Page 18 of Wild Card (The Trident Trilogy 3)

Millie, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 2020

As I get into the car, I take the seat opposite the director and stare at him—my arms crossed. He stares back with a slight smile on his face.

“You’re not scared of much, are you?” He squints at me like he’s trying to figure out what I’m thinking.

“I’m not scared of you if that’s what you mean. What do you want? You’re not getting the tape if that’s why you’re here, so quit asking.”

“You’re putting yourself in danger by holding onto it—”

I glare at him. “You have no idea what I’m willing to do to protect my dad. If you come for him—or me—that tape’s going to be heard by everyone. You’ll never be able to recruit another informant.”

He sighs and shakes his head. “I do want that tape, but that’s not why I’m here. Amar Petrovic is missing.”

“Okay,” I say slowly. “Last I heard, he and his wife moved to Rome. Is he an official missing person? Seems like that would be a police problem.”

“We’ve been tracking him—”

“For what possible reason?” I say, shaking my head. “He was never involved in the network. He just had the bad fortune to grow up on the same street with Sayid and Yusef.”

“We thought that at first, but now we’re not too sure. He’s always been the wild card in this situation.”

“He’s not a wild card,” I say, rolling my eyes. “He’s not any kind of card. He’s a dentist.”

“You know we’ve been pouring through your uncle’s journals since he died. You were there that day. You saw how many there were. He recorded everything. He refers to someone in the journals as “Mir.” The best we can make out, it’s the person who was running the network’s ground game. You know, taking care of their business affairs in broad daylight while the fighters were hiding in the mountains.”

“I know what “ground game” means, Paul.” He flinches when I call him by his first name, but then smiles. “Amar wasn’t running anyone’s ground game. Again, he’s just a dentist.”

“It’s a good cover—”

“It’s not a cover. I had Amar under observation for months before we went in and grabbed him for an interview. He never did anything suspicious—”

“Except talk to your uncle on burner phones!”

“I talked to him about that. He said Sayid was rambling on those calls. Best I can make out, Sayid knew he was dying of cancer, and he wanted to relive old childhood memories.”

“Really, Millie? Come on. You’re not that naive. You think one of the world’s deadliest terrorists suddenly wants to talk about the old times?”

“Yeah, you know what, I do. I talked to Sayid. You didn’t. I mean, he developed into a ruthless killer, but my read was that he wasn’t always like that. I think losing his entire family changed him. And yeah, maybe at the end of his life, he wanted to feel like the person he was when he was younger.”

“That’s BS. Maybe you want to think that because you were his niece.”

“Look, Paul, no offense—”

He laughs. “We crossed that bridge the first time we met. I don’t think either one of us cares if we offend the other.”

“Fair enough. You’re a bureaucrat. You haven’t been in the trenches and don’t know the first thing about reading someone. I do and I’m good at it. Amar’s a dentist—nothing else.”

He nods his head slowly as he tries desperately to get a read on me again. He’s worse at it than Butch is and I didn’t think that was possible.

“Are we done?” I say.

“We brought Amar’s wife in for questioning. She won’t talk to anyone except you. She says she knows you.”

“She doesn’t know me. I met her briefly when we brought Amar in for questioning in Sarajevo. We ended up moving them to Portugal so Sayid couldn’t find them. He found them anyway.”

“Wonder how that happened?” He rolls his eyes. “Amar and Sayid were still in touch. You said in your report that Sayid was trying to find you after that shootout in the mountains. You thought Amar was trying to help you find Sayid. Actually, I think he was trying to help Sayid find you.”

“Whatever. We found each other. Sayid’s dead. I don’t care what Amar’s motivations were. You accepted my resignation—finally. Let’s move on.”

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