by Gayle Lynds
“You’re excited, aren’t you?” She had also altered her appearance, with oversize sunglasses and a straw hat, her hair tucked up underneath.
He did not look at her. “I suppose so.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Jay. Smile. You want to see Raina so bad you’re like a kid with a hundred-dollar bill and an ice-cream truck only three steps away. Get out of the car. You’re going to be late.”
He shot her a million-watt grin. “She might be here already.”
As soon as they were out of the Jag, she rushed to him and slid her arms around him. For a moment, his arms waved indecisively at his sides, then held her, thick and warm.
“I know you didn’t do it, Jay,” she told him. With each word, he had stiffened more. “Don’t say anything. It’s okay. I just want you to know—really know—that I know, and I’ll always be your friend.” She pulled back and kissed his cheek.
He hesitated then brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “Take care of yourself, Elaine.” His smile sent something lovely and tender through her. Then he leaned over and kissed her forehead.
He strode away. His broad back grew smaller. His tread became predatory.
As the moored fish barges nudged against the Maine Avenue wharf, the rhythmic thunk of steel against wood resounded eerily. The Potomac River’s brown tide was rising, while seagulls circled low, eyeing the fresh crabs and oysters and fish in dozens of varieties arrayed on shaved ice on the block-long marketplace. The late-afternoon sunshine washed the scene in an eerie lavender light.
In his tinted skin and baseball cap and sunglasses, Jay Tice strolled beside the flatboats, his body slumped and deliberately old-looking, his hands loose and free, as he stayed aware of his holstered weapons, aware he saw Raina nowhere. He repressed disappointment and worry.
A fishmonger’s voice suddenly sang out: “Loive crabs! Get your loive crabs!”
Jay resisted an impulse to turn. The accent was the real thing with the rich inflections of someone from one of the fishing outposts along the Chesapeake Bay.
Where was Raina? He turned and retraced his steps, pretending to study the modern restaurants that rimmed the river south of the barges. He scanned the marina’s houseboats and cruisers and trawlers. He surveyed the pier—busy but not overcrowded—worried something had happened to Raina.
He carried an image of her in his mind from that first dawn exchange at Glienicke Bridge. She had looked like a Prussian princess in the wintry light, so bundled was she against the cold. He smiled to himself as he recalled her rosy cheeks, her pink nose. With her fur hat squarely on her head, her blue eyes had seemed larger than ever. And at her side, her gloved fingers had flexed once, her only betrayal of nerves. There was humanity in that gesture, the ice princess come alive. It revealed the woman, real and honest, beneath the perfect sheath of steel. The Raina he loved.
The barrel of a gun rammed sharply into his back. “So, old man, why shouldn’t I wipe you?” The woman’s voice was a hot, angry whisper beneath his right ear.
His lungs tightened. He controlled an automatic urge to swing back and jam his elbow into her throat. “Dammit, Raina.” He kept his voice low. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“You bastard. Because of you, he’s dead. Where’s your car?”
This was not what he had planned. “It’s a block from here. Put that gun away. You’re going to get us noticed.”
“I’m better than that, for God’s sake. Don’t try anything. I will wipe you if you don’t do exactly what I say. Come to think of it, I may anyway. You’ve got one more job—we may have been burned, so keep an eye out. I said walk.”
As instructed, Elaine had been following at a distance, nearly a block away. But a young thug in Levi’s and a Harley-Davidson denim jacket had just moved in behind Jay and was so close they were almost in lockstep. Jay’s taut body language signaled a weapon was involved. Suddenly Jay relaxed, and the punk backed off a fraction. They turned, and Jay raised his head and gave an almost imperceptible nod in her direction. That was when she knew—it was Raina in disguise. And the reunion looked far from romantic.
Elaine stopped and surveyed the wharf, the customers lined up at glass cases of fish, couples sauntering, nannies out with babies in strollers. No one appeared threatening. She reversed direction, too, walking back to Maine Avenue. She glanced over her shoulder occasionally, checking on Jay and Raina.
But as she closed in on the street, Elaine spotted three men in off-the-rack suits striding purposefully onto the pier. One was tall and thick. All were moving too fast to be ordinary customers arriving to barter for fresh seafood, nor did they act like jaded health inspectors. She saw no sign of weapons, but their jackets were loose. Alarmed, she gazed beyond them to a van that was rolling to a stop in a no-parking zone. There was something about the first man out of the van—he was tall, familiar. With a jolt, she remembered. He was the one she had seen slipping into a doorway behind her after she left the Reading Room and sensed she had a tail. He must have been with the operative who had tried to wipe her with the poisoned darts. Whippet.
Pulse hammering, she checked on Jay and Raina. They were still too far away to be noticed by the newcomers, but not for long.
With a quick gesture, Elaine loosened her straw hat and again hurried, her speed attracting the attention of the trio. Their heads swiveled. They stared. She stared back through her sunglasses and then at the half-dozen others who had exited the van and were striding toward the first three.
She let her mouth fall open in horror. She bolted away, giving a shake to her head so her hat would fall off. It did, and her hair flew. Now they would have to recognize her.
“That’s Cunningham!” one said, his voice raised.
“If she’s here, they must be, too,” said another. “Moses was right.”
“Spread out. Look for them. We’ll take Cunningham!”
Elaine glanced back as the initial trio came after her while the others scattered to search the dock for Raina and Jay. Dammit! She’d screwed up! All of them were supposed to chase her. She slammed to a stop, drew her Walther, and spun.
39
The men’s voices had carried over the shoppers and past the bargemen and burned a single phrase into Jay’s brain:Moses was right. He was enraged—but the rat was out of the hole at last.
“Who’s that woman?” Raina demanded from behind as Elaine whirled around to face the men.
“The hunter Langley sent to track me down—Elaine Cunningham.” He watched, appalled, as she dropped to her heels and opened fire. “I’ve got to help her!”
Under the sudden spray of bullets, the men dove for cover. Shoppers screamed, pushed, and ran in every direction. The terrible noise sent seagulls screeching into the wind. Panic swept the wharf.
Raina grabbed his arm and pulled. “Come on, Jay! We have to leave while we can. It’s what she wants. Come on!”
Abruptly the gunfire died, and Elaine sprinted off, this time with all of the attackers in hot pursuit. She was leading them away from him and Raina.
Jay darted between two shops, the sound of Raina’s footsteps behind. He led her swiftly along the pier’s edge, where shops and stores shielded them. They rushed past bluefish and crabs and bargemen offering deals. The noise of boats bumping the wharf sounded to Jay like hammers on coffin nails.
At the street, he checked all around for Elaine then turned to wait for Raina to catch up. And stared. Raina looked like a man, from dark lanky ponytail and violent sunglasses to mustache and short beard and loping gait. He hardly recognized her; she still had the touch.
Raina snapped, “Left.”
They accelerated. He kept surveying the busy area until finally he saw Elaine again in the distance—the team of men in a tight, determined pack, pursuing.
An online meeting with the Majlis al-Sha’b was not something to be done in a Kinko’s, so Faisal al-Hadi had rented a luxury hotel room in Northeast Washington for privacy and a secure wireless communic
ation. He stood at the mirror and meticulously combed the last of the mousse from his wet hair. His ability to blend so easily was testament to the superficiality of their world. He ran a hand over his jaw, feeling the bristles of his black beard. He longed to grow it again, and soon he would. This was his last mission; the council had insisted he stop endangering himself.
As he straightened the starched white uniform of his new disguise, he saw the message on his laptop’s screen announcing his brothers had assembled. It was seven A.M. in Malaysia, just after prayers. He hurried to his laptop and sat, imagining them gathered around their simple meeting table. With Allah to guide them, the Majlis had built new headquarters where no one could find them—on the hot, lush coast along the Strait of Malacca.
Convenient to the Middle East, Pakistan, and the Philippines, and encircled by thick mangrove swamps and centuries-old suspicion of anyone who was not Islamic, their hidden cove provided security and more than enough land on which to increase their sprawling nerve center. Because of reefs, the infidels’ behemoth ships could not reach them. There was no landing strip for their mammoth jets. And there had never been roads through the jungle.
He typed his code and entered it. Immediately the screen showed his brothers. As always, they had placed a laptop at the head of the table—at his place—and turned it so he could view all. At the same time, each had his laptop open to have close sight of him. There were whip-lean Afghans, squat Turks, tall Sudanese, brown Pakistanis, Iraqis, Iranians, Kurds—thirty of them and growing. Their network of networks was spreading quickly.
After the usual greetings, he came to the point. “You’ve studied the manifest?” He spoke in Arabic. All meetings were conducted in the ancient tongue in which the holy Koran was written.
Salim Mahfooz, whose severe countenance showed an informed seriousness far beyond his thirty years, was a new councilman. “I understand Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers and SAMs. Partnerships among us in small arms dealing and smuggling make sense, but I see no future in Western gadgets.” He was from Libya, where outrage over Mu‘ammar Gadhafi’s “peace” with the Great Satan after its invasion of Iraq had sent a flood of new enlistees into his organization.
“I’m concerned, too, brothers,” Ibrahim Allahmar said. “Remember our primary goals—set up an international network for economic and financial cooperation, exchange intelligence, and share safe houses and joint training programs and arms buys. That demands all of our resources. This deal is costing far more than we anticipated. Now that I see the final manifest, I’m worried.” Small, intense, and hard, he was a Uighur from Kashgar. He had been with them a year.
Al-Hadi was annoyed, but responding was a small price to pay for the cause. “Our brother, the Sheik bin Laden, is wise above all.” He waited until everyone murmured agreement. “Two days before the sacred strikes of 9/11, he phoned his mother to tell her a big event would happen soon, and she wouldn’t hear from him for a while. Do you think he was being careless?”
“Laa.” The voices rang out—no.
“You’re correct. He called because he knew the infidels’ NSA would intercept the conversation—and that their intercept-interpret-analyze cycle was seventy-two hours. By the time they actually understood what he’d said, the attack would be over. Therefore, he could phone his mother and, at the same time, demoralize them with the depths of their arrogance and incompetence. How did the sheik know about the cycle? Because he’d spent years gathering information about their intelligence systems.”
Around the table, turbaned heads nodded. Some stroked their beards with approval. The two who had objected remained silent and motionless.
“If the Soviet Union and every other hostile country couldn’t overcome America’s strategic defense, we’d be stupid to try,” al-Hadi explained logically. “Islam may be stateless, but we can still defeat nations by using fourth-generation warfare. First, we accept that the West’s military machine is vast, so we ignore it whenever possible. Second, we ignore their rules of war, too. For us, there’s no difference between ‘soldier’ and ‘civilian.’ Civilians fight, too, by supporting their war. Third, the infidels believe early warning, preventive strikes, and deterrence will defeat us. Wrong. That works only when both sides want to survive. It’s erased when fighting us, because we care only about the everlasting life of the soul.”
“Our martyrs are holy,” agreed Imam Burra Tilkrit from Yemen. “Man maat al-yaum salim min dhanb bukra,” he said, offering a proverb—Who dies today is safe from tomorrow’s sin.
Al-Hadi waited until the pair of objectors nodded along with everyone else.
Ibrahim Allahmar spoke again: “Tell us why you think this shipment is necessary for our holy jihad, Sheik al-Hadi.”
Al-Hadi quoted a phrase from the Koran: “The answer is because it will ‘instill terror in the hearts of the unbelievers.’ Each product plays a role. For instance, we’ll have a thousand integrated Land Battle packages. That’s their brand-new soldier uniforms. They have built-in scrambled communications gear, personal electronics, global navigation, and new enhanced fabric that’s impervious to gunfire. Instead of planting bombs that inevitably destroy their outposts, our men can wear these uniforms, invade while the infidels sleep, capture them for questioning, and leave with all of the intelligence and electronics equipment and guns. If their people spot us, we’ll be fully equipped to defend and attack and still escape with our plunder. Don’t you agree that this is good?”
“Very good!” the once-reluctant Salim Mahfooz said enthusiastically.
“You’ll like the RadioTech chip, too. It sits at the base of an antenna and instantly converts any incoming analog radio signal into digital data. With it, we can convert local wireless signals to our use anywhere on the planet. There’s also the Vibraject, a new way to use ultrasound vibrations to force drugs through the skin without a needle. What makes this useful is that it works from as far away as one hundred feet. We can shoot poison into the infidels from a distance, wait until they go down, then enter buildings to plant bombs or steal information without risking that our warriors will be stopped. Another product is the HiWave high-energy radio wave. It scrambles the computer chips—the digital brains—that control the functions in a car, a bus, a plane, a control tower, anywhere, in fact, that we wish.”
Al-Hadi watched the councilmen turn to one another, talking excitedly as they translated his explanations into practical deeds for the jihad. When there was a pause, he said, “I could continue through the manifest, but I’ll be home with the shipment in a month, and we can talk more then. Do I have your approval for it?”
“Why do we want this ForeTell software?” asked Kilim Dekat. Born in Germany, he was Hezbollah’s representative.
Al-Hadi smiled. “ForeTell brings all the aspects of our networks together to a degree we’ve only dreamed of. We’ll know where every man, every weapon, every tool in our arsenal is, and the stage each plan has reached. With ForeTell, we can program and coordinate the details of the defenses around each target along with the advanced physics and mathematics needed to guarantee every strike is successful. . . .”
When he finished, he studied them. Like beacons in a long, desolate night, pride and belief shone from their faces. With a nod to himself, his voice rose, full of emotion and truth: “Our loyalty is to no nation—only to Islam. We’ll strike at the infidels’ hearts—where they live and work and play. We’ll demolish their most cherished landmarks and institutions. Each time we make their people pay a high price economically and psychologically, they blame their own leaders for allowing it to happen. As our strikes continue, they’ll crumble more. We’ll destroy them from the inside out. And then Allah will have his kingdom on earth once more!”
40
Old magnolia trees lined the residential block of small clapboard houses in Southeast Washington. Although a scattering of people were returning from work, the shadowy street gave off a feeling of desertion. Ahead was Raina’s rental car, a beige Ford Mustang wit
h a big V8 engine—a neutral color plus good horsepower.
As he and Raina hurried toward it, Jay inspected the area. “Where did you get the steel pipe you stuck into my back?”
“You knew?” Her fury at him had quieted.
“Not at first.”
Both looked around quickly and climbed into the car. She turned on the engine and drove into the street sedately, doing nothing to draw attention in the tranquil neighborhood.
“I suppose it’s a miracle I managed that. But then I had the best teacher,” she said bitterly. She pulled a short length of pipe from her Harley-Davidson jacket and tossed it into the back. “I couldn’t carry a weapon onto the plane, and I didn’t want to risk picking one up around here. Pipe was the simplest solution.”
He drank in the sight of her. In his mind, he erased the mustache and wig and studied the hollowed cheeks, the smooth skin, the quiet radiance of her personality, the kindness that flowed beneath. She had a way of tilting her head when she drove that gave a sense of combined vigilance and pleasure. He studied her long-fingered hands and short nails—her practical side. She gripped the steering wheel with nonchalant control. At the same time, her lanky body relaxed into the seat as if luxuriating in it. Still, at a moment’s notice she could come alert and be lethal. Her beauty and complexity seemed to enthrall him even more.
“Have you learned anything about Kristoph?” she asked.
“Nothing directly. I was hoping you’d fill me in about him first. But before you do, we’d better talk about Moses.”
“I heard the janitors say his name. The intel about where to find us came from Moses.”
He nodded grimly. “That bastard! For years he always seemed to be somewhere near but just out of sight, a puppeteer alternately working us, working for us, and working against us. We had to play his game—we had no choice. I tried to find him, but he was always a step ahead. When he went quiet in the late nineties, I’d hoped he was gone forever.”
