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Henri awoke naked and curled against Mike’s powerful frame. Last night had been mind-blowing, though the new day brought the hollowness of guilt spreading through her chest like a giant chasm. She glanced over her shoulder while she scraped her teeth across her bottom lip. They’d made love five times in five different positions as if their sexual hunger was insatiable. No denying it, the night had been the most erotic of her life.
But stupid.
She had to work with Mike and see this op through. And she couldn’t let feelings get in the way. How could she have been so stupid to let a night of hot passion ruin things? Now what was she going to do? Pretend it never happened? From now on, every time she looked at him she’d remember...way too much.
Rolling away, she pulled the sheet around her body, picked up her bag and headed to the bathroom.
Mike moved, but she didn’t look at him. “Gonna work out?” he asked, his voice deep and gravelly.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll go with you.”
Those words were all they said from there to the workout room. After all, what should they talk about? Last night was awesome, but it could never happen again. Henri had been adamant about not kissing and look how effective her insistence had been. She wasn’t a weakling. The Army saw to it “hard as nails” was her middle name. She’d just been too long without a man. Now that she’d gotten sex out of her system, she’d be fine. Heck, for anyone who’d gone over two years without a good toss in the hay, one night of hot passion ought to last a helluva long time.
Mike pumped the free weights while Henri worked the all-around. When he moved to the stair stepper, Henri cranked up the gym’s sound system and hit the treadmill. She caught him stealing glances, not that she wasn’t watching him out of the corner of her eye.
Yeah, this is going to be as awkward as fuck.
And it continued. No talking. Steamy glances. And sweaty bodies.
Fortunately, by the time they had breakfast and coffee, they’d moved on to talking about the op without a word mentioned about the blistering night of intense passion. Thank God. Right now, the op was all that mattered. Henri’s focus homed in on finding Melvut Amri and the thief would lead her to Omar Fadli’s door. Now she had all that pent-up sexual desire out of her system, she’d strap on her weapons and concentrate on the job.
Hooah.
She wore the big, orange hat with her transition sunglass lenses. Indoors, they didn’t clear all the way and in the upper right corner was a camera that sent a live feed to ICE. Mike wore his ball cap and had applied another temporary color to his beard. He looked mysteriously sexy with dark brown stubble on his face, though Henri preferred the auburn.
Now I know I’ve lost my mind.
Mr. Kisongo met them outside the jewelry shop in the center of the market. It was the ideal front for a jeweler who traded in blood diamonds and gems. Inside, the stall looked like it catered to tourists with cheap necklaces made from semi-precious stones and dirty, uncut stones like garnets that were hardly recognizable. As a prospector herself, Henri had pegged the stones as too worthless to bother trying to do anything with them.
Mr. Kisongo ushered them to the rear of the shop and pulled aside a curtain. “This way. Out the back is where we keep the inventory for serious buyers.” As they’d seen on the satellite images, there was a rundown adobe building just across from the rear of the market stalls. There was one window and it had iron bars. As they slipped inside, Henri took note of the infrared lights lining each side of the door.
Inside, the décor was Middle Eastern, not African. In contrast to the exterior, it exuded wealth from the polished marble floors to the rich royal blue and gold trim. The showroom was small, and a man of Middle Eastern descent stood behind a glass display case with a licentious smile plastered on his face.
Mr. Kisongo gestured to the man with a slight bow. “May I introduce Mr. Arni Bashir.” He shifted his palm to Henri and Mike. “Mr. and Mrs. Emmerson from Canada.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Mr. Bashir said in accented English as he held out his palm. “Passports please.”
It was common practice for gems dealers to verify genuine buyers through a quick background search. As always, ICE had developed extensive histories of data for each of them. But still, Henri hesitated before she pulled hers from her purse. The man’s shifty eyes were about as trustworthy as a snake’s. Mike fished in his top pocket, then took hers and handed both passports to Bashir, but Kisongo grabbed them.
“If you haven’t already, please check out our website, Emmerson Associates,” Mike said. “We deal only with the most elite jewelers in Canada.”
“It is good to hear.” Bashir gestured to the uncut jewels in the display, though he looked directly at Mike. In fact, he hadn’t even glanced at Henri. “What particularly interests you, Mr. Emmerson?”
Mike leaned down, giving the stones a good look. “Everything, but our clients cannot seem to find enough tanzanite...”
Being gender-snubbed gave Henri an opportunity to use the camera in her glasses to slowly scan the room. Behind Bashir were a computer, desk and a walk-in safe much like a bank’s. Beside that was another door. In the back corners, security cameras with infrareds were pointed directly at them. Henri glanced over her shoulder. Two more infrared sensors were mounted above—as well as another two in the center of each of the sidewalls. Jawhira was seriously guarded, but not impenetrable. “Do you live here with your family?” she asked innocently, focusing on Bashir, insuring she was getting a good facial profile for Asa.
“I do,” he said, pulling out a tray of purple stones and placing it in front of Mike.
“Mm. Impressive,” said the Scot, using a pair of tweezers to pick up a stone and examine it beneath an illuminated magnifier.
Henri leaned in to her partner, straining to see the stone. “I’ll bet they get customers from all over the world here.” She pulled out a set of jewelers’ glasses and handed them to Mike. “What do you think, dear?”
He grinned and subtly arched his brows at her. “I think we’re on to something.” He shifted his attention to Bashir. “We are also interested in diamonds, but it is of utmost importance to our clients that they’re clean, if you get my meaning.”
“Of course. I assure you, we do not associate with the thugs who deal in conflict diamonds.”
Bullshit.
Mike picked up another stone and examined it. “I thought as much. We’re looking for large gems—anything over a karat.”
Bashir grinned. “You’re in luck. We’ve recently received in a shipment from the Mwadui mine.”
“You deal with Mwadui?” Henri asked. “I’m impressed.”
Bashir looked at her for the first time since they’d entered the shop. “I assure you, Mrs. Emmerson, once your husband has a look at these stones he will not entertain buying from another supplier.”
She bit her tongue as the man brought out a tray of sizeable, uncut diamonds. Making sure to get a good shot of them, she again leaned into Mike. “Impressive. I’ve never seen so many gems of that size in one cache.”
After examining the stones, they made an initial purchase of $200,000. Mike made a call to “his banker” who happened to be at ICE, and a quarter of the funds were transferred to Bashir’s Swiss account with an agreement to pay another quarter when the gems were delivered to the transport to Canada, and the remaining half when Emmerson Enterprises took possession of them on the tarmac in Toronto, or so was the plan.
***
Not surprisingly, before they made it back to the hotel, Asa reported that Bashir had been photographed in Baghdad with al-Umari—five years ago, but still, the Jawhira shop’s ties with the Islamic State were confirmed. And the jeweler’s name wasn’t Bashir. It was Hazma Mahmoud and he’d done some nasty stuff—had been one of bin Laden’s cronies as well.
They needed to move fast. If Bashir was part of the ISIS regime, no doubt they’d be running film on Mike and Henri as well. Their disguises were decent, but someone as skilled as Asa or the cyber recruits at ICE would eventually be able to drill down and connect the dots.
With no time to waste, they decided their next visit to Jawhira had to be that night.
They dressed in black, including balaclavas and night vision goggles. It was July and they were hotter than hell, but it was worth it to get inside and begin their attack on terrorist funding.
Mike carried the duffle with his tools. They were armed to the teeth and had choreographed their every moment. They each had their tasks and it was well after midnight.
Taking on the grunt work, Mike disabled the security system by unscrewing the keypad and using the ICE decoding program on his watch. It took 1.5 minutes.
Weapon balanced against her shoulder, Henri entered first. Mike had the barrel of his M4 pointed over her shoulder as she moved. Once she verified the infrared was down, she stood against the wall while Mike slipped razor blades into the camera cables to create static. If he completely sliced through the cables, ISIS would know they’d been hit but if he pushed the blade in until it connected with wire, the cameras would only record static, then would be back up as soon as the blades were removed. They were also banking on the fact that in this part of the world, it was common for there to be interruptions in the electric grid.
Once security had been shut down, Henri made a beeline for the computer. Her job? Copy the contents onto a thumb drive which they would upload to ICE as soon as they got back to the hotel. They didn’t care about the safe or its contents. Right now, they needed intel. And a “robbery” would only make the rats scatter. Even if the Avignon diamonds were in there, once confirmed, Interpol would be all too accommodating to seize and arrest.
It was best if they slipped in and out stealthily with ISIS none the wiser.
Mike stood guard while Henri worked her magic, her fingers flying over the keys and clicking the mouse.
“Holy shit,” she whisper-shouted.
“What?” He moved in beside her and pushed up his NV goggles.
“Bank transactions—big ones, to a mine in Ruhuhu.”
“Buying gems?”
“Can’t tell.” Her fingers typed rapidly. “I’ll download it all. Checking the e-mails now.”
Mike looked over her shoulder. One word caught his eye, nuclear. “What’s that?” He pointed.
“Jeez, let me start the download first.”
Mike kept his eye on the subject line. “Tell me when.”
“Right.” She glanced his way. “What did you see?”
He pointed, the tip of his glove touching the screen. “Fifth e-mail down. Open it.”
Henri clicked and read aloud. “Doctor Thomas Flynn from MIT flying into Ruhuhu on July 16th to lecture about mining uranium.”
“That’s tomorrow.”
She snorted. “You mean today.”
Mike’s jaw twitched as looked at the green bar indicating the progress of the download. “How much longer?”
“Less than a minute.”