Her Fugitive Heart Read online

  TWO

  “Gather round, children,” Roger said. “We have a High Priority assignment with a very large bonus in it.”

  “Yeah?” Benjamin said from his workstation, perking up.

  “This is a Very Special Missing Persons case,” Roger said, in his usual patrician manner, with its insistent hint of condescension. “There’s a certain gentleman who needs to be found, and quickly.”

  “So why is he so important?” I asked.

  “He wants to come in from the cold, to the West, which would be quite a coup. He possesses invaluable information on a whole number of things.”

  “This sounds like a spy swap,” I said, my skepticism rising. The gods, though, were perking up as much as Benjamin was.

  “I’m just painting a pretty picture, Ravi. You don’t want to hear another boring story like too many other cases.”

  “Do you have a name for this guy?”

  Roger left a dramatic pause.

  “Hassan al-Hassah.”

  Ken and Clive nearly fell off their chairs.

  Benjamin nearly spat out his espresso.

  Olivia didn’t even look up from her computer.

  Julia was as surprised as I was.

  I looked at Marcie.

  “Did you bring this to Roger?” I asked.

  She smiled and winked at me.

  “Hang on,” Mark said. “How did this job land at our door?”

  Marcie stood up, one of those rare instances where she took over the floor from Roger, which was not good.

  “Al-Hassah disappeared in heavy shelling in Basra six months ago,” she said. “Everyone thought he was dead, but there was no DNA evidence. Rumors and disinformation ran wild. More than a week ago, al-Hassah made contact with our guys in Istanbul through back channels and provided proof of life, then negotiated his surrender to us. Not even the British intelligence services know about this, and we intend to keep it that way until the right time. The CIA agreed to let al-Hassah sneak into London and turn himself in to the US. Don’t ask how he got here. He has his ways. As for why, well, he was Oxford-educated and he’s actually kind of fond of England, for all his anti-West rhetoric.”

  “Hang on,” Clive said. “Why wouldn’t you lot let MI5 or MI6 know about this?”

  “No offense, Clive,” Marcie said. “But your intelligence agencies don’t inspire a lot of confidence in us.”

  “I take your point,” Clive said.

  “And anyway, he’s ours fair and square.”

  “The CIA were the ones who originally trained him, after all,” Mark said. “How do we know he wasn’t working for you lot all along and this was really him coming in from the cold?”

  “You don’t,” Marcie said, her smile tight. “The Company asked for proof after proof to determine that he was in fact al-Hassah, since we’d heard about his doubles roaming around the Middle East for years. Once we were satisfied, we spent a fortune ensuring his safe passage from Pakistan to Germany before he finally arrived in London.”

  “So what went wrong, then?” Mark asked.

  “There was a rendezvous set,” Marcie said. “And he didn’t show up.”

  “Oopsie,” Benjamin said.

  Ken and Clive glared at him.

  “Since we trained him originally—by ‘we,’ I mean the CIA—since that was way before my time,” Marcie said, “there are certain parties on our side that would love to see al-Hassah dead before he can sing. He knows a lot of our dirty little secrets in the Middle East, considering he was one of the biggest dirty little secrets. To some of my guys, he’s a lot less embarrassing to have dead than alive.”

  “Given his nostalgia for England,” Cheryl said, “he probably thought Britain was a bit more civilized a place to give himself up in.”

  “So when was he supposed to hand himself over to you?” I asked.

  “This morning,” Marcie said. “Our people had an agreed meeting time at his hotel, where he would formally hand himself over along with a computer containing the files he had on his entire organization. Our people went to his hotel in Mayfair and found him absent, the bed wasn’t even slept in. The hotel staff told them he left the previous evening on his own and hadn’t been back since.”

  “Maybe he had cold feet,” I said. “Or he was going to double-cross you, or he was snatched.”

  “He could have decided to give himself up to the MI5,” Mark said.

  “We haven’t ruled anything out,” Marcie said.

  “And you’re sure the British didn’t know he was coming?”

  “We were very careful about leaks,” Marcie said.

  “So why come to us?” I had to ask. “Surely you’ve got every American agent in London and their au pair combing the city for him right now.”

  “Here’s the thing, guys,” Marcie said. “We’re fucking desperate. We don’t have a clue where he could have gone. The trail’s completely cold. My station chief said to use all resources available, so I’m dipping into the discretionary fund to hire Golden Sentinels to help find this guy. We’re reaching out to every independent contractor on our books here.”

  “So you’re the client?” I said.

  “My company is,” Marcie said.

  “Once again we’re the running dogs of American hegemony,” Mark said.

  “How are we even qualified to track down one of the world’s most wanted terrorists?” I said. “We’re private investigators, not spies or special ops.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, old son,” Roger said. “Some of you lot might know someone who knows someone. Ken, Clive, I know you have your old network of informers from your days as coppers. Mark, you know all sorts of people in the shadows. Olivia, I’m sure you can turn up something on the Internet. Someone somewhere knows something. Just make your inquiries.”

  “This feels well out of our comfort zone,” I said.

  “Oh, maybe I buried the lead,” Marcie said. “Or did you guys already know that al-Hassah has a $20 million bounty on his head, courtesy of the US government?”

  Well, that was us told.

  “Now, I know twenty million is a figure that makes the brain go doolally and the knees go weak,” Roger said. “Greed is a natural human impulse, but I’ll thank you not to go all Treasure of the Sierra Madre on us. We’re all in this together. This will be an agency effort, which means if any of you find the bugger, it has to be properly reported to our client and paperwork needs to be filed. That means you report to me, Cheryl, and Marcie together. Marcie will be our liaison with her station chief at the US Embassy. Proof of identity has to be verified before any talk of the reward will even be brought up.”

  “With proof of identity,” Marcie said, “we’re talking DNA evidence, dental records, on top of visual confirmation. We don’t want to end up with a double. And he may have gotten cosmetic surgery in the last few years.”

  “If we get a result and it pays out, the fees will go to the agency coffers and be part of your salaries as usual, but the reward will be doled out as a bonus, equally, to everyone here,” Roger said.

  I thought I sensed a couple of sighs of disappointment from Ken and Clive, Benjamin, even Mark. Mark surprised me a bit there. I never thought he cared much about money.

  “Forget about being the one who gets to the finish line first,” Cheryl said. “You find out anything, share with the rest of us. We’re all in this together.”

  “And even if it’s split, we all still get a few million each,” Roger said. “Nothing to sniff at, eh?”

  “Now, off you go. Chop-chop,” Cheryl said, clapping her hands.

  THREE

  The moment Roger and Cheryl finished, Ken and Clive got up and walked out. If there was anyone who could get any information from the streets, it was them.

  As we settled back to our desks, I noted that the gods were looking very chuffed. They were anticipating a good show. Kali was munching popcorn. Lord Shiva was opening a large bag of crisps and sharing it with Lord Vishnu. Bagalamukhi w
as slurping on a jumbo-sized cup of Coke. This was going to be bad. I sensed maximum chaos ahead.

  “What do the gods say?” Julia asked.

  “They’re giving us the thumbs-up, which can’t be good.”

  “Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned,” she said.

  “I’m sure there is, and I suspect we won’t come out of this one looking very good,” I said. “No matter how much we get paid.”

  She had that odd look in her eyes.

  “Don’t tell me you’re excited about the money, too?” I said.

  “Not really, more for the crack of it,” she said.

  “We really have to talk about your addiction to risky behavior,” I said.

  “I haven’t started yet, Ravi.” She looked coy, which meant she was relishing the prospect of doing some really crazy things for this case.

  “Julia, we’re probably the least dangerous people out looking for this guy. That means there are far worse people in town searching high and low for him, and we do not want to run into them.”

  “I know.” She shrugged, but the relish didn’t leave her eyes or her lips.

  It was probably just as well that David was out of town meeting whoever it was Roger had sent him to deal with concerning some paperwork on whatever Roger’s Grand Business Venture was, which he still wouldn’t tell us anything about. David would probably have freaked out over the prospect of us dealing with a terrorist.

  Benjamin was shaking his leg, full of nervous energy.

  “Are you already spending that reward money?” I asked.

  “Got my eye on parts to build a quantum computer,” he said. “It’ll be a modest one, but still powerful enough to link up to the big ones at MIT and even a couple of secret labs abroad. I can talk Olivia into writing some code with me to create a program to determine if we’re livin’ in a computer simulation or not.”

  “And what would you do with that if you succeed?”

  “Ravi, mate, if you can work out the code that controls Reality, it means you’ll have found the cheat code as well. Think about it. This is a shitty world we’re in. Wouldn’t you like to rewrite Reality to make things a bit better?”

  “I’m not sure your version of ‘better’ is that good for the rest of us, darling,” Olivia said, not even looking up from her computer. “Knowing you, it’ll be full of hentai porn and role-playing video games.”

  “Ahh, you love it, really,” Benjamin leered. “I could make your tits bigger totally naturally, without any surgery or artificial ingredients.”

  “Fuck. Right. Off,” she said, giving him the finger, still without looking up.

  I glanced at Olivia, who hadn’t batted an eyelash at Roger’s announcement.

  “You don’t seem as excited about the reward as everyone else is.”

  “It’s just money.” She shrugged again.

  “That sounds a bit blasé,” I said.

  “Please,” she scoffed, “I grew up around greater sums than twenty million moving in and out of the system all the time. I have a healthy respect for money. It doesn’t rule me. I know not to let it turn me into an idiot when a large payout is dangled in front of my nose like a carrot. And I certainly know how to dangle it in front of a gangster or a businessman or a corrupt official to game him into falling into a trap of my making.”

  I was still processing Olivia’s Hong Kong adventure from last year. Every day, I was reminded just how terrifying she was.

  “That’s a healthy way of looking at it.”

  “When a sum of money starts going into the tens or hundreds of millions, it becomes abstract. No single person can really wrap their head around those numbers in a practical way, let alone having that much money. It goes beyond paying off one’s debts. It becomes something completely Other.”

  “You seem to have spent a lot of time thinking about it,” I said.

  “It’s an existential requirement in my family. What about you, Ravi? Are you excited about getting a reward for catching the bad terrorist man?” Olivia asked.

  “It’s blood money,” I said. “More than the payment for any of our other cases. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with it.”

  “But you wouldn’t say no to a share of that twenty million, would you?”

  “Probably not, but what would I do with it? What do you do with more money than you’ll ever need? Pay for an Indian wedding to appease my family after Julia and I have the first English one? Buy my parents a house? They already own their house. Pay off my sister and her husband’s mortgage? They wouldn’t say no, but it’s not something they’re having difficulty with. Buy a house or a flat? I don’t need a mansion or a penthouse. I’m not going to a casino or buying sports cars or yachts. Give it away to charity and worthy causes? Sure, why not? Invest it so that it moves around in the economy where it gets spent on all kinds of dodgy stuff?”

  “I could give you a few pointers there,” Olivia said.

  “I’m sure you could, and they’ll be very sensible choices, but I doubt we’ll find him.”

  “Don’t be so sure, darling,” she said, and went back to typing whatever code on her computer it was that she found more interesting than what Roger was telling us.

  “Children, I’m not expecting you to go running around town playing James Bond,” Roger said, looking up from whatever he was talking to Cheryl about. “This is grown-up stuff. No, I’m just asking you to put out feelers, ask around, use whatever networks of information you have to find this bastard. You are not to approach him or try to nab him on your own.”

  “Ah, we’re just supposed to finger him, then?” Mark asked.

  “That’s right,” Roger said. “There are professionals in town to do the heavy lifting. They’ll have to share the bounty with us.”

  “How do we know they’ll even play nice with us?” Benjamin said.

  “They have done in the past,” Roger said.

  “You mean . . . ?” Julia asked.

  “Oh Christ, no!” I said.

  “Interzone will do the heavy lifting on this one,” Marcie said. “The Company contracted them for any extraction and to give you cover.”

  The gods, watching from the sofa, laughed, as if they had known this was coming.

  “We’re going to have those dangerous fuckers running around London with guns?” I said. “How is this not going to blow up in our faces?”

  “Laird Collins assured us they would work with you guys,” Marcie said. “Their liaison and our liaison will be, you know, liaising.”

  “So Ariel’s coming, then?” Julia asked, eyebrow raised.

  “They’re flying in this afternoon,” Marcie said.

  “Just what we need when we have a wedding to plan,” I said.

  “Ah, but think about how much a share of twenty million dollars could help,” Roger said. “Consider that your dowry.”

  “If we even find him,” I said.

  “I have total confidence in your abilities,” Roger grinned. “The lot of you.”

  “The rest of you can play with this how you want,” I said. “I’m out. I have no connections to any sources that could possibly find us a terrorist.”

  “Fair enough,” Cheryl said. “Roger won’t hold that against you.”

  I preferred to worry about whether Julia’s and my mum were going to get along as they bickered over the planning of our wedding. If anything, Dad found this rather relaxing, because Mum was focusing her energy and aggression on the wedding and Julia’s mum rather than him. He’d been enjoying a lot of peace and quiet at home because of that.

  As if on cue, Mum phoned me on my mobile.

  “Ravi dear, do you have a moment now?”

  “Anything for you, Mum.”

  “It’s just that Brenda and I are having a healthy debate about what you should wear for the wedding.”

  “I thought I was wearing a tuxedo.”

  “I’ve had a bit of inspiration, love. Perhaps you might wear a sherwani instead.”

  “Ummm . .
. I’m not sure. It’s a Church of England ceremony.”

  “Yes, but think about it, Ravi. We’re a diverse, multicultural society now, so why not embrace it? Julia can wear a traditional white wedding gown and veil, and you can wear a sherwani and safa—I said ‘safa,’ Brenda. That’s a kind of turban. That’s sher-wa-ni, it’s a long silk top, usually churidar pants. Gold or brown, Brenda.”

  “Is Brenda there? How does she feel about it?”

  “She hasn’t said no. She’s actually giving it some thought.”

  I heard loud protestations in the background.

  “I think your mum might be having a fit,” I said to Julia.

  “Do you have a moment, dear?” Mum said. “We need to get you fitted.”

  I looked over to Julia.

  “I think I have to stop our mums from killing each other.”

  “Good excuse to get out of the office,” Julia said.

  “Ah yes,” Roger said. “When David comes back, I need him to draft the paperwork for how we might collect the bounty on al-Hassah?”

  “That’s a bit premature, isn’t it, Roger?” I said. “We haven’t even started looking for him yet.”

  “I have faith in my boys and girls.” Roger smiled. “Oh, Ravi, you can expect a call from Ariel to coordinate so Interzone and Golden Sentinels don’t step on each other’s toes.”

  I winced.

  Julia and I left together.

  FOUR

  We took the Tube down to Oxford Circus and walked to Berwick Street to avoid the car traffic on Oxford Street. Julia’s mum and mine were gently debating while the tailor stood politely by the side. The “gentle debate” here was full of increasingly strained passive-aggressiveness, our mothers still smiling as they battled for dominance. Over my wedding attire. Yes, it was all very English indeed.

  “If he was a soldier,” Mum said, “he would be wearing his dress uniform. As a Hindu, couldn’t he wear something from his culture?”

  “I suppose he could,” Brenda said, very reasonably. “You mean like those lovely turbans that have to be folded elaborately?”