Sardar stood up, saying, “Tomorrow, so get some rest. We’ll talk more at breakfast.”
Sardar moved to the door and the Ghost said, “Wait.”
Sardar turned back and the Ghost said, “You did all of this simply to getthem to join you? Because they asked for me? You hired American criminals, killed American police, transported me across the border to Mexico and flew me here because they asked for me?”
Sardar said, “No, no, of course not. That aspect came up while you were traveling, when I was talking to them over the net. It was a happy coincidence of breaking you out.”
“Then why?”
Sardar opened the door and said, “Tomorrow. You’ve heard enough for tonight.”
The Ghost stood up and said, “No. What else do you want me to do?”
Sardar studied him for a moment, then said, “I want you to do what you do best. I want you to kill the prime minister of Israel.”
Chapter 26
I paced around our hotel room like a stray cat thrown into a house for the first time, Jennifer ignoring me by pretending to look at our laptop.
She said, “There’s a bunch of chain restaurants near this Embassy Suites within walking distance, or we could take the rental a little farther for a steak house. No idea if it’s any good.”
I said nothing and she said, “Pike, if we want the steak house, I have to put in a reservation. We’re not going to get one after the Oversight Council meeting.”
I stopped pacing and said, “I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose my appetite after that happens.”
We’d driven straight from the TO reservation to Tucson, and I passed on the information I had on the Ghost to the Taskforce for further exploitation. Clearly, the Ghost had significant help, and I’d asked them to check all immigration ports of egress from Mexico, because I was positive his “sponsors” weren’t setting him up with a condo in Cancún.
The good news was that the Oversight Council hadn’t blown a gasket when they’d found out I’d traveled to the TO tracking the Ghost. Wolffe had even released the rest of my team to meet me in Tucson and had given Veep the Rock Star Bird to fly here.
A Gulfstream 650, it was a private jet that was leased to Grolier Recovery Services by a host of different cutouts and was ostensibly my private company jet but was actually owned by the Taskforce. It looked like something a rock star would use—hence the nickname—but instead of champagne andstripper poles, it had pretty much anything we would need on a mission, from surveillance gear on the calm end to firearms and explosive breaching charges on the violent end. It was a flying forward operations base that, along with its integrated communications suite, gave me pretty much everything I needed for any contingency. Wolffe had stuck out his neck releasing it without Omega authority, and I appreciated it.
The bad news was that the Oversight Council wanted to meet to discuss what we’d learned before giving us permission to continue. In their minds, the Ghost had better be planning something bad and not just fleeing. Killing a sheriff didn’t warrant the risk of turning us loose when they could just rely on someone like Interpol to round him up twelve years from now. I’d asked to VTC in for the meeting, to just hear what was discussed, and Wolffe had granted permission.
Jennifer said, “It won’t be that bad. They’ll be worried about what he’s doing out in the wild. Maybe someone will have something before the meeting.”
Like magic, my phone vibrated. I looked at the caller ID and said, “Taskforce.”
I answered, waited for the encryption protocol to synch, and said, “Pike.”
I heard, “This is Creed. We got a hit on your name. One Tarek Navarro flew out of Mexico City with a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires, Argentina, with an onwards connection to Puerto Iguazú.”
Argentina? Not Lebanon or the UAE or Qatar?
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yeah. It’s the single hit we got.”
“How can we confirm it’sourTarek Navarro? Do they have any photos? Anything concrete?”
“No photos, but the passport used was from Lebanon, so that fits.”
Jennifer was looking at me expectantly and I held up a finger, saying, “I don’t believe that. It’s a trick. They’ve been very good so far, and this is just another diversion.”
“Well, maybe so, but that’s all we’ve got.”
“Does Argentina use biometrics on entry?”
“Stand by.”
