to you?”
I hated it when she looked at me like that. It was as though she could see right through me, and it wasn’t a view I’d ever much enjoyed.
“I’m so sad, Nick. I’m feeling bereaved all over again. I feel so goddamn stupid; I thought we had something good happening here.”
I sat down beside her. “Look, I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you, but what could I have said to make it sound all right?”
“The truth, that’s all I needed and always need from you. The truth I can handle, the truth I can work with, but this…” She turned away, tears running down her face.
I thought about Zeralda’s head, and gave mine a shake. “Carrie, you remember how it was in Panama. You know how these jobs work. There are some truths you really don’t want to know…”
“This has been the story of my life, Nick. I just can’t risk it all happening again. I know it’s selfish of me, but I don’t think I can take it anymore. That man is responsible for so much pain in my life. He sacrificed me and my mom by dedicating himself to his double-dealing world. But even so, I allowed myself to be sucked in, and because of it my husband was killed. I kid myself I blame George for Aaron’s death, but do you know what? Really, I blame myself. I let my own father exploit me, the way he exploits everyone.
“In Panama, he knew I was desperate to get a passport for Luz so we could get back to the States. But I’ve never gotten anything from him for free. Even as a little girl, I always had to earn it first.”
I watched her as her eyes concentrated on the water but her mind was elsewhere. “Aaron was right all along. He told me that once it started and George knew we were desperate for the passport, it would never stop because George wouldn’t let it. And you know what? He was right, because here we are again. How can I let myself be with you until I know you’ve no longer got even a toe in that world?
“I’ve made the mistake of depending on you. Depending on you being there when I wake up in the morning. And, worse still, Luz has started to get used to you being around, too. I’m not going to run the risk of having to tell her that another person she loved, that she relied upon, is lying in some ditch with a bullet in the back of his head….”
I reached out to touch her but she stiffened and moved away.
“You could have applied for citizenship. You could have gone back to school, had a home, you could have had me. Doesn’t any of that mean anything?”
I didn’t answer her immediately. “I can’t think of anything I’d like more. It’s the full fairy tale, for me.” I didn’t know how she did it, but I always found myself saying things to her that I thought I’d kept well buried. “Perhaps the real truth is that I can’t quite believe there’s a place for me in your perfect world. Remember what I said to you in the jungle? My world may look like a pile of shit—”
“—but at least you sometimes get to sit on top of it…”
I looked at her, hoping for even a hint of a smile, but I hadn’t come close.
“That’s not the issue here.” Her voice was still sad and tired. “You lied to me, Nick, that’s the long and the short of it. Nothing’s changed. You betrayed what I thought we had. Oh, God, when I think what I said to you today, I feel so ridiculous.”
My heart was pounding as I stood behind her, trying to think what I could say. “We just need time, Carrie. We just need time…”
She shook her head. The tears were running off her face now and onto her down jacket, staining the nylon a darker green. “You’d better go. Both of us have got to do some thinking. I don’t think I can just now. When you’re ready to come back to me on my terms, Nick, give me a call.
“Until then, if it has to be you who does my father’s dirty work for him, Nick, it has to be you. I’ll never forget what you did for us in Panama. I’ll always admire the man you are, and I’ll always love the man you might have allowed yourself to be. But don’t expect Luz and me to come and put flowers on your grave….”
Chapter 9
Navigation lights flashing in the gloom, an American Airways jet thundered down the runway and took off, quickly disappearing into dense low cloud. I turned back from the window and looked at George. His finger was jabbing a copy of the The Boston Globe so I could see the front-page pictures of dead Taliban scattered across Afghanistan.
“A wounded animal is the most dangerous of all, Nick. There will be another strike; it’s just a matter of where and when.” He gave me a look of such intensity that I began to realize I was going to be going sooner rather than later. “We’ve received grade-A int in the last few days that they’re putting something together for Christmas. But we have no idea of the target — and that’s where you come in.”
We’d come straight to the Hilton at Logan Airport, and it had already been getting dark when we arrived. He had booked the room well in advance. The asshole had known precisely how Carrie would react when she heard the truth, and had still been in the kitchen, waiting for me, when I got back to the house. He didn’t exactly have to twist my arm to get me working for him again. I’d already made up my mind on the walk back to Gregory Street — or, rather, it had been made up for me. The fact was, I had nowhere else to go. What was I going to do? Check into a motel down the road and try to patch things up with her over the next few months, between serving beers at the yacht club? Go back to the U.K.? There was nothing for me there except trouble; George would make sure of that. No, if I wanted to stay in the U.S. to see Kelly and perhaps really get a life, I had to play by his rules. My immediate objective had to be to earn a real passport, and when the job was over, just see which way the wind was blowing. Well, that was where my half hour of thinking had taken me, and it had seemed to make some kind of sense at the time.
“You have to ask yourself, Nick, which is scarier, the noise or the silence? Even before nine-eleven, we knew that there were al-Qaeda active service units — ASUs — out there, and they haven’t gone away.” He was sitting at the desk to the left of the TV and minibar; the chair had been turned to face the bed, where I was lying against the headboard.
“You got anything on them?”
“I wish…” He jabbed at the newspaper again. “The word is they’ll all have mad eyes and beards — not so. This side of the Atlantic they’re just ordinary, respectable people. Computer technicians, accountants, realtors; sometimes even born and raised here.” He looked around the room. “Even hotel receptionists, some of them married with two-point-four children, a minivan, and a mortgage.
“They don’t have to hide themselves in ethnic ghettos, Nick. They live in our neighborhoods, shop in our malls, wear Gap, hey, even drink Coke.” He took a can from the minibar and lifted the pull tab. “These folks are well-spoken, intelligent pillars of the community. They come here as kids, lie low, blend in, bide their time — classic sleepers. But they don’t even have to be foreigners. Guys are converting to Islam by the hundreds in our own prisons and, believe me, they’re not turning into Allah’s answer to Billy Graham….”
He sat back, the can resting on his knee. “We don’t know who, or how many, are in the ASUs. All we know is these sons of bitches are ready and waiting to press the button on December twenty-fourth.”
He pulled some papers from his alloy briefcase, along with a fistful of airline tickets for Nick Scott.
“These are copies of stuff found by Special Forces in Afghanistan, transcripts from tactical interrogations of prisoners, and more in-depth material from al-Qaeda, rendered in Pakistan.” He sat back in the chair while I scanned the first few pages. “It confirms three things. One, al-Qaeda has the know-how to build radiological bombs. Two, they’ve gotten their hands on substantial quantities of radioactive material in the U.S. And three, they plan to use it December twenty-fourth. Dirty bombs — you know what I’m saying, don’t you?”
I knew what he was saying. These things had radioactive material packed around conventional explosives. When detonated, the immediate explosion would cause just as much damage as a conventional weapon, but it would also blast radiation into the surrounding atmosphere. An area the size of Manhattan — or bigger, if the wind blew — would have to be cordoned off while they sandblasted buildings, replaced pavement, bulldozed contaminated earth — and for years after, the lines of cancer victims would grow outside every hospital. Dirty bombs are a perfect terrorist weapon; they don’t just blow you up, they rip out the nation’s heart.
George was reading my thoughts. “We’re talking Chernobyl, Nick. Chernobyl, in our own backyard…” He
