by Tom Clancy
“Anyone here want to volunteer as the victim?” Granger asked the table. No heads nodded. The mood of the room didn’t surprise him much. It was time for a sober pause, the sort of thing that comes over a man when he signs his application for life insurance, a product that is valuable only if you are dead, which rather takes the fun out of the moment.
“Fly them to London together?” Hendley asked.
“Correct.” Granger nodded, and turned back to his business voice. “We have them scout out the target, pick their moment, and make their hit.”
“And wait to see the results?” Rounds asked, rhetorically.
“Correct. Then they can fly off to the next target. The whole operation should not take more than a week. Then we fly them home and await developments. If somebody taps into his money pile after his demise, we’ll probably know, right?”
“We ought to,” Bell confirmed. “And if anyone purloins it, we’ll know where it goes.”
“Excellent,” Granger observed. After all, that was what “reconnaissance-by-fire” meant.
THEY WOULDN’T be here long, the twins both thought. They were quartered in adjoining rooms at the local Holiday Inn, and this Sunday afternoon they were both watching TV with one guest.
“How’s your mom?” Jack asked.
“Fine, doing a lot of stuff with the local schools—parochial ones. A little more than a teacher’s aide, but not actually teaching. Dad’s working some new project—supposedly Boeing is back looking at an SST, supersonic airliner. Dad says they’ll probably never build it, unless Washington coughs up a lot of money, but with the Concorde retired people are thinking about it again, and Boeing likes to keep their engineers busy. They’re a little nervous about the Airbus people, and they don’t want to be caught with their pants down if the French start getting ambitious.”
“How was the Corps?” Jack asked Brian.
“The Corps is the Corps, cuz. It just rolls along, keeping busy for the next war that’ll come along.”
“Dad was worried when you went to Afghanistan.”
“It was a little exciting. The people there, they’re tough, and they’re not dumb, but they’re not trained that well, either. So, when we bumped heads with ’em, we came out ahead. If we saw something that looked hinky, we called air in on it, and that usually took care of things.”
“How many?”
“How many did we take out? Some. Not enough, but some. The Green Berets went in first, and the Afghans learned from that that a stand-up fight was not in their interest. Mostly, we did pursuit and reconnaissance, bird-dogging for the airedales. We had a CIA guy with us, and a signals-intelligence detachment. The bad guys used their radios a little too much. When we got a hit, we’d move in to about a mile or so and give it a look-see, and if it was interesting enough we’d call in air and scramble the hell out of it. Scary to watch,” Brian summarized.
“I bet.” Jack popped open a can of beer.
“So this Sali guy, the one with the girlfriend, Rosalie Parker?” Dominic asked. Like most cops, he had a good memory for names. “You said that he was jumpin’ up and down about the shootings?”
“Yup,” Jack said. “Thought they were just swell.”
“So who was the cheerleading with?”
“Pals he e-mails to. The Brits have his phones tapped, and the e-mails—well, as I said, I can’t tell you about the e-mails. Those European phone systems aren’t anywhere near as secure as people think—I mean, everybody knows about intercepting cell phones and stuff, but the cops over there pull stuff we can’t do here. The Brits especially, they use intercepts to track the IRA guys. I heard that the rest of the European countries are even freer to act.”
“They are,” Dominic assured him. “At the Academy, we had some in the national Academy program—that’s like a doctoral course for cops. They’d talk about that sort of thing after you got a few drinks into them. So, this Sali guy liked what those mutts did, eh?”
“Like his team won the Super Bowl,” Jack replied at once.
“And he bankrolls them?” Brian asked.
“That’s right.”
“Interesting,” was all Brian had to say after getting that question answered.
HE COULD have stayed another night, but he had things to do in the morning, and so he was driving back to London in his Aston Martin Vanquish, Bowland black. Its interior was charcoal, and its handmade twelve-cylinder engine was pushing out most of its 460 horsepower as he headed east on the M4 at a hundred miles per hour. In its way, the car was better than sex. It was a pity Rosalie wasn’t with him, but—he looked over at his companion—Mandy was an agreeable bed warmer, if a little too skinny for his usual tastes. If only she could put some meat on her bones, but European fashion did not encourage that. The fools who determined the rules of women’s bodies were probably pederasts who wished them all to look like young boys. Madness, Sali thought. Pure madness.
But Mandy enjoyed riding in this car, more than Rosalie did. Rosalie, sadly, was fearful of driving fast, not as trusting of his skills as she should have been. He hoped he could take this car home—he’d fly it there, of course. His brother had a fast car of his own, but the dealer had told him that this four-wheeled rocket topped out at over three hundred kilometers per hour—that was 196 miles per hour—and the Kingdom had some fine, flat, straight roads. Okay, so he had a cousin who flew Tornado fighters for the Royal Saudi Air Force, but this car was his, and that made all the difference. Unfortunately, the police here in England would not allow him to exercise it properly—one more traffic ticket and he might lose his driver’s license, the spoilsports—but at home there would be no such problems. And after seeing what it could really do, he’d fly it back to Gatwick and use it to excite women, which was almost as good as just driving it. Certainly Mandy was properly excited by it. He’d have to get her a nice Vuitton bag and have it messengered to her flat tomorrow. It didn’t hurt to be generous with women, and Rosalie needed to learn that she had some competition.
Racing into town as rapidly as the traffic and the police allowed, he zoomed past Harrods, through the vehicle tunnel, and past the Duke of Wellington’s house before turning right onto Curzon Street and then left onto Berkeley Square. A flash of his lights told the man he paid to guard his parking place to move his car, and he was able to park just in front of his three-story brownstone town house. With continental manners, he got out of the car and raced around to open Mandy’s door and gallantly escorted her up the steps to the huge oak front door, and, smiling, held it open for her. In a few minutes, she’d be opening an even nicer door for him, after all.
“THE LITTLE bugger’s back,” Ernest observed, making the proper note of the time on his clipboard. The two Security Service officers were in a British Telecom van parked fifty yards away. They’d been there for about two hours. This young Saudi madman drove as though he were the reincarnation of Jimmy Clark.
“I suppose he had a better weekend than we did,” Peter agreed. Then he turned to punch the buttons to activate various wiretap systems in the Georgian town house. These included three cameras whose tapes were collected every third day by a penetration team. “He is a vigorous little bastard.”
“Probably uses Viagra,” Ernest thought aloud, and somewhat enviously.
“One must be a good sport, Ernie, my lad. It will cost him two weeks of our pay. And for what she is about to receive, she will surely be truly grateful.”
“Bugger,” Ernest observed sourly.
“She’s thin, but not that thin, boyo.” Peter had himself a good laugh. They knew what Mandy Davis charged her “tricks,” and, like men everywhere, they wondered what special things she might do to earn it, all while holding her in contempt. As counterintelligence officers, they did not quite have the degree of sympathy a seasoned police constable might have had for relatively unskilled women trying to earn their way. Seven hundred fifty pounds for an evening’s visit, and two thousand pounds for a complete night. Exactly what her custo
m was for a full weekend, no one had asked.
They both picked up the earphones to make sure the microphones worked, switching channels to track them through the house.
“He’s an impatient sod,” Ernest observed. “Suppose she’ll stay the night?”
“I’ll wager she doesn’t, Ernie. Then maybe he’ll get on the bloody phone and we can get something useful off the bastard.”
“Bloody wog,” Ernest muttered, to his partner’s agreement. They both thought Mandy was prettier than Rosalie. Fit for a government minister.
THEY WERE correct in their judgment. Mandy Davis left at 10:23 A.M., stopping at the door for one last kiss, and a smile certain to break any man’s heart, and then she walked downhill on Berkeley Street heading toward Piccadilly, where she did not turn right at the Boots drugstore for the Underground station on the corner of Piccadilly and Stratton, but rather caught a cab that took her downtown, to New Scotland Yard. There, she’d be debriefed by a friendly young detective whom she rather fancied, though she was too skilled in her profession to mix business of the business sort with business of the pleasure sort. Uda was a vigorous john, and a generous one, but whatever illusions existed in their relationship were his, not hers.
THE NUMBERS came up on the LED register, and were saved and time-stamped in their laptop computers—there were two of them, and at least one more at Thames House. On each of Sali’s phones was a pin register that noted the destination of every call he made. A similar device did the same for all incoming calls, while three tape machines recorded every word. This one was an overseas call, to a mobile phone.
“He’s calling his friend Mohammed,” Peter observed. “I wonder what they’ll be talking about.”
“At least ten minutes of his adventure this weekend, I’ll wager.”
“Yes, he does like to talk,” Peter agreed.
“ SHE’S TOO skinny, but she is an accomplished harlot, my friend. There is something to be said for unbelieving women,” Sali assured his colleague. She and Rosalie really liked him. He could always tell.
“I am glad to hear that, Uda,” Mohammed said patiently from Paris. “Now, to business.”
“As you wish, my friend.”
“The American operation went well.”
“Yes, I saw. How many in total?”
“Eighty-three dead and a hundred forty-three wounded. It could have been more, but one of the teams made an error. More importantly, the news reports were everywhere. All they had on TV today was coverage of our holy martyrs and their attacks.”
“That is truly wonderful. A great blow for Allah.”
“Oh, yes. Now, I need some money transferred into my account.”
“How much?”
“A hundred thousand British pounds should do for now.”
“I can have that done by ten in the morning.” In fact, he could have done it an hour or two faster, but he planned on sleeping in the following morning. Mandy had tired him out. Now he was lying in bed, drinking French wine and smoking a cigarette, watching the TV without getting too involved. He wanted to catch Sky News at the top of the hour. “Is that all?”
“Yes, for now.”
“It shall be done,” he told Mohammed.
“Excellent. Good night, Uda.”
“Wait, I have a question—”
“Not now. We must be cautious,” Mohammed warned. Using a mobile phone had its dangers. He heard a sigh in reply.
“As you wish. Good night.” And both killed their respective phones.
“THE PUB out in Somerset was rather nice—the Blue Boar, it was,” said Mandy. “The food was decent. Uda had turkey and two pints on Friday night. Last night we dined at a restaurant across from the hotel, The Orchard. He had Chateaubriand and I had the Dover Sole. We went out to shop briefly on Saturday afternoon. He really didn’t want to go out much, mostly just wanted to stay in bed.” The cute detective was taping it all, plus making notes, as was another policeman. They both were being as clinical as she was.
“Did he talk about anything? The news on TV or in the papers?”
“He watched the news on TV. But he didn’t speak a word. I said that it was appalling, all that killing, but all he did was grunt. He can be the most heartless chap, though he’s always nice to me. We’ve still not had a cross word,” she told them, caressing both with her blue eyes.
It was hard for the cops to regard her with professionalism. She had the looks of a fashion model, though at five foot one she was too short for it. There was also a sweetness about her that must have stood her in good stead. But inside was a heart of pure ice. It was sad, but not really their concern.
“Did he make any telephone calls?”
She shook her head. “None at all. He didn’t bring his mobile phone this weekend. He told me that he was all mine and I wouldn’t have to share him with anyone else this weekend. That was a first. Other than that, it was the usual.” She thought of something else: “He does bathe more now. I had him shower both days, and he didn’t even complain. Well, I helped. I went into the shower with him.” She gave them a coquettish smile. That pretty much ended the interview.
“Thank you, Miss Davis. As always, you’ve been very helpful.”
“Just doing my bit. You think he’s a terrorist or something?” she had to ask.
“No. If you were in any danger, we’d give you fair warning.”
Mandy reached into her Louis Vuitton purse and pulled out a knife with a five-inch blade. It wasn’t legal for her to carry such a thing concealed, but in her line of work she needed one sure friend to accompany her, and the detectives understood. She probably knew how to make proper use of it, they surmised. “I can look after myself,” she assured them both. “But Uda isn’t like that. He’s actually rather a gentle man. That’s one thing you get to know in my business, reading men. Unless he’s a bloody fine actor, he’s not a dangerous sort. He plays with money, not guns.”
Both cops took that pronouncement seriously. She was right—if there was anything a hooker was good at, it was reading men. Those who couldn’t often died before reaching twenty.
After Mandy took a cab home, the two Special Branch detectives wrote up what she’d told them, and then e-mailed it to Thames House, where it became another entry in the Security Service files on the young Arab.
BRIAN AND Dominic arrived at The Campus at 8:00 A.M. on the dot. Their newly issued security passes allowed them to take the elevator up to the top floor, where they sat and drank coffee for half an hour until Gerry Hendley showed up. Both of the twins sprang to attention, especially Brian.
“Good morning,” the former senator said on his way past, then he stopped. “You want to talk to Sam Granger first, I think. Rick Pasternak will be here at around nine-fifteen. Sam should be in any time now. I have to see to my desk right now, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Brian assured him. What the hell, the coffee wasn’t bad.
Granger came out of the elevator just two minutes later. “Hey, guys. Follow me.” And they did.
Granger’s office was not as large as Hendley’s, but it wasn’t a trainee’s cubbyhole, either. He pointed to the two visitors’ chairs and hung up his coat.
“How soon will you be ready for an assignment?”
“How does today grab you?” Dominic asked in reply.
Granger smiled at the reply, but overly eager people could worry him. On the other hand, three days before ... maybe eagerness was not so bad a thing after all.
“Is there a plan?” Brian asked.
“Yeah. We worked on it over the weekend.” Granger started with the operational concept: reconnaissance by fire.
“Makes sense,” Brian observed. “Where do we do it?”
“On the street, probably. I’m not going to tell you how to perform a mission. I will tell you what we want done. How you do it is going to be up to you. Now, for your first target we have a good crib sheet on his location and habits. It will just be a matter of identifying the right target and decidin
g how to do the job.”
Do the job, Dominic thought. Like something from The Godfather.
“Who is he and why?”
“His name is Uda bin Sali, he’s twenty-six, he lives in London.”
The twins exchanged amused looks. “I should have known,” Dominic said. “Jack told us about him. He’s the money puke who likes hookers right?”
Granger opened the manila file he’d picked up on the way in and handed it across. “Photos of Sali and his two girlfriends. Location and photos of his house in London. Here’s one of him in his car.”
“Aston Martin,” Dominic observed. “Nice wheels.”
“He works in the financial district, has an office at the Lloyd’s insurance building.” More photos. “One complication. He usually has a tail. The Security Service—MI5—keeps an eye on him, but the troop they have assigned seems to be a rookie, and there’s only one. So, when you make your hit, keep that in mind.”
“Not using a gun, are we?” Brian asked.
“No, we have something better. No noise, nice and covert. You’ll see when Rick Pasternak gets here. No firearms for this mission. European countries don’t like guns much, and hand-to-hand is too dangerous. The idea is that it looks like he just had a heart attack.”
“Residue?” Dominic asked.
“You can ask Rick about that. He’ll give you chapter and verse.”
“What are we using to deliver the drug?”
“One of these.” Granger opened his desk drawer and took out the “safe” blue pen. He handed it across and told them how it worked.
“Sweet,” Brian observed. “Just stab him in the ass, like?”
“Exactly right. It transfers seven milligrams of the drug—it’s called succinylcholine—and that pretty much takes care of business. The subject collapses, is brain-dead in a few minutes, and all-the-way dead in less than ten.”
