Standing by the window of her hotel room next to Dulles International, Maggie stared at the cell phone in her hand. The hum of a plane taking off throbbed through double panes and she looked up for a moment, witnessing its heavy ascent into a morning sky dull with haze.
She had jumped through a leaded glass window in Quito to evade a firefight, sprayed a suicide bomber with bullets from a Sig Sauer, done any number of things necessary to get the job done.
What was so damn hard about one phone call?
When was she going to forgive Robert de la Cruz for abandoning her and her mother, leaving them to fend for themselves in the slums of Otavalo? For letting Mami die alone?
Enough. She called the cell phone number she had for him. And got a piercing subscriber no longer available message.
She called her father’s house in Alexandria, Virginia. A woman answered, not Elise, the iron maiden her father was manacled to, who gave no quarter when Maggie was brought to the US as a girl after Mami died. Who promptly shipped Maggie off to boarding school at the first opportunity. This woman had a husky Eastern European accent and was young. She must be the new maid. Dad did like them exotic.
Maggie asked for Mr. de la Cruz.
“Robert just left. Who is this?”
Robert. So the hired help now called her father by first name. Maybe that was the new protocol for maids who threw in the odd blowjob in the laundry room.
“Maggie. His daughter.”
“Maggie?” It was as if Maggie had said she was Typhoid Mary. “I’ve heard about you.”
“Look,” Maggie said. “I don’t have my father’s new cell phone number.”
“He doesn’t like to give that number out.”
Maggie sucked in an exasperated breath. “I know I haven’t spoken to my father in a while but I really need to now.” The term father still sounded odd, coming out of her mouth.
“Quite a while.”
“And who are you?” Maggie said.
“Stefania. Your father and I were married two months ago.”
Another plane groaned into the sky. Maggie might as well have been slapped across the face. “Ah . . . congratulations. I hate to ask but . . .”
“Elise died earlier this year. Lymphoma.”
“God. I am sorry.”
“I wonder. But at least you’re up to speed now. Perhaps you should call home once in a while.”
“How can I get hold of my father?” Then she remembered to add, “Please?”
“He’s meeting clients for dinner,” Stefania said. “What exactly do you want?”
Clients? Her father was with the State Department. “It’s important. I’m only in town for the day. I fly back to San Francisco in the morning.”
“Give me your number and I’ll have him call you.”
Witch with a capital B. She gave Stefania her number. “I do appreciate it.”
“Of course you do,” Stefania said, hanging up.
Maggie wondered if her father was being taken for a ride. And then she wondered if that made her protective. Then she figured the old goat could fend for himself.
While she waited for her father to call, Maggie plugged in Dara’s laptop to recharge and made coffee in the coffee maker by the sink, where she washed her face with warm water, rinsing with cold. Maybe she could just keep going without sleep altogether.
After two plastic cups of watery, but desperately needed coffee she checked her watch. Maybe dear old Dad was stuck in traffic. Maybe he was busy.
Maybe he didn’t want to talk to her.
She stripped down to comfort level and climbed into bed with Dara’s laptop, hooking up Dara’s phone with a mini USB cable. She dug through the phone’s OS, scanning the active apps. She stopped at one, unsigned, meaning it wasn’t from the online store. That gave her pause.
The app name was nbd. With a little investigation she saw it was pinging the SIM card every thirty minutes. Spyware 101. She bet it would report back if anyone tried to remove the SIM card. It was also probably logging GPS location. It was a good thing she had set MockLoc to fake out the GPS coordinates before she left France.
She realized that nbd was an abbreviation of the Arabic word ‘noobed’. The word for pulse.
Kafka had given Dara the phone. She suspected he would monitor it.
She looked up the American Hospital of Paris, changed the GPS coordinates on MockLoc accordingly. Dara’s new home. Then she powered the phone down. Dara was in critical care and would not be able to get to her phone. Maggie could get away with that for a while.
It was midnight in Paris so she wasn’t going to ping Kafka just now. She set an alarm for five AM to do that.
On Dara’s laptop she found a hidden master folder—Abraqa. One document was labeled Darknet. Maggie clicked on it. Password protected. Maggie tried a password or two she suspected Dara might use. No luck. She plugged her IKON network card into Dara’s laptop and logged onto GITHUB, spent longer than she cared for locating a suitable copy of WordCracker that wasn’t infected with a Trojan virus. She downloaded it, went to work opening the Darknet file.
Once inside, she found a document named Kafka. That kind of find always elicited a thrill. Another document was named Mosul—a city in Iraq, currently under Jihad Nation control. There were more documents, too.
A treasure trove of information. She’d have to digest it quickly.
She fired up a Tor browser for the privacy that was in it and headed over to Al-Media, a news gathering organization heavily maligned in the US but the first with Middle Eastern news.
It took a moment to mentally translate from Modern Standard Arabic into English.
She clicked Breaking News.
Paris Blast Kills 6.
There was a picture of Maggie helping Dara into an ambulance, Maggie’s head covered in her black hijab and her eyes masked by sunglasses.
No one had taken responsibility for the attack yet. Odd.
Regarding Maggie:
Who is this woman? Her shooting most likely saved countless lives by foiling a bomb blast. The waiter at the cafe said she spoke French and appeared to be Middle Eastern, as was her companion, who is thought to be a member of Incognito, the hacker organization currently running a campaign against Jihad Nation. Incognito declined to state the woman’s name out of respect for her safety but say she is recuperating from multiple gunshot wounds. An unconfirmed report maintains that the woman is in critical condition at the American Hospital of Paris but expected to make a full recovery.
The world did not know of Dara’s demise yet. The keep-alive was doing its job. Al-Media already knew about Dara moving to the American Hospital of Paris, though. Good disinformation traveled fast.
All good, Maggie thought.
Another sidebar read: Was mystery shooter with French Intelligence?
SDAT wouldn’t mind taking credit for thwarting a terrorist attack for now. And that would only take the focus off Maggie. And maybe open a door for a coalition with Bellard.
A grainy photo of the man who had been driving the suicide vehicle appeared under the snap of Maggie and Dara, a mug shot provided by Turkish authorities who had kicked him out of the country last year, deported back home to Saudi Arabia.
The woman, the man’s wife, was Saudi as well. There was another photo of the very same man and a woman, who, from her shape and size and intense stare, was the one Maggie had gunned down. They were coming through Charles de Gaulle airport three days earlier from Riyadh, dressed in western clothes, except the woman wore a hijab. They had used fake Turkish passports and were on student visas.
Saudi Arabia, Maggie thought. She was not that surprised. America’s supposed ally was, after all, the leading exporter of terrorists.
Maggie pulled up a search window and entered three words: Senator Joyce Brahms.