by Marcus Wynne
He felt a strange sensation in the pit of his stomach, as though he were on a roller-coaster and preparing for the sudden drop. He had a mission to do. He’d been entrusted with a great responsibility and the great honor to exact a killing blow against the foe. He needed to remember that, he reminded himself. What had happened last night and today was only coincidence, and useful to him operationally.
Youssef didn’t want to think about using Britta operationally.
He replaced the vial in the case with its companions and gently closed it. He made sure the latches were in place and then replaced the Pelican case at the bottom of his satchel along with the dispersion devices, then put his clothing and his shaving kit in on top of it. The bag was bulky but sufficiently compressible so that he could still carry it slung over his shoulder. He took a change of underwear out and then closed the bag and went to the tiny bathroom and took a long, hot shower in the tub ringed with its curtain. Afterward he carefully shaved, then dressed and went out. There was a W. H. Smith bookstore they’d passed on the walk last night; he went there and then to the travel section. He bought a guidebook to Washington, DC and its environs. A detailed scale map was enclosed that showed the downtown area in great detail.
Youssef went to a coffee shop and ordered a small espresso and sweetened it with two spoonfuls of sugar and drank it while he looked over the guidebook.
There was a lot to do in Washington, DC.
ATHENS, GREECE
The final approach to the Athens airport is over the sea, and Dale Miller sat in his seat and watched the cerulean blue of the Mediterranean give way to the sandy brown of the shore and then the gray of the runway asphalt beneath him. The wheels of the 747 touched down once, then again with a slight bump, and then the plane began to slow. The aircraft taxied toward the terminal parking area, and stopped well short of the building where several passenger buses waited. Dale glanced over at Charley, who was boneless and relaxed in his seat, comfortable as a big cat. The tall man looked up and caught his eye and dropped a casual wink. Dale nodded and looked around the business-class section; no one had noticed the exchange. He leaned out into the aisle and looked forward in first-class but didn’t see Ahmad bin Faisal.
Dale followed the other passengers out the door and down the ramp into the brilliant sun of a Grecian summer. He boarded the bus with the others, nodded to the armed soldier providing security on the bus, and rode a bumpy ride to the terminal, where those passengers who’d checked baggage picked it up and lined up in front of the customs counters. With only carry-on, Dale and Charley were the first through customs, where a bored inspector gave them a desultory look and stamped their passports. Charley and Dale slowed and waited till bin Faisal passed them on his way out of customs into the main terminal, where a small crowd waited to greet passengers from the flight. The two operators went to the small line in front of the currency exchange, and saw bin Faisal go out to the taxi stand and take the first cab in line. They watched him go, and then a slight, dark-skinned man came up to them and said, “You are Hans’s friends, yes?”
“That’s right,” Dale said.
“I have a vehicle waiting,” the man said. “My name is Peter.”
“Hello, Peter,” Charley said. “Is Hans already here?”
“Yes,” Peter said. He led them out of the terminal to the parking lot, and then to a battered Fiat sedan. “Hans was with the first team, who will follow bin Faisal.” He put their bags in the trunk and took out a portable Motorola radio with an earpiece. He put the earpiece in and turned on the radio as he got behind the wheel of the Fiat, gesturing for Charley and Dale to get in.
“This is Peter,” Peter said to the radio. “We’re up and monitoring.”
He listened intently for a few minutes, then nodded, and started the car.
“Bin Faisal is checking in at the Athens Hilton Hotel,” he said. “A very nice and expensive hotel, and one we’ve worked in before. It’s where the US embassy puts up its visiting personnel. We have people on-site right now, and once he has his room we’ll work on a covert penetration for sound and video.”
He pulled out into the traffic and accelerated sharply, pressing Charley and Dale back in their seats. The car was much faster than it looked.
“I forgot how you Greeks like to drive,” Charley said.
Peter smiled. “You’ve been here before?”
“Yes,” Charley said. “Many years ago. I enjoyed it very much.”
Dale said, “Where are we staying?”
“We have a safe house prepared in the same district as the Athens Hilton,” Peter said. “It will be cramped but sufficient for our needs. Hans and I, two equipment operators, and yourselves.”
“Thank you,” Dale said. He turned and looked out at the city whizzing past his window as Peter wove in and out of the busy traffic on the main street that led into downtown Athens. He kept a lookout for the first view of the Acropolis as he came in, and he remembered taking a walking tour there once when he had downtime between missions in Athens. A friend of his, a federal air marshal, had met him in Athens and they had done the tourist thing together. He wondered what Marcos was doing now. It had been many years since he’d seen him.
Charley said, “Will we be within walking distance to the Plaka? I’m trying to get oriented.”
“A longish walk, but you can do it,” Peter said. “We are very close to the American embassy, do you remember where that is?”
“Sure,” Charley said.
Dale touched his hipbone with his elbow, then said, “Will Hans have pistols for us?”
“Yes,” Peter said. “We have to be very careful and discreet with those. We have gunfighters, but we understand that you may feel more comfortable with your own pistols. We’ll take care of that.”
“That’ll be fine,” Charley said. “We may need them with November Seventeenth sniffing around.”
Peter looked in the rearview mirror at Charley. “That is a true thing you just said.”
Ahmad bin Faisal was satisfied with his room. He had a spectacular view of the city, and the room was well appointed and comfortable. The Arab unpacked his bags and hung his coat in the bathroom to let the wrinkles out. He studied the minibar for a time, then decided instead to go downstairs to the lobby bar for a light lunch.
The lobby was full of people coming and going; the Hilton was a popular meeting spot with the Athens wealthy and there were many other international businessmen going about their affairs. Bin Faisal was satisfied that he drew no attention from the tourism police, hulking in their plainclothes, who wandered the lobby looking for trouble. The restaurant was serving full meals, but he had in mind something lighter; in the bar he ordered a Caesar salad and some bread. He settled back at his table and comfortable armchair and lit a Turkish cigarette, drawing with great satisfaction at the rich blend of tobacco while he waited for his meal. From his seat he could see the whole length of the bar into the lobby.
Ahmad bin Faisal believed in knowing his own weaknesses, and one of the things he freely admitted was that his tradecraft was not among the best. He was a financier and planner, a concept man who had never had to participate in the operations he planned with the other top lieutenants of the Al-Bashir network. His strength was in finding and moving money, putting in the financial infrastructure for the operations to come. His recent excursions into the field were prompted by the need to keep the One compartmented and yet busy while plans were finalized; the job had fallen to him to keep knowledge of the One to a bare operational minimum.
He practiced the tradecraft he remembered, but counted on more than anything the quality of his false passports and credit cards. He’d seen to that himself, making sure he had only the very best paper. With that, he was just another businessman shuttling around the continent in the interests of his company. He bore letterhead and a briefcase full of documents attesting to his business as a financial officer for an oil company, more than sufficient to put off any official interest in him.
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br /> But he had not grown to his age without being cautious. Even in Athens, where most members of Al-Bashir felt comfortable and moved about freely, it was good to be cautious. The one thing he remembered most from the intense man who had taught him rudimentary tradecraft was to pay attention to his intuition; quite often what we felt or intuited turned out to be the case.
And his intuition was bothering him.
He hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary in Amsterdam, and he was quite sure that Youssef hadn’t either. Youssef had the discretion in the final phases of the operation to make his own arrangements to enter the United States; once in place, he could be contacted only by one-way messages encrypted and sent to certain Web sites. The messages were hidden in a piece of the code that made up a photographic image. Once the image was downloaded the information could be extracted. It was very nearly foolproof.
No, Youssef would be all right.
What he was worrying about was himself. Since he’d arrived at the hotel, he’d had a nagging sensation that he was being watched. He’d originally chalked it up to the plane trip; he didn’t enjoy flying, the constant vibration and noise gave him a headache, and he disliked wearing earplugs. But now, seated where he was, it seemed as though there was a regular rotation of people coming in and out of the bar, people who didn’t stay for very long. It might be just his imagination, since it was lunch hour, but he felt as though several of the people who had come in had looked him over carefully, more carefully than a casual diner at the same location would do.
His meal came, and he turned his attention to it. He asked for a newspaper, and took the International Herald Tribune when the waitress brought it. He folded it open, and held it with one hand while he ate with the other. The meal went quickly, and he decided against a drink. The day outside looked splendid, and he decided to go for a walk. It would give him an opportunity to test himself and see if his budding paranoia was in fact justified.
He went outside, and stood for a moment and looked at the flagpoles with their flags of many nations that stretched alongside the curved driveway that came to the front of the hotel. He lit another cigarette and drew on it nervously, then began to stroll slowly away from the hotel. In the lectures he’d endured, the instructors had stressed the need not to tip off the surveillance teams that they’d been noticed. That made it all the more harder if they knew and took steps to hide themselves. Better that they be careless and cocky and confident that their subject was unaware of their attentions. So he didn’t look around or over his shoulder, instead he relaxed and let his eyes expand and widen his peripheral vision, and began paying attention to the surfaces around him that reflected and gave him some idea of what or who was behind him. Parked cars, shop windows, other people. He put on his sunglasses against the glare and to hide his own eyes.
The main boulevard outside the hotel was busy with streaming traffic in both directions. He walked down a quiet side street to a smaller street lined with shops and began walking his route. First he crossed the street so that the vehicle traffic on his side was coming toward him, then he slowed down and took his time, window-shopping, checking in the reflections if there was anyone staring at him or stopping to look. He went into a clothing store and admired the suits, then went out and crossed the street to a grocery shop and bought a small bottle of mineral water. He stood on the street and drank thirstily. Then he continued on, past a BMW dealership where he lingered for a moment and looked at the latest sedans, then continued on past the Holiday Inn and a series of bars and clubs. At street crossings, he found a reason to hold back, and then crossed just as the lights began to change, and made it a point to look and see if anyone was hurrying across to keep up with him.
Still, the feeling stuck with him. There were a few instances of people hurrying across the light at the same time as he, but they either passed him at his dawdling pace or turned off and went in another direction. There were so many vehicles that he had a hard time keeping track of them, but as far as he could tell no vehicle had come by and slowed to watch him, or appeared more than once in the endless parade of vehicles that clogged the streets of downtown Athens.
But perhaps it was just his imagination after all. He had done nothing to come to the attention of the Greek authorities, and the Israelis and the Americans would be hard put to mount a full-scale surveillance of him on such short notice. There were other people, including Greek Intelligence, who would be interested in his activities, but he was confident in the quality of his forged documents and his cover as a businessman. No, he decided. Today was not the day he was being followed. His mind made up, he continued strolling toward his final destination, a small family-run restaurant that served the finest roast lamb in Athens. It was time for a meal.
“Did he make anybody?” Dale asked Hans.
“I don’t think so,” Hans said. “But this is the first time we’ve seen him do more than cursory countersurveillance. We must be careful now.”
Charley nodded. “Old boy doesn’t have great moves, but he’s got moves. Your guys are good, Hans.”
“Thank you,” Hans said.
“Let’s stay on him tight,” Dale said. “We don’t want him to slip away.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Hans said. “We have the ball.”
AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS, BRITTA’S APARTMENT
Youssef bin Hassan studied the maps of Washington, DC. He paid particularly close attention to the schematic that showed the routes and stops of the Washington Metro, the subway and light-rail network that linked downtown Washington, DC with the suburbs of Virginia and Maryland. From his previous briefings, he knew that many of the stations were underground, and the rapid movement of the trains passing through the station would be ideal for dispersing the weaponized smallpox across a large number of people. Placement of a dispersion device on the platform level of a Metro station during rush hours would ensure the maximum amount of exposure to the mass of commuters traveling then. That would cause outbreaks scattered throughout the larger metropolitan area and not just in downtown Washington, DC.
He touched with a grease pencil the Smithsonian stop; the world-famous museum had record numbers of visitors all year round. He planned to treat doorknobs and banister rails there, and then would investigate the interior of the building for likely spots for an additional dispersion device. The Metro would bear the brunt of the attack; he also planned to see about getting on a White House tour to see what he could do there. According to his briefers, the security was stringent on the people attending a White House tour, but it was possible to take a small atomizer—disguised as a breath spray as one of the devices was—in through security. Once inside, he’d have to be extremely discreet, as video cameras covered the tourists every step of the way. The Federal Bureau of Investigation building was another place to visit; they too had tours and opened their building to the public.
He had plenty of time. The original plan called for a rapid movement across the country from major metropolitan area to major metropolitan area. But the first and most thorough targeting was to be Washington, DC. Then New York City, then the systematic visits of the other cities on his target list. It would take about two weeks for the first cases to show up in Washington, DC, but by then he should be most of the way through the major cities on his target list. The subsequent focus would be on mass travel, for the American society was a mobile one; he could count on that.
Then his mission would be accomplished.
He planned to exfiltrate out of the country from the West Coast, leaving Seattle to the end, where he could take a fast boat to Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada, and from there a plane back to Europe. Then it was on to Syria and the Al-Bashir logistic headquarters for a lengthy debriefing and a great many congratulations. From there they would watch as the epidemic raged across the United States, safe and secure in their country, all of the operators inoculated against the virulent custom-engineered strain, and with sufficient vaccine to defeat any infection th
at crossed over to their host country.
Youssef wouldn’t allow himself to think about what might happen to Britta if the smallpox made it from the United States to Amsterdam. After all, Amsterdam was a hub for several major US airlines. He mulled on that for a time and then, with the effort of training, put the thought out of his head. He tapped on the plastic-sheathed map of Washington, DC and let the image of success come up in his head. The first signs would be massive numbers of people getting ill with what appeared to be the flu, after a long incubation period. Then the rapid progress of the engineered virus would lead to the blooming, the outbreak of the pox on the skin that would make it recognizable to the health authorities. There would be widespread panic once the word got out that smallpox was loose in the United States, decades after it had been declared extinct and the vaccination program had ceased.
And then people would die, first by the dozens, then the hundreds, then the thousands.
Smallpox in its natural form killed three out of every ten people infected; the virulence of the engineered variety took that kill ratio up to seven out of ten. It had been fully tested on Kurdish prisoners in a secret underground laboratory on the outskirts of Baghdad and the course of the disease was fully and thoroughly mapped. His briefers had told him that the laboratory had often been visited by high members of the Iraqi government, especially the associates of Hussein Kamel, some of whom had enjoyed a small party with the scientists who had created the engineered virus. They had also perfected a vaccine, custom engineered just like the virus, and that had been cause for celebration as well.
