number of silk prayer rugs, large cushions, and one low wooden table on which sat a tall teapot with a long S- shaped spout, six small glasses in brass frames, and an antique hookah. The two men removed their shoes on the doorstep and stepped into soft leather slippers with turned-up toes.
Light flooded the space from a series of windows on either side wall. Against the rear wall, a good distance away, was a simple desk and chair. On the desk were three computers—two desktops and a powerful but thin laptop. All were hooked into a high-speed modem with which the house had been specially provided, according to the specifications of the person sitting at the desk, peering from one screen to another.
“Hello, boys,” the figure said in a darkly sweet contralto. She spoke in English. “Back already?”
The chair swiveled around as the whisper of the men’s slippers approached. A young woman sat in the chair. She was thin as a reed with a pale, ascetic face whose main feature was a broad, high forehead. Her blond hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail that came to rest between her knife-thin shoulder blades. She wore a pair of black jeans and a man-tailored shirt of the same color with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, revealing silken hair that was almost white. She wore no makeup or jewelry, but her deep-set emerald eyes glittered with a fierce and almost feral intelligence.
Then she stood and came toward them in long, athletic strides. She was tall, but not nearly as tall as the Syrian. She had to arch upward, standing on tiptoe, to kiss him on the lips, a long, lingering kiss whose naked passion forced Xhafa to look away.
The Syrian’s face broke into a smile of what might, for him, be termed bliss.
“Caroline, my
TWENTY-THREE
THREE SIGNIFICANT things happened in the aftermath of the destruction of Arian Xhafa’s stronghold in Tetovo. First, Alli discovered that not all the students were orphans. Most of the young girls, in fact, either had been kidnapped or sold into slavery. Second, there was cell phone service in the area. As Jack’s cell buzzed to life, locking onto the signal, he saw Paull listening intently as Alli spoke with the children’s spokesperson, a beautiful girl with the most perfect skin he’d ever seen, whom Alli seemed to have bonded with immediately.
There were three messages from Naomi Wilde. Figuring that she had been trying to get in touch with him in order to update him on her progress, he listened with a sense of both shock and mounting alarm to the brief but succinct reports on her theories.
In the first, she spoke of her mounting suspicions concerning her partner, Peter McKinsey, and his possible connection with Fortress Securities. She also told him about the conflicting evidence against Alli, as if two opposing forces were at work countering each other, an occurrence that, frankly, had her baffled.
In the second message, she described her tailing McKinsey into Georgetown and the marina there along the Sequoia boardwalk. McKinsey had met an unknown man who, by Naomi’s detailed description, seemed most certainly an Arab of some sort. The Arab had driven McKinsey out to Theodore Roosevelt Island, where they had disembarked and vanished into the foliage. Naomi didn’t say how long they were on the island. Possibly, she hadn’t stuck around to find out.
The third and final message was a total bombshell that rattled Jack to his core. Naomi detailed her meeting with a woman who had taken her out to Roosevelt Island. There, the woman had shown Naomi the newly buried corpse of Arjeta Kraja. The implication was that the two men had buried her. Had the Arab killed her or had McKinsey? Impossible to tell. Naomi said the woman had mentioned Arjeta’s sisters, Edon and Liridona, both of whom, it appeared, she knew, and who seemed somehow important. The sisters knew a secret, most probably concerning Arian Xhafa or his network. The woman said the Krajas lived in the Albanian coastal city of Vlore. Liridona was presumably still there, but Edon had run away, probably from Xhafa’s men.
Possibly to better allow him to absorb her news, Naomi left the identity of her mysterious benefactor until the end, but when Jack heard Annika’s name his blood ran cold. He sat down on a tree stump. His heart was racing; he felt icy hot, a sensation that threatened to annihilate his thought processes.
Annika had resurfaced, and, of all places, in Washington. Then he heard Naomi in her last line:
Jack, realizing that he’d been holding his breath, struggled to get oxygen into his lungs. He felt as if he were trapped underwater. He tried to calm himself, to figure out what the hell was going on, but it was as if his brain had shut down. Annika, the rogue Russian FSB agent whose life he had saved, only to find out that she was not FSB and the man he thought he’d saved her from was a confederate of hers. She had been working for her grandfather, Dyadya Gourdjiev, all along. He’d accepted that because for a brief time, at least, he and Gourdjiev were on the same side. He’d been powerfully attracted to Annika from the moment they’d first met in the bar of his Moscow hotel last year. And that attraction had turned into a love he’d believed was mutual until on his last day in Moscow he’d received an e-mail from her telling him that she had killed Senator Berns, a murder that had created a political firestorm and had been the starting point of Jack’s investigation into political corruption at the highest level in both the American and the Russian governments.
I neither regret what I did nor feel pride in it, she had written. In peace as in war sacrifices must be made, soldiers must fall in order for battles to be won—even, or perhaps especially, those that are waged sub rosa, in the shadows of a daylight only people like us notice.
So you hate me now, which is understandable and inevitable, but you know me, what I can’t stand is indifference, and now, no matter what, you’ll never be indifferent to me.
My grandfather warned me not to tell you, but I’m breaking protocol because there’s something you have to know; it’s the reason I haven’t come, why I won’t come no matter how long you wait, why I’m not being melodramatic when I say that we must never see each other again.
Her involvement all but paralyzed him. It threw the entire scenario into another arena entirely, and all at once, pieces, tiny and disparate, began to fall into place. Another murder that set an entire group of people into motion, most notably him—and Alli. Could this be another elaborately staged setup choreographed by Annika? It had her hallmarks, certainly, but there were marked differences, not the least of which was the brutal torture of Billy Warren. That wasn’t Annika at all. Her rage at her father had exploded quickly and definitively. Annika had been the victim of physical abuse; there was no circumstance under which Jack could imagine her torturing someone, unless the person had done grievous bodily harm to her or to someone she loved. This was not Billy Warren’s profile.
All at once, he became aware that Paull had broken away from Alli and the girl, and was standing beside him.
“Everything all right?”
“Fine,” Jack muttered.
“You look as if someone just walked over your grave.”
All Jack could manage was a wan smile.
Paull cleared his throat. “Listen, I’m useless here,” he said. “If I’m being perfectly honest with myself, worse than useless. I almost got us all killed.”
“Could have happened to anyone,” Jack said.
Paull smiled and clapped Jack on the shoulder. “You’re a good friend. I appreciate the support, but you’ll have to continue on without me.” His eyes cut away for a moment. “The truth is my field days are behind me. I’ve lost the feel. Wet work takes a different kind of person than I’ve become. My years behind a desk have changed me, Jack. Like it or not, my expertise is now in lending my people tactical support and protecting the missions against political meddling. Believe me when I tell you that I can be of more help to you in D.C.”
Jack nodded. It was difficult to argue against his friend’s assessment.
Paull indicated the girl with the porcelain skin. “I think you’d best take a listen to what Edon has to say.”
Instantly, Jack pricked up his ears. “What did you say her name was?”
“Edon.” Paull looked perplexed. “Edon Kraja.”
