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Rand watched Mac and Angie walk out the door in amazement. “I didn’t expect that,” he said.
Naomi laughed. “What? Did you expect him to go Neanderthal and demand she stay here where it’s safe?”
Rand gave a half-shrug. “Yes?”
She laughed some more. He liked making her laugh. He liked a lot of things about her — and didn’t that terrify him? Naomi Fairchild deserved a lot more than he could offer.
“You all pointed out that he’s used to strong women,” Naomi said. “But really? I think he’s terrified to let her out of his sight.”
That sounded right, Rand acknowledged. Especially if what Stan had told him was true. Angie Wilson was the number one target on the bastard’s ‘list,’ complete with a bounty. Over his dead body.
Fortunately, Angie had one of the best bodyguards Seattle could offer at her disposal 24/7.
“So I need to update you on Maiah’s situation,” Rand said, setting aside Mac and Angie, and whatever was going on at the north precinct. Not much he could do to help there — he was responsible for this house. Responsible to keep Naomi and her boarders safe while supervising their two material witnesses downstairs. He still wasn’t sure that he and Stan had made the right call here.
Well if they hadn’t, they’d hear about it from Noble Monday morning, at length, and in full.
“Wait,” he said. “Before I do that I should give a couple of people a heads up that there might be a problem in the north precinct — Mac won’t.”
Naomi laughed again. “You know him well,” she teased.
Rand snorted. “I’m just older now,” he muttered. He sent Stan a quick text, and then one to Nick. Nick called him back. “What do you mean there’s trouble at the north precinct?” he demanded.
“Nick, it’s your organization not mine,” Rand said. “All I know is that Mac just tore out of here, with Angie, I might add, and said he got a text from Joe that there was trouble. It won’t occur to him to call anyone, and quite frankly I’m not sure I blame him, since your response is to call me and yell?”
“Sorry, sorry,” Nick grumbled. “Really, I am sorry. But I can’t seem to get this under control. It’s like a car careening off a cliff, and the brakes are failing.”
Not a bad metaphor, Rand acknowledged. “Well, you all at SPD better do something about that,” he said. “If it’s bad now, it’s going to be worse in a month when you actually have officers standing trial for attempted murder.”
Nick snorted. “The attempted murder of their fellow officers — including me — among others. It’s going to be a real cluster.”
Rand smiled a bit at that. It was Angie who had edited the word down to cluster. She thought it was less rude. “Call up to the precinct,” he suggested. “And then call me back.”
“Yeah,” Nick said.
Naomi was looking at him with concern. “It’s going to be really bad, isn’t it? For you, and the others?” she asked quietly.
“Yes,” Rand said. “I think we’re just starting to realize how bad it’s going to be. And Monday morning, the Seattle FBI office needs a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting about it too.”
“Has something like this happened elsewhere? Or is Seattle a trendsetter, yet again?” Naomi asked.
“No, it’s happened. Baltimore is a biggie. But there are 32 other cities who have consent agreements with the Justice Department,” he said. “In some ways, that says Seattle is one of the worst in the nation. But it also says that there are 32 police departments that are equally bad. They’ve been deemed corrupt enough that the feds have had to step in. And I don’t think Seattle realizes what that means.”
“What are the others?” she asked.
“LA Sheriff’s department actually has gangs operating within it,” Rand answered. “Vallejo — the town that Mac just rode roughshod through — is considered really bad. Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, have all had their heyday. And of course, the entire South at one time ran right over the rights of Black people. Truthfully, a lot of attention gets focused on the big cities, but per capita, small towns may be even worse.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Rand asked, puzzled.
“Why are police corrupt? Do you mean brutality? On the take? What does it even mean?” she asked. “It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around what we’re even talking about here. Was that sergeant really going to kill Mac? Is he really taking bribes to not answer calls, and look the other way where drug dealers are operating?”
Rand nodded. “Yes, that’s what it means,” he said. “That’s what a bad cop does. I don’t suppose cops have any more bad apples than any other profession. But all too often, bad cops are protected from prosecution. And so they get arrogant and the crimes get bigger.” He smiled at her. “But let’s talk about Maiah before we try to solve the problems of police corruption.”
“Don’t patronize me, Rand Nickerson,” she said sharply. He started to protest. “Yes, you were. You don’t think I am really interested, or that I can understand what you and the others here this weekend are going through. Have you considered what I saw when I was with Samuel in the Mae La camps? You think I don’t know what it’s like to have to bribe a guard so you can go into town to buy toilet paper? I’ve seen worse than most. So don’t patronize me.”
Rand paused, then nodded. “I stand corrected,” he said. “It’s hard for those of us in law enforcement to think those outside of it will understand. We close ranks. And of course that makes the problems worse, because no one is held accountable. The situation out at the Parker House was remarkable in some ways, because police and civilians — journalists for the most part — worked together.”
She nodded jerkily. “This situation with Maiah has brought up old emotions,” she admitted. “And having this confrontation with police isn’t helping.”
“We shouldn’t be here,” Rand said troubled. “I’ll make other arrangements tomorrow.”
“And there you go, protecting me again,” she protested gently. “I’m stronger than that, Rand. Besides, the whole thing with Maiah isn’t your fault. If anything, you’ve been dragged into my problems, not the reverse.”
Rand snorted. “Except it is my job to be dragged into problems,” he said. “All right. Let’s agree, then, we’re in this together?”
She smiled at him. “I like that,” she said. “So what about Maiah?”
“Myint is cagey. He knows if he works this right, he could end up with residency rights in the United States,” Rand said. “He’s amoral, and ruthless, but he’s also smart. Especially for a man as young as he is, this is a chance to start fresh. He’d be a fool not to take it — and he’s no fool. That said, he’s dribbling out information slowly. He really doesn’t care if Maiah lives or dies — doesn’t even really see her as a person at all, to be honest. Interestingly, one of the people he does see clearly is Mac. Mac’s father is a major player in the international drug world, and so he’s wary. I’ve been using that.”
“Mac as the monster under the bed who will get you if you’ve been bad?” she asked amused.
Rand laughed. “Yes, exactly that. So the bigger piece is the drug trade, and a spy ring he’s been operating out of an import company here. Maiah is really just a favor for some folks back home. So he’s been willing to give up information on her as kind of an appetizer of what more he could deliver — if we make it worth his while.”
“You mean, you’ve been leading him to believe that,” she said shrewdly.
He acquiesced that was accurate enough. It seemed the least they could do after descending upon her and her household like this. But she was also right about the reverse — if Mac hadn’t pulled them all in, Maiah would likely have been kidnapped and no one would ever know what happened to her. “So our conjectures were basically on target,” he said. “Here’s the story as I’ve pieced it together from what I know, and what Myint has confirmed.”
Samuel Fairchild had been a known safe house for a long time. Probably since he first started as a missionary in Thailand, most certainly by the time he’d faked his death. He was on the payroll of an NGO front for an intelligence organization. “Not ours, but an ally of the United States,” Rand said. Naomi nodded that she understood. He figured she did — he actually thought she knew more about it than she’d let on. He was confident that Samuel Fairchild had been doing this while they were still married. It might have been why she’d brought her daughter back to the States. What Samuel was doing was dangerous — even just the safe house bit. And he’d done more than that.
Rand went on with his story, as he knew it — obscuring some of the specifics, like who Samuel Fairchild actually worked for. That was going to be addressed at some level of government, he thought, but not by him. And it wouldn’t involve Naomi or Kate — he would see to it.
Samuel Fairchild became known as a good man to have at your back in the small world of intelligence operators, NGOs, and others who tried to help the victims of the geopolitics of that region — military, militia, civilian government, all of it in flux, all of it mixed with the drug cartels. And all of it at the expense of the ethnic minorities in that region who were destitute, illiterate, and at the mercy of their government who would just as soon they disappeared as serve them.
“Do-gooderism fueled by adrenaline,” he said wryly. “Which puts him a leg up on the man I was — I was just an adrenaline junkie. Whether we were actually doing any good wasn’t my problem.”
Naomi didn’t look like she bought that, but Rand knew it was more accurate than not.
“It helped that your ex-husband knows several of the languages,” Rand said. “And he’s got an information pipeline though his church members. But that’s a problem for him too, because the plight of those within Myanmar reaches him as well. And periodically, he’s gone into Myanmar and rescued people — relatives of members of the church. And men he knows.”
So eight months ago, Samuel got an SOS from a man who had used his church as a safe house for decades. A man well known in the intelligence community — Rand knew of him, although didn’t know him personally. “Call him Ishmael,” he said dryly. Naomi laughed. Ishmael had gotten trapped by a militia group and had gone to ground with a small insurgent Karen group. He was badly injured, but the group was caring for him the best they could. However, the militia and the cartel both wanted Ishmael and weren’t adverse to blowing up villages to get him. “If the militia and the cartel weren’t at odds with each other over capturing the man, he would have been dead in days and this wouldn’t have happened.”
Naomi nodded, and Rand went on. Samuel thought he owed the man to try and get him out. Rand suspected Ishmael might have been Samuel’s handler, at one time at least, and probably had been the person to arrange for Samuel’s faked death, and his salary from the NGO. Myint would know nothing about that, and Rand had been afraid even to ask — questions revealed much to those who were skilled at gathering intelligence, and Myint ran a spy ring, for God’s sake! But he was pretty sure that was the link. He didn’t tell Naomi his speculation either, just that there was apparently a strong bond there.
So Samuel had gone in. He’d reached Ishmael and had been able to bring in medical supplies for him, and food for the villagers who were sheltering him. Rand was begrudgingly impressed actually. A principled, smart man. But still an adrenaline addict — enough so that he was willing to abandon a wife and child to start a new life.
Maiah and her mother probably had something to do with that. The timing wasn’t lost on him, and probably not on Naomi either. Samuel had been cheating on her, and now there was a child on the way. He shook his head.
“So for the last eight months, the two men have been playing cat and mouse games with one of the militias, and a drug cartel,” he said. “Myint says they’ve tried to exit the country a couple of times, but both men are on the watch lists. He admires your husband, as well as Ishmael. I think Myint is somewhat of a secret rebel — he’s amused that the two have stayed alive this long.”
But of late, they had done so by pitting the militia and the cartel against each other. This had led to the militia cracking down at the border and burning some fields. The cartel had retaliated. Obviously something needed to be done about Samuel Fairchild and Ishmael. It was just that no one could figure out what.
“And then Maiah applied for U.S. citizenship,” Rand said. “That triggered all kinds of red flags. Samuel Fairchild was supposed to be dead for one thing. And it alerted the cartel, or maybe the militia, Myint was vague about which has access to the U.S. ICE database, that Samuel had a daughter. Perhaps there was room for leverage, if she could be found. And instructions filtered down to Myint and his partner. Grab the girl and bring her home.”
“Home to Thailand? Or to Myanmar?” Naomi asked with a frown.
“To Myanmar,” Rand said. “She is a Thai citizen, however, which both makes it easier for them to take her back to Southeast Asia and raises some complications because Thailand doesn’t like Myanmar kidnapping its citizens. Myint is pretty clear that he thinks this is a desperate and stupid plot. But he’s a minion, and he knows it. So he does as he’s told.”
“And here we are,” Naomi finished. “What now?”
Rand sighed. He’d been brooding about this all day. He’d gotten most of it out of Myint during their first conversation. But he had needed time to think. He’d reached out to some old colleagues to see if anyone was able to mount a rescue. But Ishmael wasn’t a U.S. asset, and no one he knew was going to risk it for someone else’s man. Word could be passed back to his intelligence service, Rand had been assured. But, you know how it is.
Yeah, Rand knew how it was. Shouldn’t throw good money after bad was used. Rand rolled his eyes. But the only way to make Maiah safe, was to get the two men out — and then let Ishmael deal with Samuel’s vulnerability now that Maiah and presumably her mother were known — or for the two men to die over there, and then Maiah didn’t have any value to the cartel.
He almost wished for the second solution — but if the cartel-slash-militia couldn’t do it when Ishmael had been on death’s door, it didn’t appear likely they were going to get it done now. Really, it was entertaining.
If you had a macabre view of the world.
“I’m going in after them,” Rand said finally. Saying it out loud made it sound real — real stupid, he was afraid.
“You! Why you?” Naomi asked. “This isn’t your problem to solve.”
“Then whose is it?” he asked. “The Venn diagram of people who have the skills and knowledge of the region, and the people who might be motivated to do it, has a very small overlap, Naomi. You’re in luck — that’s me.”
Naomi was shaking her head. “Rand, I can’t ask you to risk your life for my problems.”
He smiled at that. “Yet, you take in a girl who represents the betrayal of the man you loved and married, and make her problems yours?”
“I...,” she began and then stopped. “OK, point taken. But I’m not risking my life!”
“Aren’t you?” Rand asked. “Look at you. You’ve made your home a refuge for all of us and accepted the risks — risks that included being trapped in a house while someone tried to set the roof on fire! Why shouldn’t someone take a risk to help you? This is what I do, Naomi. Or rather, it’s what I did. I was Ishmael, once. I’ve been in his shoes.”
“Tell me honestly, why?”
He glanced upstairs, and then back to Naomi. “Do you believe in redemption?” he asked whimsically. “I blew my chance at happiness once by being a stupid cowboy — not unlike Ishmael and Samuel. And people I loved died.”
“Their deaths had nothing to do with you or your job,” Naomi said softly. “Women die in childbirth all the time.”
He nodded. “And that’s true. Therapy got me through the worst of the self-loathing and blame for it. What’s left is mostly sorrow. But Naomi, I am to blame that she died alone. She deserved to have her husband there, holding her hand. And who knows. If she hadn’t been alone she might not have died. And we’d have a daughter like Maiah. And if we did, and she got herself crosswise of the Myanmar drug cartels and militias, I would hope there would be someone who would rescue her.”
Naomi had tears in her eyes. Well, so did he. Then she nodded. “What can I do to help?”