he?”
“Would you expect him to?” Matt said, not answering the question directly, but close enough for two spies who understood the language.
“Probably not,” Tanner said. “Let’s just hope it sticks.”
Nick picked up on Tanner’s tone. Next to Nick, Tanner was the Team’s senior agent and he always had his ear to the ground whenever a big prisoner was being interrogated.
“What do we know, Dave?” Nick asked.
“Nothing yet.”
Nick looked at the elite group. Before he could ask the question, Matt beat him to the punch.
“What are we all doing here, Dave? I mean the last time we were all in the same room together. .” he raised his eyebrows.
Tanner seemed to recognize the reference to a false intelligence report of a dirty bomb in Manhattan three years back. “I don’t know,” he said. “But Walt doesn’t call us all in without good cause.”
“The safe money is on Rashid,” Matt said. “What else could it be? I’m sure he hasn’t flipped, but I’ll bet we got something. Something that nets us Kharrazi, maybe?”
Tanner nodded vacantly, but if he knew something he wasn’t giving it away.
There was an edginess to the banter now in the bullpen as the Bureau’s finest minds spun their wheels in anticipation. A red ball meeting was urgent, so the hurry up and wait routine added to the anxiety.
Nick nodded toward the closed door at the end of the hallway. “Who’s he with?”
“No one,” Tanner said. “He’s on the phone. We’re waiting for him to call us in.”
From his chair, Ed Tolliver called out, “Hey, Matt, I hear that was the first time you were caught without your Glock since you were in the crib.”
This provoked a round of laughter that caused a few secretaries to look up and smile.
Matt gave a tight-lipped scowl and saluted Tolliver with his middle finger.
Another boisterous roar lit up the room.
“Knock it off,” a voice boomed from the end of the hallway. A broad-shouldered man with dark chocolate skin leaned out of his office with the door half-open.
“Bracco,” Walt Jackson said. “Get in here.”
Nick felt his stomach tighten as Jackson shut the door behind him. The big man disappeared and left an overt silence in his wake. Nick looked back at the team and saw something approaching compassion in their eyes. Matt seemed confused. He’d never been apart from his partner in a meeting before. Nick looked at Tanner and got an open-palmed shrug.
Finally, after a long moment, Matt said, “Better get in there and find out what’s going on.”
Nick moved toward Jackson’s office like he was walking to the gas chamber. It had to be Rashid, he thought. Maybe some attorney found a loophole in their arrest. Shit, they were being shot at like fish in a barrel. How do you squirm out of that? Never mind the other eighteen charges that were awaiting his apprehension.
Nick opened Jackson’s door and saw the immaculate desk he’d come to expect. What he didn’t expect was a chair in front of his desk. A lone chair that he’d never seen before. Not even for meetings about nuclear threats or assassination attempts. Jackson always preferred people use the sofa against the wall.
Jackson gestured toward the chair. “Sit.”
Walter Jackson was the Special Agent in Charge of the Baltimore field office. As SAC’s go, Jackson was regarded as a prince. He was a laconic man who asked only for competence and loyalty. In return he provided unending support and sanctuary from the brass at FBI headquarters just down the road in D.C. Baltimore was far enough away to stand on its own, yet close enough to draw comparisons. It was the main reason the Team was harbored there. Besides being Baltimore’s SAC, Jackson was also the Team leader and Nick was his point man.
Jackson sat behind his desk and leaned back to open a miniature refrigerator behind him. He pulled out a bottled water and tossed it to Nick.
Nick studied Jackson’s solemn expression as he took his seat and twisted open the water. “What’s going on, Walt?”
Jackson clicked his laser mouse and examined the flat screen computer monitor to his left. He tapped a couple of keys on his keypad and swiveled the screen around so Nick could see its content. At first the image was fuzzy, but Nick was familiar with the program. As the solid completion bar at the bottom of the screen moved to the right, the clarity sharpened. By the time it reached seventy per cent Nick could tell that the image came from a surveillance camera. Two men sat side-by-side at a green-felt table. At eighty per cent he knew it was a black jack table. When it was complete, Nick felt the room get warm. The man on the left side of the screen was his brother. The man on the right he couldn’t identify.
“Phil,” Nick muttered.
Jackson nodded. “Yes.”
Nick pointed to the man next to him. “Who. .”
“Don’t recognize him yet?”
Nick shook his head.
“Keep watching.”
Nick studied the man’s face. He wore a beard, sunglasses and a wide brim hat you might see on a tourist, yet there was something familiar about his mannerisms. The way he carried himself, full of confidence and bravado.
Jackson punched a couple of keys on his keyboard and the figures came to life.
“This is seven hours ago,” Jackson said. “About two-thirty in the morning, Vegas time. It’s a surveillance recording from the Rio. I understand Phil frequents the place quite a bit.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed as he struggled to make the man next to his brother. There was no audio, but it was obvious the two men were having fun. Phil’s normally bloodshot eyes were in full bloom. The man elbowed his brother as if they were old buddies while Phil tossed back the last of his rum and coke with a flip of his wrist. The drink was so fresh it still had a full complement of ice cubes. It was his brother all right, Nick thought. He’d never seen Phil allow a drink to linger.
Now, Phil raised his hand to a cocktail waitress. The tourist pulled Phil’s arm down and raised his own hand, waving a wad of folded bills. Phil made a half-hearted attempt to decline the offer, but the tourist seemed determined to buy Phil a drink. By the way Phil swayed, it wasn’t the first drink he’d accepted.
Nick breathed a sigh of relief. Phil must have gotten swindled by a pro and Walt was offering to keep it confidential. Let the FBI handle it in house. It was something Walt would do. It made sense now why Nick was called in alone.
Except he was wrong. Dead wrong.
“There,” Jackson said, stopping the playback. In the frozen image the tourist had lowered his sunglasses and seemed to be looking directly at the camera. His expression transformed into a sinister glare. His eyes were like black holes and his smile was pure acid.
Nick’s tongue instantly dried up.
“Recognize him now?” Jackson said.
Water spewed from Nick’s plastic bottle as he clenched his fists. Sitting next to his brother was the face of death. Kemel Kharrazi. Nick stared so intently at the image that he tried to will himself into the scene, or better yet, suck Kharrazi out of the image and pummel him from head to toe.
“Nick, what exactly did Rashid say to you during the arrest?”
Nick noticed that Phil was wearing his lucky shirt. The Preakness Stakes shirt that he wore the day he hit the pick-six for fifty thousand. Nick never had the heart to remind him that he wore the same damn shirt every day for the next three months until he relinquished every last penny back to Pimlico.
Nick looked at up at Jackson and said, “He’s got four kids.”
Jackson nodded. “I know.”
The silence was filled with a heavy sigh from Jackson and the crumpling and uncrumpling of Nick’s water bottle.
“Rashid asked me if I knew who would come after me,” Nick finally answered.
“I see.”
