Iron Orchid (Holly Barker 5)

The Syrian rolled off the girl and onto the floor on the other side of the bed. Teddy walked around the bed and put another round through his forehead. He looked back at the girl, who lay rigid on the bed, her eyes screwed shut.

“Wait ten minutes before you call anyone,” Teddy said in Arabic. He didn’t speak or understand the language, but he had memorized a number of handy phrases. The girl nodded.

Teddy left the apartment, listened for others in the hallway, then, hearing no one, walked downstairs, rolling his ski mask back into a cap. He took a look through the glass of the front door and saw Said’s chauffeur’s head laid on the headrest of his seat. He was asleep; no need to kill him.

Teddy left the building and checked the block for surveillance. Nothing. He walked three blocks, checking, before he took a cab back to his own neighborhood.

HOLLY STOOD OUTSIDE the Metropolitan, watching the last of the operagoers leaving the building. Lance, elegant in a cashmere topcoat and soft hat, came over and stood beside her.

“He didn’t show,” she said.

“He showed, but not here,” Lance replied. “I just got a call from Dino Bacchetti at the 19th precinct. A Syrian diplomat named Omar Said, who is an intelligence operative, was shot twice in the head while in the throes of passion at his girlfriend’s apartment.”

“I don’t think Teddy will go to the opera next Friday night, either,” Holly said.

THIRTY-TWO

WILL AND KATE LEE were in bed, reading, when her private line rang. “Yes? Say again? This doesn’t make any sense; how long have we been watching him? That’s what I thought. Fay had already left the Agency when we started watching him. All right, we’ll meet in the morning and talk about it then. Good night.” She hung up.

Will looked at her sideways but said nothing. She looked back at him.

“Oh, all right, I’ll tell you. Teddy Fay didn’t show up at the opera tonight. While all our agents were enjoying Le Nozze de Figaro…”

“I love that overture,” Will said.

“Don’t interrupt. While they had the opera house staked out, Teddy killed a Syrian spy named Omar Said, who we’ve been surveilling for about four months, ever since he arrived in New York. He is… was attached to the Syrian mission to the U.N., and he had diplomatic immunity.”

“Is Mr. Said a great loss to the U.N., the Agency or the human race?” Will asked.

“Certainly not; he was a goatish, murderous son of a bitch, and the planet Earth is a better place without him.”

“Then I take it we have no complaints?”

“It’s an embarrassment to the Agency that a diplomat who was under our constant surveillance was murdered while we were lured away.”

“You weren’t providing him with any sort of protection, were you?”

“No, we were trying to catch him hobnobbing with terrorists, so we could arrest them and kick him out of the country.”

“Does anybody know you were surveilling him?”

“Just the FBI. They were helping us.”

“Then, if he wasn’t your charge and nobody knows you cared, why is it an embarrassment?”

“It just is,” she said. She turned out her light, fluffed her pillow and turned away from him.

“I suppose this terrible news means you’re not in the mood for…”

“I didn’t say that,” she said, turning back to him.

Late the following morning, Kate convened a meeting in her conference room. Attending were Hugh English, the DDO; his deputy, Irene Foster; Ian Thrush, the DDI; his deputy, George Weaver and, by television conference hookup from New York, Lance Cabot,

“All right, Lance,” Kate said, “give us the whole thing.”

“Good morning, Director,” Lance said.

“Good morning from all of us.”