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Has to.
Because if he doesn’t arrive in JFK in eight hours, Rashad will accept no pleading, no excuse.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the final boarding call for British Airways Flight 203…”
The decision is made for him.
He will leave.
He grabs his carry-on, picks it up, and with his boarding pass in hand he approaches the smiling blond woman at the gate. His thumb hits Redial one last time.
And by the time he reaches the gate and displays his boarding pass, Marcel disconnects the call again, bitterly disappointed.
For God’s sake, why won’t MI6 answer their damn phone?
Chapter73
I’M SITTINGon a bolted metal chair in front of a bolted table in an empty square sterile concrete room, my arms and lower legs fastened to the chair by chains. There’s a sore spot on my neck where I was injected with a sedative, my left eye is throbbing, and I’ll probably end up with a black eye by the end of this dark day. My ribs also ache from a good pounding I got from my two captors when I tried to make a break for it as they were chaining me to this chair.
Up in a corner of the ceiling, a little black plastic dome tells me I’m being recorded. There’s a chair on the other side of this dull-gray metal table, and a door in the wall; the door opens and my old boss Ernest Hollister comes in and sits down, an iPad in his hand.
He looks tired and angry, and I’m sure I’m responsible for both of those moods, and I’m fine with that.
He opens the iPad and says, “You’ve been a very bad girl, Amy.”
I say, “Sorry, Ernest, I haven’t let anyone call me agirlsince I raised my right hand and swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
He shrugs his thin shoulders. “Semantics, Amy. Just semantics.”
“Then semantic this,” I say. “Why in hell did you smoke me?”
“You went rogue and disobeyed orders.”
“I was responding to an emerging threat.”
“What threat was that, Amy?”
I know he’s trying to get under my skin and I’m pissed he’s succeeding.
“Rashad Hussain,” I say. “Saudi national and businessman, terrorist financier. He’s planning a massive attack on New York City on May 29.”
“Oh,” Ernest replies. “Says who?”
“Says MI6.”
“I see,” he replies, voice still bloodless, like that of a bureaucrat kept alive over decades, designed only to implement long-dead policies and throttle any risk-taking or important decisions. “And was that all of MI6? Was it one of their intelligence-assessment committees? Or was it just a single individual?”
I’m getting angrier as I see the cold logic in his voice. “One MI6 officer that I’ve deployed with three times in the field, and whom I trust. Which is more than I can say of you.”
“So you trust this Jeremy Windsor that Rashad Hussain is on a mission to attack New York City, kill tens of thousands of people? Correct? The same Jeremy Windsor—who with an equally deranged friend from the French foreign-intelligence service—thought that Rashad Hussain was delivering a Russian-made nuclear device to a runway in France? When it turned out to be a container of medical waste and smoke detectors from Romania?”
I pull against the chains on my legs and arms. That’s all I seem able to do.
“There’s more to it than that,” I say. “There’s a French microbiologist missing from the Pasteur Institute. She’s been weaponizing anthrax.”
Ernest says, “That’s the allegation, isn’t it? So far the French have told us that they have the matter under control, and there’s no firm evidence connecting her to this hidden terrorist of yours.”
My former boss opens up his iPad, rotates the screen so I can see it, and starts toggling through a variety of photos.
