Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [88]
But, he reminded himself, he still didn’t know what she was about and who she worked with.
Sara’s smile faltered as she stared at him with those dark, vulnerable eyes. “Why do I feel like I’ve seen you before?”
Over the years, Jack had got that a lot, though mostly in the States. People seeing him on television and remembering his face but not quite able to place him.
“I told you, I’m a reporter. I used to have a show on GNT, although I don’t think there’s much chance you’d ever see me on this side of the Atlantic.”
Something shifted in her expression as a memory came to the surface. “Hatfield,” she said. “Of course. Brendan told me about you.”
“Brendan?”
“A colleague. He showed me one of your videos on YouTube. You’re the one the Home Office banned from traveling here, one of Copeland’s friends.”
The name landed like a depth charge in Jack’s brain. He sat upright. “How do you know Bob Copeland?”
She must have sensed a threat from him, because she put her hands up as if to reassure him. “He was a friend,” she said. “When we heard about what happened to him, we were devastated.”
“We?” Jack had no idea what to make of this. “Sara, I think you’d better explain.”
“I don’t know how much I can tell you,” she said. “We’ve already been compromised, and if you were to report anything about—”
“Report anything? Are you serious?” Heat rose in Jack’s chest. “This isn’t about my job. I don’t have a clue what’s going on here yet it’s cost me two friends and nearly my own life—”
“You’re not the only one who has lost friends and nearly his life,” she said.
Right, he thought. He remembered her half dead in the chair. He sheathed his claws.
“A man who was like a brother to me was found dead in a pub toilet, his throat slit. And a woman I was close to was suffocated in Bulgaria.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “That still doesn’t tell me how you know Bob Copeland. What do you mean, he was a friend?”
She lowered her head a moment as if to gather her thoughts. Probably trying to decide how much she should tell him. “You may have a hard time believing this, but I’m a field agent for Interpol.”
He looked at her as if she had said she was one of Santa’s elves. Not because there weren’t women agents but because the FBI and MI6 were already folded into this thing. Now Interpol?
“Okay,” he said. “You’re Interpol. And?”
“For the last two years I’ve been working with a small, international task force, trying to gather information about an extremist Muslim group called the Hand of Allah.”
Jack knew the name well and his reaction made it obvious.
“I see you’ve heard of them.”
“An offshoot of Al Qaeda, way under the radar. I used to talk about them on my TV show, but I wasn’t sure anyone was listening. People wanted to believe we had this stuff under control.”
She nodded. “A lot we do … some we do not. The Hand of Allah is among the latter. Their leader is a nasty piece of work named Faakhir Zuabi, who reportedly used to rub shoulders with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, bin Laden’s chief of operations.
“After Mohammed was taken into custody, Zuabi went out on his own. Since then he’s had his fingers in more death and destruction around the globe than we can track, all the while sitting comfortably in a mosque in East London—not that the British authorities want to believe this. He’s spent the last several years getting cozy with the elites in this country, financing campaigns of people who are sympathetic to Muslims.”
“You have people like that here?”
Sara made a face.
Jack realized he’d stepped in it.
“Not all Muslims want to be witness to the downfall of Western Civilization,” she said. “Some of us are quite fond of it, in fact.”
“Sorry,” Jack said, though he wasn’t sure he meant it.
Her expression relaxed. “But it goes much deeper than political influence.”
“What do you mean?”
“Abdal al-Fida was one of Zuabi’s followers, but he also worked for the British government. My job was to gather information from him about the Hand of Allah.”
Jack looked at her, thinking she must have had a very powerful motivation