Dark Zone db-3 Read online

  “Thank you for helping my daughter,” said the ambassador.

  “Anytime,” said Karr. “Pleasure was mine.”

  Stephens stood awkwardly to the side. The ambassador nodded at him, then tapped his daughter’s arm to get her to follow as he went back to the stairs.

  “Whoa,” said Stephens inside. “You know the ambassador’s daughter?”

  “I know her purse better,” said Karr. He recounted what had happened.

  “Wow. I wish I’d saved her purse,” said Stephens.

  “Start out with something like her keys, then work your way up,” said Karr. “Now where’s the encrypted phone? I think we’re supposed to call home and get yelled at.”

  8

  Mussa Duoar smiled at the waiter as he placed the large cup of coffee down on the small table at the café on boulevard Saint-Germain near the heart of Paris.

  “Merci,” he told the man, thanking him in French. “How long would it take me to get to the Seine from here?”

  The accent in the reply, though clipped, cinched it for him.

  “You are from Algiers, yes?” Mussa asked, this time in Arabic.

  The man stared at him for a moment. “Oui,” he said. The French word was followed by a flood of Arabic, asking Mussa how he knew and if he was Algerian as well.

  “No,” said Mussa, speaking again in French. “I came from Egypt many years ago, probably before you were born.”

  Mussa was barely thirty and the waiter twenty at least, but he liked to play the old man. It was not so much of an act, he calculated; his experiences had aged him in many ways. He began telling the man about Cairo — a very beautiful city, he claimed, and one he longed to return to.

  Perhaps it was beautiful, but Mussa had no claim to it; he had been born in Algeria just as the man had. Mussa’s father had worked against the French and been executed, rather cruelly, nearly a decade after the struggle for independence — a revenge killing ordered by a member of the foreign service, Mussa had learned nearly five years before. Though an infant at the time, his father’s death had shaped Mussa’s life in many ways.

  Soon it would be avenged. But there were other matters to deal with now.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he told the waiter. “Have you been in France long?”

  The man nodded. Something about his gesture — the way his head drooped at first, perhaps — told Mussa more about his attitude toward his adopted land than his words. As the waiter related how he had come to the country several years before, where he lived, how he studied, Mussa watched his face and gestures for the unspoken story — the disappointment and emptiness in his new life, the missing core of connectedness to the community, the doubts about himself and who he truly was. Mussa knew this story very well; it was his business to know.

  He did not ask the man outright if he was an observant Muslim. Instead, Mussa mentioned a place in his arrondissement, or quarter of the city.

  “Yes, I know that place. It is right across from the mosque,” said the man.

  A few more questions and Mussa learned the man’s attitude toward the local teacher at the mosque. As the waiter spoke, his spiritual thirst began to betray itself. His words came more quickly; there was tension and yearning in his voice. Here was a soul in search of salvation.

  “A bright young man like you,” said Mussa finally, “should mix with others of potential.” He took a business card from his pocket — it belonged to a pharmacist in a town twenty kilometers away, pinched from the counter — and wrote an address on the back. “The mosque here has a very good set of such people.”

  The waiter took the card eagerly, stuffing it into his pocket, then went back to the kitchen to get another order. Mussa took a sip of the coffee, then glanced at his watch. Paris was an hour behind London; the job there would be done by now.

  He took another sip of coffee, then left some change in the plate along with the euros for the bill. He got up and got into his car, trolling slowly through the narrow streets as he made his way to his next appointment in the Marais.

  Driving through the Jewish quarter of Paris amused Mussa. He found the small plaques dedicated to the dead killed by the Nazis — and the few who resisted them — quaint in a way. As a devout Muslim it could not be said that he liked Jews; on the contrary, he hated them quite probably as much as the thugs who had planted the bomb in the synagogue he was just passing soon after the Germans took over the city. But he did not find them much of a threat, surely not in France. In Israel it was certainly a different story, but here in France it was more sensible — and profitable, surely — to hate the French. This white woman with her dog, slowing him now as she crossed the street near the Musée Picasso: he hated her with her upturned nose and her snooty expression. Their eyes met and a frown came to her lips as she saw a dusky face in the big BMW.

  All his life, Mussa had seen such frowns. Soon he would have his revenge, striking a blow that would resound through Europe.

  A man was waiting for him around the corner from the museum. The man was not in Mussa’s employ but a Yemeni whose interests overlapped his own. Mussa pulled over to the curb and made as if he were asking directions. The man came over and, after pointing vaguely to the north, bent down to talk.

  “The brothers are ready to strike, but they need more material,” said the man.

  “The material is not easy to obtain,” said Mussa. “My technical adviser had commitments that could not be avoided.”

  “They need more material according to the plan you outlined.”

  The material they needed was plastic explosive. Mussa had supplied them with a new type that he had manufactured himself; the material was slightly more powerful than the American C-4 and somewhat more stable, but it was expensive and difficult to manufacture. He needed his own store for the Chunnel project. Still, the brothers’ “project” was an important one and he would have to find them more material.

  “They are devout,” said the man. “And ready.”

  “It is important that they act when I tell them,” said Mussa. “Vitally important.”

  “An hour here, a half hour there — what is the difference?”

  “The difference is everything,” said Mussa sharply.

  “Then they will do as they are told,” said the other man.

  “I will find what they need,” said Mussa. “They are wise enough to follow the instructions explicitly?”

  “We have been over this.”

  “Explicitly? The number of packages is very critical.”

  “Explicitly,” said the Yemeni, a note of surrender in his voice.

  “It will be done, with God’s will.” Mussa saw someone on the street and raised his voice. “And where can one find good knishes?”

  The Yemeni was used to Mussa’s provocations. “Around the corner and to the left.”

  “I’ll tell the rabbi you sent me,” said Mussa, putting his car into gear.

  9

  The words came at her from somewhere above, blurring together like a murmur that sounded more like a hum than a sentence.

  “Mianhamnida mianhamnida mianhamnida…”

  Lia bolted upright, consciousness flooding back. Her head quickly began throbbing.

  Where was she? What had happened?

  “I am intensely sorry,” said a man’s voice in Korean. “Very sorry.”

  She glanced down. She was sitting on a couch, wearing different clothes, baggy trousers and a blouse much too big for her. Army clothes, a uniform of some sort.

  What had happened to her? She felt dazed. She’d been smashed in the head, beaten, and for a few moments had blacked out.

  More than a few moments?

  “Where am I?” she asked in Chinese.

  “I do not understand,” said the man in Korean. He said something else; Lia had trouble deciphering. When he finally stopped speaking, she answered haltingly in Korean that she was thankful for his kindness but was OK now and could be left alone. The man responded with something
else she couldn’t understand.

  The pain in her head moved from the back to the front. It felt as if a large vibrating sander was being pulled back and across her skull.

  The man was telling her about an airplane. He paused finally and asked if she was all right.

  “Wo hen hao,” she replied automatically in Chinese. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m all right.”

  The man shook his head at the obvious lie.

  “Gonghang?” she asked in Korean. “Am I at the airport?”

  “Ne.”

  Yes. She was still at the airport.

  Lia blinked, pushing her hand over her eyes, squeezing her eyelids closed. When she opened them, he was gone.

  She knew who she was; she knew she was on a mission to North Korea and that it had gone reasonably well. But she didn’t know what had happened since she arrived at the terminal.

  She did, though.

  Oh yes, she did.

  Her body ached; her legs felt as if they had been pummeled. Her neck hurt and her cheek and eye felt swollen.

  That wasn’t the half of it.

  She knew.

  Rage surged in her, then fear, then rage again.

  Out. She had to get out.

  Out.

  Where were her clothes and her suitcase? She needed her belt — it enabled her com system.

  Lia got up and took a few unsteady steps toward the closed door. The pain seemed to run to the right side of her head, as if it were water that might slosh around under the effect of gravity. As she reached for the doorknob she sensed that she would find the door locked; she was surprised to find it wasn’t.

  The hallway was empty. As Lia stepped out, she realized that she had no shoes on. She continued anyway, padding across the cold concrete. There were two other doors along the hall; when she reached the far end she entered the reception area of the airport. Across from her was the small metal desk the local authorities had been using as a customs station when she arrived. There was no other furniture in the room.

  The terminal had two small windows next to the doorway on the right; the door led out to the tarmac area. Her pain increased as she walked toward it, and she felt her eyelids pressing down from above, weighted by the pain and the fatigue from her struggle.

  Struggle? Was that the word for what had happened?

  Struggle. A nice euphemism.

  Something seemed to smack against her forehead as she reached the door. Lia froze, almost dazed again, then realized she was hearing the sound of an aircraft landing-not a jet but a twin-engined turboprop with its loud, waspy roar. She pulled open the door and stepped outside. An aircraft had turned off the runway and was heading toward the terminal.

  “Is that my plane?” she said in Chinese, though there was no one to ask except herself.

  This was just as well. The words came out in the Cantonese she had first learned as a girl.

  Lia remembered a lesson she’d had as a five-year-old with Dr. Lau, a Hong Kong native who’d come to America many years before. Trained as a medical doctor, Lau had never practiced medicine in the United States; he made his living mostly by giving Chinese lessons to his well-heeled Connecticut neighbors. Lia had been adopted by an American couple as a baby; they’d done as much as they could to teach her about her culture, even starting her on Chinese as a three-year-old. Dr. Lau became a family friend as well as an instructor, visiting often until he passed away when she was in high school.

  The lessons with Dr. Lau seemed more real to her now than the aircraft taxiing toward her. Just as she took a step back it curled around sharply and stopped a few yards away. Lia began walking forward, ignoring the engines’ roar. She had just about reached the wing when she realized someone was shouting behind her. She turned and saw that the man who’d been with her in the room earlier had run up behind her and was holding out a plastic bag to her. It didn’t look familiar, but she took it anyway.

  When Lia turned back around she saw that a door had been opened at the side of the plane. A small set of stairs folded out from the bottom half of the door to the tarmac; a man in a blue uniform stood at the base of the steps. Lia walked toward him, feeling herself tilting sideways, pushed down by the pain in her head and the rest of her body as she walked toward it.

  The man said nothing as she climbed inside. Another man stood near the aisle. There were a dozen seats in the plane, but no other passengers. Lia went to the second row and sat down.

  Why did the plane come?

  Where am I going?

  The bag — where is the bag?

  It was in her hand. She opened it and saw that her clothes were in it. She stared at them for a while; when she finally looked up, one of the men was standing over her with a cup of tea.

  You’re Chinese, she reminded herself, pushing her head down in a bow of gratitude. Stay in character.

  As she thought that, she noticed the symbol on the tag of tea, which had been left draped over the side of the cup.

  On the tag was the Chinese character jing: Quiet. Silence.

  A message?

  Lia fingered the tag, then took a sip of the tea, contemplating the bitter taste.

  10

  Karr frowned at Stephens when he failed to leave the room with the encrypted phone. “Come on now. Play by the rules,” he told the CIA officer.

  “OK,” said Stephens. “But maybe I’ve bugged the phone.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you.” He waited until Stephens had left the room, then got up from the chair. “Come on, Charlie.”

  Dean had just sat down in one of the swivel chairs in front of a row of computer terminals on the other side of the room. He seemed reluctant to get up.

  “Jet lag get to you?” Karr asked the older man. “Come on, we’ll walk it off.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Avoiding a half hour of trading put-downs with Stephens,” said Karr.

  “Is he supposed to debrief us?”

  “He’s probably supposed to try,” said Karr. “Don’t worry. He won’t get in trouble if we walk. He was parked here after some problems in Georgia. Basically he was shell-shocked and they go easy on him.”

  Karr led Dean down the hallway to a back set of stairs and then out through a side entrance. When they reached the driveway, Karr threw the guards a salute and strolled out onto the sidewalk. It was past 6:00 p.m. and starting to get dark. He took a moment to get his bearings, then started toward what he thought was the nearest tube, or subway, stop, Bond Street. He’d only taken a few steps when, turning to see if Dean was keeping up, he spotted an empty taxi.

  “Yo, cab!” he yelled, more like a New Yorker than a Londoner. He paused at the window, telling the driver that he wanted to find the best steak and kidney pie in the city. When the driver asked if he was a crazy Yank, Karr replied cheerfully that he was.

  “And a hungry one. I was going to have fish and chips, but I think I need something thick against these ribs. I’m in your hands.”

  Inside the cab, Karr reached to his belt and clicked on the communications system. A woman’s voice, raspy with a cold, reverberated against the bones of his skull.

  “Where have you been?” demanded Sandy Chafetz, their runner back in the Deep Black Art Room. “Why did you turn the com system off?”

  Karr did what he always did when a runner asked a stupid question — he ignored it.

  “Hey, Charlie, you got that room key?” he asked, digging into his pocket for his handheld computer and a small attachment that allowed him to send video directly from the unit. Snapping them together, he took the key from Dean and panned it for the camera.

  “Got it?” he asked Chafetz. Karr liked Chafetz — she was a lot easier on the eyes than Rockman — but she wasn’t quite as sharp as the other runner, nor was she as good at marshaling resources. Karr thought this might be because she was a little too chummy with the “backbenchers”—the analysts and mission specialists assigned to various duties who worked behind her in the Art Room. Yo
u had to whip some of those guys to get them to give you information that didn’t need to be translated from geekese.

  “I have it,” she told him. “We’re analyzing it now. What hotel is it?”

  Karr laughed. “Jeez Louise, if I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.” He handed the key back to Dean and then leaned forward. “So, driver, where’s this restaurant you’re taking us to again?”

  “Over in Covent Garden,” said the cabbie.

  “It’s not a tourist trap, right?”

  The driver began to protest. Karr laughed at him, then glanced at Charlie Dean. “You going to fall asleep? Your eyelids are just about glued together.”

  “Long day.”

  “The good ones always are,” said Karr.

  “A hotel called the Renaissance,” reported Chafetz. “On Holburn.”

  “Holburn.” Karr leaned forward. “You know what, driver? We’re going to have to make a detour. Do you know a place called the Renaissance Hotel? It’s on Holburn? That’s near Covent Garden more or less, right?”

  “More or less.”

  “You can just drop us off there. But give me the address for that steak and kidney pie before you drop us off.”

  * * *

  Dean waited for Karr to tip the driver, then followed him past the three doormen and into the hotel. The Renaissance had once been an insurance company’s headquarters but now was a well-appointed hotel perched between the business, legal, and theater districts, catering to visitors of all three. The floors were rich marble, the wall panels thick wood. They took a right at the door; the desk was straight across, but Karr just gave one of his waves toward the receptionist and went directly to the elevator. Apparently he was following directions from the Art Room, which could communicate with each field op separately or together on a conferenced channel. When the elevator arrived, the two men stepped in; they were alone in the car.

  “Put that door key in the slot on the right,” Karr told him. “See that? The Renaissance floor?”