Christopher Reich - Rules of Betrayal

The merchant, a short, gray-bearded man, showed Jonathan and Danni to his study and without a word closed the door behind them.

Jonathan sat at his desk, with Danni close beside him. He set to work immediately, writing down the information he’d memorized in Balfour’s office. Some numbers came back easily; others proved maddeningly elusive, slipping from his grasp like a morning dream. He had no problem recalling a batch of six-digit alphanumeric sequences which Danni recognized as SWIFT codes for wiring funds between international banks. He had more problems with longer sequences, and it was decided that these could not be relied upon. After fifteen minutes, he was spent.

“That’s it,” he said. “That’s all there is.”

And for the first time Danni did not prod him for more. “It’s enough.”

Besides the SWIFT codes (which Danni wrote down on a clean sheet of paper, folded neatly, and placed in her shirt pocket), several notations stood out as being worthy of scrutiny. The first was the phone number he had recognized as having an Afghan country code, the initials MH inscribed next to it.

“MH has to be Massoud Haq,” said Jonathan.

Danni agreed and said she would pass the number to the technical services branch of the office, “the office” being professional’s shorthand for her own intelligence service. “It may take some time, but they’ll be able to create a network of his associates from the calls placed and received.”

“How quickly?” asked Jonathan.

“That’s always the question,” said Danni with exasperation. “With a little muscle, I think we can count on sooner rather than later.”

Jonathan’s finger rested on a grouping of letters he recalled seeing on Sultan Haq’s desk. The first line read “METRON,” and the successive lines below it “HAR” and “NEWH.” “Ring any bells?”

Danni said the words aloud. “It sounds like it’s only part of each word.”

Jonathan tried sounding out additional syllables to form a word, but came up with nothing. “Let’s move on.”

“What interests me is this name.” And here Danni pointed to where Jonathan had written “Pasha” and “PARDF.” “Wasn’t Pasha the name of our American major’s most trusted colleague?”

“It’s common enough.”

“PARDF stands for Pakistani Army Rapid Deployment Force,” Danni went on. “How many Pashas do you think they have?” She pushed back her chair. “Pasha was on Balfour’s payroll all along. He was there to look after Haq and make sure he got the warhead to its destination. If Haq escaped through the back, it was with Pasha’s help.”

Jonathan returned his attention to the pad where he had written down “N14997.” “I recognize this. It’s an N number-an aircraft registration code. Every country has its own code. G is for England, F for France.”

“And N?”

“N is for the United States.”

“Are you a pilot?”

“No, but when I was working with Doctors Without Borders, Emma used to ferry medicine from one country to another. We were required to list the registration code of the aircraft flying the supplies on our customs declarations.”

“I see,” said Danni. “So I imagine there’s a central registry that keeps track of these.”

“Absolutely,” said Jonathan.

“Let me run it by the office.” Danni placed a call to Israel and rattled off a series of instructions in Hebrew. Jonathan listened patiently as Danni fought her position with her colleagues in Herzliya. Unable to understand a word, he found himself thinking once again about Emma.

There was not a moment since he’d arrived in Pakistan that he had not felt her invisible hand lurking above him, guiding events to her advantage. He had no doubt that it was she who had placed the spyware-encoded flash drive into Balfour’s computer. Working under Connor for so many years, she would have known that his response would be to immediately dispatch the special ops boys stationed in Pakistan. But why would she want to thwart Balfour’s plans after she had risked her life, and the life of her child-no, their child!-to help bring them to fruition?

“Jonathan, we’ve got a hit.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“N14997 is a C-141 Starlifter registered to Blenheim Cargo Corporation of Miami, Florida, which in turn is owned by East Pakistan Airways, Balfour’s private airline. Apparently the plane is being leased by the United States Army Materiel Command to transport military equipment back from Iraq to the States.”

“Do they know where it is?”

“According to Plane Tracker, the aircraft landed in Islamabad this morning.”

“A cargo plane,” said Jonathan. “It figures. The last I saw Haq, he was headed toward the freight terminal.”

“Hold on,” said Danni, picking up her conversation where she’d left off, jotting notes furiously on her pad. “Okay, shalom. Thanks.”

“And?”

Danni’s eyes were wide. “The plane took off at eight p.m.”

Jonathan looked at the ornate clock on the wall: 10 p.m. “Did the pilot file a flight plan?”

“Yes,” said Danni, much too softly for Jonathan’s liking. “It’s flying to Ramstein Air Base in Germany.”

“That’s it?”

“No, Ramstein is only a refueling stop. It’s slated to continue on to McGuire Air Force Base in Wrightstown, New Jersey. Do you know where that is?”

“Yeah,” said Jonathan. “It’s a little more than an hour from New York City.”

In Georgetown, snow fell as Jake “the Ripper” Taylor approached the three-story gray-brick town house at the corner of 34th Street and Prospect Street. A Ford Grand Victoria sat parked directly in front of the stairs leading to the front door. The car was unoccupied, and he assumed that the federal marshals to whom it belonged were inside, minding their prisoner. A second Grand Vic waited around the corner, two officers in the front seat, drinking their afternoon coffee. The feds were not winning points for being inconspicuous, thought Taylor, and he was sure to make a full and complete stop at the intersection before continuing on. In that time he cracked his window and looked to his right. The alley was right there behind the town house, just as the boss lady had said it would be, and there, poking its head above the fence, was the old wooden shed.

“There’s a back entry that’s accessed through a shed in the neighbor’s yard,” she had informed him. “You can see it from the alley behind his home. Mr. Connor is a sneaky fellow, and he uses it when he thinks someone’s checking up on him.”

A sneaky fellow. The boss lady using that upper-class accent he knew so well from the university-educated camel jocks he’d met over in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And how the hell did she know that about the shed and the alley? Taylor wondered with grudging admiration. Probably the same way that she knew Connor was under house arrest and had just returned from questioning at FBI headquarters. The same way she’d known about his visiting Mr. Malloy at the NGA. The boss lady had someone inside Division. Someone deep inside.

“Take out Connor,” she’d said. “Not your usual way. It must appear natural. He has a heart condition. It shouldn’t be too hard. But be careful. He’s a cornered animal, and cornered animals are dangerous.”

He’s also pushing sixty and has a belly the size of a boulder, retorted the Ripper silently. Frank Connor would not be a problem.

The Ripper turned left up 33rd Street, then left again at P Street, taking his time to circle round and eventually finding a parking spot two blocks from Connor’s place. Opening the glove compartment, he removed a chamois cloth, balled it up, and shoved it into his pocket. For good measure, he took his carpet cutter, too.