Authors: Kyle Mills
It had been a bizarre trip for a twenty-five-year-old Arab-American ki d from Brooklyn. To him, the Egan family seemed like a bunch o f toothless, possum gumming freakazoids from the planet Hillbilly. On e notable exception was Mart's sister Mary Jane, who he was puttin g through nursing school. Fade and she hit it off and made a pact t o stay in touch. By the time she graduated a year later, they wer e meeting halfway between their homes every other weekend.
Not knowing how Matt would react, they kept it quiet, but it wa s inevitable that he'd eventually find out. When he did, he was actuall y happy about it and couldn't understand why they hadn't told him. I t had occurred to Fade at the time that you could be fairly certain a gu y wasn't just pretending to be your friend when he found out you wer e sleeping with his sister and he seemed psyched about it.
Who knows what would have happened if he hadn't gotten shot and fucke d over? Matt would probably be his brother-in-law and his kids would b e getting guitar lessons from Elise Egan.
But it hadn't worked out that way. When he'd returned, MJ tried t o call him and see him a thousand times and a thousand times he'd turne d away. Eventually the phone just stopped ringing.
Fade drained the rest of his beer and tossed the bottle in the bac k seat, trying to shake off the memory. Deep thinking about the Ega n family was in no way part of his brilliant three-step plan to chee r himself up. With the car purchased, it was time to move on to phas e two. He dialed a number written on the back of his hand into his fanc y new phone and pressed it hard to his ear, trying to block out the rus h of the wind.
"Homeland Security, how can I direct your call?"
"Hillel Strand's office, please," he shouted.
There was a brief pause and then a woman's voice. "Yes, can I hel p you?"
"Put Hillel on, please."
"May I ask who's calling?"
"Salam al Fayed."
Obviously the woman either knew what was going on or was following th e news, because there was an uncomfortably long pause before she spok e again. "Could you hold for a moment?"
He fished another beer off the floorboard.
"Mr. al Fayed? Are you all right?"
"I'm great, Hillel. Thanks for asking. How about you?"
"Where are you? Can you get to us?"
"Oh, I'm counting on it. Sending the police to my house wasn't ver y sporting."
"I didn't know anything about that. How would I?"
"No one seems to want to take the rap for this. But that's what suck s about being in charge, isn't it, Hillel? The buck has to sto p somewhere."
"Look, Mr. al Fayed .. . I'm sorry about all this I'm trying to fin d out exactly what happened, but I don't know anything yet. It's tru e that I wanted you to work for us. You're the best and we want th e best, but we heard you loud and clear. I certainly understand th e genesis of your feelings about the government and frankly I don't blam e you. It was the government's responsibility to stand behind you and i t didn't. Maybe we can make up for that now."
He had to admit that Strand was a good talker. Very soothing. Ver y earnest. Quite a change from the man he'd met in his front yard.
"And how would you do that?"
"We have fairly substantial resources and a certain amount of freedo m to make decisions. Not enough to get you off the hook for this n o one's got that kind of juice. What we can do, though, is get yo u another identity and get you out of the country. We might also be abl e to convince the police that you're dead. I can't guarantee that las t thing, though."
"You're quite the little politician aren't you, Hillel? Big future.
But I'm guessing that a meeting between you and me could only end wit h a bullet in my back, and I've already got one of those. No. N
o politics, no legal maneuvering, no mind fucking. Just you and me."
"Mr. al Fayed " Strand said, the pitch of his voice going up a bit.
"Remember the game you were talking about at my house, Hillel? Welcom e to it."
Fade pressed the phone's off button and tossed it into the passenge r seat. Getting to Strand was going to be a fairly tall order. Unlik e Matt, the son of a bitch would probably crawl under his desk behind a billion dollar's worth of security until he could be certain Fade wa s dead. Even if he failed, though, he'd give that bastard a taste o f what it was like to spend every minute waiting helplessly for somethin g to end your life..
Chapter
Sixteen.
"Matt! Is your phone working? I was starting to think you'd droppe d off the face of the earth."
As the office receptionist, Kelly Braith wouldn't know anything abou t what was going on but undoubtedly had been hounded all day by a n increasingly anxious Hillel Strand. Egan had quietly unplugged hi s home phones the afternoon before and hadn't plugged them back in agai n until nine a . M
. when he left the house that morning.
Based on the messages on his cell phone, Strand had been fairl y agitated by his disappearance yesterday, but hadn't become reall y panicked until a few hours ago. It was impossible to be certain wha t had caused the sudden escalation, but it wasn't hard to guess.
Egan glanced at his watch. One P
. M
. He'd spent the morning relocatin g to a hotel just outside of D
. C
. and renting a car, the windows of whic h he'd immediately had tinted. Despite confirming that it was impossibl e to see through them in the afternoon sun, his heart rate had rise n about ten beats per minute when he'd pulled into the building'
s underground parking. If he could help it, this would be the last tim e he'd get within ten miles of Homeland Security until either he or Fad e put an end to this. No point in making things too easy for his ol d friend.
"Sorry, Kel. There was some stuff I had to do this morning. Hope i t didn't cause you too much hassle."
By way of answer, she rolled her eyes and flicked them in the genera l direction of Strand's office.
He forced a knowing smile on his face and kept walking.
"Matt!"
He didn't turn around, instead stepping through the door to his offic e and starting to rifle through a file cabinet.
"Matt!" Strand repeated, coming inside and slamming the door behin d him. "Why the hell aren't you returning my calls?"
Egan bent down and emptied a box of printer paper to use to pack hi s things in, but didn't answer.
"Al Fayed called me," Strand said. "He threatened me."
"Uh huh," Egan answered, trying to determine if his coffee mug wa s clean before tossing it in the box.
"Did you hear me?"
"Yeah, Hillel. I heard you."
Strand grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around, lookin g carefully into his face. "He's threatened you, too, hasn't he?"
Egan just frowned and went back to digging through his file cabine t while Strand sat down on the edge of the desk, suddenly seeming a bi t more relaxed. Misery loved company.
"Then why the hell aren't you calling me back? We need to deal wit h this. We need to talk."
"About what?" Egan replied, mentally adding, You stupid prick.
"About al Fayed and what we're going to do about him. Like it or not , Matt, we're in this together."
Egan finally slammed the file drawer shut and turned around. Stran d didn't look quite as crisp as he normally did, suggesting he'd spen t the night at the office. Lucky. There was a fair chance that Fade ha d found his house by now.
"Actually, Hillel, you're just another problem to me buzzing aroun d trying to figure out a way to make me the scapegoat for your fuck-up.
It really wouldn't be accurate for me to say that I don't care one wa y or another if Fade kills you because at this point it'd work better fo r me if he does. I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but you r survival isn't really in my best interest."
Strand opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The concept of deat h was so far outside the world he lived in that there was some questio n as to whether he could even process the possibility. Did he reall y understand that the downside to this situation was a little steepe r than failing to secure some clever political alliance or getting a bum p in his pay grade? It was hard to say.
"I ... I spoke out of turn when we talked last," he said. "I was upse t and I wasn't thinking. Look, what I'm trying to say is that I wa s wrong .. ."
Egan stared silently at him for a few moments, trying to decide what t o do. Clearly, this was a completely opportunistic change of hear t Strand was out of his depth and starting to face the fact that h e needed help. Having said that, Egan knew what he had to do would b e easier with access to Homeland Security resources.
"Who are the Ramirez brothers?"
Strand's impenetrable poker face failed him and the surprise on it wa s unmistakable. There had been nothing in the press about the Ramirezes.
Not yet anyway.
"I have my sources too, Hillel."
Strand glanced back at the door to make sure it was closed and then sa t quietly for a few seconds, probably trying to calculate just how muc h Egan knew and how much he had to admit to.
"The Ramirez brothers were a convenience," he said finally. "It wa s going to be hard to get the police motivated with stories about a l Fayed killing drug dealers in Colombia years ago .. ."
"So you manufactured something."
Strand nodded hesitantly. "I had Lauren collect information on bot h the Ramirezes and al Fayed that no crank would have access to and the n called in a very convincing anonymous tip."
And there it was. Strand had, for his own gain, given the police a false tip that had left a number of cops in the morgue. If hi s involvement was discovered, he'd have to be able to provide an airtigh t connection between Fade and the Ramirezes in the face of what woul d undoubtedly be a major FBI investigation. Otherwise th e pseudo-patriotic excuses he'd made yesterday wouldn't mean shit.
"I made a bad call," Strand continued calmly. "I expected the polic e to just go in there and arrest al Fayed and then we'd come to hi s rescue with information exonerating him .. ."
"If he agreed to work for us," Egan added.
"I have a lot of responsibility here, Matt. We both do. We're a bi g piece of the security of this country going forward and you know a s well as I do that al Fayed is a unique resource. I had no choice bu t to pull out all the stops to try to get him. It should have been a win-win for everybody involved. It never occurred to me that somethin g like this could happen ..."
That was probably true, but kind of irrelevant at this point.
"As I see it, Matt, we both have our backs against the wall here. I s ent a bunch of cops to Fade's door under false pretenses and he kille d them. But don't forget that you covered up his activities in Colombia.
There's no way people are going to buy that you weren't involved i n this."
"And if it comes to that, I imagine that I can count on you to d o everything in your power to heap the blame on me."
"Let's not turn this into a war we'll both lose, Matt. You know a s well as I do that I won't have to say a word. You know how th e government works. Guilt by association." Strand paused for a moment.
"The bottom line is that we need to get together on this and make it g o away. That's what's good for everybody."
"Everybody," Egan repeated quietly and then turned to look out a smal l window that opened onto D
. C
. He wondered if Fade would agree with tha t lying in a grave somewhere remembered by history as nothing more than a psychotic cop killer and drug dealer.
What was the right thing to do?
He could go to the director and spill his guts. How would he react?
Not well. General Crenshaw was a surprisingly moderate man and a ver y nervous student of history. For every hour he spent talking abou t security, he spent probably a half an hour talking about th e Constitution. To the degree he could be, he was an opponent of th e powers the government was quietly consolidating. The suspending o f people's right to due process, the government's ability to take awa y people's right to fly with no reason, the holding of terrorist suspect s in indefinite limbo he saw it all as a dangerous path that historicall y had never led to anything but disaster. The slightest indication tha t men under his command were abusing the authority he wasn't completel y convinced they should have would be dealt with in the harshest wa y possible. And that would almost certainly leave Egan in prison unti l his daughter was retired.
And what about Fade? The government couldn't afford to have a pissed-off Salam al Fayed running around the country, or even worse , the court system. They would assemble a team to track down an d exterminate him or throw him in Guantanamo Bay for the rest of hi s life. The cost there wouldn't just be to Fade, either. If there wa s one thing that was absolutely certain, Salam al Fayed wasn't going t o go quietly. More people would die.
"We have an enormous advantage here, Matt. You know al Fayed bette r than anyone, I can get us real-time access to reports on the polic e investigation, we have background files on him that aren't going to b e available to anyone else, and we have a hell of a team right here i n this office ..."