Killer Instinct (Instinct #2)(64)

After only two hours of sleep, Foxx woke me up.

“We have a problem,” he said.





CHAPTER 90


FOXX DIDN’T bury the lede. He knew no other way.

“Your dinner with Sadira Yavari tonight? It’s off,” he said.

My first question would’ve been why were it not for what Foxx was holding in his hand.

“What’s in the file?” I asked.

“Nothing I can show you,” he answered.

I figured as much. I’ve always admired the almost comical paradox of US intelligence agencies. Everything has a code name and nothing is as it seems except for one thing, the files themselves. If something is top secret, it literally says so with a bright red stamp.

Just like on the file Foxx was holding.

“Okay. So what can you share?” I asked, rubbing my eyes. He’d obviously woken me up to tell me more than just the dinner was off. At least you better have, Foxx …

“Sadira Yavari has killed before,” he said, “and the other victim was also a nuclear physicist.”

I had to let that sink in for a few seconds. The implications. What it could mean. The questions it gave rise to.

“Was he also Iranian?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Was he tied to the Iranian nuclear program?”

“Yes.”

“Was he the same as Darvish? A double agent?”

Foxx suddenly got hard of hearing. I didn’t ask him where the hit on this other nuclear physicist had taken place, but that’s the question he answered. “The guy was on holiday in London, three years ago,” he said.

“Holiday?”

“Just go with it.”

Foxx was more than walking the line on what he could and couldn’t tell me. He was tap-dancing. “How about you just nod at the appropriate moment,” I said.

Any agency can get burned once with a double agent, the CIA included. Getting burned twice takes a special set of circumstances, if not an extraordinary level of incompetence. Unless, of course, it was a separate intelligence agency getting burned. Foxx had made a point of mentioning London.

“This other nuclear physicist,” I said. “He was doubling for MI6, wasn’t he?” Foxx hesitated for a moment until deciding that, yes, this was the appropriate moment for him to do as I’d asked. He nodded.

“Just like Darvish, dead in a hotel room,” he said. “A little different twist, though. Autoerotic asphyxia. He was found with a belt around his neck strapped to a clothes rod in the closet.”

“Again, it was made to look as if he were alone,” I said.

“Yes. An accidental death.”

Only it couldn’t be. The Brits had to know something was amiss. Or maybe it was Foxx who just now helped them put it together. Otherwise, Foxx and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.

“Did they know it was Yavari?” I asked.

“Not until about an hour ago,” he said. “She didn’t use Halo, just a good old-fashioned wig and glasses. They had surveillance footage of her in the hotel lobby with the guy. Back then, when it happened, she was thought to be Israeli. The decision was made to look the other way. They let it be.”

The reason they thought Yavari was Israeli was because the only other real possibility was that she was CIA, and if she were, Langley would’ve at least given MI6 a heads-up, if not outright involved them.

“So you gave MI6 a photo of Yavari,” I said.

“From her NYU bio, yes.”

“And because she didn’t use Halo they were able to confirm it was her.”

“The match was 89 percent.”

For facial recognition systems, especially given that she was wearing a disguise, that was as good as a lock.

My date with Sadira Yavari had always been a gamble, but the stakes had now changed. It wasn’t just me who’d be taking a risk. There was now interagency intel involved. Documentation. A file. Stamped TOP SECRET, no less.

In other words, Foxx now had a lot on the line as well. Namely his job. That was for one reason and one reason only.

“Go ahead and say it,” I told him.

He said it. “You’re a civilian, Reinhart. You’re just a goddamn civilian.”

As long as that was the case, Foxx couldn’t allow me to engage with Yavari. It didn’t matter who or what I was in the past. No, as far as the Agency was concerned, my days as an operative entitled me to a pension and not much else. That was then; this is now. I was nothing more than a civilian. A goddamn civilian.

“But what if I wasn’t?” I asked.

Foxx shot me a look. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”





BOOK FIVE


STARING DOWN THE DEVIL





CHAPTER 91


“ARE YOU ready to kill?” asked the Mudir.

He’d assembled his team again in the basement of the mosque in lower Manhattan. He had news for them. The timetable had changed. The attack would now be sooner. There would be more attacks to come as well.

As always, the Mudir had chosen his words very carefully. The idea that there were more missions was essential to preparing his men. Generals fought wars; soldiers fought battles. The Mudir had read that in a book about Patton while studying at Princeton. Battles—and, ultimately, wars—are won by those soldiers who believe they are invincible.