by Gayle Lynds
“My turn,” O’Toole said. “Toronto Customs arrested a woman flying in from Hong Kong on a forged South African passport. We’ve been targeting those passport holders because hard-core jihadists are increasing enlistments of non-Arab recruits on the theory they’re less suspicious. Then they give them forged South African passports so they’ll have visa-free entry into a lot of countries. Her suitcase had a false lining, and inside it was a sheet of paper covered in coded text. It was a photocopy—I’m not kidding—probably made in a mud hut in the wilds between Afghanistan and Pakistan or China, but nevertheless a photocopy. NSA just finished decrypting it. It’s from Osama bin Laden himself. He’s quit using electronic communications because he’s afraid we’ll find him. That’s why the courier.”
The three glanced at one another.
“I’m waiting,” Litchfield said impatiently. Then he knew: “The Majlis al-Sha’b?”
“Yes, sir,” O’Toole said, his expression grim. “At last.”
Over the past year, Litchfield’s sources had picked up clues that a new umbrella network was forming. Called the Majlis al-Sha’b, it seemed to be an outgrowth of a threatening development—a new high command uniting the Shiite Muslims of Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran with the Sunnis of HAMAS and the Palestine Islamic Jihad. The Sunni-Shiite alliance, although uneasy and not all-inclusive, bridged a bitter historic divide as well as merging Arab nationalists with Jihad, Inc.
Quintano shoved his glasses back up to his forehead. “We’ve put together a clearer picture of what’s going on. From the phone conversations NSA’s been picking up off the cells with those SIM cards, it’s clear alQaeda realizes it’s failed to achieve its strategic goal of a real political uprising in the Islamic world—so far. Bin Laden’s dream of a new caliphate is for all practical purposes on the back burner, and al-Qaeda’s morale is tanking.”
Litchfield nodded. “But the United States hasn’t achieved our basic goal, either. We still can’t guarantee our security against another attack. In fact, we still can’t confirm whether or not al-Qaeda has weapons of mass destruction.”
“Right,” Quintano agreed. “But the momentum’s with us. Because the Middle East believes we’re obsessed with al-Qaeda, each country is worried we’ll become obsessed with it, too—like we did with Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s why Muslim intelligence agencies have been cooperating with us against al-Qaeda. That’s why Syria capitulated publicly when we told them to get out of Lebanon. Of course, they still have huge intelligence resources there—they’re just buried deeper. All of them think our bad mood’s irrational, but it’s made them very nervous about crossing us.” He peered across the table to Genowicz.
“This is where I come in,” she told Litchfield. “The CDs that the Pakistanis confiscated show the jihadists are finding it more and more difficult to mount another big assault. They’ve researched for years, and they’ve got the plans, but the West’s security is tougher, and it’s blanketing their top targets. NSA’s been monitoring the active phone numbers listed on the CDs, too. They’ve been hearing a lot of whining and asking Allah for help. So while we’re closing in on our goal, al-Qaeda’s falling behind in theirs. At the moment, they’re losing the war.” She peered at Quintano.
Quintano turned to Litchfield. “So bin Laden’s decided to do something radical about it. As you know, a new breed of holy warrior emerged after 9/11 when we disrupted his control over al-Qaeda. According to the paper hidden in the woman’s suitcase, bin Laden looked around and decided that of all the groups, the Majlis were strongest, largest, and most directed—and they’d take his vision to the next level. So the paper concludes with his statement officially passing leadership from al-Qaeda to them. He’s sent a copy to each of the Majlis leaders, which means at least one must be hiding somewhere in Canada or the United States. We’re searching now.”
O’Toole warned, “The Majlis has mutated into a bigger movement more frightening than al-Qaeda. They’re technologically more savvy, more worldly, more elusive, and younger. They’ve replaced a lot of bin Laden’s religious and ideological restrictions with broader interpretations that target everyone who’s not an Islamic fundamentalist. And that means fellow Muslims, too. At the same time, the Majlis are thoroughly trained to lead double lives. When they want to, they blend into Western culture smoothly.”
“They’ve learned from al-Qaeda’s mistakes while carrying on their strengths,” Genowicz concluded, her voice low and worried.
The room was silent. Litchfield looked at the grave faces. “What’s the organization of the Majlis like?”
“NSA’s transcripts indicate it’s not a council in the sense that they get up in the morning and have a conference call to figure out which civilians they’re going to hit next,” O’Toole said. “They’re more like a cabal. They’re going in the same direction, understand what direction they’re going in, and work independently or together as needed. It really is a ‘People’s Assembly,’ but not a democracy. Each of the leaders comes with his own network. Together, they call the shots. They want to keep the nature of their group amorphous so they can expand without us interfering.”
Litchfield asked impatiently, “Where’s their headquarters? How often do they meet? Exactly how many leaders and networks are there? Who are they?”
Around the table, shoulders slumped.
O’Toole looked Litchfield in the eye. “We don’t know yet, but we will.”
“They scare the crap out of us,” Genowicz admitted.
Litchfield nodded to himself. One didn’t need political influence or a superpower’s financial resources or even military bases girdling the globe to plant bombs or take hostages or send commercial airliners into skyscrapers. Terrorism was a thinking man’s game. An al-Qaeda squad of just twenty men armed with only box cutters had pulled off 9/11 in attacks so brilliantly conceived, scrupulously planned, and sensitive to the levers of global power that they had changed the world. If the Majlis were even smarter than al-Qaeda, God help everyone.
“Mr. Litchfield?” The voice came from the door. It was his assistant, Ron Wenceslao. Worry lines etched his forehead. “From what we can figure out, whoever wiped Whippet turned off the electricity, so we didn’t get any video of the wet squad. But the upside is that Elaine Cunningham ordered a ForeTell assessment of Jay Tice.” He flashed a CD. “It’s all here, and some of it looks interesting.”
Before Wenceslao had finished the sentence, Litchfield was on his feet. There was nothing more to learn here anyway. “Thanks, Ron. I’ll relieve you of that.” He took the CD and peered back into the room. “Look harder. Let me know as soon as you have anything.” Carrying the CD in an iron grip, he hurried off.
Paris, France
Since returning to Paris, Gerhard Shoutens had been unable to stop thinking about the awful moments before Kristoph skied off the sheer couloir at Chaux de Mont. He replayed the scene endlessly in his mind. The hiss of the snow under their skis, the bite of the cold air in the crystal sunlight, the soaring exhilaration as they flashed past tall firs and down the trail that rimmed the couloir. And then Kristoph’s abrupt jerk and his enraged bellow as he flew off into the void.
Haunted by it all, Gerhard was hunched in his Windbreaker and still wandering the streets as the eastern sky brightened into morning. Cafés and shops opened, and vans disgorged fragrant baguettes and croissants. He walked aimlessly, his mind hundreds of miles away in the mountains of Switzerland with his doomed friend.
When Kristoph’s loud bellow echoed through his mind for perhaps the ten thousandth time, it suddenly changed. Gerhard stopped in his tracks. He was on the Petit Pont, the “Little Bridge.” Beneath his feet, the Seine flowed around pilings. He had no recollection of having arrived here.
What riveted him was the few seconds before Kristoph flew off the rim. In his mind, Gerhard listened and watched, concentrating as he stared blindly down at the dark waters. Then he knew: Kristoph had uttered a small surprised cry of pain before—by no
more than a second, but definitely before. It was as if something had struck him. And his skis had not swerved to avoid an obstacle but lifted up and left the snow an inch or so, definitely airborne. Then came the bellow, overwhelming the small cry.
Gerhard stiffened. Kristoph’s death had been no accident. He was sure now. Something had hit him that was so painful he cried out, so powerful it knocked him into the air. No wonder he was unable to stop his rush into the abyss. But what had caused it? There was no gunshot, nothing unusual at all.
He must phone Frau Manhardt to let her know. Patting his pockets, he cursed his absentmindedness and hurried back toward his apartment for his cell phone. Sickened, furious, he reached boulevard Saint-Germain, hardly noticing the thunder of morning traffic.
As he rushed along the curb, his side abruptly exploded in pain. He cried out reflexively, and his feet left the sidewalk. It was almost as if a giant had driven a sledgehammer into him. Instantly he knew—this was what had happened to Kristoph. And he was just as helpless. With a furious yell, he dropped into the path of a city bus that had no room to swerve and no time to stop.
Blinding light erupted inside his mind. Horns blared. Brakes screamed. Too late. The bus hurtled into him, snapped his neck, and the darkness of death enveloped him.
Some twenty yards away, a tall man wearing a belted trench coat turned casually and ambled off, sliding what looked like a large flashlight into his pocket.
22
On the road, Virginia
Controlling her nervousness, Elaine looked up from the road map as Tice slid in next to her. The suburban street remained quiet. Black shadows and bright moonlight created a high-contrast monochrome of parked cars, grassy lawns, and houses.
“Finished.” Browning in hand, he closed the door and dropped his backpack at his feet. “The bullet holes in the car don’t look too bad. Maybe we’ll be able to pick up colored putty to make them less noticeable.” He returned her car keys.
She started the engine. Act natural. “Jags consider putty sacrilegious. They like solid steel and burled hardwood.”
He nodded noncommittally. “You did a damn good job of driving.”
She nodded back. “You’re welcome.” She sped off and turned the car west.
She glanced at him as he arranged himself in his seat so that his back was against the door again, his left leg up. He kept watch alertly. His short gray hair shone in the lights of a passing car.
Without making him suspicious, she must rendezvous with Litchfield’s secret Langley team. She did not allow herself to think ahead to the peril of the pseudochase or to how Tice would react. For a moment she had a disorienting sense of remoteness, as if she were a stranger, some person she no longer knew, stepping off a precipitous brink.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said evenly, “but I’ve got a feeling there’s someplace you want to go, and you’d probably like to be certain Jerry and his animals won’t follow or find you there.”
From the corners of her eyes, she watched him pin his keen gaze on her.
“So I figure I’ll keep driving awhile to make sure we’ve really lost them,” she continued, “then you can tell me where to take you.”
He studied her profile. The photo e-mailed to him with her background information had been only a year old. In it, her hair was pulled back, probably in a ponytail low on her neck, like the one she wore now, but so tight against her scalp that she looked severe, puritanical, at best a mousy intellectual. There had been no hint of her sense of humor. In person, she was younger and far prettier. Of one thing he was sure—she did not trust him, which made it impossible for him to move swiftly and invisibly. He had to decide what to do about her.
“Good idea,” he agreed, buying time.
She stopped the Jag at a red light and read the street signs. “Why did you do it, Jay?” she asked quietly.
His hand flexed on the grip of his Browning. Rage oozed from his pores. For an instant, the cool night air inside the car’s steel skin felt molten.
“You don’t conform to the usual profile,” she went on. “You’re no misfit or failure. There’s no indication you needed or wanted more than your usual Langley salary. You spied for Russia, but you’re not Russian, and you never indicated you thought their political system was better than ours. So how about indulging me? Help me to understand.” Earlier he had masked his fury with a disarming smile. Not this time.
He could feel the tension in his jaw, the heat of his outrage in his stare. “After my arrest, I had to talk about it endlessly. There were reasons, and they’re no one’s damn business.” Memories flashed through his mind, unhappy signposts in a dark, morally ambiguous past. “Years ago, a mentor told me operatives with too many regrets tended to end up dead. To be effective, you had to get on with it. So I did. But along the way I collected a Mount Everest of regrets—you can interpret that any way you want. There’s an Italian proverb I like—‘After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box.’ We all die—rich and poor, good or bad or indifferent. Until then, we have choices. I made choices, and now my future’s limited. Don’t look at me like that. It’s reality. I’ve been marked by the people behind Jerry. I want my life to mean something again, but I may not have much time.”
“What you’re saying is you want your life to mean something to you again.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s a different truth.”
“Fair enough.” His wrath was easing. “This isn’t about proving I’m better than anyone thinks. Frankly, I’d rather you weren’t here, although you’ve shown you have your uses. But if we don’t come to some kind of agreement, I’ll have to drop you off, and the chances are good Jerry will find and scrub you. Or I’ll let you stay, and something will happen, but you’ll be in the way and get hurt because I can’t trust you enough to inform you fully. This is my roundabout way of saying I’d like you to work with me instead of against me. At least until this mess is cleaned up. Another truce.”
She remembered his file, everything she had learned about him. He not only manipulated human frailty, he used it as a lethal weapon. His “warmth and compassion” were “unusually persuasive,” and he “steeped himself in every detail” of his target until the target “began to believe he cared.” Befriend. A ssess. R ecruit. Then he owned you, or he did his damnedest to make sure you believed he did.
As soon as the light turned green, she hit the gas pedal, sending the Jaguar off again into the night.
Time passed. He waited patiently.
Finally she said neutrally, “You’re asking a lot.”
“Goddammit, Elaine!” he exploded. “If you still think you’re going to capture me or get away long enough to report me, you’re crazy! In the first place, you can count on Jerry’s dirty pal inside the government—inside Langley, is my guess—already being on the alert for any contact from you. In the second place, there’s no way they can let you live now, even if you and I aren’t together. You’ve seen too much. There’s no choice—they’ve got to scrub you. Here’s the hard truth: I don’t have time for a prisoner. Either you pull your weight, or I’ve got to get rid of you. Something big is going down. Huge. Someone needs to find out what that is!”
“I don’t have a lot of reason to trust you.” They would soon pass the outskirts of Fairfax Station. Still on track to the meet.
“I could easily have left you to Jerry’s ‘tender mercies’ at your town house. I could’ve personally wiped you long ago.”
“Okay, then. Let’s run a test. Tell me about your escape. Allenwood’s a fortress—more security than a beehive has stings. But when you slipped out, no one noticed. Your dossier shows you habitually premeditate and plan carefully. But you were a recluse in prison, except for the occasional communication with your lawyer. I’m inclined to think you found an angel—or a devil—inside.”
He raised an eyebrow. “When you’re undercover, you can’t be sure when you’ll need a safety net. Someday your life may depe
nd on it. Decades ago, I set up small numbered accounts. Completely secret. I suggest you do the same.”
“We had satellite photos of Allenwood. You were never outdoors.”
“Ah, yes. But if one moves from a building’s loading door into a van’s door in one step, one is exposed to overhead observation only a fraction of a second. And if one wears the driver’s cap, there’s no red flag to draw IMINT’s attention.”
She scowled. “There’s a reason you escaped when you did—not next week or next month. It couldn’t have been to uncover some government skunk or a big illegal deal, because you didn’t know about either. Neither of us did. No, it was the death of Raina Manhardt’s son. That’s the trigger. But you haven’t mentioned it.”
He frowned, trying to figure out how she knew.
“You took the front section of the Herald Tribune with you,” she told him. “Just the front section. There was only one article in it that connected to you.”
Jesus. She did not miss much. “Okay, you’re partly correct. I knew her in Berlin, and I was fond of her son. I suspect there’s more to his skiing accident.”
“You suspect? Come on, Jay. If I play, the first rule is you’ve got to level with me. No holding back. I want everything you know or deduce or guess. I need a lot of very compelling reasons to throw in my lot with a traitor. Tell me about Raina Manhardt.”
“You say you expect me to play fair,” he shot back. “Then it’s your turn. A trade. Tell me about your husband and why you’ve been such a troublemaker since he died.”
She stiffened.
