Granger, he’d found Ding, brought him up to speed, then called Mary Pat’s cell and arranged to meet her at home later in the afternoon. At her urging, he arrived early and shot the breeze with Ed for an hour before she arrived. While Ed started dinner, Clark and Mary Pat retreated to the back deck with a pair of beers.
Ignoring Hendley’s “tread carefully” warning, Clark laid his cards on the table. They’d known each other too long for anything less. Mary Pat didn’t bat an eye. “So Jack did it, huh? Always wondered if he’d gone through with it. Good for him. Well, they didn’t waste much time snatching you two up, did they? Who tapped you?”
“Jimmy Hardesty, about ten minutes after Alden canned us. The thing is, Mary Pat, I think we’re working on the same puzzle. If you’re not okay with cross-decking whatever intel we dig up ...”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“For starters, we’ll be breaking at least three federal laws. And be risking the wrath of the Aldens at Langley.”
“If we can get this asshole—or even get a little closer to getting him—I’ll be fine with that.” Mary Pat took a sip of her beer, then glanced sideways at Clark. “Does this mean Hendley’s footing the bill?”
Clark chuckled. “Call it a gesture of goodwill. So what’s it going to be? A onetime deal, or the beginning of a wonderful friendship?”
“Share and share alike,” Mary Pat replied. “Bureaucracy be damned. If we have to put our heads together to get our man, so be it. Of course,” she added with a smile, “we’ll have to take credit, seeing as how you guys don’t exist and all.”
Half a tablet of Ativan and a beer helped Clark pass the last five hours of the flight in a deep, untroubled sleep. As the plane’s wheels bumped and squelched on the Peshawar airport’s tarmac, he opened his eyes and looked around. Beside him, Chavez was stuffing his iPod and paperback into his carry-on.
“Time to work, boss.”
“Yep.”
Surprising neither of them, their passage through the airport’s customs and immigration line went slowly but without incident. An hour after entering the terminal, they were outside at the ground transportation curb. As Clark raised his hand for a cab, an accented voice behind them said, “I would advise against that, gentlemen.”
Clark and Chavez turned to see a lanky white-haired man in a powder-blue summer suit and a white plantation hat standing behind them. “The cabs are death traps here.”
“You would be Mr. Embling,” Clark said.
“Indeed.”
Clark introduced himself and Chavez, using first names only. “How did you—”
“A friend e-mailed me your flight information. After that, it was simply a matter of looking for two chaps with the appropriate air about them. Nothing obvious, mind you, but I’ve developed something of a . . . radar, I suppose you would call it. Shall we?”
Embling led them to a green Range Rover with tinted windows parked beside the curb. Clark got in the front passenger seat, Chavez in the back. Soon they were pulling out into traffic.
Clark said, “Forgive me, but your accent—”
“Dutch. A throwback to my service days. There’s a significant Muslim population in Holland, you see, and they’re fairly well treated. Much easier to make friends—and stay alive—as a Dutchman. A matter of self-preservation, you see. And your covers?”
“Canadian freelance writer and photographer. Spec piece for National Geographic.”
“That’ll do in the short term, I suppose. The trick to blending is to look as though you’ve been here awhile.”
“And how do you do that?” This from Chavez.
“Look scared and disheartened, my boy. As of late, it’s the Pakistan national pastime.”
Care for a quick tour of the hot spots?” Embling asked a few minutes later. They were driving west on Jamrud Fort Road, moving toward the heart of the city. “A little who’s who of Peshawar?”
“Sure,” Clark replied.
Ten minutes later they pulled off Jamrud and headed south on Bacha Khan. “This is the Hayatabad, Peshawar’s version of your South Central Los Angeles. Densely populated, impoverished, very little police presence, drugs, street crime ...”
“And not much in the way of traffic laws,” Chavez said, nodding through the windshield at the zigzagging stream of cars, trucks, man-hauled carts, and mopeds. Horns honked in a nearly continuous symphony.
“No laws at all, I’m afraid. Hit-and-runs are almost a sport here. In years past, the city’s made some effort to lift the neighborhood, mind you, but they never seem to get any traction.”
“Bad sign when the police stop showing up,” Clark observed.