structure and the multiple attempts on the lives of you and Beth. I like her, by the way. Do you?”
“I’m not taking her out on a date, Jeff. In answer to your point—the damned bridge—from what I can tell, it is just another pile of rocks and steel. We suspect there is a network of tunnels under it, but so what? Could be just for supplies and stuff.” Kyle had his shoes off, and his feet were propped on a low table.
Jeff shook his head. “That cannot possibly be the reason. If so, the medical team would just have been detained, maybe roughed up a bit, and turned over to the authorities. Instead, they were butchered. There remains some unknown linkage between all of that unpleasantness and a dangerous leak somewhere in Washington, someone who can summon professional killers.”
Kyle puffed out his cheeks, thinking. “Still have to go look at the place, so Beth can see whatever it was her brother saw.”
“So why don’t you ask her for a date? The recon mission will be over in two days. You can celebrate with a nice private dinner somewhere.”
“Like the Kandahar mess hall?” Swanson laughed. “No, Jeff. I tell you, though, that I have been impressed with her ability. She’s got a future in this game. Just needs some more training. Any relationship between us is going to stay professional.”
“Quite right. Your track record with women is abysmal. They fall into your hands, and you let them slip through your fingers like gold dust.”
“Bad things seem to happen to women I like,” he said. “Better to keep them at arm’s length.”
Jeff flipped the cover of his laptop computer and logged in to check his private mail. Pat and Jeff had known all of the serious women in Kyle’s life, and some sad times had indeed shadowed them, including some who had been killed or maimed by terrorists. What woman in her right mind would want to enter such a zone of danger? This little one, though, Beth, might prove to be the exception: She seemed to thrive on danger. “Confirmation here on the plane that will fly you from the Azores straight to Kandahar. All squared away.”
“Amazing what money and contacts can do, isn’t it?”
“Not really.” Jeff gave a low laugh. “That combination pretty much works every time.”
“Have you come across anything really unusual about the bridge, Jeff? Your people find anything?”
Jeff opened a file. “Not really. The engineering is quite sophisticated, and it is a sturdy bloody thing. That was shown when the floods hit. Although the power of that much water was an immense force, the bridge was still standing after the waters went down. Needed a bit of repair on the exterior, but the anchoring held, and the span itself survived untouched. Some fine work, that.”
Kyle drank some juice while he thought about it. Dams burst, thousands of people were dislocated, entire villages were swallowed, and this structure had held its own. Maybe they were using it to try out better building techniques so that thousands of Pakistanis would not die every time there was some natural disaster. “Who built it?”
“There we have a bit of a problem. This has been a hugely expensive and technical operation, millions of dollars, with an international consortium involved. With front companies and subcontractors and the foreign banks, it has created a financial thicket that is hard to penetrate. Haven’t figured out yet where it started, or where it leads.”
“Well, it must go somewhere. Have them stay on the money. I have a feeling that it may be important.” Kyle looked at the clock on the bulkhead of polished wood. Time to leave. The helicopter on the fantail was warming up, and Coastie was out there with the deck crew, talking about helicopter things. “We’ll take the first step and see what happens.”
As Sir Jeff started to get up, a leg muscle tightened in spasm and a flash of pain was painted on his face. He sat back down. “Go on, Kyle. I’ll see you when you get back. Take care of that girl.”
Curtis still burned about being lectured by the director of the Diplomatic Security Service, who had snapped and threatened consequences if Curtis ever again attempted to use the DSS for his own purposes. Curtis had kept calm during the tirade, although his stomach had churned. Prison? Abuse of power? The man carried a pistol in a shoulder holster and made certain that Curtis had seen it.
Bill Curtis had carefully explained that he had acted fully within the law, as stated in the Patriot Act, and in his official capacity. Any citizen could be investigated on a whiff of suspicion of terrorist activity. No proof was needed. Beth Ledford had been acting very suspiciously, even disobeying direct orders in a politically charged situation that fell within the interests of the Bureau of American-Islamic Affairs. Her interference could further impede the already weak diplomatic relations with Pakistan.
That grain of truth had saved him, along with a contrite admission that he had overstepped his authority by ordering the full surveillance of the Coast Guard woman. Curtis promised never to do so again. The DSS man had not wanted the involvement of his own office exposed any further and chose to drop the matter. The book was closed with the security service, and Curtis would not reopen it. It was well that the man had not known the other half of the story.
He had arranged for the DSS only to track Ledford around the Washington area. For the direct attacks on Swanson and at Quantico, Curtis had turned to his contacts within a renegade element of the private security community, but the mercenaries had failed, and two of them had been killed. After that, the private firm was no longer interested in the job, no matter what the pay.
Curtis drank the sharp whisky and felt the burn go down into his stomach.
He emptied the glass, washed it in the sink, and set it on a towel to dry.
Curtis climbed into bed, turned out the light, and again weighed the entwined issues carefully: revenge against the possible charge of treason, and protecting the most wanted man in the world.
Before turning off the light, he picked up a framed colored photograph from his nightstand and set it up on a pillow beside him, as if the paper images could look back at him, maybe even talk. It showed a beautiful, young Iraqi woman with flowing ebony hair and penetrating eyes, clad in ski clothes and seated in a comfortable chair beside a roaring fire in a lodge in Aspen, Colorado. At her feet was a grinning boy who had inherited his mother’s good looks. He was missing a tooth. Bill Curtis had taken the photograph while the family was celebrating the child’s fifth birthday. He drifted off to sleep with the picture still propped up beside him.
Curtis had met Raneen at a garden party in Baghdad in the old days, when he was running an oil exploration operation for the Iraqi government and spent a lot of time there. Life had been quiet and enjoyable in the big polyglot city during those times, because Saddam Hussein kept religious extremists on a tight leash. Raneen was the daughter of one of the dictator’s reluctant generals, a professional soldier, and it took Curtis months of careful maneuvering to win the family over enough that he could marry his dark-eyed beauty. A year later, they had a child, a boy, and they named him named Cane. Life was golden, and stayed that way until 1990, when that fool Hussein decided to invade Kuwait.
Curtis was in Taiwan on business, and his family was visiting the grandparents in Baghdad. They were caught on opposite sides of a sudden and vicious war, and for the first time, Raneen and Cane were beyond his reach. When American bombs struck Baghdad, one landed squarely on the general’s home, killing the entire family, including both Raneen and their son. The picture on the pillow was all that was left, and Bill Curtis cherished it.
