Midnight Empire (14 page)

‘Moving house?' said the deep male voice.

Daniel's only response was to cut the line.

Inderal was a beta blocker: a medicine for calming the nerves. He read on the internet that musicians used them, surgeons also. He figured that Ania took them for the tables, beating the anxiety that existed before one got in the groove.

He didn't tell her about the phone call. He didn't tell her because he didn't want to admit that he'd said nothing in reply—because shouldn't he have warned the man off, told him where to go?

They'd placed her belongings in the spare bedroom, bringing them up from the car park in shopping bags lest someone spot them in the hallways. Everywhere in the loft, he could smell her perfume.

They settled on a mode of operation. He was to call her when he left the base, then come to wherever she was. They might play a few hours of cards, then he'd bring her through the car park elevator, home. For contingencies—should he get stuck overnight at Creech, for example—he gave her a key.

The next night, turning onto Flamingo Road, she asked why he was so on edge. ‘Surely you are not breaking the rules so badly, Daniel. Do they care so much anyway? A young man taking a woman to his room. Should I ask where is the willingness to protect me? Am I feeling welcomed?'

‘It's not you,' he quickly thought to say. ‘It's—I'm on the lookout. Don't tell anyone but two men, two of the pilots, have been killed here in Las Vegas. Shot.'

‘Shot?'

‘One shot. One bashed. By terrorists, though it can't be proved.'

Ania was quiet. After a moment: ‘That is no surprise, is it.'

‘No.'

‘That is simple logic, simple theory.'

‘Yes.'

‘Perhaps it will even help them, the others. Can they now feel justified in what they are doing? Now they are at risk.'

‘There were plenty of risks before. Their countrymen, troops on the ground.'

‘Perhaps, but isn't this more real? What sane person actually wants to kill with impunity, with liberty? That is a spectacular kind of murder. I have no doubt that they do it, but unless a man is a psychopath, it is better if there is personal risk.'

He said nothing.

‘Well?' she said.

‘Well, what?'

‘Well, what are you thinking now about your job? What you are doing here?'

‘I don't think it matters.'

‘What you are doing does not matter?'

‘No. What I think about it.'

She looked at him, squinting. ‘Are you afraid?'

‘I don't think so.'

She turned to look behind them. ‘They could be hunting us right now,' she said flatly.

‘Keep in mind that the killings may be unrelated.'

‘How are they doing it?' she asked. ‘What are their techniques?'

‘These might be random attacks.'

‘But you do not think so.'

‘Don't I?'

‘Intuitively. Isn't it that we always understand what is happening? Even if we are falling prey to a situation, don't we know the truth of what is occurring, even if it is only at a level below that to which we can apply deliberate thought?'

‘What are you talking about, the subconscious?'

‘Yes, the subconscious. The low regions of being.'

‘You've given this some thought.'

‘I am only thinking about it now.'

They'd run out of reasons to explain why Protonic might be staying silent. They knew that he was living at the safe house. They saw him on its roof and in the streets around.

Daniel had now learned from Moore the story of Protonic's recruitment: a walk-up, someone who'd appeared at the US consulate in Karachi, ready to volunteer his services on the proviso that he be paid ‘success fees', small fortunes in cash. At last count it was said that his information was directly responsible for seventeen assassinations, including ranking lieutenants from al-Qaeda's external operations arm—men who'd come to have very short lifespans under the US drone regime.

In Peshawar, Dupont had turned his investigations onto the house itself. Apparently it wasn't in the hands of Wahhabi extremists any more but the Pakistani Taliban. What this meant precisely, Daniel had no idea. But together, Dupont and Raul had let Protonic's silence drag on for almost a week before they'd decided, today, to provoke something.

They'd been present for just over an hour when they saw Protonic and another man, a squat person they knew as December, leave the house on foot. The pair went west into the flow and truss of walkers. The direction they took led them further into the old city, deeper into the maze. The sun was bright. Whenever they made a turn, Raul sent their vector to Dupont.

The drone stayed very high to see into the narrow alleys between the buildings. There was all kinds of activity, things being moved on small carts and trays, things being adjusted or manufactured, sparks flying.

Dupont waited for Protonic and December in an alleyway that had market stalls spaced along its northern side. The pair entered from the east. Dupont waited in front of a stall, pretended to be shopping. Daniel thought that the stall was selling spices or nuts.

The men approached Dupont's position. Daniel wasn't quite sure what the plan was or what would happen. Dupont must have been watching from the corner of his eye. When Protonic got close, the American turned from the stall and with one step crashed into him. Protonic had to stop abruptly.

Did his body jerk again with surprise, or had Daniel just imagined it?

Dupont made the stranger's gesture of apology; continued on his way. Protonic watched over his shoulder, dead still; you had the impression he'd seen something shocking and unexpected. For several seconds he looked quietly dazed. For such an experienced and successful agent, Daniel thought the man wasn't doing a very good job.

For a short time Protonic and December continued west. A mule or donkey was led past them and the drone said something, routinely calling its fuel. When Protonic stopped, an argument ensued. December gestured angrily with his arms and Protonic raised his hands in calm defence. A flow of people passed around them and moments later they each moved into it, going separate ways.

‘Target?' said Ellis.

‘Follow December.'

But it was no use. They lost him in a market; he disappeared into it or through it, and they were left looking at nothing but a crowd.

The city's shadows were flattening and it was nearing evening, drone time, when Protonic finally called home. Daniel had no idea what the means of contact was, but when Raul came back to the control station he'd had word from their man. He explained that their guess was correct: Protonic was in Peshawar with Abu Yamin—so close, in fact, that it had thus far been impossible for him to send word. He'd not managed to use the explosives on the plane because Abu Yamin had insisted, at the airport, that Protonic get onboard: he needed loyal soldiers, he'd said, in Pakistan and not the Maghreb. Exactly what their mission was Protonic did not know. But he was due to meet again with Abu Yamin that evening, and when he did he'd call the man's position in.

‘That doesn't make sense,' Gray said. ‘He tells you he boarded the light plane with Abu Yamin, but we watched him arrive on a flight from Oman.'

Raul thought about this. ‘Well, Oman is on the way. We don't know for certain that Abu Yamin flew straight from Yemen to Pakistan.'

‘But is Protonic claiming that they travelled together the whole time? Because that doesn't seem to be what's happened.' Gray paused. ‘And if he was outside Abu Yamin's company, then why did he not call in?'

The moment of light. The drone had flown all night, the city pale and peaceful below, each man slipping into and out of full awareness, occasionally drifting into sleep.

It was a few minutes after the sky in their monitors began to brighten that Protonic came through. He was with Abu Yamin at a house in the north, a place that was half slum, where the streets did not have names. He'd been there all evening but hadn't been able to get away. Now he was out quickly to find some breakfast. He'd just paid a street boy to go and stand outside the Pakistan International Airlines office and to guide back whoever approached him. He'd be wearing white sneakers.

Raul spoke to Dupont. They found the airline office on a map and the drone went to it. There was someone outside it in white shoes. He looked older than they were expecting, his frame that of a youth rather than a boy.

Dupont drove there in a dusty black Peugeot, what looked like a reclaimed taxi. The car appeared at the top of the street, matte in the cool light. It was an image that would later become seared into Daniel's memory, haunting his recollection, and he'd wonder why his mind would choose to isolate that moment over all others—the car at the tip of the street.

The Peugeot came on. It crossed an intersection, slowed for another, drew level with the airline office and halted. Daniel recognised Dupont in the driver's seat. Saw the man's arm extend from the window towards the youth in a last gesture. Eyes down, the boy walked to the car and got in the passenger side.

The time between that event and the explosion was later measured as 3.1 seconds. Those who witnessed it could recall no such delay. The boy getting in and the car exploding seemed to occur in the same instant, the door closing then tearing half off with the blast that threw away light and dust. For those operating the drone, the explosion was soundless. It set the car at a strange, crooked tilt and flames began to rake through the broken windshield. The people who were very close rose halfway up from where they'd fallen and kicked away. A few failed to get off the ground at all. Others were coming forward, rushing out of the nearby streets to see what had happened In the control station, if there was no immediate cry for action, it was because nobody in the car down there could have or would now survive.

Daniel's first thought was that a rocket had struck, so fast they'd not seen it. But of course what had happened had been suicide. Suicide and homicide in one. Yes, if he pictured the youth now, there had been something more than a shirt—a jacket that could have concealed a vest. Dupont had just been murdered. A man in his car on the edge of the morning, deliberately targeted for death.

9

D
ozens of pictures of Protonic were stuck to the wall of the briefing hut: the agent who'd double-crossed them, the man who'd turned again.

Written large was the name he went by in the outside world: Abu Ja'far. There seemed no question that he was responsible for the killing. He was the one who'd arranged the boy and called them out. The only mystery was why.

The photographs showed him in profile, in portrait, in the middle distance: a man with a black-grey beard who was often smiling, who was skinny but looked in his prime, cheery, somebody it would be easy to trust.

The first men from Langley arrived at Creech within hours of the blast and more came in the middle of the night. They carried files in lock-up cases. When they weren't whispering to one another they were talking on the phone.

By the fence line, Daniel saw what he thought was Raul calling Dupont's family.

He wondered whether Dupont had realised what was about to happen in the instant before. Did the boy curse him as he got into the car? Did he recite a prayer? Did he just stare dead ahead while fingering the switch?

The car at the top of the road.

The flash followed by the burn.

Daniel remembered Dupont's particular way of standing, elbow bent and hand to the back of the head, a wary slump. His death felt impersonal. Highly plotted. A death in the service of other currents and agendas, the raw pulp of history, hardly even his own.

Raul looked riven. He was in charge of the Protonic operation and he'd not seen this coming. Daniel felt it in the air carried by the people from Langley, on whose shoulders the blame was being apportioned. Things are never the fault of the dead. Perhaps as penance, Raul had promised to spend tonight at Creech before going straight to the theatre to take Dupont's place.

Daniel went to the briefing hut, sat next to Gray, who was absorbed in reading a file. Wolfe was moving around the room, phone in hand.

‘Seventeen kills but I think he was never with us,' Gray eventually said, raising the file. ‘We thought we knew who Protonic was, but something has happened. Now we are meeting Abu Ja'far.'

‘What has happened?' asked Wolfe.

Gray paused, thinking. ‘Something's changed. We're winning, or we've already won. Who is al-Qaeda any more? A band of poorly trained illiterates and a leadership too afraid of dying to ever pick up a phone.' He spoke as though testing his words. ‘What if Protonic's . . .' He corrected himself: ‘What if Abu Ja'far's loyalties did not just switch? What if they have remained the same, were never with us. It says it here in his record of note: “Came to al-Qaeda through the Taliban.”'

Gray and Wolfe looked at each other. Gray said, ‘Abu Ja'far moves through the al-Qaeda network, slowly helping to kill them without being seen to raise a hand. We are the executioners and we pay him for the privilege. Handsomely. He makes sure of that because we must believe it's what motivates him. But what if he is in fact not the mercenary he appears to be? What if this is the true believer's contribution to re-establishing the Islamic state?'

‘Taliban,' said Wolfe.

‘We know this about him, this connection, but we ignore it, we think it's insignificant. The Taliban and al-Qaeda are not the best of bedfellows. Bin Laden brought America's lumbering wrath down on their heads. The jolly green giant smashed their little unthinking Sharia empire to bits, and they've been at war ten years to win it back. They may well do it too. But if anything will keep America there, it's al-Qaeda. This is what the Taliban know: take al-Qaeda out of the equation and the US will lose interest in the war. Take al-Qaeda out and keep them out and the US can tally a victory and give in as soon as it can save face. Unlike al-Qaeda, the Taliban does not want war with the West. It wants Afghanistan.'