Foreign Influence_A Thriller

by Brad Thor

  “Gain the advantage of the queue?” commented Cooper. “How about some professional courtesy and we skip the queue altogether?”

  “Is there a problem?” the woman asked.

  Casey held up her hand to silence her team.

  “We require all police officers to file certain paperwork upon arrival to the Netherlands.”

  “Well, we’re not police,” said Harvath.

  “That’s not what I was told.”

  “Our trip has been cleared by the—” he continued, but he was cut off.

  “If you are not police officers, then we have a problem.”

  “We are working for the American government.”

  “Do you have any government identification?”

  “No,” replied Harvath, trying to melt the ice around her a bit with his tone. “Our group is not issued ID cards.”

  “If you are not police and you do not have proper identification from your government, we will need to get this straightened out. Have a seat, please,” she said, pointing to a row of orange plastic chairs bolted to the gray tile floor.

  Harvath tried to explain but she turned her back on him, raised her radio to her mouth, and began speaking to someone in Dutch.

  Casey stepped over to Harvath and said, “The religion of peace is going to blow up their city in a matter of hours and she’s jerking us around on entry requirements? I thought you had this handled.”

  Harvath was just as angry as she was. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, removing his cell phone.

  He scrolled to a number in his address book and sent a quick text. An immigration officer is holding us up. Where r u?

  A couple of seconds later, his phone vibrated with a response. Look up.

  Coming down the hallway were three men, all well over six feet tall. The men on the left and right were blond-haired and blue-eyed while the man in the middle, who was sliding his cell phone back into his pocket, had a shaved head and narrow, dark eyes like a hawk.

  They looked like three Rugby captains walking out onto the field—if Rugby captains wore Italian suits, polished shoes, and Secret Service earpieces.

  The man on the left ID’d van den Heuvel as the reason for the hold-up and went straight for her. Though neither Harvath nor the Athena Team spoke Dutch, they got the gist of the serious dressing down he gave her.

  With van den Heuvel incapacitated, the bald man came over and shook Harvath’s hand. “I’m sorry we’re late. There have been a few developments since we last talked. We have cars waiting outside.”

  As they were whisked through immigration and customs, Harvath introduced Martin de Roon of the AIVD to Casey and the rest of the team.

  AIVD was the acronym for the Netherlands’ General Intelligence and Security Service, the Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst, which was charged with combating both domestic and international threats to national security. After the murder of Theo van Gogh and the discovery of the Muslim Hofstad Network, AIVD had become particularly focused on the Islamic fundamentalist threat to Dutch society.

  The two blond men fell to either side of the group, their heads on swivels, as Harvath and de Roon took the lead. Martin swept an ID through a card reader, pushed open a fire door, and led them all up a short flight of stairs. Opening another door, they found themselves outside. Parked in front of them were three armored BRABUS SV12 R Mercedes-Benz S600s. Recognized as the fastest sedans in the world, they were all black with deeply tinted windows.

  “Did our mutual friend send these for me?” asked Harvath.

  De Roon smiled and shook his head. “Members of Parliament do not drive armored Mercedes. Not even Mr. Wilders. These belong to the queen.”

  Harvath and Casey climbed into the back of the first Mercedes. Cooper and Ericsson got into the second, and Rhodes and Rodriguez the third.

  De Roon was sitting in the front passenger seat. The car was so quiet, it was like being in a bank vault.

  Once the convoy was ready to roll, de Roon raised his sleeve mic to his mouth and gave the command to his drivers to move out.

  As the convoy sped out of the airport, Harvath asked, “What have you learned about the target?”

  The Dutch intelligence officer prepared his driver and then told the rest of the team over the radio to move two lanes. He then turned around in his seat to address Harvath. “The target is an accountant named Khalil al-Yaqoubi, with no record of any sort. The only thing we could find out about him is that he does the books for one of the most radical mosques in Holland. He answered the Skype call from London in his office.”

  “Is he still there?”

  De Roon nodded. “He is. We have a surveillance team on him. We also have active surveillance on his apartment, as well as the mosque.”

  “How close together are the locations?”

  “It’s all the same neighborhood, but it’s an S-U-A.”

  “S-U-A?” said Casey.

  “It’s Dhimmi-speak, for Sensitive Urban Area,” replied Harvath.

  De Roon looked at her. “It’s actually EU-speak, but Scot’s essentially right. The subject operates in an all-Muslim neighborhood.”

  “So what? It’s still part of the city of Amsterdam, isn’t it?”

  “Technically, yes. But the police won’t go there.”

  “Well, as we stated upon arrival, we’re not the police and just so you know, there’s no place my team is afraid to go into.”

  Harvath met de Roon’s eyes, “They’re the ones who took down the mosque in London.”

  “Then maybe she should be in charge.”

  Casey held up her hand. “This is Scot’s operation.”

  “Do you know what a klootzak is?” he asked her.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “That’s what we call men like him here in Holland.”

  Harvath gave de Roon the finger.

  “See?” said the Dutchman. “That’s the behavior of a klootzak. They always want the most dangerous assignments and if you’re not ready to move when they are, they leave without you.”

  “I think you’re referring to what we call a cowboy.”

  “I suppose you could call him a cowboy, but klootzak is more offensive, and more accurate. Therefore, he is a klootzak.”

  Casey looked at de Roon. “Do you two have some sort of history I need to know about?”

  “It all started when Marty placed an ad in the Village Voice—” began Harvath.

  “I’m not talking to you,” she said, cutting him off.

  “I don’t like to think about it,” de Roon replied.

  Harvath smiled. “It hurts that your boss liked me more than you.”

  “He was not my boss. He was my protectee.”

  “Who are we talking about?” asked Casey.

  “Geert Wilders,” answered de Roon. “He’s a member of the Dutch Parliament. Scot helped us with some trouble he was having.”

  Casey looked at Harvath. “What kind of trouble?”

  “Do you know who Mr. Wilders is?” he asked.

  “His name is familiar.”

  “He produced the movie Fitna?”

  Casey’s eyebrows went up. “The one the Muslims went nuts over?”

  Harvath nodded.

  “I watched it on the Internet and never understood the outrage. Didn’t it show scenes of Muslim terrorism alongside passages from the Qur’an that call for violence against non-Muslims?”

  “It did,” said de Roon. “Mr. Wilders was holding a mirror up to the Muslim community worldwide and exposing their hypocrisy. They riot over cartoons of Mohammed, but are silent when Muslim terror attacks happen.”

  “And so they want to kill him over a movie that simply shows the truth?”

  The man nodded as if to say, I know. It’s ridiculous. “The hypocrisy is completely lost on them. Remember, Islam is a religion of peace and if you say it isn’t, they’ll kill you.”

  “So you met through Wilders?”

  “Geert was speaking at an event in
New York City to raise awareness about Islamic fundamentalism,” said Harvath. “There were several other big-name speakers at the event like Robert Spencer and former Dutch Member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

  “A group of bloggers at a site called the Jawa Report, which specializes in taking down Islamist Web sites, uncovered a terror plot against the event. I knew several of the security people involved and when they learned of the threat, they asked me to come in and consult.”

  “And was there actually an attempt on the event?”

  “Yes, but we stopped it.”

  “He means that he stopped it,” said de Roon.

  Casey looked at Harvath. “Is that true?”

  “Some radical American Muslim wounded two police officers and three hotel security guards trying to get into the ballroom. The man was not only heavily armed, he was also wearing a bomb vest. He would have killed all of the presenters and many of the attendees if Scot hadn’t killed him first.”

  “I got lucky,” replied Harvath.

  “You can say that again,” replied de Roon. “If I had snuck out of the ballroom looking for a Red Bull, maybe I would have been in the right place at the right time too.”

  “So that’s how you two know each other?”

  Harvath nodded. “Marty invited me to come over and do some training with his unit.”

  “Dumbest thing I ever did,” said de Roon.

  “Why?” asked Casey.

  “Because,” said Harvath, “when the powers that be saw how good he was, he got promoted. He went from being a special police officer protecting people like Geert and the royal family to AIVD where he now gets to deal with Muslim whack jobs on a daily basis.”

  “And unfortunately today is no different,” added de Roon. “We need to decide what we’re going to do.”

  Scot glanced at his watch. “The attack is supposed to happen during the evening rush, so we’ll have to take him at his office. Describe it to me.”

  De Roon pulled up the file on his BlackBerry and rattled off the salient details. “The office is on the ground floor of a three-story building. Plate glass windows. No rear exit.”

  “How many people working there?”

  “Besides al-Yaqoubi? Three men.”

  “Do we have histories on them?”

  “No, they’re all clean.”

  “Ages?” asked Harvath.

  “Al-Yaqoubi is forty-five and the three other men are forty, forty-three, and fifty-five.”

  “And we have no idea if they have any role in this or not?”

  “No, we don’t. They could be cell members or function in some other capacity within the network.”

  “Which means that if we grab him, we’re probably going to have to grab them too,” said Harvath.

  “Unless being an accountant is al-Yaqoubi’s legitimate cover and these men know nothing about his terrorist activities.”

  “But with no way of knowing, we have to assume that they’re involved. If their firm does the books for the most radical mosque in Amsterdam, we can guess where their sympathies probably lie.”

  “That’s true,” replied de Roon.

  “Is there anything covering the windows?” asked Harvath. “Shutters? Blinds?”

  “No.”

  “Any other rooms?”

  “From what we can tell, there’s a storeroom of some sort and a toilet. That’s all. The entire office is in full view of the street.”

  “Which is a big problem.”

  The Dutch intelligence officer nodded. “Keep in mind that if we’re going to grab all the men in the office, we have to be in and out in less than a minute. Any longer than that and it won’t happen.”

  “Why? Can the locals organize a riot that fast?”

  “They can. They’re experts at it. Believe me.”

  “How do we transport them?” asked Harvath.

  “We can use the van and my agents who are surveilling the office now.”

  “Since we can’t conduct the interrogation at the accounting office, what’s our alternative?”

  De Roon pulled up a picture on his BlackBerry and turned it around to show Harvath. “There’s a Liberian freighter in the port. We arrested the crew two days ago for smuggling. I have two men there now. You’ll have the whole ship to yourself.”

  “How long will it take to get there?”

  “Ten or fifteen minutes depending on traffic.”

  “That’s too long. What do you have closer?”

  “For the kind of interrogating you’re going to want to do, that’s it.”

  Harvath let that sink in. “Our larger problem is that with no back door, we’re not going to be able to get them out of the office and into the van without people seeing it happen.”

  “Exactly. And word travels fast in the Muslim neighborhoods.”

  Harvath was frustrated. No matter how he spun it in his head, he couldn’t come up with the right way to conduct the snatch.

  Casey had already given up on forcefully taking al-Yaqoubi from his office. “Can we draw him out?” she asked. “What are his pressure points? Is he married? Does he have kids?”

  De Roon scrolled through the file and read. “He is a Dutch citizen of Moroccan extraction, Rabat to be exact. According to our records, he has three wives and eleven children, but despite the fact that they receive Dutch social assistance—”

  “Wait a second,” said Harvath. “This guy is an accountant and his family receives welfare?”

  The intelligence man shook his head. “The system has a lot of problems, including the fact that we cannot find any proof of current residency for the family.”

  “None?”

  “No. We have no Dutch medical, Dutch school, or Dutch employment records for any of them.”

  “Which means they’re probably back in Morocco.”

  That gave Casey an idea. “Do we have full names and dates of birth for the family?” she asked as she removed her cell phone.

  De Roon pulled it up and handed his BlackBerry to her.

  “What are you doing?” asked Harvath.

  Casey highlighted a number in her address book and activated the call button. “I know a few people in the Moroccan secret police,” she replied. “If that’s where this guy’s family is, we might not have to walk into his office at all.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Martin de Roon ordered the other two vehicles to hang back. The less attention they drew to themselves, the better. One blacked-out Mercedes cruising through one of Amsterdam’s worst Muslim ghettos was more than enough.

  “There are two pistols in the armrest between you,” he said.

  Casey opened it and Harvath fished out a pair of SIG-Sauer P226s and an extra magazine for each.

  “It goes without saying that you didn’t get those weapons from us.”

  “Understood,” replied Harvath as he handed Casey a pistol and a spare magazine. “Have you heard anything back from Morocco?”

  She checked her phone again. “They’re approaching the house. That’s all I know.”

  Harvath glanced at his watch. They were running out of time. “What’s plan B if the house is empty?”

  “We create a distraction on the next block,” said de Roon. “Something big. Something that will draw people out of houses and shops. We pick a building and send in fire trucks and ambulances. We send them in fast and loud. We make police go in and set up barricades to hold people back.

  “As soon as the crowds begin to gather and enough people have gone to see what is happening, we pull up in the van and grab al-Yaqoubi and the other men in the office.”

  “How quickly could you get all of those emergency responders there?” asked Harvath.

  “It would only take a matter of minutes.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be necessary,” said Casey as she read the message that had just come across her phone. “Two of al-Yaqoubi’s wives and several of the children are apparently at the Rabat house. My DST contact wants to know h
ow he should proceed.”

  “Tell him to take the house.”

  “Roger that,” replied Casey, who called her contact in Morocco’s secret police, formally known as the Direction de la Securité du Territoire, or DST.

  Above a wooded gorge, south of Rabat’s diplomatic district at Ain Aouda, the United States had helped Morocco build an interrogation and detention facility for its al-Qaeda suspects. It was run by the Moroccan DST, and Gretchen Casey had participated in several interrogations there over the last two years.

  She put the call on speaker phone so Harvath and de Roon could listen in to the takedown. Commands were issued in Arabic as men could be heard jumping out of cars and pounding on a door.

  In typical Arab fashion a woman could be heard arguing with the men, and when that didn’t work, she slipped into sobbing hysterics, claiming she didn’t know anyone named Khalil al-Yaqoubi.

  Finally, the DST man in Rabat told Casey they were ready to make the call. “How close are we?” she asked de Roon.

  “Four blocks. Less than two minutes out,” he replied.

  “Proceed to the target.”

  The intelligence officer nodded and instructed his operative to take the next left. They stopped there and waited for the second Mercedes. When de Roon’s operative had gotten out, he retrieved several items from the trunk and then slid behind the wheel. Casey joined him up front while Harvath remained in the backseat.

  When they were half a block away from the target, Casey told her contact in Rabat to make the call.

  They pulled up in front of the accounting office just as the phone began to ring. The DST operative had called from inside the house in Rabat. Casey could hear everything from his end, including when he put al-Yaqoubi’s wife and then one of his children on the phone.

  The instructions were very clear. The DST operative told al-Yaqoubi to look out the window. When the accountant confirmed that the black Mercedes had just pulled up, the DST man told him to stand and without saying a word, hang up the phone and exit the office. If he was seen to utter even a single syllable, his family would be killed.