‘Arms dealing?’

‘Exactly. The FBI has an open file regarding their business. Ryan MacKenna was good at what he did, a very careful man. Nobody ever got a whiff of evidence against them.’

‘Until that night with the Chinese gang.’

‘Yes, sir. It’s hard to clean up evidence when you’re dead. Cleena was nineteen when her father was killed. According to the FBI files I’ve seen, Cleena MacKenna spent seven months tracking down those gang members. She killed sixteen of them before they left the city. Not that we can prove it.’

‘Impressive. Evidently her father taught her all aspects of the family business.’

‘Yes, sir. After she’d finished dealing with her father’s killers, Cleena MacKenna dropped out of college and became a full-time mercenary and arms dealer. She’s hired out since then to do retrieval work – assets and people – as well as assassinations.’

‘Ambitious young woman, isn’t she?’

Dawson nodded. ‘Yes, sir. And very good at what she does. The FBI and Boston Police Department have been on her trail for the last six years. Even Interpol has her marked as a person of interest in some cases they’re working on. None of those people has made a case yet.’

‘Obviously a very careful young woman as well,’ Webster said. ‘I’m sure the law enforcement authorities haven’t been the only threats she’s weathered.’

‘No, sir.’

Webster poured more wine and reached for another roll. ‘What are you thinking, Jimmy?’

‘Whoever this group is that has Lourds, they hired Cleena MacKenna to trail him from Boston to Istanbul. She travelled under a forged passport, but we know who she is. We can find her.’

‘And hire her ourselves?’

‘Or at least pay her for any information she might have about the people who hired her to help kidnap Professor Lourds.’

‘I’d like to know more about these kidnappers,’ Webster said, ‘and how they came to be interested in Professor Lourds at the same time as we were looking for him.’

Dawson didn’t point out that he still didn’t know why the vice-president wanted to bring Lourds in. ‘Yes, sir.’

Webster sipped his wine. ‘Not to rain on your parade, Jimmy, but Cleena MacKenna might be reluctant to sell out her previous employers. People like that have a reputation to live up to.’

Dawson only hesitated for a second. A lot of politicians didn’t like to risk getting their hands dirty. Vice-President Elliott Webster wasn’t one of them, but he didn’t like getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

‘If by chance there is some residual moral high ground still lurking inside her mind,’ Dawson said, ‘we can just remind her that we know who she is and where her young sister goes to college.’

‘Do you think you can contact this young woman?’

‘Yes, sir. We have assets that she’ll need to get out of the country. The cover identity she used to get into Istanbul is blown. The local law enforcement people, and part of the criminal element there, are going to be looking for her. Sooner or later, she’ll come to someone we have a relationship with. Then we’ll have her.’

‘That sounds like a good plan, Jimmy. There’s only one catch that I see.’

‘What’s that, sir?’

‘There is the distinct possibility that her employers won’t let her live. They don’t appear to be the trusting sort.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Dawson had already been thinking along those lines.

‘After we’re finished with her, Jimmy, I think we should probably limit our exposure as well.’

‘Of course, sir.’ And that was the best thing Dawson liked about the vice-president: when it came to intelligence work, they thought along the same lines. ‘I’ll take care of it personally.’ He pressed the keys on the computer and the woman disappeared.

Catacombs

Yesilkoy District

Istanbul, Turkey

16 March 2010

Lourds struggled to wakefulness.

Then he remembered the helicopter exploding overhead, the flaming pieces of it ringing as they slammed into the alley. And he remembered the hypodermic being thrust into his leg. Pain in his thigh suddenly increased.

He forced his eyes open and didn’t think he’d succeeded because he still couldn’t see. Then he realized that he couldn’t see because he was somewhere dark. There was absolutely no light. He felt as though he’d been shrouded in black cotton.

Shifting, he tried to sit up, then discovered he was in fact sitting. Not only that, but someone had tied him to a chair. The rope pulled tightly into his flesh. His kidneys also suddenly declared they were losing the war against containment.

He cleared his throat and heard the sound echo.

Sudden fear spiked through him when he realized that the echoes sounded muffled, like he was in some kind of cave or box. He cleared his throat again and listened more carefully this time. The echoes, short and repetitive, definitely indicated he was within an enclosed space. He held his fear at bay with difficulty. He wasn’t afraid of the dark – he had been in plenty of dark places before while working on transcribing hieroglyphics in Peruvian ruins. He wasn’t afraid of enclosed spaces – he had crawled around plenty of those while exploring digs and while dating a couple of aggressive spelunkers. However, he was afraid of what was going to be done to him by whoever had taken him. Stiff patches on his shirt told him he’d been at least unconscious long enough for the blood to dry. He felt more dried blood on his hands and face.

He thought about just sitting there, hoping that whoever had taken him had forgotten about him. But his kidneys were screaming for relief and he thought he’d rather die with some dignity. That meant no wet pants.

Of course, as soon as you see a gun or knife in someone’s hand, that’s subject to change. Lourds had never been one to fool himself about his personal bravery. He was brave neither by habit nor by choice.

Quietly, he cleared his throat again, then called out politely, ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

Cleena MacKenna lounged against the wall of the catacombs where her latest employers had brought her. She wasn’t surprised to find the city was honeycombed with tunnels. Most port cities and older cities in this part of the world were. In the beginning, the builders had needed places to store water and dump refuse. Smuggling had also figured in the construction of tunnels in port cities. While growing up in Boston, she had explored several of those tunnels with other kids her age who had been into ‘urban archaeology’. They’d called themselves creepers and swore they were uncovering the lost past of the city. Actually, they had just been kids going places they weren’t supposed to go.

At first, Cleena’s father had been angry with her when he’d found out where she was. Later, after she’d shown him some places they could use to hide the weapons he had bought, sold and traded, he hadn’t been as angry. He just hadn’t liked the idea of her crawling around dangerous places in the dark. Cleena had enjoyed it, had relished the excitement of going through those tunnels. It had been like entering another world.

A dozen men occupied the stone room she sat in now. They sat on crates and kegs brought by earlier visitors to the catacombs. Heavy-duty battery-powered lanterns pushed away some of the darkness inside the room, but Cleena still felt it was like a scene from one of those silly horror movies her younger sister liked to watch.

The men were passionate about whatever had brought them together. The tense and strident tones in their voices told her that. They didn’t speak in English, which was frustrating because Cleena wished she knew what they were talking about. Several of them kept glancing in her direction, and she was all too aware that she was the only woman among them.

The comfortable weight of the pistol she had picked up during the fire fight rested at her back. Her right hand was never far from the weapon. The men knew that. They had the watchful eyes of trained killers.