“They built a few new things.” He flinched involuntarily as a car zoomed close to pass.
They were staying in the equivalent of a Days Inn, a new motel at the north of town. Applying a move from Ferguson’s playbook, Rankin took two double rooms on opposite ends of the second floor. For security they would stay together, but this gave them a backup to use just in case. They were walking from the car to the room when a voice Rankin hadn’t heard in a lifetime echoed against the freshly sealed macadam.
“Hey, Sergeant. Hey, Rankin! Steve?”
Rankin turned slowly, as if acknowledging the voice meant more than simply recognizing it. But when he did, and when he saw James Corning, he smiled, genuinely glad to see him.
“What the hell are you doing here, James?” Rankin asked.
“Same old, same old,” said James. He held up his scrawny hand and gave Rankin a mock high five.
“Still pissed off at the world?” asked James when he saw Rankin’s scowl.
“You still writing lies?”
“Oh, you betcha. Bigger the better. What are you here for? Do something wrong?”
“Yeah. I got to work it off.”
They looked at each other for a moment, Rankin towering over James, James practically dancing back and forth as if he were buzzed on amphetamines, though in reality he didn’t even drink coffee.
Alcohol was a different story.
“I have an interview with the new prime minister, so I can’t hang out,” James told Rankin. “But we should have a drink.”
“Maybe.”
James thought that was funny and started to laugh. “You here for the president?”
“No,” said Rankin.
James thought that was even funnier. “What are you here for?”
“Looking for Scuds. You see any?”
James thought this was a joke — it did sound like one — and he laughed twice as hard as before. “You got a sense of humor in the last two years. I’ll give ya that. Listen, I’m in two-ten. Knock on the door. Same old, same old.” He did the goofy thing with his hand again, slapping at the air, and walked off.
“What’s he, some sort of reporter?” Guns asked as they checked out their rooms.
“Yeah. Except he’s OK. He was with me north of Tikrit when I got Crabman.”
“The whole time?”
“Whole time. He’s OK.”
Guns nodded. He had heard the story in bits and pieces, the only way Rankin told it. Even though he had worked with the guy for going on nine months, he still didn’t know everything that had happened.
“He’s not the guy who shot the woman?”
“No. That was Colgan. James shot the kid that tried to turn us in, and the two policemen who came for us.”
“Oh,” said Guns. “I didn’t know journalists could do stuff like that.”
“I told you he’s OK, right?”
“Whatever.” Guns shrugged. He didn’t have any feelings about journalists, one way or another.
Rankin finished scanning the room with the bug detector. He put his gear into one of the drawers, setting a small motion detector in the lower corner so he could tell if it had been tampered with.
“James is the guy who dove on the hand grenade that turned out to be a dud,” said Rankin. “Did the ultimate good deed and lived to tell about it.”
“Wow.”
Guns hadn’t heard
9
The analysts had tentatively identified the alias Judy Coldwell had used to travel to Europe and then the Middle East: Agnes Perpetua. She had used a Moroccan passport. But no one by that name had registered in any of the hotels in Latakia.
“What about the rest of the country?” Ferg asked Corrigan.
“Jeez, Ferg, Syria is a big place.”
“Immense,” said Ferguson. “Try Damascus.”
“Well, there I’m ahead of you, because I did already, and she’s not there. Not in any tourist hotel.”
It wouldn’t be hard to register under a different name. If the Syrians were more cooperative, and if they had infinite amounts of time, they might be able to find her. But neither was true. Ferguson needed a shortcut, but couldn’t think of one.
“Did you try Thatch?”
“Of course we tried Thatch,” said Corrigan. “We also tried her maiden name and some other different combinations. And we’ve looked at flight lists. Nada.”
“What’s she do again?”
“She’s an accountant.”
“Any hints from her clients? Where’s her husband?”
“Jeez, Ferg. Let us do our job all right? Next you’re going to ask if we started tracking her credit cards.”
“Did you?”
“Screw yourself, of course we did.”
“Keep looking for her,” said Ferguson. “Check back with me when you find her.”
“Better make it
Ferguson rented a boat and took a spin out to the area where Birk generally anchored his yacht. It wasn’t there.
Back at his hotel, Ferguson was just taking a cola from the minibar when his sat phone rang.
“Ferguson,” he said, grabbing it.
“There are times, Bobby, when you sound so much like your father it sends a chill down my spine.”
“Hey, General. How are you?”
“Incredibly busy, distracted, and forgetful, unfortunately,” said Thomas Parnelles, the head of the CIA. “How are you?”
“Probably the same. Except for the forgetful part.”
“Memory and concentration run in the genes. I understand you had some difficulty the other night.”
“Our party got crashed.”
“Shame.”
Ferguson had known Parnelles all his life, and it was difficult when talking to him to separate the vast bulk of their relationship from the fact that Parnelles was the head of the CIA. The two roles — surrogate uncle, director of intelligence — were quite opposed to each other. Parnelles had no problem: he’d been segregating his life since before Ferguson was born.
“I had a call from Tel Aviv,” continued Parnelles. “I spoke with David Tischler. We hadn’t spoken in many years.”
“Good friend of yours?”
“Not particularly. He was rather junior when I knew him. Your father liked him. They worked on a project or two together and did some traveling. But I’ve always been at arm’s length with everyone at Mossad.”
Tischler had never mentioned Ferguson’s father. Good discipline, Ferguson thought; he wanted to keep everything at arm’s length.
Ferguson’s approach would have been entirely different.
