White Shotgun

ONE

It was only another good-bye. Sterling McCord was lying on his back, staring at the lace-curtained window that looked out on the sidewalk. I was up on an elbow, studying the green in his eyes. Rainy light floated around us like the aftertaste of a kiss.

“Hello, cupcake,” he murmured.

“Don’t go,” I said.

We had been camping out in a borrowed flat in South Kensington while I was on vacation status from the Bureau. The place had belonged to the deceased relative of a friend — four rooms in the basement of a Georgian mews house just off Old Brompton Road. The air smelled of mildew and face powder, and we found frilly candy wrappers balled up on the dresser. Sterling called it “the old-lady hooch.” We’d had to push two narrow cots together, along with their wobbly headboards of padded roses, but we managed. After a couple of weeks of coming and going, it was starting to feel less like a tomb and more like a place to live. Keys on the table. Eggs in the refrigerator. Then Sterling got the call.

“Do you want to do something interesting?”

That was the way it always began. The voice on the phone. A deep Welsh accent. Sly, as if the reason he was calling wasn’t all that interesting. An hour later, Sterling would disappear on a mission he couldn’t discuss.

Sterling McCord worked for a private security firm called Oryx. His gear was stowed in a corner of the bedroom, laid out for quick departure, the black rucksack hanging from a doorknob. He did not travel with a weapon, preferring to improvise when he arrived. His first stop would be to purchase a Leatherman multi-tool — he must have left dozens in the field. With not much more than a canteen, a poncho, and GPS, it would take less than five minutes to dump his stuff in the rucksack and be gone.

“Is there at least time for a good-bye drink?” I asked, drawing my toes along his leg. Even at rest, his calf muscle felt like a knot of hardwood.

He played with the bracelet on my wrist. “We’ll have time.”

Sterling liked to say the only thing that made sense in the world was horses. He grew up in Kerrville, Texas, and learned the cowboy arts from his dad — how to train a cutting horse and weave tack, like the fine leather bracelet he had made for me, an eternity knot that would never come off. I had no intention of taking it off. Things were different with Sterling. It was the peaceful way we went to sleep together; deep conversations at three in the morning, someone always willing to rub the kink out of someone’s hip. I knew I had fallen in love when I woke up one morning in a white sun-drenched hotel room in Madrid to the scent of baking chocolate. Sterling had ordered his idea of breakfast in bed: two cafés con leche and one fresh, sweet-smelling dish of molten chocolate cake with powdered sugar on top. We laid against the pillows feeding each other spoonfuls of bittersweet chocolate. That was it.

Oryx is a type of antelope, but also a helicopter, and Sterling’s aircraft of choice. He piloted an Oryx during the war in Sierra Leone, after he left Delta Force, where he learned how to blow a door open without waking the cat. But the most essential skill in the top echelon of Special Forces is the ability to work in absolute secrecy, below the radar of the Pentagon and the FBI. The invisible warrior without boundaries is essential to our security — and a pain in the ass if he happens to be your lover.

I didn’t even know to which continent Oryx was sending him, but it was a familiar trek: the rucksack over his shoulder and my hand in his, the touch of our palms unable to deny the sweaty tension of leaving, as we walked the five blocks to Baciare, a neighborhood bistro where you could get a good plate of pasta after midnight; neither one of us expected anything more than a stiff drink to numb the coming separation.

London was on high alert. It had been an explosive spring. Two separate plots to blow up airliners were foiled at Heathrow. A Muslim student at the University of Nottingham was stopped for being in possession of an Al-Qaeda handbook he had downloaded at the library. He died in custody, stabbed by another inmate. University students clashed with gangs of teenage neocons, and dozens of cars were burned during three days of rioting in East London.

The Metropolitan Police were doing a good job of making the rest of the city seem jolly as ever to the tourists crushing the Embankment, but to the interested eye there was a remarkable number of foot patrols, even in the residential boroughs. Edgewater Crescent was a private square lined with redbrick town houses and cherry trees, a tiny oasis off the main drag, which was constantly jammed with posses of young men and women moving quickly, wave on wave of ethnicities and languages, unruly lines in front of the bars and gelato places. Even in this tranquil area, we saw two pairs of female police officers making the rounds beneath the Victorian streetlamps, hair pulled into scraggly ponytails, wearing bulletproof vests and boxy uniforms built for men.

Our trek was interrupted when the cell phone rang. Actually, it was a series of maddening electronic notes like a clown on crack playing an accordion.

After a moment I murmured irritably, “Why do you have such an unbelievably annoying ring?”

“Not my phone,” Sterling said.

It was my U.S. cell phone. It hadn’t rung in weeks, although out of a habitual sense of doom I always kept it charged. I dug it out of the bottom of my bag.

“Ana?” said a familiar voice. “It’s Mike Donnato, calling from Los Angeles.”

“Mike—?”

Sterling let go of my hand.

“—it’s great to hear from you!” I said.

It wasn’t great. It was a disaster. Donnato had been my handler on a domestic terrorism case in Oregon, where Sterling and I had met; and where it was pretty obvious that my FBI partner and I still had feelings for each other. Donnato’s intrusion into our last moments together in London was an unwelcome surprise.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“At the office,” Donnato said. “It’s daytime in L.A.”

“What’s going on?”

“This is not official business, Ana; it’s personal.”

Oh God, I thought. Now that I’m with Sterling, Donnato is finally going to say he’s getting a divorce.

“You need to check in with the legat in London,” he said, meaning the legal attaché for the FBI. Although the Bureau has no jurisdiction abroad, we maintain a presence in foreign countries to serve American citizens.

“Did someone die?”

“No, but I can’t talk about it on an unsecured phone.”

“Am I in trouble?” I asked.

“Go to the American embassy. They’re expecting you.”

“Mike, why?”

“I’m only the messenger. Do it tomorrow.”

I closed the phone. During the call, Sterling and I had not broken pace.

“What’s that about?”

“Mike wouldn’t tell me.”

“Your good ole buddy?” Sterling gave it a Texas kick just to bother me.

“Don’t be a dickhead. He’s my best friend.”

“Then why’s he holdin’ out on you?”

“It isn’t him. It’s the Bureau,” I said grimly, feeling a gut clench, like when you pass your old school packed with bad memories. One day I’ll have to return to the States to testify in that domestic terrorism case in Oregon, and possibly implicate a deputy director of the FBI. Meanwhile, I’m an active duty special agent on vacation — until they decide whether to hang me or give me a medal. Hearing the strain in Donnato’s voice, I’m thinking they’ve made up their minds.

It was a relief to get to Baciare, our comfort zone in London, our signature place, where the owner knew to bring two Proseccos and a plate of burrata cheese the moment we sat down.

But not tonight. Our quiet hideaway had been invaded by a raucous birthday party, a long table of shiny-faced Italian men making toasts. Espresso cups and cake plates, bottles of Champagne and platters of biscotti littered the table. The object of the celebration was a sweetheart of a boy — dark-haired and red-cheeked — who had probably just turned twenty-one. His angelic face was filmed with sweat, and he looked completely stewed. Half the men seemed to be older relatives; the others were his age, laughing together uncontrollably from whatever they had smoked in the alley.

The owner of the restaurant, a lanky fellow named Martin, who wore wire-rimmed glasses and had long gray hair trailing from a bald spot, usually greeted us with a fawning smile, murmuring, “Grazie mille!” between each breath. Tonight he turned us away, apologizing that it was a private celebration, but a man from the party, fortyish, fleshy face and dark hair, intervened, putting an arm around Sterling and insisting that we accept two glasses of bubbly. Martin checked his watch and reluctantly waved us to a table in the back. We promised to be quick. Sterling was to be picked up by another operative in fifteen minutes, and Oryx people were precise.

“Sterling,” I said with some urgency as we sat down, “are we all right?”

“Why wouldn’t we be?”

“Just want to be sure,” I said.

“You say that every time.”

“It’s no fun being the one who’s left behind.”

“We could try it the other way,” he suggested wryly.

“You’d never move to L.A.”

“Maybe I would, if you’d support my bad habits. You go to work, I lie by the pool. Fair?”

“Great, except who knows? Judging from Mike’s call, I might not have a job when I get back.”

“I was just playin’ about Mike,” Sterling said. “He’s a good guy.”

I started shredding a cocktail napkin. “This is not about Mike. That’s in the past.”

“Yeah, okay,” Sterling said.

I squinted at him. “Okay, what?”

He stretched back in the chair, but his eyes held mine. His blond hair was greasy, and he hadn’t shaved for the mission. My tender hooligan.

“What are you really trying to say?” he asked.

I blushed. Luckily, he had the grace not to point it out.

“I want us to be together, is all,” I told him.

Sterling inclined his head with a tiny smile, and his eyes said, I know you. I understand you.

“I promise to be back as soon as I can.” He glanced at the door, ready to move. “We ain’t gonna work this out now.”

I smiled and sprinkled napkin scraps into the ashtray. “That’s what you always say.”

It was how we kept going, I suppose. It’s easy to avoid talking about the future when you tacitly agree there might not be one. He’s leaving on a dangerous assignment. I’m on an ice floe of uncertainty concerning the Bureau. You don’t want your last good-bye to be a fight.

Spoons were being tapped against wineglasses at the long birthday table and everyone was quieting down. A boy maybe fourteen years old waited to speak. He wore a yellow satin zip-up jacket, had spiked hair. Obviously they’d let him have some wine.

“I want to make a toast to my big brother, Marco,” he said. “He’s always been a wanker, but now he’s an even bigger wanker. To Marco!”

Cheers and applause. Marco stood up and hugged his little brother, then got the kid in a headlock and pounded him until the father pulled them apart.

“Basta!” shouted the father, soft-bellied, workman’s arms. “Happy birthday, Marco!”

From the back room someone who might have been an uncle appeared, grinning and rolling out a silver racing bike with wheels that seemed to twinkle.

“For real?” shouted Marco, and threw his arms around the dad.

Sterling’s phone beeped. Time to go. He stood and slung the rucksack over his shoulder.

“Be safe,” he said.

“You too, baby.”

The party began to break up. Jackets were buttoned, phone calls made. Waiters, abandoning decorum, quickly piled the dirty dishes into plastic bins. We walked the gauntlet of cheerfully inebriated men.

“Ciao, bella!”

“The party isn’t over!”

“Come with us. Both of you. Come!”

We put on our neutral cop smiles, murmuring, “Thank you. Congratulations. Good night.”

We pushed through the wooden door that mimicked a wine cask, relieved to be out of there and breathing the cool air. The cherry trees were in snowy pink blossom. Under the lamplight, the elegant street looked enchanting.

We kissed and separated without further words. I watched as Sterling walked away, trying to tamp down the phantoms of anxiety that always arose when he left. I thought about the empty basement flat, where it was damp as a cave.

The same gentleman who had invited us to the party came up behind me. I noticed his aftershave — ocean spray and menthol — and that he was wearing a linen suit the color of wheat.

“Aah, come on, don’t look so sad! If he loves you, he’ll come back.”

I just smiled and kept on going. Others were emerging from the restaurant and hugging good night, lighting cigarettes and walking toward their cars. The boys were gathered around the bike, Marco demonstrating how light it was, and how balanced — you could pick it up with two fingers under the frame. I remember the linen suit because it reminded me of spring in Washington, D.C., and the cherry trees around the Tidal Basin, and the small stir of pride I always felt because somebody in the United States government had preserved them; someone was looking out for the trees.

A black Ford Focus rolled up. Peeling paint, dented doors. A taunting voice shouted, “Want a cigarette?”

I looked directly at the driver — twenties, dark skin, baseball cap — thinking he was catcalling me. Another jerk, another hassle. And then the windows of the car exploded with orange fire from the muzzles of automatic weapons. I didn’t hear the sound of gunfire, but could feel the hit of overpressure from the bullets around my head. The breath was snatched away from me, like being swept under a huge salt wave.

The car was gone. Sterling was lying on the ground fifteen feet away. There was screaming and the acrid stench of gun smoke, or at least it seemed that way as my sensory apparatus started coming back. I realized that the car had been moving when the shooters opened fire. An angle had opened up between us and the intended targets, and it had saved our lives.

Sterling got to his feet and helped me to stand. His face and arms were pockmarked with cuts. Stars swam through my vision and warm blood dribbled down my temples. I pressed a palm to my scalp. It came away crimson.

“You’re okay,” he told me.

Professionalism kicked in like anesthetic. I broke away and scanned the situation. Gutted storefronts. Two dozen bodies sprawled every which way. The victims who were still alive had sustained injuries only a trauma surgeon could address.

“Is anyone a doctor?” I shouted at the gawkers.

Sterling grabbed me and said, “Stop.”

There was command in his voice I had never heard before.

“Leave the scene. The police can’t know I was here. Deny you’ve seen me.” He pushed me away. “Go!” he repeated, and disappeared around the corner.

Sirens were coming fast. People were running in all directions. Martin, the owner of the restaurant, seemed to be in a fugue state, sleepwalking across the sidewalk, sweeping the bloodstained broken glass aside with one foot.

An Englishwoman in her sixties took my arm. “We need help,” she said. She was hyperventilating. “Did you see that car? I never saw a car drive so fast around here.” She pulled me toward a group that had surrounded two figures on the glittering sidewalk. When I saw what they were looking at, I was overcome with sadness, as if the twinge of abandonment at Sterling’s departure had been just the foreshock of a complete cave-in.

Go! I thought. Do not get tangled up with the British police.

But Marco was sitting cross-legged, cradling his younger brother. Under the streetlamps the yellow satin jacket was black with blood. The boy’s arms were around Marco’s neck, and he was trying to pull himself up.

“Oh shit, I’m really hurt.”

Several women of different ages were bending over them and saying calming things, although one could not help sobbing. The English lady looked at me with great intensity, as if we had a magic bond; as if we knew the truth. Her eyes were so close they seemed enormous. Exaggerated black equine eyes, shining with terror. The details engraved themselves: a silver chain interlinked with pearls and the collar of a pink crocheted sweater.

Marco’s teeth were chattering. “Where’s my dad?”

The lady bent down on one nyloned knee. “Your dad is coming,” she promised.

“I can’t feel my feet,” his brother said.

The younger boy was hemorrhaging badly. He had life-threatening wounds to the chest and abdomen. I looked away, down the blurry, snow-laden street, willing the universe to give Sterling back; to see him trot out of the darkness with his rucksack of remedies and sanity. Now the patrol units and ambulances appeared. Sterling was gone, already in another country. The bike was resting on its side as if someone had laid it there, weightless, all its wondrous mechanisms intact. Citizens were rooting through the rubble, taking souvenirs.

TWO

Training tells us a disaster is “anything that overwhelms you,” and this qualified. So many bodies in unknown states of bleeding and shock, the clock ticking for those whose breathing was falling off. No latex gloves, tourniquets, face masks, defibrillator.

“Anybody who can move, come to me!” I shouted.

Stunned residents who had left their flats lined up compliantly where directed, in front of a grocery store across the street, eager to obey anyone who seized authority. Once herded to safety, they raised their arms in unison to take pictures with their cell phones, staring at the tiny screens like invaders from another planet.

I began to triage the victims, tapping their heads and shouting, “Are you okay? I’m trained; I can help you,” pushing through the nausea and fear to focus on checking vital signs so I could direct the arriving paramedics. Marcos’s little brother was an “Immediate” but later tagged “Dead,” having succumbed to massive bleeding and a severed spine. I never found out what happened to the father, or to the man in the linen suit.

Despite Sterling’s command to disassociate myself from the incident, the first thing I did was to let them know I was FBI. This led to a clipped conversation with Inspector Ian Reilly from the Homicide and Serious Crime Command, a florid-faced dinosaur with a bad head cold, for whom I summarized my view of events: the taunting shout, the release of automatic weapon fire apparently aimed at the restaurant, the getaway north on Edgewater Crescent Road.

After making sure I was tended by a medic, Inspector Reilly sent me by squad car to Metropolitan Police headquarters at New Scotland Yard, a gray-windowed tower on Broadway, where I sat in a nondescript airless room with a female Pakistani sketch artist, collaborating on a composite drawing of the driver of the Ford. He ended up looking like every thug you’ve ever met — a long face, straight eyebrows, a prominent nose, dark curly hair, scowling eyes beneath a baseball cap.

When we sat down several hours later, Inspector Reilly wanted to know if I had ever met Clint Eastwood. I am based in Los Angeles, after all. I had to tell him that sadly, I had not, and asked what had been determined by the forensic team. Had they checked all the surveillance cameras in the area? Had they retrieved shell casings? Were there tire tracks? Who were the targets? What was the theory? A turf war? Random violence? Terrorists or organized crime?

Inspector Reilly was not eager to share. He did remark dryly that two witnesses reported that the driver had been wearing a turban. “No,” I assured him. “A baseball cap.” To his credit, he saw me not as a colleague but as a witness to the point-blank execution of seven people, who needed to be interviewed with sensitivity. Just as patiently, I went through the hoops.

When we were both satisfied that we had done our jobs, he said he would get me a ride back to South Kensington. It was seven in the morning and everyone in London seemed to be going in the opposite direction, toward the canyons of the financial center. My eyes burned with exhaustion as I stepped from the lobby of headquarters to find a glossy black Opel sedan waiting at the curb. It was too nice to be a Metropolitan Police car. A clean-cut driver hopped out, wearing a smartly tailored suit.

“Special Agent Ana Grey?”

He was American.

“I’m Ana Grey. Are you sure I’m the one you’re waiting for?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He opened the rear door. Sitting in the impeccably clean backseat was a big-boned woman in her fifties wearing a nubby black suit and something I can never manage to get right: cream-colored sling-back heels. Her short blond hair was styled in waves that curled around gold shell earrings. Her cheeks were veined from what I imagined to be decades of Midwest winters. On her lap was a red leather business tote. You knew that all the accessories inside matched.

“Ana,” she said warmly. “Good to meet you. I’m Audrey Kuser, the FBI legat in London. How are you doing?”

“Hanging in.”

She inspected my face. “Rough night?”

“Better for me than for a lot of other people.”

She saw that I was looking at the Daily Telegraph neatly folded beside her. The full-page headline said GUNFIRE IN S. KEN LEAVES 7 DEAD.

“You won’t find your name in the paper. The Bureau isn’t publicizing the fact that an American FBI agent was present at the attack.”

“Not planning to write home about it.”

“I’m sorry for what you went through. How are you feeling?”

“Dog tired, and disgusted with human nature. But I’m okay. If I weren’t, I’d tell you.”

“I want you to check in with a counselor.”

“Sure thing.”

Been there, done that.

“Excuse me while I just finish this.” She was tapping the keys of a BlackBerry with the square corners of manicured nails. “Here we go. Your flight is confirmed. David?” she asked the driver. “Can we stop in South Kensington and make it to the airport by eight-thirty?”

“No worries.”

He accelerated into traffic.

“Am I being deported to L.A.?” I asked, half joking.

She pressed a button, causing the glass divider to slide up so the driver couldn’t hear our conversation. She was Bureau, all right.

“You’re going to Rome.”

“Rome,” I repeated. Not a question, but a statement of astounding fact.

She nodded and removed a folder from the red tote. “You are now on official business. A couple of weeks ago, a call came in to the Los Angeles field office from a woman named Cecilia Maria Nicosa. Ring a bell?”

“Negative.”

“She claims to be related to you. She says you two have never met.”

“That’s for sure. Where does she live?”

“Siena, Italy.”

“I don’t know anyone in Italy.”

The legat stayed patiently on point.

“She’s been trying to find you for a while. She hired a private investigator.”

“I’m flattered, but why?”

“She claims to be holding a small inheritance for you from a family member in El Salvador. Besides, she wants to meet you.”

“Why?” I repeated dumbly.

Ms. Kuser seemed amused. “That’s often what people in families do.”

“It’s strange to me. I have no close relatives left.”

“We know.”

“Of course you know.”

I stiffened in the seat, waking up to the hard-core nature of the inquiry. I would not be driving around London with the FBI legat if something weren’t seriously up.

“This woman is from Italy and she’s Italian and you think we’re related? How is that possible?”

“I didn’t say she’s Italian,” Audrey Kuser said with an edge. “I said she lives in Italy. She’s originally from El Salvador. Just like your dad.”

I had the sensation of ice cubes slipping down my neck.

Audrey Kuser was looking at the file. “Your father’s name is Miguel Sanchez, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

I was shocked to hear her speak my father’s name. He was an immigrant from El Salvador who married my American mother. He disappeared from my life when I was five years old, in a darkened yard in Santa Monica, California, bludgeoned to death because he had brown skin.

“How do you know about Miguel Sanchez?”

Audrey Kuser glanced at me over her reading glasses.

“You wrote your father’s name on the application when you joined the Bureau,” she explained. “We confirmed ‘Sanchez’ as belonging both to you and to this woman. Sanchez is her maiden name. She’s claiming to be related to your father’s family. She wrote several letters, in fact.”

“Why did I never receive them?”

She narrowed her eyes mockingly. “Are you serious?”

I understood the implication. Personal mail from a foreign source to a special agent would have been sent to FBI HQ, where it was probably still being examined by umpteen layers of intel analysts.

“Here’s what we’ve learned about your family member, and what we want you to do. Cecilia Maria Nicosa is married to Nicoli Nicosa, a wealthy coffee importer who made his money supplying the restaurant business. We believe the husband may be dirty. He was carrying on a very public affair with a woman called Lucia Vincenzo, a mafia operative who recently disappeared. Lucia Vincenzo had connections with international drug trafficking, and because of his history, we suspect Nicosa might, too. Ms. Vincenzo is not the only victim who has vanished in northern Italy in recent months; there has been a cluster of the ‘disappeared.’ Italian citizens are afraid the government cannot control the violence associated with global criminal networks — and in fact, the government has asked for our assistance. This case will give us the opportunity to help the Italians and also get intel on drug trafficking to the United States. We want you to check Mr. Nicosa out. We want to know if he’s dangerous. You’ll report to the legat in Rome. When you get there, he’ll give you an official passport that says you’re on U.S. government business.”

We were pulling up to the Georgian mews house. The curtains were drawn over the basement window. I knew exactly what it would smell like inside.

“Palio starts next week,” Audrey Kuser was saying. “Do you know what that is?”

“A horse race?”

“It’s a festival in the city of Siena that draws huge crowds, ends with a big race. If you were a relative, and you were in Europe right now, it is plausible that you would want to visit Cecilia Nicosa during Palio.”

We got out of the car and she accompanied me down the basement steps. She would not leave my side until I was delivered safely to the plane to Rome.

As I turned the key, the borrowed flat seemed dead; whatever warmth and hopefulness Sterling and I had kindled was gone along with him. Audrey Kuser stood with feet planted, thumbing her BlackBerry, while I pulled out a suitcase. I could see from her aggressive stance the solid street agent she once had been.

“I’m sure you would rather take a shower and sleep for twelve hours,” she observed.

“It sounds like a lot of planning went into this.”

“The ball’s been in play since we made the connection between you, your relative, and Nicoli Nicosa. We’ve been interested in him for a while, but with Italian-controlled crime syndicates, it’s impossible to get inside unless you’re trusted kin.”

“I’m not exactly trusted kin.”

“Not yet, but it could be a good fit. We had been looking at you going undercover, but last night’s events pushed the time frame.”

“Why is that?”

“The fact that you were on Edgewater Crescent Road. We had to ask ourselves, was it a coincidence you were there during the attack? Mike Donnato calls from Los Angeles to inform you of our interest, and an hour later our agent is caught in a hail of machine gun fire. Did someone overhear that conversation? Is someone out to eliminate Ana Grey — or the entire operation? The better part of valor is for you to leave London.”

Vacation was definitely over. I’d been awake twenty-four hours and traumatized more than I knew, overwhelmed by manic exhaustion. The notion of putting up a front for some long-lost relative seemed beyond my capabilities. I found myself staring numbly at a jumbled drawer of T-shirts.

Audrey Kuser looked at her watch and began to fold each one and lay it flat in the suitcase.

“When you raise three boys, you get good at this,” she said briskly. “Let me help.”