“Je me vengerai!” Delilah Hussein demanded. I will have my revenge!
Her enormous guest shifted his bulky frame in the freshly painted Adirondack chair situated on the covered patio. The warm breeze dissipated the blue smoke wafting from his lips. Through a slit in the silk mask that covered his face, a curved pipe rested between his lips.
“Why the mask, Hammon?”
“Precaution. I’m sure your cameras are recording this meeting.”
“Thank you for meeting me in person,” she said. “It was hard to convince you to come.”
“Your communication intrigued me,” Hammon replied. “You mentioned that there is something in it for me? A way out?”
Hussein nodded. “If we can come to an agreement.”
“There is much going on in Washington. It’s much too soon,” he replied. The small droplet of sweat running down his temple belied his anxiety. It stopped, absorbed by the top edge of the large scarf covering his nose and mouth.
“I need something from you,” she said.
“I met you face to face as a courtesy,” the three-hundred-pound man said. “It has only been two years since the attacks. My government is still on high alert. They are actively searching for you and my moles. My men have gone underground and will stay that way until I decide it is safe.”
“Searching for me?” Hussein asked, picking up on the spy’s comment.
It was amazing he could function at all, she thought. How a man possessing Hammon’s girth could perform the subtle manipulations of a spy escaped her. But, she concluded, this man sat behind a desk, covertly directing others. Such duties required an adept, sharp mind but little physical dexterity or energy.
Hammon nodded with one emphatic head bob. “They have knowledge that you did not die on the yacht in Newport News. They have begun a massive manhunt. It is only a matter of time before they come across the recordings made by Jason Rodgers and the dead private investigator, Waterhouse.”
Hussein felt her pulse quicken. “How did they come by this knowledge?”
“I do not know that. My access to that intelligence is limited.”
“The Americans may find the recordings, but they are inconsequential now. The government will never let them become public. It will be too embarrassing.”
“Perhaps,” Hammon replied, clicking his pipe stem against his teeth.
“What else do you know?”
“They also know that you have a plan underway. You should withdraw to fight another day. You risk capture and failure.”
She shook her head. “We have an agenda and a timeline. The attacks on the presidents were part of a larger, coordinated effort to bring America to its knees. It will happen. We have worked too long and too hard to turn back now.”
“Our participation,” Hammon continued, “only extended to the assassination attempt. We were unaware of a larger plot. That is of no concern to us. We are simply being prudent, Lily,” he continued, using Hussein’s alias. “You have a beautiful estate here on this island. It was a stroke of genius to build a compound on a resort island. It’s the last place they will look.”
“This is not my estate, you idiot. Do you think I would bring you to my headquarters? This is a secondary property. My headquarters are far from here.”
Hussein watched the eyes of the spy grow wide for an instant. Then they reacquired their steely glare.
“This surprises you? We have many resources.”
Hammon shrugged, trying to feign indifference. But Hussein could see his frustration. The man had thought he still had her trust and could waltz into her headquarters. He had struck a deal with his government to save his own ass. Of that Hussein was certain. It’s the only reason he would agree to such a meeting.
“Has our failure to kill the father and the son caused you to become meek and timid, Hammon?”
Hussein smiled. Her impression of him had changed in the first thirty seconds of their meeting. He was no longer the all-powerful, never-to-be-questioned font of wealth from which she had once drawn support. He was transformed in her mind to a morbidly obese means to an end. Delilah Hussein did not know this man’s real name. She did not care. It did not matter. She knew him as Hammon, the leader of a secret faction embedded deep within the American Central Intelligence Agency. He was a spy. She no longer needed his money. She needed something else.
“Hammon, what happened to the $24 million that was supposed to be transferred into the accounts after the assassinations?”
Hussein saw the skin around the fat man’s eyes crinkle as he smiled beneath the scarf. “That money was dissolved back into secret accounts automatically after the assassinations failed. You are not asking me to pay you for a failed operation, are you?”
Hussein returned the smile and shook her head. “Non, mon ami. I would never do that. But I do want something else. A favor, actually.”
Hussein had already aligned The Simoon with the growing, wealthy terrorist organization known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or ISIS, an organization spawned by the power vacuum in those two countries. Hussein had secured additional funds from The Watcher, the disgruntled, former colleague of Hammon and his terrorist organization, al-Nusra.
The round man shifted again in the wooden Adirondack chair. Its planks creaked in protest. Hussein sighed and leaned back, looking like a beached whale covered in a large floral print shirt. He placed the Sherlock Holmes-style pipe through the slit in the mask, revealing plump lips. He relit the blackened tobacco in its bowl.
Winter in America was winding down. Soon the tourists would vacate until the Northern Hemisphere autumn reappeared. Hussein liked it when the island became less populated. She had more freedom to move around. During the tourist season, she was a recluse.
“A favor?” Hammon replied with air of indignation.
Hussein could almost read his thoughts. This bitch has the audacity to ask for favors!
“I do not believe you are owed any favors, Madame! You have forgotten, Miss Lily, without my organization’s help, your operation would never have gotten off the ground. Do not blame us for the failings and incompetence of your operatives. If you are to proceed with further endeavors, you will do it without our assistance or funding.”
“Your Steven Cooper—or whatever his name is—was a key cog in that failure,” Hussein retorted. “He folded like a cheap lawn chair.”
“There were plenty of mistakes and failures to go around.”
“I see,” she continued, “that you will not be swayed by my words.” Hammon nodded. “That is correct. I have no money or favors for you.”
“I feared as much,” Hussein stated flatly. “You can’t blame a girl for trying, can you?”
“It never hurts to ask.” The crinkle around the man’s eye above the scarf told her he was smiling.
“So this meeting is not a complete waste, Hammon, you will give me something else. Something that is actually of much greater value than money. It is in fact the real reason I wanted to meet you.”
“And what is that?” His voice filled with concern.
“A piece of information.”
Hammon’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t understand.”
“Non, this information I wanted you to deliver personally.”
“I have no information for you.”
“Mais oui, you do.”
Hammon turned his palms toward the black night sky.
“I want to know where my son is being held.”
Hammon glared for a long moment. “I do not have such information.”
Hussein’s lips flattened into a thin line. She removed a handgun from beneath her silk gown and leveled it at her guest.
“I know you do.”
“I cannot give you something I do not have.”
“Then we will have to use other means to extract it.”
Chrissie felt as if she’d been teleported back in time. Her body shook. All the demons she’d fought and managed to suppress for more than a year lurched at her. Simply because she’d thought she seen a shadow move in the back yard.
I thought all that was in the past?
She truly understood how war-ravaged veterans felt. She watched the shadows for two more minutes. Nothing.
She refused to let the ghosts in.
The thought of removing her father’s Colt from its lock box in the bottom draw of the night stand flashed through her mind. She had slept with it under her pillow, loaded, for nearly six months after the presidential ordeal.
No! she told herself. I’m not going to be held captive by those memories. I have enough to deal with.
Chrissie climbed back into bed. Her thoughts shifted back to Jason. Her eyes found the familiar crack in the plaster of the ceiling and focused on it, her mind reliving the emotions and hurdles of the past two years.
Even if there were no other woman, should she marry Jason? Hell, should she stay with him?
In the last months, two critical issues had bubbled to the surface.
One was Michael, and the way he acted toward her. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she sensed Michael’s inability to accept her had something to do with the assassination attempts or something that had happened because of it.
The second was the way Jason himself acted.
In the beginning, after things had calmed down, they grew into a routine, keeping The Colonial running and getting to know each other again. In the days and weeks that followed, she saw the warm, sensitive man she’d fallen in love with all those years ago. He worked hard and was very attentive toward her. She knew that he, too, was in love.
As days turned into weeks and then months, their thoughts turned to building a life together. Confident that they would make it work this time, they discussed combining their households and their finances, where they would live, and even children. Chrissie told him that she wanted to get to know his son, Michael.
“He will always be the priority in your life,” she had told him one night. He comes first. And I want to build a new family around the three of us.”
Jason seemed motivated and enthusiastic about all of it. And they started to take steps to make it all happen. Jason introduced Chrissie to Michael at dinner one night at his house in York County.
Jason thought it would be best to have the meeting take place in surroundings the boy was familiar with. Dinner was simple: hamburgers on the grill, corn on the cob, macaroni salad, and watermelon wedges.
Jason and Chrissie did most of the talking. Jason tried to draw Michael out, prompting him with questions and observations. Michael seemed shy and withdrawn, responding with one-word answers.
Chrissie chalked it up to Michael’s understandable discomfort with Jason’s new girlfriend. But the distance between her and Michael never seemed to close. He was standoffish and avoided her whenever possible. It frustrated Jason. Chrissie told Jason to leave it alone. But Chrissie’s presence in Jason’s life seemed to be driving a wedge between Jason and his son.
Then there was the subtle evidence she’d found that Jason was doing things behind her back. He’d say he was going out for a while and disappear for four and five hour stretches. The phone would ring and Jason would go into another room and close the door to take it.
After four weeks of ignoring it and trying to convince herself that it was nothing, she’d finally asked, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” was his reply.
She pressed him on it. “Just mind your own business, please,” Jason demanded. Chrissie backed down and did not bring it up again. The matter, however, festered.
After enough gut-wrenching, she’d decided to follow him. He’d stopped at the strip joint. He sat outside in the Mustang waiting for almost fifteen minutes. Chrissie could not bear to see Jason with another woman. She left before her heart could be broken.