Fariq Kuzbari said a few quiet words in Arabic, and his men, albeit hesitantly, reholstered their weapons. Heat met the Syrian leader’s eyes and what she saw in them made her turn to her own crew. “Guys? Thank you, but this is an order. It’s all good.”
Minutes later Heat was sitting alone with Kuzbari in the tranquility of his HSE. Outside, his men stood in a line with hands at the ready, facing off against the blue unis, similarly ready to respond to trouble. Rook, excluded from the meeting, kept himself occupied with his iPhone camera so that he could capture the standoff tableau.
Fariq Kuzbari had changed very little since Nikki last encountered him. A few years before, when she learned her mom had once been a spy who infiltrated the homes of diplomats and foreign agents by giving piano lessons, one of her mother’s clients was Kuzbari’s family, so he had come onto Heat’s radar as a person of interest in her mother’s murder. In the end, he was not a suspect, but he and Nikki had formed a bond of mutual respect with an overlay of healthy suspicion.
“I didn’t intend to alarm you or to spark an international incident, Captain,” Kuzbari began. His English was excellent, just as she had remembered it, with a touch of a British accent that, along with his looks, reminded her of Sir Ben Kingsley. She also noted his use of her new rank in addressing her. Either he had spotted the pair of gold railroad tracks on the collars in her dry cleaning or he had serious access to intel. Heat would go with the latter.
“There’s a lot in play here you may not know about.”
“Something I don’t know about. Refreshing.” He sounded like he meant it. With everything in the news about the civil strife, including atrocities gone wild, in his country, Nikki could only imagine the information he had thrashing about in his head. She wondered how he felt about it all. Was he a partisan, a party to the abuses, or a man in a frightening position threading the needle until he could disappear from the nightmare with a set of Louis Vuitton full of gold bullion? Was this gentle side she was witnessing the real Fariq, or was he just another thug in a bespoke suit?
“I’ll make this brief then,” he continued, “as we both have a great deal to attend to. In the world of diplomacy, this is what’s called a back-channel outreach. As I know you must be keenly aware, there is an issue of tremendous import and great sensitivity between our governments.”
“The counterfeiter we busted.”
He paused as if he had a reply to that, but moved on. Apparently mixing it up with New York’s Finest over semantics wasn’t on his agenda. “The tension surrounding Mehmoud Algafari is what I am referring to, yes.”
“Pardon me, Mr. Kuzbari, but what does any of this have to do with me, aside from the fact that the safety of my city has been compromised by your Free Mehmoud cyber attack?”
“You cut right to it, don’t you?”
“As you said, we both have a great deal to attend to.”
“I am reaching out to you because of our unique relationship. Although our occasional dealings over the past few years had a degree of healthy friction, I have always found you to be forthright, trustworthy. Also, I confess I have am sentimental because of the kindness your mother displayed to my children when she was their music teacher.”
Nikki wanted to add, Even though Mom was spying on you, but kept the thought inside.
“So, my point—or shall I say, my message—is that I would like you to hear directly from me that the Syrian government has no official connection whatsoever to the disruption of the technology infrastructure of this city.”
“You’re telling me this, because…?”
“Because I know you will believe me and because I have faith that you will inform others in your metropolitan government, hopefully with some advocacy.”
“And if not officially the Syrian government, then who? Rebel insurgents? Dissenters? Human Rights Watch? Anonymous? Mehmoud’s counterfeiters?”