“Captain Ledger,” he said. Not a question.
When I didn’t reply, he nodded toward the other chair.
“May I?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s a free country.”
His mouth twitched a little at that. He sat, perching on the edge of the chair like a nervous Chihuahua ready to bolt. He looked around and then stared out through the window for a moment, then nodded. Not sure if it was to the mysterious woman or the shooters or to himself. This was his home turf, so I was curious why he should be skittish.
He looked at me looking at him. “You know who I am?”
“Yes.”
“If we were in your country I imagine you would like to arrest me.”
“‘Arrest’?” I said, tasting the word. “No … not really.”
“Then—”
“‘Kill’? Sure, that would work.”
He had eyes like a hunting hawk. Piercing, fierce, and almost unblinking. “Why do you believe that it is up to you to judge whether I live or die? I have never killed anyone. I have not spilled a single drop of human blood. Not ever.”
I crossed my legs and leaned back in my chair. “Jalil Rasouli,” I said. “I always thought that was kind of funny. Same name as the artist. I like the artist. He brings something to the world. He uplifts.”
“As do—”
“If you say that what you do also uplifts I will rip your throat out,” I said in a conversational tone, my smile unwavering. Rasouli shut up. I let a couple of seconds pass. I said, “If you know who I am then you should be able to guess that I’ve read your file. Not the public profile, but the real stuff. You say that you don’t have any blood on your hands?”
He said nothing.
“Vezarat-e Ettela’at Jomhouri-ye Eslami-ye Iran,” I said quietly. His eyes bored into mine. I translated it just to put it out there. “The Ministry of Intelligence and National Security of the Islamic Republic of Iran. MISIRI. Pretty unfortunate acronym.”
Nothing.
“You were the deputy operations chief during the 1999 chain of murders. CIA, Interpol, even some spies in your own government name you as the man behind the whole shebang. No blood on your hands? But how many murders did you green-light? Car accidents, stabbings, shootings in staged robberies. Oh, and all those faked heart attacks—what was it you used for those? Potassium injections? And who were the targets? Soldiers, enemy combatants? No. You went after writers, translators, poets, political activists, ordinary citizens. Iranian citizens. The intellectual class, the ones capable of phrasing a compelling argument against the extremist government. You get that idea from reading Stalin’s biography?”
Jalil Rasouli brushed some lint from his jacket sleeve. “Your Persian is very good; you speak it like an Iranian. Excellent.”
“You should hear my pig Latin.”
He didn’t seem to know what that was and shrugged it off. On a different and mildly perverse level, I was pleased by the compliment. I have a talent for languages and Persian was one of the first I learned. Before I joined the DMS I sat on wiretaps as part of Baltimore PD’s role in Homeland. Listening to endless hours of people talking about ordinary things helps a linguist smooth out the edges of their own command of the language. On the other hand, I’d rather have my fingernails yanked out with pliers before I let Rasouli know that I appreciated his approval.
“Most of the world press thinks you’re going to make a bid for the presidency,” I said. “Oddsmakers say you even have a shot. Not sure it would be an improvement over the current psycho in office.”
He yawned. “You want to provoke me? What do you think I would do? Attack you?” He jerked his head toward the thug. “Or order Feyd to do it?”
“Don’t count too much on that moron.”
“He is very good.”
“His coat is buttoned and he’s leaning against the wall on his gun-arm side. He tries anything, you’ll be dead before he can draw his gun, and then I’ll feed it to him.”
Rasouli considered his bodyguard and gave a noncommittal shrug. “If I am the man you believe me to be, then I could have sent a squad of soldiers here.”
“Maybe you should have.”
He smiled. Son of a bitch had a great dentist. I wanted to knock his caps down his throat. I had to covertly take a calming breath. This guy was not bringing out my best qualities.
Rasouli cleared his throat. For a moment he looked almost embarrassed by his own threat, which I found confusing. With a clear change in his tone of voice he leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. “I am risking much in meeting you here.”
I resisted the urge to prove him right. Instead I gave an encouraging nod.
“I could not go through the regular diplomatic channels,” he continued in a quiet and confidential tone, “for reasons that should be apparent to you.”
“Because your regular diplomatic channels are staffed by vultures, thieves, cutthroats, and scumbags,” I said. “And your own people would sell you out for the price of a bowl of lentil soup.”
“No,” he said, “my own people would sell me out, that is not a question, but it would be for very much money.”
“Ah. So you know that your ambassadors and diplomats are as crooked as a barrel of fish hooks.”
He smiled. “There is a saying: ‘Trust a thief before a diplomat.’”
“That says it.”
“There is a matter of great importance and equally great complexity that needs to be dealt with, but it is so…” Rasouli waved his hand as he searched for the word.
“Fragile?” I suggested. “Volatile?”
“Either will do. Both, I suppose.”
“And you thought it would be easier to discuss it by ambushing me with snipers?”
“Would you have agreed to this meeting without them?”
“Probably not.”
“Of course not,” he said. “Besides … the snipers were already here, preparing for another task. I … borrowed them.” He paused, then added, “That other task is now canceled and will likely be abandoned.”
“What was the other job?”
Rasouli considered, then shook his head. “No, it would confuse things to discuss that. What we are here to discuss is much more important.”
“Before we get to that—why me?”
He spread his hands. “You came highly recommended.”
“By whom?”
“A mutual friend.”
“Give me a name.”
A strange, fierce light flared in his eyes and he studied every inch of my face before he answered. “Hugo Vox.”
Rasouli couldn’t have hit me harder if he’d swung a baseball bat at my face.
“You’re shitting me.”
“Not at all.”
I swallowed a lump the size of a football. Hugo Vox. Now if there was ever an “enemy of god,” then Vox had my vote. Pretty much my vote for “actual supervillain” too. Vox used to be one of the most trusted men in the United States anti- and counterterrorism community, trusted by the kind of people who don’t trust anyone. Vox was a screener for above-top-secret personnel and the director of Terror Town, the most effective counterterrorism training facility in the world. To be “vetted by Vox” was the highest honor and a seal of absolute trust. Unfortunately he turned out to be a murdering psychopath and a founding member of the Seven Kings, a secret society that we believed to be behind everything from 9/11 to the London hospital bombing. A very conservative estimate of the deaths that could directly or indirectly be laid at his door was somewhere north of twelve thousand. I wanted his head on a pole, as did most of the law enforcement agencies in the world. My boss, Mr. Church, most of all.
“How do I know that you really spoke to Vox?” I said in a quiet growl.
Rasouli offered a thin smile. “He said that you might ask that, so he gave me something to say. I suppose it is a code phrase that will mean something to you. It means nothing to me.”
“What is it?”
“Vox told me to say, ‘I vetted Grace and she was clean. She wasn’t one of mine.’”
I had to work really hard to keep what I was feeling off my face. It cost a lot.
Grace.
Damn.
When I’d first joined the DMS a year ago, Church’s senior field officer and my direct superior was Major Grace Courtland. She was as beautiful as she was smart and tough. She had been the first woman to enter Britain’s elite SAS team as a field operative, and she helped build Barrier—Britain’s elite and highly secret counterterrorism rapid response force—and was later seconded to Church when Congress gave him approval to build the DMS. Grace and I went into combat together, we worked together, and we fell in love together. We never should have done that, it was against common sense and every rule in the book. Then, last summer, a professional killer’s bullet took Grace away from me. She died saving the world. The whole damn world. I still hear her voice; still catch glimpses of her out of the corner of my eye. Still feel the absolute yawning, cavernous absence of her in my heart.
She had also been vetted by Vox before coming to work for Church. Some people on both sides of the pond tried to use that to smear Grace’s good name. Church had words with a few of them. I had words with a few others. Word got around and people shut the hell up.
Hearing her name on the lips of this monster filled me with a rage so intense that black poppies seemed to bloom before my eyes. Rasouli watched my face and I could see the delight he took in what he saw. He was like a vampire, feeding off of my pain.
The voices in my head all screamed at me to drag Rasouli to the floor and …
… I closed my eyes for a moment.
Grace.
Thinking of her tricked me into a memory of her speaking my name.
Joe.
The black flowers of hate withered and blew away, leaving a strange, cold control. I smiled at Rasouli and after a moment his smile faded.