Out of Range: A Novel (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

J
ulie sat in a heavy wooden chair, soaking wet and shivering uncontrollably—so exhausted and wrung out that if she had not been duct-taped to the arms and legs of the chair, she would have simply collapsed and fallen to the floor.

“So let’s go over that first meeting again,” Quinn said for at least the hundredth time. His voice was patient, measured, maybe a little bored. “Where was it again?”

“Santa Monica. The promenade. I
told
you. His name was . . .” For a moment, her mind skittered out of the room. Why couldn’t she just go home and be with her children? Ollie and Meagan needed her. Charlie needed her. Why didn’t Quinn understand that?

“The
name
,” Quinn said.

“Hopkins. Frank Hopkins.” Each syllable seemed an overwhelming effort. “He’s an officer. With MI6.”

Quinn had been asking the same questions over and over in different ways for what seemed like days. Of course, the tactics that accompanied these questions kept changing. After using the combination of red and green drugs, Quinn had switched gears and played the father confessor for a while. But he soon tired of that tactic and turned to what seemed like his natural home: waterboarding. Which turned out to be even worse than the drugs.

The chair was attached to the floor with hinged rear legs so that it could be tipped backward. Then one of Quinn’s henchmen held a towel firmly over her mouth while a second man poured water over the towel until it was so soaked that breathing became impossible. And then, inexorably, as she kicked and thrashed, the water began leaking into her nose and mouth and she began to drown.

Uncannily, Quinn seemed to know precisely the moment at which she would lose consciousness and just before that moment, he would let her breathe again. As the drowning continued, with brief pauses to let her cough out the water in her lungs or occasionally to vomit, the sensation grew more and more hideous. By now, she felt as though she were falling down a dark path that could end only with her own death and her mind was starting to play tricks on her, as though it were slipping through the cracks of time and space, wending its way back to Los Angeles . . .

She had been warming up for her daily run when a short rumpled man wearing an unambiguously English bespoke suit had risen from a bench, folded the pink sheets of his
Financial Times
under his arm and approached her, saying, “Mrs. Davis, my name is Hopkins. I wonder if I might have a word with you.”

Ten minutes later, she was walking down the promenade overlooking a broad sweep of the Pacific Ocean while Frank Hopkins spun a story that had at first seemed ridiculous and surreal.

He had said that her old friend, and lover, Alisher Byko was involved—somewhat tangentially—in a political conspiracy which had the potential to have a major negative impact on the entire Western world. MI6 knew she had been corresponding with Byko—had in fact been intercepting their email exchanges—and needed her to go to Uzbekistan to see him.

According to Hopkins, Byko had gone underground and was unreachable due to some internal political conflicts in Uzbekistan. Her going to meet Byko was apparently the only way the man could be drawn out into public. They promised that Byko would not be harmed, that they just needed to talk to him. But Julie’s years of NGO work in faraway places had taught her to be suspicious of intelligence agencies.

Bullshit
, she had told him.
Do you seriously think I’m that naive?

Hopkins had persisted, giving his word that he’d told her everything, but she knew he was lying and walked away. He’d chased after her and reluctantly surrendered more. Thousands and thousands of lives were at stake, he told her. British lives. American lives. European lives. Then he showed her documents and photographs and played tapes of conversations. And finally he’d convinced her that Byko was . . .

No!
She forced herself to put all of that out of her mind. If she even allowed herself to think about what Hopkins had told her then Quinn would ferret it out. She had to make that into a blank spot in her mind.

She fast-forwarded to her decision. Hopkins had stressed that there was very little time and he insisted that she not discuss it with anyone, not even her husband. Julie had felt terribly guilty as she spent that evening at home—cooking, playing with the children, engaging in small talk with Charlie. Everything had seemed so excruciatingly normal. But even then, she knew that she had to go.

The truth was, from the very moment she and Charlie had left Uzbekistan, she felt ashamed about their hasty retreat. There had been so much left to do. And Byko was a part of that guilt. Maybe it was a silly thought, a self-aggrandizing exaggeration of her own capacity to bend the world to her will, but she began to think that if she’d stayed perhaps she could have restrained Byko, kept him connected to his better self.

Over the years she had never told Charlie how she felt about leaving Uzbekistan. He, after all, was the one who’d been shot. He was the one who’d been so certain that the conservative path they’d chosen was the right one. And yet she couldn’t help thinking that in his heart of hearts, Charlie might just feel the same way she did—that they had traded a chance to make a difference in the world for a bland, crabbed life of safety and comfort.

Here was a chance to make amends.

And if she was brutally honest with herself—as she was now—she had to admit that her own restlessness was part of what had driven her to take this on. She had
burned
to do more in the world, to do something bigger, something that
mattered
.

Of course, sitting here on this soaking-wet chair, the only thing that mattered to her now was finding a way back home. To see her children and her husband again.

“Julie! Julie!” Quinn’s voice intruded into her reverie, as if he was calling to her from the other side of a dark forest. “Earth to Julie!”

She wanted to respond. She knew there was something terrible coming if she didn’t.

But Los Angeles was so much nicer. Why had she ever left? What had she been thinking? If she hadn’t engaged in that email flirtation with Byko, none of this would ever have happened . . .

She could feel her body shivering. But it seemed disconnected from her mind, almost as though she were watching someone else suffer.

Then she was holding hands with Ollie and Meagan. They were walking through Disneyland, all of them skipping toward a sprawling castle, music growing louder as they got closer. “It’s a Small World After All.” Meagan’s favorite ride.

Ollie and Meagan laughing. Closer and closer, the music swelling.

It’s a small world after all, it’s a smaaaaaallll, smaaaaaallll world!

It was warm. The sun was bright. She was happy. They were all so happy. Why hadn’t Charlie come, too? That would have been nice.

Chapter Thirty-three

I
t took almost five minutes—getting transferred here and there, connecting to various receptionists and skeptical-sounding duty officers at MI6—until finally a man of some apparent authority got on the line. “This is Hopkins.”

Charlie gripped the phone. “My name is Charlie Davis. I’m calling about my wife, Julie Davis. If you don’t know who she is, find someone who does.”

“Go on,” the man said.

“She’s been kidnapped by Alisher Byko. She’s being held in Uzbekistan.”

There was a long pause before the man replied. “And you know this how?”

“I assume you’re tracing this call, which means you can see I’m sitting on the shoulder of the A217, smack in the middle of the Fergana Valley.”

“You know where she is then?”

“I do,” Charlie said. “And I also know where Alisher Byko is. But before we go any further, I need to know how she got herself involved in this mess.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what mess you’re speaking of.”

“Then maybe you’re not the guy I should be talking to.”

“I don’t mean to sound dense, Mr. Davis, but I know you understand the constraints of operational security for a man in my position. So I’ll need to know what the ‘mess’ is that you’re speaking of before I can divulge classified information to you.”

Charlie took a deep breath. He needed Hopkins’s help to rescue Julie, but before he simply downloaded everything he knew to an agent of MI6, he had to find out exactly what all of this was about. Without information, Charlie had no way of gaining leverage on the man, of keeping him honest, of being able to hold his feet to the fire. But he also had to respect the position Hopkins was in. Which meant it was going to require a gradual trade-off of information and reassurance if Charlie was going to get anywhere with him. It would be a delicate dance.

“Look, Mr. Hopkins, I know you or somebody close to you tried to take Byko down three days ago in Samarkand. I don’t know why. But I do know that my wife was used as bait.”

“I’m going to need to ask you some questions now, Mr. Davis. So I can be sure you’re making this call to me of your own volition. Answer me honestly and I’ll know that you’re not under any kind of coercion. Are we clear?”

“I get it,” Charlie said, “but make it fast.”

“What is your daughter’s birthday?”

“August nineteenth.”

“And her middle name?”

“Victoria.”

“And who is she named for?”

“My mother.”

“And the color of her bedroom?”

Charlie closed his eyes. For a moment, he almost couldn’t remember. And then when he did, when he pictured it, pictured Meagan lying in bed reading one of her favorite bedtime stories, he suddenly found himself choked up.

“The walls are yellow and blue,” he managed, clearing his throat. “With lots of animals on them.”

“I am glad to hear that you’re safe.”

“Well, that’s very kind of you, but Julie’s being tortured for information as we speak. So how about cut through the bullshit and tell me what the hell’s going on.”

“Very well.” Charlie could tell that Hopkins was thinking hard, trying to determine the minimum amount of information he could dribble out in order to placate him. “Your wife had, shall we say, a romantic history with Byko. We knew that and sensed a vulnerability on his part. We’ve been tracking his legitimate communications for several years. We needed to reach him. We saw that your wife had reconnected with him after some years of being out of touch. We asked her to help us establish contact with him. And that is the sum and substance of her connection to my organization.”

“So she had never been associated with MI6 before this?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Byko,” Charlie said. “He claims you recruited her at Cambridge.”

“You’ve seen him?” Hopkins asked, the tone in his voice betraying what felt like titillated surprise.

“He thinks you sent her to Uzbekistan to spy on him, that you assigned her to get close to me—to get me to plant stories in the local press.”

“The paranoid ramblings of a deranged lunatic,” Hopkins insisted. “If you met with him, then clearly you must have seen how far gone he is.”

Charlie wiped away a bead of sweat from his forehead and noticed that his hand was shaking. He hadn’t intended to ask Hopkins these questions, but now here he was doing just that. Had he completely lost sight of who his wife was? Had his trust in her utterly evaporated? That he was now doubting every moment of their relationship? That he was allowing Byko to get into his head?

“I understand you don’t know me and have no reason to trust me,” Hopkins continued. “But does it really make sense that Julie would be some kind of deep-cover operative for British intelligence while living in suburban Los Angeles? I would hazard the argument that it does not. All I can say is that she was never an agent of the British crown. If it’s any consolation, she was quite torn about this whole business. On several occasions she expressed to me that her greatest reservation about the undertaking was not the danger—but the fact that she had to lie to you. I’ll also say this—I like your wife very much. I suspect I like her for the same reasons as you. She is a very frank and earnest person. An open book, as it were. Honestly, she would have made a wretched agent over the long term. She managed to pull off this one thing because Byko was blinded by his attraction to her. Beyond that, I’m afraid there’s little I can do to reassure you. Now if we can move past this point to the matter at hand, Mr. Davis—”

“The matter at hand is that you dragged an innocent woman into your world and then didn’t protect her!”

“We believed she would be safe. And I deeply regret what’s happened to her.”

“You deeply regret—” Charlie cut himself off, seething. “So she did everything you asked, then the operation went south . . . and you sent her home like she was some flight attendant on her weekend off? She’s a mother with children. Her name’s in the goddamn phone book! It never occured to you that Byko might suspect her? That he might send somebody after her? Couldn’t you have called the CIA or FBI and gotten her some protection?”

There was a moment of awkward silence. “I understand your anger, Mr. Davis. All I can tell you is that we had certain operational constraints and no reason to believe her cover had been blown.”

“And what is it that Byko’s into that made it so damn important for you to recruit a mother of two young children and put her in this position?”

“I’m afraid that is where the line has to be drawn, Mr. Davis. I cannot breach security on the specifics of this matter.”

“Then I guess you don’t want to know where Byko is.”

There was a slight pause before Hopkins answered. Charlie could tell the man was about to go with a new tack.

“I’m assuming the real reason for your call is to find out how we can help you save her?”

“Would you even give a shit?” Charlie barked. “Given that she’s just a civilian asset you’ve used up and thrown away?”

“I do very much give a shit, Mr. Davis. And you are wasting valuable time by not telling me what you know.”

“You’re right, Mr. Hopkins. The clock’s ticking. And Byko’s not going to stay at this location for very long. So you’d better come clean with me now.”

Hopkins sighed loudly. “You understand this is a matter of grave international security. And I’m going to trust that I can rely on your integrity as a journalist. What I’m about to tell you cannot be repeated. To anyone.”

“You have my word,” Charlie said.

“Byko is planning a coup against the Karimov government. Whatever the West’s reservations about the current regime, they have been a valuable ally. We need them. And we need to convince Byko that now is not the time.”

“Bullshit,” Charlie snapped. “Julie despises the regime. She would never have risked her life to help that gang of crooks and thugs.”

Hopkins said nothing.

“Five seconds, Mr. Hopkins. Do you want Byko or not? Five. Four. Three. I’m hanging up now—”

“Mr. Davis! Wait.” Charlie could hear something verging on panic in Hopkins’s voice. “What about this? Tell me Byko’s location and I swear on my own children if you go to the embassy, I’ll speak to you on a secure line and clarify every—”

“Good-bye, Mr. Hopkins.”

“Bombs!”

The line was quiet for a moment. Charlie could almost feel Hopkins’s regret and desperation as his voice dropped to a whisper. “Dirty bombs.”

“Where?” Charlie asked.

“A variety of major cities across the globe.”

“Los Angeles?”

“No. Not Los Angeles.”

“What cities then?”

“That is where I must draw the line,” Hopkins replied heavily. “You know I’ve already told you far more than I should have.”

“And how do you know that he’s planning this?”

“We’ve tracked shipments of strontium-90, uranium-238 and cesium-137 from his uranium mine to these various cities. But we haven’t been able to find or penetrate any of the individual terror cells or pin down the exact targets in those cities. That’s why we need Byko.”

Charlie ran his hand across his face as he tried to make sense of this enormous revelation. And then something occurred to him. Oliver’s birthday.

“Jesus Christ, it’s happening tomorrow,” Charlie said. “The anniversary of the massacre.”

“Where is he, Mr. Davis?”

“What about Julie?”

“If she’s with Byko, as you say, we’ll find her, too. We’ve got an SAS team on standby right now. They can be wheels up in a matter of minutes. We’ll find her and we’ll bring her home. I promise you. Meantime, we’ll vector in a satellite to the location you identify. That’ll allow us to track them.”

Charlie didn’t want to admit it—as angry as he felt at the man—but there was something about this Hopkins guy that he liked, something that seemed solid, staunch, reliable. He’d interviewed a lot of spies over the years. And he’d found that some—for want of a better way of putting it—lied with purpose and integrity because it was part of doing their job, while others lied because they enjoyed it. Charlie’s guess was that Hopkins was the former type of man.

“Okay,” Charlie said. “Here’s what I’ve got for you . . .”

Charlie gave Hopkins the location of Byko’s compound and waited while Hopkins’s team vectored in the satellite.

It took nearly ten minutes before Hopkins came back on the line. “Brilliant. We’ve got the satellite up.”

“Can you see the compound?”

“We can,” Hopkins replied. “And what look like a half-dozen armored vehicles parked in some kind of atrium.”

“They’re still there,” Charlie said, exhaling gratefully.

“It appears that way. If they move now, we’ll be able to track them.”

“So you’re sending in a tactical unit?”

“As soon as we’re off the phone, I’ll scramble the SAS team.”

“You’d better not be screwing with me,” Charlie warned.

“Mr. Davis, it must be clear to you at this point that our interests are entirely aligned. I have no reason to screw with you.”

“Nevertheless,” Charlie continued, “if I don’t hear something from you in the next six hours, I’ll be calling the Associated Press and giving them everything we just talked about.”

“You gave me your word,” Hopkins replied.

“Yes I did, as I’m sure you gave Julie your word that you could protect her.”

“Mr. Davis, this is becoming quite preposterous. I can assure you—”

“I don’t need assurance, Mr. Hopkins. I need insurance. And that’s what I’ve got in my back pocket.”

“I understand you loud and clear, Mr. Davis. And you
will
hear from me. But please understand, I can’t tell you what Byko is going to do with your wife in the next few hours. All I can promise is that the men we’ll send to save her are second to none, and if she’s still alive, we’ll get her out of there.”

“Well, get going then,” Charlie ordered.

Without reply, Hopkins was gone and Charlie set the phone down on the seat next to him.

They were professionals. They would do what needed to be done.

It was almost over.