The Death Trust (19 page)

EIGHTEEN

J
esus, are you okay?” she asked when she joined us.

“I’m a bit rare on one side. My butt could probably do with another minute or so,” I said.

Masters ignored me and concentrated on Varvara. “Do you need treatment for burns?”

“No, we’re okay,” I said.

“I’m asking Varvara.”

Masters took a break from attending Varvara and gave me a cursory inspection. “You’ve lost an eyebrow. Singed clean away.”

I glanced at my forearms. They were black with soot and sweat and the hair on them was also gone.

“When you said there’d been a bit of a fire,” she said, gesturing at the fire trucks and emergency vehicles, “I didn’t take your call seriously. I could have got here quicker.”

“Forget it,” I said. I wondered how long it would take Special Agent Masters’s concern to be replaced with the question undoubtedly on her mind: namely, what I happened to be doing at Varvara’s apartment at three in the morning. And then I remembered seeing Masters’s Mercedes parked outside the Pensione Freedom just before Varvara made her spectacular entrance there. If she’d seen the Latvian arrive, Masters probably believed she already had the answer to that one. I gave a mental shrug. She was a grown-up, wasn’t she? Nevertheless, I made a lame attempt to throw her off course. “Varvara came by my hotel earlier this evening to let me know that she could prove the letter was a forgery. She brought me back here and we found her apartment on fire. Ms. Kadyrov believes the fire was started to prevent us using other samples of General Scott’s handwriting she had to compare them with the suicide note.” This, of course, was at odds with what Varvara had told the fireman.

“Then why didn’t she just bring some of this evidence to your apartment in the first place?” asked Masters.

There it was. Masters was on the hunt.

“I was not sure I could trust him,” Varvara said, apparently playing along.

Masters again. “What changed your mind?”

Why did I feel like a trap had been set and my foot was poised above its steel jaws? I was about to open my mouth and say something defensive—I have no idea what—when Varvara sprang those jaws shut: “Because we fucked and a woman knows afterwards if she can trust a man, no?”

Thanks a bunch, Varvara.

Special Agent Masters fixed me with a look of pure ice and said, “Yes, trust
is
in short supply these days. Almost as much as professionalism.”

“We managed to save an example of the general’s handwriting,” I said, pushing on. Were Masters and I married? No. Was the case officially closed? Yes. Did I feel like I’d let Masters down? Yes. Did I have to be tucked up in bed by eight
P.M
. with a Dr. Seuss? No. A score of justifications ran through my head, but, the fact was, I felt guilty. “Varvara, you want to show the Special Agent?”

She nodded and led Masters under the streetlight. The major’s reaction was swift, if not a little more animated than my own. “Are you fucking kidding me, Cooper?” she said, looking up.

“Can I speak with you a moment, Special Agent?” I said, walking into the shadows.

Masters followed. “What?” she asked. “And it had better be good.”

“Whether you or I think that note helps build a case for murder, the fact is
someone
thought the apartment was worthwhile torching. And what if Ms. Kadyrov had been home when whoever turned up with a can of kerosene and a Zippo? The
timing
of this is what’s so wrong.”

“Get to the point,” she said.

“You know Scott was murdered and so do I. And it’s not just murder: There’s something going on here, something very big—Peyton, the two autopsies, Philippe, Veitch, the journalist…Either we can work together and get to the bottom of it, or you can let the people who did it walk. And, if you do, it’s because the scale of it has you scared. Or maybe you’re just jealous that I got laid.”

“What?” Masters’s hands went to her hips and a sardonic smile twisted her lips. A storm was building, the proverbial quiet before all hell breaks loose. And then it burst. “I have
never
met anyone as arrogant as you in my life. You are
so
sure of your own righteousness it makes me sick! I thought I could work with you. I really tried, but I can’t. You are not a team player. And now
this
!” she jabbed a finger in the direction of Varvara.

“So it’s jealousy, then,” I said.

“You are so out on your own on this, Cooper,” Masters said, shaking her head.

“I mean it, the green-eyed monster has you.”

“Get over yourself, Cooper.”

“Then tell me what you were doing outside my apartment earlier this evening. Were you spying on me—waiting to see whether I went out for a cheeseburger, or something equally heinous?”

Masters’s arms were folded tight, protecting her. “What makes you think I was there?” she demanded.

“Because that purple Mercedes of yours sticks out like a mandrill’s butt.”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“You’re wrong. It’s all that matters. Why were you there?”

“You’re never going to find out now, are you?”

“Was it business or pleasure? And if it was business, whose business were you on?”

“You are an asshole, you know that?” said Masters.

“Look…I saw your car, and then I heard a knock on the door. I thought it was going to be you standing there when I opened it, but it wasn’t. How long were you sitting out there, asking yourself whether you’d come up or not, working up the courage?”

“The courage to what? And stop trying to make your completely unprofessional evening’s intercourse with Ms. Va-va-va-voom out to be my fault.”

“That’s not my intention. I’m just saying it could have turned out differently, is all.”

Masters glared at me. “Oh, lucky me.”

“Look, I apologize if I disappointed you, okay?”

“Go to hell. You know what your problem is, Cooper?”

“I have only one?”

“You’re dishonest. You think one thing but you say something else entirely.”

Busted.
“That’s a bunch of crap,” I said defensively. Brenda, the ex, had accused me of much the same crime over the years.

“I’m sick of playing games with you, Cooper,” said Masters. “We’re either on the same team—honest and open—or you’re on your own. Why are you so…so…closed down? You’ve been married, haven’t you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Did she cheat on you? Is that what happened?”

If Masters was expecting me to break down and start sucking my thumb, she was going to be disappointed. “Our relationship counselor convinced me it was never going to work,” I said.

Masters nodded smugly. It was clear she now believed she knew what made me tick. “I have one other question for you, Cooper.”

My turn to nod.

“What the hell is a mandrill?”

Varvara had three blankets wrapped around her by the time Masters and I had settled on a workable cease-fire. Her teeth had stopped chattering, and she appeared dazed. Masters put an arm around her shoulders.

“Varvara,” I said, “you have to leave here.”

“I know,” she said.

“No, I mean you have to leave here—Germany; Europe. Go where no one will look to find you. Use that passport. We don’t even want to know where you’re going. And this is important: When you get there, you must
not
use a credit card, for a while at least. Use cash only. It’s too dangerous for you here. The fire proves that, if nothing else.”

“You’re going to arrest that woman, yes?” she asked.

“If you mean Mrs. Scott, no. She hasn’t committed a crime, not one I’m aware of.”

“You are wrong.”

“There are too many questions left unanswered, Varvara. Do you have money?”

“Yes.”

“You can stay with me till the morning,” said Masters with that protective arm still around her shoulders, glaring at me.

“What?” I mimed.

“Where are
you
going?” Varvara asked, directing the question at me.

“I’m off to the fun capital of the world,” I said. “Otherwise known as Baghdad.”

NINETEEN

I
checked the time on my Seiko. It was just before midnight in D.C., a handful of minutes before 0600 at Ramstein. The sun was coming up on the fog rolling across the apron, and I had a crap that felt like a lump of cold pig iron sitting in my gut. The USAF C-130 parked on the apron, two of its propellers spinning, was my ride to Baghdad. I don’t like C-130s. There were a lot of them in Afghanistan and they bring back memories.

The connection cut in again. General Gruyere’s throat sounded like she’d been gargling hydrochloric acid, but it could have been the poor line. Of course, Gruyere being who she was, I could easily have been right in the first instance. “Jesus wept, Cooper! Are you fucking trying to tell me Harmony Scott is lying about her own husband’s goddamn suicide?” she growled. Yeah, the line had nothing to do with it.

“The truth is, ma’am,” I said, “I’m not sure what I believe right at the moment.”

“Do you know who or what you’re dealing with here, son? If you’re even just a little off with this, Jefferson Cutter will peel you like a banana and roll you in rock salt.”

I went through my reasons for going to Baghdad, which didn’t seem to impress her. But when I added Varvara’s conflicting note to the picture, Gruyere reluctantly conceded that perhaps some questions requiring answers were still outstanding. In her way, she was giving me a conditional green light—the condition being that if I fucked up, it would go badly for no one but me. So what else was new?

The line dropped out permanently just as Masters strode through the hangar lugging a bag. “What’s that?” I asked when she drew up beside me.

“My grandmother. What does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re going someplace.”

“I have movement orders for both of us. I’m coming with you. We’ll pick up weapons and armor in-country.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Okay then, let me put it another way: Fuck off,” she said.

“I need you to stay here and—”

“And what, darn your socks? I don’t think so. You don’t have a choice, Vin. Now, are we going, or are
you
staying?”

“Excuse me, sir, ma’am. We’re good to go,” said the captain, a reed-thin man with a head shaved pink.

I picked up my gear. “We need someone to hold the fort here,” I told Masters.

“We’ve got Flight Lieutenant Bishop. I’ve given him a whole list of stuff to chase through, like getting a line on those Aurora Aviation people. He’s also going to be looking into some phone and bank records. Technically, he’s still on secondment to us, remember?”

“Yeah. Okay, that’s good.”

“It gets better,” said Masters.

“A dentist’s coming with us?”

“Tooth still giving you grief?”

“Yeah,” I said. I was about two thirds of the way through my supply of pills and twigs.

Masters pouted in a show of sympathy that lasted less than a second, and moved on. “Anyway, I called into OSI before coming here. Bishop was going through his computer files and wanted to know if he should delete the copy he made of the general’s hard drive.”

“You’re kidding? He made a copy? That’s a break and a half.”

“Maybe not. He’s still saying the Dungeon program protecting those files is almost impregnable.”

“But he’s going to keep trying, right?”

Masters nodded.

“Does anyone else know he made a copy?”

“I asked him that. He doesn’t think so.”

“Good. Can he do something else for us?”

“What?”

“Can he track down the current whereabouts of former members of Peyton’s unit? Particularly the noncoms? They’ve probably had their tour extended along with everyone else still in Iraq. It’d be helpful if we could speak to a few of those guys and find out what really happened.”

“What about the U.S. hospital in Baghdad? Did you call?”

“Yeah, the colonel there knows we’re coming.”

“Good.”

“Excuse me, sir, ma’am?” The captain was looking anxious. “We’re on a schedule here.”

Back to Masters. I wasn’t keen on her coming along, for the simple reason that the two of us didn’t really need to go and hold each other’s hands. That and the fact that the capital of Iraq was still Terror Central. People were losing their lives there every day, and, as far as I knew, none of them were turning up in the lost-and-found.

“Honest and open, Cooper, remember?” said Masters, attempting to read my thoughts, her ear to the cell. The connection made, she put a finger in her other ear and turned away to talk.

Ten minutes later we were strapped into jump seats in the C-130. I loaded up on painkillers with a sleeping pill chaser, and took off for the Land of Nod.

And then suddenly I was awake as the plane lurched and the pitch of the screaming turboprop changed. The approach to Balard Airport, gateway to sunny Baghdad, had begun.

Masters yelled over the roar of the turbines, “Can you let go of my leg now, Cooper? You’re cutting off the circulation.”