The Goddess Legacy (12 page)

“No oars,” he explained as they drifted away.

“Figures,” Allie grumbled, and Drake motioned to their houseboat.

“They must have tracked Carson’s phone somehow,” he said.

“Crap. I should have thought of that,” Spencer said. “Of course. If they suspected I had it…”

“Why didn’t they come sooner?” Allie asked.

“It wasn’t on,” Drake explained. “I powered it up at the morgue.”

Spencer held out his hand. “Let me have it.”

Drake obliged, and Spencer shut it off. “Throw it overboard,” Allie suggested.

“No. We might want to use it later, as a decoy. If I toss it, we lose that option.”

“Are you sure?” Drake asked.

“Waste not…” Spencer felt around in the bow and freed a greasy tarp that stank of fish and rot. “Get down as low as you can. We can’t all stay out of sight, but since I supposedly look like a local, maybe they won’t pay any attention to me.”

Allie made a face and Drake took the tarp from Spencer and pulled it over them. Spencer sat in the stern, holding a fish net and pretending to work on it. From the corner of his eye he watched the houseboat and was rewarded a minute later by the sight of at least twenty uniformed police with submachine guns encircling the boat.

“Looks like we got out just in time,” Spencer said. The boat had drifted sixty yards and was in the middle of the river, moving downstream at a leisurely clip. “What I wouldn’t do for an outboard.”

“Can they see you?” Drake asked.

Spencer’s mouth barely moved. “They’ve got their hands full right now, but yes, it’s just a matter of time till someone looks over.”

“What should we do?”

“Prayer’s never a bad idea.”

“Seriously, Spencer,” Allie chided.

“Not a lot we can do if they decide to open up on us with their guns. Then again, there’s no reason for them to if they think I’m a lone fisherman.”

“So it comes down to luck?” she asked.

“Most things usually do.”

When they were a hundred yards away, Spencer could see that the cops on the boat were obviously agitated, and several of them pointed to the skiff. One of the men had binoculars, and Spencer caught the glint of sunlight reflecting off the lenses as the spyglasses were brought to bear on him. Spencer fingered the net, staring at it with intense concentration as he tied an imaginary knot, and then held it partially up, as though inspecting his work. He could only hope that his disguise would carry the day, and then his heart caught in his throat when he remembered the dye box and supplies in the houseboat garbage.

When the police did a thorough search of the boat, they would find it, and even the dimmest would quickly figure out what he’d done. Sweat pooled beneath his arms as he willed the boat faster, all the time pretending to be engrossed with the net.

The skiff passed a group of locals washing their clothes in the river, seemingly oblivious to the drama playing out upstream, as well as to the questionable cleanliness to be had from the muddy water. Spencer waved at them and returned to his project, hoping he would be dismissed as benign by the police.

Spencer’s fishing act must have been convincing, because as the little boat drifted around a bend and out of sight, no high-velocity bullets blew them to pieces. He remained in character until he was sure they were clear, and then pulled the tarp off Drake and Allie, who were drenched with sweat from just the short time without any breeze.

“Safe to sit up?” Allie asked.

“I wouldn’t. Just in case. But don’t worry – we’re coming up on a bridge. We can get off there if we can climb one of the pontoons.”

The shade of the bridge was a blessing as they passed beneath it. Spencer used his hands to paddle the boat closer to a support, and the bow bumped against brick and concrete and came to a stop. Drake sprang up and tied off the line to a piece of corroding rebar. “Can you manage Allie’s bag?”

“Sure thing,” Spencer said.

Drake clambered up the crumbling face of the support, using the gaps where bricks had worn loose as hand and footholds, and Allie followed him up. As she was nearing the top, she lost her footing and, with a small cry, dropped toward the water below. Drake’s arm snaked out and his hand locked on hers, and he pulled her up to him, muscles straining. He hauled her over the rim and they lay panting beside each other as Spencer climbed the sheer side.

Allie sat up with a look of alarm. “Drake, do you feel that?”

“Was it as good for you as it was for me?”

She swatted him. “I’m serious. The vibration.”

Spencer’s head popped up at the edge of the platform, and Drake rolled away from Allie, almost knocking himself unconscious on a metal rail. He stared at it as Spencer heaved himself onto the bridge, and then turned to call out a warning. He was interrupted by the deafening klaxon of a train horn as an engine came into view, bearing down on them at high speed.

“Damn,” Drake cried, and pulled Allie to the side. “Hang on to the outside of the bridge. We can’t stay on the tracks – it’s only wide enough for the cars.” He inched around a girder to where he could just maintain a grip on the steel, his toes wedged in a gap. Allie joined him, and Spencer made it with only seconds to spare.

The train roared past, car after car. The bridge rumbled with the weight, the structure shaking like a drunk with the DTs as they held on for dear life, eyes closed against the black dust blowing from between the girders with hurricane force.

Several long minutes later, the last car passed and the train receded down the tracks, leaving them stunned and deafened. Drake helped Allie back onto the platform and Spencer joined them. Soot darkened his face, and his teeth glowed when he grinned.

“That’s one way to get our attention,” he said. “If the cops don’t get us, India will.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Allie said. “Let’s get off this thing and find a road. The police will eventually figure it out, and when they do, we can expect them to pull out all the stops.”

They trudged down the tracks to the far side of the bridge, jumping over holes where the surface had collapsed into the river below. Spencer shared his worry about the hair dye supplies when they were near the bank, and Allie patted his arm.

“Not to worry. I bagged it all and brought it with us when we went to the morgue. Tossed it at the market, so your secret’s safe – for now.”

“That was good thinking,” he conceded. “You might just make a decent field operative yet.”

She glanced at Drake. “I’ve been told not to quit my day job.”

“I never said that. I think you’re amazing,” he protested.

“Amazingly hot and sweaty – and don’t forget grubby from our little jaunt.”

“You look awesome to me.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “I take back everything I said about you. Maybe you stand a chance after all.”

“Everything you said?”

“We can talk about it later,” she said softly, the promise in her eyes unmistakable.

“I don’t mean to break up this mutual admiration society, but how do you think they were able to remotely erase Carson’s phone? I know it’s possible to track one, but erase it?” Spencer asked.

Drake’s moment of ebullience quickly faded as he considered the question. “I don’t know. But the real question isn’t how…”

Allie nodded and finished his sentence. “Right. It’s why.”

They plodded along in silence, the ramifications troubling.

Spencer broke the quiet first. “Maybe Reynolds didn’t tell us everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, but all along, it’s felt like we’re being used for…for bait, or something.”

“I told you I didn’t trust him,” Drake said.

“That was the driver, Roland,” Allie reminded him.

“Him either.”

“He kind of saved our asses just now,” Spencer said. “Assuming he didn’t call the cops himself.”

“But why would he do that? What would the motive be?” Allie asked.

Spencer stepped from beneath the overhang of the trestle bridge and into the sun. He looked back at her with a frown.

“I don’t know. But there’s only one way to find out.”

Rawalpindi, Pakistan

High horsetails of clouds streaked the afternoon sky like white smoke over the Pothohar Plateau, the celestial blue of the heavens so vivid it seemed painted. A cluster of dwellings encircled a clearing where young boys kicked a soccer ball with competitive enthusiasm. They were watched by a few old men who, with their working years behind them, spent their days gossiping and condemning the wicked ways of a world that had left them behind.

A silver Toyota Hilux truck pulled away from one of the modest houses and tore down a dirt road that led to town, the driver one of several men renting homes in the area, who kept to themselves. When he reached the main intersection, he made a left and headed south, away from the city, and kept going for fifteen minutes, at which point he pulled onto a tributary and then rolled onto the drive of a walled compound.

An armed guard studied the driver as though he’d never seen him before, a ritual that was repeated whenever the Toyota appeared, and the guard spoke into a handheld radio, fingering the trigger guard of the Kalashnikov AKM that hung from a shoulder strap, its curved magazine iconic and instantly recognizable.

The radio crackled and a voice brayed from the speaker. The guard nodded to the driver and moved to slide the heavy iron gate open. Inside, two men joined him in heaving the barrier aside, and the truck rumbled down the gravel drive toward the two-story main building.

A bearded man with a stern expression, wearing a flowing amber robe, a turban, and sandals, waited at the entrance. Intelligent eyes beneath a thick brow watched the truck approach, and when it stopped, he nodded to the driver, who returned the gesture as he stepped from the vehicle.

“Welcome, Abdul Aziz. It is good to see you,” the bearded man said.

“It is an honor, as always, Razzaq,” the driver replied.

Razzaq led him into the house, which was surprisingly cool thanks to overhead fans and thick walls, and they sat together while an attendant served them tea. Once they had sipped the pungent brew appreciatively, Abdul Aziz glanced around to ensure they were alone and leaned toward Razzaq.

“We have received the funds,” Abdul Aziz said. “Yesterday. They are ours to use as we wish.”

“Excellent. Will there be any problem withdrawing it in cash?”

“No. It was delivered in two suitcases. All euros, as requested.”

“Perfect. I trust you have it in a safe place?”

“I guard it with my life. There is no one so foolhardy as to attempt to steal from us, even in these difficult times. My oldest son watches it as we speak.”

“I am blessed to command such loyalty.”

“We would gladly lay down our lives for the cause.”

“Thankfully Allah has a different destiny in mind for you.”

“It is like a dream. To be so proximate to the avenging might of the will of the Prophet, peace be upon him.”

“Nothing can stand in our way. We will bring the sleeping dogs to their knees. Too long have our lands been used as pawns in their game. Too long have our people suffered at their hands while they go about their business like fat, spoiled children, blind to the damage they inflict. But all of that will change, and then we will have the upper hand.”

“I await the moment with every fiber of my being.”

“As do I, brother, as do I.”

They discussed the logistics of transporting the cash across the border. Razzaq was the leader of a particularly extreme sect of Islamic radicals who, in addition to buying whole cloth the most draconian interpretations of holy scripture, had developed a highly sophisticated funding network – contributions from mosques all over the eastern seaboard filtered through investment firms and, once pooled, were concentrated in offshore hedge funds, who laundered the money by investing in the unregulated over-the-counter derivatives market, where hundreds of trillions of notional value contracts traded hands, with no reporting required, completely outside of the safeguards of the banking system.

“It is laughable how the governments have clamped down on financial freedom in an effort to stop crime, when it’s well understood that real money operates completely outside of their banking system,” Razzaq observed, the theme a favorite of his. His cousin ran a fund that operated in the British Virgin Islands, and had engineered the mechanism which would soon allow Razzaq to become the most hated and feared figure in the world, and a hero to his fellow adherents.

He’d learned from watching ISIL that access to capital was the key to recruitment, and was one of a new breed of freedom fighter, as he thought of himself, educated in the American Ivy League university system, the son of prosperous parents. He was far more sophisticated than his predecessors and was equally at home discussing credit default swaps or oil futures as he was issuing scholarly and invariably militant interpretations of the Koran. Which made him extremely dangerous – or as he liked to say, a Renaissance man who understood his adversaries’ weaknesses well enough to exploit them for his own purposes. With a substantial war chest, there was no limit to what he could achieve, and his years subjecting himself to primitive conditions in Pakistan and Afghanistan would soon be over.

When Razzaq and Abdul Aziz had concluded their discussion, the older man led Abdul Aziz to the doors, which a servant had closed to keep out the dust that blew across the area from the nearby desert. Abdul Aziz embraced Razzaq, who returned the salutation in kind, and then watched the Toyota drive away, leaving the large courtyard empty except for the gunmen who protected him round the clock and several chickens frightened from the shade by the sound of the vehicle.

Tomorrow Razzaq would travel to Abdul Aziz’s humble abode to count the cash and confirm the amounts – some earmarked for the border guards, some for the customs officials, and the majority for his contact in India.

Allah indeed worked in mysterious ways, he thought as he watched the gate shut behind Abdul Aziz’s vehicle. Mysterious, and wondrous, for the patient man – and Razzaq had perfected the art of waiting.