Collateral Damage

“Should the U.S. compensate victims?” said the journalist. Zen thought he remembered him from a conference somewhere—he was an American representing AP overseas.

“I don’t even know if it was a U.S. aircraft.”

“Does this delegitimize the entire coalition involvement?” asked a short, dark-haired woman who’d just joined the group.

“How would it do that?” asked Zen.

“So killing civilians is its goal?”

She was obviously trying to bait him, but Zen had plenty of practice dealing with that sort of thing. He simply ignored her, turning back to the reporter for CNN.

“I think the coalition has a lot of good people here,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll figure out what happened and fix it. If it needs to be fixed.”

“General Zongchen said that he wanted you on the investigating commission,” said the AP reporter. “Are you going to join it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” asked Toumi.

Mousetrapped. There was nothing else to do now but to sidestep, a maneuver best performed with a smile and a bit of a wink. Zen told them that he’d have to see what happened.

He proceeded to answer different variations of the same questions for the next ten minutes or so, until the reporters finally concluded that he wasn’t going to change what he was saying. The man from CNN thanked him, and the others promptly turned around and headed away to file their stories.

“Well, that went over well,” Zen said sarcastically to Jason. Following his aide’s glance, he saw that Mina Toumi was standing on the other side of him.

“I’m sorry—you were trying for an exclusive,” said Zen. “I didn’t mean to ruin it.”

“It’s OK,” she said.

“Did you get everything you needed?”

“I’m OK. Thanks.” She gave him a tight smile, then left the room.

“Tongue back in your mouth,” Zen said to Jason, who was staring after her.

“I wasn’t—I didn’t . . .”

“Relax, Jay. If it was any more obvious I’d have to hose you down. Did you get her phone number at least?”

“E-mail.”

“You’re on your own,” Zen told him, wheeling from the room.

5

Benghazi, northern Libya

Alone as the doors closed, Neil Kharon stepped back against the wall of the elevator and took a long, slow breath as he emptied his mind. Talking to the rebel princess required a complete suspension of ethics and opinion. Idris al-Nussoi was a despicable creature, ignorant and willful.

But perhaps that’s why she had become the de facto head of the resistance.

Of course, it could be worse: he could be talking to the Libyan government officials.

His chest expanded slowly as he filled his lungs. He felt his muscles pushing outward, stretching the carbon-fiber vest he wore beneath his sweater as protection against a double cross. The vest would stop a Magnum round, and had even survived, intact, against a WinMag bullet in testing; otherwise he would not have put up with its constrictions. Kharon did not like to be constrained in any way. Tight spaces, like elevator cars, filled him with fear.

He could deal with it, as long as there was plenty of light. He had learned several tricks over the years.

He held his breath for a moment. The yoga guru he had learned the technique from emphasized the vibration one felt at this point, claiming that it put the adept practitioner in contact with the basic life force of the universe. Kharon had long ago dismissed this as bunk, but he savored the sensation nonetheless: a slight tingle through the muscles, relaxing against the nerve endings they intersected with.

A moment of calm preparation for the job ahead.

The elevator doors opened. Kharon stepped out and held up his arms as two men in tracksuits approached. They were bodyguards, though he wondered why anyone in their right mind would trust them. Disheveled, they smelled of fish and Moroccan hashish. They were several inches shorter than Kharon, and considerably heavier.

The one on the right frisked him quickly—it was so inefficient, Kharon could have smuggled an MP–5 in his pants—and then stepped back. The other growled in an indecipherable language—it wasn’t Arabic, Berber, English, or Italian, all languages Kharon could converse in. But he knew from experience it meant he could go.

He walked down the hall toward a pair of men dressed in faded army fatigues. Their clothes were old, but the AK–74s they flashed as a challenge were brand new. These had been supplied by Kharon’s sometime partner, a Russian spy-cum-arms dealer. The two men had been working together on and off now for several years, the Russian for profit, Kharon for something more satisfying and considerably darker.

The guards eyed him suspiciously even though they had just watched him being searched. Kharon ignored them as best he could, staring straight ahead at the door he was aiming for.

It opened before he reached it. His approach had been watched on a closed circuit television camera.

But there were no other sensors or bugs. A thin wire sensor in his shirt acted as an ante

“So, you have arrived. And on time,” said the short, fat man who appeared behind the door. He was Oscar Sifontes, a Venezuelan advisor to the rebels, the princess specifically. In theory he was independent, though everyone knew he was paid by Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., the state oil company. He had a cigar in his left hand and he waved it expansively, as if he was happy to see Kharon.

In reality, Sifontes considered him a tool of the Russians, and therefore a rival for influence. He had tried to persuade the princess to have nothing to do with him—something Kharon would have suspected even if he had not bugged the suite.

The Venezuelan’s designer jeans were at least two sizes too small; with his white shirt, he looked like an ice cream cone, with a moustache on top.

And a very smelly cigar.

“We are having fine weather, do you not think?” said Sifontes, by way of making conversation. “It is more pleasant here than Sicily. The weather there was cloudy. In Libya, there is only sun.”

“Weather is too random to consider,” said Kharon.

While Sifontes struggled to translate the words into Spanish and then make some sense of them, Kharon strode from the small foyer into a large common room. The princess was sitting on a couch at the far end, watching a video feed on an iPad and talking on a cell phone at the same time. The iPad was a constant companion. It had been given to her by the Americans some months before as a present. It wasn’t bugged—there had been numerous checks, including Kharon’s own. Nonetheless, he suspected that the accounts it co

Kharon bowed slightly. It was an u

Her long black dress was baggy by Western standards, though here would be considered modern. The silk scarf that had slid back on her head had bright blue and green stripes on the deep black field, another straddle of old and new.

“Your trip back from Sicily was enjoyable?” Kharon asked in English. He preferred the language to Arabic because it was harder for her underlings to understand.

“Airplanes are not my favorite thing. But we made it in one piece.”

“They treated you well?”

“Always.” She dropped the iPad on the couch with a dramatic flourish. “But now we see that the Americans have bombed a city. That will set us back weeks.”