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  Fiero smiled from behind her glasses.

  “I’m right in saying this Kham Whatever are the assholes who blew up that NGO guy in Barcelona last week?”

  “You are.”

  “And the other two bombings this year?”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I right in saying every law enforcement and intelligence agency on the continent is looking for them?”

  “Goes without saying.”

  “But someone wants us to get involved?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone who can pay,” Fiero said. “And pay well.”

  Finnigan removed his cap and wiped sweat off his forehead. “Wow. Who is it?”

  “Someone who can get us access to the police investigations to date. All of it. Whole case files.”

  He sipped vodka. “Wow. Who is it?”

  “Someone who can keep us off the radar of the various intelligence agencies looking for the bombers.”

  “Wow. Who is it?”

  She told him. Then waited a bit. “So. Go fuck myself?”

  “Goes without saying.”

  C04

  Larnaca, Cyprus

  They argued half the night. But the next day, Finnigan took the Land Rover and headed out to rendezvous with their would-be clients.

  The first of the two flew in from Tel Aviv, arriving at the island’s only real airport just after ten. Finnigan had a photo of her and knew her real name, not the name she would be flying under.

  Fiero waited forty minutes then followed. Dressed in leathers and a helmet, she rode her Ducati south from Kyrenia, winding up the rough-faced Pentadactyl Mountains until she hit the high plateau that made up the centermost geography on the island of Cyprus.

  She’d been shot in the right arm earlier that year, and riding the cycle hurt—but not badly. It was almost a good ache, like that of a tattoo needle. Fiero smiled wolfishly from behind the smoked face shield and laced her way between slower-moving cars, roaring south. On Cyprus, cars and steering wheels are oriented in the British style, not the American style. She bypassed the capital, Nicosia, and entered the Greek-held territory at one of the United Nations checkpoints. She had a Cypriot driving permit, so the border guard waved her through quickly.

  She made it to the airport at Larnaca with time to spare. She pulled off the helmet revealing her hair worn in a low chignon, parted in the middle, in the Spanish style. She tapped in a six-digit code to unlock the storage space under the Ducati’s seat, revealing a leather folder with euros—coin of the realm for the two thirds of the island with a Greek government—and Turkish lira for the other third. Larnaca was on the Greek side. The storage space also held her SIG-Sauer P226 Tactical Operations autopistol with its front cocking serrations and short reset trigger. She kept it with a fast-draw belt holster and two additional .9 mm clips. Many female soldiers opted for a smaller gun, but Fiero had spent her youth riding horses and crewing speed yachts. She had a pianist’s fingers and a sculptor’s strong wrists.

  She swapped out the lira in her wallet for euros but left the gun where it was. From beneath it, she withdrew a butterfly knife, folded in on itself, the blade hidden and patient. She slid it into her right ankle boot and relocked the seat’s cover.

  She was leaning against a tourism bureau kiosk and drinking a takeaway coffee when Hugo Llorente emerged with a cluster of other travelers. They did not greet each other, nor did they even appear to make eye contact. But a few seconds after Fiero started walking away, Llorente fell in, thirty paces behind her.

  She hailed a cab out front of the terminal. She stood outside the driver’s window and paid cash for the short ride into town—you can see the boardwalk of Larnaca from one end of the main runway. She told the driver where to go, described Llorente, then turned and walked back to her motorbike.

  Hugo Llorente didn’t emerge from the terminal until Fiero was gone.

  Finnigan had met Annie Pryor at the same airport, but twenty minutes earlier. He parked behind the Budget rent-a-car booth in a vast parking lot of rentals. By dragging her wheeled carry-on all the way to that lot, anyone following her would have been stuck a mile from their own vehicle and unprepared for a driver to pick her up. But as it was, neither Finnigan nor Pryor noticed any tails.

  Annie Pryor was fifty, he guessed, blond with a short, efficient bob. He had no idea what name she’d traveled under and didn’t care. The island was warm but not hot, and not humid; a trick of the Eastern Med, Cyprus often missed the humidity and blistering heat of the lands around it. Pryor wore casual clothes but with the élan of a rich person. Finnigan, in jeans and a T-shirt and boots, looked like her hired driver. Finnigan imagined a backstory for her that included Princeton and Yale, the State Department, and eventually the CIA. Where—and this part he didn’t have to make up—she’d become a senior station director for Europe. Her current shop, to use a term of intelligence circles, was Madrid.

  He drove from the airport to Larnaca and quickly got the Land Rover into the narrow, Byzantine old town. They spoke not a word to each other. It would have been impossible to follow them unless the enemy had a drone, and Finnigan relaxed a little as they doubled back on their own trail for the fourth time.

  He parked behind a ninth-century church and postage-stamp-sized cemetery, a block from the waterfront esplanade. The neighborhood was overrun by stray cats and old men playing backgammon. He climbed out. Pryor did too, taking her carry-on. He pointed to a cheap hotel and crossed the street.

  She spoke for the first time. “You’re good at this, Mr. Finnigan.”

  He held the door for her.

  “You’re not happy I’m here.”

  Finnigan said, “No shit,” and let her enter first.

  Hugo Llorente’s taxi let him out in front of the same ninth-century church. He went in, lit a candle, prayed, dropped a euro in the donation box, and exited through the tiny graveyard, where Fiero pried herself from the shadows and led him to a small seafood restaurant.

  Llorente was five five, in his late sixties; a thin, birdlike man with bony shoulders. He wore the pencil mustache of a cinema villain. His suits never fit properly. Shrapnel scars pocked his jaw line on the right side, a gift from a mortar attack in the Golan Heights many decades ago.

  The entire block was one large building, constructed in the seventeenth century and remodeled a dozen times. There were six entrances on five streets—no such thing as right angles in the map of Larnaca’s old town—with six different addresses. If one knew their way around the building, you could get from one entrance to all the others. If you didn’t, you probably couldn’t. St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking paid the building owner a monthly fee for the right to meet clients here.

  Fiero led the older man through the ill-lit corridors, eventually into the hotel part of the building and up to the third floor. She rapped on a door and Finnigan opened it.

  The room was grungy but clean. Fiero spied the antisurveillance equipment that normally stayed tucked under the bed and knew her partner had swept for bugs.

  Llorente nodded to the American woman. “Annie.”

  “Hugo.”

  She’d flown in from Tel Aviv. He’d flown in from Ankara. They had not, nor would they ever, be spotted together on Cypriot soil. St. Nicholas knew what it was doing, and the two older spookmasters let them handle the details of the meeting.

  Finnigan ran downstairs and picked up the preordered lunch: lamb and flatbread, assorted fresh vegetables, plus a brass pot of good Greek coffee. On Cyprus, coffee was almost always served with low, plastic cups of water sealed with plastic lids. He paid and took the tray up himself.

  Fiero had taken her favorite position in any room, standing back to the wall, one boot sole up on the wallpaper, arms crossed under her boyish chest. “Michael, this is Hugo Llorente. Centro Nacional de Inteligencia. He was my handler fo
r years.”

  Finnigan wiped his palms on his jeans and extended one hand. After a beat, Llorente took it.

  “Howdy. You’re the guy turned Katalin into an assassin. I’ve wanted to kick your teeth in for some time. Welcome to Cyprus.”

  The smaller man smiled. He wore his skin the way a boxer wears tape around his wrists—taut, stretched thin, showing the strain.

  “I appreciate honesty, but I’d appreciate a cup of that coffee more, please.”

  He accepted a cup and doctored it with milk, while Pryor accepted a sealed cup of water. Finnigan made himself a gyro as Fiero stood in the darkened corner, watching.

  “This is Annie Pryor of the CIA,” Llorente said, fiddling with his coffee. “She is the station chief for Madrid. She is here without the knowledge or consent of her government. She came at my request.”

  “We don’t want to work for either of you guys,” Finnigan said.

  “Do you speak for your partner?” Pryor asked. She picked at the seal of her water cup. “Look, we don’t think that highly of bounty hunters, who tend to be profiteering cowboys. But here we are.”

  Finnigan couldn’t help but smile. “You got a sales pitch? This oughta be good.”

  “Yes,” Llorente said, “but first I want to talk about Thomas Shannon Greyson.”

  The partners let their poker faces slip, if only a little.

  “Greyson is the aide-de-camp of Judge Hélene Betancourt,” the Spanish spymaster said, sitting on the squeaky bed. “He was tortured—maimed, really—by a splinter cell of Kosovo soldiers earlier this year.”

  This was not common knowledge, and Finnigan was none too happy to hear the tale being told by the spy crowd.

  “I was prepared to sneer at this company of yours, this St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking, as an amateur operation. I was prepared to try to get Katalin to return to our service. To our country.”

  Finnigan said, “As a killer.”

  Hugo Llorente dismissed the word as if it carried the same moral weight as dentist. He turned to Pryor. “Katalin is truly gifted. Among the best we had.”

  Pryor said, “I know.”

  Fiero said, “Among?”

  Finnigan flashed her a grin, then turned to the older man. “What’s this crap gotta do with Shan?”

  “You and Katalin rescued Mr. Greyson,” Llorente said. “And I know you’ve been using your own resources to pay for his rehabilitation and surgery. For round-the-clock care in a private home, here on this island. For charter flights to surgeons throughout Europe.”

  The partners didn’t deny any of it.

  Pryor set her bottle down. “That tipped it for me. Hugo, too, I think. Our agencies are not as scrupulous as you about taking care of our assets. I wish that weren’t true, but it is. You did right by Greyson. You give bounty hunters a good name.”

  Finnigan chewed his food and turned to Fiero. “Ain’t we something?”

  “Noble,” she agreed, standing statue-like, away from the others.

  Pryor sighed. “Okay, so what do you know about the Khamsin Sayef ?”

  “Arabic,” Fiero said. “Sword of the Storm.”

  “Bullshit Islamist psychos,” Finnigan added, “who went from blowing up bankers and engineering companies to a nongovernmental organization trying to feed Africa.”

  “A bizarre escalation,” Llorente agreed. “Victor Wu and the Clarion Group had raised millions for agrarian projects in the Maghreb.”

  He raised a short, calloused finger and read off the country names, west to east. “Western Sahara, Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Alsharq, Egypt.”

  Fiero cut in. “Sword of the Storm started in Alsharq.” She turned to Finnigan. “It was a tool of the ousted government, which lost power three years ago. Now it fights against the new government.”

  Finnegan nodded and turned back to their guests. “This cleric dude? It’s his group?”

  Pryor nodded. “The cleric is the figurehead anyway. No one knows who the hell he is or which faction he was trained with. He’s the one who appears in the YouTube videos, extolling the death toll from each bombing. We think he’s the shot caller for the Khamsin Sayef. He could just be a pretty boy. We don’t know.”

  Finnigan ate some lamb. “What do you need us for?”

  “Killing Victor Wu was an escalation,” Pryor said. “But for us—for Hugo and me, for the CNI and CIA—the bigger problem is that the bomb also killed a man named Pete Newsom and two of his operatives.”

  Fiero said, “I know that name. He’s CIA.”

  “Was,” Pryor said. “He took early retirement and joined a military/intelligence contractor called Sooner, Slye, and Rydell. Do you know about them?”

  Again, the partners shot each other a look. Fiero muttered, “Bloody hell.”

  Finnigan snorted. “Suicide Ride. Yeah, we ran into them with that thing involving the Kosovars and Shan. Big-time military contractors. Multi-million-dollar worldwide operations. The Walmart of war.”

  “Yes,” Pryor said, and the word sounded bitter on her tongue. “They started out as mercenaries in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. They had a famous, Wild West gunslinger name. When the American Congress and—more importantly—the Washington Post found out about their wartime atrocities, the contractors bought the rights to the name of a small, Oklahoma law firm, Sooner, Slye, and Rydell, and traded in their Kevlar for pinstripes. Same violent war dogs, new respectable branding.”

  Llorente huffed irritably into his coffee cup.

  “The real problem with these bastards is, they’re good at what they do,” Pryor said. “Good and profitable. They pay incredible salaries to get high-ranking military and intelligence assets to come on board. I served with Pete Newsom when he was an assistant station chief, an operations director. He was good but not excellent. He left the agency for a half-million-dollar signing bonus.”

  Llorente sighed and drained his coffee. “Half of Spanish Intelligence wants to work for them. Same for the CIA. Annie and I have discovered that our investigation into the Barcelona bombing is being leaked in real time to Sooner, Slye, and Rydell. We want to bring Sword of the Storm to justice. These mercenary bastards want them dead. Not out of any sense of justice, but because of branding.”

  Finnigan said, “I’m sorry: Branding?”

  Pryor nodded. “They’ve put on a full-court press on this. Literally hundreds of operatives assigned to getting the bombers. We had some possible suspects and tried to put them under surveillance; Sooner, Slye, and Rydell—Suicide Ride, as you put it—swept in, guns blazing, and killed everyone.”

  “The same thing happened with us,” Llorente said.

  Finnigan spoke around about a third of his sandwich. “Lemme guess: The Spanish prime minister wants Spain to bring in this nameless cleric and the Storm of the Whatever. He wants a trial.” He paused to swallow. “Suicide Ride needs to bag him, or they lose face before their clients. So now it’s a race.”

  “It’s not just the Spanish prime minister,” Pryor said. “Do you have any idea how much money Congress throws at Sooner, Slye, and Rydell to handle security at State Department facilities overseas? There are forces in Congress that would love to privatize the Intelligence Community. And believe me, every one of those congressmen is looking forward to a position on the Sooner, Slye, and Rydell board of directors as soon as they tire of public service.”

  She all but spat the last words.

  “Your investigations leak like a colander,” Finnigan said. “You want the Khamsin Sayef brought to trial. You want this cleric schmuck in prison. And you can’t let Suicide Ride make you look like chumps. So that’s where we come in.”

  Llorente set down his cup on the lacquered tray. “You have garnered a reputation, Mr. Finnigan. You and Katalin. You have proven adept at finding people and bringing them to justice. Even well-armed people. Anything Ann
ie or I do, the mercenaries know instantly. You have the luxury of working without our bureaucracy, and also without the tentacles of Sooner, Slye, and Rydell.”

  “If you find the bombers,” Pryor cut in, “we can get them in a court of law. Do this thing properly. Show the world that terrorism on the European continent won’t be tolerated.”

  “We don’t trust you,” Finnigan said. “Either of you.”

  Pryor said, “Don’t blame you.”

  “No offense or anything, but CNI turned Katalin into an assassin, trading on her soul. And I was a New York City cop before I was a US Marshal. In both roles, I never met anyone from the CIA who wasn’t a huge dick.”

  Pryor spoke without a smile. “Neither have I.”

  “So why should we believe you?”

  “Because of this.” Pryor reached into her carry-on and produced a folded square of heavy-stock notepaper. She held it out.

  Finnigan stood, wiped his fingers on a napkin, and reached for it. He unfolded it and read the dollar figure. “Sweet mother of God.”

  “And we’ll put it in your Cypriot bank account today,” Pryor said. “You get the money, results irrespective.”

  Finnigan read the number again. It was more than they had made in the three years they had worked together.

  He turned to Fiero, handed her the note.

  Fiero read it, handed it back, poker face in place. She turned to Annie Pryor. “Do you want us to find the cleric and the Khamsin Sayef because of the three bombings? Is that the only reason?”

  Pryor bought time by peeling the cover off her water cup. She took a sip.

  Llorente pretended to straighten the crease in his trousers.

  “No,” the American said. “The cleric and his people killed my best friend. Three years ago. This is personal.”

  Fiero used her shoulders and boot sole to push herself away from the wall. She reached for the door.

  “We’re in. You have planes to catch.”

  She exited.

  The other three blinked at each other.