Omega Series Box Set 1 Page 58

  “And their childhood friends…”

  I frowned at him. “Are you not interested?”

  He didn’t answer for a while. Finally, he sat forward and looked at his notepad again. “See, here’s my problem. Our Operational Branch has no Abdul Abbassi, Butcher of Helmand, on its wanted list.” He shrugged. “I think it’s a name you made up.” He smiled almost apologetically. “Let’s face it.” He gestured at my clothes with his open hand. “Your whole story, your costume… It’s fantastical.”

  I sat forward and leaned my arms on the desk, mirroring his posture. “Listen to me, Mclean…”

  “Special Agent Mclean, Mr. Walker.”

  “Listen to me. I watched that man butcher an entire village. I saw it with my own eyes. There is only one reason why he would be at that party…”

  He spread his hands. “Why would the Taliban want to bomb a United Nations conference on climate change, Mr. Walker?”

  “I don’t know…”

  The door opened and Special Agent Jones came in. He handed Mclean a couple of sheets of paper and sat down. “Mr. Walker, I can see you have no record, and I can see that you were a captain in the British Special Air Service. But we have nobody on our wanted list answering to the name Abdul Abbassi, and I’m afraid that even if you did recognize this man, and he has committed wartime atrocities in Afghanistan, that is not reason enough for our Operation Branch to start an investigation, or take any other action for that matter. He is not on a wanted list.”

  I held his eye for a long moment. “That man is going to perpetrate a terror attack at that conference. Whatever your lists and databases tell you, I am telling you that he is going to strike at the conference.”

  Mclean spread his hands. “Well, thank you for coming in, Mr. Walker. We’ve made a note of your observations and we will look into it.”

  I couldn’t keep the irony from my voice. “You’ll look into it?”

  Harrison matched my tone. “Sure, we have nothing better to do, have we, Special Agent Jones?”

  Jones smiled. “Nothing that won’t keep.”

  I stood. “Thanks for your time, gentlemen. I won’t waste any more of it. See you around.”

  Back on Broadway, I stopped and pulled my pack of Camels from my jacket pocket and lit up. I drew the smoke down deep and blew it in a stream up at the starless sky. I stood thinking. I had a problem. I had lost Marni, in more senses than one. I needed to find her and make her understand about Abbassi, but what little chance I had of getting Gibbons to cooperate with me, I had shot to pieces when I threatened him with my knife. Now, as soon as Ben discovered that I had lost her, I’d have him gunning for me. He was running out of patience with me, and I knew it.

  And if all that wasn’t enough on its own, now I also needed to find out what Abbassi was planning, why he was at that party.

  I started walking toward my car. I couldn’t do all of it. There was only one of me. I needed to prioritize. I reached the Zombie and leaned on the roof, thinking and smoking, gazing at the sleepless, lamp lit street with its endless streams of people and traffic. The chances were that Marni and Gibbons had some kind of safe place, and that was where she’d gone. The way he’d told her to go, to run—it hadn’t been a cry of panic, telling her to get the hell out of there. It had conveyed more. It had conveyed that they both knew where she was going to go, somewhere prearranged. I had no precise reason for believing that, except a gut feeling based on my reading of their body language, and the tone of his voice.

  So if she was safe, at least for now, then I should focus on Abbassi, because right then I was pretty sure he was the major threat to her. To her and maybe to hundreds of other people. I looked at my watch. An hour had passed since I’d left the party. Abbassi had been smoking a cigarette outside. He hadn’t had the look of a man who was about to leave. There was an at least even chance that he would still be there. I climbed into the Zombie and made my way back up Centre Street toward Union Square and Park Avenue.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but right then it was all I had. I’d wait for Abbassi to leave, tail him, and see where he went, who he saw, what he did. Sooner or later he would give me some clue as to his reason for being there. Meanwhile, I would think about how to deal with Marni and Gibbons when the time came. If I had to, I’d abduct her and force her to listen to me. And I might well have to. I needed time to think and plan, but time was one thing I had very little of.

  I pulled into 79th Street and parked a hundred yards down the road from the house, across from the Serafina. It was almost eleven o’clock and there was a desultory flow of cars driving up to the door and collecting couples and small groups of people who were glittering a little less than when they had arrived, but laughing a little more.

  I waited half an hour and saw a red Ferrari V12 Superfast pull up. A guy in a suit climbed out and spoke to the doorman, who was still holding his side. The doorman spoke into a radio and after ten minutes, Abbassi came out and had a word with the guy from the Ferrari, who handed him some keys. I fired up the Zombie. Abbassi climbed into the Ferrari, did a U-turn, and took off. I went after him. He turned left on Madison Avenue and kept going north.

  I let him get well ahead. A bright red Ferrari is not easy to lose. He eventually crossed the Madison Avenue bridge into the Bronx. He kept going north, up 3rd Avenue and Boston Road toward the Bronx Park area. At 180th he turned right and crossed under the railway bridge.

  You couldn’t get much further from East 79th Street. Everywhere you looked there was decay and graffiti, desolation, poverty and hopelessness. His Ferrari stood out like a strippergram at a wake. He moved up Morris Park Avenue, turned into Amethyst Street and pulled up outside an ugly, detached, white clapboard house with iron railings on the windows and the door. It was three stories and had a flat roof. I drove past like I knew where I was going and watched him get out, unlock the door and go inside. I parked at the end of the road, lit a Camel, and sat watching the house in my mirror.

  A couple of things were clear to me by now. The first was that Abbassi was not worried about being spotted. You have to be either very confident or very stupid to bring a Ferrari 812 into an area like Van Nest. Or both. I could buy that he was both.

  The other thing was, if he was hanging out with the prince and driving a three-hundred grand Ferrari, clearly this shack wasn’t his house. So if he didn’t live here, what was this place? It had three stories and it wasn’t small, so it was reasonable to assume there were people inside it. If that was correct, then he was visiting. Whoever he was visiting, I was pretty sure it wasn’t another Arabian prince, or his in-laws. I needed to know who they were.

  That led me to thinking I needed to look inside and bug the place. For that I needed to know how many of them there were, and when the house would be empty. To find that out I either needed to sit on the place for a week, or bug it. It was a vicious circle—and I didn’t have a week.

  I waited another hour, mulling things over, and saw the lights go out in the windows. After that, I cruised around the neighborhood for a bit, thinking and smoking. That was when I discovered there was a small mosque, or mushalla, three or four hundred yards away on Rheinlander Avenue. If they were Muslims, the chances were pretty good they would go to the mosque on Friday. That was tomorrow. It didn’t give me much time, but it might just be enough. I tried to remember what I had in my kit bag in the trunk. I had replenished it after Burgundy.[3]

  I had my Smith & Wesson 500, my two Sig Sauer p226s, the take down bow and six aluminum arrows. The night goggles were there and there were a couple of cakes of C4, and half a dozen detonators. And bugs. I’d gotten Kenny to send me some bugs and trackers. Since I’d been chasing Marni, I had come to realize how useful they could be.

  I headed south toward Manhattan. I planned to grab four hours sleep and be back before dawn, to wait for my opportunity. Then I’d find out exactly what Abdul Abbassi and his pals were about.

  It was almost one AM when I left my car in the par
king garage and took the elevator to my apartment. I knew something was wrong as I put the key in the lock. It’s a sixth sense you develop. It’s as though your skin prickles, like you can smell something on the air, but it has no aroma.

  I turned the key and stepped aside as I pushed the door open. Nothing happened, but I could see the lights were on. Whoever it was wasn’t shy or didn’t expect me back. I cursed myself for leaving my 9 mm in the kitbag in the trunk, but slipped my knife from my waistband and stepped in. Ben’s voice came to me from the living room.

  “It’s only me, Lacklan. You can close the door and put your weapon away. I hope you don’t mind, I helped myself to some of your Irish whiskey.”

  He was sitting in my armchair with a Glock 19 on his lap. I still had my knife in my hand. He looked at it and said, “Are you going to kill me?”

  I jerked my head at his gun. “What’s that for?”

  “Insurance. You are unpredictable. I thought if you found somebody in your apartment you might go all ninja on my ass, so to speak. I left the lights on so you would be forewarned.”

  “Are you here to execute me?”

  He dismissed the idea with a small laugh. “No.”

  I checked the kitchen, the bathrooms, and the bedrooms. They were clear. I came back and looked down at him. “Take out the magazine and put your weapon away, or I’ll cut your throat.”

  He started to laugh and shook his head. He released the magazine, put it on the table, showed me the chamber was empty and put the weapon in his holster. I sheathed the knife, poured myself a whiskey, and sat on the sofa. “What do you want?”

  “What happened at the ball? Cinderella got away.”

  I sighed. I wanted to sleep. “We have a problem. She was coming with me. We were on our way. She wanted to go to the can before we left. While she was in there, I saw an old friend.”

  He frowned. “Who?”

  “Abdul Abbassi. He’s a jihadist, worked for the Taliban. He was at the party, in full tux and driving a Ferrari.”

  Ben frowned. “Abdul Abbassi? The Butcher of Helmand?”

  “You know him?”

  “I know of him. He’s a very dangerous man.”

  “If he’s here, as a guest of the prince, it means they are planning an attack, and in all probability on the conference.”

  “I wouldn’t jump to conclusions, Lacklan.”

  “Well, he isn’t here for the hot dogs, Ben.”

  He thought for a moment. Sipped his whiskey and studied my face. “He’s not your concern. Leave him to us. We’ll deal with him.”

  “Deal with him how? He’s a threat to Marni. I want him neutralized.”

  “We’ll deal with it. I want you to focus on Marni. Bring her in.”

  “You don’t give me orders, Ben.”

  He sighed. “I am not giving you orders, Lacklan, but this is the best use of our resources. Bring her in, make her safe. Arrange a meeting. We’ll deal with Abbassi.”

  I stared at him for a long moment. Then I asked, “Tell me something, Ben. Why don’t you go after Gibbons? Wouldn’t it be easier for you to get to her through Gibbons than through me?”

  He shook his head. “We can’t go after Gibbons. Don’t ask why, I can’t tell you. You understand a fraction of what goes on. If you would see sense and join us, I could tell you so much more. And believe me, we could use a man like you to fill your father’s shoes.” He shrugged, drained his glass, and stood. “Just get Marni on board before it’s too late, Lacklan. Thanks for the whiskey.”

  I heard the door close and sat a long while staring at my glass, thinking about Gibbons, about how he had been willing to sacrifice his own life to allow her to get away. That took real commitment. A man like that was a real danger to Omega, and yet they couldn’t go after him. How, I wondered, does an Oxford Don like Gibbons get that kind of protection from an organization like Omega?

  I went to my room, set the alarm for five AM, and fell into a restless sleep.

  Five

  Forty minutes after five found me sitting at the end of Amethyst Street drinking black coffee from a flask while pre-dawn touched the edges of the sky with a sleepy gray. Twenty minutes after that, lights started coming on in the windows of the house, touching the red Ferrari with shiny amber highlights. Another hour and the sky seemed to stir and stretch. Beyond a giant cypress tree, where some guy had turned his yard into an orchard, the sun warped over the horizon, spilling molten light and turning the dawn into morning. Down the street, windows slid open, front doors began to bang, and car doors like volleys of rifle shots scattered the birds from the trees into the yawning sky. And the machinery of the great city started to grind into action, sending streams of people, its lifeblood, flowing through the streets, the arteries of the vast cyborg: men and women to work, to generate wealth for their masters and revenue for the state, children to school to learn to be like their parents and generate wealth for their masters and revenue for the state. Collectively essential, each one, each individual was a replaceable, expendable cell in the body of the beast.

  By eight thirty, the street was quiet again, and half an hour after that, Abbassi’s front door opened and four men stepped out. They were talking and laughing as they made their way up the road toward Rhinelander Avenue, headed for the mosque. They passed within eight feet of the Zombie. The tinted glass meant I could see them but they could not see me. Abbassi was slightly ahead of them, staying aloof. Two of the others were clean shaven and looked as though they were in their early twenties, with short hair, sweatshirts, jeans, and sneakers. The other was older, maybe thirty, with longer hair and a beard. He wore an Afghan hat and a long jacket over baggy pants. It was easy to see the set up. Abbassi was the commander, the Afghan was the sergeant. Two got you twenty he had combat and field experience. The other two were grunts, new recruits, probably from the West.

  I let them get around the corner and gave them five minutes. At an approximate speed of one and a half yards per second, that put them almost five hundred yards away. Then I started the silent engine and slipped down the road to park across from the Ferrari. I cocked my Sig and slipped it in my waistband. Then I walked across the road, fishing my lock picks from my pocket like they were a bunch of keys. I didn’t expect a real active neighborhood watch on this street, but it pays to be careful. It took me a few seconds, the lock yielded, and I stepped in, closed the door, and pulled the Sig.

  I knew the chances were they had all gone to the mosque, but there was still a possibility somebody had stayed behind. I moved to the living room. The furnishings were sparse, basic, and cheap. There was a couple of old sofas and a dining table with four chairs. There was no TV and there were no bookcases. An open door led to the kitchen. I placed the first bug on the top of the door frame. In a house occupied by four guys, you can be pretty sure it’s the least touched place in the house. Another went in the same spot on the kitchen side. A kitchen is a place where people do a lot of talking.

  I ran silently up the stairs. There were four bedrooms. They were unremarkable. Like the rest of the house, they were sparsely and cheaply furnished, with IKEA beds and melamine wardrobes. I placed a bug in each room.

  They were essentially voice-activated, micro-cell-phones that were pre-dialed into my laptop. If anybody started talking, the sound of their voice would activate the cells and whatever they said would be automatically saved into a file on my hard drive.

  I wasn’t sure how long I had, so I made only a cursory inspection of the house, searching the wardrobes, suitcases under the beds, and the cupboards under the stairs. I didn’t find any bomb-making equipment or explosives. That didn’t mean they weren’t there. It just means they weren’t easy to find. What I did find was three passports in the sideboard in the living room. The Afghan guy was Aatifa Ghafoor. The other two were a Pakistani, Ali Kamboh, and a British national of Pakistani origin, Hassan Barr. I photographed all three with my cell. I checked my watch. I’d been in the house for just over half an hour. I clo
sed my eyes and went through everything I had done since I’d entered the place, checking if I had left any sign of my presence. I was pretty sure I hadn’t.

  I let myself out, went to my car, and got in. I lit a cigarette and sat thinking about what I had to do next. I had to make peace with Gibbons somehow. I had questions for him that I needed answered immediately, like why was Omega so afraid of him? And, above all, where was Marni?

  I pulled my cell from my pocket, selected the three photographs of the passports, attached them to a text message, and wrote, “These three men, plus Abdul Abbassi, the Butcher of Helmand, are the reason I needed to get Marni out of the party. They are here in New York. I had no time to argue or explain. We need to talk. I’ll call you.”

  I pressed ‘send’, then fired up the engine and pulled away. I crossed via 3rd Avenue Bridge and made my way to Morningside Park. There I strolled by the pond and called Gibbons.

  “What do you want, Walker?”

  “I understand you’re mad at me. But that isn’t important now. I am getting tired of saying this, but you really need to talk to me, and above all, you really need to listen.”

  “Give me one good reason why I should.”

  “I just sent you three damned good reasons, but I’ll give you a lot more than that if you will just give me the chance.”

  “That’s exactly what I am doing, against my better judgment. Talk.”

  “OK, first, what happened last night would never have happened if you and Marni had listened to me from the start.”

  “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Abdul Abbassi, a terrorist commander who, five years ago, was attached to the Taliban. I won’t waste time now giving you his CV, but believe me when I tell you I have seen him do things that would make a hard man weep. He was at the party last night, and whether you take it from me or not, Gibbons, you have to ask yourself what he was doing there.”