Page 31 of The Devil's Ransom

I retrieved my Glock and said, “Okay, okay, let’s check and see if this place is anything other than a fistfight.”

In the second room we found our man, with his niece, both chained to a bed. He looked at us in fear.

I said, “Jahn Azimi?”

He nodded slowly, unsure if he should admit his name.

I turned to Brett and said, “Get the bolt cutters.”

To Jahn I said, “Hang on for just a second, and you’ll be free.”

His head sagged back into the pillow and the girl said something in Pashto that I didn’t understand. He turned to her, rubbed her head, and I saw a tear form in his eye.

And that was all the thanks in the world.

Chapter18

Shakor heard the robotic voice mail invitation and hung up the phone, wondering why his team leader refused to answer. He had not been able to get in touch with the capture team for close to twenty-four hours, and it worried him. The team leader, Bashir, had called him yesterday, jubilantly bragging about the successful mission against Jahn and the CIA agent. He’d said they were in a safehouse and intending to travel back to Afghanistan after midnight, when any Tajik checkpoints would be laxer.

And now Shakor couldn’t get in touch with Bashir at all. Out of the four different calls throughout the night, only one resulted in contact early in the morning, but it wasn’t Bashir. It was a lowly team member, who’d told him Bashir had gone out for supplies and would call as soon as he came back, but Bashir had not.

After that one contact, nobody was picking up, leaving him without an answer as to why the team member had Bashir’s phone. He’d thought about that question after he’d disconnected, and it made him uneasy.

It might mean nothing. In fact, the lack of contact was probably a good sign, as Shakor knew the cell service dropped to nothing outside of Dushanbe, so the team was probably on the road right now. At any rate, he had little time to dwell on it, as he had his own mission to complete.

He turned to the other man inside their little Airbnb and said, “Any word from the airport?”

“Nothing. A few private aircraft taking off and that same shuttle helicopter coming and going, but nobody’s touched our plane.”

It had taken them two days to get their passports in order from the Haqqani network in Uzbekistan, and in that time, using the tail number of the aircraft, they’d determined that the plane was owned by a rich Russian and had flown to Zurich.

That was the worst possible case, leaving Shakor with fantasies of the treasure disappearing into a Swiss vault owned by some bloated Russian oligarch. It was the same thing they’d thought had happened the first time the Taliban had taken over, way back in 1989, which had proven false, but now theyknewAhmad had taken the treasure, and that he’d takenthisplane to Zurich. And so, without anything else, he’d flown his team to Zurich and placed surveillance on the aircraft, waiting on someone to show up so they could interdict him. Or surveil him. Or something.

So far, it had not provided any fruit.

Just as he was wondering about becoming more aggressive in his tactics, but unsure of what that would be, his phone rang. He looked at the number, and saw it was Haqqani. Shakor dreaded answering it, but he did anyway.

“Hello, sir.”

“I received no status report yesterday. Where do we stand?”

“I had nothing to report yesterday, but I do today. We have Jahn.”

“You have Jahn? Seriously? Why wasn’t I told?”

“It just happened. We caught him in Tajikistan.”

“When will he be here? Back in Kabul?”

“Soon. Bashir is driving now. I’m sorry I didn’t call, but I’ve been busy in Zurich trying to catch that other traitor and find the treasure.”

“You mean Ahmad Khan? You don’t have him? You’ve been in Zurich for over a day and a half.”

Taken aback, Shakor said, “I know that, sir, but the only lead we have is the aircraft. We’re on it twenty-four seven, and so far nobody’s gone to it. When they do, we’ll get them and find out where he went. Best case, it will be Ahmad himself.”

He heard a breath, then some cursing. When Haqqani came back on the phone he said, “Do you not watch the news?Ahmadis in Zurich. He’s turned himself in to the United States consulate there. He’s under the protection of the Americans now. How could you miss that?”

Shakor said nothing, the words bouncing through his head like a cue ball smashing around a billiard table. He put his hand over the phone and snapped his fingers, saying, “Google Ahmad Khan in Zurich.”

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