She dropped her light backpack and sat with legs dangling over the cliff. After watching the swirling fog for a few moments, she dug out a phone. It had been purchased on the black market in China and at the moment lacked both a battery and SIM card. Cyrah installed both and waited for it to capture a mobile network. As promised by her out-of-date guidebook, signal strength was excellent.
The proprietary Internet calling app had numerous layers of security but she finally managed to navigate to a waiting area. A chirp sounded when her two colleagues entered and she put in a wired headset.
“Everyone is well?”
The voices that responded had been making her smile for almost fifteen years now. To call them sisters would trivialize their relationship. Sisters shared parents and an upbringing but that was nothing compared to what they’d been through together. What they’d escaped together.
“The weapon used in the Guatemala attack was likely dropped from a plane and was unquestionably military in origin.” Nasrin’s voice was steady as always. A woman of logic and control. “Further, the house in Franschhoek is still being watched by a three-man team. American and very professional. There’s no doubt they saw you.”
“No doubt,” Cyrah responded, unconcerned. The Americans watching Claudia Gould’s house would see exactly what had been presented to them—a low-level policeman making a little extra cash helping a reporter.
“At this point, I think we can be certain that Mitch Burhan is still connected to the US government,” Yasmin chimed in. She was the group’s most empathetic member. A creative who was sometimes hard to keep on track but who understood people and was a fountain of improbable ideas that almost always ended up working.
“Why are we wasting our time on this?” Cyrah asked.
“A reminder that we shouldn’t have taken this job,” Nasrin snapped.
“We only take work that everyone votes for. And that’s what happened.”
“Because we were afraid you’d kill yourself swimming through one of those caves,” Yasmin said.
“Or expose us all by getting arrested driving one of your sports cars at three times the speed limit,” Nasrin added. Her fears were largely unfounded, though. Cyrah was the one who was exposed. The one who pulled the trigger. The other two could disappear in a matter of hours, leaving barely a trace that they’d ever existed.
“Were we able to track Burhan?” Cyrah said, unwilling to rehash this argument.
“No,” Nasrin said. “We have limited resources on the ground in Africa and we weren’t expecting him to leave. By all appearances, he wasn’t expecting it, either.”
“How so?”
“He had a meeting with his architect in two days’ time that’s now been canceled. He also canceled the moving van that was scheduled to move items from the house to a storage unit he rented.”
“The question is whether he’ll return. Has anything been rescheduled? I see him as our best chance of finding Claudia.”
“Nothing that we’re aware of,” Nasrin said. “We’re following their architect, contractors, law firm, realtors, and every other person or organization they might need to work with. Up to the moment he left, it had been a productive strategy. While we hadn’t gotten anything actionable yet, it seemed only a matter of time. It was reasonable to expect regular communication with the people they hired, meetings, payments, and the like. Potentially even physical inspections that Claudia might want to be directly involved in. And all of that would have to be scheduled ahead of time.”
“Something had to have happened in order to make him leave so unexpectedly,” Cyrah said. “Do we have any idea what?”
“Not at this point,” Yasmin replied. “But we’re working on it.”
“What about the police?” Cyrah continued. “How did his meeting with Thato Gumede go?”
“Quite well, apparently. Our informants say that the police have no interest in charging Burhan with a crime. He has a right to defend himself and based on what happened in Latin America, they’ve come to the same conclusion we have about his involvement with America’s clandestine services.”
“But his identity is still checking out?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything. So does Claudia’s and we know it’s false. Again, it’s hard not to see the hand of the American government in this.”
“Agreed. But they have a weakness.”
“The daughter,” Yasmin said.