Dead Zero (24 page)

“Not that it matters,” Nick told his inner circle a short while later, “but if we don’t get this guy, I am so gone it’ll make your noses bleed. I will be lucky to end up in Alaska investigating the Fairbanks garbage scandal. But enough about me.”

The overnight reports contained no breakthroughs. The only new piece of information was trashman Larry Powers’s description of the rifle he’d briefly seen in the cab of the truck, a very short bolt-action rifle with a thick barrel and a thick scope.

Bob was asked at the meeting for his opinion on the weapon.

“I’m betting it was a sort of Remington bolt-action rifle, short action, maybe in .308 or even .243 or .22-250. So I’d advise the people in South Carolina to try to find records for a transfer of that rifle in that caliber to Colonel Chambers’s shop. I’m guessing he did the work, or his smith. I’m also thinking a new barrel with an integral suppressor rather than the ‘can’ type that screws on, again for the shorter size. I see a gun that’s mostly suppressor and action, without a lot of barrel or stock. He carries it looped to his body at the shoulder, under a coat. He just reaches in, pivots it upward and it’s already set against his shoulder by the loop, goes to scope, maybe a red dot because, remember, he said it was ‘thick.’ Then he fires, slides it back under his coat, and wanders down the street. You’d never know he had it.”

“Is that legal?” asked someone, and there was laughter because some thought it was a joke, but Bob answered it anyway.

“You’d have to get ATF to clarify, but I’d say no on two counts. The suppressor is classed as a Title III item, like an automatic weapon, meaning it has to go through the legal hoops for private ownership. Did Chambers’s outfit have the legal classification to manufacture and sell
such a thing? As for the rifle itself, if it’s less than eighteen inches in barrel length, it cannot have a shoulder stock.”

“Why don’t we turn the whole thing over to ATF,” somebody said, again to laughter that was simply to express the fact that the agents had very little to go on: their own law-enforcement-only distributed picture of the suspect, his habits, his background, and very little else. It looked as if the only chance for an arrest would come if he made another attempt.

“He won’t,” Bob told Nick a few minutes later in Nick’s temporary Baltimore office. Susan was there too, in the usual pantsuit, her hair unusually mussed, and of course the more it got mussed the more Swagger got mussed. She was long, tall, thin, mostly leg, with high cheekbones and some kind of mean intelligence behind her bright eyes that would always keep you from confusing her with your mama. Thirty-eight, going on twenty-five, face smooth, wise, serene, perfectly colored in nuances of lavender and off-pink, like some kind of ancient vase behind glass. She knocked him out every goddamned time.

“How do you know?” she said.

Maybe he said it because it was his job; maybe he said it just to see a flair of response in those dark eyes.

“Well,” Bob said, “because he told me so last night.”

FOUR SEASONS HOTEL

SUITE 500

M STREET NW

WASHINGTON, DC

1300 HOURS

I’d like to follow up, sir, on the irony theme if I may,” asked David Banjax of the
New York Times,
recently exiled from the Newark Bureau and on a very short leash back in the Washington office, trusted only for a one-on-one setup by State Department flacks. “Do you consider it ironic to visit this city, with its monuments, its marble vistas, its statuary, as the center of a state visit in light of the fact that at one time you were sworn to destroy it?”

“Oh, Mr. Banjax,” said Ibrahim Zarzi, a fraught look on his handsome face, his dark eyes pooling with melancholy regret, “I am afraid you have been misled by early press reports which ascribe to me activities in which never ever did I participate. One has enemies. Enemies fight with more than bombs, they fight with unpleasantly inaccurate information. This is exactly such a case.”

They were in a room on Zarzi’s floor in the Four Seasons immediately after the news conference and all around Banjax, watch faces undulated gently. Square, round, black, gold, white, vivid, subtle, encrusted with jewels, screaming of Special Operations by dark of moon, or seductions in the dining room of the Ritz, it seemed like some kind of slow-motion museum on the theme of time passing. It was hypnotic. He thought of a common scene in a certain kind of movie that always seemed to take place in a field of reeds or wheat things (wheat
fronds
? wheat
leaves
? wheat
staves
? wheat
puffs
?) weaving rhythmically in the wind. Wasn’t it the one where the girl first gave her heart and her body to her lover? And wasn’t that sort of what was happening now, as it was his job to be seduced by the charisma of this man, whom the
Times
already supported editorially, and
to give him his say about his colorful past? And on top of that, it was making him a little bit sick. In the pit of his stomach, he felt uncertainty.

“Well, sir,” said Banjax, “it is true you were once known as ‘the Beheader’ for the unfortunate death of Richard Millstein, which was videotaped and shown around the world.”

“I am so glad that at last I have a chance to address that tragedy. In fact, no, I was not to blame, nor in any way responsible for Mr. Millstein’s death. That I swear. That I attest, with one hand on the holy Koran. Sir, I am rewarded in my patience that I will make my virtue and my innocence clear once and for all in this matter, peace be upon you.”

He smiled, teeth glittering. He had changed for the interview and now wore gray flannels, Gucci loafers (no socks), a white shirt open to the midchest and displaying bronzed, toned muscularity and a frost of hair, some kind of massive black military watch on one wrist that set off the many gold rings his fingers sported. He was lean, muscular for his age, and bold with macho vitality. Polo later, perhaps? A brace of grouse? Perhaps a ride aboard Jumbo in the forests of the night after a tiger, burning bright, and if the Jeffrey .500 didn’t put the big cat down and he made it up the elephant’s back, then there was always the double-barreled howdah pistol to drive two .600 nitros into the animal’s open jaws and jackhammer him to earth.

“Mr. Millstein fell in among thieves and brigands, alas. In their apostasy, they used my name in order to give a cover of political animus to what was basically a kidnapping and ransom operation. They represented not the Muslim street or even the groups that are called ‘terrorist’ but the simple universal greed of human corruption, as prevalent in our culture, alas, as in your own. It is tragic but it is inescapable. Wars bring out rogues and rascals, opportunists, the like. It was Mr. Millstein’s bad luck to encounter such. You believe me, of course?”

It was hard not to believe everything Zarzi said, for he said it with such earnest conviction. But Banjax tried mightily to offer some resistance,
even if the unease in his stomach was mounting.

“Well, sir, it’s easy to say, of course, and you are very convincing. However, some sort of objective proof would—”

“Proof? Proof? What proof would I have? A note from a teacher? Possibly the statement of a wife? My best friend’s testimony? Sir, you require that which does not exist. Had I it, you now would have it. I have only the humble power of my—oh, and one other thing.”

Banjax leaned forward.

Ticktock ticktock
went the thousand watches, each in a hulu gyre, reflecting this way and that against their orbit as they rotated slickly through the light patterns. Banjax felt sweat pop on his brow, a wave of wooziness pass, pass again, and pass a third time.

“Of course I ask your forbearance in linking it to me.”

“Of course,” said Banjax, if barely.

The elegant man reached into his briefcase and pulled out a sheaf of documents.

“This is the original report, not by Afghan officials, but by the Pakistani Directorate for Inter-service Intelligence, into the incident. It is, of course, in Urdu. You will have it translated, I’m sure.”

“Yes.”

“Certain elements of ISI are sympathetic to revolutionary movements in Afghanistan, as you know. Thus, it is important for them to know exactly who did what to whom when. They may even be paying certain funding. It is my hope, with the presidency in my control, to engage them and dissuade them from such activities. But the more immediate point is that their agents found no evidence of either my own or revolutionary groups’—terrorist groups’, you would say—involvement in the tragedy. It cost a great deal of money to deliver this from their hands to yours through mine. It is my gift to the West. It is something not even your Central Intelligence Agency has laid eyes upon yet.”

He handed the papers over to Banjax, who took them greedily.

Ah,
he was thinking,
a scoop
.

He remembered his great run of them during his last shot at Washington and the big leagues. The pleasure was intense. He looked up to make his next brilliant point.

And then suddenly it hit him: all those undulating watches, the thickness of the man’s cologne, his closeness, his earnestness, his warmth, so cloying. Banjax felt woozy, then blurry, then defenseless.

He fainted.

BALTIMORE FBI HQ

WOODLAWN

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

1145 HOURS

Oh, Christ,” said Nick.

“Bob,” said Susan, “this is not good. You can’t be consorting with the object of a federal manhunt.”

“If he approached you,” Nick continued, “you should have grappled him to the ground, screamed bloody murder, and we’d all be home free now, and I’d break my long-standing rule never to have a martini before noon. Jesus Christ, this is a mess. You may even have broken the law.”

“Nobody knows better than the man who wasn’t there. Are you done?” Bob said. “Okada-san, got any more shit to pour on me? Nick, I’ll bend over and you can whack me a few times or kick me. Oh that’s right, you’ve got a bum hip. Bring in some young guy.”

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” said Nick. “So tell the story.”

Swagger did, point by point, tracking Cruz’s revelations: white contractors, planted satellite transmitter in SVD, pursuit by satellite surveillance after first ambush, pursuit after evading second trap, radio contact with 2-2 Recon, missile strike on hotel.

“It’s nothing if he doesn’t give himself up now,” Nick said.

“And I’m telling you,” said Bob, “he doesn’t buy into your ability to protect him. After all, there’ve been two attempts on his life so far by a real hard-core professional team.”

Swagger faced his own absurdity: when he was with Cruz, he argued for Nick and Susan. When he was with Nick and Susan, he argued for Cruz. He realized he had no future in Washington culture, because he couldn’t even keep his own sides straight, much less anyone else’s.

“As for me,” said Susan, her face mandarin and remote and official,
“I see where this is leading and I don’t like it. I told you this and I don’t get why you’re not listening. The Agency will not stand still for an outside investigation of its operations in Afghanistan, which are undertaken in good faith and under great danger. I’m here to help you stop Cruz, not lead a witch hunt.”

“It ain’t about a witch hunt. There wasn’t no witches, right? But maybe Cruz does have enemies. And maybe they’re our enemies too. I don’t have no dog in this fight, I ain’t here to steal turf from any outfit called by its initials. I’m here for the truth, and I’m going to find it or look for it until you put me in the bag.”

“God, he’s a stubborn man,” said Susan. “In Tokyo, he went and fought a master swordsman who should have sliced him to shreds. No one could talk him out of it. You cannot talk to the man when he’s like this. It’s like arguing with a forest fire!”

“I want to work this angle, and I gave him my word.”

“The truth is, your word means nothing,” said Nick. “You were not authorized to make commitments. You don’t represent the Bureau.”

“My word means nothing to you. It means everything to me, especially to another sniper.”

“You are so fucking stubborn!” screamed Nick. “It’s like beating your head against a gun stock.”

“It’s a sniper thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

“This is the real world, not a Boy Scout jamboree.”

“Listen. Cruz ain’t going to go again,” Bob argued. “I got that from him. That’s his concession. The next public outing is Sunday, Zarzi’s run of talk shows in DC. He ain’t going to try nothing then. He gave me his word. I gave him mine. So get me out to Creech.”

“Creech is off-limits,” said Susan.

“What’s Creech?” asked Nick.

“It’s an Air Force base north of Vegas where they run the drone war,” said Susan. “It’s where
our
snipers go to play life-and-death video games with terrorists, gunmen, IED teams, high-value targets, and the like. It’s where the real hunting and killing take place.”

“Nick, get me out there with some smart partner agent to cover my
rough edges and let me sniff around. Say an American asset was killed in the explosion in that hotel and some outfit is bringing heat on our asses. They’ll let me on, strictly pro forma, give me the tour. They ain’t going to tell me nothing, not up front. But if I’m there and it gets out what’s being looked into, something may shake out of the trees. Then I can find out if in fact they did put a missile into that hotel.”

“Agh,” said Nick to no one.

Then he said, “Susan, I don’t see how I can say no. He’s a hero. They like him upstairs. And he has found Cruz twice and neither of us has even come close with all our resources. And sometimes he’s right.”

“Been known to happen a time or two,” said Bob.

“You are
such
a bastard,” she said evenly to Bob. “You are taking this exactly where my orders are to prevent you from going.”

“But you know it’s the right thing.”

“I told you. I went over the records very thoroughly. This shooting off of missiles isn’t casual, you know. Everything is recorded, everything is documented, every shot is noted as to operator, intel validity, time frame, and result. It’s not like the Mexican revolution, bang bang bang, with everybody shooting everything at once all over the place drunk on tequila.”