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  Copyright © 2021 by Dana Haynes

  E-book published in 2021 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover design by K. Jones

  Book design by Blackstone Publishing

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced

  or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the

  publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental

  and not intended by the author.

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-09-409985-9

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-09-409984-2

  Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense

  CIP data for this book is available

  from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  To my literary agent, Janet Reid,

  for fighting for me.

  To Katy King:

  Some day, when I’m awfully low

  When the world is cold

  I will feel a glow just thinking of you

  And the way you look tonight

  —Dorothy Fields, Jerome Kern

  C01

  Barcelona, Spain

  Pete Newsom entered the restaurant first, a full forty minutes before the principal of the Clarion Group was set to arrive.

  The founder of the Clarion Group, Victor Wu, was still blocks away in a bulletproof vehicle. The dinner would be a fundraiser with some of the reigning bankers of southern Spain. Wu, an intensely charismatic speaker, would explain the good works his nongovernmental organization was doing in Saharan Africa, the roads they’d built, the wells they’d dug, the pollution sources they’d dammed up. The Americans, the Brits, and the French had signed onto the good works of Victor Wu’s NGO almost a decade earlier. The Germans and the Dutch had come on board since. Spain came next and brought along deep pockets from the private sector. Greece and Italy had been slower to pitch in. Today’s dinner was the third of . . . who could possibly know how many dinners, through which Victor Wu would, well, woo new investors into his fold.

  The courtship began with drinks and a dinner, because this was Spain and that’s how they do it. They wouldn’t even talk deals at this first gathering.

  Newsom was there as security. The Clarion Group operated in some intensely violent portions of the planet, and the American military contractors Sooner, Slye, and Rydell LLC had the contract to keep Wu and company safe. Nobody was better at it. Sooner, Slye, and Rydell had contracts to keep half the US State Department and half the British Foreign Ministry secure while operating away from their home countries. The contractor had gained a reputation by hiring some of the finest people in all the land: Navy SEALS and Army Rangers from the States, SAS from England, elite units of the Israel Defense Forces, and more. And, of course, former spooks like Pete Newsom, who had spent his time in the CIA and had retired at the grand old age of forty-one as chief of operations for the Paris Station. He’d gone from risking his neck for a public servant’s paycheck to a half-million-dollar signing bonus, profit sharing, fully paid health and life insurance, and a salary that matched some Big Ten coaches.

  All to keep NGOs like the Clarion Group safe, while they made the world itself safer.

  Good gig, Newsom thought, as he checked the details for the fourth time.

  Wu’s staff had picked a restaurant just off Las Ramblas in Barcelona, in the old Byzantine El Raval neighborhood. The place looked a tad seedy from the outside but had been a favorite of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español for decades. Sucking up to party hacks was as good a way as any to get a deal green-lit by the banks. The restaurant was nestled back in a dark, twisty side street, far from the tourists. Wu had paid to have the place to themselves; it only featured eight tables, so that wasn’t hard.

  Newsom had selected a menu of Spanish dishes and good local wine. He arranged for a string trio from the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields to play softly in the background, pieces by Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz, whom Newsom had never heard of, but whatever. He appreciated that the primary—the guy he protected, Wu—sweated the details.

  The restaurant had been the wine cellar of a great house in the sixteenth century. The walls were brick and rounded like a cave. The floors were rough slate slabs the size of baseball plates.

  Newsom watched the street and saw two motorcycles pass by the darkened windows of the candy shop across the narrow labyrinth-like street. His guys: the outriders, sprinting two blocks ahead of Victor Wu’s armored SUV, scanning for trouble.

  Newsom nodded to the restaurant owner and head chef, who scuttled to the back of the house to get everything ready. He nodded to the string trio, who took their stools.

  His smartphone chimed.

  The screen read Blocked.

  “Newsom,” he answered.

  “Pete? Hi.”

  He recognized the voice. More accurately, he almost recognized the voice. He checked his watch. “Ah. Hi. This isn’t a good time. Can I call you—”

  “You don’t recognize me, do you?”

  It had to be someone at Sooner, Slye, and Rydell, or someone from the US Departments of State or Defense. Maybe CIA. Who else would have this number? Newsom watched as Wu’s bulky SUV cruised down the alley, the passage as tight as a cannonball in a cannon, and turned left into the well-hidden lot behind an ancient Catholic cloister. The motorcycle outriders would have gone ahead to block the oncoming traffic. One of Newsom’s guys would be waiting in the lot for the SUV. Everyone had earjacks and sidearms.

  “You there, Pete?”

  He switched the phone to the other ear. “Hey. Geez, I’m sorry. This really isn’t a good time and . . . it’s a bad connection. Can I—”

  “Your favorite Hitchcock movie is Notorious. Mine too. Jog your memory?”

  The caller was right. It was his favorite Hitchcock movie. But anyone could know that. He tried to think back and remember who . . .

  Two of his men in somber suits walked around the corner onto the narrow street. Right between them was Victor Wu, small in stature, dressed to the nines. They seemed to be laughing, and Newsom appreciated that Wu chatted up his security detail. Some primaries treat their detail like butlers. Not Wu.

  “Do you remember Hitchcock’s definition of suspense, Pete? Do you remember what he said about shock versus suspense?”

  It came to him in a rush. The voice. Talking about Hitchcock.

  His blood pressure sank, turning his face a putty gray under the offset track lighting of the restaurant.

  He blinked stupidly. He stood, frozen, feeling sweat prickle the back of his neck. This call could not be happening. It was perfectly impossible. Not improbable. Not unlikely.

  Impossible.

  Wu and the security detail approached the restaurant. Thanks to the glare in the window, Newsom could see them but they couldn’t yet see him.

  “Hitchcock said: Two guys sit at a table and—ka-boom! That’s a shock. But two guys sit at a table, and the audience can see under the table . . .”

  Newsom glanced around the restaurant. It couldn’t be. It absolutely could not be.

  He felt his knee bend before he was even aware of it.

  He knelt like a penitent man and glanced under one of two tables in front of the windows. The table to his right.

  Nothing there.

  “Remember? Pete? What Hitchcock said?”

  He looked to the table to his left.

  He felt his stomach lurch. r />
  “Hey? Pete? Smile.”

  He glanced up.

  Outside the restaurant, an aide opened the door for Victor Wu. The entourage smiling, then noticing the American spook down on one knee.

  Pete Newsom looked past his men, past his primary, across the street, to the familiar figure in the darkened stoop of the candy shop.

  Pete dropped the phone.

  “B—!”

  C02

  Televised

  The cleric was younger than people might have assumed. It was difficult to tell beneath his deeply tanned leathery skin and full beard, but he appeared to be in his thirties.

  He wore the simplest robe, a cheap thing, thin and colorless. He wore a checkered kaffiyeh, one end thrown over his right shoulder. He spoke Arabic with the accent of a college-educated Cairene.

  The room behind him had been scrubbed of any discernible clues regarding his location. This tape—like previous tapes—had been delivered by a street urchin to the headquarters of Al Jazeera television in Qatar.

  His deep-set eyes, under prominent brows, seemed to sparkle like dark opals.

  “My friends. By now you have heard that another enemy of the people, another enemy of freedom, another sworn foe of the Prophet—peace be upon him—has been killed.”

  His voice was not guttural, was not deep. He sounded academic.

  “The Khamsin Sayef has reached out to the heart of the Spanish crusaders, and has snuffed out the life of a man who has secretly provided funding to the war criminals who have stolen the government of Alsharq from the people. The forces of the Khamsin Sayef can strike anywhere in the Western world. Those who oppress the beloved believers of Islam cannot hide from us.

  “Victor Wu was an agent of the CIA. His so-called Clarion Group is a CIA front. He thought himself safe behind the lies of the West. We proved him wrong.

  “We are the Sword of the Storm. We are the just and righteous bringers of death.

  “All praise to the Prophet. Peace be upon him.”

  C03

  Kyrenia, Cyprus

  Katalin Fiero Dahar, wearing a very short skirt and a black tank and sneakers with no laces, sat at a round iron table on the promenade on the marina front in Kyrenia. She hunkered low, legs outstretched, crossed at the ankles. She wore her hair scraped back in a ponytail, revealing pointed, almost elfin ears. Her classic Ray Bans obscured her almond-shaped eyes and she hadn’t moved in more than a dozen minutes.

  Several men could attest to this. They’d been covertly staring at her.

  The tourists of Kyrenia, in the Turkish north of Cyprus, tended to be English or Russian. Which is to say, fair-skinned people unused to the August sun of the Eastern Mediterranean. The flesh on display that sleepy Monday ranged from alabaster white to the raw red of fresh sunburns. Which explained why so many tourists and townies were covetously glancing at the exceptionally long and exceptionally tanned legs of the Spanish/Algerian woman lounging, or perhaps sleeping, in the chair.

  Michael Finnigan stepped out of the restaurant behind her and took the other chair at the table. He deftly laid out two small glasses, a bottle of vodka, and a high hat of crushed ice. He nodded amiably to a couple of guys strolling the promenade, who quickly averted their gaze.

  Finnigan—Irish American, and himself fair of skin—had become accustomed to the Mediterranean island and the sun. He wore sunscreen and a Yankees cap to shade his eyes, plus a pair of wraparound snow-skier glasses, currently hanging by a rubberized lanyard and bouncing against his chest as he poured the vodka.

  Fiero stirred for the first time in ages, reached for her glass, and drained it in a shot. Finnigan poured again.

  “Tourists are staring at your legs.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “You really do got great legs.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  They sat and sipped and enjoyed the moment. The town, on the northern coast, not far from the Turkish mainland, formed around an ancient caldera, with a small lagoon and marina in the center, the promenade circling it, and the commercial core of Kyrenia built up on the cliffs above the promenade. The town itself started flat near the coast but rose quickly, built up on the wall of craggy mountains, the Pentadactyl, or “Five-Finger” Range. A hulking Venetian and Ottoman fortress loomed to the south of the town, behind which sat another, more commercial lagoon. Sailboats maneuvered into and out of the marina, and a small fleet of fishing boats bobbed in the Med, just past the rocky breakwater.

  A waitress stepped out of the restaurant with a tray, delivering plates of fresh salads and tissue-thin strips of carpaccio stewing in lemon juice with capers, horseradish, and a sprinkling of herbs. She chatted up the partners, whose offices took up three stories over the restaurant. They spoke English, which was their common tongue. She also brought a paper cup with more ice and poured it around the vodka bottle, cocked at an angle in the high hat.

  A Scottish tourist couple happened by with a map and a perplexed scowl. They glanced meaningfully at Finnigan, who jumped up, studied their map and guidebooks, and began putting together an itinerary for them.

  Fiero suppressed a smile. It wasn’t just that the Boy Scout insisted on helping every stray that crossed his path. There was something about his three-days growth of beard and messy, tousled hair, and his easy smile and laugh lines. People instantly trusted Michael Patrick Finnigan and, more to the point, people instantly liked him.

  That had never been the case with the laconic Spaniard. Taller than her classmates, more athletic, and lacking that mutant superpower of small talk, she’d attended the finest boarding school in the south of Europe. She’d learned the haute école of classical dressage but not the art of gossiping or sharing a joint or shooting the shit (a Michaelism).

  But Fiero could chat to Finnigan. Could, and did. The list of people she could chat with ended there.

  Finnigan used the Scots couple’s phone to take a snapshot of them with the rainbow of boat sails in the background. They strode off as he sat and refilled their glasses. Fiero said, “I might have found us a job.”

  He glanced up quickly. “For real?”

  She shrugged. “It would pay extremely well.”

  “I like the sound of that.” He dug into the carpaccio. “My God. What’s in this?”

  “Ras el hanout,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “A Moroccan spice mix. My mother’s favorite.”

  “This is insane,” he said, spearing more of the meat. Finnigan couldn’t remember ever having a bad meal on Cyprus, and they’d been there for three years. “A job. We haven’t had one of those since Serbia.”

  Fiero nodded and shifted in her seat to reach for her fork and knife. Sitting unmoving, she appeared to be thin, even skinny, all angles and no curves. But when she moved, the density of the knotted muscles beneath her tanned skin made themselves evident.

  “The judge hasn’t been able to throw any work our way in months,” Finnigan said around a mouthful of local tomatoes dressed in green olive oil and the juice of lemons that probably grew within a mile of the restaurant.

  “Hard for her to do. Bounty hunters tend to be personae non gratae at the International Criminal Court.”

  “True. Me, I think we’re public servants.”

  “People get the wrong impression about us,” she added. “Like we’re uncivilized or something.”

  “Crazy.” He shook his head.

  Hélene Betancourt, senior-most justice at the World Criminal Court, had sustained the partners for three years. There were certain people around the world whom Judge Betancourt wanted brought to trial but who had eluded law enforcement. So she had turned, through an intermediary, to St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking, a supposed marine salvage company that, in fact, served as a front for Finnigan, the ex-cop, and Fiero, the ex-spy.

  The marine salvage work
explained how they made money. It worked as a pretty good cover, although not, they discovered, with their families. Finnigan’s whole clan had been cops or married to cops. His grandfather and uncles. His dad and little sister. All were New York’s Finest. Finnigan had worn the badge, too. Back in the day. He wasn’t prepared to tell any of them that he now made his living illegally smuggling kidnapped criminals across national borders.

  Fiero’s father was a well-heeled Spanish businessman and aristocrat. Her mother, a famed academic, Islamic activist, and ardent feminist. There was no way Fiero wanted them to know she made a living holding a gun.

  Neither of the partners could tell their families they were in the marine salvage business. Who’d believe that, knowing them as only family can? The pretend job might also require anecdotes over holiday visits. What anecdotes could they share?

  So, as far as the Finnigan and Fiero clans were concerned, Michael and Katalin were low-level, paper-pushing bureaucrats for the European Union, stationed in Cyprus. The work they invented was dull enough that nobody asked too many questions.

  It was perfect.

  Of late, they’d taken a couple of small cases in other countries—Greece, Austria—but had mostly stayed off everyone’s radar.

  “We’re not broke,” Finnigan said, pouring more vodka. “Bridget goes over our finances with me every Tuesday. We’re doing okay. But that won’t last forever.”

  Fiero nodded and stabbed at her raw steak.

  “Who’s the client?”

  “Someone who wants our help finding the leaders of the Khamsin Sayef.”

  Finnigan looked up from his food. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Terrorist cell blowing up people in Europe; yes.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  She shook her head.

  “Who?”

  “I’d tell you, but you’ll tell me to go fuck myself.”

  He blinked, mouth open. “What the—I would never. Why would you think that? We’re partners. All decisions, even Steven. Fifty-fifty.”