Rules of Betrayal (12 page)

Connor’s eyes narrowed and a hint of red flushed his cheeks. “There’s something else I should tell you. The job I’m asking you to take is extremely dangerous. You will be going into the belly of the beast, and there is not going to be anybody there to hold your hand. You will be alone behind enemy lines, and I mean that in the real sense of the word. There is every chance in the world that you will be caught. And if you are, I can’t do a damn thing about it. The good news is that you won’t have to rot for fifty years in a Pakistani cell. The bad news is that you’ll be summarily executed.”

“Hey, Frank, don’t sugarcoat it. Tell how it’s really going to be.”

Connor didn’t appreciate the joke. “I will steer you where you need to go. I will tell you everything you have to do. Follow my instructions and you’ll make out just fine. The most important thing is to keep your wits about you. Are we cl—” Connor caught himself. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said Jonathan. “I get it. It’s dangerous. Go ahead. If it’s something to help Emma, I’ll do it.”

“All right, then let me read you in on your wife’s activities. For the past two months—since September—Emma’s been stationed at the FSB’s residence in Damascus, doing penance for her role in the attempt to assassinate Igor Ivanov. They have her doing menial tasks—running Arab diplomats, low-level sneak-’n’-peeks, the occasional theft of corporate secrets. These days industrial espionage is a state activity, especially if you’re as far behind the eight ball as Russia. One of her jobs is handling Ashok Armitraj, a big-time gunrunner working out of South Asia. Armitraj is half Indian, half British and calls himself Lord Balfour. Ever heard of him?”

Jonathan said he hadn’t.

“Soon you’re going to know every goddamn thing there is to know about him. He’s going to be your bestest and closest friend. Anyway, a month back Balfour contacted Emma with a shopping list he wanted for a client. Usually no one cares who the end user is. Balfour gives us a country and we put that on the export documentation.”

“Us? America sells to this guy, too?”

Connor nodded. “We have a lot of fine companies to keep in business. Anyhow, the Russians don’t mind who the end user is. They’re shipping this stuff out the back door as it is.”

“What do you mean, the back door?”

“Think of them like the Mob. The stuff Balfour buys from the Russians has all fallen off the back of a truck. In this case, the truck is a government arms factory controlled by the FSB. There’s legit production and there’s the back door. Legit sales go on the books. The back door goes into the generals’ pockets.”

“So who was Balfour’s client—the end user?”

“We don’t know. What we do know, and what opened our eyes, was Prince Rashid’s involvement in the deal. According to Balfour, Rashid was brokering the sale and guaranteeing payment on his client’s behalf.”

“Prince Rashid from the Gulf? He’s a benefactor of Doctors Without Borders. He’s a good guy.”

“Oh?” Connor’s eyes darted away and he shook his head, as if somewhere there had been a gross misunderstanding. “Maybe we’re
talking about two different people. The Prince Rashid I know is one of the world’s notorious terrorist financiers. He funnels money to Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Laskar-e-Taiba, and any other Islamic organization bent on destroying the West, to the tune of two hundred million dollars a year.”

Jonathan sat back, chastised. “I hadn’t heard.”

“Of course you hadn’t. You’re too busy being wowed by his good works and his blond wife and his beautiful blue-eyed children. Rashid wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“If you know all this, why haven’t you made it public?”

“Think of what you’re saying. The prince’s family is the United States’ staunchest ally in the Gulf. The accusation alone would sour relations for years. This isn’t the kind of thing you air in public.” Connor leaned forward, as if sharing a secret. “This is the kind of thing we take care of privately.”

“So you used Emma to get at Rashid through Balfour?”

“No comment.” Connor pursed his lips, as if struggling to decide what he might or might not say. His expression made it all too evident that something had gone terribly wrong. “All we know is that she disappeared while overseeing the transfer of weapons from Balfour to Rashid.”

Jonathan envisioned the scenario without difficulty: Emma acting as a Russian agent to get close to Rashid and kill him. She’d pulled off similar feats in Lebanon and Bosnia and too many other places to name, let alone remember. It was not an occupation without risk. “Is she dead?”

“We have good reason to believe that she’s not.”

To Jonathan’s ear, “good reason” sounded like spy-speak for a fifty-fifty chance at best. “So Rashid was onto her?”

“We don’t know. But before I tell you what we do know, I want you to get a grip on yourself. A temper isn’t going to help anyone, especially Emma.”

Jonathan drew a breath, tamping down his nerves. “I understand,” he said.

“Prince Rashid has a thing he does to people he thinks screwed
him. Business, politics, whatever. He likes to take them into the desert and put the hurt on them. I’m not going to go into detail. It’s nasty stuff.”

“Like what?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Like what, Frank?”

Connor set his forearms on the table and sighed, as if he were going against his better instincts. “Chains,” he said. “Cattle prods. Cigarettes. Sometimes he drags them behind his car.”

“And he did this to Emma?”

Connor nodded.

Jonathan looked away, an ungovernable rage building inside him. The thought came to him that he would stop at nothing to punish the animal who had inflicted such punishment on his wife.

A steady ringing filled his ears, but he wasn’t sure whether it came from inside him or from the carrier. “You just said you had good reason to believe that she isn’t dead.”

“We have evidence that indicates she survived the beating.”

“Did someone see her?”

“No.”

“Then what? This is my wife you’re talking about. ‘Good reason’ doesn’t cut it.”

“We found what we believe to be her footprints walking away from the spot where she was left. It appears she was driven from the scene. At this point, that’s all we know.”

“Cattle prods? He dragged her behind his car across the desert?”

Connor frowned. “He’s a bad one. I’m sorry.”

Jonathan felt something cold and hard and merciless settle inside him. He had never been one to harbor grudges, to catalogue wrongs done to him, slights received, indignities and insults, in the vain, misguided hope of one day paying them back. In his younger days, he had had his own method of dealing with assholes, and that method invariably involved a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey and his fists. He found his method to be cheap, expedient, and effective at resolving matters between individuals. Unfortunately, it was
also illegal, and landed him overnight stays in jail in ten cities across six counties. As he grew older, and (eventually) matured, he’d learned that violence was not a means to an end. It was just a means to feed the devil inside you. Instead of hitting people, he ignored them. He traded mayhem for a medical degree, fists for a scalpel and forceps. He needed his hands in good condition for surgery.

But all the while, the devil inside him waited, biding his time, doing pushups in the deepest corner of his soul, gathering strength for the moment of his return. Jonathan knew this, and, ever vigilant, had kept him at bay these many years.

Chains … cattle prods … cigarettes … sometimes he drags them behind his car
.

Connor’s words penetrated to that deepest corner, and now, seated at the table as the carrier shuddered with the launch of another jet, Jonathan felt the demon stir inside him, the hounds bay for revenge.

Payback.

“So this is about getting to Rashid?” asked Jonathan, with a new and improved outlook on the matter.

Connor shook his head. “Not just yet. The situation is fluid. Rashid doesn’t matter at the moment. We’re more interested in finding out the identity of the man for whom he purchased the weapons. If he’s a new player, we want a name. If he’s an established entity, we want to know that, too.”

“But Rashid hurt Emma. You can’t just let him—”

“Rashid is an SOB, and one day he’ll pay. You’ve got my word. But right now there’s no way we can get close to him. He knows we’re watching. He’ll have his defenses buttoned up tight. The only way in is through Balfour. You see, Balfour doesn’t just supply weapons, he flies them to wherever his clients need them. If we can find out where Balfour delivered those guns, we’ll know who Rashid’s mystery friend is. As I said, we need to get close to Balfour, and you’re the only one who can do it.”

“I already told you that I don’t know anything about him.”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s what you can do for him that counts.”

Connor spent several minutes explaining Balfour’s history, his rise to power as an arms trafficker, and his subsequent fall from grace as a fugitive on Interpol’s Red List. When it was done, Connor paused and leaned back in his chair, his shrewd eyes fixed on Jonathan. “Still interested?” he asked.

“Keep talking,” said Jonathan.

“Balfour is in trouble and he knows it. The Indian government is closing in on him. The Pakistanis may pull the welcome mat from beneath his feet at any time. He needs a way out and he needs it now. The problem is, there’s nowhere for him to hide. So … Balfour needs someone to alter his appearance so that he can start a new life incognito. He’s in the market for a plastic surgeon, and he wants him to perform the procedure at his compound in Pakistan. We would like you, Dr. Ransom, to be that surgeon.”

“You want me to change his looks? To turn him into someone else entirely?”

“Hopefully, you’ll never have to perform the operation,” said Connor. “Balfour conducts all his affairs from offices inside a palatial compound outside Islamabad. We want you to use your status as Balfour’s guest to locate information telling us the identity of Rashid’s client. There’ll never be a better opportunity to get inside his business. Rashid’s client is just the tip of the iceberg. If things go well, we’ll get enough information to turn the arms market inside out.”

“How long will I have?”

“You tell me. How long does that sort of procedure take?”

“Start to finish? A lot depends on just how radically he wants to alter his appearance. Nose, chin, implants. We’ll have to see. In any event, I’ll have to do a full workup on him, a physical, blood panels, that kind of thing. We’re talking two days minimum if we can get results back quickly. What kind of equipment does he have?”

“Knowing Balfour, he’ll have the best.”

“In that case, the surgery itself will only take a half-day. But he’ll need to rest for a few days afterward. There’s no way he can get on a plane for at least a week.”

A klaxon sounded on the ship’s internal speaker system. A man
announced that chow was being served in the enlisted mess and that the movie for that night was
Batman Returns
. Jonathan spent a moment running over all that Connor had told him. “You said Balfour’s in the market for a surgeon. Has he chosen someone?”

Connor said yes.

An uneasy feeling took hold of Jonathan. “What’s going to happen to him?”

“He’ll be taken out of the picture,” said Connor matter-of-factly.

“Taken out of the picture?”

Connor nodded. “Obviously, we need to get him out of the way.”

“You guys just don’t get it. I can’t trade Emma’s life for his.”

Connor stared with obvious disappointment across the table. “Is that how you see us? A bunch of amoral killers willing to do anything to accomplish our objectives? You, of all people, should know how seriously we value human life.”

Jonathan didn’t miss the unspoken message. He, a civilian, had been privy to several of Division’s operations. He knew far more than any civilian should. If Division made it a policy to eliminate any and all individuals they considered a risk, he would’ve been dead a long time ago. “Yeah, maybe,” he admitted. “It’s just that I’m not too good at figuring out who has to live and who has to die.”

“You leave that part to me. Right now, you just need to do as I tell you. You good with that?”

Jonathan said that he was, but already a voice was sounding inside him, saying that Connor was holding something back. “So what happens now? How much time do we have?”

Connor checked his watch. “Jesus, where did the time get to? You’d better haul your butt upstairs to the flight deck. Your carriage is waiting.”

“Now?”

“This minute.” Frank Connor guided him out of the wardroom and down several flights of stairs, stopping at the pilots’ ready room. He barked a few orders, and an officer emerged with a flight suit and a helmet.

“Put ’em on,” said Connor. “Now.”

“Where am I going?” asked Jonathan.

“To see some friends of mine. You’ve got a lot to learn before I can send you into Balfour’s den.”

Jonathan looked at the flight suit and helmet. “Hold it a second,” he said, keeping his hands at his sides. “What about Emma? You told me she might be in danger. Isn’t this about her?”

“It certainly is. The best way you can help your wife is to finish what she started,” said Connor. “Lord Balfour was one of the last people to see Emma before Rashid tortured her. If anyone knows what happened to her, it’ll be him.”

Frank Connor stood on the
flight deck, watching from the safety line as Jonathan climbed into the rear seat of the F-18/A. An airman leaned into the cockpit and tightened Jonathan’s harness and acquainted him with the plane’s features. At one point the airman pointed to something at Jonathan’s feet and then crossed his hands over each other dramatically while shaking his head, and Connor knew that Jonathan had just been advised not to pull the ejection handle except in an absolute emergency.

The airman closed the canopy and leaped down from the ladder. Farther up the deck, a flight controller waved a green flag. The pilot gave a salute. The sound of the aircraft powering up was like an industrial turbine red-lining. Connor saw Jonathan glance his way. Feeling that something was expected of him, he forced an arm up and gave a thumbs-up. It was an awkward gesture. He’d never been good at the rah-rah stuff. It wasn’t that he didn’t have much practice at it. Rather, it was that he felt it disingenuous in a business that made its home in the gray regions of the human condition, where success was measured by acts of greater or lesser evil and death was ever-present. Still, he was the director now, and it was his duty to offer encouragement. He smiled, and Jonathan nodded.