The Guardian (8 page)

‘You think I got time to waste, kid?’ Gruden said.

‘No,’ Charlie replied. ‘I didn’t know whether you could help,’ he stammered. ‘I thought you wanted to talk—’

Gruden looked up sharply. ‘If you didn’t know whether I could help, why the fuck you call?’

‘I wasn’t sure—’

‘You weren’t sure? Why’d you call, then? You think I’m a fuckin’ chump?’

‘No, I just . . .’ Charlie took a deep breath, tried to relax. Gruden was testing him. Charlie had spent enough time around bullies to recognize the tactic, and he understood that
his reaction would set the tone for the negotiation to come. He thought about all the people who had taken advantage of him throughout his life, and he willed himself to appear confident. ‘I
wanted to talk to you first,’ he said slowly. ‘I didn’t know whether you could help with this. It’s an unusual item.’

Gruden picked up a stained napkin and wiped his mouth. ‘Is it genuine?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s genuine.’

‘Then I can help you move it,’ Gruden said. ‘But I gotta see it first. I can’t do a fuckin’ thing one way or another if I can’t verify that it’s the
real article.’

‘I understand,’ Charlie conceded. ‘But I need to know how you plan on moving it.’

‘You hear that, Joe?’ Gruden said. ‘Kid needs to know how I plan on moving it.’

‘Unbelievable.’

Gruden narrowed his eyes as he looked back at Charlie. ‘You don’t need to know shit,’ he said. ‘If it’s genuine, I got people who are interested. You understand,
I’m gonna take sixty per cent to move it, though.’

‘Going rate is forty,’ Charlie said.

‘Like you said,’ Gruden responded, ‘it’s an unusual item. Goin’ rate don’t apply.’

‘Maybe,’ Charlie shot back, ‘but you said you’ve already got people interested. If that’s true, this is gonna be the easiest sale you’ve ever made.’

Gruden blew his nose into the dirty napkin. Something escaped and landed on the front of his shirt. Charlie couldn’t tell whether it was egg. Gruden either didn’t notice or
didn’t care; it remained on the shirt. ‘Maybe the easiest, maybe the most dangerous. I guess we’ll wait and fuckin’ see,’ he said. ‘Either way, you need my
connections.’

‘There are other people with connections in this city,’ Charlie said. It was dangerous to try to play a man like Miles Gruden, but Charlie also knew that this was probably the
largest fence the gangster would handle all year. It was easy money to him – too easy to pass up.

Gruden looked at Charlie for a long time before he lowered his eyes to his newspaper again. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘What do you think, Joe?’

‘Like I said, it’s a fucked-up world, Mr Gruden.’

Charlie worried that he had over-played his hand. ‘Forty-five per cent,’ he offered quickly.

Gruden folded up his newspapers one at a time, stacked them in a neat pile on the side of the table. He raised his hand and gestured toward the table and a waitress hurried over to collect the
plates in front of him. She came back five seconds later with a pot of coffee and filled his cup. ‘I remember you,’ Gruden said as he emptied four sugars into the coffee cup.
‘From when you were growing up in the neighborhood. Probably seems like a fuckin’ lifetime ago to you, but to me it was just yesterday. You were always a scrawny little shit. Scared of
your own shadow.’

‘The Army changes people,’ Charlie said. It was the best he had.

‘Yeah?’ Gruden sipped his coffee. ‘I wouldn’t know; I was smart enough to stay out.’ He put his coffee cup down. ‘But lookin’ at you now, it’s
hard to believe. You still look like the same scrawny little shit from the projects.’ He paused for a moment. ‘What’s your sister doing now? Some kinda fuckin’ charity work,
I hear. She was always a hot piece of ass.’

Charlie said nothing. He just sat there, staring back at Gruden, trying not to blink.

‘If it wasn’t for her, growing up you’d have caught an even more serious ass-kicking, you know that? I guess the Army changed her, too, from what I heard, didn’t
it?’ He waited only a beat, and when there was no response, he said, ‘Shame, that. I hear she messed up a guy I do some business with occasionally last night. You might want to tell her
to be careful who she fucks with. I’ll let it pass this time, if we’re doin’ business here.’

‘Fifty per cent,’ Charlie said. He folded his arms across his chest, and kept his eyes focused on the man across the table from him.

Gruden stirred his coffee, took another sip. ‘You’re right, Joe,’ he said, looking over Charlie’s shoulder. ‘It’s a fucked-up world.’ He looked back at
Charlie. ‘You know where my shop is?’

Among other things, Gruden owned a barber shop off L Street. Everyone knew where it was. Charlie nodded.

‘Good. You bring it by my shop this afternoon. Six o’clock. If it’s genuine, I’ll move it. Fifty per cent.’

Charlie nodded again. He stood up without saying another word and walked out the front door of the restaurant. He headed around the corner and up the block. When he came to the first alley, he
ducked inside and found a spot where he couldn’t be seen from the street. He put his hand against the wall, took a deep breath, and slumped to the pavement as his knees buckled.

‘I never thanked you for Sam,’ Ainsworth said. He was leaning against the door to Jack Saunders’s office. Saunders was packing a briefcase. ‘For what
you did for him and the others. It was a violation of every directive you had, but I should still have thanked you.’

‘I wasn’t looking for thanks,’ Saunders said without looking up.

‘I know you weren’t. Which is why you deserved them more. Thank you. As your boss, I’ll tell you that you did a very terrible thing. As Sam’s father, though, I want you
to know how much I appreciated it.’

Saunders looked up and held Ainsworth’s eyes for a moment. He could see at that moment how deeply the death of his son had affected the man. ‘He was like a brother to me.’

‘I know. You might be the only person who could possibly understand how I felt, because you felt some of the same things. Except you did something about it, while I . . .’ His voice
trailed off for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose that is why I owe you thanks even more. As I sat here and considered all the global political implications, you went out and took
revenge.’

‘I didn’t think of it as revenge.’

‘Yes, you did. But in the end, it was only a gesture. The people who were truly behind his murder – and the murders of all the others at Camp Chapman – are still operating with
impunity, and they will continue to unless we show the will to oppose them fully. That is why your vacation in Boston is so important.’

Saunders went back to packing his things. ‘Any last words of advice, while you’re still my boss?’

‘Have you ever heard of
The Prophet’s Will
?’

‘Sure,’ Saunders said. ‘Jerry Bruckheimer movie, right?’

Ainsworth didn’t smile. ‘It’s the code name for a Taliban operation to remove western influence from Afghanistan once and for all.’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard of it,’ Saunders said. ‘Don’t know much about the details.’

‘No one does,’ Ainsworth said. ‘My guess is there isn’t much to know. We get rumors every once in a while. Nibbles of information, really, from the lines we’ve got
out in the water. Nothing more than that.’

‘So why bring it up?’

Ainsworth folded his arms. ‘Some of the nibbles mention the Heart of Afghanistan.’

‘Interesting.’

‘Plus, there have been rumors that there could be some people on our side involved.’

Saunders looked at his boss. ‘People on our side?’

‘In the military.’

‘Why would anyone on our side be involved?’

‘I have no idea. It’s really just ghost stories, probably. I figured you should know, though.’

‘Do we know anything about the operation at all?’

Ainsworth shrugged. ‘Not much. All the bits and pieces we’ve got talk about capturing the Heart of Afghanistan – the source of Mohammed’s power. The true believers seem
to think that if they get their hands on it, it would lead Islam to its final victory over the West.’

‘What is it?’ Saunders asked as he transferred a couple of pens from his desk to his briefcase.

‘We don’t know. But whatever it is, they seem to think it’s in Boston at the moment.’ Saunders looked unperturbed. ‘You need to be very careful on this,
Jack,’ Ainsworth cautioned him. ‘Afghanistan is in a very precarious position right now. The American public thinks we’ve succeeded. The politicians are desperate to pull as many
of our troops out as we can; all of them, if possible. That’s going to leave a power vacuum in the country, and the civil war that will erupt will be worse than the one that happened after
the Soviets pulled out. It’s going to be a mess, and everyone over there knows it. You need to understand that the people who are lying in wait, biding their time, are the most dangerous
people you will ever deal with, and they will stop at nothing to get power and keep power.’ He gave Saunders a hard look to drive home his point.

Saunders considered this for a moment, then went back to his packing. ‘Tell me about Phelan,’ he said.

Ainsworth opened a leather briefing file. ‘Charles Teigan Phelan,’ he began.

‘Nice Jewish boy, I’m guessing?’ Saunders said.

Ainsworth ignored him. ‘Born October tenth, 1988, at Metropolitan Hospital in Boston. Grew up in the Old Colony Public Housing Project in South Boston.’ Ainsworth looked up at
Saunders. ‘You grew up around there, right?’

‘Quincy,’ Saunders replied. ‘We were posers compared to the kids from the Southie projects. They were the real deal.’

‘Not Phelan, from what we can tell,’ Ainsworth said. ‘He was never in trouble as far as we know. Got decent grades in school, but nothing to stand out. He certainly
wasn’t getting any scholarships to Harvard. Signed up for the Army at eighteen. Passed through Basic, but he wasn’t fit enough to get into any of the elite forces he was looking for.
Hell, even the infantry didn’t really want him. He ended up in the Quartermaster’s Corps.’

‘Sounds pretty dull,’ Saunders said.

‘Compared to what you did over there? Sure. He saw some interesting spots, though. Did a tour in Baghdad and was lent out to a unit in Istanbul. Ended up stationed in Kandahar before he
mustered out.’

‘So, what’s his name doing in a Taliban communication to a sleeper cell?’

Ainsworth shrugged. ‘Could be nothing. Could be a coincidence.’

‘And we’ve got no address,’ Saunders commented.

‘No. Like I said, his sister’s in Boston. If someone was looking for him, that’d probably be the best starting point.’

‘If someone was looking for him.’

‘Right,’ Ainsworth said. ‘Which we both know you’re not going to do.’

‘Right,’ Saunders agreed. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out his gun, tossed it in his briefcase. ‘I’m just doing a little sightseeing.’

Cianna found herself looking over her shoulder as she walked back to her apartment, the bag of groceries held loosely enough to allow her to defend herself if necessary.
Walking up the stairs to her apartment, she peered around the corner at every landing, half-expecting to find someone lying in wait for her.

It was silly, she knew. No one was after her. She’d paid whatever debt she owed to anyone, and then some. Those from her past had neither right nor reason to pursue her. All the same, she
turned the deadbolt behind her when she got inside her apartment, and latched the chain.

She put the groceries away, sat on her couch, staring at the wall. She tried to put the thoughts of what had happened years before out of her mind, tried to force herself to think about
something else. There was nothing else to think about, though. Her life had once meant something. Now . . .

She looked around her apartment, taking in the stains on the rug and the paint-splashed walls stubbled with the dirt and grime of a long line of the destitute who had preceded her in the tiny
abode. How had she come to this?

Akhtar Hazara stepped off the plane in Boston with a sense of apprehension and excitement. It felt to him as though every passenger on the plane had regarded him with suspicion
and fear, and he was eager to be as far away from the airport as possible. He’d dressed well, in a western suit and collared shirt, but there was no way to conceal his ethnicity, and as he
boarded the 747 at London’s Heathrow Airport for the last leg of his journey he could tell that his mere presence made many on his flight nervous.

He didn’t mind, really. He even understood it at some level. After all the images that had been flashed into the American psyche of young men who looked remarkably like him against the
background of destruction from the World Trade Center to the Pentagon to Lockerbie to Luxor, he supposed the fear was unavoidable. Rational though it might be, he would be glad to get away from the
airport, where he could more easily blend into the background of America’s streets.

He had only one carry-on bag, which contained an empty, ornately adorned wooden box and a change of clothing. The box drew a curious look from the customs official, but only for a moment. Then
he was passed through and out into the bustling maul of Logan Airport. From there he headed out to the curb and caught a cab.

The address he gave the driver was for a quiet bar downtown near the TD Banknorth Garden, the enormous arena where two of the local athletic teams played their games. Akhtar had studied briefly
in America, at George Washington University in DC. It had cost more money than he could imagine, but his uncle was convinced it was worth it. Gamol had helped out financially, he knew. While there,
he’d tried to follow American sports, but he found them pointless and complicated, with their arcane and illogical rules. He preferred European football and cricket.

He went to the bar and ordered a whiskey. He’d developed a taste for booze when he’d lived in the States, and he savored the flavor as he sipped. He didn’t drink around his
uncle, who still held firm to the Muslim prohibition against alcohol.

The man arrived a few moments later. He was tall, with hair so short the scalp was visible. He wore civilian clothes, but they were clean and pressed and orderly. All that was missing was a rank
insignia. He sidled up to Akhtar and put a newspaper on the bar. ‘Have you just arrived?’ It was a simple code.