I didn’t look up, because I knew he was waiting, his eyes ready to ambush mine.
“I need your help, Nick.” It was a challenge, not an entreaty.
“Things are good here with Carrie.”
“Are they?” He gave an exaggerated frown. “I don’t think she took it too well. She’s like her mom.”
The asshole. Divide and rule. He’d done it on purpose. I forced myself to stay calm. “You didn’t tell her everything, did you?”
“Son, I don’t even tell God everything. I’ll leave that until I meet him face-to-face. But, right now, I see it as my duty to make sure there’s a big fucking bunch of al-Qaeda ahead of me in the line.”
He stood up and turned his back to me again as he placed the framed picture back on the dresser. Maybe he didn’t want me to see how proud he was of the way he’d delivered his lines. “The secret of combating terrorism is simple — don’t get terrorized. Keep a clear head and fight back on their terms. That’s the only way we’re going to win this war — or, at least, contain it, keep a lid on it. But we can only do that if we take the battle to them, with every means at our disposal. And that’s where you come in, Nick. I need to stop the drains getting blocked — and fast. Do you want to know more, Nick, or am I wasting my time here?”
I looked at him and took another mouthful of coffee. “I’d like to know what happened to Zeralda’s head.”
There was a bit of a smile. “It came back here and was presented to his cousin in Los Angeles on a silver platter. By all accounts it kind of freaked him out.”
“What about the greaseball who was there with him? Was he the source? Is that why no one else was to be killed?”
“Greaseball?” He managed to complete the smile. “I like it. Yes, he was and still is a source, and a good one — too good to lose just yet.” The smile faded. “Nick, have you ever heard of hawalla?”
I’d spent enough time in the Middle East to know it, and when I was a kid in London, all the Indian and Pakistani families used it to send cash back home. “Like Western Union, but without the ADSL lines, right?”
He nodded. “Okay, so what we’ve got is a centuries-old system of moving money, originally to avoid taxes and bandits along the ancient Silk Road, and nowadays to avoid the money-laundering laws. A guy in San Francisco wants to send some cash to, say, his mother in Delhi. So, he walks into one of these hawalla bankers, maybe a shopkeeper, maybe even working in the money markets in San Fran. The hawallada takes his cash and gives the guy a code word. The hawallada then faxes, calls, or e-mails his counterpart in Delhi, maybe a restaurant owner, and gives him the code word and the amount of the transfer. The guy’s mother goes into the Delhi restaurant, says the code word, and collects. And that’s it — takes less than thirty minutes to move huge sums of money anywhere in the world, and we have no track of it.
“These hawalla guys settle their debts and commissions among themselves. In Pakistan, business is huge. There’s maybe five, six billion U.S. dollars sent back there every year by migrant workers just from the Gulf states. But only one billion goes through normal banking channels. Everything else goes via hawalladas. These guys work on total trust, a handshake or a piece of paper between them. It’s been going on for centuries, must be about the second oldest profession. It even gets a mention in the New Testament.” He gave me a wry smile. “Carrie’s mother is a very religious woman. You know the tale of Ananis and Safia?”
As if. I shook my head.
“Go read it someday. These hawalla guys were hiding money that they were due to give to Peter, so they were deemed sinners. And when they were confronted with their shame they just fell down and died.” There was a pause. “That’s what you did for us, Nick: you made Zeralda fall down and die. This hawalla network has been used to funnel money to the terrorist groups in the Kashmir valley. It’s been used by the heroin trade coming out of Afghanistan, and now it’s here, in the U.S.
“This is not good, Nick. Zeralda was a hawallada, and we reckon he’d moved between four and five million dollars into this country for terrorism in the last four years. You can be sure the legit banks are doing their bit now and cracking down on laundering all around the world, but with hawalla we can’t check accounts or monitor electronic transfers.
“Well, we’ve got to close it down. Al-Qaeda is retreating and regrouping its assets in both manpower and cash. We’ve got to turn off the faucet, Nick, and we’ve got to do that before al-Qaeda moves all its funds to safe harbors. Money is the oxygen for their campaign in this country — your new country. I say again, am I wasting my time here, Nick?”
I really needed room to think. “What happened to the cousin in Los Angeles?”
“Let’s put it this way: we didn’t stand in his way when he jumped on the first plane he could get out of the States. All he left behind was a few clothes, a pair of leather motorcycle gloves, a Qur’an, and maybe sixty pages of Arabic text off the Internet. All his accounts are frozen, but we’re not after his money. We want him to go spread the news of what happened to the other half of the transaction route. He’s back in Algeria, a very scared man, and much more use to us there than he would be sitting in a penitentiary.”
The coffee was almost cold. I took another sip to buy myself some more thinking time.
“See, Nick, you were the key. The key that switched on the power of terror. Bringing back that head showed these guys that for us anything is possible as well. They’ve got to know we’re coming for them, that they shouldn’t start reading any long books, know what I mean?”
He liked that one and took another swig himself. “As Rumsfeld just told the world, Nick, there will be covert operations and they’ll be secret even in success.”
“Did you know beforehand that Zeralda was into boys? We were briefed it was just hookers.”
“As I said, even God doesn’t know everything I know. I wanted to make sure you guys finished the job. Not being mentally geared up for it, then seeing something as sick as that would make it…shall I say, less confusing? I just figured you’d be thinking it could be your own kid. Am I right?”
I nodded. The expression in those boys’ eyes had reminded me of the way Kelly looked when her parents were killed.
“Nick, I understand what you want from life now, but things have changed for all of us since September, and everything’s ratcheted up again in the last twenty-four hours. My grandfather was only here a year before fighting for this country in the First World War. My father did the same in the Second, because he wanted this country to remain free. I’ve done the same all my life, and even found myself crying on nine-eleven — and that’s not a place I often go to.
“Do this new job for me, and I guarantee you’ll get a Nick Stone passport. All you’ll need to do is swear your oath of allegiance and that’s it, you’re one of the seven hundred thousand new Americans this year.” He switched on the kind of expression you normally only see in stained-glass windows. “You’re one of us now, Nick. All the people you love live here. Think about Kelly. What world do you want her to grow up in? The kind of place where you freak out every time she flies here to see you? Who knows? It’ll take a while, but Carrie will understand. Think about it, Nick, just think.”
I’d done my thinking. I’d heard all I needed to hear.
I stood up, handing him the empty mug. “No. I’ve done my part. We had a deal and my only job now is to make things right with Carrie.”
Chapter 8
I ran out into the street. I didn’t need to be Oprah Winfrey or Dr. Phil to work out where she had gone — I mean, where do you go when the man you’ve poured your heart out to turns around and kicks you?
I found the Plymouth and walked down into Little Harbor. She was sitting on the beach, staring out at the houses on the other side of the bay. My footsteps crunched on ice as I approached.
“Carrie, I’m so sorry…”
She turned very slowly to face me. “How could you?” Her voice was weary, defeated, empty even of the bitterness I expected and, I guessed, deserved. “How do you think this makes me feel? I trusted you.”
“I’m not turning into your dad. It was just that once. One job. It’s over now.”
“Of all people…He caused Aaron’s death, remember? The same man who was going to blow up an American cruise ship just so the White House would have the excuse to march back into Panama. Doesn’t that mean anything
