Sympathy For the Devil (19 page)

“I’ve got the kind of clothes Omar will expect you to wear at the apartment. The place is already stocked with food, too. After I drop you off, you’re not allowed to leave the apartment until you meet Omar. No walking around money. No getting beers or getting drunk because pious Muslims don’t drink beer or get drunk, remember? After we get you settled in and debriefed, you’ll call Omar and set up a meeting for tomorrow. Everything you need to know about your cover is already on that laptop. We won’t call them until you’re comfortable with your cover.”

“As long as I’m comfortable with it by tomorrow, right?”

“Like I said before, you’re a Green Beret. You can handle it.”

“I’m glad one of us thinks so,” Kamal said. “So what do I call you, anyway?”

“Whatever you want, Ace. It makes no difference to me.”

“How does Power-Tripping Cracker Motherfucker sound to you?”

“I’ve been called worse.” He looked at Kamal in the rearview. “Don’t be nervous, honey. This isn’t your first dance. You’ll do fine, and all the boys will love you. Just stick to the plan, and you’ll come out of this better than you were going in.”

Kamal folded his arms across his chest and went back to staring out the window. “I don’t like you.”

Hicks steered the Buick into the passing lane. “Then you’re in good company.”

H
ICKS DROVE
back to Manhattan after getting Kamal set up in the apartment—the top floor of a four-story walk up in Astoria.

Kamal had spent most of the time complaining about everything. The décor wasn’t right. The clothes were uncomfortable and bland. The food in the fridge was lousy. Hicks reminded him he was supposed to be a pious Muslim on a mission, not some drug dealer in a Miami Vice episode. He even complained about the large Islamic wall calendar Hicks had tacked to the wall next to the door. Said it was depressing as hell.

Kamal was complaining about the television being too small even as Hicks walked out the door.

Hicks didn’t tell Kamal that the apartment was under surveillance via the cellphone he’d given him as well as the TV. Both items were plugged into the OMNI network and monitored everything that went on in the apartment without Kamal’s knowledge. Kamal didn’t know the phone was designed to transmit even when it was off or even when the battery was removed. He certainly didn’t know the TV had been optimized to monitor his every move. OMNI would send him an alert if Kamal left the apartment or so much as touched the hundred grand.

But Hicks didn’t expect to get any alerts. He figured Kamal would take a couple of hours and get himself acclimated to his newfound freedom. Maybe take a shower or grab some sleep in the first real bed he’d seen in over a year. He was a free man now and, one way or the other, he wouldn’t be going back to prison. If he did what he was told, Hicks would give him a chance at getting a job within the University system. If he failed, Hicks would put a bullet in his brain.

That’s why Hicks was surprised when the Buick’s dashboard screen showed an OMNI alert for a call being made from the burn phone he’d given Kamal. A call to the number Omar had given the Middle Eastern financier so his emissary could reach him.

Hicks didn’t know whether to be pleased by Kamal’s enthusiasm or disturbed by it. He couldn’t have properly reviewed Omar’s file in such a short amount of time. Hicks had given it to him only twenty minutes before.

He listened to the phone ring as the traffic approaching the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge slowed to a crawl. It was a bad time to be taking the bridge; just after six o’clock and rush hour was in full swing. But for once, Hicks didn’t mind the traffic. He could concentrate on Kamal’s conversation with Omar.

When someone answered in Arabic, Kamal responded in kind. The banter ended there as Kamal didn’t speak Somali and wasn’t expected to. His cover was from Nigeria—the same place where his parents had been born—so there was no expectation of a common language.

But Hicks still recognized the voice on the other end of the line. It was the same voice he’d heard on hundreds of hours of surveillance audio. It was the voice of Omar.

Kamal wisely switched to English with a heavy Nigerian accent. “I am afraid, my brother, we have the same faith but different languages. I suggest we meet and discuss our brotherhood in person where our privacy can be assured.”

Hicks couldn’t see Omar, but he could hear the excitement in his voice. “Yes, of course, my brother. We have much to discuss and much to make our uncle happy. We thank Allah that he has told him to send you to us. Your faith will be well rewarded.”

Hicks hoped Kamal would play it aloof and he did. After all, he was the one with the money Omar needed. “Then I suggest you have someone meet me tomorrow morning at ten o’clock so we can discuss the matter in greater detail. I despise tardiness, so be sure not to be late.”

Kamal gave them an intersection near the Astoria apartment and killed the connection.

Hicks hadn’t told Kamal the cellphone was designed to transmit even when it appeared to be off. Since it operated on the OMNI system, the screen could be dark and the battery could be removed, but it was still powered wirelessly by the network. The computer and television worked the same way.

Hicks expected Kamal to call him and ask him how he thought it went, just as they’d discussed. He expected Kamal to be like most field agents and need some kind of reassurance that he’d done well.

But Kamal didn’t call. He didn’t say a word or make another sound. Not even a whistle. Instead, he heard what sounded like a light switch click off, followed quickly by a light snoring.

Hicks killed the connection. He knew OMNI would monitor the scene and automatically alert him if Kamal went on the move or if he made or received another call.

Kamal was obviously one cool customer. Hicks was beginning to think that maybe Jason had sent him the right man for the job after all.

A text message from Jason appeared on his dash board screen:

AN ENCOURAGING BEGINNING. WHERE ARE YOU GOING NOW?

Hicks decided not to respond. A little bit of Jason went a long way and he’d been dealing with the insufferable bastard all day long.

He needed a drink.

H
ICKS HAD
always preferred the lobby bars of New York’s grand hotels as opposed to the Irish bars, cocktail lounges, and other types of watering holes throughout the city. He liked the mix of locals and visitors and how the crowd was almost different every single night. Change made patterns harder to form and patterns lead to predictability. Predictability meant death for people in his line of work, so the fewer people who knew his habits, the better.

The Bull and Bear Bar on the corner of Forty-ninth and Lexington at the Waldorf Astoria was his favorite bar in the city. He liked the circular wooden bar and the way the light hit the bottles just so, especially after sunset. He liked how the bartenders were always efficient and friendly, but never got too chatty. The bar drew a nice mix of well-heeled travelers and jaded New Yorkers who sometimes dropped in for a couple of drinks before catching the train back to Suburbia. Occasionally, some wide-eyed tourist might wander in and nurse a beer, shocked at how much it cost while they gawked at the drapes and the bronze bull and bear above the bar. They went there so they could tell the folks back home that they had drinks one night at the Waldorf Astoria as if paying more than ten dollars for a glass of alcohol made them cosmopolitan.

Ambiance was a state of mind. Liquor dulled the pain no matter where you drank it or how much it cost. The romance of booze was a glass of bullshit, but he ordered it anyway.

Hicks lucked out and found a parking space on the street a block away. He left the events of the day and the chilly New York evening behind him as he pushed through the revolving doors of the Bull and Bear. It was after seven o’clock by then and the after-work crowd had thinned out a bit. The pre-dinner folks had already gone to eat and the restaurant was still busy.

That left the die-hards at the bar; the people who had good reason to drink and no reason to be anywhere else. Hotel guests, mostly. Business travelers and tourists too tired to go anywhere else. And people like Hicks, who just needed to be somewhere other than where they were supposed to be.

Hicks never walked into a bar with an agenda. He never went in looking for company or conversation or to meet a woman. He never had an agenda because he hated being disappointed and New York was a city built on a bedrock of disappointment. But he never allowed himself to bring alcohol into the Twenty-third Street office. The life of an Office Head was a lonely enough and drinking alone only made it more so. He’d seen many a good Office Head devolve into self-pity and drunkenness, and he’d be damned before he let the same thing happen to him.

Besides, his job afforded many more pleasant ways of getting himself killed.

That made it a bit easier for Hicks to spot the woman who was sitting alone at the right side of the bar, near the stairs that led back up to the rest of the hotel. She was tapping away furiously on her BlackBerry and didn’t look happy about it.

He decided she was probably north of forty, but not by as much as she looked. She wore a gray business suit that revealed a thin, but not skinny, frame. Her short blonde hair might’ve looked severe on another woman, but she managed to wear it well. Her pearl earrings were just feminine enough to soften her overall look without going overboard. She the hands of a pianist—long and elegant—that busily pecked out that email on her Blackberry with great urgency.

There was something about her that he liked more than just her solitude or possible availability. He sensed a strength in her or maybe an intent sense of purpose, simply by the way she looked. Either consciously or subconsciously, women always put thought into how they looked. If that was the case, and Hicks believed it was, then he liked the way her mind worked.

The half-drunk glass of white wine at her elbow didn’t look like it had been touched it in a while and whatever the email was about, it was demanding all of her concentration. Judging by the look on her face, he was glad it wouldn’t appear in his inbox.