A Gentleman's Game

by Greg Rucka

  “I’m not telling you that,” Landau said. “The Americans are telling us that. The United Nations is telling us that. The European Union is telling us that.”

  “They’re going to get hit, too.” Borovsky picked up the folder, brandished it like proof. “And when there’s more blood in the street, they’ll ask us why we didn’t do anything to prevent it. This is how you lost your wife and your boy, Noah, and you sit there and do nothing.”

  “It’s not up to me.”

  “A coward’s defense,” Borovsky said, and left the room.

  25

  Saudi Arabia—Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan

  14 September 2000 Local (GMT+3.00)

  “This is Nia,” Abdul Aziz told Sinan. “Nia is shahid.”

  Sinan tried to hide his displeasure. It had nothing to do with the woman’s desire to be shahid; he held the martyrs in the highest regard and remembered them always in his prayers. It had nothing to do with her manner, or her bearing, or even her appearance, veiled and garbed as was appropriate. He could even forgive her presence in the camp without a blood relation to watch over her. She was proper and respectful and Abdul Aziz called her shahid, which perhaps was overzealous, since the woman had not martyred herself yet, but otherwise there was nothing wrong with Nia that Sinan could see, nothing he could articulate to himself.

  But Sinan did not like her here, and he didn’t like the fact that Abdul Aziz was presenting her to him like this.

  Nia bent her head slightly. The sunlight falling through the camouflage netting that ran in great swaths above them played with the eyes, made the bright brighter, the shade murkier. Sinan couldn’t tell her age but guessed she had to be younger than twenty. She was small, too, and carried herself small, so the ultimate effect was that of a black-cloaked, vaguely female-shaped ghost, floating just beyond Abdul Aziz’s shoulder.

  “Salaam alaykum,” Sinan said.

  “Wa ’alaykum is-salam,” Nia answered, and it was almost inaudible behind the veil.

  Abdul Aziz said, “Sinan and Matteen were at the Great Mosque, outside, when the murders took place. It was Sinan who realized the evil that had been done, and it was Sinan who raised the alarm.”

  Nia raised her head slightly. Above the veil and below the cowl of her abaya, Sinan could see her eyes, large and expressive, the soft brown of warm wood. When she realized that he was looking at her in return, she hastily dropped her gaze.

  “They should die for what they have done,” she whispered.

  Sinan thought the sentiment devoid of any venom, as if the girl were only repeating a line as it had been taught to her. It probably had, at that. There were some thirty other recent arrivals since Saturday, mostly men, but a handful of women just like Nia. Palestinians who had been undergoing instruction in the various Hamas-controlled mosques, all of them learning the glory and purpose of becoming shahid.

  Sinan didn’t know how their travel had been organized so quickly, or who Abdul Aziz had contacted to bring it to pass, and he didn’t care. Once upon a time, Matteen had explained to him, this camp had held a splinter of the Harakat ul-Mujihadin, but then Abdul Aziz had asserted his control. Now, instead of training them to fight in their own lands, Abdul Aziz had decided to take the fight into the homes of their enemies.

  It was a sentiment that Sinan embraced, and one he was eager to support.

  The presence, then, of this shahid only served to confuse him, and Abdul Aziz’s need to introduce Nia to him compounded that.

  As if sensing the discomfort, Abdul Aziz grunted. “Wait for me here,” he told Sinan, then moved off, escorting Nia back to the women’s tent.

  Sinan felt the tension leave him as he did. He turned to the small tent he shared with Matteen and four others, sat on his bedroll, laying his rifle beside him. He was tired, a deep fatigue that had sunk to the bone and that had come from the flurry of activity in the wake of the Prince’s murder.

  They had raised the alarm at once, Sinan and Matteen, shouting in their grief and alarm, until other voices joined theirs, echoing their outrage and disbelief. Sinan had shoved his way through the crowd, desperate to find the barefoot killer, to choke the life from her with his bare hands. With Matteen at his heels, they had raced out of the Great Mosque back onto the street, searching for a glimpse of the kufr woman, just a hint of the animal who had committed this incredible blasphemy. They had run down the maze of streets in the Old City, shouting for help, fueled by their grief. But the search was immediately impaired, none of them willing to accost the women they saw, to rip the veils from their faces, and each woman they approached would look away, and it was universal behavior, modesty rather than guilt, and Sinan’s frustration had been so great he had actually screamed aloud with it.

  It was Matteen who had seen the blood trail, and they had followed it as best they could, losing it every few dozen feet in the dust before finding another thin line of it and pushing forward again. Near the San’a’ Palace Hotel they had lost the trail entirely and begun searching stall to stall, house to house, only to be refused entry at most. A Western woman, they had asked, have you seen her?

  Yes, we’ve seen Western women, they were told. I sold a jambiya to one, a rug to another, a scarf to a third.

  Then Sinan had found a group of men, seated on crates and stools, chewing qat in the shade, and one had said, “There was the limping woman. . . .”

  “Where?” Sinan had demanded.

  The man had smiled, the bulge of qat in his cheek the size of a tennis ball, and indicated the entrance to the hotel across the street.

  “When?”

  “Not long ago. She had blond hair. Modestly dressed, but her hair was uncovered.”

  The other men had laughed, nodded, remembering, and Sinan had left Matteen to further the questioning, rushing into the hotel, reinvigorated with the news, anxious in his search. When he saw the dirty smear of blood and dirt outside the bathroom threshold on the first story, he’d taken his Kalashnikov off his shoulder and made it ready in his hands. He had burst through, into the room, already certain what he would do. He wouldn’t kill her, no, he would wound her, wound her so that she would live, so he and Matteen could drag her back, so proper justice could be delivered.

  But the bathroom had been empty, and he had found the discarded veil and hijab wrapped in their balta, and that was all. He had snatched them up, run back onto the street, nearly colliding with Matteen there.

  “She’s gone,” Matteen had reported. “They say she took a taxi. They know the driver, they gave me his name.”

  Sinan had shown Matteen the clothes, and together they had searched them right there in the street, much to the amusement of the men who watched them, chewing their qat. They’d found nothing but two pieces of adhesive tape stuck inside the balta’s arms. Eventually the two men made their way back to the Great Mosque, rejoining the others, who had summoned the police. A crowd had gathered, was continuing to swell, bubbling with outrage and anger at the murders, and more police were coming in response. Matteen started the SUV and Sinan climbed in, and they had to go in reverse to get clear. As they were turning, Sinan looked back in time to see a young man in the crowd hurl a rock at one of the police, others bending to do the same.

  They left as the riot began.

  •

  Abdul Aziz ducked under the flap of the tent, gesturing for Sinan to stay seated, joining him on the rug.

  “Zulfaqar says you are good with your hands, Sinan. He says you learned the explosives quickly, that you understand how to make a bomb.”

  “Zulfaqar is generous,” Sinan said. “He is a good teacher, and Allah, in His wisdom, makes me a good student.”

  “The woman. You still don’t think she was Israeli.”

  “American,” Sinan said firmly. “Or English.”

  “No one else thinks as you do. They believe it was the apes who did this.”

  “She had blond hair.”

  “There are Israelis with blond hair.”

/>   Sinan shrugged. “She was pale.”

  “You hardly saw her skin.”

  “I saw her foot. It was pale, Aziz. No Israeli would be that pale.”

  Abdul Aziz seemed to consider this for a few seconds, then shook his head slightly, making his kuffiyah rustle. “No matter. We will act the same.”

  “Why did you bring that . . . that girl to meet me?” Sinan asked.

  “Not you to meet Nia, Sinan. Nia to meet you. You will help her become shahid.”

  Sinan tried to keep the confusion from his face.

  “You and Matteen together,” Abdul Aziz continued. “Nia will wear the bomb. You and Matteen will make certain she delivers it, and delivers herself to Paradise.”

  “Delivers it where?”

  “Cairo.”

  This time, the confusion could not be hidden, and Abdul Aziz smiled thinly at Sinan’s bewilderment.

  “The British Embassy will be the primary target. The American Embassy is only a block away from it. That is the secondary target. You and Matteen will take Nia to Cairo, and you and Matteen will help her on her journey to Paradise.”

  “When?”

  “Soon, Sinan.” Abdul Aziz got to his feet. “Soon. We will talk more of this later.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  “God is great.”

  “God is great,” Sinan agreed, and watched as Abdul Aziz stepped back onto the field of shadow and light outside the tent. He lay back on his bedroll, looking up at the canvas ceiling, feeling the day’s heat wrapping itself around him, its weight and the stillness of the air inside the tent. If he listened hard, he could hear the serious voices from the classroom tent, the teachings, the lectures.

  Now he heard Dr. Faud’s voice, crackled and distorted through the speakers as one of his sermons played on cassette. Sinan knew the words of it by heart, having played it many times himself. Once the imam’s words had roused him, inflamed him, spurred him to action.

  Today they sparked flames of a different sort. Maybe it had been the Zionists who had murdered Faud, as so many believed, or maybe it had been the Great Satan, the Americans, or their dogs, the British. It didn’t matter.

  Nia would be the start, just the start.

  Whoever it had been, he’d make them burn.

  26

  London—Vauxhall Cross, Office of D-Ops

  15 September 1758 GMT

  Kate stuck her head into Crocker’s office and said the three words that never failed to make a good day bad and a bad day even worse. He’d just finished vetting the last reports for the final in-house distribution of the day, and was shoving the little paperwork he had remaining into his document bag, wondering how bad his commute home would be tonight. The Bakerloo Line had returned to full service Sunday night, and with it running again, he’d allowed himself to imagine reaching his family before they’d moved on to dessert.

  “We have trouble,” Kate said.

  He froze in midaction, looking instinctively at the files in his bag. “Trouble” could mean many things in this office. If it came from the Duty Operations Officer over the red phone, it meant something, somewhere, had gone horribly wrong. An operation had been compromised, an agent had died, a spy plane had gone down, a bomb had blown up. Something that required adrenaline.

  When it came from his PA, it meant it came from one of the floors above him, from the Deputy Chief or C, or outside of the building, from Whitehall or the FCO or Downing Street. On some occasions it could even come from the Ministry of Defense.

  He preferred it when the red phone brought the news.

  Crocker slid his hand from the bag and looked at Kate, standing just outside his door. Her expression sold it; whatever it was, it was political, and he felt his stomach sour at the thought of it.

  “Are you going to tell me or just stand there like some David Blaine stunt?”

  She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. “There’s an inquiry that came across my desk from the Security Services, clearing permission for internal surveillance.”

  “Who are they vetting?”

  “Minder One.”

  Crocker scowled. The Security Services performed irregular checks on all personnel holding positions deemed “sensitive” in the Government, anyone who could pose a security breach. It was a safety measure, another of the legion that had been instituted in the days after Philby and his brethren. The checks were fairly subtle and lasted anywhere from twenty-four to seventy-two hours, with the subject placed under constant surveillance. Sometimes Box would peek at his or her mail or listen in on the telephone. Crocker suspected that, where he could get away with it, Kinney even sent his boys into the subject’s home, in search of anything incriminating.

  In and of itself, internal surveillance wasn’t unusual, and neither was the request; protocol demanded, and courtesy required, that Kinney, under standing order of the DG at Box, notify the subject’s direct superior. In Crocker’s or Rayburn’s case, it meant that Weldon received notification; in Poole’s or Lankford’s, that Chace would. If the Head of the Special Section or the PA to D-Ops was being put under surveillance, Crocker had to be notified.

  So that wasn’t the problem.

  The problem was that Chace had already been given a clean bill of health in July, less than two months earlier.

  “They did her end of bloody July,” Crocker said. “She’s clean.”

  “I know,” Kate said. “So I called over to Box to double-check, thinking it was a mistake, perhaps.”

  “And?”

  “And they said they would have to get back to me.”

  “Which they did.”

  “Which they did.” Kate fingered the ring of keys at her hip, the ones used for the safes in the outer and inner offices, and for Crocker’s document bag. “David Kinney himself called to tell me it had been an error and to discard the request.”

  “He called you? Directly? Not his PA?”

  “He called me directly, Paul.”

  “Where’s the Deputy Chief?”

  “I believe he’s already left the build—”

  “Bloody well find out if he has or not, and if he hasn’t, tell him I’m coming up.”

  Kate nodded impassively and reached for the house phone on Crocker’s desk, punched two digits, and waited. Crocker took the moment to shrug out of his overcoat and toss it back into his chair, then to light a cigarette.

  “Oliver?” Kate said to the phone. “Kate. Has DC left the building?”

  Crocker stowed his lighter in his vest pocket, gouted smoke at Kate, impatient.

  “No? Could you tell him that D-Ops is on his way up, please? Yes, it is urgent.”

  He was already through the door even as Kate completed the call, and was moving through the outer office when he called back to her, “And find Minder One, tell her to stay in the Pit.”

  “I’m staying, too, am I?” Kate called back.

  “Forever,” Crocker snarled.

  •

  “Why is Box putting Minder One under surveillance?”

  With hat and raincoat still in place, Weldon sighed, then set his document bag on the edge of his desk. He didn’t bother to sit.

  “Can this not wait until tomorrow, Paul?”

  “I want to know why Kinney’s putting Chace under the microscope again, sir. Were you aware of this?”

  “I seem to recall receiving something to that effect, yes.”

  “Kinney told my PA that it had been a mistake.”

  “I suppose it must have been, then.”

  Crocker tried to drill two holes through Weldon’s skull with his eyes, and when that failed, he said, “David Kinney doesn’t call my PA to address an error. He has his PA do it.”

  “Perhaps he’s trying to foster greater cooperation between the houses?”

  It didn’t deserve a response, so Crocker didn’t offer one.

  Weldon sighed again, very much put-upon. “You’ll have to talk to C.”

  “Then let’s go up th
ere right now.”

  “He’s left for the day.”

  “Let’s call him, I’m sure he’s available.”

  “You’re overreacting, Paul. Box is putting Minder One under surveillance, that doesn’t mean they’re looking to arrest her for violating the Official Secrets Act.”

  “You confirm she’s under surveillance, but you won’t tell me why.”

  “I don’t know why!” Weldon shook his head. “C informed me that the DG at Box had been on to him, and that it was understood. You weren’t to receive a copy of notification, for reasons C did not make clear to me, reasons of his own.”

  “Then I’ll ask him.”

  “You will not!” Weldon looked appalled. “This can wait until tomorrow, surely? For a routine surveillance?”

  “No, it can’t,” Crocker shot back. “Kinney goes behind my back to put a watch on Chace, then the surveillance isn’t routine, it’s extraordinary. It means they don’t want me to know, it means they’re concealing their motives, so it’s not a spot-check, it’s not vetting. They’re keeping track of her, and I want to know why. I should know why, she’s my Head of Section, the Minders are my direct purview, no one else’s.”

  Weldon’s hand began working the handle of his document bag. “If the Director General was given an order to place Minder One under surveillance, he received that order at the request of Downing Street. Regardless of the reason, he is most certainly acting on a direct order from HMG. Last I checked, we still work for HMG.”

  “This is about Yemen, isn’t it?”

  “I honestly cannot say.” Weldon frowned, then seemed to resolve that he’d said all he was prepared to say and hefted his bag from the desk. “I have a train to catch, Paul. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  Crocker stared at him, and Weldon, uncharacteristically, not only met the stare but bounced it straight back.

  There was nothing more to be gained here, Crocker realized.

  “Very good, sir,” Crocker said, and he stepped back, and even went so far as to open the door of Weldon’s office, holding it for the Deputy Chief. “Sorry to delay you.”