Lost Luggage (John Flynn Thrillers Book 5) Page 2

  Flynn nodded slowly.

  “And we have more contacts down that particular road,” said Gorski. “Don’t we?”

  “We do.”

  Flynn glanced around the bar, with its mix of local and international people. Very few of them were tourists. Even now, most of the people who came to Basra did so because of the riches that lay beneath the sand. “But not here,” he said. “Iraq’s a bust. Just like all the other avenues of inquiry. They’re all dead. Except for one.”

  Flynn put his coffee down and stood.

  “Where are we going?” asked Gorski with a glint in his eye.

  “We’re going to see an old army buddy.”

  The man sat across the bar from the two foreigners. He wasn’t concerned that they would notice a man sitting by himself. He had observed that traveling businessmen often did that. Not that he was any kind of businessman. He wore a white button-up shirt and gray trousers and fit the part, more or less. But he wasn’t staying in the hotel. Places that catered to foreign businessmen were well above his pay grade. He wasn’t being paid enough to cover one night’s stay in a month, but he could wear the cost of a cup of tea, which he sipped as he watched the men talk.

  The man was paid the rough equivalent of five US dollars each month to keep an eye on his neighbor, Yusuf. He didn’t know who paid him, but each and every month the money arrived, so each and every month he kept his eyes open. Years ago there had been more to tell. But in the past few years, Yusuf had gotten on with his life just as people had done since the Americans packed up and mostly left. The man knew that Yusuf had worked as a driver for American diplomats even after the drawdown, but he was fairly certain that even that work had ended.

  He had almost forgotten that he was supposed to do something in return for the money that arrived each month, when his wife had remarked that Yusuf’s wife had mentioned that he was going back into the international zone the following day. She didn’t know why, and Yusuf’s wife had not suggested that he was once again working for the Americans. So the man had called the phone number he was asked to call and mentioned what he considered to be that fairly inconsequential fact. The voice at the other end of the line had told him to follow Yusuf and see whether he visited the embassy compound or not.

  Yusuf had not. He’d parked close by, but instead of heading across the road to the embassy, he had met two men in a café. It wasn’t until they stepped out of the café and back onto the street that he had even remotely recognized the two foreigners. He couldn’t be completely sure—everyone, including himself, had aged ten years since he had last seen them—but he was confident enough to call back and report the meeting.

  The voice had told him to follow the foreigners, not Yusuf. They knew where Yusuf lived. The man thought about asking for additional payment, but the voice didn’t sound in a particularly accommodating mood, so he followed the two men to a local hotel, where they got in a car and drove south.

  They drove a long way south. The man had never been to Basra, and the two foreigners seemed to drive around the city aimlessly, before stopping for a time in a warehouse area adjacent to the airport.

  Upon reaching the hotel, he had called the voice again and was told to provide photographs of the men if possible. He sat in the bar with his tea, pretending to look at his cell phone, the way people did constantly now. He snapped a couple of shots, zooming in as far as the focus would allow, and texted them to a number in Baghdad.

  Then he sat sipping his tea until the two men stood and walked up the stairs, he assumed to their rooms. He would wait a little longer to see whether they came back down. Then he would make his way out to his car, where he would spend the night in view of a building full of nice, comfortable beds.

  Chapter Three

  The next morning saw a hot wind blow across the city. Flynn and Gorski got out early and marched at a fast cadence for an hour before returning to their rooms. Flynn couldn’t shake the sensation that they were being followed, but as they headed back to the hotel, his vigilance provided no evidence of a tail.

  They ate a breakfast of shakshuka and coffee before heading to the airport. Each man checked in one backpack, and then they made their way through security to wait for their flight.

  The man watched in confusion as the two foreigners strode away from the hotel. It was early but the day was already hot, and the men walked seemingly without purpose. He followed them in his car for a time but grew concerned about how noticeable his slow pace was. The man was no kind of international spy. He worked in a greengrocer’s, selling potatoes and dried chickpeas and onions. He had been a casual informant under Saddam’s old regime and had considered the new monthly stipend for watching Yusuf a gift from the heavens. But it came with no experience and no training and had, until now, involved nothing more than the occasional phone call.

  When the two foreigners turned on their heels and came back toward him, the man drove on, fearing that he had been spotted. He took a long loop around before coming back at the hotel and parking in the front lot. He was sitting there when the two men strode back into the hotel, and he was still there when they came back out and got into a cab.

  The man felt better about following a taxi, and he didn’t have to do it for long. The taxi dropped the two men off in front of the airport terminal, so the man pulled over short of the terminal and got out. He was certain that a security officer of some description was going to tell him to move on, seeing him as some kind of security threat, but the man knew that the voice on the phone would want to know where the two foreigners were going.

  He stepped inside and gave his eyes a moment to acclimatize to the change in light, then spotted the two men with their backpacks standing at a check-in desk underneath a sign for Air France. A cardboard destination placard had been slipped into a holder, which told him where they were going.

  He didn’t wait around. He knew he wouldn’t be able to follow through airport security, so he returned to his vehicle, where a local police officer abused him for leaving his car unattended. He just waved his hands and apologized, then drove out of the airport complex and pulled to the side of the road. He made the call. He told the voice where he was and what the two men were doing.

  “Where are they going?” asked the voice.

  “Nice, France,” said the man.

  For a moment there was silence, then the voice said, “Good, very good.”

  Then the line went dead.

  The voice belonged to a man sitting in a car on the street on which Yusuf lived. He passed for an Iraqi, and his paperwork confirmed that, but neither was true. The man had grown up in Iran and had been methodically and comprehensively taught to hate the nation of Iraq and its people, almost as much as he had been taught to hate the Americans. After ending the call with the greengrocer, the man-made another call of his own.

  This call was picked up in an office in Tehran. “Yes?”

  “The two foreigners have gone to the airport in Basra,” he said.

  “Where are they going?”

  “Nice.”

  “France? Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The driver will know,” said Tehran.

  “How badly do you want to know?”

  “Badly enough.”

  With the call ended, the man moved his car around the block and approached Yusuf’s apartment from behind. He didn’t live locally, but he had the details memorized. He came in off the lane and made his way up the stairs. He heard a television behind one door and a baby crying behind another.

  The man reached the door he wanted and simply knocked. There was no need for dramatics, at least not yet. There was no peephole in the door, so he waited until the lock cllicked and the door opened.

  He recognized the man in the apartment from a photograph. He was older and looked tired, but it was him.

  “Yusuf,” said the man.

  “Yes?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Why?”

  “Be
cause I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  “I don’t think I’ll—”

  The man pushed Yusuf in the chest and he stumbled back, and then he stepped inside and closed the door.

  “Who are you?” asked Yusuf.

  “My name is not important.” The man strode past Yusuf, through the small living room, and into the kitchen. He pulled a long knife, a filleting blade, from a drawer and returned to the living room. The man wasn’t a tough guy. He didn’t consider himself any kind of enforcer, but living in the desert made a man hard, and hard men survived by doing what was necessary.

  “What do you want?” asked Yusuf.

  “You need to look after your family, Yusuf,” said the man, walking past Yusuf with the knife in his hand. He stopped by the door and locked it. Then he turned back to Yusuf. “You need to tell me everything about the men you met yesterday. The men you have helped before.”

  “What men? I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  The man stepped closer and held up the knife. “You will talk to me. Before or after I gut your wife is up to you.”

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  “Yusuf,” said the man, shaking his head. Then he suddenly slashed at Yusuf, the knife cutting Yusuf’s arm as he stumbled back and fell to the floor beside a coffee table. Yusuf clutched at the wound but didn’t whimper or wail. “Who are these men? Why did they go to France?”

  The blood oozed from the wound between Yusuf’s fingers. The man stepped closer.

  Yusuf looked up at him. “Okay. I will tell you what you wish to know. Just leave my family alone.”

  The man snarled. “You talk first, then I will decide.”

  Yusuf nodded and tried to sit up but clutched at his arm and yelled in pain. The man standing over him frowned. He wasn’t surprised that this Iraqi cried like a baby. The man was about to spit his disgust on him when he heard the floorboard creak behind him. He made to turn.

  He saw the flash of movement but no more before the steel pot slammed into the side of his head. It nearly knocked him off his feet, but not quite. He stumbled around to see a woman standing there with a large stockpot in her hands. It was clearly heavy and difficult to wield, and he wasn’t planning on giving her a second chance to do it. He blinked heavily to clear the ringing in his ears, and lurched toward her.

  He parried the knife at the woman, but she was fast enough to step aside as the man bent forward. The woman didn’t lift the pot again, instead thrusting it into the man’s face.

  The second hit broke his nose and sent him off balance, and he flailed as he felt himself fall backward. He didn’t feel the impact with the floor, because the base of his skull hit the corner of the coffee table and he instantly felt nothing more at all.

  The man in Tehran pondered what to do. It was a lead, albeit a small one, and after all these years, he wasn’t even sure they had the infrastructure in place to follow it. Sanctions had decimated his country’s economy, and although those at the top lived as comfortably as ever, cuts had been made lower down. Their intelligence services were not what they had once been, and even at their height, they were hardly the CIA.

  But he still had some contacts in the field. Some were loyal to the Ayatollah, and others were loyal to the money. But Tehran could not afford to be choosy.

  He called an agent in Geneva. Not an agent of his government, more a mercenary, but he had used this man before to disappear dissidents and unruly journalists. He was one loyal to the cash, but he produced results.

  “I need you in Nice.”

  “I can be there in six hours. How many?”

  “Two, so far.”

  “And the job?”

  “Follow. For now.”

  “How many others do you have on them?”

  “How many are you?”

  “This kind of notice, I can be two.”

  “Then it’s two.”

  “Will they suspect they are being followed?”

  “I would work on that assumption.”

  “Then it will be hard. Do you have any tracking on them?”

  “No. I just got word they were leaving Basra via air tonight.”

  “We will be in Nice to meet them. Send me all you have on them. And you have my account number, correct?”

  “Yes, I will take care of that.”

  “Do.”

  Yusuf moved fast. He sent his wife into the bathroom to get a bandage for his arm as he moved to the man on the floor. He felt for a pulse and found none. The man had fallen back into the corner of the table with a sickening crunch. Yusuf knew the man was dead the instant his body went limp. He also knew that his wife would think about the life she had unwittingly taken later, but now was not the time. She was far too pragmatic for that. Women who survived in the desert always were.

  His wife wrapped his arm as she spoke. “He is dead?”

  “Yes. He hit the table.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Will another come?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I must get rid of this man. We can’t have the police involved. It was self-defense, of course, but whoever this man worked for may have people in the government.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we should go and visit our daughter in America.”

  He thought this might bring a smile to her face, but it did not. She stood and asked if his arm was okay, and he said yes. They rolled the man up in the rug on the floor, and then she helped drag the body to the door. Yusuf pulled a thick envelope from underneath a side table that stood by the front door, and then he patted the body down and found some keys and a phone. He turned the phone off and then left the apartment and searched for the man’s car. He used the remote to check each vehicle he passed, eventually finding the right one a block from his house.

  He left it where it was. Instead, he walked to a hookah bar about ten minutes away. The bar had a half dozen computers in the back that kids used to play online video games. Yusuf used one to send an email to the man who he had once known as Fontaine, the man who now called himself John Flynn. He wrote that a man had come asking, and that they would have to leave, and he would contact again when they were safe. After sending the message, he deleted the copy in his sent folder, logged out, and left.

  He walked further away from home to a place he had scoped out before, just in case. He walked in the door of the travel agency to the ring of a tiny bell. He couldn’t book anything online, as he had no credit card, so he had a travel agent do it for him. The agent found a flight for that evening to Dubai, then on to New York City and Atlanta. Yusuf used a wad of US dollars from his envelope to pay for the flights. The cash transaction wasn’t unusual, but the amount was, so the agent checked every bill to ensure it was real.

  With the tickets in hand, Yusuf returned to the man’s car and moved it into the alley behind his apartment, and ran upstairs. His wife was packing when he got back. There was no certainty that they would ever return, so her suitcase was filled with photographs and heirlooms. He would take a shirt and trousers and give her the rest of his suitcase for her clothes. He owned little that he would miss, and he was certain anything could be replaced in America.

  When she was packed, Yusuf had his wife help him with the body. He wanted to move before people started arriving home from work. They dragged the rolled carpet down the stairs and out to the waiting car. Together they hefted the dead weight into the back seat, then Yusuf told his wife to order a taxi.

  “What about you?”

  “I will dispose of this, then I will follow. If I don’t make it to the airport on time, leave without me.”

  “I will not.”

  “I say leave. I will follow. But you must promise me you will go. Our daughter needs you. Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  Yusuf’s wife returned to the apartment to collect her luggage. She would take the suitcase
with the heirlooms, he knew that. There was nothing else she couldn’t buy again in America.

  Yusuf drove across town. It was a place he had visited once before, back when things were bad. It was a small steel production plant, used to produce reinforcement material for concrete construction. He had waited to arrive because he needed the gate to be open. The plant didn’t run twenty-four hours; there wasn’t that much demand. But it did need the men who worked there to survive, so they closed during the worst heat of the day and opened as it cooled in the evening.

  He drove in through the gate like any other employee, but there was no one to check ID. No one cared. The factory was hot and smelled terrible, so no one who didn’t belong ever came in. Except occasionally.

  Yusuf stopped the man’s car at the rear of the plant and opened the back door. Then he pulled the rug across the seat and squatted down like a weight lifter, hefting the roll of carpet across his shoulders, then pressing up.

  For a moment he feared the weight would beat him, but he was motivated and stronger than his frame suggested. The desert made a man hard. He stumbled into the darkness of the plant and was hit by the heat of the foundry. There were no men around. They would be changing their clothes, getting ready for their shifts, but not entering the plant with the furnace until the last possible moment.

  Yusuf climbed up to a gantry and reached the edge of the crucible. The furnace ran even when the plant was closed—it took too much energy to reheat than to keep it running—so the heat was intense, and Yusuf’s eyes watered as he looked at the orange glow from within. Soon it would be filled with scrap metal that would melt inside it and be poured into molds. Today’s metal would be slightly less pure than normal.

  Yusuf heard a door open, and the light shone from the break area where the men were entering for their shifts. He quickly turned and backed up to the crucible and dropped the rolled carpet inside. It spat and flamed as the heat from the furnace burned the rug and possibly the body inside. Yusuf tossed the man’s phone in after him and was then driven back by the heat into the dark corner of the foundry.