Line in the Shadow by Clancy Nacht & Thursday Euclid

Author:Clancy Nacht & Thursday Euclid [Nacht, Clancy & Euclid, Thursday]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Frowning with concentration, Rex pried the back off the flimsy disposable phone, palmed the battery, and swapped the SIM card with one he’d saved just for this purpose. He jammed the battery into place like a gun’s magazine, feeling the same thrill of arming himself. He fitted the back panel into place and powered up the phone, then gave a cursory glance at the mouth of the alleyway.

Ancient walls rose around him, almost white in the oppressive noon sunlight. Heat shimmered like lip gloss kisses on the dusty ground. In the shadowed alcove where Rex waited, the temperature was less deadly, perhaps ninety-five Fahrenheit, an acceptable level compared to that of the plaza beyond.

The phone gave a muffled chirp as its screen flared into life. Rex checked its reception, verified the correct profile had loaded, and placed the call. It rang once, then again, then a third time. With each ring, Rex’s gut tightened into a harder knot. On the fourth ring, a quiet voice answered, “A damsel with a dulcimer, in a vision once I saw.”

The Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem was the sign/cosign passphrase for an asset long thought lost to poor tradecraft on the part of her handlers. The knot released, leaving Rex ebullient as he replied, “It was an Abyssinian maid, and on her dulcimer she played, singing of Mount Abora. Al-Ahmad? Sokolov. Time to come home, child.”

“Oh, praise Allah. You must be quick.” The soft-spoken woman switched to Russian to give Rex a string of coordinates and landmarks, then hung up abruptly.

Rex immediately removed the SIM card, replaced it with a third identity, and destroyed Sokolov’s. He shouldn’t need it again this trip, and if he did, it was already too late. Good tradecraft relied on these over-cautious measures. It was why Rex had been sent to Oman instead of a younger agent with a ready-made legend for the region; over two decades after its creation, his Ivan Sokolov identity still held water, and that allowed Ivan to go anywhere in the world without question. His contacts, his reputation, and above all his permanence made his credentials hold up to scrutiny in a way that no younger identity could hope to.

As simple as it was now to cook an identity on the computer, to Photoshop and plant an entire false life on the web, nothing could compete with name recognition, the power of a familiar face, or the indisputably real existence of business and social transactions made over years and years of undercover living. A month or two a year as Sokolov for twenty years, and he was more real than Rex was.

Rex hailed an orange-and-white taxi, slipped into the backseat, and gave the driver a landmark as his destination. Though he had been given several potential meeting places, Rex had hopes that this would be the only location he needed to convince al-Ahmad to come in. Perhaps it was egotism, but when he was Ivan, he was in his element. Ivan could persuade anyone of anything, and museums were his favored hunting ground.

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