Andrew Britton - The Operative

Veil did not move. Jessica Muloni rose slowly. She swiped a hand across the orange suit folded on the table. The outfit landed on the floor next to Veil.

“Help her up,” she told the Pakistanis.

They did. She stood unsteadily, blood flowing from her nose.

“Forget the cavity search,” Muloni said. “Help her get dressed ASAP.”

The group leader, the one who had been holding the scalpel, translated for the others. Bishop rose, and they got to work. Muloni was obviously on the clock now, trying to get the jet off the ground before Cosette or Valjean got in the way.

“You got anything to add?” Muloni asked Bishop.

“I’m good,” he said.

There was no point telling her that this was a shitty business. They knew it, the Pakistanis knew it, and now a small group of Mounties knew it.

The team escorted the prisoner back down the corridor. Javert, Cosette, and the Mercedes were gone by the time they reached the tarmac. Valjean looked shaken. He told Bishop they went to the hospital. There was a bloody handkerchief on the tarmac beside him.

“These individuals are free to depart without the RCMP contingent,” the Mountie said of the Pakistanis and their prisoner.

“Understood,” Bishop said. His voice was matter-of-fact, as though it had been a tactical decision and not the result of the team leader nearly biting off his tongue.

“I’m to remain with you until you leave,” Valjean added.

“Of course,” Bishop replied. He looked at his watch. “Our flight home’s not for another ninety minutes. Can we buy you coffee?”

“If we can find an open bar, I’d prefer a scotch,” he answered.

“Sounds good,” Bishop replied.

Within five minutes, Bishop was driving the three of them to the terminal building. The Gulfstream IV, with Veil and the Pakistanis on it, was just one more rolling boom in the succession of jets leaving the runway. Bishop relaxed a little. Muloni was calm.

“I didn’t realize you knew Urdu,” Bishop said.

“Women who work for the Company need an edge,” Muloni told him. “Farsi and Urdu were mine.”

“Impressive. What did you say to her?”

“She started to swear at me. She only got as far as ‘hell.’ Probably going to tell me to go there. I said, ‘Heaven.’ The inflection suggested that was the only place I’d be going-unlike her.”

“Crap. You did all that with inflection?”

“That’s a lot of what language is,” she replied. “Language was my major. In the Semitic world especially, you find so much of language is just taunt and counter-taunt, with the ante constantly being upped. ‘Your father picks lemons.’ ‘Your mother sucks lemons.’ ‘Your sister is a lemon.’ That sort of thing.”

“Only a little rougher, I’m guessing,” Bishop said.

“Yes.” She smiled. “My father’s family had a Moroccan strain. They were Muslim traders. Very vocal.”

“You get that in my Irish and Italian heritage, as well,” Bishop told her.

“We’re all more alike than we care to admit,” Muloni said. “That’s the damned thing about us killing each other.”

Bishop shook his head. “That’s what happens when you run out of insults, I guess.”

“Screw you,” she said with a little wink.

She was right. Inflection was everything.

The man removed his black mask several minutes after the Gulfstream had taken off. He swept a gloved hand through his damp blond hair. He was Caucasian, with the hulking build of an American football player.

He was clearly not Pakistani.

“Close one,” he said, blinking sweat from his pale blue eyes. “I thought we were going to have to waste them.”

The man sitting across the narrow aisle yanked off his own balaclava. He was an African American male in his thirties. He pulled off his gloves and tossed them, and the mask, on the table in front of him. This man was not Pakistani, either.

“I wouldn’t’ve lost any sleep over it,” he said. “Javert. Valjean. What are they? Freakin’ librarians?”

There was general laughter among the men. Across the table were two other deep luxury seats. The third man sat in the one by the aisle. Their prisoner sat by the window, her olive complexion ruddy in the sunset, her eyes narrow as she watched the last man unmask himself. He had Asiatic features, possibly Hawaiian.

“All that matters is it worked out,” the first man said. The blue eyes settled on Yasmin. “You don’t look surprised, little lady.”

Yasmin didn’t bother explaining. She didn’t want to provide information that might help these men or their handlers in the future. Their affected accents had been good, but she had doubted from the first that any of them were Pakistanis. Neither they nor the aircraft cabin smelled of cigarettes. She had never met a Pakistani agent who did not smoke. She had also noted the bulge of wallets in their pants. Pakistanis typically carried folded currency. They were not big on credit cards. These were mercenaries. Working for the highest bidder.

“She’s got a good poker face, I’ll give her that,” the African American said.

“But a looker,” said another.

“Yeah, well, that’s all you’re gonna do,” the African American said.

“I know. I’m just saying.”

Yasmin was instantly tired of their locker-room banter. She had heard it in the barracks as a young girl; a world and a decade away, there was nothing different in their looks and remarks. It was pathetic.

“What is going on?” she asked. She did not expect them to tell her much. But any information was more than she had now.

“It’s a classic good news, bad news situation,” the man beside her said. “Do you understand that expression?”

She nodded.

“The good news, as you’ve probably figured out, is that we’re not taking you to Islamabad.”

“Where, then?”

“That’s a secret, I’m afraid. But that’s also good news. You won’t be cooped up here for the better part of a day. We’ll have wheels down in-”

“Two hours or less,” she said. “In New York, I think.”

The men fell silent. The Asiatic man confirmed her guess with his look of open admiration.

“What makes you say that?” he asked.

“That’s a secret, I’m afraid,” she replied.

A jet such as this one had a ceiling of 13,000 meters. They were leveling off at around 2,000 meters. That suggested a very short flight. There would be nothing in a Canadian city that Quebec would not provide, so she guessed they were headed to America. Only New York made sense within a two-hour radius.

“Who are you people?” she asked.

“Sorry. That, too, is need to know only,” the Asiatic man said.

“Do you, in fact, have my daughter?”

“We do,” the Asiatic man went on. “We needed a way to get your attention.”

“For what?”

“That’s the bad news,” he said, but he did not elaborate.

She wanted to ask about Kamilah, how she was, when she might see her or even talk to her, but she doubted they would tell her anything. Information was power, and their body language told her that her little display had set them on guard. That was exactly what she wanted. A man on defense was easier to provoke.

Yasmin regarded the African American. “What is your code name?” she asked.

He just smirked.

“Dr. Fed? FBI-Zee?”

The man’s expression soured, and he moved forward suddenly, as though he intended to strike her. The Asiatic man held up a hand, palm out. The other man hesitated, then settled back into his seat.

The leader turned to her. “Don’t talk.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I’ll have them cut off your daughter’s finger and show it to you on a live feed,” he said and held up a phone.