Free Sympathy For the Devil by Terrence McCauley Page A

bigger than we thought.”
    “Which makes Omar far more dangerous than we thought,” Jason said. “Which means we’re going to have to work closely on this from here on in. Our personal animosity aside, we need to help each other to keep a bad situation from getting even worse.”
    “That means I need to be apprised of every new development in this case, and you need to wait for my approval before you act on any intelligence. The I.D. on this man from the camera should’ve come back with the two men you killed. It didn’t. Colin’s assignment should’ve been wrapping up and, instead, he’s dead. There’s more at play here than our animosity for each other. And perhaps more than we know.”
    Hicks decided to quit while he was ahead. “Agreed. I’ll keep you posted.”
    As Hicks opened the car door, Jason said, “Stay in touch. And stay safe.”
    Hicks smiled before he closed the door. “Gee, Honey. I didn’t know you cared.”
     

H ICKS WAITED until he got back to Twenty-third Street to download the files Jason had sent him. And just as Jason had warned him, the background on the two Somalis he’d killed had been a dead end. All of Jason’s posturing about his goddamned information embargo had been just that: posturing.
    According to the file, the two men he’d killed were a couple of twenty-year old orphans raised in a Christian missionary in Somalia. That same orphanage sponsored them for student visas so they could come to the Land of Opportunity and bring their knowledge back home with them. Their passports had been stamped at JFK four months before and they’d fallen off the radar since then until the moment Hicks had killed them.
    They’d entered the country legally with legitimate passports and sponsors. That meant they’d probably gotten involved with Omar after they’d gotten into the country. And since OMNI had never tracked either of them to the cab stand or any of the drivers, it confirmed that Omar’s operation was much bigger than he’d previously thought.
    Somehow, Omar had managed to build up a network while being under the watchful eye of OMNI and Colin. Sending a couple of rookies with Colin to the rendezvous probably meant Colin hadn’t told Omar much about the University. If he had, Omar would’ve sent pros or just flat out killed Colin and cut his losses. Hicks figured Omar had drugged Colin to get him to talk. The bigger question was why. What had Colin seen?
    It must’ve been something that Omar had wanted kept secret. Something that hadn’t shown up in six months of passive and active surveillance from the finest intelligence array in the world.
    All Hicks had to do was find out what it was. And to do that, he’d have to start from square one.
    He toggled his screen to see Colin’s autopsy report. The autopsy photo of Colin’s corpse on a slab came up first. A white sheet draped over his body with gaps and sags where none would be if he had still been alive. Places where the doctor had cut into him. He stared at the picture until he thought he could see each pixel of the image. Why are you dead, my old friend? Why did you set me up?
    Omar had disappeared and the dead men were dead ends. The only lead Hicks had left was the image of the man on the camera’s memory card. An image a foreign government was protecting. And two dead men from an organization far larger than Hicks knew existed.
    He was beginning to think this was far above the skill set of an untrained Somali cab driver with bad intentions. This felt like it was something more.
    Hicks almost jumped when his phone began to buzz. It was the Dean himself.
    Hicks had worked for the man for almost twenty years, but had never met him. He had no idea where the Dean lived or where he worked or what his name might be or even what he looked like. They’d always communicated over the OMNI network by phone and via email, but never in person.
    The University prided itself on ‘dynamic diversity.’ There was no central