see which neighbor’s house was the closest. It was no contest. There was a split ranch to the right less than twenty feet away from Gorgin’s house. If anyone was inside, she had to get them out of there. She was about to run.

“Freeze!” came the man’s voice. He was behind her.

Elizabeth froze. She had to. She literally had blood on her hands and was wielding an AK-47 in the middle of the street on the heels of shots being fired.

Still, she tried to explain. “I’m an agent with—”

“I don’t give a fuck if you’re the pope,” he barked. “Lower your weapon and lie down on the ground!”

“There’s no time,” she said, pointing. “That house is about to—”

BOOM!

And, like that, they were both flat on the ground.

Chapter 42

“I THOUGHT this only happened in the movies,” I said.

“What’s that?” asked Landon Foxx.

“A couple of operatives meeting secretly in a Chinese restaurant.”

“First of all, I only count one operative, and it’s not you,” said Foxx. “Second, the Chinese know how to do something that Americans don’t. Mind their own damn business. ”

Sure enough, the CIA’s New York section chief and I were standing in the back of a crowded kitchen during lunchtime in Chinatown, and not a single cook, busboy, or any passing waiter or waitress even glanced our way. As for Foxx’s jab about my no longer being an operative, I sort of leaned in on that one. Best to just take it on the chin and get to the point of my wanting to meet with him.

“Is this woman with the Agency?” I asked, holding up a picture of Sadira Yavari on my phone.

Foxx stared at her for a moment. He shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

“Would you actually tell me if she was?”

“Probably not,” he said. “In any event, this is the part where you tell me what you know about this woman and, more importantly, why I should know it.”

Fair enough. “Professor Jahan Darvish,” I said. “Ring a bell?”

Foxx nodded. “The MIT guy who died with a liquor bottle up his ass.” He said it so matter-of-factly you would’ve thought Darvish had died from something typical, like cancer or a heart attack.

“This woman—Sadira Yavari—was with Darvish when he came back to his hotel the night of his death,” I said.

“Was she his girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Escort?”

“Nope.”

“How can you be sure?” asked Foxx.

I swiped left on my phone to a screenshot from the hotel’s surveillance footage. “That’s how,” I said.

Foxx blinked a few times, taking it all in. I could see the questions lining up in his mind like planes on a tarmac. “Let’s start with this,” he said. “How are you even involved in this, Reinhart?”

“It’s a long story,” I said.

“They always are.” He stared at the picture again, the glow around Yavari’s face. “How were you able to identify her if she was using Halo?”

“That’s an even longer story,” I said.

“Is there anything you want to tell me about this woman?” he asked. “Besides her name?”

Yes, there was. Plenty.

“Sadira Yavari was born in Iran—parents also Iranian, both deceased. Now a US citizen. Lives in Manhattan. Pays her taxes, clean record, never even jaywalked. She’s a philosophy professor at NYU.”

“How many years?”

I knew that would be his very next question. On the surface, it confirmed that Yavari wasn’t CIA—at least as far as Foxx knew, and Foxx knew most everything within the Agency.

“Seven,” I said. “She’s been teaching at NYU for seven years.”

“Who else knows she was with Darvish at the hotel?” he asked.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

I cocked my head and stared at Foxx without saying anything. For a moment it was as if the entire restaurant kitchen had gone silent, all the banging and clanking of pots and pans, all the sizzling of oil, just fading away.

He got the hint.

I never liked the official motto of the CIA. Few people even know what it is. The Work of a Nation. The Center of Intelligence . It reads like it came from a junior copywriter on Madison Avenue. For sure, it didn’t originate from anyone who actually worked in espionage. But mottos are for flags and plaques. If you ever really wanted to summarize the work of the Agency—how critical information is actually gathered—there’s a far better expression.

To get trust you have to give trust.

Foxx was holding back. He wasn’t telling me something, and until he decided to spit it out, I was keeping my mouth shut. There’d be no more information from me. No more intel. Hence my long stare at him and, ultimately, his nod in return.

“Okay, here it is,” he said finally. “Professor Darvish was an asset.”

Chapter 43

I KNEW IT.

Okay, maybe it was more like a gut feeling. It had to be something like that, though. Foxx tipped his hand with the regularity of a solar eclipse, but the questions he had been asking—the way he had been asking them—it was as if he’d intended all along to bring me into the fold regarding Darvish.

The Iranian nuclear physicist from MIT was an informant for the CIA.

“We had the same surveillance footage from the hotel, but Halo prevented us from identifying the woman, although we sure as hell still tried,” said Foxx. He nodded with what felt like begrudging respect for me. “Well done, Reinhart.”

Forget a solar eclipse. Foxx complimenting me? That was hell freezing over.

“When was Darvish recruited?” I asked.

“The summer of 2015.”

“During the Iranian nuclear deal, in other words.”

“Exactly,” said Foxx. “Among the working theories was that the Iranians would try to further their program in our own backyard while we were busy snooping around in theirs. Sure enough, they leveraged Darvish by threatening his parents and brother back in Iran.”

“What about money?” I asked. “Did they also pay him?”

“Handsomely, from what I understand.”

I literally scratched my head. “Safety for his family and financial security to boot,” I said. “Why would Darvish risk that to become an asset?”