standing.
Baltasar grunted as he hit the pavement on his left shoulder. Annika kicked him in the stomach, and he flopped over. By this time, Jack had checked to make sure the vehicle was empty. Now he dropped down beside Baltasar. Together, they dragged him over to the pile of bones within which tiny flames still flickered and danced. Mostly, though, the superheated chemical fire had turned everything to brittle ash. But the nauseating stench of roasted meat was still in the air.
“Vasily!” Annika called.
Jack looked up to see Vasily, the remaining
Annika signed to Vasily.
The big Russian gripped Baltasar by the back of his head and slammed it down and ground it into the smoking pile of bones. Flames leaped into Baltasar’s beard and thick, curling sideburns and he began to yell. No one paid him the slightest attention. Then Annika delivered a vicious kick to his kidney and he fell onto his side. She rolled him onto his back so that he was looking directly up at her.
“Where is Arian Xhafa?”
He stared at her, his lips clamped firmly together.
“You
He smiled up at her. His beard continued to smolder.
“Vasily, please stay with our friends,” Annika said.
She signaled to Thate, who left Alli’s side. He grabbed Baltasar by the back of his collar, and together they dragged him into the woods.
Jack and Alli stood together, with Vasily’s tattooed hulk.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jack said in Russian.
Vasily grunted, but Jack could see that he was grateful. The big man turned and went to scavenge weapons from inside the military vehicle.
As soon as the car had entered the swale, the driver had doused the lights and, at Annika’s direction, they had exited, sprinting for the safety of the first line of pines. All except the driver, who had switched the lights back on and had set the car in motion with a homemade mechanism that had gradually released the gas pedal, so that the car would slow several thousand yards farther down the straightaway.
“What will Thate do to him?” Alli said.
As if in answer, an unearthly howl pierced the night. It came again. There was nothing human about it, nothing familiar. The third howl made Alli shiver. It was impossible to imagine what kind of creature could make that sound, or what could be causing it.
Alli made a motion to go into the woods after Annika and Thate, but Jack put a gentle hand on her forearm.
“I wouldn’t,” he said.
She looked at him. “She’ll get what she wants, won’t she?”
“I believe she always gets what she wants.”
Alli nodded. “Did you suspect that Thate was hers?”
Jack sighed. “I should have.”
“In retrospect, it all makes so much sense: his position inside Xhafa’s network, his being sent to Tetovo to spy on Xhafa, his commanding an elite group of Russians in Western Macedonia.”
They saw Annika walking toward them. Thate appeared out of the pine shadows a moment later. He was cleaning something on a wad of fallen pine needles; they couldn’t see what and Jack refused to speculate on what it might be.
“I know where Xhafa is,” she told them when she came abreast of them. “I also know where he’s holding Liridona. Unfortunately they’re on opposite sides of the city.”
Thate now joined them. There was no sign of whatever he’d been cleaning off, no sign on either of them that they had been interrogating a member of the enemy.
“These were not Xhafa’s people,” she said to Jack. “They were the Syrian’s.”
“I don’t understand,” Jack said.
“I didn’t, either, until Thate and I convinced this man—Baltasar—to confess. As I told you, the Syrian has stepped into Berns’s shoes and become Xhafa’s arms connection. This has been beneficial for Xhafa because, believe it or not, the Syrian’s access to cutting-edge weaponry is better than Senator Berns’s was. But the situation is now far more explosive. In return for the weapons, Xhafa allows the Syrian to export his particular brand of terrorism all over the world via Xhafa’s private fleet of planes. The Syrian has connections with the Colombian and Mexican cartels, who are moving massive amounts of drugs from Afghanistan and the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia for perhaps a half-dozen Muslim extremist organizations who are using the drug money to pay the Syrian for arms. It’s a toxic global network with the Syrian at the center.”
Jack had to stop himself from calling Paull immediately to tell him how much more dire the situation had become. Arian Xhafa was merely a symptom; the Syrian was the disease. He needed some answers first.
“What does all this have to do with the Syrian sending a death squad after us?”
“Let’s get back in the car,” Annika said.
When they were on their way back to the highway, she said, “For the past four months, the Syrian has been trying to get to my grandfather. Having failed in those attempts, I fear he’s now coming after me as the only other way he can think of to get to Dyadya Gourdjiev.”
“What does he want with your grandfather?” Alli asked.
“Dyadya Gourdjiev’s brain. It’s a storehouse of secrets,” Annika said.
“That sounds pretty vague,” Jack interjected.
All he got in response was one of Annika’s enigmatic smiles. “Here’s our problem. We need to get to Xhafa and the Syrian as quickly as possible, but the same holds true for Liridona. She’s being held in a safehouse in the western part of Vlore. The Syrian’s compound is in the northeast.”
“Which means we need to split up,” Alli said. “Thate and I will get Liridona.”
“And I said no.”
“You haven’t,” Alli said hotly. “Not explicitly.”
He was about to once again expound on the subject of letting her loose in hostile territory when he caught Annika’s expression, and he remembered their discussion about knowing what was best for Alli. He recalled how he’d bridled when she’d told him that she’d made the decision about what was best for him to know. He tried to tell himself that this was different, but the argument wasn’t holding water.
He steeled himself for one of the most difficult things he had to say. Difficult because he suspected he knew what Annika’s answer would be. “I promised Alli that she could ask you your opinion.”
“I think she’s right, Jack. We have two objectives that need to be addressed immediately.” She searched his face. “If you agree with me, I’ll send Vasily with her and Thate, while you and I go on to the Syrian’s compound.”
Jack looked from her face to Alli’s. This was an important moment for all of them, there was no question of it. But beyond the operational imperatives, he recognized this as an emotional crossroads in Alli’s development. Despite her defiance and Annika’s arguments, he knew the decision was on his shoulders. No matter her own feelings. Alli wouldn’t go unless he gave her his blessing. In an odd way, he recognized this as the moment when a father gives his daughter to the man she is about to marry. In a very real way, she was passing out of his protection into a world filled with peril, heartache, and exultation. He also knew that she would never forgive him if he forbade her this mission. The intimate bond that had been forged between them would be ruptured and nothing he would ever do or say would restore it.
He thought of all the mistakes he’d made with Emma and, perhaps inevitably, he felt the cool wind as she settled in beside him.
—Emma?
—Do you know? he said. Do you know if she’ll be all right?
She had told him that already.
