Diane (The Town of Pearl 6)

Mark felt the instant shock to his system. His mouth dropped and then he looked at Jobs, Segar, and Turk, and could see how angry and just plain pissed off they looked. He shook his head. “No way. You’re wrong. There is no fucking way that Brenda would help that Persian asshole. He’s responsible for the death of numerous federal agents. Hell, she wanted to take him out herself when that fuck got diplomatic immunity and couldn’t be charged as an accessory to those murders. She gave the fucking order.” He thought about Marzban. The pompous piece of shit was walking around a billionaire, involved with so many illegal operations, but no one was ever able to prove shit on him. He’s got himself so detached on anything concrete or documentable, that no one can come close to catching him red-handed. Never mind close enough to even arrest him, even if it were a waste of time.

“Mark, I know you two had a thing way back,” Cody said, as he lowered a folder to the table.

“We didn’t have a thing. We worked together. We got close, but we weren’t an item or dating.”

Cody raised his eyebrows as if he didn’t believe him.

“I answered the fucking questions about that earlier. You all heard me while you were hiding behind the fucking mirror like cowards. You want to read a prisoner’s body language, eye response, and demeanor, then it’s best to be right in the same fucking room. You really get the gist of their anger,” he said sarcastically.

“Enough, Mark. These guys are not the enemy. I didn’t have to even give you this much information,” Weathers told him. Mark gave his commander a dirty look.

“Really? Considering all the crazy shit I’ve done for the bureau and for you over the years, you’d think you owed me at least an explanation of what’s happening here. Hell, maybe even let me help.”

“Not happening,” Ray Segar stated.

“Why not?” Mark asked.

/> “Because, we think Samir, along with Brenda, are targeting certain individuals within the government and in this organization,” Weathers told him.

“What? How do you know this?”

“Open the folder,” Cody told Mark.

He reached out, feeling the trepidation fill his gut. As he saw the first pictures, he wondered what they were getting at. Brenda walking toward a club or restaurant somewhere. Then a limo outside a place, then Brenda walking beside a man, holding his hand, but the man’s back was toward the camera. Mark glanced up and looked at the other agents and then back down. It hit him fast, the more pictures he saw. Brenda with Marzban, Brenda kissing Marzban, and Brenda getting into his limo smiling. Brenda heading into a hotel. Brenda and Marzban naked, looking out the main window in some high-rise hotel room. He didn’t feel jealous at all. Instead he felt deceived, tricked.

He glanced up at the men. He hadn’t looked at all the photos.

“Keep looking. It gets worse, and the others show some of their handiwork,” Weathers stated.

Mark glanced through, seeing buildings somewhere, he couldn’t tell where they were. They didn’t look like the United States.

“Where were these taken?” he asked.

“Iran,” Ray replied, and Mark felt that ache in his gut.

He stared at the pictures of military vehicles, weaponry, an arson of explosives.

“What are these?”

“A known terrorist group’s new toys thanks to Marzban Samir. The disappearance of a US military shipment across seas by a subcontracted, third-party affiliate to cut out costs was taken over by insurgents,” Cody stated.

“How the hell does something like that happen?” Mark asked.

“Unfortunately, with all the new cutbacks, the security level is low on a lot of these shipments. This one in particular was headed to a US military base near Somalia. However, keep looking at the next pictures,” Cody added.

Mark flipped through them. There were dead bodies. Pictures of what appeared like gangs in cities on US soil, not in the Middle East or abroad elsewhere. Then there were pictures of military boxes, the kind that held weapons. Mark looked up.

“The fucker is selling to someone who’s into the arms business for local gangs. These guns have been found in the hands of fucking kids from New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, all the way to Texas, Wyoming, Nevada, and California. It’s a fucking major operation,” Weathers told Mark.

Mark couldn’t believe it, and more so that Brenda was somehow involved. “Why would Brenda be involved with this guy? How is Marzban able to come and go into the United States if the government knows he’s involved?”

“You know the fucking deal. He is a smart man, and always covers his tracks. It’s this asshole Arshad Ehsan and his buddy Zand Yousef who guard him. They are Persian. They work for Marzban Samir and they have so much money they live like fucking royalty,” Ray told him.

“More importantly, is that both men frequent clubs in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, California, and here in Wyoming,” Ned stated.

“We get in on Yousef and Ehsan and we get Samir,” Cody said.

“And what about Brenda?” Mark asked.