Flashpoint by Suzanne Brockmann Page A

told Decker would find its way to Nash’s ears, no exception.
    Well, okay. Maybe Deck would keep it secret if Tom wanted to throw Nash a surprise birthday party. But probably not, because Nash hated being surprised.
    So if Tom didn’t like that, well, Deck wished him luck with the new company and this mission, but . . .
    Tom had told him to chill out and sit back down.
    “He asked me to look up a guy named Dimitri Ghaffari,” Decker told Nash now. “See if he and his American partner are good candidates for recruitment to Tom’s team. We don’t have a name for the partner—in fact that could be something Ghaffari made up to build his reputation. It rings of urban legend: Ghaffari and his rich American backer.
    “Tom doesn’t know much about him, but Ghaffari’s name has come up often enough over the past few years. Apparently he did import/export out of a home base in Kazabek. Business has tanked since the K-stani government deteriorated.”
    The warlords who were running most of the country these days wanted to keep the West out, and people like Ghaffari had made a living bringing it in.
    Ghaffari could well be looking for work, and his loyalties no doubt would be on the side of those who supported capitalism.
    “He might’ve been killed in the quake,” Nash pointed out.
    “Yeah.”
    “Everyone we know in Kazabek might’ve been killed in the quake.”
    “Yeah.” That was a sobering thought.
    “This assignment already blows,” Nash said.
    “Yeah,” Decker agreed. But if that laptop was real, and there was even the slimmest chance that it was somewhere in the rubble, with even just the smallest portion of its hard drive intact . . .
    “You have any nickels on you?” Nash asked. “We’re flying in to Ikrimah, and, well, I usually have enough time to pick up a few rolls of nickels from the bank.”
    Decker dug through his pockets. He had only a few mixed in with the pennies and dimes. He gave them to Nash. “Maybe the bookstore has an extra roll.”
    “Ah.” Nash managed to smile. “Good idea.” He looked over at Tess again, but then caught Decker watching him. “I honest to God didn’t know about . . .” He shook his head.
    “There was nothing to know,” Decker said, and went to help Tess find a book to read on the flight.
    K AZABEK , K AZBEKISTAN
    The first aftershock had caught her unprepared. Sophia had forgotten how intense it could be, much like another earthquake itself.
    After escaping Padsha Bashir’s palace, she’d found her way to the old Hotel Français, near City Center, where she had lived with her parents when she was barely ten years old, an entire lifetime ago. The hotel had been crumbling and in ill-repair even then, and she’d heard two months back—before she’d foolishly accepted Bashir’s invitation to that ill-fated luncheon where Dimitri had been served his final meal—that the Français had shut its doors. The old wreck had been sold and was scheduled to be either restored or demolished in the very near future.
    But Sophia had lived in Kazabek for long enough to know that the very near future could be any time between the end of the year and the end of the decade. It wasn’t likely to be sooner, because, in K-stan, changes of that magnitude took time.
    And sure enough, the building was still standing. Part of the roof had decayed, but as she made a slow circuit of the rambling place, she could see that the walls weren’t cracked—at least no more than they had been before.
    The basement door was locked, but locks had never been a challenge for her. She opened it without doing any damage. No one would know she’d gone inside.
    The entire hotel was empty, all of the furnishings and wall hangings missing, and all the towels and the maids’ uniforms that had lined the little corridor by the laundry room gone.
    On the first floor, outside what had once been a restaurant, she found the ladies’ washroom. Comprised of two small rooms, one a former sitting area,