FORTY-EIGHT
Closing the doors to the truck shut out of lot of the harsh light from the streetlamp. With the sounds from outside also shut out, she didn’t have to talk very loud to be heard.
“All right, this is your chance. Talk.”
“Listen, Miss Constantine—”
“You said you weren’t a cop.”
Not knowing her point, he paused. “I’m not.”
“Then stop calling me ‘Miss Constantine,’ would you? Only the fucking police call me ‘Miss Constantine.’ If you’re not with the police, then who do you work for?”
“I have to admit, I like ‘Angela’ a lot better.”
“Good. I asked who you work for.”
“Actually, I work for myself.”
“Doing what? And what do you want with me?”
“First of all, it’s obvious that you can recognize killers by seeing their eyes.”
“Obviously.”
“The first thing I need to do is to help you understand why it’s possible for you to do that.”
“I know why I can do it. I don’t need your help to understand it.”
Jack hadn’t expected that. He’d never met anyone before who was aware of their ability and seemed so confident in their understanding of it.
“Get on with it,” she said before he could think of what to say. “I have someplace to go.”
She’d just told Nate she wanted to get some sleep, not that she had somewhere to go. He turned to look out at the darkness.
“This late?”
“I asked who you work for. You weren’t entirely honest in your answer. You also said that you came a long way to see me. Where did you come from?”
“Israel.”
“You live there? You work there? This is not making a lot of sense.”
“All right, listen, this is important so I’m going to take a chance here and be completely honest and up front with you in the hope that you will do the same with me.
“I sometimes work for the Israeli government—the Mossad, actually. I help them stop terrorists before they can kill people. I used to do the same thing for various US intelligence services, but not anymore.”
“You mean you’re some kind of spy?”
“Not exactly. You need to understand, there are a lot of great, dedicated people working for US intelligence services. Those services used to appreciate having my help. But their bosses didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I help find killers by using people who can do what you can do—well, not exactly what you can do. I’ve seen some people who could do quite a lot, but I’ve never seen anyone who could do anywhere near what you can do.”
“Why—”
Jack held up a hand. “Just listen for a moment. What I did fell out of favor for political reasons. There are people in those agencies now who would not just like to see me gone, but would like it just fine if I ended up dead.”
She frowned. “Why, if you were helping them stop killers, why would they want you dead?”
“Probably for some of the same reasons that you don’t like the police. There are good people in the intel agencies, just as there are lots of good police officers who would risk their lives to save yours.”
She huffed a half laugh. “I’ve never met any of those.”
“I understand. I have a somewhat similar problem. What I’m doing, what I’m doing here with you, is because I still believe that we can do some good in this world. I think that I have a purpose in this life, and my purpose is to find people like you. Do you have any idea what I mean? Do you understand?”
She considered his words for a long moment. “There are people among us that shouldn’t be allowed to be among us.”
Jack smiled. “Bingo.”
“So, the spy agencies don’t approve of your methods.”
“No, they don’t. Some people in intelligence agencies, if they could, would see to it that I was charged with murder and put away for life for stopping some of the killers I’ve found. Like I say, there are lots of great people in intel, but anymore I have trouble telling the good ones from the bad. So, the best thing for me to do is stay off their radar.”
“I can understand that. I’ve had that same problem.”
Jack smiled. “Then we’re much the same. I’m telling you all this because I want you to understand that I have no intention of ever telling any authorities anything we discuss, or anything about you. I don’t want to get you noticed by them, either. I hope you will treat me the same. People like us have to stick together.”
“So what are you doing here? What is it you want from me?”
“You heard about the terrorist attacks all over the country?”
“Sure. I work all the time so I don’t listen to the news much, but I heard about it. It’s all the customers in the bar have been talking about. Seems like a lot of them blame Russia and want to go to war.”
“People like simplistic solutions.”
“You think it’s more complicated?”
“Yes. One of those attacks—one of the big ones—was at the Oeste Mesa border crossing between Mexico and California.”
He pulled a second photo out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her.
“That’s him,” she said after she looked back up. “That’s Cassiel.”
Jack nodded confirmation. “He was there.”
She frowned back down at the photo. “Why can’t I see that he’s a killer from this photo, see everything about him from his eyes like I could from the other one?”
“There is an important difference between the two photos. This one was taken by one of the automatic cameras at the border crossing, just before the attack. It’s a digital photo that’s been digitally enhanced, enlarged, and sent over the Internet. Your ability to recognize killers only works in person, or with a photo printed from a negative onto photo paper.”
“Huh. That’s weird.”
“Have you ever seen a photo of a killer on photo paper before, like the first one I showed you?”
“No.”
He looked at her from under his brow. “So … then you’ve seen a killer before? I mean, in real life? A real killer?”
“Yes,” she said, dismissing the question by not elaborating. “So Cassiel crossed during the attack?”
“Actually, we think he may have been part of the attack.”
“That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” she said as she looked at the blowup of Cassiel’s face from the camera at the crossing.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he’s a killer, a monster. He works alone. Killing is his passion. He is consumed by it, haunted by it. He can’t go for long before his urge to kill overtakes everything else. It drives him to the point of taking foolish risks. It doesn’t make any sense that he would be taking part in a terrorist attack.”
“See, now, that’s part of the puzzle I don’t understand, either. All I can figure out is that it could be he just wanted to be in on the slaughter.”
Angela shook her head. “No, that’s not his style. He doesn’t care about seeing people get killed. That’s not what gets him off. It’s the personal act of killing in all forms that fascinates him. He is obsessed with watching people die at his hands, whether it’s cutting their throat … or shooting them in the back of the head.”
Jack knew she was thinking about her grandparents again, so he steered her back to the puzzle pieces he was trying to fit together.
“I thought the same thing. He doesn’t fit the psychological profile of a terrorist. That’s why I’m at a loss as to what he was doing there, in this photo, just before the attack. The only other possibility in the back of my mind is that he might be coming back into the US to kill you, and coming in with the terrorists was the simplest way. He killed members of your family in Italy. He killed your grandparents. I think he might be coming back to kill you.”
“He does like to kill entire families.” She finally looked back from staring out into the dark woods across the road. “Give me that photo again—the first one.”
Jack handed it over and watched as she looked into Cassiel’s eyes, but this time for a long moment.
“No. That’s not the reason. He was careless. He killed a woman and her family, Khorshid Hamidi. Funny.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I’ve never heard any of these names before, but I know them now simply from looking into his eyes.”
“You were saying … he was careless?”
“Yes. He killed that family and was captured by Iranian authorities. She was the daughter of an imam. They were going to put him to death. He was spared to be part of this mission, this terrorist attack.”
Jack sat stunned by what she was able to tell from looking at his eyes.
She handed back the photo. “So what other pieces are you trying to figure out?”
“Well, I was in Israel helping them identify terrorists—killers—who were coming into Jerusalem.”
She frowned. “How were you able to do that?”
He didn’t think it was the right time, so he waved off the question.
“That’s not important right now. The important part—one of the pieces of the puzzle that I think involves you—is that we captured a suicide bomber before he could detonate his bomb vest.”
“That’s fortunate.”
“Yes. But the strange thing is, the guy was Mexican. He only spoke Spanish. He said he was born in Mexico.”
Angela’s expression darkened. “Mexican. A Mexican suicide bomber in Jerusalem. That seems pretty strange.”
“They’d never had it happen before. But the key thing is, he was supposed to blow himself up in the attack. Had he succeeded we would never have known that he only speaks Spanish.” He could see that behind her eyes, the wheels were turning. “One of my talents is that I find connections in things that at first don’t seem like they fit together.”
“You mean you work on connections like the captured Mexican suicide bomber and Cassiel crossing into the US from Mexico.”
“That’s part of it,” he said, watching her face as she started putting pieces together in her own mind.
“Cassiel could pass for Mexican,” she said as she stared off. “He speaks several languages. Spanish is one of them.”
Jack smiled. “That was my thought. It’s a connecting thread. But I don’t know what it means.”
She looked back at him. “What does this have to do with me? Why are you telling me this?”
“I found you because Cassiel killed people in Italy with the name Constantine. I read the report about your grandparents’ murder. No one was ever charged with their murder. I thought it had to be Cassiel who killed them.”
“It was.”
“Yes, well, I know that now because you just told me he did, but before none of us knew that for sure. The thing is, one of the other pieces of the puzzle, one of the seemingly disparate facts that has me troubled, is you.”
“Me? Why me?”
“I know that you were attacked by four Hispanic men. They intended to kill you and almost succeeded. I wondered why they would do that. Cassiel wants to kill you, but why did they? The only thing I could come up with was that after they raped you maybe they wanted to eliminate you as a witness. But I have this uneasy feeling that there’s more to it, some other connection to all these things I’m trying to fit together.”
“There is.”
“Like what?”
“They weren’t Hispanic,” she said.
He remembered that José, the Mexican suicide bomber, only spoke Spanish, and yet he didn’t know anything about Santiago de Querétaro, in Mexico, where he was supposedly born.
“What do you mean? Every report I saw said they were four Hispanic men.”
She shook her head. “They weren’t Hispanic. I told the police they were because that’s what I thought when they first came into the bar. That’s all the police needed to know.”
“You’re sure they weren’t Hispanic?”
“Positive.”
“Did they speak Spanish?”
“Yes. Spanish and English with a broken Spanish accent.”
“Then what makes you think they weren’t Hispanic?”
She smiled to herself just a little. “Do you think Mexicans hate America?”
“No, not really.”
“Neither do I. These guys did. They despise America with every fiber of their being. That hate for America defines them.”
Jack shrugged. “Okay, so then what do you think they are?”
“Middle Eastern. Muslim of some kind. My guess is Iranian.”
“Iranian.” Jack leaned in a little, frowning at this young woman who an hour ago he would not have believed would even know that Iran was mostly a Muslim nation. “Okay, now you have my attention. Why do you say Iranian?”
“They called America the Great Satan. That’s what I always hear Iran calling America—the Great Satan. They also called me things like ‘a dirty American whore,’ that kind of stuff. The kind of things the Iranians and terrorists say about us. They hold women in especially low esteem. I was no more than dirt to them so they thought they had every right, as men, to use my body.”
“But if they were trying to pass as Mexican, why would they say those things in front of you?”
“Because they intended to kill me. They thought I wouldn’t be alive to repeat any of it to the authorities and blow their cover, so they felt safe in being themselves in front of me.”
“Wow,” Jack said as he leaned back.
“But they didn’t decide to kill me because they didn’t want me to be able to identify them. They intended to kill me from the first because they received orders to do so.”
Jack came up off the seat back. “Orders? What orders? Orders from who?”
“Orders that came in the package I delivered to them. I have a courier service. I delivered a package to them, to Hartland Irrigation, and inside there was a letter ordering them to kill the courier.”
Jack stared off into the darkness as he thought about it.
“Do you know what was in the package?”
Angela shrugged. “Some kind of long tubes. They were clear. I could see wires inside the tubes.”
Jack stared at her a moment. “Can you describe the wires?”
“Well … wait.” She pulled out her phone. “Let me see if I can find a picture of what the wires looked like.”
She typed something into a search engine. She clicked a lot of screens looking for one that had the right kinds of pictures. When the images came up, she started flicking her finger to scroll down through dozens of pages of photos, all the time murmuring, “No … no … no.” After searching for a time, she abruptly halted. She enlarged a picture and then turned the phone toward him so he could see.
“These wires,” she said. “They looked just like these. They were in tubes with red caps just like this. The wires even had the little thingamajigs on the ends like the wires in this photo.”
Jack could feel the blood drain from his face.
“That’s exploding bridgewire.”
Angela wrinkled up her nose. “What’s an exploding bridgewire?”
“It’s used to detonate a series of explosives at precisely the same time.”
“Why would you need to do that?”
“To detonate an atomic bomb.”