Such a simple phrase capable of covering a host of situations. I never operated by the book, not that we had much of a ruleset to abide by in the SIS. Still, I found it difficult to recall an event that occurred over a half-decade ago or more that would require Frank Skinner to send a group of SOG operators to Nowhere, Texas to find and bring me to the remains of the SIS headquarters in order to hold a clandestine meeting.
Frank took a deep breath, leaned back in his chair. “Actually, we all messed up. But you were the man in the field, so a lot of this falls on you.”
“OK?” I said, unsure what the hell he was talking about.
“Our intelligence was garbage to begin with.”
“That was often the case.”
He waved his right hand over the folder. “Yeah, I know. But in this case, we had it wrong. I mean, big time, Jack.”
“Get to it, Frank.” I reached for the folder. He grasped the edge of it and pinned it to the table. “Come on, I’m tired of playing this guessing game.”
“Katrine Ahlberg,” he said. His eyes wavered back and forth as he stared at me, waiting for my reaction. “Remember her?”
“The Scandinavian Princess. Came from a wealthy family in Norway.” I stared at a yellow stain on the ceiling. “No, Sweden.”
“That’s right.”
“Father made his fortune in textiles. At least, that was his gig on the surface. Something else to do with human trafficking, if I remember correctly.”
Frank nodded, said nothing.
“Katrine married that son of a bitch Saudi, Awad. One of the Crown Prince’s two-thousand cousins, right? His dad was an oil tycoon. Awad followed in his footsteps, but spent little time actually working in the family business. When we found him, he was driving around in a gold Mercedes AMG. I mean, the thing was actually made from gold.”
Frank shook his head. “Such flagrant waste.”
“Intel said that Katrine and Awad had been involved in dealings with terrorists. Funding, recruiting, planning, that kind of stuff. More indirect than direct.”
“Good memory,” Frank said. “Kinda surprised considering all the lumps you’ve taken on the head.”
I reached back and cupped the back of my skull. Noticed for the first time that the sedative-induced hangover had cleared. “So were we wrong? Were they not involved in those things?”
“No, we were right. Hell, turns out they were more involved than we suspected. We—," he took a sip from his water bottle then cleared his throat, “I should say, you, Jack Noble, did the world a favor the night you assassinated her.”
“What’s the problem then?”
“You killed her twin sister.”