Collision (2 page)

2

“We’re in deep trouble,” Sam Hector said. “Ten-million-dollar contract choked this morning.”

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Ben Forsberg said into his cell phone.

“It’s a deal with the UK government to provide additional security for their embassies in four east African countries,” Hector said. “I can’t lose another big contract, Ben. I’ve sent you the details and I want you to go through the information tonight. All vacations must end.”

“Sure.” Ben was close to home, the top up on his BMW because as he approached Austin the spring sky clouded with rain. He wished that Sam hadn’t called it a
vacation
. Ben no longer took vacations; he had alone time, away time. He’d only been away for six days. “I’m ready to go back to work.”

“Thank God, because the deals are drying up,” Hector said. “I wish you would come back to work for me full-time. I need you.”

“How’s the negotiation with the State Department coming?” Ben wasn’t interested in rehashing that conversation; he liked working freelance now and living in Austin. The Dallas office reminded him too much of Emily.

“Another precarious situation. We’re in disagreement on five or six points. Undersecretary Smith is being intractable on the level of training that our security personnel have to have for the next Congo assignment while not wanting to pay a commensurate price. Which is bullshit. Congo is amazingly dangerous right now. They need us and she’s being obstinate, thinking she can handle it with regular government personnel.”

“I’ll talk to her.” Ben didn’t expect the negotiations to be prolonged; the security situation in Congo was deteriorating, terrorism on the rise; the State Department personnel stationed there needed a greater level of protection, and a contract with the professional soldiers of Hector Global was the cheap and fast answer. Hector Global did several million dollars’ worth of business with the State Department each year, providing armed security for its employees; a new rising conflict in Congo was a tragedy, but an opportunity as well. Someone had to protect the diplomats, and no one could do a better job than Hector Global. “If the situation there deteriorates, it might help us close the deal—she’ll get scared.”

“I like scared people because we’re in the business of making fear go away,” Hector said.

“You still want to use that as a motto,” Ben laughed. “Fear is not a good slogan.”

“Whatever. I also suspect she’s stalling so she can get you back up to Washington again.”

Ben moved into another lane, headed north on MoPac, the major north-south artery for west Austin. He exited into the suburb of West Lake Hills so that he could take back roads home to central Austin; the infamously slow Austin traffic had already begun its daily dragging shuffle.

“Ben? Did you hear me?”

“Sam. Don’t kid, you know I’m not ready for—”

“You cannot live in this bubble you’ve created for yourself.” Now Sam Hector sounded less like a client and more like a chiding father. “You just spent five days alone, Ben, at a resort known for catering to people twice your age. Emily would not want you isolating yourself.”

Ben said nothing. He had found it best to endure this kind of advice in polite silence.

“Ms. Smith has asked me about your interests, how often you come to Washington, what food you like to eat. As soon as our negotiations are done, I suspect she’ll ask you out the next time you’re in DC.”

“Does she know I’m a widower?”

“I told her. But not every detail. That’s up to you.”

“E-mail me Smith’s concerns on the contract and I’ll craft our response.”

Sam Hector was silent for a moment on the other end of the line. “Forgive me. I’m only trying to be helpful. We all worry about you . . .”

“Sam, I’m really fine. And I’ll talk to you tomorrow morning.”

“Take care, Ben.” Sam clicked off the phone.

No woman had asked him out in the two years since Emily died, and he had no plans to ask out any woman. He tried to imagine how he’d react to an invitation. He had nothing to give, nothing to share, nothing to say. A slight cold terror touched his skin. He lowered the car’s window, let fresh air wash over his face as he turned off the highway toward home. He clicked on the radio: “A bizarre shooting in downtown Austin today left two dead . . . ,” the announcer said and Ben switched off the radio. He did not like to hear about shootings. Two years after his wife’s death, the very word twisted a knife in his spine, brought back the horrible memory of Emily sprawled dead on the kitchen floor, a bullet hole marring her forehead.

Random, pointless, for no reason, some unknown idiot firing rounds at empty houses. He eased his grip on the steering wheel, tried not to remember.

Ben lived in Tarrytown, an older and expensive neighborhood on the west side of Austin. His house was small by the neighborhood’s increasingly grandiose standards—Tarrytown had been invaded by mega-mansions, towering over the original houses on the cramped lots—but the limestone bungalow suited him. He pulled into his garage just as the simmering storm broke into soft rain. His flower beds needed springtime tending and the yard could use a mow, he thought.

Ben went inside his house and set his duffel bag on the kitchen floor. He grabbed a soda from the refrigerator and headed back into his office. He cracked open the laptop and downloaded five days’ worth of e-mail. Most of his clients knew he was gone this week so there was less than normal. He saw an encrypted note containing the specifics of Sam’s hot UK deal. He frowned at a couple of messages: a request from a business magazine reporter to respond to allegations of security contractor malfeasance involving a company he’d never worked with; three e-mails from people he didn’t know, protesting the use of private security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; and e-mails from six people with military and security backgrounds, looking for work with Hector, asking him for advice and help.

Where there were millions at stake, and guns involved, controversy always loomed. He understood people’s concerns about private contractors being used in war, but the reality was that the government was offering big-dollar contracts, and people of both dubious and high integrity went after them. Hector Global was one of three hundred private companies offering security and training services in Iraq alone. Ben was careful to work only with the contractors with good records and highly professional staffs. Many of them, other than his biggest client, were new, staffed by former soldiers and unused to navigating government deals. His guidance made it easier for them to win favorable terms.

There were well over a hundred thousand private security contractors on the ground in Iraq, training security forces and police, protecting facilities and dignitaries. The money was excellent. Ben had helped Sam Hector grow his company into a three-thousand-employee behemoth in the security world, with thousands more independent contractors on call, to provide everything from security to computer expertise to food services.

A soft red
6
glowed on his answering machine’s readout. He decided to deal with the rest of the real world after he took a shower. Technically, he was still on his alone time, he told himself.

Ben showered and rubbed a towel hard across his skin. The mirror showed a bit of early spring sunburn on his nose and cheeks, from his lake walks; he was of Swedish descent, and the sun wasn’t always gentle on his pale, slightly freckled skin. He smoothed out his thick thatch of blond hair with a comb of his fingers, brushed his teeth, and decided not to shave over the sunburn. He dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and a long-sleeved polo shirt. He reached for the soda he’d left on the counter and then the doorbell rang, a low, long, almost mournful chime.

Two people stood on his bricked porch. Ben had been around enough government agents in his work to recognize them as such—the stance, the careful neutral expressions. One was a petite, dark-haired woman in her early thirties, wearing an expensive, tailored gray suit. She had brown eyes and a mouth set in a frown, and when Ben opened the door, her gaze was so fierce that he nearly took a step backward. The man next to her was thin and silver-haired, expressionless.

Behind them, Ben saw a car, with two thick-necked men in suits and sunglasses standing at attention near the passenger door.

“Mr. Forsberg?” the man said.

“Yes.”

Both showed photo IDs. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Strategic Initiatives. It wasn’t a division at Homeland Ben recognized from his consulting work, like FEMA or the Secret Service. “I’m Agent Norman Kidwell. This is Agent Joanna Vochek. We’d like to speak with you.”

Ben blinked at the badges. Kidwell was in his forties, with a hardscrabble face that was alien territory for a smile, dark eyes that gave a glance more calculated than kind, a suggestion of granite under the skin of his jaw.

“Okay. About what?” Ben asked.

“It would be better if we could talk inside, sir,” Kidwell said.

“Uh, sure.” He wondered if one of his clients had messed up, gotten dodgy with a contract with Homeland. But they couldn’t just call him? He opened the door wider. The two agents stepped inside.

“How can I help you?” Ben shut the door.

“Let’s sit down,” Kidwell said.

“Sure.” He went into the kitchen and they followed him, Vochek staying very close to him. He noticed her glance surveying the room, as if mapping every exit. “Would you like a soda or water?”

“No,” Kidwell said.

“Heading on a trip, Mr. Forsberg?” Vochek pointed at his duffel bag.

“No, I’ve just gotten home.” He sat at the kitchen table. Kidwell sat across from him. Vochek stayed standing, planting herself between him and the back door.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“Marble Falls.” It was a small town an hour west of Austin. “My parents’ condo.”

“Were your parents with you?” Kidwell asked.

“No. They’ve both passed away.”

“Were you alone?” She crossed her arms.

“Yes. Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

Kidwell opened a notebook and rattled off Ben’s full name, his birth date, his social security number, address, and home phone. “All correct?”

Ben nodded.

“You have an office phone?”

“I work out of my home; my cell serves as my office number.”

Kidwell kept his gaze unwavering, as if a thread connected his eyes to Ben’s. “Do you have any other cell phone accounts?”

“No.” He suspected he was about to be dragged into a bureaucratic mud hole; clearly a client had screwed up in a contract with Homeland and he was going to have to endure endless protocol before these two tight-asses got to the point.

“You advise government contractors,” Kidwell said.

Ben nodded and tried a cautious smile. “Is one of my clients in trouble?”

“No. You are.” Kidwell tucked his chin into the V of his hand, between thumb and forefinger.

“Because?”

Vochek leaned against the wall. “Do you have a client named Adam Reynolds?”

“No.”

“Do you know him?” Vochek asked.

Her insistence on the word
know
made him more cautious. “If I’ve met Mr. Reynolds, I don’t recall it.”

“He designs software for the government. A one-man shop, but highly effective,” Vochek said. “He’s a very smart guy.”

“Then I’m sorry I don’t know him.” Sweat broke out along Ben’s legs, on his back, in the cups of his palms. He tried another awkward smile. “Listen, I sincerely want to help you, but unless you tell me why I’m in trouble, I’m phoning my lawyer.”

Kidwell pulled a photo from his jacket pocket and slid it across the table to Ben. “Do you recognize this man, Mr. Forsberg?”

Ben guessed the photo had been taken at a distance and then computer-enhanced, colors sharpened, details made clear. It showed a man, short and stocky, glancing over his shoulder as he walked down a busy street. He wore a hat pulled low on his head, its brim dripping rain. He was adjusting his collar against the wet and the wind, and his fingers were surprisingly delicate and long.

Ben pulled the picture close again, inspected the man’s face, racked his memories. “I don’t recognize him, I’m sorry.”

Kidwell said, “Nicky Lynch.”

“I don’t know him.”

Kidwell scratched his lip. “He looks meek. He’s not. His father was a torturer and gunman for the IRA before he died, and Nicky took over the business. When Northern Ireland got boring after the disarmament, Nicky went for hire. He’s one of the most feared freelance assassins in the world. We believe he’s done all sorts of nasty work for hire: training al-Qaeda snipers in Syria, eliminating political resistance leaders in Tajikistan and Pakistan, killing judges and witnesses in Mexico and Colombia for drug cartels.”

“Now I definitely don’t know him,” Ben said.

“Are you sure?” Vochek asked, with a doubtful tone.

“Jesus, yes, I’m sure. What the hell is this?”

“This afternoon we believe Nicky Lynch killed Adam Reynolds, here in Austin. Mr. Reynolds had called me in Houston at noon, asked me to come immediately to Austin, on a matter of national security,” Kidwell said.

Ben looked up from the unassuming face of the killer in the photo and shook his head. “What does this asshole have to do with me—”

“You tell us, Mr. Forsberg,” Vochek interrupted. Now she leaned forward, put her hands on the table, her face close to his. “Because Nicky Lynch was shot to death and your business card was in his pocket.”

3

Your business card was in his pocket.
The sudden hush in the room took on a weight.

“Explain why Nicky Lynch had your business card, Mr. Forsberg.” Kidwell said.

Ben found his voice. His lungs felt filled with lead. “It has to be a mistake . . .”

“I can think of two possibilities. One, you are associated with Lynch. Two, you are being targeted by him.” Vochek shrugged. “Which is it?”

“This is a sick joke, right? Please, because it is seriously not funny.”

“Not a joke,” Kidwell said. “We believe Lynch shot Reynolds through his office window with a high-powered sniper rifle from across Colorado Street.”

Through a window. Sniper rifle.
Emily lying on a floor. The words, the memory, made the world swim before his eyes. He squinched his eyes shut, took a deep breath. “No . . . this has nothing to do with me . . .”

“We found a proposal with your letterhead on the floor of Reynolds’s office,” Vochek said. “Help yourself, Ben. Cooperate with us.”

“But I didn’t know him.” Ben sank back to the chair.

“Give me your phone,” Kidwell said. Ben slid the smartphone to him and Kidwell handed it to Vochek. “Find out his recent calls.” She started clicking through the menus.

Ben rubbed at his forehead with his fingertips. A slow burn of anger lit in his chest, piercing the haze of shock. “If I don’t know him, then your second option . . . is someone wants me dead. There’s just no reason.” He suddenly wanted Kidwell to nod, to agree, but the poker face stayed in place.

“Do you have any enemies?” Kidwell asked.

“
Enemies?
No.” It was the kind of grab-your-guts question the police asked him after Emily died, and when he looked up at their faces he saw the familiar stain: suspicion. The same poisonous frowns the police in Maui and later Dallas had worn while talking to him after Emily’s murder. Suspicion had already doused his life once with acid. Not again.
Not again
. “Who killed Lynch?”

“We don’t have a suspect.” Vochek glanced up from studying the list of recent calls on Ben’s phone. He held his gaze with her own piercing stare, then went back to studying his call log.

I’m the suspect,
he realized.

Kidwell slid another picture to Ben—a snapshot of Ben’s business card. Blood smeared the edges. The listed business number wasn’t his cell number, but his home number had been jotted in pencil.

He tapped a finger on the picture; hope rose in his chest. “That’s not my business phone.”

“According to the cellular company, you opened a cell phone account with that number last week,” Vochek said.

Ben shook his head. “I sure as hell didn’t. What about this proposal you claim I wrote?”

“It outlined getting government contractors, including several of your clients, to finance Reynolds’s ideas for new software products.”

“I never wrote it.” Ben shoved the photo back at Kidwell. “Anyone could copy my logo off my Web site. Forge a proposal to make it appear it came from me, print a fake business card.”

“They could. But why?”

He had no answer, and as his shock morphed into anger, he decided to turn the questions back on them. “If this is an investigation, why aren’t the Austin police or the FBI here to talk to me?”

Ben saw a glance he couldn’t read pass between Vochek and Kidwell. “Due to the highly sensitive nature of this case and how it could impact on national security, we have jurisdiction over your questioning,” Kidwell said.

“How exactly does this impact national security? I think I better—” But Vochek cut him off.

“This week you were scheduled on Adam Reynolds’s Outlook calendar, three times. Explain.”

Ben shook his head. “I told you, I was in Marble Falls.”

“Just an hour away,” Kidwell said. “You could drive back and forth with ease.”

“Could have but I didn’t.”

“So Reynolds’s calendar is complete fiction?”

“As far as me being scheduled, yes.”

Silence for ten long seconds. “I’m going to give you a single chance to come clean, Mr. Forsberg. Do you know of any terrorist threat that Adam Reynolds uncovered?” Kidwell asked.

“No. None. I swear to God I don’t.”

“You see my problem.” Kidwell stood. “Adam Reynolds did significant work for our government, and he was murdered today by a man with known terrorist ties. Your name is the only name tied to the killer and the only name that’s all over Reynolds’s office and calendar. Now, by our simple but effective geometry, that means you have a suspected terrorist tie.”

Ben’s breath stopped, as if a noose had closed around his throat. “You’re wrong.”

“I’d like to search your house.”

Ben shook his head. “What Homeland office are you with—Strategic Initiatives?” He remembered the notation on their badges. “I never heard of your group, or any of these people you’re trying to connect me with. I want my lawyer here, and I want you to get a warrant.”

“Neither is necessary,” Kidwell said.

Vochek knelt close to Ben’s chair. “Cooperate with us, Ben, and I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

“The only help I want is from my lawyer.” He stood and reached for the phone. Kidwell wrenched it from his hands, drew a gun, aimed it at Ben’s forehead.

Ben stepped back, nearly stumbled over his chair. “Oh, God . . . are you crazy?” He raised his hands, palms high in surrender, suddenly afraid to move. This could not be happening to him.

“You’re not calling anyone.” Kidwell noticed the blinking answering machine and hit the play key. Six messages. The first three were from various friends, inviting Ben to dinner and to a UT baseball game and to go to the movies this weekend; then there was a message from a telemarketer about a survey about the automotive market; a reminder from the library that Ben had an overdue book; and then the sixth message, spoken by the slightly nasal, tense voice of a stranger.

“Hi, Ben, it’s Adam Reynolds. Just confirming our meeting at four this afternoon. I’ll see you in my office. Call me at 555-3998 if you need to reschedule.”

Silence in the room, just the beep and the computerized voice on the recorder saying
end of messages
.

“Ben.” Kidwell looked past his gun at Ben. “You’re a deal maker. I strongly urge you to make a deal with us.”

Panic hummed in Ben’s skin. “I swear I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know anything. I don’t.”

“Let’s get him to the office, Agent Vochek. And get a computer forensics team from Houston to search every square inch of this house. I want it all— papers, computer files, phone records, everything this asshole’s touched.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” Ben took a step back from the gun.

Kidwell lowered the gun toward Ben’s legs. “I’ll shoot you in the knee-caps and we’ll take you out on a stretcher.” He gestured with the gun. “Your choice.”

Ben stared at the gun and then slowly turned and followed Vochek to the front door.

Outside the two guards waited in the backseat of the government car. The wind and rain from the brief thunderstorm had passed; the wind gusted a cooling breath.

Ben got into the car. The guards sat on either side of him, Vochek driving, Kidwell in the passenger seat. As Vochek pulled the sedan away, Ben glanced back through the tinted windows as his lawn sprinklers surged to life and began to shroud his house in mist, like a vanishing memory.

One of the guards stuck a gun into his ribs. “Sit straight, eyes ahead, don’t move.”

This isn’t right, Ben thought and through the shock a horrifying notion occurred to him: Maybe these people weren’t with Homeland Security after all.

Khaled’s Report—Beirut

Nothing is as it seems. That idea is the deepest truth in this sorry world. And now I am about to live this truth, because my whole life is going to become a carefully constructed lie.

Why?

Because I write these words with my brothers’ blood on my face.

Oh, I washed the stains off weeks ago. No remnant of their loss remains on my skin for anyone to see. But their blood is there. Always, an invisible mark on me.

The only cure is to avenge them.

My bosses want me to write my story as to why I have taken on this most dangerous work. I can assume that my words and my handwriting will be analyzed, to see if I’m worthy, to determine my loyalty, to do a psychological evaluation to see if I’m made of—to borrow an Americanism—the right stuff.

I am an unlikely candidate, I know, to become a fighter. I was the baby of the family, the one who my brothers Samir and Gebran always tried to protect, to shield from the bully, to walk home from school, to give advice so I didn’t make an ass of myself. Which I am, confession time, prone to do. I do not think I am particularly smart or brave. I am angry.

My bosses should know exactly what they are getting in me. I studied chemistry for a while, then changed to business and finance. I like the cleanness of math; it is much less messy than life. I am too formal in social settings (and probably in my writing) but too easygoing with those that I love. I don’t like loud people. I love old Westerns. I can be a fool but I am not foolish. I can be angry but I am not mad.

And now, I think I can kill and not weep.

Let me say this about my brothers: I do not blame them. They both always did what they felt was right in this world. Gebran was a music teacher, a talented guitar player. Samir worked at a bank, generous to a fault. They had no idea of the danger they were getting into, I suspect, but I am walking in, both eyes open, facing paradise.

Samir and Gebran were two and five years older than me, and they had a different set of friends. More political, more fiery. I was more concerned with video games and girls than defiance of Israel or Palestinian statehood or the Islamic struggle. No one in Beirut is surprised that I am supposedly moving to Europe for school, not after what happened to my family.

No one can ever know that I’m actually going to America to do my work.

So here is what happened: Samir and Gebran had, as I said, a different set of friends, far more firebrand than my lazy loafing clique.

I don’t want to go when my brothers invite me to go see a buddy of theirs named Husayn who lives near Rue Hamra—but my brothers are insistent and I have, sadly, nothing better to do.

On the car ride there from the southern suburbs in Beirut where we lived with our parents, Samir turns to me in the backseat and says, “Husayn works with a special group.”

We are driving past buildings bombed out in the last fighting with Israel, mounds of rubble slowly being cleared so the buildings can rise again before they are bombed back down to their foundations. An endless cycle. Will it take twenty days or twenty years? It doesn’t matter, it will happen again. The cycle never ends. “A special group,” I say. I do not think my brother means the Special Olympics or volunteering with the elderly or any other helpful pastime.

“Yes, a group. Called Blood of Fire.”

“Sounds like a charity,” I say sarcastically.

Samir ignores the edge in my voice. “It has been dormant for several years. Husayn is bringing Blood of Fire and its ideas back to life. It is not a charity but it . . . does good work.” Samir peers at me through his glasses, as though my reaction might be printed on my head, like a news feed.

Good work
. I’ve heard that term used before, a justification for bombing and killings and terror. Fear worms through my guts. That sunny afternoon, I had no use for violence. None. What did it ever accomplish? The knife in the hand doesn’t buy security when the other man has a bigger knife. Perhaps you get in one stab and then you’re done . . . unless that stab pierces to the heart.

But I am a different boy in that backseat as we trundle toward fate, and I say, “So, what, Hezbollah not good enough for him?” Like I am making a joke.

Samir and Gebran don’t laugh.

“Your friend is, what, a terrorist?” Try using those words together,
terrorist
and
friend
in the same sentence. Putting breath around those words feels like a pipe inching through your throat.

“Terrorist, no, it’s the wrong word,” Gebran says, in the patient voice he uses to teach guitar chords to ten-year-olds. He doesn’t suggest an alternate term.

“You said you wanted to have peace in Lebanon,” Samir says, watching me. “So do we. Peace across the Arab world.”

Sweat lies cold against my ribs. I thought we were going to his friend’s house for a casual dinner, nothing more. This is more. A whole new world of more, and I want no part of it.

I want to say,
Mama and Papa will kill you for buying into this,
which is true, but I don’t. Maybe the trick is that I need to see this friend of my brothers. See how he’s played them into joining his cause and then dismantle his approach with reason and a dose of brotherly guilt, convince them both it is a bad idea.

Strange, how a stray thought, a word unspoken, a whim followed, can change your world. If I’d told Gebran to pull over. If I’d told them, no, turn the car around, I want to go home. If I’d had a bit of courage to stand up to them immediately.

Husayn lives in a small apartment a couple of blocks away from Rue Hamra and its busy stores and crowds of tourists. The apartment reeks of onion and cinnamon and cigarette smoke but is well furnished. Books, in Arabic and French and English, crowd the shelves. Husayn looks like a man who practices his scowl in front of a mirror. He is thin like a weed, dark, with a soft, fleshy mouth. But in his eyes a flame stands, a fire that makes your bones twitch under your skin. I wonder if he is high or crazy.

Only eight or nine people are at the apartment; the only one I talk to for longer than five minutes is a young man with a scar marring the corner of his mouth; his lip looks twisted. He tells me his name is Khaled, same as mine. He seems nervous, also like me. Food and drinks, and I am introduced all around, the baby brother. Or am I the promising candidate? I nod and smile and shake hands and try to keep my hands steady.

They talk, but they do not start chatting of plots or bombs or retribution. They talk of politics—hatred for the Israelis, disdain for Syria, aggravation and fury with the West. They sound like old men, not young firebrands. The cigarette smoke thickens like a cloud because the windows are kept shut at Husayn’s insistence. I notice, after twenty minutes, that I am the recipient of many sidelong glances.