Fire With Fire

world.”

Elena turned back towards him. “Uh-oh.”

“What do you mean ‘uh-oh’?”

Elena smiled. “I mean, I know that tone of voice. Trevor, look at her. She and Riordan are-well, it looks like they’re more than friends.” She put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry-I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Yeah. Me neither.” He checked his watch; 1258 hours, local. Which meant that, any minute now-

A medium-sized, nondescript man in black fatigues slipped into the room sideways. He scanned faces, stopped when he saw Trevor, nodded once. Trevor leaned toward Elena’s ear. “I’ll be back in a few.”

“Trevor, the guests-”

“Are all trying to talk to you because you’re the pretty one-and none of them knew Dad personally, so I’d be happy to stop playing charades. Besides, I’ve got to get back to work.”

She nodded, scanned down the dwindling line. Caine was toward the end.

Trevor walked back to the position he had originally occupied. Rulaine saw him approach, moved toward the other side of the hall.

The nondescript man met Trevor at the exact point Rulaine had vacated. “How’s it going, boss?”

“All quiet. What’s the word, Stosh?”

“Lot of shack chat. By the way, is it true?”

“About what?”

“That I’ve got to stand a little straighter when I salute you?”

“Like you ever salute me.”

“Hey-I salute you. Sometimes. Sir.”

“Yeah-but I mean without that big shit-eating grin.”

“Well, it’s just hard not to remember you blowing chow during the last run of hell week.”

“Oh, you just loved that.”

“Made you the grunt you are today, Commander.”

“You’re a sadist, Chief.”

“Masochist, too-since I asked to serve under you. Figured you’d want to return the favor to your old instructor.”

“Right now, I just want my old instructor to clue me in on the shack chat.”

“Aye aye, sir. Hardly know where to start.”

“The most unusual stuff first.”

“That’s just it, sir: it’s all unusual.”

Trevor looked over at the man who had nearly busted him out of his SEAL training: Chief Petty Officer Stanislaus Witkowski was nearly fifty, unflappable, and renowned for his extraordinary capacity for understatement. “It’s all unusual?”

“Seems so to me.” He nodded in the direction of the receiving line. “For instance, take what happened to that guy last night.”

“Riordan?”

“Yep. Something funky about that whole deal.”

“Well, sure: someone tried to off him in his room. And then tried to make it look like arson.”

Stosh shook his head. “Not what I mean, boss. First off, do you know that Riordan apparently tagged one of the bad guys with a knife?”

“What?”

“Yeah. Turns out the blood the cops found on the floor wasn’t Riordan’s.”

“How do you know that?”

Stosh grabbed a canape off a passing tray. “From a friend in base security. We’ve bent our elbows on the same bar a few times. He’s Force Recon, so I have to keep telling him how he’s really supposed to do his job.”

“Okay, so how does your leatherneck beer-buddy know anything about the blood on the floor of Riordan’s apartment? How does he even know that anything happened to Riordan?”

“Well, that’s where the serious weirdness kicks in. Seems that when the bad guys broke into Riordan’s apartment, the alert didn’t go to the police first. It went straight to the duty officer in the State Department’s Marine contingent.”

“What? How?”

“My jarhead pal didn’t know. But out he goes on the call. They get to the suite and there’s already one guy he knows-a ‘translator’-on site, checking Riordan’s vitals.”

“Some translator.”

“Yeah, I’d say his spook-cover is pretty much blown. Anyway, they’re mopping the blood up off the floor and the translator grabs a Marine to evac Riordan to the base hospital. But so far as my pal can see, Riordan’s not wounded.”

“They sent him to the base hospital?”

“Yeah. Now, as he’s being ferried off, the police arrive and start arguing procedure and maintaining a pristine forensic site and etcetera etcetera etcetera. Result: jurisdictional tug of war. The locals are grabbing what they can, just as the station chief shows up from the State Department, claiming precedence due to matters of national security. That three-way clusterfuck goes on until your pal Downing shows up. A few words with each of the contenders and all is calm.”

“So the blood-?”

“So some of the blood has already been taken off site by the locals. They type it: A negative. But when I spoke to the orderly who was present when they admitted Riordan to the base hospital, he was O positive.”

“Wait: I don’t get it. If the hospital blood-typed Riordan, he had to be wounded, right?”

“Nope: no sign of a wound. But they already knew Riordan’s blood type at the hospital. Before he ever arrived.”

Trevor frowned. “Is he in an armed-service database?”

“Nope. I told you it was weird. Seems our non-bleeding Mr. Riordan was nonetheless rushed into surgery a few minutes after he arrived. And that’s where my buddy’s story loses sight of Riordan.”

“But that’s not the end of it?”

“Nope. I’ve got another pal in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We argue the merits of bourbon and vodka occasionally.”

“And he figures into this-how?”

“Well, late last night, my pal Sasha comes hang-dogging into the Red Planet Lounge, looking like he’d lost his best buddy.”

“What had happened?”

“Well-he’d lost his best buddy. Turns out his good friend was reportedly knifed near the dives around the passport and quarantine control zones. Or at least, that’s what the bigwigs in the Russian Embassy told Sasha.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Sasha’s deceased buddy was reportedly alone when he was attacked, so there were no witnesses. And when Sasha tried to track down more information about it, he ran into a wall: his pal’s murder had been called in by ‘an anonymous local tip.’ So Sasha got really curious, and tried to get a look at the forensics report of the crime site: nada. No cooperation: just a lot of locked jaws and unfriendly eyes, both from the intel guys in the Foreign Ministry and the watch sergeant in the local precinct. But because Sasha is the senior NCO in the Ministry’s security contingent, he has access to all the medical records of his team.”

“And?”

“And his pal, the one supposedly knifed in an alley, had a very interesting blood-type.”

“Let me guess: A negative.”

“Bingo: same type as on the floor in Riordan’s suite. Doesn’t prove anything, but-”

“Yeah: ‘but.’” What the hell was going on? Why would the Russians have sent someone after Caine? That made less than no sense-unless these Russians were moonlighting, were being paid to do it by someone other than their superiors.