Chapter Six
When they arrived at the booth, Father Jeremy made a quick round of introductions, before collecting his glass off the table and sliding out of the booth.
Rachel plopped into the priest’s vacant spot, then scooted down to make room for Julian.
“Thank you for arranging this, Father,” Cai said, taking the remaining edge of the booth bench.
“Good to see you again Nikolaj,” he replied, laying a warm hand against Cai’s shoulder. “Come by the church on Wednesday, after confession. I have a poker game with the Sisters of Mercy that might help you make rent.”
It felt good to be invited. If it was going to be followed by a pat to the head, Cai might go ballistic. “Yes, Father. I’d like that.”
“If you all will excuse me? I’m going to go build a wall around a plate of nachos at the bar.”
The priest was supposed to be the buffer—supposed to explain things when Cai’s nerves got the better of him. He should have explained to Father Wolff that he needed him here. Didn’t he know that Cai became a complete idiot within four seconds of being around Riley?
Just be as quiet and unobtrusive as possible. Then you won’t blurt out something stupid.
When it was just the five of them, Agent Marks broke the silence, her words clipped. “What’s this all about?”
“You Yanks are so friendly,” Julian said.
Rachel took out her cell phone and tucked herself into the corner. Her thumbs flew across the screen. “Or maybe she’s just immune to your charm,” she said. “Some of us are, you know.”
“Haven’t had time to be charming yet, have I?”
“I had a ten-hour workday, during which any one of you could have come to the FBI building and not dragged me out of my home, away from my sick kid, in the scant hours I’m not working.” Agent Marks’s eyes narrowed on Cai. He winced and hiccuped an apology, but she’d already trained her glower on Julian. “Move it along before you become another victim of the American Revolution.”
“Yes. All right.” Julian laid the note with GPS coordinates on the table and covered it with his palm. “Do you know the name Jonathan Dexter?”
“The British reporter killed in Somalia a few years ago?” Riley asked.
“Yes.” Julian’s fingers curled, the paper crinkling and rustling as he murmured, “Surprised you knew that.” He retreated into quiet, his gaze a million miles off.
“Al-Shabaab,” Cai whispered with a nudge, not wanting to alienate Agent Marks even more by making her wait.
“Right. Al-Shabaab. That’s—”
“A cell of al-Qaeda operating in Somalia,” Riley said. “Pretend for a moment, Mr. Thompson, that you’re speaking with people who need to know things like terrorist organizations and current events.”
“Don’t know what you know, do I? Best explain it like you know nothin’, yeah?” When no objection came, Julian continued. “We went to cover the unrest in Somalia, pirates, warlords, child soldiers and such. But Jonathan decided to investigate a story making rounds in political circles. Bit more difficult to find information. To get people to speak with us, we said our story was about how the UN embargo on weapons affected military groups fighting against al-Shabaab. Which was true but it wasn’t our focus.”
“How old are you?” Agent Marks asked, her tone laced with suspicion.
“I was Jonathan’s intern and interpreter, if that’s what you’re questioning,” Julian said. “I’m half-Somalian.”
Without looking up from her phone, Rachel lifted her hand in the air and mimed jamming her thumb against an imaginary remote. “Informant. Go.”
“Have you had some sort of electric shock?” Julian asked.
Cai tried to give her a dirty look but she ignored everything except her screen. “She’s...um... she wants you to go faster.”
“Long story,” Rachel said. “Bored.”
“It hasn’t had time to have boring bits!”
“Then why am I bored?”
“Because you’ve heard—”
Agent Marks laid her holstered gun on the table. Everyone silently stared at it.
“Right now,” Julian said quickly, “Because of the embargo, Somali troops are trying to police the country with sandals and half magazines. This is the military meant to fight terrorists. Their pay is barely above starvation levels, and their training is negligible. But, while we were researching the story, we came across a very different troop.”
“Different how?” Riley asked.
“Elite—or, elite by the standards I’ve already laid out. Jonathan estimated thirty to fifty well-trained, well-armed, and well-equipped soldiers who were obviously not Somalian.”
“Mercenaries.” Agent Marks leaned in.
“Yes. Not just mercenaries. American private military contractors is what polite circles call ‘em.”
“Somalia is barely recovering from two decades of civil war,” Riley said. “They couldn’t afford a private security man, let alone fifty. Were they connected to al-Shabaab?”
“No. At first, they were targeting al-Shabaab.”
“At first?”
“I’ll get there.” Julian’s voice became brittle, ready to fracture with the right word. Cai sought his thigh under the table and squeezed. The muscles relaxed but Julian took almost a minute to resume the story.
“The mercenaries started off by executing and dismantling al-Shabaab cells, so, of course they were operating with impunity. At least until Jonathan and I discovered them.
“Somalia,” Julian continued, “was, as you said, recovering from a twenty-year civil war. Poor, but there were billions in frozen assets ready for when the Somalian government stabilized. Billions they needed in order to fund their military to fight Al Shabaab. You tell me this, if the funds were frozen and the weapons embargo was in place, which it was back then...?”
“Then who was funding the mercenaries?”
“Exactly!” Julian said excitedly. “That’s the story we followed. For months, we tried asking or paying for information. No one would speak to us. The group were local heroes, you must understand. And they were bribing or killing nearly every single politician, warlord, or witness.” Julian opened his fist and then passed the crumpled paper across to Riley. “We were relentless but hit a dead end until Jonathan received this.”
Agent Marks peered over Riley’s shoulder and studied the paper. “GPS coordinates?”
“Yes. Those led us to a ship anchored well inside pirate territory. At the time, the EU and NATO forces were in control of the Gulf of Aden, but you’d have to be stupid or crazy to anchor a ship in those waters. And not just any ship. A freighter. A prime target for pirates.”
“You saw the ship?”
“Saw it boarded,” Julian said. “Saw crates lowered off. Witnessed bodies loaded on. Then only some crew climbed down into dinghies.”
Riley abruptly looked up. “You’re talking about the MV Lion Star that was captured by pirates. According to the story I read, some of the crew escaped, but the ship was taken anyway, then the rest of the crew were murdered. The story was big news here because one of the dead was friends and business partners with a local politician. Are you saying it wasn’t pirates?”
“I’m telling you what I saw,” Julian said. “A yacht pulled up alongside the bigger ship. Definitely not pirates. Definitely not Somalian, unless they’d seen a ghost just before boarding. A rope ladder was lowered down, like they were expecting the yacht. Four white men climbed up and they offloaded about twenty crates, looked like weapons from the size and shape. Eleven men got back on the yacht. I had a camera with a zoom.”
“In open water, they didn’t spot you?” Riley asked.
“They did, eventually. We were in a small boat and turned the motor off because it vibrated, and I couldn’t take pictures. I was so focused on getting clear images of the ship that I didn’t notice them heading straight for us. Jonathan had binoculars and he started screaming, ‘Get the bloody motor going!’” Julian grabbed hold of Cai’s hand and slowly gripped tighter as he spoke. “But, like I said, we were quite far away to start. Luckily, we steered into the line of sight of an EU Naval ship and the yacht backed off.”
Cai winced, fingers prickling with pins and needles. He jammed his tongue into the roof of his mouth before he had to say something. “Julian,” he whispered, twisting his wrist to try and break free. The death grip loosened.
“We got back to our hotel excited about the story,” Julian said. “Jonathan called his editor and told him what we had. We thought we’d got away, you see? Maybe they traced the boat we rented or asked the local hotels. Whatever way it happened, they found us.” Julian’s voice shook in time with each jitter of his leg. “I was uploading images one at a time because the hotel’s internet was shite. I went to the loo while the upload started. If—” He watched the TV for a second, his jaw tight with the effort to hold back tears. “That’s when I heard the sounds, like mousetraps being sprung. Which, for the place we were staying, wasn’t too far a stretch.”
“When did you figure out it was bullets?” Riley asked.
“The toilet sat against a thick concrete wall,” Julian said. “I don’t think they realized that because the other walls might as well have been made of cardboard. I was laughing about the rats, and I yelled at Jonathan to quit being a girl and get off the bed. That’s the last thing Jonathan heard from me or maybe he was already dead. He didn’t answer. Then bullets came through the door and shattered the sink. Concrete kept out the rest. I fell into the tub, saw a tiny window above me, and scrambled out of it, pissing myself the whole way. I figured that was the wet running down my leg. Didn’t feel any pain until I landed face-first in the dirt two stories below. Thank fuck for dirt roads, yeah? Knocked the wind outta me, but I took off, quick as I could on a gimp leg, leavin’ a big trail of piss ‘n blood.”
Julian had that tone. The one that made Cai think of Sergei Mogilevich pleading on his knees, acting like, if he explained enough, said enough, the night wouldn’t end up with Papa smashing his face in with a hammer. Sometimes Cai wondered if Julian wanted the misery to end like Sergei had by the time Papa finished.
Rachel snapped her fingers for his attention and mouthed, ‘I wanna go’. Cai gave her a look that he hoped said, “Are you out of your freaking mind?”
She rolled her eyes and went back to her phone. He gnawed at his lip. If Julian didn’t get through this quicker, she would finish it with an unfiltered and unabridged version.
“Mr. Thompson, this is obviously difficult for you, but we have to ask.” Riley’s tone was calm, soothing, perhaps sensing the sadness in Julian’s voice. Cai loved him more for that. “You haven’t brought this to the police since it happened. After all these years, how much of this is verifiable?”
“None of it,” Julian admitted. “They covered it all up and claimed Jonathan died in a robbery. Anyway, getting his killers is not why we came to you. But it’s important to know the kind of people we’re up against and why they’d have an interest in me. Honestly, when I left Somalia, I had the bullet hole in my thigh as a reminder for me to never revisit that nightmare.” Julian’s leg jackhammered again. “I went back to England, for a bit. Traveled relentlessly. Then I went to Afghanistan, where I interned with another reporter. It only reminded me of Jonathon. My anger drove me to post about his death and the MV Lion Star in my blog. Suddenly, mum was getting calls asking, ‘Had she heard from me?’, ‘Did she know how to get in touch with me?’ After they called mum, the called my friends and editor”
“What about the person who sent you those coordinates?”
“Dead, I’d wager. Everyone’s dead but me. And I’ve no evidence. That’s why all this is completely mental. I dunno why they’re after me.”
“How did you get involved in this?” Riley asked quietly, tapping at the edge of Cai’s palm.
Cai drew his hand away and into a fist. He had to minimize Riley’s effect on him before he blurted out a confession. “I, um, I went in search of Julian.”
“Oh my god, I can’t take another story.” Rachel slapped her phone down on the table. “Cai overheard this guy yelling at his lawyer about Julian’s stuff on his blog. Now, there’s a hitman after Julian. So, we need help.”
Julian glared at Rachel.
Agent Marks asked, “How did you overhear a client speaking with an attorney? Which client? What firm?”
Cai barely refrained from banging his head repeatedly on the table.
He needed better friends.
“How did you find out there was a hit?” Riley asked.
“Oops.” Rachel glanced to her left and pursed her lips. “I need to pee.” She stood on the bench ready to climb over Julian and Cai.
“Sit,” Riley ordered.
She complied with a petulant plop. “I assert my fifth amendment rights.”
“You don’t have any rights. We haven’t arrested you.”
“Is that true?” she asked Cai.
“No.” Cai met Riley’s gaze without flinching. He couldn’t break away. Being mere inches from him felt like being caught in the sun’s gravity. He expected his heart to pop out of his throat, roll across the table and flop into Riley’s lap. “Oh well, it belongs to you anyway.” He sighed.
“What does?”
Julian knocked the side of his knee in warning.
Oh, no. Cai’s brows popped up without his permission. He rubbed at them, trying to pull them back into place. “Sorry?”
“What belongs to me?”
“No, it isn’t true, Rach.” It was times like these that Cai wished prayers actually worked. “You um…you have the right…y-you don’t have to incriminate yourself.”
Agent Marks interrupted his floundering. “Who was the client you overheard? Why would they send a contract killer over a blog post? And what evidence of a hit do you have?”
“Max Porter,” Julian supplied, with a warning sideways glare. “He sent my picture to a throwaway email, and then he wired fifty-thousand dollars to an account in the Cayman Islands.”
“Who is Max Porter?” Agent Marks asked.
“The head of security for Foreign Security Incorporated,” Julian answered.
Agent Marks exhaled loudly. “Now we’re back to how you got that information,” she asked.
Cai lifted his hand to signal Rachel, then realized too late that it was still threaded with Julian’s. He quickly broke free, but not before Riley caught the motion. “I, um, we-we can show you.”
* * *
A minuscule part of Riley was happy that Cai found someone. The rest of him wanted to get as far away from this table as possible.
What are you going to do when it’s too late? When I’ve found someone else?
Julian was in his early or mid-twenties, Riley estimated. Strong features, soft brown hair as dark and curly as Kelly’s, but in a tighter afro. Handsome. Confident. Arms bulging with lean muscle as he rested his elbows on the back of the booth, like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“We’re just friends,” Cai said quickly.
“Naked friends on occasion.” Julian laid his palms spread flat on the table, grinning as if he’d presented Riley with a straight flush. “Naked, hot, sweaty, moaning friends.”
Cai’s skin turned incandescent.
Riley pushed his glass away before he crushed it into sand.
“Five seconds to verify even a tiny portion of this information, or the three of you will be paying my babysitter fees,” Kelly said.
“I’m not sure what you’re asking for, Mr. Thompson,” Riley said, dismissing the bait Julian dangled in front of him. “Kelly and I don’t launch investigations. Our supervisors assign cases based on intel, but there’s nothing here we can present to our superiors. If you want our help, we need something concrete.” Riley didn’t touch on how they got the email they mentioned. When he figured out an angle to get the truth, when they’d dug too deep a hole to lie their way out of, he’d be in a better position to ask the right questions.
“You can show them now, Rach,” Cai said, tapping nervous fingers at the edge of the table. When he caught Riley staring at them, he slowly brought his hands into his lap, gripped his bottom lip in his mouth, and stared up at the ceiling.
Not that Riley didn’t appreciate Cai’s glaringly obvious tells, but, he couldn’t figure out if the nervous glances and lip biting were the awkward struggle Cai sometimes had with his crush, or if it was the impressive amount of lying coming out of his mouth.
“So we’re clear, this is stuff we found in, like, a trash can or something,” Rachel said, provoking an eye roll from Agent Marks and a perturbed glare from Riley. “Just sayin’.”
She pulled out a tablet from her purse and swiped through it. “Okay, got it.” She flipped the screen toward Riley and Kelly. “The following movie has been rated DNFA, for Do Not Fucking Ask how it was obtained.” She pressed play, and a small splitscreen video started. “Meet Senor Max Porter.” Rachel pointed a finger to one half of the screen and then the other. “And his little friend, Mac Address 89-31-63-3B-41-CF.” A webmail program with an open email loaded up on the right half of her screen. On the left half, a muscular man in his late thirties faced the camera.
“Max here”—Rachel tapped the screen—“is douchebaggero numero uno in a story I like to call The Spanish Liquidator and Mr. Very Very Bad Password.” From the camera angle, it seemed the guy was being filmed in a hotel room from his own laptop.
The head of security for FSI had been hacked by a teenager in a tutu.
Max Porter appeared to be sending Julian’s picture along with an address to an email with a .ru extension. Moments later, a reply came with a numbered account.
If Riley believed that the split screen was, in fact, Max Porter’s laptop, then Porter also appeared to access a bank account in another tab. But without a clear view of Porter and his laptop at the same time, it could easily have been someone else’s screen. Riley had Rachel pause. “I want the original videos, now,” he said, and got his business card out to slide across the table. He jotted down the bank account number, Porter’s email address, and the numbered account of the supposed hitman. Cai slid a piece of paper over, a small smile hovering on his lips.
Riley glanced over the printed letters on the page. Account numbers, notes next to them with times, dates, names, addresses, everything he would have written down.
Tracking either the ‘hitman’s’ numbered account or the Russian email would be next to impossible, but he could check them against ongoing cases. If that was Porter’s account, it would probably lead to numerous LLCs and accounts owned by various indigent people in third world countries. If Kelly agreed that any of this story was true, a big if, the work had to be done. He slid the list over to her.
“You need to watch this part,” Julian said.
The video sped up. Porter smoked, paced, peered at the screen, paced some more, all at superhuman speed. Everything slowed when a voice-over-Internet program rang.
The caller had a thick accent. It sounded like someone trying for Spanish but landing closer to Eastern European.
“Mr. Porter.” Meester Port-hair.
“Yes.”
“Your computer has been compromised.”
“What?”
“You are being monitored, Mr. Porter.”
The video ended. Rachel waited for Cai to give a barely perceptible nod, then she typed on the tablet and gave everyone a pleased grin. “Sent to your g-man email.”
“Is there more video?” Kelly asked.
“Not for you, there isn’t.” Rachel grinned wider and exchanged the tablet for her phone, returning to playing her video game.
Riley was being played and he didn’t like it. What the hell was that useless video supposed to prove? “Mr. Thompson, that is not evidence of a murder-for-hire. The video does, however, prove that Mr. Porter was hacked.” His accusatory glare at Rachel was countered with a wiggle and a smug, toothy grin. He sighed and looked between Thompson and Cai. “The email and payment could be for an investigation and background check. What proof can you offer that it’s a hitman? Has there been an attempt on your life? Have you received threats? There isn’t enough here to launch an investigation. And what you do have, appears to have been illegally obtained.” Not to mention altered. “It isn’t enough to get you into protective custody, either.”
“Don’t need protective custody. No one knows I’m here. I’m quite safe.”
“FSI works directly with the Pentagon,” Kelly said. “Finding your travel information would be easier than finding a McDonalds in any half-mile radius.”
“They’ll find out exactly what I want them to know,” Julian replied. “I flew into New York on a travel visa, took a taxi to the Bronx, and spent two weeks, cash-only, touring all over the USA by bus. No one knows I’m here,” he repeated.
Riley stopped himself from giving his ‘are you a moron’ scowl. “FSI is based here in Denver, with hundreds of private security soldiers at their disposal, most of which are elite ex-military, and you’ve waltzed right into their laps. You’re making it difficult to believe you’re in any danger.”
“Why do you think I’m in Denver, Agent Cordova? And why do you think I came to you? I came here because Cai had an in at the FBI. If you lot start asking questions, I’m no longer their biggest threat. That’s it. Just ask a few questions about Max Porter or the MV Lion Star! Listen, I’ve a story to write. I need them to be on the defensive. I can’t spend the rest of my life hiding or renovating your mother’s motel.”
“And banging Cai,” Rachel put in helpfully.
“No, I could definitely do that for the rest of my life. Not sure what I’d do without those squeaky chipmunk sounds he makes when I get my tongue in the right spot.”
Cai choked and then laughed, his cheeks blood-red. He caught Riley’s eyes and his smile grew softer. “He thinks you’ll get jealous,” Cai said. “It’s not true.”
Which wasn’t true? Riley wondered. The chipmunk sounds, the sex, or the somewhat backhanded proposal? “I don’t care,” Riley said succinctly. Definitively.
Cai’s mouth slackened, his gaze fell to the table and then swept over the bar as he retreated into himself.
Regret shot through Riley. He dulled his stabbing conscience by bringing the discussion back to the case. “Let’s get back to how this started, Nikolaj. You said you followed Julian to London. How did you learn about him?”
“Austin’s dad got me a job painting a mural at Diedrich and Associates. They do legal contract work with FSI,” Cai said, his voice flat while he stared at the game on the big screen over the bar. “Walter Cole came in furious, screaming about Julian’s blog post.”
“Running-for-governor Walter Cole?” Kelly asked.
“Yes. He wanted the blog shut down. His lawyer said that would take time. After the senator left, Maxwell Porter said he’d shut Julian up.”
Cai finally turned toward Riley, his face blank as Julian whispered in his ear. He closed his eyes briefly, then grabbed his coat. “Julian...Julian can tell you the rest,” he said. After fishing in his pockets, he pulled out a set of keys, sliding them over. “I’ll see you at home.” He slipped out of the booth and maneuvered through the crowd.
“Stay!” Riley pointed at the table as he and Rachel stood at the same time.
“Do I look like a Pekingese to you?” She put her hands on her hips, above a metal spiked-belt holding up her pink tutu.
“Sit or I’ll arrest you,” Kelly said.
“On what charge?”
“A Walt Disney trademark infringement, I should think,” Julian put in.
“I’ll be right back.” Riley moved quickly toward the exit, catching sight of Cai’s arm as he disappeared outside.
* * *
By the time Riley pushed the door open, Cai was halfway down the block. “Nikolaj, wait!” He half expected him to keep walking. The pressure eased in his chest when Cai stopped and turned around.
“Why? I’m leaving! That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” A slurry of wet snow pelted down, soaking into their hair. Cai’s black strands glistened and stuck to his face. His rage kept the warmth in his cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” Riley said, shortcutting any explanations to get out of the cold. “I was an ass.”
“You didn’t have to be cruel and cold,” Cai said, apparently not ready to accept just an apology. “I didn’t want to come to you. We waited...I waited too long as it is.”
“Why did you?”
“I didn’t have anyone else! Austin lost all his contacts on the force when he quit. His ex-partner retired while I was gone. I don’t trust the police here. Not after—”
“Why did you wait so long, Nikolaj?”
Cai’s hand shot out, slapping the brick wall. “My name is Cai!”
The force behind that uncharacteristic anger spiked Riley’s adrenaline. He reached reflexively for his gun.
Cai followed the movement, his eyes widening. He jammed his hands into his jean pockets.
In the silence, the storm battered them both, stuck to their clothes and melted into dark stains.
“Does it help, Agent Cordova? Did you file me away perfectly in your brain after I left? Strakosha comma Nikolaj, son of Kaja the Hammer. AKA Baby Capone, the murderer. Kid, kiddo, boy .”
“Enough,” Riley said quietly, finally finding his voice. Had he really just gone for his gun? “Enough, Cai.” He held out his palm and beckoned with his fingers, numb though they were. “Let me see your hand.”
“No! I don’t need my hand checked or-or my nose wiped, or my freaking hair ruffl—”
Riley calmly grabbed the front of Cai’s jacket, yanking him forward. “Settle down,” he said.
“Yessir,” Cai whispered.
Riley sucked in a quick breath, gathering the scent of candy into his lungs. His gaze dropped to Cai’s wet and trembling lips. He let go, took a step back, and rubbed his neck, spreading ice along his heated skin.
Cai examined him like he was a blank canvas—eyes narrowing, head tilting. “Why did that make you look at my lips?” His thick, black eyebrows furrowed forward and then flew up like arched raven’s wings. “Oh!” he breathed out, drawing back as something clicked in that too-smart brain. “Are you—do you...”
“Just give me your damn hand.” Riley snatched Cai’s wrist and examined his palm. A small abrasion marred the skin on the meaty edge near his pulse. Riley itched to run his thumb over it. “You’ll live.”
“I said so.” Cai snuck his hand back into his coat. Or, actually, Riley’s old pea coat. So that was what had happened to it.
Slush melted into rivers down Riley’s nose. He wiped it off. “Get back inside, before I freeze to death.”
“No.” Cai sidestepped the attempted grab and retreated to the street just as Rachel peeked out the door behind Riley.
“Cai, FBI lady said I can’t lie to her, or I’ll get arrested. Is that true?”
“Yes, it’s true,” Cai answered.
“Shitfuck!” she said.
The door slowly closed when she went back inside.
“I need to go.” Cai backed up further. “I don’t think... You’re not weird or anything. It’s not that.”
“What?” Riley blinked. What was happening? Was he being placated ?
“I mean, it’s okay. I’m not judging you.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that,” he replied dryly. He wasn’t weird? “We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t. I get it.” Cai looked away. “You don’t care.”
Rachel barreled out of the bar again. “Can we go?” Throwing her thumb over her shoulder, she said, “Lady FBI won’t stop asking questions and, if I can’t lie, there’s only so many times I can go pee.”
Riley made a second attempt to grab Cai’s sleeve. “You need to give us the rest of the details.”
“I’ve given you all I’m going to, Agent Cordova.” Cai’s sneakers splashed snow onto the bottom of his jeans as he took off.
Rachel bumped against Riley and then turned around briefly to yell out, “Check your pocket, G-man!” She grinned, waved, and then followed Cai, her tutu bouncing out diamonds of melted snow.
Riley slipped his hand in his pocket as the two disappeared down the street. He pulled out a small black cell phone wrapped in a cocktail napkin with a note written on it.
-Disclaimer: The following phone was picked out of the trash. I didn’t steal it.
PS: you acted like a real shitstain. Love and kisses, Rachel.