The Teeth of the Tiger

by Tom Clancy

  “That went okay,” he told the twins. “I guess we need to get you guys back to the hotel, eh? There’s something I need to do. Come on,” he commanded.

  Dominic left enough Euros to cover the meal, with a tip. The clumsy waiter chased after them, offering to pay for laundering their clothes, but Brian waved him off with a smile, and they walked across the Piazza di Spagna. Here they took the elevator up to the church, and then walked down the street toward the hotel. They were back to the Excelsior in about eight minutes, with both twins feeling rather stupid to have red stains on their clothes.

  The reception clerk saw this and asked if they needed a cleaning service.

  “Yes, could you send somebody up?” Brian asked in reply.

  “Of course, signore. In five minutes.”

  The elevator, they felt, was not bugged. “Well?” Dominic asked.

  “Got him, and I got this,” Jack said, holding up a room key just like theirs.

  “What’s that for?”

  “He’s got a computer, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  When they got to MoHa’s room, they found it had already been cleaned. Jack stopped off in his room and brought his laptop and the FireWire external drive that he used. It had ten gigabytes of empty space that he figured he could fill up. Inside his victim’s room, he attached the connector cable to the port and lit up the Dell laptop Mohammed Hassan had used.

  There was no time for finesse; both his ’puter and the Arab’s used the same operating system, and he effected a global transfer of everything off the Arab’s computer into the FireWire drive. It took six minutes, and then he wiped everything with his handkerchief and walked out of the room, wiping the doorknob as well. He came out in time to see the valet taking Dominic’s wine-stained suit.

  “Well?” Dominic asked.

  “Done. The guys at home might like to get this.” He held up the FireWire to emphasize his point.

  “Good thinking, man. Now what?”

  “Now I gotta fly home, fella. Get an e-mail off to the home office, okay?”

  “Roger that, Junior.”

  Jack got himself repacked and called the concierge, who told him there was a British Airways flight at Da Vinci Airport for London, with connecting service to D.C. Dulles, but he’d have to hurry. That he did, and ninety minutes later was pulling away from the Jetway, sitting in seat 2A.

  MAHMOUD WAS there when the police arrived. He recognized the face of his colleague as the gurney was wheeled out of the men’s room, and was thunderstruck. What he didn’t know was that the police had taken the knife and made note of the bloodstains on it. This would be sent to their laboratory, which had a DNA lab whose personnel had been trained by the London Metropolitan Police, the world leaders in DNA evidence. Without anyone to report to, Mahmoud went back to his hotel and booked passage on a flight to Dubai on Emirate Airways for the following day. He had to report today’s misfortune to someone, perhaps the Emir himself, whom he’d never met and knew only by his forbidding reputation. He’d seen one colleague die, and watched the body of another. What horrendous misfortune was this? He’d consider this with some wine. Allah the Merciful would surely forgive him for the transgression. He’d seen too much in too little time.

  JACK JR . got a mild case of the shakes on the flight to Heathrow. He needed somebody to talk to, but that would take a long time to make happen, and so he gunned down two miniatures of Scotch before landing in England. Two more followed in the front cabin of the 777 inbound to Dulles, but sleep would not come. He’d not only killed somebody but had taunted him as well. Not a good thing, but neither was it something to pray to God about, was it? The FireWire drive had three gigabytes off 56’s Dell laptop. Exactly what was on it? That he could not know for now. He could have attached it to his own laptop and gone exploring, but, no, that was a job for a real computer geek. They’d killed four people who had struck out at America, and now America had struck back on their turf and by their rules. The good part was that the enemy could not possibly know what kind of cat was in the jungle. They’d hardly met the teeth.

  Next, they’d meet the brain.