Trust Me, page 16
She’d checked a half dozen times in the last week, and so far, she’d received no photos from the past. It had been twenty-four hours since her last check. She made a mental reminder to check again when she got home this afternoon.
She now read a message from Salim’s mom, inviting her to visit his family’s home in Upstate New York. Her heart squeezed.
Diana’s abduction had been kept under wraps by the State Department, so as far as Salim’s family knew, her work in Jordan had been extended by several weeks following the death of Dr. Fahd Yousef.
She sent a quick reply using her ankle as an excuse to put off visiting for a few more weeks. She didn’t have the emotional energy to face Salim’s parents and tell them the truth about what had happened to her, but she also knew there was no way she could see them and not tell them.
They were the closest thing she had to parents, and with the loss of their son, she was the closest thing they had to a child.
She wanted to keep that relationship for all their sakes, but she didn’t know if she could live with the condemnation she would see on their faces when she revealed she’d looted a site in Jordan.
Also in her inbox was a summons from Dennis Gardner, the man who’d set up the grant with the university in Jordan to fund the dig and her work there. It was a very authoritative summons, saying he was in DC on business until Tuesday, staying at the Mayflower. They needed to discuss her work in Jordan. She was to be at his hotel today at one p.m.
She glanced at her watch. An hour and a half from now.
Gardner didn’t inquire about whether or not the timing worked for her. His time was clearly more important, and she needed to accommodate his schedule.
If Chris were here with his car as he’d offered, they’d have time for lunch and she could leave the crutches in his vehicle. As it was, she didn’t have time to return to her condo and so would have to strap either cane or crutches to her backpack as she took the Metro to Farragut North.
It irritated her that she didn’t have a doctor appointment or any other valid reason to refuse the summons. But the truth was, this was a meeting she’d been dreading, so it would be good to get it over with. It was probably better that she didn’t have too much time to mentally prepare. If she tried to reschedule, she’d just stress about it and it would be worse when it finally happened. At least now, she’d have it behind her by the end of the day.
She sent a reply saying she would be there, then texted Morgan informing her of the meeting and location, including Gardner’s hotel room number.
No way would she meet with anyone to talk about Jordan without letting Morgan and Freya know where and when. These kinds of meetings could easily be a trap.
Chris wasn’t exactly sure why he was in the FMV office waiting room, but when Morgan and Freya requested a meeting, he couldn’t resist the opportunity. Rand might consider them friends, but given everything that had happened to Diana and the way she was being used by the Intelligence Community, he was feeling less charitable toward them today than he had last night when he first arrived at Morgan’s birthday party.
He was the one who’d fucked up in questioning Diana’s memory, but they were the ones who’d put her in the situation to begin with, right down to feeding her a deck of cards that included a man who’d been taken off the most wanted list nearly two years ago.
Was it possible FMV had set Diana up somehow?
Of course, he couldn’t begin to see what purpose that would serve, but when the CIA was involved, he knew to be wary.
The FMV admin, a man Chris had met at the party last night, apologized for the delay again and let Chris know that they were just waiting for one more team member before their meeting could begin.
Chris hoped the person they were waiting for was Diana, only to be disappointed when a brown-skinned woman with glossy black hair entered the office in a flurry of energy. She took one look at Chris and said, “You must be the lieutenant. Sorry I’m late. My daughter is sick and not at school, and I needed to wait for my sitter to arrive, but the sitter got stuck on the Metro. I just need a minute to catch up with Freya then we’ll be ready for you.” She nodded to the admin then was off down the hall before Chris could reply.
“That was Amira,” the admin said. “She wasn’t at the party last night because her youngest got sick yesterday. Her husband is deployed, so she’s on her own right now.”
Chris knew what that was like. He wondered if she’d be on her own with the kids through the holidays. Still, it was hard to be separated from a spouse for long periods no matter the season, and especially so when one had kids. It had been a major reason he and Pam had decided to hold off on having children.
Now Pam was pregnant with a different SEAL’s child, and Chris had just signed the papers an hour ago that dissolved their marriage, leaving her free to marry her baby daddy if she wanted.
He didn’t love her anymore, and he certainly didn’t miss her, but he wasn’t quite to the point of being able to congratulate her and raise a toast to her happiness. He hoped to get there someday—he didn’t want to be bitter, and he’d loved her deeply once upon a time—but he had no idea how he’d find that path.
At least now that the divorce was final, he wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore. He gave thanks to the god of family planning and birth control that they weren’t facing shared custody. Someday, he might want kids again, but not with Pam.
After ten more minutes of waiting, he was led into a comfortably appointed meeting room and officially introduced to Amira Ripley and again shook hands with Freya Lange and Dr. Morgan Adler.
If any of the women knew what had transpired—the good and the bad—between Diana and him last night, it didn’t show on their faces, and as far as he could tell, only Freya was trained to hide her thoughts and emotions.
“You know, of course, that I’m not at liberty to share any details of the op to save Dr. Edwards with you, regardless of your involvement and security clearance.”
Lange nodded. “We’ve already extracted what we could from Rand.”
He smiled at the word she chose, imagining Rand being grilled by the former SAD operative and slowly doling out what he could like teeth removal.
“When was that?” He didn’t see Rand happily going to Morgan’s party after being subjected to questioning.
“This morning,” Morgan said.
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Amira said. “Too bad we couldn’t Zoom.”
Chris snorted. No way could any of these conversations be conducted online. He wouldn’t be surprised if the CIA had the offices under constant surveillance. There was a law that prevented the CIA from operating on American soil to surveil American citizens, but the law stopped at former CIA employees. Those they could investigate. They were required to have probable cause and all the other legalities covered, but they were CIA. Breaking laws—foreign, not domestic—was the backbone of how they gathered intelligence. Illegal surveillance was fundamental to their business model, like teaching first graders to add and subtract so they could move on to multiplication and division.
He wouldn’t trust the agency to only use legal means to monitor Freya Lange any more than he’d expect a lion to be vegetarian. His gaze darted around the room. “I’m guessing you scan this place for bugs regularly?”
The former spy grinned. “Often enough to know exactly when they started trying to hack our systems—four days after Diana was abducted. But don’t worry. We have the most secure system possible.” She nodded toward Amira. “Amira is our in-house tech wizard, and we have other specialists we trust completely. And this room is completely shielded from any electronic signals in or out.”
Chris nodded, not surprised to find he was sitting in a vault. It wasn’t a conference room set up with a large monitor at the end of a long table. No, it was a series of comfortable love seats and low tables. Like one might find at a coffee shop or wine bar. This was a room for conversations, not computer demonstrations.
“So why am I here?”
“We believe you can help us identify someone.” Freya flipped open a file folder and pulled out a stack of small, thick papers.
“Not another deck of cards?”
She shook her head. “No. We want to know if you can identify Jamal from a lineup.”
“Jamal? One of the two brothers who were Diana’s guards? Why?”
“You were the only operator to see his face. And you saw him twice.”
“The first time, he was backlit. My camera couldn’t even get his face. Kramer might have gotten a better look. He was in the slot canyon too.”
“He didn’t. Rand put us in touch. We interviewed him and Albrecht this morning.”
He’d known Albrecht never saw the kid’s face in the stairwell. Even Chris only got a glimpse before he turned and ran up the stairs.
“The camera didn’t get him either time, but you saw him, right?”
He closed his eyes and remembered crawling through the low tunnel that opened up and became a slot canyon. He’d gone from shimmying in a belly crawl, to hands and knees, to a stooped walk—the full March of Progress—before the slot opened wide enough for a vehicle to be hidden among the sandstone walls. He’d seen Diana, lit in green through his NVGs, as the boy she later identified as Bassam held a knife to her throat.
Then headlights had flared on, and he’d flipped up his goggles as she was backlit by the bright beams. The light hit her at a faint oblique angle. She and Bassam were lit slightly from the side, and the wash of light reached him, so Diana could see his face too.
Her position then shifted, and she cast a shadow that shielded his eyes from the bright beam, allowing him to see her better. He remembered glancing toward the light source, trying to determine if there was any way Kramer, who was still in the tunnel, could slip out and to the side, and take out the tango who’d turned on the headlights.
The man—more a boy—stood in the wash of light for a moment, but moved back in the shadows as soon as Chris shifted so his body camera could capture him.
Jamal was thin and wiry. His keffiyeh had slipped off, probably when he’d crawled through the tunnel, and Chris saw short dark hair, a pointed chin and nose. He guessed the boy sported wisps of facial hair, but it wasn’t visible given the distance between them.
He’d been a handsome kid. Thick brows and sharp cheekbones.
Chris opened his eyes and faced the three women. “I might recognize him. Maybe.”
Freya nodded and picked up the file folder and opened it, standing it up on the coffee table between them. “I’m going to lay out nine photos. I want you to tell me which ones are of Jamal.”
“You have photos of him? How did you manage that?”
Freya gave a faint smile. “It’s classified.”
He rolled his eyes, but he hadn’t really expected an answer.
After the images were arranged, she reached for the folder. He held up a hand, “Wait. How many photos are of Jamal?”
“That’s for you to tell me, Lieutenant.”
She then lifted the folder, and he studied the images laid out in a three-by-three grid. Nine young men. All Middle Eastern, with skin tones that varied from yellow-brown to a deep dark mahogany. None had skin quite as dark as Chris’s own dark brown, but one was close.
“Take your time,” Morgan said.
Assuming these photos—some of which appeared to have been taken on city streets with the subject unaware of the camera—didn’t show boys attempting to change their appearance, he focused on the faces with the skin tone closest to what he’d seen in the canyon. Medium brown with reddish undertones.
His eyes kept coming back to one image. A slight profile, a similar angle to what he’d glimpsed before the boy shifted into the darkness. He studied it for a long moment, trying to decide if the angle of the shot was influencing his thoughts. This boy was younger, maybe thirteen or fourteen. According to Diana, Jamal had been fifteen.
He closed his eyes to again bring the night back into focus. The tilt of the head. The coldness of the eyes as Chris’s weapon aimed in the boy’s direction as Bassam shouted that Diana would die if Chris fired.
He hadn’t believed the threat. After all, Diana was their prize and still alive for a reason, which was why he’d been confident that if Diana hadn’t cooperated with the brothers, he and Kramer would’ve had no problem completing her rescue.
But she’d taken control of the brothers and the op, and now he needed to decide if Jamal was in any of the photos before him.
He opened his eyes and pointed to the image on the right side of the middle row. “That’s Jamal.”
His declaration was met with silence, and he reconsidered the idea that only Freya knew how to maintain a poker face.
Finally, Freya said, “Are there any other pictures of him?”
He shook his head, but then pointed to the photo on the bottom left. “That’s his brother, Bassam. I’m guessing it was taken when he was younger, closer to the age Jamal is now.”
It wasn’t a photo taken from the drone footage, which was almost a relief because it would only raise questions if Freya Lange had access to Top Secret military images and video.
“How’d he do?” Amira asked.
Freya scooped up the photos. “Passed with flying colors.”
“Where did you get these?” Chris asked again.
“I’ve been digging into where the brothers came from originally. Diana suggested they might have been taken in one of the attacks on a school. We looked at a number of such attacks across the region. Two years ago—before Rafiq’s supposed death—one raid in Beirut led to the disappearance of over a dozen children, including brothers named Bassam and Jamal. Their sister, Farah, was also taken.”
“Diana never said anything about a girl.”
“No. She would have been enslaved or killed early on. Possibly separated from the brothers once their cooperation with the Islamic State group that took them was established.”
“Why are you showing me this now?”
“We needed a positive ID so we can get our friends with facial recognition capability to start searching databases to see if Jamal has entered the US, or to stop him if he tries to do so. We were fairly certain these were the right boys, but needed someone who’d seen them both in person to confirm it.”
“Why not ask Diana?”
“The Intelligence Community would suspect her identification in a way that they won’t yours,” Morgan said. “I’m not sure you realize just how dire Diana’s situation is. The Kingdom is on the cusp of demanding she be extradited back to Jordan. If we can’t find a way to prove Rafiq is alive, the State Department will likely comply in keeping with our nations’ extradition treaty. Diana could face prosecution and imprisonment in Jordan for looting the archaeological site.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Dennis Gardner answered his hotel room door with a scowl on his weathered face. “You’re late, Miss Edwards.”
She gave him a tight smile. “Dr. Edwards.” She cocked her head for him to open the door wider, as she could hardly pass through the narrow opening while using crutches, wearing a loaded backpack with her new cane strapped to it.
She was tired and frazzled and it had taken her longer to walk the block and a half from the Metro because she’d opted to use the elevator instead of riding the escalator, but the line had been long on a Friday afternoon. “The time you selected for this meeting wasn’t convenient for me, Mr. Gardner, but I did my best to accommodate you. You’re welcome.”
There was a slight cough from inside the room, and Gardner stepped back, letting her see who else was attending this meeting.
She hobbled into the room on three legs and faced Dennis Gardner’s son, Mason, and another man she’d never met before.
Mason was a chip off the old block, a younger version of the sixty-five-year-old third-generation retail magnate. The Gardners were both white and just under six feet tall. The younger son was tanned and fit, with thick dark hair, while the elder was pale with streaks of gray and thinning hair.
The male genes ran strong in this family, as she’d seen the portrait of Dennis Gardner’s grandfather, who’d opened the first Gardner Holdings store in the 1950s in Virginia. Now the ever-growing empire showed all signs of being passed on to Mason to keep the vast array of stores in the same family’s stewardship for a fourth generation.
Several months ago, they’d broken ground on a new flagship store for their most prominent chain, Historie. The art replica retail giant was best known for the Gardner family’s Signature Line of replicas—artifacts of which the Gardner family themselves owned the originals. Every year, they sold a limited run of one-to-one-sized replicas handmade out of the same material as the original for thousands of dollars. In the new store/museum, the originals would be displayed along with a replica in a setting that was also a replica of the type of site where the item had been found.
Given that Mason Gardner’s name was all over the press releases for the new store, she gathered it was his baby, his way to show the world he was ready to take over the family business. Still, he’d faced every meeting with Diana with as much enthusiasm as one faced changing a kitty litter box—a chore that was unpleasant whether one loved the cat or not.
She was fairly certain Mason did not like the cat in this instance. The new store and museum might be his pet project, but he was not an animal lover.
She turned her focus to the stranger in the room, guessing he was probably another company man who was not thrilled to be here. At least he was easy on the eyes.
Very easy, in fact, with cheekbones that could cut glass and eyes the color of a lake on a cloudy day. With pale skin that contrasted with short dark hair and a half day’s growth of stubble that wasn’t thick enough to hide his dimpled, square chin, he was damn close to perfection in the looks department.
Not that she was interested. As she’d learned last night, dating—or even hookups—weren’t a great idea for her right now. And the ring on his finger meant he was definitely not a prospect for either.
