The Guardian (30 page)

No one said anything for a moment. Then the cop stepped aside, and pointed toward the staircase with his gun. ‘You two first,’ he said.

Akhtar looked at Saunders. Saunders nodded. ‘I’ll go after you,’ he said.

Akhtar looked ashen as he started down the stairs with Saunders and the cop following close behind. Saunders could hear the wooden staircase groan as the cop shifted his weight from step to
step. The man was still breathing heavily, wheezing and huffing with each step. Saunders looked around the bar as they came down, searching for anything that might give him an advantage if he chose
to jump the cop and try to disarm him, but nothing presented itself.

At the bottom of the staircase, Akhtar turned to the right to head down the hallway toward the front of the bar. As Saunders passed the door off the hallway leading to the kitchen, he thought he
saw movement in the little circular window. He kept walking and looked over his shoulder at the cop. ‘Is your car out there on the street?’ he asked, nodding to the door.

The cop was just passing the door to the kitchen. ‘Yeah, why?’

‘’Cause it looks like someone’s trying to steal it.’

Saunders’s body was blocking the detective’s line of vision to the street, so the cop had to lean his body forward and around Saunders to see his car through the window. ‘What
the fuck are you talking about?’ he demanded.

Just at that moment, the kitchen door swung open. Saunders glanced back and ducked as he saw something large and black and heavy taking a wide arc near his head. A moment later he heard the
sound of iron colliding with bone and looked over his shoulder to watch the cop fall to the ground. Looking up, he saw Cianna Phelan standing over him with a large frying pan in her hand. The cop
groaned once and rolled over, unconscious.

Saunders moved over to him and felt for a pulse. It wasn’t easy through all the fat on the man’s neck, but after a moment he satisfied himself that the man was alive. ‘Jesus,
you could have killed him,’ he said.

‘You think I should have shot him, instead?’ she replied.

‘Fair point,’ he admitted. Then he frowned. ‘I told you to stay out on the street.’

‘You did,’ she agreed. ‘And if I was still there, you’d be on the way to the police station.’

‘I would have found a way out of this,’ he said seriously.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘I could see you were about to make your move.’

‘I’m just saying—’ he started.

‘Just say thank you,’ she said. She looked over at Akhtar and the box in his hands. ‘Is that it?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This is the sacred Cloak of Mohammed.’

‘Great,’ she said. She looked at Saunders. ‘Now what?’

It took all three of them to drag Morrell’s enormous body into the kitchen. Cianna, who was familiar with where Nick O’Callaghan kept things from the years
she’d spent helping in the bar, found a roll of duct tape, and Saunders bound the cop’s hands and feet to a table. The huge man regained consciousness just as Saunders was getting ready
to put duct tape over his mouth.

‘What are you doing?’ the cop mumbled in a disoriented haze.

‘We’re leaving you here,’ Saunders said. ‘You’ll be fine. We’ll call your buddies in a few hours to come get you.’

The cop looked around and saw Cianna. ‘You . . .’ he said.

‘I’m sorry about Nick,’ she said to him. ‘He was the closest thing I ever had to a father.’

‘He was the closest thing I had to a brother,’ the cop garbled. He squinted up at Saunders. ‘You didn’t kill him, then?’

‘If I’d killed him, would I leave you alive?’ Saunders put the tape over the man’s mouth. He nodded to the box containing the Cloak. ‘That is going to lead us to
the man who killed your brother. Either that, or it will lead him to us. Believe me,’ he said, ‘if there is any way we can, we will kill him for you.’ He nodded to the others and
they left the cop in the kitchen and headed out to the bar.

‘What kind of resources do you have?’ Saunders asked Akhtar. ‘We have to find a place to stay, and a way to get you out of the country and back to Afghanistan. It’s only
a matter of time before Fasil retraces his steps and figures some of this out.’

‘What do you mean, what kind of resources do
I
have?’ You have the American government behind you.’

‘I wouldn’t say the
entire
government is behind me on this,’ Saunders admitted.

Cianna gave him a sharp look. ‘How much of it would you say is behind you?’

‘A small bit of it.’ She continued to stare at him. ‘One man,’ he said. ‘But he’s very highly placed, and he has resources. He just may not be able to move
quickly.’ Saunders looked at Akhtar. ‘How about it? What kind of help can you get us?’

Akhtar frowned. ‘I have only a phone number where I can leave a coded message, and I am sent a contact, but it takes time.’

‘How long?’

‘ To get me out of a Boston jail, a few hours; to get me out of the country,’ Akhtar shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

Saunders thought about this for a moment. ‘You have no idea who your contact is?’

Akhtar shook his head. ‘I assume he is CIA. That is all.’

‘Do you know what he looks like?’

‘I met him once, in Afghanistan, but he was wearing robes and a headscarf, so I only saw part of his face.’

‘Was he tall, with a thin face and receding hair?’

Akhtar shrugged. ‘As I say, I saw only a part of his face, and to me your white faces all look similar, but yes, that is generally what I remember.’

Cianna said, ‘What are you thinking?’

Saunders shook his head. ‘Nothing.’ He walked out of the kitchen and the other two followed him. The moon was high in the evening sky now, and it cast a broad light on the street.
‘We need to get out of here, that’s the first issue. This place draws too much attention.’ He looked at Akhtar. ‘Go get your car. Pull it behind into the alley by the back
door, and we can leave here.’

‘ To go where?’ Cianna asked.

‘We can figure that out once we’re on the road. The most important thing is to keep moving right now.’

Akhtar nodded and started out toward the back door. He was still holding the box in his hands. ‘Akhtar,’ Saunders said. Akhtar turned to look at him. ‘Leave the
Cloak.’

Akhtar looked down at the box, and Saunders could see the dread in his eyes at the notion of giving up possession of it. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Because,’ Saunders said, ‘I don’t want you out on the street alone with it.’

Akhtar stared hard at Saunders.

‘You’re going to have to decide at some point whether or not you really trust us,’ Saunders said. ‘It’s that simple.’

Akhtar nodded and set the box down on a table, turned and headed out back to the alley so he could slip out and bring his car around. Saunders and Cianna watched him go. When the door closed
behind him, she turned to Saunders and said, ‘You wanted him to leave.’

He nodded. ‘I did.’

‘Why?’

‘I have a suspicion, but I couldn’t do anything to confirm it in front of him.’ He pulled out his cell phone and dialed. He considered asking Cianna to go into another room,
but decided that she would not be able to decipher anything he was saying in a way that could cause any problems.

The phone rang twice before it was answered. ‘Lawrence Ainsworth’s office,’ Agnes Shoals’s melodious voice sang out.

He took a deep breath. ‘Agnes, it’s Jack,’ he said. It felt as though the phone line had frozen. ‘I need to talk to him.’

She cleared her throat over the line. ‘Jack,’ she said. ‘You’ve been suspended. I can’t let you—’

‘Cut the shit, Agnes, I know he trusts you. You know he’s still in contact with me. I need to talk to him. Now.’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ she said icily.

‘Agnes, it’s vital. I wouldn’t call the office otherwise. Please put me through to him.’

There was a pause, and then the line clicked over. For a moment he thought she’d hung up on him, but then there was another noise on the line, and Ainsworth picked up the phone. His voice
was tense. ‘You shouldn’t call my office,’ he said. ‘You know that.’

‘I had no choice, Lawrence,’ Saunders said. ‘We’re in a tight spot.’

‘We?’

‘Yes, we,’ Saunders said. ‘I am still with the girl. I’m also with a young man. His first name is Akhtar. Do you know his last name?’ Saunders was making a guess,
but it was an educated one. There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment.

‘Hazara,’ Ainsworth said at last.

‘You win the blue ribbon,’ Saunders said. ‘You always were the wily one.’ He smiled to himself. As soon as Akhtar had said that he was working with someone in the
government, he’d suspected it was Ainsworth, who always seemed to have all the angles covered. ‘We need your help, Lawrence,’ he said. ‘We’re at Spudgie’s Bar
and Grill in Southie. We need transportation and protection. How soon can you—?’ Saunders didn’t get another word out as Ainsworth cut him off.

‘Don’t say anything else,’ he said. ‘You need to get out of there, and get out of there now.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Saunders said.

‘Then I didn’t train you well enough,’ Ainsworth replied. ‘You called my office. I’ll figure out a way to help you if I can, but you need to get moving without
another word. Don’t call me here.’ The line went dead.

Saunders turned his phone off and put it in his pocket. ‘What happened?’ Cianna asked.

He didn’t looked at her as he cursed his stupidity. ‘Someone was listening,’ he said. ‘We need to get moving.’

Bill Toney was pacing in his office when the call came from the communications room. He’d given explicit instructions that he be contacted at once. The voice on the other
end of the phone was excited. ‘He’s made contact with Ainsworth,’ it said.

‘When?’

‘Just now.’

‘What was said?’

‘Very little that we can use. Only that they have the Cloak, and that they are at someplace called Spudgie’s Bar and Grill in South Boston. Does that mean anything to you?’

Toney controlled his breathing. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. That’s of more assistance than you know.’

‘Yes, sir. Do you want us to consider monitoring the line?’

‘Yes, Lieutenant. Now it is more important than ever.’

Toney hung up. He considered his options for a moment. Once his decision was made, he picked up the phone and dialed the number.

Cianna could see Akhtar pulling into the alley behind the bar as she and Saunders exited through the back door. They were hurrying, and he barely managed to get the vehicle
stopped before they’d opened the doors and piled in. Cianna was in the front seat, and Saunders, holding the box with the Cloak, was in the back seat. Glancing over his shoulder, Akhtar
winced when Saunders put the box roughly on the seat beside him.

‘What’s going on?’ Akhtar asked.

‘Drive,’ Saunders ordered.

Akhtar threw the car into reverse and started to back out of the alley. It was a narrow lane with dumpsters lined on one side, running the length of the block. Spudgie’s was on the
water-side, and the alley opened there onto Columbia Avenue, but a stack of crates and an old rusted fence blocked the alley’s exit at that end, so Akhtar had to back all the way out.

‘Faster,’ Saunders said. His voice was calm on the surface, but insistent enough to convey the urgency of the situation.

‘What happened?’ Akhtar asked again.

‘Hopefully nothing,’ Saunders replied.

As they neared the street, though, another car pulled up at the end of the alley and screeched to a halt, blocking their way. Fasil, Sirus Stillwell and the Afghan bodyguard jumped out and
started toward them. They all had military-issue machine pistols drawn, and both Sirus and Fasil leveled them at the back of Akhtar’s car and squeezed off shots. The pistols fired ten rounds
per second, and both volleys struck the back window, which exploded. Saunders ducked down and hoped that the metal in the car’s body would be sufficient to stop the shells. Akhtar hit the
brake, and the car skidded to a stop fifteen yards from the three men.

‘Drive!’ Saunders shouted, slamming his fist against the back of the front seat. ‘Forward!’

Akhtar put the car in gear and stepped on the gas. The car lurched ahead with a squeal just as another round of gunfire slammed into its rear, knocking the bumper off and causing the back of the
car to skid into the building to the left. Akhtar ducked down to avoid being shot. The car lurched back to the right and slammed into a dumpster. Fortunately the giant steel container caromed off
the building and spun out into the alley, providing a partial shield from the next volley of gunshots. One ricocheted off the dumpster and smashed the window next to Cianna’s head.

‘Fuck this!’ she said, as she pulled out her pistol, spun on the front seat, and took aim out the shattered back window. She squeezed off three quick shots and saw all three of the
men in the alley dive out of the way. It would buy them a moment, but not much more. Fasil was yelling to the other two, and he and Sirus ran back to the car. They got in and spun it around so that
it was headed into the alley. The third man stood back up and continued firing, stopping only when the car pulled alongside him to let him in.

‘They’re coming this way!’ Cianna shouted. She fired two more shots, leaving her with only one more.

‘Keep going!’ Saunders shouted to Akhtar.

‘There is nowhere to go!’ Akhtar shouted back.

Cianna and Saunders looked up to see the crates and fence at the end of the alley coming up fast. Akhtar seemed to hesitate just for a moment, and Cianna sensed the indecision. She turned back
around in the passenger seat and swung her left leg over so that she was straddling the center console. She stepped down hard on Akhtar’s foot, pushing the accelerator down to the floor. The
car lurched forward as Akhtar screamed, his fingers digging into the steering wheel, trying to keep the car under control.

‘Duck!’ Cianna shouted.

The car hit the crates first, and they were all relieved when they realized they were empty. The wood shattered, and splinters flew across the car and into the alley behind them.