The Libra Affair (29 page)

Red flashed through Jordan's mind —
Isbel!

Without a moment to spare, she scrambled out of the kitchen, through the lobby, and flew up the staircase.

At the top of the stairs, she heard the girl crying her name.

“Let go!” the child's voice penetrated through the closed door of their room. “Let go!”

Jordan raced to the end of the hallway and kicked open the door with her weapon aimed and ready.

Chou!

The man turned and aimed his weapon toward Jordan as he clutched Isbel by the neck. He fired.

Jordan ducked for cover.

Isbel struggled under the weight of Chou's arm.

Jordan took a chance, advanced, and returned fire.

Missed.

Isbel screamed frantically.

Jordan rolled over the bed.

Chou pivoted, aimed, but the girl bumped his arm.

His bullet was lost.

Jordan returned fire, popping him in the shoulder.

His body jerked from the impact. He stumbled and released the girl from his grasp.

Isbel scrambled to the corner behind a chair.

Chou regained his footing and fired again, but with his aim impaired, he missed.

Not waiting, Jordan pulled the trigger.

Chou took the bullet to the chest. He dropped to his knees.

Jordan gripped her gun.

Chou dropped his gun.

Jordan raced forward, kicked his gun toward Isbel, and shouted, “Get the gun.”

Chou was still alive.

Not missing a beat, Jordan faced Chou. “What are you doing here?” she shouted.

“I,” Chou choked, “could ask you the same.” He rolled his eyes toward the girl, who was cowering in the corner.

“Answer me,” Jordan demanded.

With a hand to his chest, he struggled. “To read your horoscope,” he said in Mandarin Chinese, which was code for
I'm here to help
.

“Why? Everything is on schedule. There's only a minor delay. It's nothing.” She had to keep up appearances even though the man was dying, but only because she knew this could be a set-up.

He shook his head. “It's a good day to be a Libra, Jordan Jakes.”

Without a doubt, he was there to help. This shoot out had all been a big mistake.

Chou smiled, showing his teeth, while grimacing from the pain. Blood poured freely from the hole in his chest. His clothes were soiled, the rug soaked.

“Why did you shoot?” Jordan asked the dying man.

She knew he was there because of the delay in the rocket launch.
And
because of Farrokh's call to Fat Su. He was there to help her, to make sure the mission went as planned. He'd had no intention of killing her. But with the unexpected presence of Farrokh's daughter there and not Farrokh himself, Chou must have sensed the set-up. The hotel owners must have been cold assets — disposable.

Jordan realized that they'd both acted on instinct.
It happens
— it was part of the job.

Seeing Chou perched upon his knees in his death pose, Jordan regretted that it had come to this. She questioned whether she could have said “Wait” in that second before he fired. But he was just as much to blame. All she could do now was to give him some peace in his last moments of life.

“I'll get the job done. I can promise you that,” she told him.

“You double-crossed us.” Chou clamped his eyelids shut. “I should have known you — ”

He stopped, unable to speak.

“You're wrong, Chou. Wrong,” she yelled at him, still playing the dying man.

He keeled over and fell facedown to the floor.

“All you had to do was ask. I would have explained the girl,” she cried.

He rolled his head to the side and looked up at her. His eyes were glazed, blood seeped from his mouth, and in his dying breath, he told her, “Farrokh. You have to — ”

Jordan nodded to indicate she understood what he wanted her to do. Even though the man was dying, she wasn't about to reveal to him her role as a double agent for the CIA in this plot. The hotel could be bugged from top to bottom; he could somehow be recording their conversation; it wasn't worth taking a chance Fat Su was listening in on them this very moment, however unlikely it was. And he was well beyond discovering the truth; this wasn't a movie where all was revealed in the last moments of life.

She relaxed her shoulders and waited for him to pass.

Chou suddenly sprang up. He had a knife in his hand.

Jordan jumped back.

With one dastardly swing, he plunged the dagger into his heart. For a moment, his body froze like ice. His face drained of its color. Then he dropped to the floor and his body was still.

He had lost face.

She approached the body and kicked it over with a single shove of her foot.

Chou was dead.

The room was silent.

Not waiting, Jordan searched his clothing. She took his papers and wallet. He had nothing more. She knew as long as Chou remained a John Doe, there was a chance Fat Su would be kept in the dark … for a while.

Jordan looked over at Isbel. She was curled into a ball behind the corner chair. In a calm and deliberate voice, she spoke to the girl. “We've got to go now. You'll be fine.”

Isbel shuddered.

“You're okay.” Jordan started toward the girl. She secured Chou's gun, which was lying exactly where she had kicked it, and when she reached the girl she squatted down next to her. “We can't stay here,” she told the girl in a gentle voice.

Isbel nodded compliantly and held out a hand.

Jordan helped Isbel to stand and as they passed the body, she said, “Don't look at him.” Before leaving the room, Jordan stopped at the closet, where she grabbed Isbel's crutch and their bags.

Isbel looked back at the dead man. “That man,” she said to Jordan in a shaken voice, “he said my father's name.”

“Come on,” Jordan said and held a finger to her lips to quiet the girl.

“But that man — ”

“Never mind about him,” Jordan said as she helped Isbel through the door.

“But he knew my — ”

“Forget it. You heard wrong.”

Not arguing, the child became silent, then began to whimper.

“You're fine,” Jordan tried to comfort her. “You're with me.”

“I just want all of this to stop.”

“It will.”

“When?”

Jordan stopped and took the girl by the shoulders. “I promise, I won't let anything happen to you. You have to believe that. Okay?”

Isbel nodded, then reached out and hugged Jordan tight.

Jordan stroked her hair and comforted her for a brief moment. “I'll carry you down the stairs,” Jordan told her. “When we get to the bottom, you can wait in the lobby until I pull the car around.”

But when they reached the staircase, they both stopped. Farrokh was standing at the foot of the stairs.

“Baba!” Isbel cried when she saw her father.

“Quiet,” Jordan said.

Farrokh hurried up the stairs.

“Are we secure?” Jordan spoke to him as he climbed two steps at a time.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Front-back doors locked?”

“Yes, we're tight.” When he reached the landing, Isbel flew into his arms.

Jordan glared at the man. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm going with you,” he said.

Jordan leaned into him and whispered into his ear. “This place may be wired. Maybe even monitored remotely. And we've been through this; it's not a good idea for you to tag along.”

Then Jordan stopped to think. What if Farrokh
did
come along? He could do two things: one, clean up the mess here at the hotel, and two, dispose of the Samand after she secured the Jeep at the storage unit in Sarakhs.

That alone would be worth his coming along. From there, he could take Isbel and the two of them could split. Now that she had the codes — the correct codes — she didn't need him to get the job done. It made sense for him to accompany them, at least part of the way.

“You need me,” Farrokh mouthed the words. “Think about it, Jordan.”

“Was that you in the kitchen?” she asked him.

“No, no. How can you say that?”

Jordan read the truth in his eyes. “Okay,” she said. “On one condition and one condition alone.”

Farrokh pulled Isbel to his side.

Jordan whispered in his ear. “You come along, but only as far as Sarakhs, then you two leave. And I don't mean just cross the border. You leave like we talked about. You go someplace where no one will ever think to find you.” Farrokh wanted to argue, but she said, “It's not a choice.”

“Jordan, I need protection,” he replied.

“No, you don't. You can take care of yourself. Just get going, make contact, and I'll see what I can do.”

“I need — ”

She cut him to the quick. “No one's offering you anything else.” Her words were harsh. “If you stay, you're a dead man. This is your only chance and it's no guarantee.” The truth stung. She knew he knew it.

“I don't know where we could go.”

“Try Peru.” She pulled back from his ear.

“Peru? I don't know anything about Peru.” He mouthed the words, looking into her eyes.

She leaned forward again and spoke in his ear. “All the better. Your life here is over.” She didn't have to say anything further; he understood exactly what she
wasn't
saying. “Are we agreed?”

When she pulled back, he nodded reluctantly. “Okay.”

“And another thing.” Jordan motioned back up the stairs, then leaned in to him. “You've got a mess to clean up. Last room on the left.”

“Who?” he asked.

“Chou.” She drew back to gauge his expression.

Farrokh's jaw dropped.

Whispering again, Jordan said, “What did you think would happen when you called Fat Su? And another thing, your daughter was — ”

“Don't.” He withdrew to stop her from saying anything more.

Jordan looked at the girl and said nothing more, then stared back at Farrokh.

He bowed his head to the side, acknowledging both the task at hand and the fact that his life in the Middle East was officially over.

“Good,” was all Jordan said to seal the deal.

“Let's do it,” he said.

Jordan leaned into him again. “I take it your car has a trunk?” Her meaning was clear: They needed to dump the body somewhere else. They couldn't take a chance on it being discovered there, especially if the place was a set-up by the Chinese, and it had to have been with the owners disposed of like they were.

Farrokh responded with a nod of understanding.

Then she leaned in again and continued. “We'll take Highway 22. Exactly thirty-five kilometers outside of Abravan, it'll be nothing but desert with plenty of dirt roads. Make sure the car is obliterated, leave no traceable sign of,” she nodded her head toward Chou, “then hike back to the highway. You do have plastics?”

He nodded.

“I'll stop in front of you. When you reach our car, take the backseat.”

“Got it.”

“Use the gas ovens. Make sure you take the place down to the foundation.”

“Right.”

“Anything goes wrong,” she added, “the girl and I keep moving. Agreed?”

“Got it.”

“If you're not ready to board when I reach the rendezvous point, I'm not waiting.”

He drew back and looked at his watch. “I need ten minutes here. Another sixty to dispose of the car and get back to the road.”

She looked at her watch. “Let's synchronize. Ready?”

“Ready,” he said.

“And
now
.” Together they set their watches. When their eyes met again, she said, “I'll see you in seventy clicks.” Then she grasped Isbel by the arm. “You're riding with me.”

Jordan drove around the outskirts of the city while Farrokh remained behind to load the body in the trunk and grab whatever flammable supplies he could find in the kitchen.

Some long minutes into the ride, Isbel took a deep breath and looked over at Jordan. “Thank you.” Her voice quaked.

Jordan glanced at the girl, then back at the road. Words weren't necessary so she said nothing in response.

But Isbel continued as though she had not paused, saying, “For saving us.”

Jordan's mind began to race. She thought of the incident back at the room. Had she really saved Isbel from the hands of Chou? It was puzzling why he hadn't just killed the girl. It made no sense, not when he'd killed the owners of the hotel in cold blood.

And why was that? Who were the owners? What did they know? Why kill them and not Isbel? The owners must have been involved with the Chinese NSB. The very fact that they were dead proved the point. They were necessary, but dispensable pawns.

She thought of Chou's dying words —
Farrokh
.

Then Willoughby's face flashed through her mind.

Jordan glanced at Isbel. The girl was still looking her way, waiting for her to say something, so she bucked up and said to her, “You're welcome,” to keep it simple. She knew the girl had to be feeling upset over what they had just been through, even if she didn't show it.

“You okay?” Jordan asked her.

“Fine.”

“You sure? You've been through a lot.”

Isbel smiled admiringly at Jordan. “None of it seems real.”

“Keep it that way,” she told her. “That's how you'll get through this.”

It wasn't long before sirens screamed in the distance. Jordan looked into the rearview mirror and saw flames shooting into the sky. Farrokh had executed a magnificent job back at the hotel; the place would burn to pure rubble.

Isbel struggled to look toward the sirens, but Jordan turned at the next intersection to head toward Highway 22, and the girl saw nothing.

• • •

Ben woke with a start.