She thought for ten seconds, then asked, “And Rafiq?”
“Dead.”
She raised a dark eyebrow. “You killed him?”
“It couldn’t be helped. Akil and I got in a firefight with some suspicious individuals in a farmhouse off the road to Toulon.”
“That was you?”
“That was us.”
“French television is reporting six bodies recovered from a house burned to the ground. They also recovered four young women who claim they were being held prisoner.”
“That’s the place.”
“Charming.”
“Not really. We need to get out of the country as soon as possible.”
“That can be arranged. Where’s the Renault?”
Crocker had forgotten about the car. “As far as I know, it’s still parked near the club in Noailles.”
“All right. Put the individual you captured in the back of my vehicle. Cover him with a blanket.”
“There’s one last thing.”
She looked at Crocker’s outfit. “I don’t do laundry.”
“We need someone who can help us recover data from a laptop that’s been underwater.”
She checked her watch. “It’s two in the morning.”
“This is important. It has to be done now.”
“Fine. Throw the guy in the boot and get in.”
“What about his car?”
“I’ll deal with that later.”
She picked up a cell phone from the seat next to her and dialed while the two SEALs returned to the BMW to get the driver.
Crocker liked her style.
She drove them to a modern apartment building located on a bluff overlooking the port and waited in the SUV. Crocker and Akil hurried through the white lobby decorated with mirrors and fake flowers.
Up on the sixth floor a pale man with glasses and thinning, disheveled reddish blond hair answered the door. Wearing sweatpants and a dirty white tee, he introduced himself as Albert Hayes.
“You guys want coffee?” he asked, listing to his right. “It’s in the kitchen.”
Hayes took the laptop from Crocker and hurried inside.
The apartment was dark, disorderly. Magazines, newspapers, half-empty containers of food strewn over sofas, tables, counters. A framed poster from Chinatown on the wall.
Crocker poured himself a cup of black coffee and walked back into a narrow bedroom where Albert Hayes sat at a long desk covered with computers. The shades were drawn, the bed unmade.
“What’d you do to it?” Hayes asked, waiting for the laptop to boot.
“Someone threw it into a lake.”
He shook his head and hooked up the laptop to another computer, started punching keys. “They generally don’t like water. What are you looking for?” Hayes asked.
“Information.”
“What kind?”
There was movement on the laptop screen. Code scrolling slowly.
Hayes looked disappointed. “Well, I can tell you one thing: the hard drive is fucked.”
“Then thanks for the coffee.”
“Not so fast.”
Hayes worked the keyboard, disconnected cables, reconnected them again. Then slipped a disk in the drive and waited.
Something happened. A message came up on the screen. The tall man leaned forward and slapped more keys.
“I found some e-mails,” Hayes reported. “Recent, it looks like. Check ’em out.”
Crocker and Akil leaned in over his shoulder. Some were in French, others in Arabic. Akil started translating.
Most of them didn’t make sense. “The furniture has been moved to Naples.” “JS has a new carpet. Returning home.” “Give the girl three candy bars after lunch.”
“It’s in some kind of rudimentary code,” Hayes offered.
“Looks like.”
“Not my department.”
Crocker instructed Hayes to stop at one, subject “Carpets,” which read: “We have stored the carpets here. The one you ordered for the sheik will be delivered to the port in K-P on the 25th. I hope he appreciates its exceptional quality.”
Crocker asked Akil to read it again.
“Could be something.”
“The sheik.”
“Yeah, the sheik.”
“What’s K-P?
“Karachi, Pakistan?”
Crocker remembered that Dorina had said that Cyrus was taking the girl east.
Hayes found references to S. Rastani in two other recent e-mails.
“Any mention of a leader, someone named Zaman?” Akil asked.
“No,” Hayes answered. “Even though the e-mails come from different addresses, I believe they’re from the same source.”
“Why?”
“They’re all directives. They sound like they’re coming from someone who is moving pieces on a big chessboard.”