The Invisible (Ryan Kealey) Read online

  THE INVISIBLE

  Also by Andrew Britton:

  The Assassin

  The American

  THE INVISIBLE

  ANDREW BRITTON

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  For my grandmother, Eunice Britton

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1 ORAEFI, ICELAND

  CHAPTER 2 ORAEFI

  CHAPTER 3 ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN

  CHAPTER 4 ORAEFI

  CHAPTER 5 ISLAMABAD

  CHAPTER 6 RAWALPINDI, PAKISTAN

  CHAPTER 7 RAWALPINDI

  CHAPTER 8 RAWALPINDI

  CHAPTER 9 ICELAND

  CHAPTER 10 RAWALPINDI

  CHAPTER 11 WASHINGTON, D.C.

  CHAPTER 12 WASHINGTON, D.C.

  CHAPTER 13 MADRID, SPAIN

  CHAPTER 14 MADRID

  CHAPTER 15 MADRID

  CHAPTER 16 SIALKOT, PAKISTAN

  CHAPTER 17 MADRID

  CHAPTER 18 MADRID

  CHAPTER 19 MADRID

  CHAPTER 20 WASHINGTON, D.C.

  CHAPTER 21 WASHINGTON, D.C. • LAHORE, PAKISTAN

  CHAPTER 22 CARTAGENA, SPAIN

  CHAPTER 23 CARTAGENA

  CHAPTER 24 SIALKOT • CARTAGENA

  CHAPTER 25 SIALKOT

  CHAPTER 26 CARTAGENA

  CHAPTER 27 SIALKOT

  CHAPTER 28 CARTAGENA

  CHAPTER 29 SIALKOT

  CHAPTER 30 LAHORE

  CHAPTER 31 PUNJAB PROVINCE, PAKISTAN

  CHAPTER 32 LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  CHAPTER 33 WASHINGTON, D.C.

  CHAPTER 34 NORTHERN PAKISTAN

  CHAPTER 35 NORTHERN PAKISTAN

  CHAPTER 36 FAISALABAD

  CHAPTER 37 WASHINGTON, D.C. • NORTHERN PAKISTAN

  CHAPTER 38 SIALKOT • SOUTHERN PORTUGAL

  CHAPTER 39 WASHINGTON, D.C.

  CHAPTER 40 SIALKOT

  CHAPTER 41 SIALKOT

  CHAPTER 42 SIALKOT

  CHAPTER 43 WASHINGTON, D.C. • SIALKOT

  CHAPTER 44 SIALKOT

  CHAPTER 45 WASHINGTON, D.C.

  CHAPTER 46 PUERTO SAN JULIÁN, ARGENTINA, FIVE MONTHS LATER

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Linda Cashdan of The Word Process, for her editorial guidance early in “the process.” Thanks again for your input. To Erika Lease, M.D., for her invaluable contribution on the medical side of things. To Carol Fitzgerald and everyone at bookreporter.com, for designing and maintaining my Web site. To Connie Asero and everyone who participated in the Crystal Coast Book Festival. It was an extraordinary event. Thanks for letting me be part of it.

  Thanks to everyone at Kensington, especially Steven Zacharius, Robin E. Cook, Laurie Parkin, Maureen Cuddy, Michaela Hamilton, and Doug Mendini, a true fixture on the trade show circuit. To Meryl Earl, who has somehow managed to get my books published in a multitude of languages, none of which I understand. To Rosemary Silva, for her outstanding work with the copyediting. Also thanks to Alex Clarke and the entire team at Penguin Books for their continued support in Australia and the U.K.

  To my editor, Audrey LaFehr, for her enthusiasm, encouragement, and exceptional patience. Thanks for everything.

  To my agent, Nancy Coffey, for many, many things. If I had to name them all, the acknowledgments would be longer than the book itself. So thanks for all that you do. Let’s hope this is just the third of many.

  And to Dezzy Murphy and the other Irish climbers who conquered Concordia, thanks for inspiring the prologue.

  An “invisible” is CIA-speak for the ultimate intelligence nightmare: a terrorist who is an ethnic native of the target country and who can cross its borders unchecked, move around the country unquestioned, and go completely unnoticed while setting up the foundation for monstrous harm.

  PROLOGUE

  THE KARAKORAM HIGHWAY (KKH), PAKISTAN

  In Rebeka Česnik’s opinion, the view, even when seen through the cracked window of the ancient bus winding its way down from Kashgar to Islamabad, was simply magnificent. Perfect. Stunning in every conceivable way. These were the words she had used to describe every trip she’d ever taken, and her effusive comments always made her friends and relatives smile, though it had taken her quite a while—the better part of her life, in fact—to understand just why that was.

  Her mother had been the one to finally let her in on the joke. That had been a few years earlier, shortly after Rebeka joined Frommer’s as a travel photographer. At the time, the observation had struck her as not only true, but slightly humorous. Even now the memory made her smile, but she couldn’t dispute her mother’s words.

  It’s a good thing you took up photography instead of writing, she had said, because no matter where you go, your descriptions are always the same. Every place you visit is just as perfect as the last.

  It was a true enough statement, Rebeka supposed, though she’d never really dwelled on her lack of verbal creativity. All she cared about was her traveling and her art, and to her great satisfaction, she’d been able to make a successful living with both. She’d always had the ability to pick out a unique, compelling scene, but that wasn’t enough for her. Nor was it enough to satisfy her extremely demanding employers. Instead, her goal was to pull the readers into the photograph, to draw them away from the article itself. It was a lot to aspire to, as the magazines she worked for employed some of the best writers in the business. Moreover, it was nearly impossible to capture the grandeur of the things she saw on a regular basis. Still, judging by the awards and accolades she had racked up over her short career—including the prestigious Hasselblad Award in 2006—she had managed to make her mark in an industry brimming with talent, and that was no small feat.

  Rebeka had embarked on her current career after winning a regional photography contest at seventeen years of age. She’d started shooting on an amateur basis in 2002 with a secondhand Minolta Dynax 8000i. The camera had been a gift from a spoiled cousin who’d since moved on to more expensive hobbies, and she’d fallen in love with it instantly. Her love of travel, however, dated back to her childhood, and she sometimes wondered why it had taken her so long to work her two favorite hobbies into what had become a spectacular career. She had grown up on the Soča River in the Julian Alps, not far from the famed Predjama Castle, and she credited the gorgeous scenery of her childhood with sparking not only her interest in nature, but her desire to see as much of it as possible.

  Since leaving Frommer’s the previous year, she had embarked on freelance assignments for Time, Newsweek, Le Monde, National Geographic, and Nača žena in her native Slovenia, just to name a few. Those assignments had given her the opportunity to visit fourteen countries over the course of two short years, in addition to the twelve she’d already seen, and she had thoroughly documented her journeys—not only with her camera, but also in her journal, by far her most treasured possession. Every assignment carried with it the promise of a new adventure, but as she stared out the window, ignoring the unpleasant sway of the bus on the steep mountain road, she couldn’t help but think that the snowcapped peaks surrounding the Hunza Valley had surpassed her wildest expectations. A brief shower earlier in the day had given way to a spectacularly clear blue sky, and the afternoon sun made the snow-topped spires in the distance glisten in ways she could never hope to capture on film. It didn’t happen often, but there were times when she knew she could never do justice to the scenery, and while those moments were among the most thrilling of her personal life, they were hard to accept professionally. Still, she wouldn’t have traded the sight for anything.

  After a while the bus rocked slightly to th
e right as it swept around the mountain, and the splendid sight of Tirich Mir—the highest peak in the Hindu Kush range—faded from view as the bus began the long descent into Khunjerab National Park. Disappointed with the change in scenery, Rebeka turned in her seat and let her gaze drift over her fellow passengers. The vehicle was filled to capacity, which wasn’t surprising, given the time of year. Many were climbers destined for the world’s most challenging peaks, and they were assured of permits only during the summer months. She had traveled with these people for weeks on end, and she’d come to know most of them fairly well.

  Sitting directly across from her was Beni Abruzzi, the rakish, handsome, long-limbed climber from Brescia. He was talking—with animated gestures, as always—to Umberto Verga, his stocky Sicilian cousin. Umberto rarely spoke, and when he did, it sounded more like a series of grunts than actual speech, but Beni was only too happy to pick up his cousin’s slack. He’d served as a caporal maggiore, an infantry corporal, in the Italian army. He’d also spent some time in Iraq, a fact he’d mentioned more times than Rebeka cared to remember. Abruzzi had spent hours bragging about his military exploits, and while Rebeka believed most of his stories, she wasn’t impressed in the least. Unsurprisingly, the Italian’s gaze was presently fixed on the trio of pretty Norwegian nurses who had joined them in Tashkurgan. That had been two hours earlier, and forty minutes before the bus crossed from China into Pakistan via the Khunjerab Pass, the highest point on the Karakoram Highway.

  There was also the downtrodden group of Danish climbers who’d arrived at K2 four days earlier with the goal of summiting, only to turn back at base camp in Concordia, and a small knot of aging Canadian trekkers. There was even a renowned American geologist by the name of Timothy Welch. The professor emeritus from the University of Colorado seemed to spend a great deal of time staring at his hands and muttering under his breath, which Česnik found both amusing and a little unnerving.

  Beni managed to catch her eye, but she turned away before he could fix her with his usual lascivious stare. To cover her reaction, she hastily pulled her journal out of her Berghaus pack, undid the clasp, and started to scribble a few notes, catching up on the events of the past few days. It was hard to concentrate under the lean climber’s intense gaze. She’d done her best to make her disinterest clear, but her efforts had clearly been wasted. Although she was just twenty-three—the same age as Abruzzi—Rebeka had accomplished a great deal in her young life. For this reason, she tended to look down on many people her own age. She knew it was snobbish, but she couldn’t help it; she was a driven woman, and that meant things like men, sex, and partying didn’t figure high on her list of priorities.

  At the same time, she knew her looks had given her a considerable boost in her current career—that they would have helped her in any career. She took this in stride, though, and it didn’t change the way she viewed her success. After all, she’d seen the recent U.S. edition of Outside magazine, and her picture on the page of contributing journalists had not been any larger than that of the editor in chief, a decidedly unattractive Swede in his midsixties. This discovery had only confirmed what she already knew: that it was her talent—not her looks—that had made her one of the world’s most sought-after young photographers.

  She looked up, startled out of her reverie as the bus shuddered, the driver downshifting suddenly. Craning her neck, Rebeka saw a number of vehicles parked alongside the road up ahead, men milling about on the paved surface. As the bus rolled forward, the scene came into focus, and she saw something that chilled her blood.

  Rifles. Every man in sight was heavily armed, and there were plenty of men. Judging by the low rumble of voices in the surrounding seats, everyone else was just as confused and concerned as she was. Passports and visas were frequently checked on the KKH, but this wasn’t one of the scheduled stops. As far as Rebeka knew, they still had miles to go before they reached the next Pakistani checkpoint. Tensions between General Musharraf’s government and that of Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh had been rising steadily over the past few months, but this was the first time she’d seen any tangible evidence of the escalating situation.

  She only hoped she was right, that it wasn’t something else entirely. Bandits had always been a problem on the Karakoram Highway, though guarding against them was usually just a matter of taking the proper precautions, such as not traveling alone or after dark. As it stood, it was midafternoon, still light, and they were nowhere near the Line of Control—the heavily guarded border that separates the disputed territory between Pakistan and India. In short, these were about the best conditions a traveler on the KKH could ask for.

  The bus ground to a gentle halt, and the doors at the front banged open. The air in the vehicle seemed unusually thick, and no one was making a sound. Rebeka realized they were waiting to see what would happen, just as she was. But then a man appeared at the front, and the collective tension seemed to drain away. The man standing next to the driver and surveying the passengers was wearing the uniform of a Pakistani army captain. Rebeka felt her breath come a little bit easier, and she wasn’t concerned in the least when the captain asked them all to disembark and present their passports. Realizing that the soldiers might poke through their belongings, she slipped her journal under her coat. She wouldn’t be surprised to get back on and find some items missing from her pack, and while most of it was replaceable, the journal was the one thing she couldn’t bear to lose.

  She was sitting near the back of the vehicle, so she had to wait for the passengers up front to disembark. As they began to line up on the side of the road, documentation in hand, Rebeka saw a rare opportunity and decided to take it. The soldiers seemed to be unusually wrapped up in their task, so she dug out her camera—a Canon EOS-1V with an 85mm lens already affixed—and carefully lifted it above the ledge of the window. She took a few quick shots with the flash disabled, hoping to capture her fellow passengers’ frustrated expressions. It wasn’t part of her assignment, but she happened to know a freelance writer who was doing a story on corruption in the Pakistani army, and she thought she might be able to get some mileage out of the photographs.

  Once she’d fired off a half-dozen shots, Rebeka quickly lowered the camera and checked to see if anyone had noticed. It didn’t look like it, but either way, she had run out of time; the front of the bus was nearly empty, and a young soldier was striding toward the open doors.

  Rebeka quickly ejected the film, dropped it into a spare tube, and slipped it into her pack. She had just gotten to her feet when the soldier reached the back of the bus and gestured toward the camera. Shouting something she didn’t understand, he grabbed her free arm with his left hand, then reached for her camera with the other. She pulled it away instinctively, but he leaned in and managed to knock it out of her hand. Then, as she watched in disbelief, he kicked it toward the back of the vehicle.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she shouted in English, tugging free of the soldier’s grasp. “Do you have any idea how expensive that was? As soon as we get back to Islamabad, I’m going to—”

  She never got the words out. The soldier slammed a fist into her stomach, then slapped her hard across the face. Rebeka’s knees banged against the edge of the seat as her body followed the blow. She hit the plastic cushion hard, tears springing to her eyes as she struggled for air. Momentarily stunned, she didn’t fight as the soldier reached down and wrapped a hand in her hair, yanking her to her feet. Hunched forward and crying out with pain, she reached behind her head and frantically tried to pull his fist apart as he marched her to the front of the vehicle. Once they had reached the driver’s seat, he released her and shoved her hard down the stairs.

  Rebeka tumbled through the open doors. As she hit the ground awkwardly, something gave way in her shoulder with an audible pop. Although her head was swimming with confusion and fear, she instantly tried to prop herself up using her right elbow. It was completely instinctive, but it was also a huge mistake; her shoulder instan
tly screamed with agony, and she screamed in turn, collapsing onto her side. Ten seconds later, the young Pakistani stepped off the bus and walked past her, carrying the broken remains of her camera.

  Her fellow passengers were starting to resist, having realized that something was wrong. Shifting her weight to her left elbow, Rebeka managed to sit up and take in the scene, though her vision was still slightly blurred. She watched as Umberto Verga stepped forward and spat a few words in halting Punjabi to one of the guards, who immediately tried to push the hefty climber back into line. Verga barely moved, but his face turned red with indignation. Taking another step forward, he slapped aside the barrel of the Pakistani’s rifle. Rebeka watched in a daze as Verga repeated his question in English, and although he was standing about 30 feet away, he was shouting so loud, she could hear every word.