That was everyone’s mistake, Jack thought. Thinking of him as a police officer. Thinking of him as someone who had to play by the rules all the time.
He fired.
The bullet whistled past the stripper’s cheek and entered Farrah’s face, exiting the back of his skull and lodging itself in the plasterboard and taking a significant amount of Farrah’s brain with it. The dancer fainted.
Jack glanced behind him, seeing Farid cowering on the floor. “Don’t go anywhere,” he warned.
Jack hurried to each of the two Armenians. One was dead, but Jack took his weapon anyway. The other was in shock, both his feet dangling from strips of flesh where his ankles had been. Jack kicked his gun away.
From somewhere in the depths of the building, someone yelled. “Get out of here. I called the police!”
“Good,” Jack said, suddenly feeling exhausted. “That’s very good.”
He checked Farrah, too, although there wasn’t much left of him. He tossed the gun aside. The girl, Tina, was out cold, but her breathing was regular and her heart beat was strong.
Jack staggered back over to Farid, who was looking up from the floor in astonishment. “Who the hell are you?”
Jack sat down in a lounge chair next to him. “I’m the guy asking you the questions,” he said. “And before I start asking I’m going to tell you this one time. I have no patience left, so unless you want to end up looking like Farrah over there, you answer me right away. Understand?”
Farid nodded.
Jack asked questions, and this was the story he heard:
Farid Koshbin had been a runner for a few Iranian fences, front men who took stolen and knockoff merchandise and put it into their stores as the real deal. About a year ago he had discovered that he knew enough people to be a valuable contact himself, especially for Persians and Arabs coming over to the United States. He had worked for Farrah several times. Babak Farrah liked to bring over Iranians to work for him, because they relied on him and he could pay them low wages for a year or two before they got wise and quit. Since 9/11, of course, that was harder to do. Farid Koshbin made a little money on the side finding employees for Farrah. He’d learned about eight Persians coming into the country illegally who would need work, so he arranged to help them.
“How’d you hear about them in the first place?” Jack asked.
“Phone call. A guy said he had friends coming over the border who could use some help.”
“Was there a name?” Jack demanded.
“No. The guy told me how to reach the coyote who was smuggling them in, so I called him. I got them jobs working for Farrah, but I guess they fucked up. They took off or something and they caused all this.”
“When did they arrive?”
“A month ago. Maybe six weeks.”
That stumped Jack for a minute. “Weeks ago? Not months? Not six months?”
Farid looked at Jack’s gun. “I’ll say six months if you want me to, but it was a month.”
Something didn’t add up, but Jack let Farid finish his story: when the eight Iranians went missing, some guns and money went missing, too. Farrah was mad enough that his hired help was gone, but never let a theft go unpunished. Since he couldn’t find the Iranians, he tracked down Farid and was going to punish him.
“So there are eight Iranians in the country. You’ve seen them with your own eyes,” Jack confirmed.
“Yeah, sure.”
Weird as it was, this was a relief to Jack. Finally, confirmation of what he’d been saying all along.
There were sirens outside, loud enough and close enough to penetrate the Peppermint’s thick walls. Police poured into the room, shouting. Jack held up his badge.
Frank Newhouse woke up, instantly alert. This was more out of habit than necessity. The apartment was quiet, as he expected. This address was so far removed from the life and name of Frank Newhouse that no one, not CTU and not even the Attorney General, would connect it with his current activities. His girl, lying next to him, was still asleep. His eyes followed the shape of her body, outlined by the sheets. He appreciated the fact that she stayed in good shape for him. She was a good woman, patient with him during his long stays away from home, and welcoming (very welcoming, he thought, remembering the sex they’d had a short time ago) when he returned.
Newhouse stood up and stretched his body, still lean and muscled after forty-eight years of use. Slipping on jeans and a t-shirt, he walked around the apartment to limber up, then sat down at the kitchen table, where two separate cell phones sat charging. He spent a few minutes running over the plan in his mind. It hadn’t all worked out entirely as he’d hoped. He’d never expected his deep cover file to get out of Langley. Jack Bauer never would have requested it, and if he had, well, Bauer had dropped so low on the food chain, the request probably would have been ignored. Newhouse hadn’t expected the information to slip out from a different source. He’d underestimated the Senator and her resources. He made a mental note to find whoever had slipped the files out of the CIA and deal with them personally.
That had been the one slip. The files had led to the condo, which he had had to abandon, because unlike this apartment, the condo was connected to Frank Newhouse.
Still, it would be nearly impossible for CTU to put two and two together, and if they did, by that time it would be too late. The CTU agent had dismantled his bomb and that worried him a little, although he didn’t see how it could affect his plans. It didn’t really matter if CTU knew about the EMP device. In fact, in some ways it wasbetteriftheydid.But if Jack Bauer and his team focused on that building, they might learn more than he wanted them to, and that would lead them to places where Frank didn’t want them poking their noses. He’d have to tie up a few loose ends.
It also worried Frank that Farrah was taking so long to kill Farid. Farrah should have called in by now. Frank checked one cell phone, but no one had called. Where was Farrah? He had a perfect excuse to get rid of Farid, and plenty of muscle to do it. New-house knew how persistent Jack Bauer was, and how vital it was to seal off certain avenues of investigation.
Two cell phones sat in their cradles on the bar near the kitchen. Frank picked one up, dialed a number and waited while it rang.
“It’s about time,” said Attorney General James Quincy. “What the hell is going on?”
Frank said, “You sound unhappy, sir. Isn’t it all happening the way you wanted? You did great on CNN.”
“Yes, I got my forum,” Quincy said. “But I need the end game now. I’m catching a lot of heat here, Frank.” The Attorney General paused. Frank could hear the anxiety in his voice, and he relished it. “You’re sure you’ve got these guys under control. There’s no real threat, right?”
Frank did a convincing job of inserting surprise into his voice. “You didn’t want a real threat, Mr. Attorney General. You wanted the threat of a terrorist cell to boost your chances for your bill to pass. And you’ve got it.”
“I heard a CTU agent nearly got killed trying to dismantle some kind of bomb. If it had gone off, people would have died.”
“The bomb wouldn’t have gone off,” Frank assured him. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. Politicians were all alike. They talked a tough game, but when it came to doing the heavy lifting, they turned into girls. “As for him getting hurt, I had to do something to make it look dangerous.”
“I didn’t know anything like that was part of the plan.”
“It’s better if you don’t know some of it,” Frank said.
“Just tell me that it will all be over tonight.”
“I guarantee it,” Frank said. He hung up.
He would have felt sorry for Quincy if he’d had even an ounce of respect for him.
“Hey, baby.” His woman stood in the doorway, stretching her lean body and smiling at him. “Mmmm, there’s nothing like afternoon sex.”
“Nothing like sex with you,” he said. She walked forward, sleepy-faced, and he pulled her into his lap. “So I’m going to be busy tonight, but tomorrow I should have plenty of time. We should go up to Santa Barbara.”
“Okay, I’ll finish my painting.” She yawned. “Oh, hey, that reminds me, do you still have those white buckets?”
Frank cocked his head. “White buckets?”
“Yeah, you had a bunch here the other day. I used one as a rinse bucket for my brushes. Mind if I use it again?”
