Cold Snap (53 page)

"What?"

"Samad was known to have filmed people having
their hands chopped off on the streets of Baghdad. Or flayed, or
castrated—"

"Fuck!" Mohammed looked horrified. "That
little fuck!"

"Please proceed. Time is remiss."

"It's what?"

"Please continue. Do you know how many copies
of the DVD with the secret file were made?"

"About fifty. Samad didn't have a clue about
the Mosul video. It was only when he got to the States that he
noticed it. I can't believe he brought a copy with him..."

"Perhaps he thought to sell copies to A-Zed,
which had a side business in tourist curios."

"Maybe. Yeah, you're probably right. But
somewhere down the line he finally saw the secret file and the
night light in his head went off."

"And the original video?"

"It didn't go anywhere. The travel agency was
blown up just around the time the Coalition was setting up the
Green Zone. I don't know if it was because of the video...but it
probably was. Can you imagine the Sadrists making bombs with this
stuff? Obviously, someone else didn't like the idea, either. The
only copies left were the ones Samad sold and the one he brought
here with him."

Ari nodded encouragingly.

"So...Bill said there was every indication
that Samad had returned to Iraq, and that he was planning to
retrieve the nuclear material and sell it on the black market. What
balls! A Shia sneaking into Mosul to steal WMD's! He'd have been
cut up for fish bait. But Bill said he couldn't take that risk. And
that we had to stop him."

Mohammed looked up.

"Yeah," he continued, "you're asking 'why
us?' We asked the same thing. And he said our parents were being
punished for betraying Saddam. Which is sort of why I think..." He
cocked a bruised, wary eye up at Ari.

"But this is phenomenal!" said Ari. "This
Bill chap sounds like a man of resources. He could have contacted
his associates in Baghdad. They would have dealt with this worm in
sure fusion."

"Fashion," said Ahmad, who received a scowl
for his trouble. "It didn't sound grammatical, anyway," the young
man added haughtily.

"I think there was more to Bill's agenda.
Maybe he was hoping we'd be killed. What a stink! American
jihadists slain in Iraq while fighting American interests! But we
wouldn't even have to die. You saw that video. We had to give proof
the job was done, and done the way he wanted it. Bill wanted a
beheading, but...you saw. I think Hasan left the sword behind on
purpose. I can't say I like what we did in its place, but Bill said
if we didn't, he'd..."

"I understand."

"What you don't understand is that he
threatened to post that video on YouTube if we didn't do everything
else he asked of us. I wondered why he insisted we uncover our
faces..."

"But how did you get to Iraq?" asked Ahmad,
lured into the conversation by the mention of YouTube. "It's not
like driving down to Virginia Beach."

"And I was the only one with a passport!"
Mohammed laughed harshly, then wincing and clutching his shoulder.
"I was going to go to Paris! Well, forget that. You'd be amazed how
many holes there are in the system. Bill arranged for us to go to
Canada—you'll need a passport to go there, too, pretty soon. When
we arrived in Toronto we were given phony passports and visas. Top
quality, no one gave them a second glance. Yeah, I finally got to
Paris, but that was only for a five-hour stopover. Before we knew
it, we were in some dingy field near Aleppo getting training in
weapons and bomb-making. They weren't too happy about Gail being
there. They weren't too happy with any of us, with only ten words
of Arabic between us. There was definitely some big authority
behind all of this. I wonder who paid for it all..."

"You were taken over the Syrian border..."
said Ari.

"We met a guide on the Iraq side. Good thing,
too. We didn't know one sand dune from the next. They had
informants, by the way. They knew exactly where Samad was and where
he was headed. And the rest...you know."

"Hardly," Ari sighed. "I suggest that was
only the beginning of your ordeal."

"Well yeah, what with you and the police
shooting at us and all."

"You said Bill was holding the video taken in
Nineveh Province as a threat over your heads. He had more tasks
lined up for you."

"I told you, he said there was a death
warrant out for anyone who had seen, or might have seen, the secret
video."

"Yes," said Ari. "The famous bombings."

"We tried to scare people away, you know.
Scare them so much they'd leave town. But we couldn't be
specific."

Ari thought of the mutilated GI Joe left at
Elmore Lawson's office. "Perhaps not specific, but certainly
graphic."

"None of it worked, anyway. No one left. I
guess people couldn't figure out why they were being threatened, or
why they should be scared."

"But there were bombings all around the
world!" Ahmad protested. "You mean you flew out—"

"Not our doing," Mohammed cut him short.
"We're not the only chumps Bill has his claws into. But for us, it
got even worse."

"A-Zed," said Ari.

"I never heard about them until a bunch of
Chaldeans showed up on my doorstep and told me that some
hole-in-the-wall company in Richmond had been hacked, and that we
had to go down to get hold of the immigration database. They told
us to copy the latest immigration list, with all the updates, and
then bust up A-Zed's computer. These guys aren't too bright,
though—asking us to close the barn door after the cow was
gone."

"Which cow?" asked Ari. "Which barn?"

"And they expected us to…well, after all, we
were such big-league killers..."

"They saw the execution video?"

"Bill must have sent them a copy, just to dig
our graves a little deeper. The Chaldeans were furious. They paid
Samad's way back to Iraq because he told him he could get more
credit card numbers for them. He was their golden goose, and we had
snuffed him. They wouldn't kill us for it, no. They would make us
do more killing. And we almost did, too. But after we jumped Rhee
and his men and had them all tied up...my stomach just gave out. I
just couldn't do it."

"You tried to kill Mr. Lawson and
myself."

"You were shooting at us."

"Wait," Ahmad interrupted. "That tells me how
the immigration database got on your laptop. Check: A-Zed. But the
photo gallery and biometric images…I've got a problem there."

"That's from Bill."

"Yeah…but the credit card numbers are tied in
with the gallery…that's how you got the bombing targets' addresses.
And since those credit card numbers were skimmed by Samad in the
Green Zone…"

"You are temporarily not an idiot," said Ari
in admiration.

"Thanks," said Ahmad, not taking his eyes off
Mohammed. "You see what I'm saying?"

"That Bill and Samad were in it together from
the beginning?" Mohammed dwelled on this. "Actually, that doesn't
surprise me all that much. But it does make me wonder what the real
reason might be for us being sent to Iraq…"

"Perhaps it was no more momentous than a
falling out of thieves," said Ari.

Mohammed snorted. "So we can't even say we
were out to save the world."

"Not at all," said Ari. "You drew the world's
attention to imminent destruction."

Mohammed and Ahmad stared at him.

"Say what?"

"How did you discover who the hacker-person
was?" Ari asked Mohammed, ignoring Ahmad.

"Yeah, drag me into it," Ethan complained
from across the room. "And now my nuts are scorching, not that you
care."

"I believe your wife would be pleased to set
a torch to your testicles," said Ari. "I suppose all of your wives
would."

Ethan's eyes widened. "How the..." He lowered
his head and slammed a foot on the floor. "Fuck!"

Mohammed looked puzzled.

"Ethan took a page from the Holy Book and
indulged in many wives," said Ari. "He could quote chapter and
verse, but I do not think it is the custom of this country."

"So he's even a bigger creep than I
realized," Mohammed said, momentarily diverted.

At this point, Ari felt the need to tread
very carefully. "At the time you invaded A-Zed, you had no idea who
was behind the hacking business?"

Mohammed shook his head. "We were hoping to
find out once we studied the data from their computer, but of
course you ran off with my laptop."

"You thought perhaps the Koreans were cooking
up a fallacious stew to deceive you?"

"You mean, some sort of blackmailing scheme?
It's possible. You think that's what happened?"

"When did you first meet Mr. Wareness?"

"Now that's a mystery," said Mohammed,
staring at Ethan. "I got this screwy call. Some guy said if I
wanted to get my stolen data back, I should call a certain
number..."

"Do you have any idea who this man was?"
asked Ari, hiding his agitation.

"Not a clue. The number didn't show up on
Caller ID. I didn't recognize the voice. One thing, though—there
were a lot of dogs barking in the background."

Ari was horrified to discover he was gnawing
on his own knuckle. This was rude and unsightly. It also betrayed
his jitters. He quickly lowered it into his lap.

Bruce Turner.

Who worked for a company with ties to ISAF.
The invisible hand of Ari's benefactor and tormentor was clearly
evident. And he could think of two good reasons why someone in
Afghanistan would stick his busy fingers into Iraq and the States.
Ethan's hack-job had threatened the A-Zed illegal immigration
operation. ISAF must have been using it to help Afghans who had
been assisting them in Kabul (and who were now at risk) to escape
to America. And no wonder they would want to keep it under wraps,
since many of them were no doubt former opium dealers. Not to
mention thieves, murderers, torturers and other assorted
undesirables, though Ari chose not to dwell on this.

The other item was far more ominous, but
iffy. Did ISAF know about 'Scenic Iraq'? Or had one of the biggest
heists in history been pulled off under the very nose of the
international community? He had once read about the theft of almost
the entire treasury of Spain during the Spanish Civil War, with the
whole world looking on. It had ended up in Russia, which showed no
inclination to return a single peso. You just had to admire such
hutzpah, especially if it involved enriched uranium. Even if Saddam
was in on it, it still amounted to theft…in the eyes of the West,
at least.

If ISAF had inserted the execution video on
Ari's CENTCOM flash drive, they must have known he would be roused.
They knew the identities of the unmasked killers, could track them
down and give Mohammed's phone number to Bruce. But they would not
have anticipated Bruce and Turnbridge trying to warn Ari away from
Ethan. It was a former Sayed employee who had hacked A-Zed, and he
had hacked A-Zed in revenge for being fired. For all Ari knew,
Sayed Technical Solutions had set up the A-Zed immigration
database. Rhee's nephew didn't seem capable of it. Having somehow
learned about A-Zed while at Sayed, Ethan chose to go after the
aching little pustule that would hurt Bristol Turnbridge the
most.

"Wasn't that risky, calling a number given to
you by a stranger?" Ari asked Mohammed.

"We used a pay phone...there's still a few
around. It was riskier meeting him in the first place. We didn't
know...it could have been a set-up, right? In fact, I'm still not
sure..." Mohammed drew a visual line between Ari and Ethan. "We
met. We invited him to stay with us for a while."

"It's called 'kidnapping'," Ethan barked.

"Can you kidnap a blackmailer?" said
Mohammed. "Anyway, we didn't tie you up until an hour ago." His
tone said, 'Much to my regret.'

"You took away my keys," Ethan shot back.
"And those Chaldeans you left with me weren't so friendly. They
didn't look like they wanted me to leave."

"They were friendly enough to let you sneak
your phone out of your car," said Mohammed. "Idiots. And look where
it got your friend."

"I don't know how he found me…"

Mohammed would soon be in front of the
police. Ari was supremely relieved that, thus far, ISAF had been
kept out of the conversation.

"Ethan was asking $500,000 for the
immigration database?"

"No, fifty-thousand," Mohammed sneered.

"But I was told—"

"I could've asked for a lot more," Ethan
boldly announced.

"I wouldn't care if it was just the Chaldeans
who were listed," said Mohammed. "But there are hundreds of
innocent people in that database. If the Americans get hold of it
and they're forced to go back home..."

"We shall forgo any mention of it to the
authorities," said Ari, shooting Ethan a menacing look. "If you
hold your nuts in such high esteem, it would be a shame to lose
them."

Ethan opened his mouth, then closed it. Ahmad
gave him a hard nudge.

"He's not kidding."

Ethan opened his mouth again, then closed it
again.

"Yeah," Ahmad continued. "Maybe you'd better
tell us about any copies you're keeping."

"Just one," said Ethan. "On a flash drive in
my car. A Pinto. In the barn."

"We searched your car," Mohammed
protested.

"It's taped in a plastic bag on the
firewall," said Ethan. "Same bag I kept my phone in."

"Then the names are assuredly safe," said
Ari, swiveling his dark gaze onto Ahmad, who promptly turned his
gaze up to the ceiling.

Fifty-thousand, Ari thought. There had seemed
to him to be nearly a thousand names on the list. If he demanded a
mere $100 per name, he could—

Force of habit, he sternly admonished
himself, putting the idea out of his head.

"What was Bruce doing here?"

"I managed to give him a call before they
tied me up," Ethan answered. "I just sort of told him I thought I
might be in over my head, and could he come out—"