An early morning knock at his hotel room door woke Kafka from a deep sleep. He was still adjusting after jet lag, months of apprehension over the situation with Jihad Nation, even more intense worry over his mother and father. God be praised, they were safe now, in a suite in the very same hotel. For the last day he had slept in a near blackout, recovering.
They’d made it. The United States. Freedom. The land of plenty.
He almost didn’t get out of bed. He began to drift back off.
But another knock pulled him out.
Kafka threw off the covers to the king-size bed and climbed out, stumbling over to the door in his new silk pajama bottoms, rubbing his eyes.
“Who is it?” he said in English to the door, head cocked.
“Maintenance,” a voice responded.
He opened the door on the chain, peering out.
A hotel maintenance worker in a brown uniform and cap. Tall. Fit. Trimmed neat gray mustache. Wearing glasses. Holding a toolbox. “Water leak downstairs,” the man said, pointing down with a finger. “I need to make sure it’s not coming from your bathroom.”
“I was sleeping.”
“I do apologize, sir,” the man said. “Won’t take but a minute. If there’s any complication, we’ll be happy to move you to another room.”
“Very well.” Kafka sighed as he unlatched the door, stood back. “But I expect to be upgraded.”
The man came in with his toolbox. Kafka shut the door.
The maintenance man went into the bathroom; he set his toolbox down on the floor. Kafka heard him banging around in there. He turned on the faucet, turned it off. He opened a cabinet door. He turned on the shower.
“Can you come in here, sir?” he said. “I think I’ve found it.”
“Where is this leak?” Kafka said, going over to the bathroom.
The maintenance man was kneeling by the toilet. He had removed a red tray of small tools from his toolbox and put it on the seat lid.
“Shut the door, will you?”
Kafka did, starting to get annoyed. “Where is the leak?”
The maintenance man stood up, stared through his glasses. “I’m looking at it.”
Kafka froze when he saw the hypodermic needle in his hand.
“What?” Kafka said stupidly. He turned to escape but he had shut the bathroom door.
The prick of the needle jabbed his midriff.
Almost immediately he stumbled, only recently having woken up, after days of exhaustion. His head began to swim.
Shout, he thought. Scream.
He couldn’t.
“Did you really think you could get away with it?” he heard the man say, echoing in his ears. “Did you really think you could betray us?”
Kafka opened his mouth. Words, slow and laborious, started to come out, but they were words without sound, landing with dull thumps, like stones underwater. And he fell with them, falling softly onto a submerged layer of wet sand, to remain there, forever.
“Dead?” Maggie said. “Dead?”
She could not believe it.
She’d barely slept on the flight back. Now she stood on the runway at Langley Air Force Base, having disembarked the transport, planes roaring as they took off and landed, talking to Ed on her cell phone.
She was shattered.
“How?” she asked.
“Found on the bathroom floor by the maid. Shower still running. Looks like a heart attack. But we won’t get the coroner’s report for some time.”
“Heart attack?” Maggie said. “Kafka was thirty years old.”
“Thirty, working for Jihad Nation while he worked us as a double agent, under an unbelievable amount of stress, trying to get his parents to safety. Thirty going on eighty as far as his nervous system was probably concerned.”
“And the timing doesn’t cross your mind?”
“What do you think?” Ed said, and Maggie could hear him sucking on a cigarette. “Right before we were scheduled to dismantle Abraqa?”
“Exactly.”
“And now we can’t.”
“Says who?”
There was a pause.
“I thought Kafka wasn’t going to give up the passwords until his parents were safe and sound and settled in the US,” Ed said. “When your debriefing was complete.”
“Ed,” she said. “You really are a Luddite.”
“Wait—did Kafka ever log onto Abraqa from your laptop?”
“Bingo. In Berlin. Before the rescue operation.”
“Of course you would have some kind of Trojan keystroke recorder program on your computer.”
“Apple and Android are doing the same thing to the entire cell phone public. Why not me?”
“I’ve said it before, Maggs. I’ll be working for you in a year or two.”
“Only I don’t want your job.”
She heard Ed take a drag on his cigarette. “For the time being we keep this strictly between you and me, Maggs. Until Abraqa is shut down.”
“I was going to say the very same thing.”
“Shouldn’t you get a jump on it?”
“Disable Abraqa Darknet? Whoever killed Kafka thought I was going to have to wait until after the debriefing Kafka is now never going to have to begin the process. So I have a little time. But yes, I will be doing it very soon.” All she really had to do was change the passwords. “But I need your okay, Ed. If I do it on my own, you know it’s going to piss more than a few people off. Perish the thought we violate protocol.”
Ed took another puff on his smoke. “You have my okay. But do it when this phone call ends. Not that I’m paranoid.”
“I’m way ahead of you.”
There was a pause while a plane groaned into the sky.
“Kafka’s demise feels like more than simple retribution, Ed.”
“I know, Maggie,” Ed said. “And then again, I don’t. That’s the way this game goes. You don’t always know. It could be just what it looks like. Jihad Nation took Kafka out when they had no other option.”
But she knew. Or thought she did.
She just had no idea who.