Taz, page 15
“Yeah. It’s just something I was doing for Lindsey She had some reservations about making that trip with Sammie to the Poconos.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked, quirking a brow as he tossed a stack of papers over next to the shredder, “Why’s that?”
I shrugged. “Something about Liam Avery. Did you ever meet the dude?”
“Naw,” he replied, “I told Sammie to let Lindsey do the business dinners,” he said with a snicker. “I don’t like her bringing her work home like that.”
“Yeah,” I said with a smirk, “Like you never do, right?”
“That’s different. So, what about Liam Avery?”
“I met the dude, not that I can remember that particular occasion, but Lindsey filled me in. She said that I hadn’t cared for him, and that I’d made it a point to let her know that I didn’t trust him. I guess when they landed this new contract for the resort, it gave her pause to wonder if my earlier assessment had merit.”
“Knowing you, Taz, the dude was probably good looking and you were simply following your alpha male instinct to make sure he wasn’t scouting pussy that you’d already claimed.”
I tossed him a glare. “Do you really believe the shit you spew, man? Or are you just trying to piss me off?”
He smiled. “A little bit of both. So, Kim is checking him out?”
“Yeah, she has already verified the background information he had given to Lindsey. He came from the U.K., served with the Royal Air Force back during Desert Storm. Apparently knocked up a Middle Eastern chick while he was stationed over in Saudi. She dissed him to marry an Iranian who had defected to Iraq—get this, the dude served in the Republican Guard in Baghdad.”
Slate snorted derisively. “Yeah, took out a few of them myself during Enduring Freedom. They weren’t shit. So what? Did this chick keep in touch with Liam the whole time? We’re talking about a ten to twelve year span?”
“No—he didn’t hear shit from her until March of 2003. She was trying to get him to go to Baghdad and collect their child, a daughter, so that she’d be safe before the invasion. Liam went there to get the child, and he told Lindsey he intended to bring Renya with him as well.”
“That could put a marriage in the toilet.”
“Yeah, no shit. I mean, that’s what he told Lindsey. Kim verified his military status—I told her to dig deeper.”
Slate picked up his desk phone and hit some digits. “Hey Kim, Taz is here in my office. Can you grab what you have on Liam Avery and come on down?”
Kim breezed through his office door within moments, a disturbed look evident on her pretty face. “I’ve been blowing your phone up since nine-thirty this morning, Taz.”
“Sorry, darlin’. Traffic jam; phone dead, but I’m here now. Is there a problem?”
“You tell me,” she replied, opening up a manila folder. “Liam Avery’s background has checked out perfectly to what information you were given until March of 2003.”
“What happened then?” I asked.
“His passport shows he entered Iraq prior to them closing the airport in Baghdad, but shows no further activity after that. Period. It has since expired.”
“No further information after that at all?” Slate questioned.
“None,” she replied.
“What about family?” I asked.
“Liam Avery was an only child. He inherited a shitload of wealth when both of his parents were killed in a 1988 private plane crash. He collected his inheritance when he turned eighteen and promptly enlisted in the armed forces after graduation from high school. No one—not one person has inquired about his whereabouts until now. Oh yeah, I mean he enlisted some of his former contacts from the military to get clearance to fly to Baghdad on a visa just prior to the invasion, but there’s no contact back to any of them after that. They presumed he was off doing whatever he was doing prior to that.”
“Kim,” Slate said, his voice soft but cold as steel, “I need for you to provide me with the names of those individuals employed at the British Embassy in Baghdad prior to the invasion in 2003. This is top priority, understood?”
“Yes, Agent Slater. I’m on it.”
Lindsey
Mom and I had landed at a small private airport near Mt. Pocono. Liam had dispatched his private jet, as scheduled, and when we disembarked, we immediately saw him waiting in the small glass enclosed terminal. For late September, the air was quite a bit chillier than what we’d left in D.C. The fall foliage on the mountains and hillsides were a gorgeous array of crimson red, burnt orange, and bright hues of gold.
“This is breathtaking,” Mom said, looking around.
“It is beautiful,” I agreed as we made our way to the terminal.
Liam greeted us warmly, his driver taking our overnight bags from us. “I trust you ladies had a pleasant flight?”
“Short and sweet,” I replied, smiling, “Just the way I like them.”
“Liam, this area is simply breathtaking,” Mom said. “How many acres do you have?”
“My resort has a bit over two hundred acres,” he replied, “We’re just about five miles on the other side of that hill.”
I had filled Mom in previously about Liam’s daughter. “Lindsey tells me that we’ll get to meet your daughter?”
“Oh, absolutely,” he said cheerily, “I’m glad she filled you in. It’s been a dream come true finally getting to meet one another.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
“We drove in this morning from Hancock, New York. That’s where my corporate U.S. offices are located and my main home. It’s just an hour and a half away so I dropped her at the resort and she’s getting the grand tour now. She’s actually been living in the States for quite some time. You’ll find her very Americanized,” he said.
“So, how did she find you?” I asked, knowing that it was really none of my business, but I was curious nonetheless.
“Long and complicated story,” Liam replied, clearly not wanting to share it. “I’m just glad that it finally came to fruition. You’ll meet her this afternoon. We’re having lunch together around one in the main lodge.”
I settled back and remained quiet for the remainder of the short trip to the property. It was called Mountain Crest Resort. Liam pointed out the various buildings as the car wound through the curved and hilly lane. “There’s the main lodge,” he said pointing to a sprawling two-story cedar building on the right. “That’s where we’ll be having lunch. My office and living quarters are on the second floor of the building.”
As the car passed the lodge, there was a sharp turnoff to the left and Liam pointed to the first A-Frame chalet we approached. “I have you both staying here. It’s close to the lodge and it will give you an opportunity to see how the chalets are currently decorated. They’re all the same so you two can get started with assessing what updates will be needed. After that, we can talk about selecting new furnishings and window treatments.”
“This will be so much fun,” Mom said, her enthusiasm genuine. “I mean nurseries and daycare centers are great, but this gives us the chance to design something with an adult motif for a change.”
I so wished that I could feel as enthusiastic as she did, but that same uneasiness that had been plaguing me since we’d received this contract hadn’t left yet.
Once Mom and I had been delivered to our quarters, Liam said that he’d send the car back for us around one.
“Nonsense,” Mom replied, “It’s a gorgeous fall day. Lindsey and I will walk up to the lodge. In fact, I really would love to change into my hiking boots and explore if there’s time.”
“Certainly,” Liam acquiesced; a slight frown didn’t go unnoticed by me, “But how about holding off on the hike until after lunch so that I can join the both of you? These thick woods with multiple trails can be tricky. Wouldn’t want you two to get lost.”
“Okay with us,” Mom replied. “We’ll see you at lunch then.”
After he left, we explored the chalet. It had two bedroom suites in the loft, a large open area below with a stone fireplace, fully equipped kitchen and a dining area.
“This is really nice,” she commented, “But right away I can see the kitchen requires some updating, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Lindsey, what is it? You don’t seem very excited about this job. I’m surprised.”
I shrugged grabbing my overnight bag and headed to the winding staircase that led to the loft. “I just miss Taz, I guess.”
“Why don’t you give him a call?” she suggested. “I told Slate I’d call him once we got settled.”
“Great idea,” I replied, from the steps. “I’m taking this first suite if that’s okay?”
“Fine,” she called up to me as she rooted in her handbag for her cell.
Once I got to my room, I pulled my cell out and was dismayed to see there was absolutely no reception. That probably explained the landline phones that were located throughout the chalet.
I went over to the nightstand and lifted the receiver from the cradle, figuring I just needed to dial ‘9’ for an outside line. Unfortunately, there was no dial tone.
Mom came into my room right then, saying that she couldn’t get a signal on her cell either.
“I know,” I replied, “It must be the mountains and trees. The landlines aren’t working. We’ll see if they have a phone at the lodge when we go up.”
She glanced at her watch. “Well it’s eleven-thirty now, so I guess it’s no biggie. Let’s get unpacked and then go for a walk.”
“Sounds good.”
It was a bit after noon when Slate and I had gathered enough information to know that Liam Avery was not the person he’d been portraying. In fact, the guy wasn’t even the real Liam Avery. Our contacts at Military Intelligence in the U.K. had provided us with Liam Avery’s military records, as well as his photo. At the time Liam had departed for Baghdad, he had contacted someone at the base and requested military consulting status. It was denied. Liam had taken a commercial flight to Amman, Jordan and then hired a driver to take him into Iraq. After that, there was no further paper trail. As far as MI5 was concerned, Liam never made it out of Iraq.
“We fucking have to start with what we know, Taz,” Slate growled.
Like I didn’t already know that!
“Get Kim to track his business holdings. Let’s find out who this fucker really is,” he barked. He grabbed his cell and pushed a button. “Fuck that!” he yelled, tossing his phone back on his desk. “Her fucking phone is off. Went straight to voicemail. And why are you still standing there?”
Fuck if he wasn’t falling apart.
“Listen, man,” I said patiently. “My wife is in this too, remember? It’s not going to do either of us any good to lose our shit right now. You forget we’ve both been through this before. We need to stay calm and not lose our edge to emotions.”
And I didn’t know how I knew this, but suddenly I did. I recalled what Slate had gone through when that fuckface from the Outlaws had taken Sammie and, subsequently, what I’d gone through when Kyzer Stanfield had taken Lindsey.
Slate let out a hard sigh. “I know, man. Let’s work smart and quickly though. This has all the markings…”
And he didn’t finish, but I knew where he was going with it.
“I’ll get the information. It won’t take long. Why don’t you pull in a marker from the base? We’re going to need a chopper.”
“Got it,” he replied, grabbing his phone once again.
Kim had worked furiously to get the information, and it had been quite a twisty trail. Lots of holding companies, LLCs and finally she pulled the name out of the tangled-by-design montage of who had created it all: Alyshad Amin.
Slate wasn’t going to like this at all…I know I didn’t.
Amin had been the Republican Guard that had married the pregnant Renya and moved her to Baghdad. My money said he was the son of a bitch that had probably killed Liam and thwarted Renya’s plans of getting her daughter out of Iraq. His mother was British, she’d married a member of the Shah’s Army, and when he was overthrown in 1979, they sought political asylum in neighboring Iraq.
Counterintelligence files indicated that Amin was one of the higher-ups in MOA, making the headquarters of all of his legitimate holdings right there at their seventy-acre compound in Hancock, New York under the auspices of a religious entity.
In a nutshell, Amin was a major fundraiser for terrorist activities in the homeland.
I gave Slate the information and, as predicted, his reaction was borderline explosive.
“What the hell does the motherfucker want with Sammie and Lindsey? Is this some sick way of taunting the Bureau? Does it get the fucker off?”
I gave it a moment. “Only if he knows that we know,” I replied, “And up to this point, he has no idea that we do. We need to keep it that way.”
“The hell?”
“Listen to me, Slate. Just let me do what I’ve been taught to do and calm the fuck down, okay?”
He nodded reluctantly.
“If we presume that is his motivation, then the worst thing we can do right now is to show our hand. That means neither one of us should start blowing up Sammie or Lindsey’s phones, or call any of his offices looking for him or asking for their location. If they call us, then we presume he’s privy to everything they say to us, got it?”
“Fine. What action do we take? I’m not about to sit here and wait.”
“You’ve never met this guy, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you sure that he’s never been inside your house? Maybe dropped something off for their project?”
“Fuck, I don’t know,” he said, running a hand through his thick, dark hair. “I mean, shit, he might have, why?”
“Because I think both of us should have our residences electronically swept for bugs. Just as a precaution. We don’t know how deep his interest in us or what we have to say in the privacy of our homes goes.”
Slate nodded. “I’ll get someone out to both places immediately.”
“While you do that, I’ll have Kim pull up a live feed on his Pocono resort. We’ll figure out how close we can get a chopper down discreetly.”
“We’ll go when it’s dark,” he replied. “Get some night gear issued from Diana.”
“I’m on it.”
And we both set on getting these initial tasks done. It made both of us feel less helpless.
Mom and I had been introduced to Liam’s long-lost daughter at lunch. She wasn’t what I had expected, and I was dying to get back to our chalet to see what Mom had to say about her!
She looked to be about my age, but her hair was cropped short and bleached to a light, brassy blonde. Extremely dark roots were starting to creep up from her scalp. It looked as if her colorist had tried (and failed) to lighten her eyebrows to make it not so obvious just how much darker her natural hair color was. They were a reddish brown. Her eyes were brown. She was tall and slender; and she was dressed in tattered jeans and a sweater.
What I found to be particularly odd was the fact that her interactions with Liam seemed extremely comfortable, not what I would’ve expected of someone who had just met her natural father a couple of days prior. There seemed to be a familiarity between them, though Nadia didn’t speak a lot to either one of us. She mostly addressed Liam quietly.
Liam gave us a tour of the lodge, even showing us his offices and living quarters on the second floor after lunch. Mom took that opportunity to ask him about phone service.
“Liam, we’re not able to get a signal on our cell phones, and the landline in our chalet isn’t working—I wondered if?”
“Say no more, Samantha,” he replied with a smile. “I should’ve warned you both about that. Since we’re not in season yet, the primary switchboard for the cabins isn’t in operation. We can’t get cell signals because this is a dead zone, but our primary landline here in the office is functional. Feel free to use the one in my office,” he offered, gesturing towards the door next to his apartment down the hall. “We have several lines, just dial nine to call out. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
Lovely.
“I’ll go with you, Mom,” I said, “I might as well check in with Taz.”
Later that afternoon, after we had completed our meeting with Liam in his conference room and returned to our chalet, I finally felt compelled to bring the subject up of Liam’s creepy daughter.
“So, Mom, what did you think of Nadia?” I asked as I pulled a cold bottle of water from our fridge.
“Well, she was pretty quiet, so I guess I don’t have an opinion of her one way or another. She was pleasant enough I suppose, why?”
That was so typical of my mother. Non-committal until someone else spoke the obvious.
“I couldn’t decide whether she is some sort of a Pink wannabe—or just trying like hell to find her lost youth.”
“Lindsey,” Mom chastised, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a grin, “That’s not very nice. I would have thought you’d be tickled that she found her father. You’re such a sucker for happily ever after, aren’t you?”
“Hmmph,” I replied, giving her a solid eye roll. “Seriously? You can’t stand there and tell me you think they’re a typical father-daughter act. I mean come on!”
Mom shrugged, pulling some grapes from the fridge, along with a bottle of water. “Hey, I’m no expert on what’s normal or typical—I plead ignorance on that. Let’s face it, I sure as hell never thought your own father would have lowered himself to do most of the things he did to the both of us.”
That brought a quick stab of pain as I recalled the betrayal and heartbreak I had endured when my father had shown his true colors a couple of years back.
“I’m sorry, Lindsey,” Mom said, “I didn’t mean to bring that up, honey.”
“It’s okay, but maybe that is exactly why I’m so, I don’t know, dubious about them just now meeting one another. I mean, she seemed totally comfortable and familiar with him—and with this place.”
