“They wanted a sitrep of our situation on the ground.”
“Just on the ground?”
Mac nodded, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Did anyone ask about Dr. Shah?”
“It may have come up,” said Mac.
“And you told him?”
“You know, Lizzie,” said Mac. “Look around. We’re not any good at this. Regime change. Empire building. You should have thought of the consequences before you got us into this mess.” He made a showof checking his wristwatch, a beat-up Casio G-Shock. “Listen, I got to run. Have a safe flight home.”
“You bastard,” she said.
He came closer and kissed her on the cheek. “Back at ya,” he whispered.
A week later,The New York TimesandThe Washington Postran stories about the “Neocon’s Last Gasp” and “another failed attempt to find the smoking gun.”
A week after that, Eliza was let go, but not before being reprimanded before her father’s own committee—and on C-SPAN, for all the world to see. It was the first and only time she’d lost a job.
It was not something she forgot.
“Mr. McGee,” said Elkins, once again in the present. “When did you lose your leg?”
“Pardon me?”
“In Iraq. The accident with Mac Dekker.”
“April 6, 2006,” said McGee.
“I’m sorry for you,” she replied.
“Shit happens,” said McGee.
April 6, 2006. A week after she left Iraq. She’d been so angry, so caught up in her own hurt feelings, that she’d never wondered if something might have happened to him.A broken leg, knee, and jaw. Laid up six months.All this time she hadn’t known.
“55 Rue du Bac is a five-story building,” said the tech. “There are twenty-six handsets either in the building or within a ten-meter radius. That’s as good as we can get without tapping into NSA.”
That, Elkins knew, was never going to happen. Not without lots of paperwork. The director would have a conniption.
“Forget it,” she said. “We’ll never find him that way.” She turned to Baker. “New idea. If Mac is so keen on finding Ava Attal, maybe we should be too. You said Rosenfeld works at a restaurant. He must speak English. Call and see if he’s there. I want to know what he told Mac Dekker.”
Chapter 28
Passy, sixteenth arrondissement
Paris
“I need phone numbers,” said Harry Crooks.
The tea kettle was empty. Mac had finished recounting the events of the last twenty-four hours. He rose from his chair and made a tour of the living room.
“You can track a mobile signal?” he asked. “From here?”
“No,” said Crooks. “Only the telecoms can track the exact location of a mobile handset in real time ... or the people you and I used to work for. But I can track where a mobile handset has been.”
“Without hacking a telecom?”
