Altered State

It was different from the company’s headquarters, not so reminiscent of the Führerbunker in 1940s Berlin, but still secure enough with heavy gates and lookouts guarding entryways to the lobby and an underground garage.

“What kind of vehicles does Carlisle stash downstairs?” Bolan asked.

“Just the normal,” Falk replied. “You want to see the hardcore motor pool, with APCs and all, we’ll need to go west, to the Bala Kohi deh Afghanan district. Out by Kabul’s big TV tower.”

“Let’s see it,” Bolan said. “And then I need to find out when Carlisle is moving freight.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Park-e-Zarnegar, Kabul

The mausoleum of Abdur Rahman Khan stands in Zarnegar Park, near Kabul’s city center. Once, it was a palace, converted to a vast tomb by the king’s son when Abdur Rahman died in 1901. Its red dome mounted on a white octagonal structure, surmounted by small minarets, still ranked among the finest examples of nineteenth-century baroque architecture in Kabul.

Clay Carlisle loved beautiful things. He had booked the mausoleum for a private tour soon after his arrival in Kabul, but at the moment he had no eye for antiques. His thoughts were focused on the future, both immediate and long-term.

Zarnegar Park was the hub of Kabul, located near Embassy Row, overlooked by the stylish Kabul Serena Hotel and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Communications. None of those features had drawn Carlisle to the park, however. He was not a tourist, and his visit on this fading afternoon was strictly business.

His limousine stopped at a newspaper kiosk on the park’s western boundary. One of Carlisle’s four security guards stepped out of the car and returned seconds later with a new passenger in tow.

The man was fortysomething, with a long face under thinning sandy hair, his slender form clothed in a tailored suit of charcoal-gray. Black wingtips made his feet seem overlarge and heavy. Opaque sunglasses concealed his eyes, which Carlisle knew from past experience were washed-out bluish-gray with a tendency to squint.

“Strange days,” said Russell Latimer, the CIA’s deputy station chief in Kabul.

“Getting stranger all the time,” Carlisle replied. “What can you tell me about our dilemma?”

Latimer cocked one eyebrow behind his shades. “I’m not sure that I’d call it our dilemma just yet.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Carlisle made sure his practiced frown fell somewhere short of hostile. “My mistake, then. As an uninvolved outsider with no future stake in anything that happens to my company, what can you tell me about my dilemma, then?”

“Hold on a second, now.”

“Hold on to what, Russell? Remember what our Lord and Savior said in Matthew 12:30: ‘He who is not with me is against me.’”

“Hey, I’m with you, Clay. All right? I only meant—”

“Don’t tell me what you meant. Tell me what whatever you’ve found out about my problem.”

Sandwiched between two bodyguards who made him look emaciated, Latimer put on a brave face and replied, “You seem a little out of sorts today, my friend.”

“Seeing eleven of my men gunned down has that effect, Russ. Call me crazy.”

“I’d call it normal, in the circumstances. And I’m working on it, but—”

“I hope you’re not about to disappoint me,” Carlisle said.

“That’s never my intention.”

“But you don’t know anything.”

“We have a name, okay? Maybe we have a name.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Matthew Cooper. He left Baltimore for Paris yesterday, then caught connecting flights to Rome and into Kabul. Had a rental car waiting when he arrived. We have it now, impounded from the Old City around the time of your…unpleasantness this afternoon. Trunk full of guns and ammo, see? And I don’t mean the magazine.”

Carlisle ignored the feeble joke and asked him, “Is there more?”

“I ran a check on Cooper, stateside. He’s got credit cards that bill him through a P.O. box in San Diego. Some months he buys nothing, other times he’s in the high four figures. Always pays on time, with postal money orders. No luck running down a bank account or any kind of residential address in the time I’ve had, so far. It’s looking like a classic legend.”

Carlisle understood the Langley-speak. A “legend” was a false identity created to withstand at least a cursory examination, covering for…what?

“That doesn’t tell me anything of value,” he replied.

Latimer nodded. “I agree, and I’ll keep digging. But I know already that he doesn’t have a package with the Feebs or with the Pentagon. We’re running prints they lifted from the rental car, but in the circumstances, I’m not hopeful.”

“What’s your gut saying?” Carlisle asked.

“It could go either of two ways,” Latimer responded. “One, this Cooper is some kind of independent crook with business here in Kabul, unrelated to the incident this afternoon.”

“Who shows up just before my men get wasted, with a carload of weapons parked near the scene? Then disappears and leaves his car behind, after the shooting? I can’t swallow that kind of coincidence.”

“Neither can I,” Latimer said. “The second option is that he’s a black-ops artist sent or summoned for a meeting with your nemesis from DEA.”

“That sounds more logical,” Carlisle said.

“I agree. Unfortunately, at the moment I can’t tell you where he comes from, who he works for, what his orders are.”

“All right. What can you tell me?”

Latimer frowned and replied, “Smart money says that he’s official. The sophisticated cover tells me he’s got juice behind him.”

“And?”

“And I can’t see the DEA calling a private shooter in, no matter how badly you’ve pissed them off.”

“Could he be one of yours?” Carlisle inquired.

“From Langley?” Latimer appeared to be surprised by the suggestion. “I don’t think so, but it wouldn’t be the first time one hand didn’t know what the other was doing.”

“Can you check it out?”

“I’ll definitely try, but if there’s some kind of covert team-within-the-team, I may not have full access.”

“This is critical,” Carlisle reminded him. “I’ll deal with the man when he comes up for air, but I need to find out who’s behind him.”

“Agreed. It’s priority one.”

“Then I’ll let you get to it,” Carlisle said. A nod to his driver and the limo pulled over. “This must be your stop.”