When Zahir parked his rental at the Inner Harbor, he paused a moment to look at the water, covered in a light mist, vapor rising as the morning heated. He breathed in deeply, regretted it. The air smelled of algae and waste.
He walked the half-block to Silver Corner, a mom-and-pop diner he’d eaten at once three years before. It now sported a cheerful new blue-and-white-striped awning.
Unfortunately, the inside still needed a serious face-lift. He stepped inside and inhaled bacon grease and mildew.
He eased onto a brown cracked vinyl seat in one of the six booths. He ordered black coffee—that surely couldn’t poison him—from a middle-aged waitress with a towering beehive of brassy red hair. Over her left oversized breast her nametag read, fittingly, Red. That made him smile.
“Getcha anything else, hon?”
What planet was she from?
“No, the coffee will be fine.” He turned to look out the window and saw his contact on the street outside, wearing, of all things, a tan trench coat and a slouchy hat pulled down over his forehead. Well, hello, Mr. Subtle. You’re pretending to be the spy who came in from the cold?
His young handler in Atlantic City had evidently convinced him that Zahir always followed through, so he had come. Mr. Subtle was looking around furtively, as if he was afraid someone would jump out and slap handcuffs on him.
Kill you, maybe, but no handcuffs. Mr. Subtle slithered into the diner, saw Zahir nod at him, and slinked over, slid into the booth. He looked scared and wary. “I’m here.”
“Of course you are.”
Mr. Subtle slid down in the booth, as if it would hide him and his paunchy belly. Zahir flicked a hand toward the waitress, mouthed Coffee.
Woody Reading looked at the man opposite him, the beaked nose, dark hair and eyebrows, not a handsome man, mid-thirties, the man his handler, Aziri, had said would not kill him easily and fast if he didn’t bring him the blueprints, he would gut him like a fish, then he would destroy his reputation and his family. He knew Aziri believed it to his soul, and so did Woody.
Zahir was amused and pleased that the man was looking as if Zahir would strike like a snake if he said the wrong thing. Good. A frightened man tended to do what he was told.
The coffee was delivered. The waitress didn’t linger. She wasn’t stupid; she could smell the fear roiling off the man in his silly trench coat—and the other man, the dark one who looked sexy until she’d looked into his eyes and felt her flesh crawl. Dead eyes. Dead eyes.
“Aziri told me to bring you the blueprints or you would kill me.”
Zahir only smiled, nodded. “At the very least. So you have them under your trench coat?”
Mr. Subtle leaned forward to whisper, “Yes, but please, won’t you reconsider? I know what you’re planning, but believe me when I tell you that the FBI is closing in. I don’t want to be caught.”
“After what you’ve already done, you’re only now considering you could be caught?”
“Look, I gave the Bishop the plans for the plane, even backup plans for Bayway. But now it’s getting too hot. People aren’t stupid. My company will be targeted soon, then they’ll fix on me. Won’t you reconsider? I could still return the blueprints, no one the wiser. Do you really need them?”
Ah, Matthew and his ridiculous moniker—the Bishop, bestowed by Ian several years before like a crown on his head. Zahir laughed low, and Woody jerked back, nearly upending his coffee. “That is none of your concern. You are well paid. You need know nothing more. Give me the blueprints.”