Killer Instinct (Instinct #2)(17)

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “But you still shouldn’t be here.”

And there in a nutshell, ladies and gentlemen, is what it’s like working for the CIA. A constant diet of contradictions that still somehow manage to make sense.

Some things never change.

The here where I wasn’t supposed to be was a dimly lit hallway outside an operating room in the basement of a safe house in Brooklyn that was currently doubling as a mortuary. Foxx, the CIA’s New York section chief, had acquiesced and allowed me to be here—against all rules and protocol, not to mention the fact that he never much liked me—because he knew what good friends Ahmed Al-Hamdah and I had been.

He also knew that Ahmed once had saved my life back in London. It was only right that I be able to pay my last respects. No matter how wrong.

The “official” count of the dead from the Times Square bombings stood at 216. That’s what was being reported all over the news. The actual count was 217.

Ahmed would forever be unaccounted for in every sense of the word. His parents were killed in a car accident when he was a toddler. He was an only child. The aunt who then raised him in London died from cancer while he was at Oxford. She never knew he’d been recruited by MI6. No one did.

Ahmed was required to lose touch with the friends he’d made at school. He was also forbidden to make any new ones outside work. The same rules applied when he later joined the CIA. The reason he and I first bonded was shared grief. I’d also lost someone I loved to cancer. Moreover, the same cancer as his aunt: pancreatic. My mother had died four months after she was diagnosed, when I was thirteen.

By the time Ahmed moved to the US, he was a true nowhere man. Those who crossed paths with him “off duty” knew him by a fake name. Even then, they rarely saw him. So rarely, in fact, that he once joked, It will be years before everyone realizes that they haven’t seen me in years.

Now, for sure, they were never going to see him again. They’d never know why either. Only a handful of people on the planet would ever know he had perished in the initial Times Square attack—after sacrificing his life trying to stop it.

Oh, the glamorous life of a CIA operative.

“He was embedded with a cell here that was connected to another cell that carried out the bombings,” said Foxx.

“Multiple cells?” I asked. The mere thought of there being one active in the area was bad enough. But two?

Foxx straightened his broad shoulders and nodded. In his mid-fifties without an ounce of body fat, the guy was a total gym rat and addicted to running marathons. That was how he managed the stress of the job. It was far healthier than wearing out a barstool.

“We get smarter, they get smarter,” he said. “Picture a bunch of capos working for a single mob boss, only the capos don’t actually know one another or even the identity of the boss himself. That’s what we’re dealing with.”

Yeah, that was smarter. “In other words, no single member can ever bring down the entire operation.”

“Exactly. Only Ahmed was on the verge of doing just that. He’d infiltrated one of the mini cells and had just cracked another. That was the one that carried out the bombings,” said Foxx. “Ahmed was literally running toward Times Square in hopes of defusing at least one of the bombs when he was shot. By then he’d been exposed.”

Foxx watched me flinch. He knew the details of what had happened to me in London. I’d been exposed during the Westminster Abbey sting. Ahmed killed my would-be assassin a mere second before the son-of-a-bitch would’ve been my assassin.

“Tell me more about this cell,” I said.

“You know I can’t do that. I’ve already told you too much.”

That’s what you think, Foxx. But we’re only getting started. You just don’t know it yet.

I slid my heel along the concrete floor, the scraping sound echoing up and down the hallway. Timing is everything.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” I said. “Did I mention the guy who came to visit me yesterday?”

“What guy?” asked Foxx.

“The one who’s part of the cell,” I said.





CHAPTER 23


FOXX FOLDED his arms, rolled his eyes, and let out a deep and pissed-off sigh all at once. “Way to bury the lede, Reinhart. And you wonder why I never liked you.”

“I never wonder at all,” I replied. “I know exactly why you never liked me.”

“You were reckless.”

“I took risks.”

“You withheld information from the Agency.”

“I was careful whom I told things to.”

“You were a wiseass.”

“Yeah, okay, you got me there,” I said. “Guilty as charged. Now, do you want to hear about this guy or what?”

I told Foxx everything about my visit from Benjamin Al-Kazaz, or rather, the guy posing as a lawyer by that name. He’d somehow connected me to Ahmed but clearly didn’t know if I was CIA or merely an old chum from our London school days. Hence the charade.

“How did you know the guy was lying?” asked Foxx.

“He picked the wrong fake name.”

“Al-Kazaz?”

“No, his first name,” I said. “I made a joke about his returning to Saudi Arabia and how they’re not exactly welcoming Benjamins these days. He had no idea what I was talking about.”