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It was the right decision, but Sayyed needed to add something. "No mention of the money, though. At least not yet." One by one they all nodded as he knew they would. To a man, they were too proud to admit that they had been duped out of such a large sum of money.
CHAPTER 44
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND
THE Gulfstream 450 landed at Zurich International Airport and proceeded to the fueling pad rather than Customs. The flight plan stated that the plane was stopping for fuel before continuing to Kuwait. The truck was waiting, and while one of the men began to unwind the hose, a second man in blue coveralls approached the plane's fuselage, opened his hand, and slapped the side of the plane three times. A second later the hatch opened and the stairs lowered. The man bounded up the steps and hit the button to pull the stairs back up and close the hatch. He checked to make sure the cockpit door was closed and proceeded into the cabin.
Hurley took off the baseball cap and sat in one of the two open chairs across from Irene Kennedy. They were separated by a table. "Good morning." Hurley tapped the thick file that was sitting in front of the young counterterrorism analyst. "I assume that's for me."
Kennedy pulled the file closer to herself and said, "Before we get to this, there are a few things we need to discuss."
"Well, let's make it quick, because I have a schedule to keep, and we need to get you back up in the air before Customs comes poking around."
She nodded as if to say fine and then asked, "What was the final dollar amount?"
"For?"
"You know damn well what for."
"Oh ... the thing." Hurley looked around the cabin as if he was trying to add it all up in his head. "I suppose somewhere in the neighborhood of..." Hurley flashed her a four with one hand and a five with the other. "Roughly, of course. A lot of it gets siphoned off along the way. Fees and whatnot."
"You're sure?" Kennedy asked, fairly confident that he was lying to her.
"Irene, to be frank, it's really none of your business. This is between Tom and me."
"Well, Thomas wanted me to ask you face-to-face, since you're so paranoid about using phones."
"He knows damn well why I don't use phones. The same reason he doesn't."
"True ... but he still wants to know."
"Why?" Hurley asked.
"Because he thinks you're holding back on him."
Hurley laughed. Stansfield knew damn well Hurley would never give him an official accounting. To handle all the black-bag stuff they threw his way, he had to have access to piles of cash. "Darling niece, I think you are either bending the truth or trying to bluff me. Which one is it?"
Kennedy studied him with a crooked frown, none too happy that he had figured out what she was up to. "A little of both, I suppose."
"And why are you trying to stick your pretty little nose where it doesn't belong?"
"Because some day, not too soon, I hope, you and Thomas are going to die and somebody will need to make sense of the tangled web you've left behind."
"If anything happens to me in the next few days, tell Thomas I said to visit our old friend from Berlin who now lives in Zurich. He'll have the answers you need."
Her bluff called, Kennedy grabbed a file sitting in the seat next to her. Unlike the bland manila one on the table, this one was gray. Kennedy placed it in front of Hurley and opened it to reveal a black-and-white photograph of a man exiting a car on an unknown city street. "Look familiar?"
> Hurley glanced at the photo and lied. "Not really."
"This is Nikolai Shvets ... Name ring a bell?"
"A soft bell. I have a lot of Russian names floating around in my head. It's hard to keep them all straight. Kind of like reading War and Peace."
"Sure," Kennedy replied, not buying a word of it. "Care to guess where this photo was taken?"
Hurley glanced at his watch. "We don't have time to play Twenty Questions, young lady, so let's get on with it."
"Hamburg. A certain bank that drew a lot of interest yesterday. Any idea why one of Mikhail Ivanov's top deputies would show up yesterday, of all days?"
