"Agent Chase? Are you okay?"
Regan was dimly aware of the spook touching her sleeve. She ignored the sensation, and him, fighting the inexplicable fog that had closed in as she stared at the scarlet and gray splattered across the desk she couldn't recall moving in front of.
The fog. It wasn't surrounding the desk.
It was inside her.
It took several torturous moments before she was able to push her way through. To accept where she was—in the present, not the past. At the chancery at Embassy Islamabad, Pakistan, not on the ground floor of a skinny, brick townhouse in desperate need of remodeling on the outskirts of Washington, DC.
How long since she'd heard that retort?
"Agent Chase?"
Damn it, focus.
She drew her breath in deep, gathering up her jangled nerves as she forced her equally jangled hand to slip her SIG back inside the jacket of her suit and into the waiting slot in her shoulder holster. Only then did she risk turning around to face the open door. Jeffers was nowhere to be seen. Three Marines stood in the middle of the outer office, waiting instructions. Corporal Vetter's familiar, uniformed form loomed among them. But that was it.
"Regan?" Riyad again. His voice was sharp this time, determined.
Knowing.
Worse, those dark eyes of his were brimming with genuine compassion as she swung around toward the desk and the spook waiting patiently beside it, and her.
"Can you do this?"
She knew what he was asking. Admitting.
They didn't have time for him to play catch-up cop, and Riyad knew it. Not with that unruly mob still swelling outside the gates.
There might be a slew of diplomatic security agents currently swarming in and around the buildings and grounds of the embassy, but every single one was actively attempting to keep that smoldering powder keg from exploding.
This investigation was up to her. Despite the fact that the physical fallout to the victim in front of her was identical to the horror she'd been attempting to banish from her brain for the past twenty years.
Focus. Work the case in front of you.
Now.
She drew her breath in deep once more, this time purging the lingering remnants of past horrors with it. Mostly. "I'm fine." But her hand definitely wasn't. "My kit. It's in the outer office. Would you—"
"Absolutely." He turned on his boot heels and left, leaving her with that goddamned mess in front of her.
And it was a mess.
Like her mother, the embassy's senior political officer had pressed the working end of a pistol beneath the base of his chin, only to shift his hand at the last moment, sending the round exploding up at a slight angle, through his jawbone, nasal cavity and forehead, blowing the top of his skull into the ceiling of the room. Bits of brain, blood and bone had then rudely rained down around him. In her mother's case, her shoulders and lap…and, of course, the recently decorated Christmas tree behind her.
Tom Crier's flesh and fluid, and bits of brain and bone, had ended up on the shoulders of his dark blue suit and in his lap as well…along with a sheet of previously plain, white paper with two words scrawled amid the center.
Forgive me.
"Agent Chase?"
She drew in her breath and turned to find Riyad behind her, brandishing her crime kit. She thought about ordering him to remove the polite kid gloves he'd inexplicably brought into the room with him, but what the hell. His eggshells attitude might be grating, but overall it was a welcome change from his disdain when they'd performed a similar activity in the Griffith's conference room two days earlier.
Not trusting the fingers of her rattling hand, she reached out with her left and spun the barrels on her crime kit's waiting combination lock. Once inside the stainless-steel case, she withdrew a pair of latex gloves and booties, then motioned for Riyad to do the same. Protective gear donned, she retrieved her camera and automatically began her photographic sweep of the scene while the spook moved across the office to set her opened kit down on the modest, wood-grained conference table.
Other than that body and what definitely appeared to be a suicide note, nothing appeared amiss.
She tipped her head toward Embassy Islamabad's now former political officer. "He was having an affair with Inaya Sadat—with her husband's knowledge and permission. Crier fathered her baby."
"You're sure?"
As sure as she could be without paternity test results in hand. "Brandt and Aamer Sadat were lovers. Major Garrison and I got verbal confessions from both Sadats at the Shifa this evening." Something neither would ever have invented with their religion and Pakistani citizenship, since both risked death with the admissions. "Also, their son, Danyal, does have diabetes, but that's not why he's in the ICU. Someone infected the boy with the chimera. I could smell it on his breath. Dr. Fourche is already consulting and arranging to have the cure flown in later today."
"Holy fuck. A baby?"
"Yep."
The spook extended a gloved finger toward the desk. "Hence, the bastard's note."
She nodded. "It would seem so." Then again, appearances could be deceiving. She'd learned that lesson the hard way…several times.
Forgive me.
For fathering a child outside of his marriage? Or for infecting that child with a deadly virus to cover it up? Or had Thomas Crier been alluding to the investigation he'd come to suspect she was really here in Islamabad to pursue? The one involving their nation's latest, and perhaps deadliest-to-date, traitor?
Regan pondered the questions as she wrapped up her close-up photos of the victim and his immediate surroundings. She'd taken no photos of the weapon Crier had used, though, because she'd yet to spot it.
Had it bounced beneath the desk?
She reached out to grasp the left arm of the executive chair. The leather monstrosity did possess wheels, but with her recalcitrant hand, there was no way she was going to risk losing control of the chair and accidentally spinning their victim out onto the floor. "I'm done photographing the body. Can you help—"
"Let go. I've got it."
The spook's filthy frown returned when she failed to obey, though this one resembled John's when she'd tried to take her kit from him as they were leaving the Serena hotel earlier tonight, rather than the others Riyad had been bestowing upon her since her arrival aboard the Griffith.
She released the arm of the chair and let Riyad roll Crier's body several feet back.
And there was the gun.
Crier's right hand had hit his thigh following the 9mm's retort, sending the Glock he'd used to blow his brains out skittering underneath the desk.
She crouched down and took the requisite photos, then reached down to retrieve the Glock. "Can you grab an evidence—"
"Right here."
"Thanks." She slipped the 9mm into the paper bag already open in Riyad's hands.
He filled out the evidence label, but left the bag unsealed as she'd yet to dust the Glock for prints. The label finished, he walked the bag across the office to lay it on the conference table beside her stainless-steel case.
"I've got a gunshot residue test kit in the second drawer—"
"Got it."
Damn. The man might make a decent investigative colleague after all. He'd even spent his time while she was photographing the scene splaying her kit wide on the table so he could root thought its contents and set out items he thought she might need. She turned back to Crier's body as the spook reached her side. Ignoring that glassy, vacant stare as best she could, she accepted the GSR swab for the lab's sample. She used her steady hand to dab the swab down the victim's right index finger and along the inner webbing, then up to the tip of his thumb.
Fortunately, that vacant gaze was green, not blue. And while the rest of those misshapen features were baby-faced, they were definitely male.
It helped.
She finished dabbing Crier's right hand and moved onto his left as Riyad took care of packaging up the initial samples. Once both hands had been dabbed for the lab's definitive test, she retrieved the small square of white cotton, swiping the entire inner webbing of Crier's right hand once more with the material.
This second round of swabbing was for herself.
She set the square of cotton into the plexiglass developing chamber, then accepted the dropper from Riyad and popped the ampule within. Once the square was soaked with the testing solution, she sealed the plexiglass box and handed it to Riyad so he could set it on the conference table along with the rest of the materials she'd expended.
And now, the wait.
Within five minutes, they'd have the results.
Though really, given that she and Jeffers had been outside the office when the Glock had gone off and that no one but Crier had been inside when she'd entered, the pending results of their GSR field test were significantly less of a mystery than the contents of the man's imposing executive desk.
Riyad returned to her side. "Now what?"
She pointed toward the column of drawers on either side. "We search." Unfortunately, the drawers were locked. Had her hand been cooperating, it would have been easy enough to pick the main lock. But they didn't have time. Not with that mob outside the gates, swelling even now, as her watch closed in on 0230. "There's a small crowbar at the bottom of my kit."
Moments later, the spook returned with the iron bar and performed the destructive honors.
She pointed toward the far column of drawers as he turned to lay the crowbar on the windowsill behind them. "You take the right side; I'll take the left."
"Will do."
They searched in silence for several minutes, sifting through a mind-numbing amount of bureaucratic paperwork until she hit the bottom of the lowest drawer in her assigned column—literally.
Odd. Her trembling hand continued to smack into the base of the drawer with a steady rhythm—but both the sound and the feel were off.
Riyad shifted his suit-clad bulk to her side. "What's wrong?"
"I think we've got a false bottom." Was this why Crier had created one in that pack of Pakistani smokes? Because he'd used one to conceal something else?
The spook turned to the window, then back, crowbar in hand. "Step aside."
The bar went into the drawer. A solid pop filled the air around the desk. Regan reached in with her steadier hand and lifted the damage piece of wood.
Definitely a false bottom.
A tantalizing, smooth brown envelope lay in the space beneath.
She pulled the envelope out with her right hand. Riyad waited patiently as she worked the stiff brass brad on the reverse so she could lift the crisp flap and tip the significantly less crisp contents out into her waiting palm.
She sucked in her breath as she skimmed the header of the upper sheet.
Her colleague wasn't nearly as polite. "Holy fuck."
The spook appeared fond of that phrase. But in this case—as Regan continued to flip through the papers beneath the upper sheet—she couldn't argue with it.
"Ah, shit." John.
She glanced across her latest crime scene to find the man's dark gray suit filling the doorway of the office. John hadn't been kidding.
He had found her.
Though clearly not where and how he'd hoped.
John's glower strengthened as he strode into the room, pausing at her side to take in the corpse still seated in the executive chair several feet away. His glower turned downright caustic as it moved on to the visible rattling of her arm.
He was about to say something about one or the other, when his gaze fell to the papers in her hand. "Is that—"
"The security review for Embassy Islamabad?" She reached into her pocket and retrieved the purple nitrile gloves she'd taken from the Shifa's ICU earlier that evening, passing them over. "You tell me. Is this as bad as Riyad and I think it is?"
John donned the gloves and accepted the sheaf of papers.
The curse that escaped as he flipped through the stack was filthier than Riyad's had been. "Yeah. These are the plans Webber and I worked on. And these—" John held up the smaller, stapled sheaf that had been tucked beneath. "—are copies of my personal notes concerning our contingency plans for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal."
Oh, Jesus.
Both Chaudhry and his son were definitely targets. Even if they weren't, she couldn't take the chance that Webber didn't have Colonel Chaudhry in his sights as well as the chief justice's. But was Webber simply trying to foment hate and discontent for the US within the colonel's mind and heart? Or was there something else going on? Something truly horrific, as suggested by the presence of John's notes?
If so, how the hell did they stop it?
John caught her glance. "Rae, you've got a visitor."
At the embassy?
Other than Palisade, Kettering and select members of the embassy staff, no one outside their team even knew she was in the city.
She glanced at her watch. It had taken her and Riyad longer than she'd thought to process the scene. All she had left was to test the Glock, and the envelope and papers for prints—and arrange for the disposition of Crier's body pending autopsy. "Who wants to see me at 0258 in the morning?"
"Chief Justice Harun Chaudhry and his wife are waiting in a conference room one floor down. I was near the back gate when their car pulled up. I called the ambassador, then escorted them inside and got them comfortable. Justice Chaudhry seems to think you're expecting them. He also said that he and his wife have seen the news, and now they want to hear what really happened to their daughter—from you."
She turned to Riyad.
He shrugged. "You told me to call Kettering. I called."
Yes, but she'd fully expected to go to Chaudhry. The man was here—at this hour? And with what was going on outside? And he'd brought his wife along? Then again, it wasn't as if the woman—or her husband—would be able to sleep. Nor was the unruly mob outside the gates a danger to the Chaudhrys.
At least, not yet.
Regan shoved Crier's hidden envelope at John so he could tuck the incendiary evidence back inside. If that was even possible—even with steady hands.
She headed for the wood-grained conference table and the plexiglass box containing the GSR field test results to give herself something to do while her brain continued to work through the latest developments.
As for the chemical one inside the plexiglass, that development was downright anticlimactic. The brown specks now staining the square of white cotton proved that Thomas Crier had indeed taken his own life in this very room, leaving the rest of them to clean up his personal and professionally traitorous shit.
"Rae?"
John had followed her to the table. She slipped the used GSR container into the evidence bag Riyad had already prepared and sealed it, as well as the one containing the Glock, then turned to face both men. Prints on the 9mm, as well as the envelope and papers, would have to wait. Not to mention her pending call to the local morgue. "Sam, I need you to swap out your NCIS cap for that SEAL one. You know better than anyone here how Webber operates. I think we'll all be better off if you head back to the security office to assist Maddoc." Based on what they'd found in that desk, the RSO and his men would need new contingencies, and fast. "Major Garrison will be with me…and the Chaudhrys."
"Agreed." The spook peeled off his gloves and shoved the latex into his pocket as he headed for the door. "I'll keep you posted."
"Ditto." She turned to John. "You were there in that cave when it went down. Trust me, they're going to want to hear from you, too. Don't leave anything out. And don't try to be vague or use euphemisms to spare their feelings. When I call on you, tell them exactly what happened. They've already seen the worst of it: the photo of their daughter's mutilated corpse. If you try and tone it down, they'll know. And that risks them believing we're not being honest about the rest of it."
And that they could not afford.
Frankly, John's testimony and the files on her laptop were all they had to go on, quite possibly all that stood between this country and hers…and war.
John glanced at Crier's body, shifting as he turned back, deliberately using that massive torso of his to shield her from the death scene he'd realized was uncannily similar to her mother's the moment he'd entered the office.
His fingers came up to smooth a strand of hair that had slipped out of her braid, tucking it back under the dupatta she hadn't even realized she'd forgotten to remove upon her return to the embassy.
So much for claustrophobic.
As for the compassion that had begun to simmer within John's stare, however… "Are you okay?"
She shrugged. Really, what else could she do?
"I have to be."
The glower he'd worn upon entering returned. She knew he wanted to argue with her, but he didn't. Nor could he. Because he knew she was right.
"How bad is it outside the gates?"
His sigh was dark. "Bad. And it's getting worse."
Somehow, she managed a smile. But it was stunted, much like her dwindling hopes that she could pull this thing off. "So, no pressure then."
"You can do this, Rae."
She was grateful for his vote of confidence. Because at the moment, her own nerve was lodging an insistent, belligerent veto.
She corralled her doubts as best she could as she finished packing up the contents of her crime kit. She added in the items she'd taken into evidence, including the smooth envelope and its classified contents, then automatically secured the kit's barrel lock on a new number. Finished, she nodded toward the stainless-steel case, knowing John wouldn't let her carry it anyway. Not with the tremors beginning to work their way up her arm.
"That's ready to go. My laptop's still in the outer office."
John hefted the case and motioned her toward the door. "How do you plan on working this?"
The same way she always did. It was the only way she knew how. "Corporal Vetter?"
"Yes, ma'am?"
"I need access to a wireless printer and photographic paper, ASAP. I also want copies of all security footage that pertains to this office from this past week forwarded to my CID email." She definitely needed to know what Crier had been doing—and who he'd been doing it with. She motioned for John to pass her crime kit off to the corporal. "Have that case secured in the RSO's safe, and do not let it leave your side until it goes in. Finally, seal up this office and post a guard outside. Unless the chancery's on fire, the guard does not leave his post until I've had a chance to deal with the body."
God willing, her conditional wouldn't come to pass.
"Yes, ma'am. Corporal Swan will take you to the printer."
She and John followed a tall, black, sinewy Marine out of the secretary's office.
Twenty minutes later, freshly printed materials tucked beneath her non-trembling arm, John was escorting her down the corridor and into the conference room where Ambassador Linnet stood in the far-right corner, just beyond the end of the walnut table that dominated the space. Linnet was nodding her sleek, blond bob as she spoke quietly with a petite woman of roughly sixty years. Since Linnet's companion was the only female Pakistani in the room, she was most likely Mrs. Chaudhry. And there was the evidence in the woman's face. The slightly reddened and puffy eyes. While Sitara Chaudhry had surely rivaled Inaya Sadat's beauty in her younger years, the plain burgundy of her silken shalwar kameez and dupatta suggested that the older woman preferred the more subdued end of the rainbow.
Either that, or Sitara had chosen the muted colors in honor of her daughter's passing.
Regan recognized the stocky white-haired and bearded, western-suited Pakistani male nearest the women from the news the year before: Chief Justice Chaudhry.
As for the taller, fiftyish, traditionally dressed Pakistani male engaged in a low, but politely heated conversation with Warren Jeffers in the opposite far corner, it appeared the country's prime minister had made an appearance as well.
Lovely. This was going to be hard enough without either of those blowhards chiming in.
Except, the look Jeffers shot her as he glanced up from his conversation with Prime Minister Bukhari hearkened more to his attitude toward the spook than it had during either of her previous conversations with the DCM.
Had she managed to knock the disdain and vitriol from the man when she'd shoved his bulk to the floor outside Crier's office following that gunshot?
If so, she could only hope she'd earned Jeffers' coming support, or at the very least, his silence. Though, in light of her previous intel on the man, she doubted it.
Jeffers headed toward her, his peppery curls and suit even more wilted and rumpled than they'd been at their last meeting. "Agent Chase, please, let me assist you with that."
She shook her head as he reached for the thick folder she'd just created. "Thank you, but I've got it."
Those overly generous lips flattened.
Scott and Aamer Sadat had been spot on, then.
Further proof arrived with the saccharine smile that resumed oozing as Jeffers turned toward the ambassador and her guests. The look he'd shot Regan upon her entrance had simply been a reflection of his need to keep up diplomatic appearances.
Good to know.
As John stopped at the head of the table to deposit her laptop beside the leading chair, she bypassed Jeffers and continued on toward the ambassador and the Chaudhrys. Though she hadn't yet met the former, she nodded as though she had.
The ambassador picked up on the cue and nodded back.
The thirty second crash course in Pakistan manners that John had given her in mind, she stopped in front of the chief justice and his wife and bowed her head to both. "Chief Justice Chaudhry, Begum Chaudhry, As-Salaam-u-Alaikum."
As she straightened, the errant strand of hair from Crier's office slipped free again. Her fingers shook as she smoothed it beneath the dupatta.
Given who she'd been about to meet and why, she'd decided against removing the head covering during John's customs lecture.
It was a good call.
Both Chaudhrys seemed pleasantly taken aback by the swath of black. Especially since it was clear she hadn't donned it simply to impress them, but had been wearing it a while. She'd caught her reflection in the sliver of glass embedded in the conference room door just before John had opened it.
Unlike the grieving mother's veil, the silk dupatta John had purchased at Al Dhafra was clearly crushed and limp from the day's use.
Even the prime minister appeared pleased with the tip toward traditional, female Muslim modesty as Bukhari approached to let her know that his president was dealing with another crisis and would be arriving as soon as he was able.
Regan repeated the formal greeting to Bukhari that she'd offered the Chaudhrys and waited as Jeffers stepped up to encourage everyone to take their seats.
Though both the American and Pakistani contingents claimed chairs along the opposite side of the walnut table from her, she focused her attention solely on the grieving mother at the center of the grouping.
Her gut—and her quick googling of the woman while she and John had been waiting on the printer—had assured her that Mrs. Chaudhry was the key. Not only did the chief justice value his wife enough to bring her along and offer her the choice, center seat, ironically Mrs. Chaudhry was a practicing surgical nurse at the Shifa, of all hospitals. And, like her husband, the woman also spoke English.
If anyone would be able to study the evidence she'd printed and quickly zero in on the truth, it would be Sitara Chaudhry.
Despite that excellent grasp of English however, John had felt it best that, out of respect, he offer his statement to the Chaudhrys in their native tongue.
Regan had agreed. "Major?"
On cue, John departed the head of the table and moved down to her side. He took the seat to the right of her and waited.
"Chief Justice, Begum Chaudhry, I would like you to meet Major John Garrison, US Army Special Forces. Major Garrison led the mission into that cave where your daughter died. With your permission, I would like the major to begin with his account of what he and his men saw and did upon their arrival, and afterward. Please, feel free to stop Major Garrison at any point with questions—or…just to stop him."
John waited for Chaudhry's revealing, questioning glance in his wife's direction and the man's subsequent nod, then began.
As with the hospital interview with Inaya, Regan didn't understand a word of John's stream of gravelly Urdu. She didn't need to. The entire translation was right there, in Mrs. Chaudhry's face. In the emotions that took hold in the woman's reddened eyes and in those gently quivering lips. When John reached his hoarse, halting description of the mutilated bodies he and his men had found in the cave, and of the infants that had been cut free and dumped on their breasts, the woman's eyes turned even redder and filled with glistening tears.
As had John's.
Regan reached out without thinking and slipped her hand into his lap beneath the table to squeeze the fist his left hand had unconsciously made. As much as her heart ached for the Chaudhrys, it ached just as much for John. Yes, he'd encountered death in countless ways in his career—but he'd never had to describe it to a loved one before.
Not like this.
Though John promptly turned his fingers so that they engulfed hers, he continued to stare straight ahead as he held on tight, swallowing hard as the tears began to fall from both Mr. and Mrs. Chaudhry's eyes…and his own.
John finished speaking, cleared his throat and waited.
Evidently he'd offered enough—or perhaps too much—because the chief justice shook his head slightly. There would be no questions of John.
At least not tonight.
Her turn then.
Regan waited for Sitara Chaudhry to gather herself, or as best the woman appeared able, then slipped her fingers from John's and stood. She opened her folder and removed the copies she'd printed of the evidence reports and lab results that hadn't been leaked to the Pakistani media because they exculpated McCord. She slid a binder-clipped packet in front of the Chaudhrys, another in front of the prime minister, and a third between the ambassador and her deputy chief of mission to share.
Regan kept the fourth for herself as she returned to her seat, removing her black binder clip so she could hold up each item as she went through them. "The first few pages have already been released to the media, so you may have already seen them. And it is true, Captain Mark McCord's blood was found inside the cave on a shawl that had been draped over one of the babies, as well as on two women—one of whom…was your daughter. But Captain McCord's blood was planted."
Regan held up the second round of labs that had proven it. "These are the results of the tests that were run on the captain's blood. If you'll note the sections I've highlighted in yellow, you can see that the lab determined that plasma proteins were missing from the blood evidence that was found on the two women and the shawl. The absence of such proteins indicates that a quantity of the captain's blood was frozen sometime before the murders, and then thawed out and placed inside the cave."
She held up the next several pages. "You can read a description of the blood-washing process here, as well as a statement that proves that the machine vital to the process was purchased by a hospital in Tehran, and that the doctor who committed the murders attended a training session there. It's during this session that we believe the captain's blood was frozen. The technician who held the training picked Dr. Nabil Durrani's photo out of a lineup. Also, you'll find a statement by Dr. Soraya Medhi describing how she spotted Dr. Durrani leaving the pharmacy at the Joint Theatre Hospital on Bagram Airbase in the middle of the night on the twelfth of October of this past year—during a false bomb threat. The same night, a pint of McCord's blood was stolen. The pint had been donated during a blood drive. There are additional supporting documents in your papers as well. Along with a transcript of the initial statement of an Afghan translator by the name of Tamir Hachemi, admitting that he assisted Dr. Durrani with the murders, and even obtained knives belonging to Captain McCord. The knives that were used to commit the murders and remove the babies from their mothers' wombs. I'm ready to answer any and all questions regarding the contents of your packets. Finally—" She turned to the second to last sheet. "—I've included Captain McCord's statement. He admits he was having an affair with one of the victims and that the child Begum Khan carried was his. We believe this is why Begum Khan was targeted by Durrani. To more effectively set up the captain for the murders."
"And this?" Mrs. Chaudhry's voice whispered across the table. The woman's fingertips shook as she traced them over the final item in the Chaudhrys' stack.
It was one of the eight-by-ten-inch glossy photos Regan had printed in the office Corporal Swan had escorted them to half an hour earlier.
"That's the child who survived, Begum Chaudhry. Her doctors believe that the shawl that was meant to railroad her father into murder actually saved her life, as it allowed the infant to hold onto what little body heat she had until Major Garrison and his men arrived to rescue her. Begum Khan's husband does not know who fathered the child, but he has rejected it regardless, on the grounds that she's a girl and not worth the expense. As a result, Captain McCord applied for custody and has named his daughter Jameelah after her mother. At the moment, the captain is with his daughter in Germany, in Landstuhl's neonatal intensive care. Jameelah has been growing stronger every day and is expected to be released from the hospital soon."
A fresh batch of tears welled up in Mrs. Chaudhry's eyes. Regan's began to burn too as the woman continued to trace her fingers over the photo of the thriving infant, swaddled in pink and lying in her plexiglass bassinet.
That slow, loving trace revealed so much.
Sitara Chaudhry was more than a grieving mother right now. She was also a not-quite-grandmother grieving what might have been.
But the child beneath her fingertips was also proof that Americans and Pakistanis could come together. Regan could see that in those tears and quivering lips as well.
For the first time in days, hope began to bud within her.
Until the prime minister coughed. Snorted really. "Agent Chase, you say a respected Afghan doctor killed these women. But there is no proof in the pages you provided. Just some American who claims the doctor purchased a machine to do this…washing of blood. Why would an honorable Muslim do this? Kill innocent Muslim mothers? Kill the precious flower of our chief justice?"
Regan pushed her temper down as she offered a respectful smile to the doubting ass who hadn't bothered to even glance through his own stack of papers, let alone study the highlighted sections that proved her case.
Fortunately, the chief justice and his wife had not only followed along with her commentary, they'd gone back to the beginning of their packet. Even now, both were carefully reading through each page before the chief justice turned to the next.
She left them to their personal horror and addressed Bukhari. "Yes, Prime Minister, Nabil Durrani was a doctor." Diplomatic meeting or not, she just couldn't refer to the bastard as respected or honorable. "But Durrani was obsessed with Chief Justice and Begum Chaudhry's daughter. Durrani would not take no for an answer, much less leave her alone. During my discussions with the man, I came to believe Durrani even harassed the young woman to the point of her leaving her job."
Sitara Chaudhry perked up at that, shifting her focus across the table. Her husband might still be reading, but his wife wasn't.
Regan had the woman's complete attention.
And more.
She also had the blaring suspicion that Mrs. Chaudhry knew something. Quite possibly something she'd been told by her daughter. But Asma hadn't confided in her father, because Harun Chaudhry's expression hadn't changed.
He was also still reading.
Regan continued with what she did know, and suspected, hoping her facts and supposition would intersect with whatever secrets the mother had been privy to. "I think they worked together, but I'm not sure where. I know Durrani got his medical degree in the United States, at Harvard in Boston, Massachusetts. I also know that shortly before the murders, Durrani culled his remaining victims from the Malalie Maternity Hospital in Kabul, where he was volunteering and had recently been offered a full-time position. Before that, Durrani worked with a local Islamic charity that assisted in vaccinating women against polio and tetanus in your country's own Federally Administered Tribal Areas—"
Regan paused as the older woman sucked in her breath, then turned to her husband to speak softly, urgently, in Urdu.
Regan risked a glance at John.
He nodded.
Something she'd said had clicked with the mother.
She turned back to the prime minister, since technically she'd been addressing his concerns, but Bukhari was now ignoring her. He, too, was focused on the equally urgent comments that Harun Chaudhry was now offering his wife.
By the time both Chaudhrys had refocused on her, Regan knew she'd hit on the nexus between those two lives: Durrani's and Asma's.
She risked confirming it. "It's true, isn't it? Your daughter knew Dr. Durrani. He gave her reason to fear him…somehow."
The mother's eyes filled with fresh tears.
But it was the father who had the strength to nod. Speak. "Yes. She confided this, and more, to my wife. You are right. This man was unnaturally obsessed with her. She thought by leaving her job six months ago, and taking another, she would be safe. But she also believed in our tribal regions and its people. She suffered much pain and grief when she lost her beloved husband and her own unborn child. She wanted to remain there, working to improve their conditions. This is how he found her, yes?"
"I believe so." In an effort to give the father a moment to deal with the tears that had begun to tinge his eyes, turning them luminous and black, she busied herself with the papers that were now littering the table in front of her.
She gathered them together. After two failed attempts to reattach the binder clip, she gave up and set the papers down, laying the clip on top.
"Your hand. It shakes." The chief justice flipped through his stack once more until he'd located the medical assessment she'd included. The one that described her neurological fallout from that psycho-toxin, along with Sergeant Welch's and Staff Sergeant Hudson's. "It is a result of the chimera Dr. Durrani infected you with?"
"Yes."
"This damage may be permanent?"
The chief justice was asking for information she'd have forced Durrani to barter his very life for. She gave it freely to this grieving father and his wife.
Nor did she mask her own pain. "Yes."
The admission caused her hand to shake harder. To her horror, the quivering hijacked her entire arm, as it had following Durrani's suicide.
She was mortified when the fingers of John's left hand came up to cover hers. To lightly stroke and soothe. Not because he'd done it.
Because it worked. In front of others.
But the Chaudhrys weren't staring at her hand; they were looking at John's. At the ring he, too, hadn't removed since the Serena. Both Chaudhrys' gazes shifted, almost in tandem, to her left hand. To the matching rings that were still there as well.
And then, something seemed to click in both husband and wife.
Again, it was Harun Chaudhry who acted on it. He stood. Bowed. "I thank you for the time you have taken to speak to my wife and myself." His attention shifted to John. "Major Garrison, I also sincerely thank you for your efforts, and those of your men, to save those precious lives. Asma's, as well as the others. I believe you both."
Regan was still stunned, attempting to put her gratitude in this man's trust into words, when the chief justice turned to the ambassador.
"Ambassador Linnet, I must do what I can to quell the unwarranted anger outside your gates. Perhaps a speech? Tonight. Before things grow worse. Televised, so that my fellow citizens can wake to the truth and not to lies. My wife will, of course, be at my side."
Bukhari stood then too. "As will I." The prime minister turned to stare down at Jeffers and the ambassador. "I will assist in the preparations."
Wow, that was quick.
And apparently definitive, because everyone else on the opposite side of the table had come to their feet and were now nodding their approval.
Regan came to her feet as well. She bowed her head to both Chaudhrys in turn. "Chief Justice, Begum Chaudhry, if you don't mind, I have one more thing. I would like to formally apologize for the leaking of the photo of your daughter. I cannot imagine your shared pain at losing a grown child, and I am truly sorry you both discovered it the way that you did. I don't yet know how the photo got out, but I will not rest until I find the leak. I promise you." And if it hadn't been Crier, she would plug it.
Permanently.
Regan bowed to the Chaudhrys again, then gathered up her papers and turned to head down the table for her laptop, leaving John behind.
As with Riyad, John's skills would be crucial to the security for the coming televised conference that Jeffers and the prime minister were already outlining.
One crisis had been successfully averted.
But there was another, potentially larger one looming on the horizon. From the comments she'd overheard, the prime minister was insisting—quite vocally—that the chief justice's speech take place outside the gates, off sovereign, American soil.
In front of that mob.
Harun Chaudhry appeared to believe that he could quell the anger of his fellow citizens before he even walked through the gates, by making a brief announcement via the embassy's loudspeaker. But even if that worked, it might not be enough.
Because that crowd wasn't their only concern.
According to Riyad's tip, Zakaria Webber had been in Islamabad for at least eight hours now. Given everything that had gone down around town tonight—events Webber himself had very likely set into motion—what were the odds that the rogue SEAL wouldn't be out there in that angry, overflowing crowd…waiting for Chaudhry?
And there was Bukhari's half-assed rebuttal to her evidence, not to mention the man's strangely swift capitulation to this entire, precarious scenario.
Why did she have the feeling this impromptu conference was playing into the prime minister's hands?
Unintentionally or not, had she just tagged Harun Chaudhry for death?