Collateral Damage

by Stuart Woods

  —

  Eleven hours later the little caravan wound along a steep, narrow trail. The air had become thinner, and the animals sucked and blew. They rounded a corner, and before them was a wide arch, covered by camouflage canvas. Everybody dismounted.

  They had had only two breaks all day, and her bladder was bursting. “Where can I pee?” she asked one of the native men in Arabic.

  He pointed. “Behind rock,” he replied.

  She ran around the big stone, hoisted the burka, dropped her jeans and squatted, leaning against the rock. When her stream made noise, the men on the other side of the rock laughed.

  When she returned, the canvas had been pulled back, and the men and animals were inside a cave, lit by dim electric lights. The ISI agent grabbed her elbow and pointed at another woman in a burka. “Go with the women,” he said. “You will be called when he is ready—maybe tomorrow.”

  “Maybe tomorrow? I’ve got to—” She stopped as he drew back his hand. “All right.” She followed the woman along a passage and a moment later they emerged into a roundish cavern, perhaps twenty feet in diameter. Half a dozen women sat around a small fire that was lit in the middle, its smoke disappearing into the darkness above.

  She was told she could take off the burka, then she was given a surprisingly good stew of lamb and vegetables, which she ate greedily. Then she was given a small pillow and a blanket and told to sleep. She had no trouble doing so.

  —

  She was shaken awake. Light was coming through a hole in the top of the cavern, and the other women were moving about. She was handed a bowl containing a hunk of bread and goat cheese. She ate the breakfast and washed it down with water from a canteen.

  “You!” a man shouted.

  She turned to find him pointing at her. “Put on the burka and come!”

  She did as she was told and followed him back to the main passage and for perhaps a hundred paces, making several turns. She emerged into a well-lit room with carpets and pillows on the floor and several pieces of ornate furniture. Five men sat in a circle, eating. She was told to sit and be quiet.

  Half an hour later four of the men left, and the fifth man beckoned her to come and sit before him. He seemed to be in his fifties, with a graying beard and broad shoulders.

  “Listen to me,” he said, and she nodded.

  “Remove burka.”

  She pulled the garment over her head and smoothed her hair back.

  “Stand there,” he said, pointing at a white cloth hung on a nearby wall. “Brush your hair—look presentable.”

  She did so, tucking in her shirttail. A man appeared with a Polaroid camera and took her picture. When it developed, four images appeared and he took the photos away.

  The man beckoned her to return to him, but he did not tell her to put on the burka again. “You are the sister of Ari and Mohammad, are you not?”

  “I am.”

  “My condolences. I knew your father. My condolences for him, too.”

  “Thank you. My only wish from now on is to take revenge against British and American intelligence for their deaths. It would be my father’s wish.”

  “I understand. It was important that I see you,” he said, “before you continue your work. You are intelligent and, I suspect, very wily.”

  She smiled. “Thank you.”

  “You have good ideas for London.”

  “Thank you.”

  He rummaged in an ornate box next to him and came up with a sturdy brown envelope. He handed it to her. “Look inside.”

  She opened the envelope and removed a sheet of paper, to which a thin key was taped. On the paper was written the name and address of a London bank, a man’s name, and a box number.

  “You will go to the bank and ask for this man, then request to open your box. There will be money there, sufficient for your needs. When you have more ideas, more money will be in the box. You understand?”

  “I understand.”

  The photographer returned and handed the man four booklets. He handed them to her.

  “Here are passports with new names. You will use one to enter Britain, then destroy it. Use the others as necessary. Your contact remains the same. Now, put on the burka and go back the way you came.”

  She stood up and pulled the garment over her head, then she put the passports into her backpack and the key and instructions into the hip pocket of her jeans. She was led back the way she had come, and she emerged from the cave into bright sunlight. The ISI agent and another man were waiting for her, holding the mules, all now unladen.

  “Get on,” he said to her.

  She got on.

  —

  As the sun was low in the sky, the helicopter appeared, guided by an electronic beacon held by the ISI agent. He waved the pilot in.

  —

  Three days later Jasmine opened the door to her London flat and let herself in. She ran a hot bath and stripped off her traveling clothes, tossing everything into her washing machine and starting it. Then she got a half-full bottle of scotch from the bar and settled into the tub, taking pulls from the bottle, hoping she would not drown.

  Felicity Devonshire sat at her desk in her beautifully paneled and furnished office on the top floor of “The Circus,” as the MI-6 building was called, even though they had moved from their old location in Cambridge Circus some years before. A green light went on over the door, and she pressed a button to unlock it.

  A man entered with a file folder and handed it to her. “Architect, this was transmitted from Edinburgh Airport five minutes ago. Our facial recognition software caught it.”

  Felicity opened the folder and stared at a copy of a Syrian passport. The young woman in the photograph might well have been Jasmine Shazaz.

  “She came in on a Syrian Air Force Dassault corporate jet from Damascus, also carrying two diplomats, duly registered with the Foreign Office. She walked away from the airplane before customs arrived, then went through immigration with no problems. She was carried on the airplane’s manifest as a cultural assistant in the Syrian Embassy in London.”

  “So she did travel,” Felicity said, using a magnifying glass on the passport photograph. “Tell our technical section, good job with the recognition software. Where did she go from there?”

  “We thought perhaps the railway station, and we covered Glasgow and King’s Cross, but nothing. Then we checked flight plans and found a small twin had departed Edinburgh ten minutes after she cleared customs, filed for London City Airport. It landed there an hour ago, dropped a female passenger, then took off again, filed for Edinburgh. As soon as it cleared London airspace the pilot canceled his flight plan. He could have landed anywhere.”

  “Don’t bother searching for the airplane,” Felicity said. “It will be a charter, and the pilot will be of no use to us.”

  “As you wish, Architect.”

  “So she’s back in London,” Felicity said. “I think we can expect havoc again soon.” She handed him the copy of the passport. “Have this couriered to Tom Riley at the U.S. Embassy, for transmission to Holly Barker at the Agency’s New York facility. Actually, depending on how good their interception program is, she may already have it.”

  The man took the folder and left.

  —

  Holly arrived late at the New York office, still sleepy and a little sore from the previous night’s recreational activity. There was a folder on her desk, and she opened it. There were two copies of the same passport, one intercepted, the other forwarded from MI-6. Holly looked at the photograph, then phoned Felicity Devonshire.

  “Good afternoon, Holly.”

  At first Holly thought that was a needle, then she remembered the time difference. “Good afternoon, Felicity. Thank you for forwarding the passport to me. Is this a photograph of Jasmine Shazaz?”

  “We believe so,” Felicity replied. “She entered the UK at Edinburgh this morning on a diplomatic flight from Syria, carrying that Syrian passport.”

  “Was it
a good document?”

  “We don’t have the original, but probably. A blank passport could have been provided by Syrian intelligence to anybody they trusted with it. I expect it’s been shredded by now.”

  “Any news on where she might be?”

  “Almost certainly in London.”

  “And what are the chances of picking her up?”

  “It seems likely that she won’t be walking the streets much, so I should say the chances are poor. We will probably hear from her next when something explodes, and what with our surveillance camera network in the city, we may have an opportunity then. We do have more news on the bomb at the Porsche agency.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “A fashionably dressed young woman entered the showroom carrying a large Hermès carrier bag, one of the bright orange ones, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “She looked at a couple of cars on the showroom floor, and when the salesman left her for a moment, we believe she placed the carrier bag in the boot of a model 911 4S, then left the showroom. At any rate, she was gone by the time the man finished his call. The bomb went off about twenty minutes later as the foreign secretary’s car drove by, almost certainly controlled by a cell phone from a parked car within sight of the showroom. The salesman was lucky—he had left the showroom floor to use the toilet.”

  “What measures are you taking to find her?”

  “We’re doing an all-hands-on-deck sweep, which means that every person associated with our service, MI-5, the Metropolitan Police, or the Foreign Office will be carrying the passport photograph, with instructions on what to do if she is spotted. Those persons who are armed are authorized to employ deadly force, if in their personal judgment it becomes necessary. Do your people have any need to speak with her? If she survives, we will be happy to turn her over.”

  “No,” Holly said.

  “I understand,” Felicity replied. “We do wish to speak with her, albeit as briefly as possible, but after that we would not wish her to be available to visitors or other prisoners.”

  Or to anyone else, Holly thought. She thanked Felicity, hung up, and called Kate Lee.

  “Good morning, Holly.”

  “Good morning, Director.” Holly related her conversation with Felicity.

  “I suppose we could call that progress,” Kate said.

  “I suppose.”

  “Do you think they’ll actually turn her over to us?”

  “I declined the offer.”

  “Oh, good. I wouldn’t like to make the next decision after that one.”

  “I was left with the impression that MI-6 and especially the Foreign Office are not especially interested in hearing what she has to say either.”

  “I expect we would see a brief news release from the FO saying that she was spotted, and after a brief exchange of fire, she expired of one or more gunshot wounds.”

  “That would be the best possible ending for everyone, except the lady herself,” Holly said.

  “Do we have the slightest reason to believe that she or her colleagues have the wherewithal to create another device?”

  “Dr. Kharl is dead, and we know of no one outside a government facility who could accomplish that.”

  Kate sighed. “Then all we have to worry about is governments.”

  “The only conclusion we can draw at the moment is that this was a family cell comprised of mostly family members. It seems unlikely that any government, even Iran or North Korea, would wish to be involved in such an enterprise. The repercussions would be too great for them.”

  “Thank you, Holly. The president and I are going to Georgia for a few days. If you’d like some time in New York, then stay on.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I’ll be available at all times, of course.”

  “Of course. Good-bye, Holly.”

  “Good-bye, Director.” Holly hung up. Oh, good, she thought, some free New York time.

  Kelli Keane sat across the breakfast table from her boyfriend, James Rutledge, and stared over her newspaper at a row of kitchen cabinets.

  “What’s up with you?” Jim asked.

  Kelli jerked back to reality. “What?”

  “For the past couple of days you’ve been walking around in a daze, and once in a while you look really angry.”

  Kelli thought about how much she could tell him. “I’m trying to figure out a way around a promise I don’t want to keep,” she said, sipping her coffee, which had gone cold. She got up, threw it into the sink, and poured herself another cup. “More coffee?”

  “Half a cup,” Jim replied.

  She poured it, then sat down again.

  “Your eggs are getting cold.”

  She ate a few bites.

  “I can’t think of anything you promised me,” Jim said. “We’ve never promised each other anything.”

  “Oh, it’s not a promise to you.”

  “Then to whom?”

  Kelli screwed up her forehead and tried to think of a way she could answer the question. “I think I may have promised not to tell anybody even that.”

  “Baby, are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “In a way,” she said. “I’m in the kind of trouble that a journalist gets into when she knows about something but can’t write about it.”

  “Why can’t you write about it?”

  “Because I promised—I signed an agreement not to.”

  “A business agreement? With Vanity Fair?”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s bigger than that—it’s bigger than anything, any story I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Well, let’s see: bigger than the attack on Pearl Harbor?”

  “Yeah, in its way.”

  “Bigger than nine-eleven?”

  Kelli thought about that. “No, but it could have been.”

  “Are we talking terrorist attack here?”

  “We’re not talking,” Kelli replied. “I can’t do that.”

  “I haven’t heard anything on the news or seen anything in the Times about anything like that.”

  “That’s the thing—you won’t see it or hear about it anywhere, because nobody can talk about it.”

  “Who comprises the category of ‘nobody,’ in this case?”

  “Anybody who was there.”

  “There in L.A.? That’s the only place you’ve been lately.”

  She nodded her head.

  “Did something happen in L.A.?”

  “Almost.”

  “I saw the president’s TV address, and I read about the three bombs in the Times,” Jim said. “But only one went off, and the only people killed were terrorists.”

  “That’s accurate,” Kelli said, “to a point.”

  “Was there another attempt on the president’s life?”

  “I can’t talk about it anymore.”

  He put his hand on hers. “Kelli, whatever it is, it’s eating you up. You might feel better if you talk about it. You know I’ll keep your confidence.”

  “I know you would, Jim. But I thought I would, too, and here I am talking about it.”

  “Then do this: write it all down, pour out everything, then lock it in your safe and forget about it.”

  She frowned again. “You know, that might work.”

  “Well, I have to go to work,” he said. “I’ve got to oversee the installation of some new lighting at High Cotton.”

  “I thought you were finished with that project.”

  “Yeah, well, when you think you’re finished with a project, something always comes up. There have been some complaints about inadequate lighting in the programming department. People look at their brightly lit screens, then look at something on paper, and their eyes can’t adjust quickly enough. The new fixtures have arrived, and we need to get them in today.”

  “You go ahead,” Kelli said. “I’ve got to do some grocery shopping. Anything you need?”

  “More bourbon,” he said, “and more vodka.”

  “Okay, I’ll call and have
it delivered.”

  “And we’re out of Parmesan cheese.”

  “Already on my list.”

  He stood up, held her face in his hands, and kissed her. “Feel better,” he commanded, then he left.

  Kelli slowly finished her breakfast and drank her coffee, then she went into her little workroom and sat down at her computer.

  Last week in Los Angeles, during the Immi Gotham concert at the opening of The Arrington, a new hotel, a nuclear bomb came within three seconds of detonating. I was there. I saw it happen.

  She wrote rapidly for an hour, editing as she went, then she saved the document, printed it, copied it to a thumb drive, put the hard copy and the drive into her safe and locked it, then deleted the original from her computer.

  Then, unburdened, she called in the liquor order, stuck her wallet in a pocket in her jeans, and went grocery shopping.

  Jasmine was awakened by the cell phone on her bedside table. She was disoriented for a moment, then she reached for it. It could be only one person. “Hello?”

  “I think you should do some light grocery shopping this morning,” he said.

  “What?”

  “After all, you’ve been away, your fridge must be empty.”

  “I need to sleep,” she said.

  “Sleep then. Do your shopping early this afternoon; take a walk, get some air. The park is nice this time of year.”

  “All right.”

  “Tell me what things you will buy.”

  She was hungover, but she tried to think. “Milk, bread, sliced beef for sandwiches, mayonnaise, eggs. And scotch.”

  “Famous Grouse all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “Later.” He hung up.

  Jasmine rolled over and slept for another two hours, then she struggled out of bed and got into a hot shower, letting the water drum against the back of her neck to make the hangover go away. She toweled off, dried her shoulder-length hair with a large hairdryer, then she looked for breakfast. Cereal, but no milk. She had it with water, then checked the kitchen clock: nearly one o’clock.

  She got into a modest printed dress and flat walking shoes, then found a suitable scarf and covered her hair. She checked the mirror: without makeup she could pass for any one of fifty Muslim women on the street. She had chosen the neighborhood for that.

  She let herself out of her building and walked two blocks to the Spar grocery, towing her shopping basket on wheels. She bought the things she needed, paid cash, then walked another block to her neighborhood’s park. It was a well-shaded green space where mothers, many of them in Muslim dress, watched their children play and chatted among themselves.