Abuse of Power (24 page)

The road was dimly lit and sparsely populated, and judging by the graffiti Jack saw scrawled across a Wholesale Fabrics building to his left, it was one of the poorest of East London neighborhoods.

The only thing he knew about Whitechapel were stories of Jack the Ripper, who had used this area as his hunting ground over a three-year period in the late nineteenth century. The streets the Ripper had roamed were very different than these, but you couldn’t walk along here without thinking about his brutal butchery and the hysteria surrounding it.

The woman didn’t seem bothered, however. She kept moving at a steady pace until she reached the end of the block and turned left.

Jack hurried to catch up, slowing again as he made the turn and saw her about forty yards ahead. She moved past a darkened dry cleaning store, then a low wall—which he soon discovered offered a view of the train tracks—then crossed to her right at the intersection and turned down Whitechapel Road.

Again he sped up. He wasn’t in the habit of stalking women, but that’s exactly what he was doing right now.

He thought of Jack the Ripper again and shuddered.

When he finally did turn the corner, she walked briskly past a row of closed shops—a kebab house, a stereo store, a real estate agency—

Near the middle of the block she took a sharp left, moving into an alleyway. Jack crossed to her side of the street, but again he held back. He knew that stepping into that alley might alert her to the fact that she was being followed, and he didn’t want to tip his hand. Or find her waiting for him with a .45.

Waiting what he hoped was enough time, he continued toward the alley and made the turn. It was short and narrow and came to a dead end at a graffiti-scarred wall.

The woman was nowhere in sight.

Where the hell has she gone?

In the wall to his right was a dilapidated metal door marked
EXIT ONLY.
Jack moved to it, checked the knob.

Unlocked.

He stood there a moment, thinking about what he might be getting himself into, wishing he had his .357.

Well, you don’t,
he thought.
How badly do you want more pieces of the puzzle?

He took a calming breath then pulled the door open.

When he got inside he heard music. The steady
thump-thump-thump
of a bass drum. A short set of cement steps led downward toward a narrow hallway, lit by a flickering fluorescent light.

Jack navigated the steps and headed toward the end of the hall, its walls and ceiling adorned with enough Day-Glo graffiti to trigger an epileptic seizure. There was an adjoining hallway to the right. He took it.

At the far end was another metal door, a large skinhead in a muscle shirt sitting on a wooden stool next to it, his beefy face expressionless. He was the kind of “soccer thug” whose ancestors had exploited the world and built Britain. Now the government hated and suppressed his breed, permitting Muslim thuggery to reign. A nation that attacked itself this way was a nation with a political autoimmune disease.

The skinhead’s face didn’t change as Jack approached. He merely extended a hand, palm up, and said, “Twenty quid.”

“Did a woman just go in here? Beautiful. Dark hair.”

“Twenty quid or sod off,” the guy told him.

Jack took a twenty-pound note from his jacket pocket and handed it to him. The guy inspected it in the dim light then got off his stool, stuffed the bill into his back pocket, and wordlessly reached for the doorknob.

“Take your pick,” he said.

As the door swung open, Jack was accosted by a wall of sound, the music slamming into him like a living force, so loud that his eardrums immediately began to throb in pain.

Beyond the doorway was a small brick warehouse filled with flashing lights and writhing bodies, moving to the beat of the music. Most of the dancers wore typical street clothes, but some of the woman had skirts so short with necklines so low they flirted with public indecency.

Not that Jack was complaining.

It was a good old-fashioned rave, and for a moment he wondered if he’d made a mistake. Surely this couldn’t be where the woman had gone—no good Muslim girl would be caught dead in a place like this.

But then, based on what he’d seen so far, Jack wasn’t entirely sure she
was
a good Muslim girl. And what was the alternative? There was no place else for her to have gone.

Jack moved inside, pushed past a couple in a clinch, then stepped onto the main floor and scanned the sea of bobbing heads for any sign of her. He was too jet-lagged to make more than a poor stab at dancing, doing only as much as it took to blend in. The strobe lights didn’t help much, and after a full minute of searching, he was convinced he’d lost her.

Had he missed something in the alleyway? Another door, maybe?

His question was answered a moment later. At the far side of the warehouse, on a raised platform that looked like an old loading dock, the woman emerged from a doorway. A cardboard sign marked
TOILETS
hung above it.

No longer wearing the shapeless dress she’d worn at al-Fida’s flat, she now sported clothes that could easily have been hiding beneath that dress—a dark pullover sweater and a pair of blue jeans. He had been right about the woman. Her body
was
spectacular.

She eased up to a rail along the edge of the loading platform and looked down at the dance floor. It was hard to see her face clearly in the intermittent light, but judging from the way she carried herself—no bobbing head, no shake of the shoulders to match the beat—Jack figured she had as much interest being in this place as he did.

She’d been standing there for less than a minute when a slender, curly-headed white guy sidled up next to her and smiled, making his best play.

Who could blame him? She was a knockout. She was also way out of his league.

Jack watched them, thinking he was about to see the guy go down in flames. But to his surprise the woman leaned toward Curly and whispered something into his ear.

Did she know him?

“There’s a problem. We need to talk.”

Curly’s smile disappeared as he listened attentively. Then he nodded and whispered back, gesturing toward another hallway at the back of the warehouse.

When he was done, the woman gave him a dismissive push then shoved away from the rail without another word. Curly lost himself in the crowd. She headed toward that hallway.

Jack didn’t waste any time. Threading his way through the crowd of dancers, he moved in her direction, reaching the far edge of the dance floor just as she disappeared from sight. He glanced toward the loading platform to see if Curly was still there, but the guy was long gone.

Then someone grabbed Jack’s arm.

He spun around, expecting to see Curly, but was surprised to find an attractive blonde in a black bustier and fishnet stockings smiling at him. The bustier barely contained her, and her eyes had the glassy, faraway look of the perpetually stoned.

“Hey, luv, where you going? Let’s dance.”

“Some other time,” he said, and pulled his arm free.

This time it was Jeremiah that came to mind:
“For my people are foolish, they know me not; they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.”

Then he was up a short set of steps and heading into the hallway, which was dark because of a broken light fixture.

There was movement to his left and he hesitated when he saw two dark figures—then realized it was the clinching couple from the dance floor. They hadn’t bothered to find a motel room, their silhouettes moving rhythmically to the music.

He hurried past them and saw a door marked
EXIT.

Pushing through, he found himself in another alley that ran the length of the building and then some, opening out to streets on either side. But there was no sign of the woman, and Jack was quickly coming to the conclusion that he wasn’t very good at this stalking thing.

Which way had she gone?

Making his choice—there was a faint floral scent in the air, possibly the hand lotion he had smelled earlier?—he went to his right and hurried toward the street, not slowing this time as he reached the mouth of the alley. Moving onto the sidewalk, he swiveled his head, glancing both ways, and was relieved to find her walking about a quarter of a block away to his left.

Dry skin,
he thought gratefully. A woman’s vanity can be dangerously second nature.

As he moved out after her, she crossed the street again and disappeared into yet another alley.

What the hell was she up to?

Jack waited for a couple cars to pass, then followed. The way the alley was situated, there was very little light in there and he hesitated, once again wishing he had his .357 on his hip. Those years as an embedded reporter in Iraq had made firearms seem like part of a man. More often than not he was allowed to carry weapons in hairy situations. It was against the regs, but so was a lot of what happened in war. His third arm was an M249 light machine gun, fussy with sand but it took care of them; a Beretta M9 was his fourth hand, making up for a lack of stopping power with smooth, semiautomatic action that put a lot of those little balls into an enemy. Being unarmed felt like an unnatural state of being.

Plunging forward, he walked briskly, looking toward the other end of the alley. Jack didn’t see the woman. That was the first inkling he had that she was the cat and he was the mouse. But he had gone this far—

Halfway through, the building to his right gave way to a small car park—probably an employee lot. It was empty and lit only by a single incandescent bulb that burned over the building’s rear door. A faded sign under the bulb read
CG & SONS FINE GARMENTS.

Had she gone in there?

Jack was about to move toward the door when a figure stepped from the shadows next to him and pressed the muzzle of a Browning Hi-Power 9mm to the side of his head.

He froze. Slowly, he shifted his gaze to her.

There was a gun at his skull, the safety probably off, an anxious and unsentimental finger on a hair trigger, yet he couldn’t help thinking she was even more mesmerizing up close and personal.

Ridiculous, but there it was.

Her face was a mask. Hardened. Unflinching. In these kinds of situations, it was best to let the person with the firepower do all the talking.

“Why are you following me?”

“I saw you at the club and—”

Gunmetal and perspiration produce a distinctive odor. It was in the air now and it overpowered the fading smell of aloe. The smart-aleck act was not going to buy him anything.

She pressed harder. She knew what she was doing. She didn’t lean into the gun like an angry street thug. She knew he would feel the increased pressure against his skin, understand that it meant her center of gravity was off, realize that if he were willing to risk it he could step from the line of fire, pivot, grab her wrist, and hurl her off-balanced self against the wall. It was basic self-defense.

So much for the stuff you
can’t
do,
he thought.

“
Who
do you work for and
what
do you want?” she demanded.

She was getting impatient but she wasn’t quite there. He had a little wiggle room. He hoped so; he was betting his life on it.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Jack said.

“Except you’re the one following
me,
remember? Although you’re not very good at it. I spotted you back at the train station.”

“That shows what you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had you way before that,” he said. “I was in Abdal al-Fida’s flat when you found him.”

That caught her off guard. Her dark eyes widened. “That’s impossible.”

“I was hiding in his closet. I saw that show you put on when you called the police. Pretty good performance as a grieving girlfriend.”

She pressed the Hi-Power against his temple—hard, like it was a drill bit. He’d pricked her pride.
Now
she was off balance.

“Did you kill him?”

Jack frowned. “Hell, no. I wanted to
talk
to the guy.”

“Why?”

“Because of what happened in San Francisco. I know al-Fida was behind it and I’m trying to find out who he works for.”

She considered this. “You’re a Yank.”

“Through and through.”

“
Who
are you?”

“A reporter,” Jack told her, just as squealing tires announced the arrival of a dark SUV in the alley. Its headlights washed across them. The woman flinched and Jack took his shot. He stepped sideways, simultaneously grabbing her wrist and twisting it away from her. Only she didn’t release her hold on the gun as he’d expected. She yelped and swung a fist toward him, landing a blow to the side of his head.

He stumbled sideways, caught off guard by her power.

Another SUV roared in from the opposite side, and the alley was soon flooded with men, automatic weapons in hand, heading straight for Jack and the woman. More surprised than hurt by her punch, Jack kicked her legs out from under her, grabbed the Browning with his right hand, then spun toward one of the approaching gunmen. He slammed the heel of his left hand into the gunman’s nose and the guy howled and went down as Jack raised the Browning. But before he could make use of it, three more men were grabbing hold of him. The butt of a rifle slammed into the back of his head and his cranium exploded in pain. The world went red and he stumbled as the men started pulling him exactly where he didn’t want to go—to the ground, where his chances of survival were nearly nil. You can’t grapple with men who are beating you.

He tried to fight, but there were too many of them. Then the rifle butt slammed him again, and the next thing Jack knew he was spiraling down a long black hole.

23

Jack awoke to the sound of screaming.

A woman’s screams of pain, the kind of pain that comes from teeth being extracted without Novocain, or fingers being cut off with wire clippers. Her high-pitched wails echoed mournfully down a long hallway.