The Shadows of Power

by James W. Huston

  Ismael looked at Madani, who spoke quickly. “Six would be perfect.”

  Salam laughed. “That is impossible. If we were inclined to sell any, it could not possibly be more than one or two.”

  “Do you have any Russian missiles?”

  “Yes. We have purchased many of them on the black market.”

  “Perhaps we could have some of those as well.”

  “They are not as likely to hit the target.”

  “But they might. And we believe the targets are unarmed. No defenses.”

  “Then they might be of assistance. Do you have money?”

  “Yes. We can pay you.”

  “In dollars?”

  “Of course.”

  Salam nodded and thought. He rocked slightly back and forth as he decided. “You are confident?”

  “Yes.”

  Salam nodded, and stood up. “Thank you very much for coming all this way.”

  The Algerians stood. “What is your decision?”

  “We have never sold Stingers to anyone. I told you that. They are sure to be tracked here.”

  “You will not help us?”

  “We can help you with Russian missiles. They will do what you need to have done. You can have six of them, assuming you can pay the market price.”

  “What is that?”

  “Fifty thousand U.S. dollars per missile.”

  “But they are not as reliable. Not as likely to hit the target.”

  “You said yourself that your targets are unarmed. Defenseless. They will suffice.”

  “You will not change your mind?”

  “What about my brother?”

  “He died in a Russian airplane. His vengeance should be sweeter if you achieve success with a Russian missile.”

  Ismael was deeply disappointed. “The Stingers would almost assure success.” He paused.

  “A good plan will succeed with Russian missiles. You must just plan more precisely.”

  Madani realized they had gotten as much as they were going to get. “Thank you for your generous offer of Russian missiles. We will take them.”

  Salam stood. “Thank you for coming. And as a gift of friendship, one young man to another, I will let Ismael here,” he said, clapping him on the shoulder, “have one Stinger missile, as a gift. To do to the Americans what they have done to all of us. For the Tomahawks that the Americans rained down on Khartoum under their President Clinton for no reason at all, killing innocent people. It is time for that debt to be paid.”

  They prepared to leave.

  Salam spoke again, “I would like to speak with Ismael alone. You will be going with us for a few days, so please just wait outside.”

  Madani asked, “A few days? Where? To do what?”

  “For training. We will show you how to use the weapons properly. And how to defend yourself from the attacks that are sure to follow your use of the weapons. You need to be fighters. Please,” he motioned. “Wait outside for us.”

  Madani and Khalida walked outside, unhappy about the relationship that was clearly forming between Ismael and this Salam.

  When they were gone, Salam turned to Ismael. “What do you know of these two?”

  “I’ve known them for years. They were involved in many of the attacks in the nineties before the new government came to power.”

  “As were you.”

  “Some.” Ismael shrugged.

  “Do you trust them?”

  Ismael considered. “Mostly.”

  “Do you think they are competent?”

  “Somewhat. They are very dedicated. Driven.”

  “That is good.”

  “Yes.”

  Salam paced around the room thinking. He stopped. “If they get all these missiles, can they do this thing?”

  “Maybe. It depends on how much help we get in Paris.”

  “They expect a lot.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “Will you go with them and shoot the missile yourself?”

  “Yes. I will.”

  “I do not have the confidence in them that you have. Maybe they will do it. But I want you to succeed.” Salam stepped closer until he was inches away from Ismael. He whispered, “When you get to Paris, do not be predictable. Do not go around with them to meet people. Do only what is necessary for the mission. And if it begins to fall apart, don’t panic. There may be others there that can help you. Just you.” He paused. “Maybe I will make a trip to Paris myself.”

  * * *

  Lew Savage checked with the security detail in Pensacola that was assigned to watch the Stovics’ beach house. Everything had been quiet. But now they had assigned additional agents to protect Debbie Stovic and her baby, Mr. and Mrs. Stovic, the parents, Debbie’s parents, and anyone else they thought might be exposed.

  Still, Lieutenant Ed Stovic, the American icon, was the one who was in the crosshairs. Of that Lew had no doubt. He knocked on the door of the pretty house on the beach as he and Patricia waited on the porch. Karen answered the door. “Mr. Savage, Patricia,” she said, remembering their names. “Come on in.”

  They walked in and looked at the house as if they were considering buying it. They were accustomed to apartments or brownstones, not spacious three-story houses with porches that went all the way around and overlooked the ocean. They were impressed. “Nice house,” Patricia said.

  “Thanks,” Karen replied.

  “Is Ed here?”

  “Yes. He’s about to leave.”

  “Right. We wanted to talk to him about something . . . to both of you . . . about something important.”

  “Sure. I think he’s on the porch in the back.”

  They followed her across the polished hardwood floors to the back of the house and out onto the wide porch. Stovic was sitting on the steps with the two children.

  “Ed, the FBI are here.”

  Stovic stood up. “Hey.”

  Lew put his hands in his pocket awkwardly. “Do you have a

  second?”

  “Yeah. What’s up?”

  “We need to talk to you about something. I don’t know if you want to do this in front of the kids. . . .”

  “Is it bad news?” he asked.

  “Not really. We want to ask you to do something. Karen, actually. It’s something we feel pretty strongly about.”

  “Go ahead,” he said. Karen watched them with guarded curiosity.

  Lew was struggling. He took a deep breath. “We think Karen and the kids should be taken into protective custody.” He saw the startled looks on their faces and put up his hand. “I don’t mean in jail, or anything like that, but sometimes when we feel someone is in real danger, we hide them. We have places that are very safe, unknown to all but a few, and staffed round the clock with very capable agents. I don’t think this Ismael character is done. I don’t think he’ll be satisfied with just taking out your brother—sorry. We—I feel that your family is in danger. And I would just cut my wrists if anything happened to them.”

  Stovic grimaced. “You told me yourself you believe he left the country.”

  “We do. But I have no confidence in our ability to keep him out. He must have access to very high-quality fake passports and papers. With those, and his looks being fairly average for any number of groups of people, he could easily slip back into the country undetected. The INS didn’t have any record of him coming back into the country when we now know he was here for some time.”

  Karen watched the children walk down the steps to the sand, looking for something. “That’s comforting.”

  “Exactly. I’m not here to give you comfort, I’m here to put the fear of God into you. I don’t trust this Ismael character, or anyone he has working for him, to do the predictable thing. We’ve been burned bad once, and I don’t want it to happen again.”

  Stovic replied. “We had just talked about Karen coming to Paris. Four or five of the wives are coming to Paris. We’ve never been to Paris,” he said. “Always wanted to go. Planned on goin
g when the Truman was on cruise, but having kids makes that tough. We were going to send the kids to their grandparents.”

  Patricia shook her head vigorously. “Bad idea. She needs to be safe until this whole thing goes away. Safety first. You do want your family safe?”

  Stovic was perturbed. “What kind of stupid question is that?”

  “Sorry. I strongly recommend, sir, that she allow us to hide her away.”

  “Where would you take them?”

  “That remains to be decided, but even when we do, we probably won’t tell you. We don’t want anyone accidentally telling the wrong person and it getting into the wrong hands.”

  Stovic looked at his wife. He could read the disappointment and sadness in her face. How long was this going to go on? How long would they have to change their lives to accommodate this threat? “What do you think?”

  She hesitated. She didn’t want to sound petty. She looked at him. “I wanted to go to Paris. With you. I’m not really afraid. If anyone is in danger, it’s you. And you’re not changing what you’re doing.”

  “I want you to be safe. Until all this blows over.”

  “When will that be? And how will we know?”

  “I don’t know. At least until after Paris. But I don’t want you in danger. I’m always in danger. This just ups the ante a little. With you, though, and the kids? Why put them through that?”

  “We could just put the kids in protection of some kind.”

  “We can’t let the FBI watch over our kids without us, can we? How could we live with ourselves? We wouldn’t enjoy our time if we knew our kids were somewhere with a bunch of stuffy FBI agents sitting watching television all day. No, thanks.”

  “When did you want to do this?” Karen asked.

  “Today. This afternoon. We’d like you to leave with us. We have a jet waiting at the naval air station. You don’t even have to go to the public airport.”

  “Would I be able to talk to Ed?”

  “I’m afraid not. Not until it’s over.”

  St. John sat straight up in her bed. She was sure she had heard the doorbell. She looked at the clock next to her bed: 10:14 P.M. She felt as if she’d been asleep for hours. She got out of bed and threw on a bathrobe, went down the stairs, and peered through the eyehole in the door. There was someone there, but she couldn’t make out who it was. She spoke. “Who is it?”

  “Pizza.”

  She hadn’t ordered any pizza. “I didn’t order any. You’ve got the wrong house.”

  “No, I don’t. You asked for me.”

  She tried to figure out what the man was talking about. She turned on the porch light and saw that he was from Roselli’s Pizza of Georgetown. She opened the door slightly to look at him better, without the distortion from the fish-eye lens.

  “Step back from the door and let me in, or it’s going to start looking real awkward real soon.” He gave the door a slight push and she let him in. He closed the door behind him.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  He took off his pizza hat and dropped it onto the chair in the foyer. He put the box with pizza in it on the dining room table to his left. “I told you never to ask me to come see you. It’s too obvious.”

  She suddenly realized whom she was talking to. “Why the pizza disguise?”

  “So the guys watching your house wouldn’t immediately know who I was.”

  She frowned. “There aren’t any men watching my house.”

  He handed her a two-by-two-and-a-half-inch LCD screen.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a detachable screen from my digital camera. I took some low-light photos of the men out there. I thought you’d get a kick out of it.”

  She picked up the small screen and looked at it.

  “Push that small button in the lower right corner.”

  She did. The screen lit up, showing a picture of two men in a car, with the time and date of thirty minutes before. “Did you take this?”

  “Yep. In the street behind your house.”

  “How many are there?”

  “I saw three cars. But I might have missed a few. Hit the button on the lower left.”

  She did and saw that it allowed her to go from one digital photo to the next. She stared in amazement as one photo after another—each with the time and date on the bottom—proved that her house was being watched carefully. “Who are they?”

  “Federal agents, I’m sure.”

  “They have no right to watch me.”

  “Sure they do. They might even have a warrant. Walker told me they’re onto the fact that he’s receiving encrypted e-mails. And they can’t break the encryption with the NSA, because no key has been provided and its a 256k bit encryption which they hate. It would take all the computers they’ve got about a billion years to read one e-mail. So they are very suspicious. They’re sure you’re the eventual beneficiary of the communication, wherever it’s coming from, and since the encryption is clearly trying to hide something, probably we’re able to convince some magistrate somewhere that you were worthy of clandestine surveillance. They probably have a worm in your computer, waiting for you to load the encryption device. Then they’d know what keys you’re typing as you type them, bypassing the entire encryption problem. They’ve probably tried on Walker’s too, but it’s harder on a laptop.”

  St. John knew he was right. “So now what?”

  “So you insisted I come here. Here I am. But you’ve taken a big chance of showing your entire hand. They’ll track me. They’ll know it’s me within forty-eight hours.

  She handed the LCD screen back to him. He dropped it into his pocket. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. But tell me what’s so important.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about the Blue Angels. About the discussion we were having through the e-mails. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure they go to Paris. That they participate in the air show, and that we get the Algerians that are after them.”

  He nodded.

  “And I want you to go over there. I want you to be part of it. Can you operate freely there?”

  “I know some people, but I can’t go there without authorization—”

  “I’m giving you authorization.”

  He was afraid she’d forget about the government structure someday. “I need to have that confirmed by those at the Agency or DEVGRU.”

  “That will happen. And Rat?” she said, calling him by name for the first time.

  It amused him. “Yes?”

  “If you are able to find the Algerian, I want you to feel free to—”

  “To take him out?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the executive order?”

  “One two three three three?”

  “Right. The one that says you can’t assassinate.”

  “President Bush suspended that. It’s never been reinstated.”

  He knew that, but wanted her to hear what she was asking him to do. “I can’t accept such an order from you. It has to come from the right people, and you’re not it.”

  “You’ll get your orders. As clear as you want them.”

  “But first we have to get the Blues over there. We have to smoke out the Algerians before they try something else.”

  “Couldn’t agree more.”

  He headed for the door.

  “If we get to the Algerians, can you finish it?”

  “Guaranteed.”

  “I’ll make sure they go to France. There are some who want to cancel the trip. They say it’s too dangerous. But these pilots can handle some danger, can’t they?”

  “I can’t speak for them. I think they appreciate the risk, or at least some of it.”

  “You should make contact with whoever you know in France.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Let me know if you need anything at all. We can get it for you.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said. He picked up his hat, put it on, and walked out
of her door with his head down, hiding his face.

  * * *

  Lew and Patricia flew overnight on American Airlines. They landed at De Gaulle airport and hurried to Le Bourget. They were startled by the furious activity to ready the airfield for the air show that was to begin in ten days. They grabbed a Mercedes taxi into the heart of Paris, to the headquarters of the DST, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire. The DST had been created in 1944 to “struggle against activities of espionage and against the activities of alien powers on territories under French sovereignty.” It had continued to do just that ever since. Since the seventies it had undergone an evolution to concentrate more on terrorism. The subdirectorate Lew and Patricia were going to, one of the five in the main office in Paris, was the subdirectorate of international terrorism.

  The office at 1 rue Nélaton was an imposing five-story marble building overlooking the Seine. It dated from the nineteenth century and had been completely refurbished.

  They stepped out of the cab into the warm Paris sunshine and walked through the rotating door into the lobby. They had notified the French that they were coming but had given no indication of why. The French had been annoyed but had agreed to meet them when the word counterterrorism was used. They understood it could be a sensitive matter.

  What Lew and Patricia didn’t want them to know, what made it sensitive in their own minds, was the result of their discussions with those at the CIA and FBI about the Algerian presence in France. Pervasive. Throughout the country, growing, menacing; many adjectives, many superlatives, but all pointing to the conclusion that the Algerian presence in France was a large problem and destined to be larger still, especially now that an Islamic regime had taken over in Algeria. It was thought that the Algerians in Paris would be extremely sympathetic to the new Algerian regime and might take it as a signal, direct or indirect, to assert themselves in France itself. Thus far, the Algerian community in France had been more or less quiet. It was also thought that the French were taking a political approach to the problem by denying its existence in public. The official line in France was that the Algerian community was no problem and did not cause trouble. The actual belief was very different.