The Invisible

sound of traffic was incredibly noisy. He didn’t continue his thought; instead, he just banged twice on the door. Inside, there was a slight squeak, as if someone had just risen from an old chair. Kealey unzipped the duffel on his shoulder, thrust a hand inside, and withdrew a bundle of notes. Seconds later, the door sprung open, and a man stood before them. He looked confused at first, but a cautious expression soon slid over his face. “Who are you?” he asked in fractured Spanish. “What do you want?”

Kealey had seen file photographs of the rail-thin Algerian. He knew he had the right man, but he decided to feign a little ignorance to keep things casual. “Are you Kamil Ghafour?” he asked in English. Ghafour’s shrewd brown eyes narrowed immediately. “Why?”

“I need to talk to you. I think you’ll be interested in what I have to say.”

“Are you the police?” he snapped. He extended a bony, threatening finger, then continued in English. “My status in this country is legal. I have documentation, and—”

“I’m not the police.” Kealey held up the bundle of notes, and Ghafour’s eyes locked onto the money immediately. Kealey was surprised when the man didn’t visibly react. No smile, no greedy stare, no nervous lick of the lips . . . no gesture of any kind. Instead, his feral gaze slid sideways to Petain, who was standing at the bottom of the wooden steps. “Who is she?”

“She’s with me.” Kealey tossed over the bundle, and Ghafour caught the money cleanly. “There’s more where that came from. If you’re interested, that is.”

Ghafour looked at him a beat longer, then jerked his head to the rear. They followed him into the cool interior, and Petain shut the door behind them. They removed their hard hats as the Algerian walked behind a cheap wooden desk. He turned to face them, but Kealey noticed that he didn’t sit down, and alarm bells started ringing instantly. He scanned the top of the desk, but he didn’t see any evidence of a weapon. That didn’t mean anything, though; there could be a veritable arsenal in the drawers. Given the site manager’s antigovernment stance and obvious disdain for authority, Kealey felt sure there was some kind of weapon hidden inside the room. Judging from Ghafour’s stance, it was probably inside or behind the desk.

“So,” Ghafour prompted, spreading his arms out to the side, as if to say, “Here I am . . . What do you want?”

Kealey lifted the duffel bag to eye level, then tossed it onto a ratty couch. “There’s a lot of money in there. Twenty thousand Euros, to be exact. My gift to you.”

Ghafour looked at the duffel once, but his eyes flicked back to Kealey instantly. “And what,” he asked in a slightly amused voice,

“would I have to do for all of that?”

Kealey didn’t respond right away, although his eyes never left Ghafour’s smiling face. The Algerian was short—five feet eight inches at the most—and he couldn’t have weighed more than 130 pounds. He was the last person one would expect to find on a building site, and that was something else to consider. Had his employer hired him simply because of his nationality, or was Ghafour active again? Was the site manager involved with the GIA? The man had money and connections, Kealey reminded himself, and Ghafour had never renounced his ties to the Armed Islamic Group. Suddenly, the spark of doubt returned, but this time it was twice as intense. Maybe trying to pay him off had been the wrong play. Unfortunately, it was too late to change tactics now; they had no choice but to see it through and hope for the best.

“All I want is information,” Kealey said, watching the other man carefully for a hint of where the weapon might be. The slightest shift of eyes could give it away, and he had to know. “Money for information, Kamil . . . Believe me, it’s a fair trade. You were in prison for seven years, correct? In Algiers?”

Ghafour smirked, his thin lips twisting into something approximating a smile. “Yes, but you already knew that, didn’t you?” The smile disappeared suddenly. “You’re not the police, so who are you? MI5?”

“No.”

“Where are you from? England? The States?”

Ghafour waited for a response. When it became clear one wasn’t forthcoming, his smile grew wider. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re American. It’s so obvious, when you know how to look . . . You seem familiar. What’s your name?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Kealey heard himself say. Petain was shifting nervously beside him. She muttered something under her breath. Kealey didn’t catch it at first, the air conditioner drowning out the words, but then she repeated it.“Behind the files.”

Kealey’s eyes dropped to the desk. To his left—Ghafour’s right—

a pile of files was stacked up to waist height. Kealey understood that Petain had a view of what lay behind the folders, and a cold chill ran down his spine when he realized what she was trying to tell him. Kamil Ghafour’s gun was less than 2 feet from his right hand.

“You don’t need to know who we are to enjoy the money, Kamil. All I want is a name. Who came to see Amari Saifi in prison? Who arranged to get him out?”

“Yes,” Ghafour continued slowly. He spoke with a slight lisp. “You seem very familiar.” It was as if he hadn’t heard the questions. He extended his left hand and wagged a finger at the other man. “I’ve seen you somewhere before. I’m sure of it.”

Kealey felt another chill. It could have just been the abrupt change in temperature, but either way, the man’s relaxed, carefree attitude was putting him on edge. Petain was completely immobile next to him; he could almost feel the tension radiating from her body. Clearly, she was just as uneasy as he was.

“You don’t know me,” he told Ghafour, adding a harder note to his voice. He doubted the Algerian had any idea who he really was. Earlier that morning he’d added some gray streaks to his hair, which made him look at least ten years older, and his eye color had been temporarily changed with a pair of green-tinted Clear View contacts. More importantly, he was still wearing the thick beard he’d grown over the past three months, which all but obscured the lower half of his face.

“I’ll ask you once more, and then I’m taking the money and leaving,” Kealey lied. “Who came to see Saifi in Algiers?”

Ghafour opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, someone began pounding hard on the metal door to the trailer. Kealey caught only part of what happened next: Petain jumped at the sudden noise, her eyes darting to the left. At the same time, her right hand dropped to her hip, lifting the lower edge of her white cotton blouse. It was purely instinctive, and the FN Forty-Nine was revealed for only a split second, but that was all it took. Kealey sensed, more than saw, Ghafour’s hand dart behind the cluster of files, and without thinking, he threw himself forward, reaching out for the other man’s arm.

The gun discharged once as Kealey reached Ghafour, his left hand moving to knock the weapon aside. He reached out with his right to get hold of Ghafour’s shirt at the neck, then used his forward momentum to propel them both into the wall of the trailer. The whole structure rocked with the impact as someone began to shout outside, calling for help in rapid-fire Spanish. Then Kealey and Ghafour were on the floor, wrestling for control of the gun. It went off again, the sound rattling off the thin metal walls of the trailer, then again before Kealey could pull it free of the other man’s grasp. It wasn’t until he got to his feet, struggling for breath, that he realized the third shot hadn’t come from Ghafour’s weapon.

He turned to face Marissa Petain. Her feet were placed shoulderwidth apart, and both hands were on her gun. It was extended at arm’s length, and looking down, Kealey saw exactly where her round had gone. There was a small hole in the Algerian’s upper left thigh. It didn’t look too serious, but then, as Ghafour groaned and rolled to his right, the wound started to spurt.

“Oh, fuck, ” Kealey said. His own weapon was still at the small of his back, so nothing had to happen there. He put the safety on Ghafour’s 9mm and tossed it to Petain. She managed to catch it as Kealey dropped to his knees and put both hands over the other man’s wound, pushing down as hard as he could. Ghafour shrieked in pain, then let loose with a series of unintelligible curses. He flailed his arms wildly, trying to catch Kealey in the face, but he didn’t have the leverage.

Ignoring the cries of pain, Kealey spoke to Petain without turning to face her. “Make sure that fucking door is locked!” he shouted. After a second of frozen indecision, she burst into action, reaching the door with two quick paces.

She checked the handle quickly, then spun and said, “It’s locked. It’s already locked.”

“Can they open it from outside?”

“No, I don’t think so. Not without breaking it down. Oh, God, I didn’t mean to . . . Ryan, what do you want me