And Egypt? Had the submarine been a mirage and Egyptian deputy navy minister Abu Bakr a wrong turn?
Not exactly, as I found out when I checked in with Doc after I made it back to our Bangkok hotel. My silver-tongued friend had discovered from several of the crew members that there had been an emergency drill on the evening of my Sicilian adventure. The submarine had surfaced, then practiced its manoverboard routines for about forty minutes. Interestingly, the event had not been recorded in the log.
“I’m no submariner,” said Doc, “but even I know that sort of exercise is out of place. I’ll bet it wasn’t entered into the log because anyone authorized to inspect it would realize it didn’t make sense. I say the ship captain needs to be watched—he would have had to order the drill, or at least signed off on it.”
“They didn’t drop anyone off on their way to the exercises?”
“No. All the crew was accounted for,” said Doc. “I think they were supposed to get the nuclear warhead and return to Egypt with it.”
“No, I don’t think so. If that were the case, they would have hidden the warhead closer to the water.”
“I don’t know, Dick. Imagine Egypt with a nuke?”
What Doc was saying did make sense; the Egyptian government had a lot to gain. Still, I didn’t think the bomb would have gone to Cairo if it had been stolen. Assuming Saladin was involved—and admittedly I had only the Minimis to link him—he would have taken the bomb off the island as soon as he could and used it to cement his position. If he exploded a nuclear bomb, he’d be even more revered than bin Laden. He’d live up to his namesake.
“We should have the submarine captain investigated,” said Doc. “But by who? We can’t trust the Egyptians. I can tell the Christians In Action down in Cairo, but they’re only going to look at me cross-eyed.”
“How many conversations from Bakr have you taped?” I asked Doc.
“Must be a lot. We’ve been picking up the disk drives every night.”
“When were you planning on picking up the key logger?”
“I wasn’t.”
“I think it might be a good idea if you did. And while you were there, you might replace his hard drive. I hear Dell has an emergency recall out…”
Here’s what we did: I called Shunt and had him prepare a new disk drive for Bakr’s machine. On that drive were encrypted emails mentioning the submarine captain in a plot against the government. When he was finished with that, he took bits and pieces of the conversations our bugs had recorded to make a tape referring to the conspiracy. Both the hard drive and the tape were transported by one of our newbies to Cairo. Doc arranged a service call with Bakr’s housekeeper that afternoon. At about the time he was closing the unit up, Big Foot delivered the tape to Jamal. I’m assuming that Jamal wasn’t in league with the terrorists; I don’t like to think ill of people. But whether he was or not, the tape was the sort of evidence that he couldn’t afford to sit on. If there was one, there might be a hundred, and failing to act on a direct threat to the government was itself an act of treason. Besides, this was exactly the sort of case that would make Jamal look like a hero, assuming there was more evidence to go with it.
Evidence soon found on the hard drive at Bakr’s residence.
Do I hear a few tsk-tsk’s from the peanut gallery? Save your sympathy for someone who deserves it—like maybe some of the innocent people who’d been shot while touring St. Peter’s a few weeks before, or the BetaGo couriers who thought they were working for a legitimate company, or the ten school kids killed the next day by a suicide bomber in Indonesia. Papers in the bomber’s home indicated that he had planned to kill more people at a church in a few weeks, but had moved up his schedule because the police were moving in.
I know about that incident because it was the information from Si’s book that put the police onto him. I feel sorry for the kids. As for their murderer and the bastards who made it possible for him to kill them, may they all rot in hell until the end of time.
Trace, Tosho, and I got rooms at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, which is a serious hotel. The Thais know how to do hotels—even in your basic roadside joint, you’re treated like royalty. The Oriental Hotel is not a basic roadside joint. It has eight restaurants and more bars than I can keep track of. Pretty much everything you’d ever want from a hotel.
My phone calls finished, I caught a forty-five-minute nap on a bed the size of a tennis court. When I woke up, I went to the window and stared out at the river Chao Phraya. From here, it looked quiet and even majestic. The riot of small boats and their constant chaos were far away.
I wished my cares were. Saladin was still out there somewhere, maybe on the other side of the world, maybe down the hall. And he was planning something, something a hell of a lot of bigger than ridding the world of Demo Dick.
After a few strong pulls of the humid night air, I put my clothes back on and went to check out the bars. I found my way to one overrun with palm trees, said to be haunted by the ghost of Somerset Maugham, a Brit who wrote and drank—not in that order—at the Oriental in the days when the sun never set on the British Empire. I didn’t see Somerset’s ghost, but Trace turned up a few minutes later. She, too, had been thinking of Saladin.
“How does it feel to be the middle of a jigsaw puzzle?” Trace asked.
“How’s that?”
“Saladin—you’re the missing link that ties everything together. He sent you here to have you killed.”
“No, he sent me here to keep me out of the way. The question is from what.”
“You don’t think he tried to kill you?”
“Probably he did. But I think he also was worried I wouldn’t just lay down and die. So he didn’t want me running around where he was.”
“Where would you have been if this didn’t happen?”
“Back at Rogue Manor, firing up the grill and taking the dogs for a run.”
“You wouldn’t still be in Sicily, looking for the missile thieves?”
Probably not; I’d grown tired of Kohut and Pus Face, and we’d already thwarted the attempt to steal the warhead. But Saladin would have had no way of knowing that. If he were behind the missile theft, he might have been trying to get rid of me before he stole it.
Or after he stole it.
“You’re a really lucky bastard, you know,” added Trace.
“How do you figure that?”
“If Si had followed the KISS principle, he would have shot you at that house and killed you right away. That would have made the most sense.”
“Then he would have had to lie to his father about murdering me, and he couldn’t bring himself to do that,” I told her. “This way, he wasn’t the murderer.”
“Right.” Trace raised her glass as the waiter came over, asking for a refill.
“You’re drinking seltzer?” I asked.
“I have to keep my body pure. A concept you wouldn’t understand.”
I laughed. She didn’t. Trace wasn’t drinking alcohol because she was helping a niece complete an Apache coming-of-age ritual and had to keep her body pure until the ceremony was completed. Her work complicated things for her; she would have to follow a special ritual to appease the spirits for killing fellow warriors when she returned, or she would jeopardize her niece’s standing with the spirits that had to accept her. I admire her dedication, both to her extended family and to her ancestors’ ways.
As for myself, I stuck to the Bombay Sapphire.
“You are right, but not about Si,” I told her as we sipped our drinks. “It’s Saladin who’s not a Keep It Simple kind of guy. He can’t imagine a plot that’s not as twisted and complicated as a piece of spaghetti wrapped around a cat’s paw. Sicily was a good example. He took too long to launch his plan, used too many people, and then got too tricky about what he was doing with the bomb.”
“All right. Why’d he get the mob involved?”
“I assume to transport the bomb,” I told her. “The stolen car network would take i
t to North Africa.”
“Alberti said Carlo di Giovanni wasn’t involved,” said Trace. “How would the network have transported the bomb if he didn’t authorize it? Besides, you told Doc that it would make more sense for Saladin to use the bomb as soon he got it. The longer he held on to it, the more chance someone would find it.”
Trace was doing a pretty good imitation of an old chief in the teams, reminding me I hadn’t checked all of my ass umptions.
“Did they find the bodies of the people who were hiding in the castle on Sicily that night?” I asked Trace.
“No. It’s not unusual for someone who drowns to be washed out farther to sea there. Not that too many people drown every year.” Trace shrugged. “They didn’t find the boat, either. Best theory is that it was sunk or stolen.”
“If he was planning to use the warhead in an attack soon after he stole it, what would he attack?”
“I’d stick it on a ship bound for New York.”
“If you were trying to start a war with Christianity? Saladin said he’s looking for a war of civilizations and religions.”
“New York’s the biggest, most obvious symbol of the U.S.,” said Trace.
“Yeah.”
“Where would you attack?”
“Jerusalem, maybe. That’s more the center of Christianity than New York.”
“You’d kill mostly Muslims and Jews. He already tried to attack St. Peter’s,” added Trace. “You beat him. If that was him.”
I had, entirely by chance. But even if I hadn’t blundered into it, how much could the motley collection of terrorists have accomplished? A handful of scumbags with submachine guns could chip a lot of stones, put holes in a lot of valuable glass, and rip the hell out of dozens of famous paintings. They could have killed a hundred people. But the damage would hardly be enough to start a war, even by Saladin’s screwed-up logic. Someone who was stealing a nuclear device had grandiose dreams of destruction.
But he’d tried to steal it after the attack. All the tangos had done was make things harder there. Backass had used the attack to justify beefing up security, moving more people and equipment in. The same was going on throughout Italy, and in other parts of Europe as well. It might not last, but still—why poke the hornet’s nest if you don’t have the torch in your hand?
Unless Saladin wanted security increased.
We will strike at a time of their choosing.
“What if it wasn’t just bad English,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” asked Trace.
“ ‘Time of their choosing.’ We’ve always thought ‘their’ was supposed to be ‘our’: Saladin meant he would pick the time. But what if he didn’t? What if he meant, we’ll do it when they want us to do it.”
“We don’t want them to do it,” said Trace. “We want them to leave us the fuck alone.”
“That’s the problem with you, Dahlgren. You don’t think like a fucking psycho.”
“That sounds like a serious character flaw,” said Tosho.
“Fuck yourself, Samurai,” said Trace.
“Careful, there are ladies present.”
“Eat me.”
“He doesn’t mean you, Trace,” I told her, pointing. The local CIA station chief had tagged along behind Tosho. She pulled a chair over from a nearby table.
“Your information has been extremely helpful,” she said. “We’ve found at least two cells in Indonesia no one knew about. We’re going to assist the authorities there in a raid.”
“Great.”
“The Thai police and military are looking for Si Bi Phiung. So far, no luck.”
They weren’t going to find him, I was pretty sure, but I didn’t tell them that. Si’s father had undoubtedly killed him himself because of the dishonor he had brought onto the family. But there was no sense adding to his misery.
“They also have several leads on terror cells in Thailand, among the Muslims here,” she added. “The Thai authorities have planned a number of raids. They think the biggest cell is in Ko Phuket. I’m going down there in the morning, and you’re welcome to come.”
Ko Phuket, a large island province on the Upper Andaman Coast, has some of the most beautiful beaches and tiniest bikinis in the world. Unfortunately, it was right in the path of the tsunami that struck Thailand and the rest of Asia at the end of 2004. It made a decent recovery, though the beaches are a little less crowded than they once were. Even so, between the tourists and day workers, the province was exactly the sort of place an overly clever terrorist might pick to hide in plain sight.
The one time in my life that I actually had a chance to join in a mission called Operation Fuck-it, and I had to decline.
“I’m afraid we have to catch a plane in the morning,” I told her. “Maybe another time.”
Tosho volunteered to go along; he thought there might be connections to BetaGo and the Japanese company there. Maybe he was right, but part of me suspects he just wanted a look at the action on the beach.
“We’re catching a plane in the morning?” said Trace after the others left. “To where?”
“Rome. I know who Saladin is. The thing I can’t figure out is why I didn’t realize it two weeks ago.”
*An interesting question occurred to me later on: Given that ground tiger bones and blood was so expensive, how did the Chinese know that counterfeits weren’t used? Apparently it’s a big problem, and Si’s wares were much prized because they were authentic. There isn’t space here to go into the different methods he used to ensure this, but besides having Chinese Taoist “doctors” who could vouch for him, he apparently paid for mitochondrial DNA sequencing of random shipments. That’s a very expensive test, and it shows how much money was at stake.
11
It’s hard to have a Hallmark moment in the middle of Don Muang Airport, especially over the phone. Ten million people buzz around you, the connection is terrible, and two or three munchkins stare up at you from the nearby candy kiosk hoping you’ll toss them a few baht for gum.
But you take what you can get.
“I love you, too,” I told Karen. “I promise I’ll get home as soon as I can.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
When you’re a sailor, long separations are just another part of Navy life; I wouldn’t say that you ever get used to them, but you accept them as part of the landscape, like the gales that churn up the sea. But I wasn’t in the Navy anymore, and Karen had never been in the military. We missed each other and swore we’d work on fixing that as soon as we could.
“And when will soon be?” she asked.
“Soon. Very soon.”
I was getting sentimental in my old age—and for once I didn’t mind admitting it. But I had to finish this.
“We had a good time in Italy,” she said.
“We’ll have another good time soon.”
“I’m beginning to hate that word soon.”
“Love you.”
“Me, too.”
The convoluted flying arrangements Trace made had us going to Tokyo via a nonstop flight, so we headed through the departure hall to All Nippon Airlines, where we took our places in a line that snaked halfway back to downtown Bangkok. The misadventures of Si, Saladin, and BetaGo had shaken the airport security apparatus into a high state of alert, which meant that instead of genuflecting before the weapons detector and then proceeding, passengers now had to remove their shoes, twirl twice, and then go through. It made most people feel more secure—but did it increase security?
You be the judge.
Once we cleared the checkpoint, I left Trace and went in search of a Western-style coffee kiosk to satisfy my daily caffeine quotient. As I queued up, I noticed an unshaven, dirty-turbaned man standing near the newsstand a few yards away watching me. He turned quickly as I glanced over. At first, I didn’t think much of it, but after I paid for my coffee I noticed him staring again. The newsstand had a display of books for sale, and for a second I thought, hey, maybe he s
aw my picture on a book there and wants my autograph.
If you believe that, I have a long-range, superaccurate Scud missile I’d like to sell you.
I took a long sip of the coffee—weak, a common problem in Asia. Turbanhead was still watching me. I walked a few yards to a stall displaying ladies’ scarves. I examined a few, taking careful note of the intricate silk designs…and getting a much better view of Turbanhead. A view good enough, in fact, to confirm that I had seen his grimy rags and worried face before.
I pulled one of the scarves up and asked the lady how much.
One hundred baht—two and half bucks.
I pulled out ten 1,000-baht notes and pointed to the cell phone she had clipped to her belt.
“Let me use your phone? It’s a local call.”
Her eyes just about left her head as she looked at the money. She couldn’t grab the phone quickly enough.
The exceedingly polite airport operator not only answered on the first ring, but agreed to page Trace right away. Turbanhead had just begun to move as she came up on the line.
“Hello?”
“One of Si’s scumbags is over here near the coffee kiosk,” I told her. “He’s one of the slimes I saw before they batted me on the head and dragged me off to be tiger meat.”
“Shit. I’m over here near the gate. Hang on.”
“No. Get airport security over here first. I’m going to follow him.”
I tossed the phone back to the woman and trotted down the hall. Turbanhead went into the men’s room twenty yards ahead of me. Following him wasn’t an easy call—it was an easy place for an ambush—but I didn’t know whether there might be a window or another way out, and I didn’t want to lose him.
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