Double Down (4 page)

“Well,” he said, “I vetted them all and taught the members of FTP from the ground up. I just got lucky that they turned out to be so skilled. All except for Jackson, that is.” Everyone shared a laugh at that; they all knew about the ongoing battle of wits between the Boss and Jackson. They also knew that after Jackson had proved to be such an extraordinary agent during the last leg of their journey, the Boss was more impressed by him than he'd ever been before.

Jackson leaned forward to respond, but was interrupted by his cell phone ringing. Seeing it was Mahmoud, he picked up. “Yeah, M? Whatcha got? I'm here with Fritz and the Bod Squad.” He listened for a moment, his forehead creasing with concern. “Ah, shit. Okay. But at least you've got good timing—Chas was just about to send a message to him. I'll call you back ASAP.” He hung up, and they all looked at him expectantly. “Mahmoud and Tyka found a file in Birdsong's villa with information about all of us, including you, Chas,” he said with frustration. “He knows who we all are and who we really work for, and he knows the code five. We've been made.”

There was a collective pause. “But,” Chas said, “we're still no closer to knowing what connection he has to Baba Samka, right? I mean, he's a brilliant seeker of information; he could have been doing research on me and through me discovered all of us. I mean, what do we really know?”

“Well,” the Boss said, “that seems to be the issue. I second the Bee's idea. I say you come clean and ask about Buzz. Say you're working with the FBI. Tell him he's not under any threat, that we're just looking for information. Be totally up front with him. And see what he says.”

“Okay,” Chas said. “I have to contact him through a website to get his number—he uses burner phones he recycles every week or so. And he works through a site that can't be traced. Let me get the details and we'll go from there.”

“Great,” the Boss said. “Let's reconvene here in a couple of hours.”

‡‡‡

Everyone collected themselves and made their way out. Fritz went back to her office, where she popped open a Red Bull, poured herself a coffee, and lit a Parliament. She wanted to assign a new team; the Bod Squad shouldn't be involved anymore, they were no longer safe. She was frustrated that she was failing to keep them out of harm's way, and she still felt unsettled about using them on this job. It had all become much larger than any of them realized.

She was just lighting her second Parliament when Rafael knocked on her door, then walked in. He was her right-hand man, “on loan” from the Israeli secret service in an exchange plan with the FBI; he'd worked with Fritz on and off for the past five years. He had a bulk of knowledge that was very helpful to her, and contacts that were exceptionally useful.

“Fritz,” he said carefully. “I just got word from one of my contacts in the counterterrorism unit of Mossad. Baba Samka is back. He just blew up a target in Morocco.”

3

Tyka and Mahmoud were back at Mahmoud's
pensione
, sitting on the bed, the files they'd collected from Birdsong's estate spread out before them. Tyka was smoking a cigarette and Mahmoud was looking through the collected information, searching for clues. Neither of them spoke.

Mahmoud turned a page and sighed. He was looking at pictures of his family, at collected information about the Casablanca bombings of 2003, and wondering if the killer he sought was right under his nose yet again.

He looked over at Tyka sitting on the bed next to him, smoking cigarette after cigarette. “What's bothering you?” he asked. “You look upset.”

“Nothing,” she quipped. “It's been a perfect day.”

“My sentiments exactly. Not the best moment.”

“Yes,” she said, standing up and moving over to the window, clearly beginning to tense up further. “I'm not used to being made. That doesn't happen to me. Not ever. I've flown under the radar all my life.”

“You and me both.” How could he get her to relax? To open up to him? Maybe if he revealed more about himself, she would do the same. “Did I tell you that I used to work for the local Moroccan police?”

“Really?” she asked. “I thought the local police were for shit.”

He laughed. “They are. At the time all I was interested in was a desk job, and maybe having a family. But it all changed with the Casablanca bombings.”

“Changed how?” she asked, settling down a bit. How honest should he be? he wondered. Should he tell her everything about his past? Or just some of it?

“Well,” he said, “my whole family was in Casablanca that day, except for me. I was in Tangier, following my sister's husband, who was abusing her.” At this he swallowed hard, and Tyka nodded at him to go on. “She was murdered before I could help her . . . I never could get her out of it. After the bombings, I helped my friend Amal set up a safe house for women in Johannesburg . . . this was where Chas and Susannah stayed when they were searching for Buzz.” He'd tell her some of it, but not all . . . he'd hold back about how he'd hunted his brother-in-law down and killed him in cold blood, how it was his first murder, how good it felt to take his rage out in blood, and how that set him on an entirely different path. No, he mused, some things were best kept secret.

“How did you get into this line of work?” she asked intuitively.

“Through Amal,” he replied evenly. “She connected me to some higher-ups in the Moroccan secret service and I went on from there. The secret service, unlike the police, are quite sharp.” He'd had hard-core training in the slums of Casablanca. Surprisingly thorough, given the atmosphere. That was where he'd learned the craft of being an assassin, how to master disguise, how to handle various weapons, and the finer points of infiltrating gangs. He left the secret service five years later as one of the finest snipers they'd ever employed, and they still occasionally called him in on a job. But the contacts he had made over those five years, not only in Morocco but in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Israel, France, Italy, and the States, gave him more work than he knew what to do with. He could pick and choose his jobs; he made plenty of money and only worked hits that led him closer to finding the man he sought. “I just can't understand,” he said, revealing a glimpse of the deepest part of him, “how BS remains so goddamn elusive. How he manages to destroy all I have loved.”

“I know how you feel,” she said, putting out her cigarette and laying a hand on his arm. For the first time, he thought he saw a real openness in her eyes. “He has done the same for me. He has somehow managed to kill almost everyone I've ever gotten close to.”

“I dream about him at night . . . about what it would be like if he were gone. How much freer the world would feel. Now I sometimes think—”

“That I will never be free,” she finished for him, her words soft. She ran her hand down his arm to join with his.

“Yes,” he echoed. “That I will never be free.”

“You see,” she said slowly, “he has somehow been connected to the death of everyone I've ever called family, directly or indirectly. Or anyone who has ever helped me. It is as though I am cursed . . . if I love someone, he takes them away.”

“It's almost the same with me,” he said, exhaling deeply, grateful to see more of her true self, holding her hand in return, loving the permission to touch her in such a casual way. “Except for Jackson, who has always been my rock in this, and who I trust with my life. I know that he and his team will get us as close as is humanly possible.”

“Hm,” she said, looking skeptical and pulling away from him. “I don't know that I agree.” He could see the wall coming back up between them in a flash. “And also, I just can't help but think that since I got involved with the Bod Squad, all my work has been turned to shit.”

It's not rational
, he thought,
but I get it. I just need to turn this back around again.
“Honestly, Ms. Tyka, I understand your feelings, but I hardly think joining the Bod Squad has ended your career.”

“Well, it certainly seems that way,” she said. “It feels like they were the cause of Gabriella's death, and now
this
.”

“Now, now,” he said, trying to figure out the right thing to say. “You and I both know that Gabriella made her own choices. The line of work we're in . . . it is not exactly the safest path.”

“Are you saying it was her fault, Mahmoud?” she asked, rounding on him.

Oh no
, he thought.
I'm saying everything exactly wrong
. “It's not that,” he said, trying to pacify her, wanting to take a step back, to see the lady who lived inside her armor. “It's that she knew what she was in for.”

“And do you, Mahmoud?” she asked darkly, her eyes clouding over. “Do you know what you are in for?”

“I only know what I hope for, Ms. Tyka. And what I hope for is right in front of me.”

With that he grabbed her, pulled her across the bed toward him, and engaged her in a passionate, take-no-prisoners kiss so long and deep that he lost track of time. They were stopped by a short, sharp knock on the door, and broke apart just as a key card slid into the lock and the door was thrown open.

Standing there in a trench coat, heels, and clearly not much else was Cécile de Foulere, a petite woman whom Mahmoud often worked and slept with. Cécile was a French/Russian double agent who spoke both languages like a native. Mahmoud had forgotten he'd invited her to join him a few days ago—before he'd known Tyka was in Italy, before he'd gotten distracted by his work and his newest bedfellow.

Cécile was dressed to impress, her short, dark red hair spiked, her eyes smoky. “Right,” Mahmoud said awkwardly to Tyka. “This is the agent I told you about. The one who gave me the intel about Buzz.”

The two women took each other in, and Tyka broke the silence first with a short, dry, sarcastic laugh. “Let's skip the introductions, shall we? I was just leaving.”

As she gathered her things, Cécile said, “
Qui est votre plus récent pute?
” not realizing that Tyka spoke French. Mahmoud sank down onto the bed as Tyka looked Cécile straight in the eyes and responded, in French, “I'm nobody's whore. Especially not his. Now get the fuck out of my way before I blow your head off.”

Cécile stepped to the side and Tyka left in a huff. Cécile turned to Mahmoud and said, in a soft French accent, “I've never seen you make a mistake before. Bad quality in an assassin. And I'm not particularly interested in someone's sloppy seconds. What's wrong, Mahmoud?”

He exhaled a long breath. He'd known Cécile for many years and had always appreciated her candor and her intelligence, as well as the fact that she could match him round for round in bed. She was right . . . he
had
gotten sloppy, and if this were a different situation, his mistake could have proved fatal. “It's him, Cécile. We are so close, and now we've been made.”

She sat down next to him on the bed and put a hand on his shoulder. “Well,
you
might have been made, but I haven't. How can I help?”

‡‡‡

Robert Smith had collected himself, taken care of some email, and set everything up so that it appeared he was still in D.C. It was now about ten p.m. EST, four a.m. in Palermo . . . it would look like he'd been working late again. Over the years he had figured out a way to run most of his unit remotely; he said it was about keeping the cover of his team, but really it was about his own personal freedom. And as his relationship with Gabriella had become more important, his freedom had, too. There were only two things that mattered to him: Gabriella, and exacting revenge. He'd had a rough upbringing, and his sense of justice was as sharp as a razor's edge.

Gabriella kept a small apartment in Sicily, near where she'd grown up. He'd go there briefly to take a few mementos and clear out anything that might connect her to him; the last thing he needed was for the Sicilian Mafia to come after him. He'd rather they remained just where he had them: eating out of his hand. Did he have to compromise his work with the CIA to ensure a good relationship with the Mob? Sure, but from that he got a lot of intel, a lot of leads, and the freedom to construct whatever stories he liked. This was true power. And power without boundary was what he'd sought by going into intelligence in the first place.

Gabriella's apartment was located on Via Muzio Salvo Rosina, in a poor area of Palermo near the Porto di Palermo. The building was squeezed between several others, and he knew he could access it easily by climbing the balconies in the back, strewn with clotheslines and laundry hanging out to dry. As he entered the apartment he was struck by how painful it was to be in her space, to smell the scent of her hair on the pillows, her perfume on the clothes hanging in the closet. He did a thorough search of the place and found she'd been true to her word: nothing implicated him or anyone else. She kept the place simple and sparsely decorated with only a few family photos, some pottery, and a cross in every room—the perfect apartment for the cousin of a former Mob boss.

On the bedroom bureau, buried in her jewelry case, was a gift Robert had given her years earlier, in the very first flush of their love. They'd had a beautiful dinner in D.C., and had gone to his staid and bare apartment to make love on every surface. When they'd finally retired to the bedroom, he'd pulled a string of pearls from underneath the pillow and fastened it around her neck; she'd said she'd always wear it when they made love, and she always had. He took the pearls and slipped them into his pocket. Then he went to wipe out what remained of the Marconis, to start from scratch, to clear the playing field. At the very least, the act of murder would ease some of his grief.

‡‡‡

Tyka was making her way through the streets of Palermo to Gabriella's apartment. She'd checked into a small apartment hotel thinking she would stay for a few days or so, no more than that. She'd been out buying another pack of cigarettes when she remembered something Gabriella had told her: that she'd hidden some valuable information in her apartment in Palermo, and that if she was ever killed, Tyka should get the intel and use it as she saw fit. It had been many years ago that Gabriella had said this to her, and it had been such an emotional few days that Tyka had only just remembered. It was about five thirty a.m. now, and she felt like she hadn't slept in days—come to think of it, she hadn't. And then there was Mahmoud.

In light of everything else that was going on, she shouldn't have been quite as angry as she was. But she was fuming. She'd smoked her way through two packs, downed a small bottle of whiskey, then sat in the shower and cried in a way she hadn't since she was a girl. And why? Because Mahmoud,
that pretentious, cocky, self-assured pain in the ass,
was sleeping with someone other than her
?
That was ridiculous. She knew the sex was just a release from the missions they were on. She knew neither of them wanted anything more than temporary comfort. She knew there was no place in her life for anything more than a fling. And yet . . .

He had gotten under her skin.

Under her armor.

Fuck.

She was nearly at Gabriella's now, and tried to distract herself by recalling what Gabriella had told her.
There is a tin milk pail in the corner of the apartment
, she'd said.
It fits the theme of the place, and looks like—how you say?—an old relic. But the pail has a false bottom. Inside
is where I've hidden the intel
. Then she'd made Tyka memorize her address. While she'd never have Tyka over—too risky, too easy then to break both their covers—she'd made sure Tyka knew where it was.

Tyka walked in through the front door and up the stairs. The building was an old one, with simple locks on the doors, and she easily got in using a hairpin and a credit card. Gabriella never had need of any security: before they turned on her, the Mob fully protected her. She slipped through the door and began to look around. Light shone in from the streetlamps and the sky was just beginning to brighten a bit. The light threw odd shadows on the walls from the spare pieces of furniture, and the shutters created geometric patterns on the floors. It was so strange for her to be here, in this space that was clearly a cover for the real Gabriella—this apartment looked like the haven of a sweet Italian girl, replete with country decor and crosses on the wall. From what Tyka knew, Gabriella never went to church, and she lived the life of a savvy international agent, not a nice girl from the countryside. But it was appropriate to her cover, perfectly done. Lace curtains hung over every window, and doilies decorated every surface. There were antique silver candelabras on the living room mantel, and rosary beads on the bedside dresser. And the kitchen had beautiful hand-painted mosaic tiles on the walls. On the refrigerator was a shopping list, and Tyka felt a catch in her chest seeing Gabriella's handwriting.