Back at Camp Lemonnier, Tom lay in a steel bed in the Navy Expeditionary Medical Field Hospital, a cream-coloured, single-storey building, surrounded by raised concrete walkways. The room was painted white, with square-shaped fluorescent lights and an AC vent in the low-level ceiling. Apart from a piece of abstract art on the wall and a large pot containing a branched yucca plant, the space was stark and minimalist. A Navy surgeon had just left, after saying that the X-rays had shown that the bullet had missed the major organs. He’d be flown back to the States to recuperate.
The door opened and Tom heard footsteps stop halfway across the room.
“Don’t tell me. They weren’t my X-rays,” he said, jokingly.
The person didn’t answer.
“Who’s there?” he said, struggling to raise his head.
A man in a straw fedora walked over to a table where a bowl of fruit lay, his hands stuck in the pockets of his white-linen pants. He picked up an apple and turned face-on, tossing the apple in his hand.
Tom frowned, his eyes narrowing. When he recognized the face, he stopped breathing and his body tensed, a sense of the surreal overtaking him temporarily. He saw a ghost standing before him. But a ghost with a beating heart and a name.
Dan Crane.
“The jarheads call this place CLUville, due to the Containerized Living Units and the link with France. Smart, huh?” he said, his tone rasping.
“What the hell’s going on?” Tom asked.
“Guess I’m just hard to kill.”
Then Crane explained that a source had informed the CIA that the ISI were going to kill him in Ta’if. A radical group within the House of Saud called the Brothers of Faith had been up to no good, and the pro-Western king had been persuaded that the operative who’d been sent to murder him there should be replaced. Crane’s death was staged for the benefit of the ISI. He had worn a ballistic vest when he’d been shot at with blanks. But his sports bag had been lined with bulletproof shields just in case. A shot of adrenalin had stopped the risk of a heart attack.
“Though I was sweating like a dog walking past a Korean restaurant. And not just from the heat, either,” he added.
“I don’t get it,” Tom said, resisting the urge to scratch the stitches on his forehead.
“Perception, Tom. As I told you back at the Ariana, everything is perception.”
Tom stared hard at Crane. “You gave Khan to Hasni. Are you denying that? Denying you got paid for it?”
“Don’t get your blood pressure up there, Tom. And, no, I ain’t denying it. But he got paid for telling us where Lyric was in Karachi, and then by the ISI for telling them that we were on the way. Khan was playing both sides. That’s why he gave you Hasni’s son.” Crane looked a little distant. “There’s nothing double agents like more than the vulnerability of their employers. I guess he knew you wouldn’t kill Mahmood, but he wanted to show Hasni just how vulnerable he was. Hasni played along in the game, made out like Khan wasn’t one of theirs. Besides, Hasni wanted revenge for his son. There are certain unwritten rules, even for spooks. You and Khan broke one of them. So, yeah, I turned him over to Hasni, just as Birch said. I had to play along, too. Hence my visit to a bank in Ta’if.”
Tom couldn’t quite take it all in, said, “Birch didn’t trust me?”
“Everybody trusts you. It wasn’t a matter of trust. Until Hasni and a terrorist called Mullah Kakar were taken out, it wasn’t safe to tell anyone the truth. We were just beaten to it. Ordered by the Saudi ambassador to Pakistan.” Crane glanced at his watch. “But he died just over six hours ago back in Yemen. Hit by a drone strike as he was escaping from you and the SEALs. I guess he never knew his masters sent him to his death. I think you should know that Peter Swiss is dead, too, Tom. The corruptibility of money, huh.”
“Was it just the money?” Tom asked, regaining some of his composure.
“We believe that that was the primary motive. For Swiss at least. But by the time the feds have finished crawling over ADC, it won’t be worth a dime.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Tom asked.
“I didn’t want you getting the wrong idea about me if we bumped into each other in the future. Besides, a man like you got a right to know the truth sooner rather than later,” he said. “You did good, Tom. I’ll bet good money that the Iranians will agree to back off. They were barked at for an hour after we thought the Leopards had taken Lyric, that they were involved, too. It was made very clear to them what we’d do. After that, they realized we weren’t done in the region, despite two wars. It won’t take much to persuade them that the same will happen if they invade southern Pakistan, you ask me. But if you hadn’t rescued Lyric, alotta people would have died, that’s for certain. Leopards, Iranians … Our own.”
Tom sighed. “What about the Pakistanis?”
“The president has agreed to a five-billion-dollar arms package to assist them with the ongoing threat to their national security, and the security of the region in general. Politics, Tom. Now I gotta leave ya. Say hi to the general when you see him.”
To Tom it was a double shock. Not only the appearance of the man whom Birch had said had been killed just a day earlier, but also by the fact that he clearly knew his father.
“How come you two know each other?”
“Your father didn’t always sit behind a desk,” Crane said.
“I said how do you know him?”
“Before I joined the CIA I was in military intelligence. He was my boss,” Crane said. “You see, Tom, your father kept a promise, too.”
Tom thought about that for a moment. “Did he get you outta Beirut?” he asked.
Crane grinned, took a bite of the apple and walked towards the door. After five steps, he stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“If it weren’t for your father, I would never have let you go over the border, let alone everything else you’ve been up to. But as it is, well, that was a good move. You live in a state of honour, Tom,” he said. “And that’s a damn fine thing. You ever get fed up with the bureaucracy at the State Department, look me up.”