A Wild and Lonely Place Read Online Free

it.
    Renshaw said, “Azadi Consulate, Jackson Street near Octavia.”
    “Azad—isn’t that one of those oil-rich emirates?”
    “Right. Oil rich, progressive, and politically stable. They’ve maintained the consulate since the late sixties, do a high
     volume of business with our West Coast oil companies.”
    “But they haven’t been—”
    “The target of a bombing? No.”
    The next slide showed another sheet of plain paper lettered in Palatino Italic:
BE FOREWARNED.
Below a sentence was taped, obviously a headline clipped from a newspaper: BRAZILIAN EMBASSY BOMBED.
    I asked, “The Azadis received this after the first D.C. bombing?”
    “Yes. And again after each subsequent one.” He showed slides of the messages in quick succession.
    Odd. According to Joslyn’s files, none of the other diplomatic missions who had been bombed had reported receiving such warnings.
     But then, neither had Azad. “Did these come to the consulate, or to other Azadi delegations as well?”
    “Only the consulate here.” Renshaw switched the projector off and the screen went blank.
    “Okay,” I said, “what’s RKI’s connection to Azad?”
    “We handle their security in San Francisco, D.C., and New York.”
    “How’d that happen?”
    “They were impressed with how we dealt with a situation for an American company operating out of their capital in the late
     eighties. When these messages started arriving, they decided to beef up their protective measures at all three of their U.S.
     locations and contacted us.”
    “Did they also contact the authorities?”
    “No. Mrs. Hamid has an aversion to negative publicity and, besides, the authorities hadn’t done anything for the bomber’s
     other targets.”
    “And Mrs. Hamid is…?”
    “Malika Hamid, consul general here.”
    “A woman consul general? Interesting, for an Arab country.”
    “As I said, they’re progressive.”
    I thought for a moment. “Do you buy the idea that they didn’t contact the authorities because of Mrs. Hamid’s concern about
     bad press?”
    He shrugged.
    “There’s got to be more to it than that.”
    “If there is, no one’s told us.”
    “And you haven’t asked.”
    “It’s not our policy to question our clients’ motivations. Not that I wouldn’t mind finding out, and that’s where you—”
    A pager went off in Renshaw’s pocket. He took it out, went to an extension phone on the wall by the door, and spoke briefly,
     his back to me. When he hung up and turned, he asked crisply, “Sharon, do you want in on this or not?”
    His cut-to-the-chase tone alerted me that something big had happened. I stood. “Yes, I want in.”
    “Then let’s go.”
    “Where?”
    “Azadi Consulate. There’s been a bombing attempt, and one of our operatives is injured.”

Two
    The police had barricaded Jackson Street between Octavia and Laguna, so we parked around the corner from the consulate. The
     pavement there was at a steep grade, but Renshaw neglected to curb the wheels and set the emergency brake of RKI’s maroon-and-gray
     mobile unit. As he stepped down, the van lurched backwards. I grabbed the brake handle, pulled it up, then twisted the steering
     wheel to the left. Renshaw acknowledged his mistake with a rueful headshake.
    When I joined him on the sidewalk, he muttered, “Dan would’ve laughed his ass off at that—and then made me pay out of pocket
     for the damage.”
    “You were preoccupied.” I quickened my step to keep pace with him. “Surely Kessell could understand that.”
    “That’s no excuse—and I wouldn’t accept it either. Neither Dan nor I tolerates any margin for error.”
    Given their pasts, I could understand why. Renshaw had been an agent on the DEA’s elite—and now defunct—Centac task force,
     based in Southeast Asia. When it was disbanded in the mid-eighties, he disappeared into Indochina and emerged a wealthy man
     several years later; I’d never had the nerve to ask him about that period in his