“Yes,” Nash said. “He said to trust him.”
Of course he did.
CHAPTER 78
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN
BILAL Din was not a happy man.
To be fair, he knew he had only himself to blame. While the salary he earned as a corporal in Pakistan’s Airport Security Forces, or ASF, was not extravagant, it did provide Bilal with enough to take care of his small family.
And therein lay the problem.
Bilal did not want a small family. He wanted a house full of children. Boys and girls who would grow up to a world outside of Pakistan and careers beyond government service. Bilal wanted his offspring to study at the best universities and earn diplomas with exotic names like Oxford, Cambridge, or Harvard.
Bilal was a practical man and knew that achieving these dreams required money. Money on a scale that his government career couldn’t provide. With this in mind, Bilal had taken on a second, more lucrative job.
A job with the CIA.
But Bilal wasn’t a spy.
He was a purveyor of information. He provided his handler with tidbits concerning the comings and goings of people and cargo through Islamabad International Airport’s busy terminals.
In exchange for his service, his offshore bank accounts received regular deposits.
Though he knew that what he was doing was wrong, Bilal slept soundly at night. As part of his agreement with his Agency handler, he did not provide information on Pakistani officials or trade in national secrets. He bore his birth country no ill will and did not consider himself a traitor. Bilal was simply a pair of eyes and ears for the Americans, who no doubt had countless more officials like him on their payroll. In the five years since he’d first brokered the arrangement, Bilal had never had cause to second-guess his decision to work for the Agency.
Until now.
“Do you have the uniforms?”
The idyllic setting provided a strange backdrop for the question. A question loaded with intent. Bilal stood on the gravel-lined access road just south of the Rama Dam spillway. The site offered a picturesque view of the man-made lake to the east and was a prime spot for anglers during daylight hours. At this time of the night, however, no fishing poles jutted out from the concrete flood barriers lining the shore and no vehicles were parked among the green weeds spouting between the loose rock.
Well, almost no vehicles.
In addition to Bilal’s patrol car, a battered blue Honda Civic occupied the sought-after fishing spot. A Honda Civic bearing two people.
The question had come from the slighter of the pair.
The woman.
Though the woman spoke flawless Urdu in a perfect accent, Bilal did not believe she was Pakistani. Everything about her appearance and speech might suggest otherwise, but Bilal sensed an arrogance found in only one place.
America.
Or maybe that was his anger speaking.
Without answering, Bilal opened the passenger door to his patrol car, withdrew a pair of Airport Security Forces uniforms, and handed them to the woman. He instinctively disliked her, but Bilal kept his eyes fixed on her face. She was attractive, but that wasn’t why Bilal refused to look at her companion.
The man terrified him.
Dark-skinned, with a thick beard and wavy black hair, her companion could have hailed from a half a dozen countries. Bilal didn’t think the man was Pakistani either, but he was making a concerted effort not to appear interested in the stranger. The man had done nothing that could be construed as aggressive, but Bilal instinctively placed him in a different threat category. He had never seen the pair before and, Allah willing, would never see them again. The less he knew about whatever they were planning, the better.
His task complete, Bilal was turning back to his vehicle when a voice stopped him.
A male voice.
“Wait.”
Bilal froze, hating himself for responding. As a member of the ASF, he was charged with keeping airports and, more importantly, passengers safe. As such, he’d developed a law enforcement officer’s instincts when it came to identifying dangerous men. While the man standing in front of him was not particularly physically imposing, nor was his stature provocative, Bilal’s sixth sense still screamed a single word.
Beware.
“I provided the uniforms,” Bilal said. “My part is done.”
“Not quite,” the man said. “We need your car.”
Bilal rested his right hand on the butt of his service revolver.
To anyone who understood the language of violence, his message was clear.
This conversation was at an end.
“Uniforms sometimes go missing,” he said. “The same can’t be said of patrol cars. Besides, if I gave it to you, how I would get back to the airport?”
Bilal inwardly grimaced at his response. Besides providing the man with an opportunity to offer a rebuttal, his lapse had done something worse—display weakness. As he’d done during his initial meeting with his handler, Bilal knew that he had to establish and maintain the terms of this relationship. Dangerous people could sense weakness in the same manner in which a shark could smell blood.
Still, his question was valid.
