Christopher Reich - Rules of Betrayal

“Oh?” Connor’s eyes darted away and he shook his head, as if somewhere there had been a gross misunderstanding. “Maybe we’re talking about two different people. The Prince Rashid I know is one of the world’s notorious terrorist financiers. He funnels money to Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Laskar-e-Taiba, and any other Islamic organization bent on destroying the West, to the tune of two hundred million dollars a year.”

Jonathan sat back, chastised. “I hadn’t heard.”

“Of course you hadn’t. You’re too busy being wowed by his good works and his blond wife and his beautiful blue-eyed children. Rashid wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“If you know all this, why haven’t you made it public?”

“Think of what you’re saying. The prince’s family is the United States’ staunchest ally in the Gulf. The accusation alone would sour relations for years. This isn’t the kind of thing you air in public.” Connor leaned forward, as if sharing a secret. “This is the kind of thing we take care of privately.”

“So you used Emma to get at Rashid through Balfour?”

“No comment.” Connor pursed his lips, as if struggling to decide what he might or might not say. His expression made it all too evident that something had gone terribly wrong. “All we know is that she disappeared while overseeing the transfer of weapons from Balfour to Rashid.”

Jonathan envisioned the scenario without difficulty: Emma acting as a Russian agent to get close to Rashid and kill him. She’d pulled off similar feats in Lebanon and Bosnia and too many other places to name, let alone remember. It was not an occupation without risk. “Is she dead?”

“We have good reason to believe that she’s not.”

To Jonathan’s ear, “good reason” sounded like spy-speak for a fifty-fifty chance at best. “So Rashid was onto her?”

“We don’t know. But before I tell you what we do know, I want you to get a grip on yourself. A temper isn’t going to help anyone, especially Emma.”

Jonathan drew a breath, tamping down his nerves. “I understand,” he said.

“Prince Rashid has a thing he does to people he thinks screwed him. Business, politics, whatever. He likes to take them into the desert and put the hurt on them. I’m not going to go into detail. It’s nasty stuff.”

“Like what?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Like what, Frank?”

Connor set his forearms on the table and sighed, as if he were going against his better instincts. “Chains,” he said. “Cattle prods. Cigarettes. Sometimes he drags them behind his car.”

“And he did this to Emma?”

Connor nodded.

Jonathan looked away, an ungovernable rage building inside him. The thought came to him that he would stop at nothing to punish the animal who had inflicted such punishment on his wife.

A steady ringing filled his ears, but he wasn’t sure whether it came from inside him or from the carrier. “You just said you had good reason to believe that she isn’t dead.”

“We have evidence that indicates she survived the beating.”

“Did someone see her?”

“No.”

“Then what? This is my wife you’re talking about. ‘Good reason’ doesn’t cut it.”

“We found what we believe to be her footprints walking away from the spot where she was left. It appears she was driven from the scene. At this point, that’s all we know.”

“Cattle prods? He dragged her behind his car across the desert?”

Connor frowned. “He’s a bad one. I’m sorry.”

Jonathan felt something cold and hard and merciless settle inside him. He had never been one to harbor grudges, to catalogue wrongs done to him, slights received, indignities and insults, in the vain, misguided hope of one day paying them back. In his younger days, he had had his own method of dealing with assholes, and that method invariably involved a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey and his fists. He found his method to be cheap, expedient, and effective at resolving matters between individuals. Unfortunately, it was also illegal, and landed him overnight stays in jail in ten cities across six counties. As he grew older, and (eventually) matured, he’d learned that violence was not a means to an end. It was just a means to feed the devil inside you. Instead of hitting people, he ignored them. He traded mayhem for a medical degree, fists for a scalpel and forceps. He needed his hands in good condition for surgery.

But all the while, the devil inside him waited, biding his time, doing pushups in the deepest corner of his soul, gathering strength for the moment of his return. Jonathan knew this, and, ever vigilant, had kept him at bay these many years.

Chains… cattle prods… cigarettes… sometimes he drags them behind his car.

Connor’s words penetrated to that deepest corner, and now, seated at the table as the carrier shuddered with the launch of another jet, Jonathan felt the demon stir inside him, the hounds bay for revenge.

Payback.

“So this is about getting to Rashid?” asked Jonathan, with a new and improved outlook on the matter.

Connor shook his head. “Not just yet. The situation is fluid. Rashid doesn’t matter at the moment. We’re more interested in finding out the identity of the man for whom he purchased the weapons. If he’s a new player, we want a name. If he’s an established entity, we want to know that, too.”

“But Rashid hurt Emma. You can’t just let him-”

“Rashid is an SOB, and one day he’ll pay. You’ve got my word. But right now there’s no way we can get close to him. He knows we’re watching. He’ll have his defenses buttoned up tight. The only way in is through Balfour. You see, Balfour doesn’t just supply weapons, he flies them to wherever his clients need them. If we can find out where Balfour delivered those guns, we’ll know who Rashid’s mystery friend is. As I said, we need to get close to Balfour, and you’re the only one who can do it.”

“I already told you that I don’t know anything about him.”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s what you can do for him that counts.”

Connor spent several minutes explaining Balfour’s history, his rise to power as an arms trafficker, and his subsequent fall from grace as a fugitive on Interpol’s Red List. When it was done, Connor paused and leaned back in his chair, his shrewd eyes fixed on Jonathan. “Still interested?” he asked.

“Keep talking,” said Jonathan.

“Balfour is in trouble and he knows it. The Indian government is closing in on him. The Pakistanis may pull the welcome mat from beneath his feet at any time. He needs a way out and he needs it now. The problem is, there’s nowhere for him to hide. So… Balfour needs someone to alter his appearance so that he can start a new life incognito. He’s in the market for a plastic surgeon, and he wants him to perform the procedure at his compound in Pakistan. We would like you, Dr. Ransom, to be that surgeon.”

“You want me to change his looks? To turn him into someone else entirely?”

“Hopefully, you’ll never have to perform the operation,” said Connor. “Balfour conducts all his affairs from offices inside a palatial compound outside Islamabad. We want you to use your status as Balfour’s guest to locate information telling us the identity of Rashid’s client. There’ll never be a better opportunity to get inside his business. Rashid’s client is just the tip of the iceberg. If things go well, we’ll get enough information to turn the arms market inside out.”

“How long will I have?”

“You tell me. How long does that sort of procedure take?”

“Start to finish? A lot depends on just how radically he wants to alter his appearance. Nose, chin, implants. We’ll have to see. In any event, I’ll have to do a full workup on him, a physical, blood panels, that kind of thing. We’re talking two days minimum if we can get results back quickly. What kind of equipment does he have?”