by Marcus Wynne
“He’s not running any counter moves at all,” Hans said. “He appears nervous, but he’s not taking any action to counter it. Why?”
“Why is right,” Charley said. “If he thought he was under surveillance, he might try some countersurveillance moves. Or maybe he’s just playing it as cool as he can right now to see what happens.”
“There’s something not right about this,” Dale said. “He’s no operator, but first he’s trying some moves and now he’s not. What does he know that we don’t?”
Hans said, “It may be that he’s convinced himself there’s no surveillance. Or he’s nervous about something entirely unrelated. Maybe his dinner didn’t agree with him, or there’s something else on his mind. We don’t know. Right now we have him where we want him and that should be enough. Let’s stop second-guessing ourselves and take advantage of the fact that we have him.”
“Hans is right,” Charley said. “Let’s just chill, Dale.”
“I want this guy,” Dale said. “I want to sweat him till his brains run.”
“We all do,” Charley said. “Cultivate patience.”
Ahmad bin Faisal was settling into an easy rhythm. The fact that he hadn’t seen anyone following him and that there were other people on the street gave him comfort. His stride began to lengthen, and he lit another cigarette, pausing for a good long moment to give people time to fix on him. He began to nod a simple greeting to the people who passed him on the street, each hurrying to enjoy the nightlife that Greeks lived for. For a moment he thought about going to a club, but his instructions from Christou had been clear: go back on the direct route to his hotel and stay there for the night and wait to be contacted by Christou’s people.
So he stayed on the street, didn’t look over his shoulder or around nervously anymore.
“He’s settling down,” the woman said to her partner.
“He’s not used to this sort of thing.”
“Who is he?”
“Al-Bashir.”
“And he’s not used to this?”
“He’s higher up. Finance and support.”
“Ah. That makes sense. That’s why the pay is so good.”
“He’s bringing us a gift in more than one way,” her partner said. Her hands were tucked into the crook of his arm and they continued strolling along, chatting like any of the other couple on the street. “This is an opportunity to strike.”
“It may be. Costas closed in on their streetfighters just a while ago. They may be Americans, CIA. If so, it will be a good opportunity.”
“They are very good. We’ll have to be careful.”
The two of them looked around and laughed.
“He’s almost to the hotel,” Dale said. “No brush passes, no contacts, no countersurveillance . . . he’s been squeaky clean.”
“Yes,” Hans said. “But that makes sense. He’s not a street operator; if he’s going to meet with someone they will give him directions and a place and a route to walk; they’d be providing security for the meet. The logical place would be some sort of contact at his hotel giving him further instructions.”
“You got a crew in there already, right?” Charley said.
“Of course,” Hans said. “We have a room there adjoining his and we have a penetration for video and sound. The hardest part is keeping a presence in the lobby; the tourist police are everywhere down there.”
“Do you have a connection with the police department?” Charley asked.
“Yes, but we’re staying at arm’s length due to the nature of this job.”
“Makes sense,” Charley said.
The terrorist couple followed slowly behind and watched bin Faisal go into the hotel via the front main entrance. They strolled along and went into the hotel, going directly to the lobby bar where they sat at the end of the bar and ordered aperitifs. The woman crossed her legs and dangled one foot impudently while she toyed with her drink. From her vantage point she could see into the lobby. Two tourist police, in plainclothes uniforms of leather bomber jackets, sweatshirts, and American Levis and combat boots, stood hulking near the entrance of the bar, looking out into the lobby. She paid close attention to the other people in the bar and outside in the lobby, lingering in the comfortable lounge chairs and sofas set tastefully among end tables in the lobby.
“How is your drink?” she asked her partner.
“Fine.”
“I saw two in the lobby,” she said.
“Yes, I saw them.” “There are more. When there’s two, there’s more.”
“We have enough to proceed. Finish your drink.”
The woman downed her drink, then set the empty glass down and stood. “Shall we go?” she said.
Her male partner finished his own drink and set the glass down on the bar and signaled for his bill. He paid it from a roll of bills in his pocket, then set the change down on the bar and led his partner out, holding her arm. The two of them went out the front main entrance and took a cab from the taxi stand in front of the hotel. The man gave directions to the driver, who accelerated off into the traffic quickly. After a few blocks, the man said to the driver, “Here, this will be fine,” and the driver pulled over.
“For your trouble,” the man said, adding a few bills to the small fare.
“Thank you,” said the driver. He pulled away, hitting his fare light as he did.
The couple stood beneath a streetlight and looked around them. No surveillance on them, and they would have been very surprised if there was. After all, they were street operators working an active operation, and they were sure that they hadn’t been made by the surveillance team working Ahmad bin Faisal. They walked a short distance down the block and then crossed the street where a sedan idled beneath a street lamp. The woman tapped on the rear trunk lid as they came abreast of the vehicle and the three occupants looked round at them. The man and the woman squeezed in beside the woman in the backseat.
“Do we have a count?” said the driver.
“Yes.”
“Americans?”
“We couldn’t tell,” the second woman said.
“I could,” said the older Greek named Costas. “They are definitely American. Very professional, better than the local CIA, who are very good. They are running an operation against an Al-Bashir financier. That’s who they were following tonight.”
“Do we have enough for our report?” the driver said.
“Oh, yes,” Costas said. “I think we have an opportunity too good to miss here.”
“They’ve put him to bed,” Hans said. “He’s in his room now, getting ready for bed. He won’t be going anyplace. We’ve got a vehicle team and a set of streetwalkers standing by in case he does move tonight, but we’ll have plenty of advance warning. Time for sleep.”
“I could use some shut-eye,” Charley said.
“I’m too wound up to sleep,” Dale said.
“You should try to rest,” Hans said. “You are very tense.”
“We’ve got a lot riding here, Hans,” Dale said.
“I know this,” the Dutchman said. “So do I. You have to learn to trust us, Dale. Have we done anything wrong yet?”
“No,” Dale said. “And I don’t mean anything by it, Hans. I’m just used to working this sort of thing myself.”
“You didn’t work alone when you did,” Hans said reasonably. “Even you need to sleep, eat, and shit sometimes. Trust us. Let us do our job.”
“Sorry,” Dale said.
“Nothing’s going to happen,” Charley said. “Let’s get some time toes-up.”
AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS, BRITTA’S APARTMENT
Youssef and Britta lay in Britta’s narrow bed, tangled in the sweaty embrace of lovers. Her breathing was deep and slow, and the rhythm of it stirred the skin on Youssef’s chest where her head lay, heavy with sleep. He was still awake, strangely so, though drained of tension. It was as though there were thoughts he expected to hear, just on the threshold of his hearing, hovering nearby as he lay n
ear sleep. Light from the street outside filtered through the big window and fell across the bed in slanting lines. There was a lone voice, distant, and then gone. It was late.
Youssef shifted slowly so as not to wake Britta. He stretched his legs, then relaxed back into the bed as Britta stirred slightly, then slipped back into deep slumber. Youssef let himself slip back into the dreamy reverie that comes right before sleep, and let himself slide into sleep as gently as any child.
A dream full of images came to him: he was as tall as a giraffe, walking slowly with a pendulous gait, and picking his way down a crowded street, striding over cars. Everywhere there were heaps of sick and dying people, their faces covered with the pustules of smallpox, and he couldn’t recognize anyone, so distorted and inhuman they looked. There was a strange light in the sky, not from the sun, and he walked toward it, ignoring the human detritus all around him. He was wearing a traditional Saudi robe and headdress, and his feet were shod in leather sandals, and he heard the whish whish whish of his clothing as he walked. Here was a sick child and the mother, but he turned his face away from their pleading. He couldn’t understand the noises they made, but his mind made them into words, pleading for help, for water, for mercy. There was a young man and his girlfriend, curled together in the bonelessness of death, the boy with his arms curled protectively around his lover even in death.
Death, death, death, everywhere.
Up ahead was the light, like a reversed cone from the darkened sky above, which boiled with turbulent clouds like cold milk into hot tea. Youssef stepped forward and entered the cone of light where it hit the street at a place empty of bodies and abandoned cars. He felt the the warmth of the light on his traditional robes. In the cone of sunlight he threw back his head and let the light warm his face, strangely cold, his muscles tense around his eyes from the not-seeing that he’d been doing, the deliberate turning away from the pestilence and death that surrounded him. There in the light he felt a presence. He turned and looked and saw Britta there with him, his size, towering over the street. But while he looked up toward the source of the light, she looked down and back at the people dying below. Her hands went out to reach for them, but pressed up against the edge of the light as though she were pressing on glass. She turned to him and her lips moved as though speaking, but he heard nothing. He reached out his hand to touch her, but it was as if she were behind a clear glass barrier separating the two of them. His hands splayed wide on the invisible barrier, he watched as her skin became flushed, then spotted, then the spots broke open into the blooming of the pox, her eyes open wide in horror, her hands clutching at her face. Youssef tried to look away but he could not; he couldn’t look away from her china-blue eyes, even now dulling and fading, and he reached for her as she fell . . .
. . . and he awoke with a start, shouting “Britta!” throwing her arms from him in his need to be untangled.
“What is it, Youssef?” Britta said, woken from her deep sleep with the clarity of someone waking to an emergency.
“A dream,” he said. “A horrible dream.”
She cradled him and pulled him against her soft breasts like a child. “There, there,” she soothed. “It was only a dream. Only a bad dream.”
ATHENS, GREECE, NOVEMBER SEVENTEENTH SAFE HOUSE
While other people slept, the terrorist surveillance team from November Seventeenth sat around a table in a house in a residential suburb of Athens, studying maps of the area around the Athens Hilton, writing their plans on big sheets of paper they put up on the wall of the room around them, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. The unexpected appearance of a full-scale American intelligence operation in their territory provided them with an opportunity to strike hard at their old foe, in a fashion meant to not only hurt but to publicly embarrass the American operators.
“Do we take them when they are static or while they are moving?” a woman named Anna said. She was half of the couple that had followed Ahmad bin Faisal to the Hilton hours earlier.
“I think static,” the older Greek gunfighter, whose name was Costas, said. “While they are moving, it is to our advantage for escape, but they have the advantage of being already mobile. So I think static. We take them while they are sitting there watching our friend.”
The man who had been the other half of the couple that followed bin Faisal, whose name was Stavrous, said, “Can we get the police response we want?”
“Yes,” Costas said. “The tourist police are right there, we must mind them. Our man in the police department will be monitoring the emergency dispatch center and arrange to be first on the scene, before they have an opportunity to clean up and get their equipment and the bodies out.”
“What of their gunfighters?” one of the other men said.
“Don’t worry about them, Anton,” Costas said. “I have plans to deal with them. They only have two on the street and they will be the first to go.”
“I like it,” Anna said. “You think a walk-up is the way to go? Perhaps we should ambush them from a distance and not take the chance of exposure.”
“Too difficult to set up on short notice,” Costas said dismissively. “Mobile teams to strike a coordinated strike at stationary targets, that’s what we need. We need not kill all of them, in fact it’s better for the police response that we don’t. They’ll be running around trying to see to their people and find us and they’ll end up in a shooting match or in custody with the police. Then our friends in the press will splash this across the world’s headlines. American CIA Agents in Gunfight in Athens Streets. That’s what the American president will be reading over his morning coffee.”
They all laughed at that. Costas said, “He will be shitting himself while we’ll be drinking coffee.”
“We had best sleep for a time, then,” Stavrous said. “We’ll have a busy day.”
“Yes,” Costas said. “Time for sleep.”
ATHENS, GREECE, HANS’S SURVEILLANCE TEAM SAFE HOUSE
Dale, Charley, and Hans sat on folding chairs around a worktable in the hastily put together operations room in the safe house. Charley sat calmly, his hands loose in his lap, while Hans sipped from a bottle of water. Dale stood up, then sat back down.
“What’s he doing?” Dale said.
“He’s sleeping,” Hans said. “Which is what we should do. I have static posts all around and people right next door to him. He’s not going anywhere and no one can get to him without us knowing.”
“So what did Callan say?” Charley asked.
“There’s a snatch team standing by, they’re in the country now,” Dale said. “We’ve got the eye, they’ll slide in and take him.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“How soon?” Charley said.
“As soon as tomorrow,” Dale said. “Six-man team working out of a van with a cover car, as well as all of us for support, surveillance, and cover.”
“Seems like a lot for one guy without protection,” Charley said. “That’s a lot of exposure.”
“It’s pretty minimal, all things considered,” Dale said.
“Yes,” Hans said. “It’s not as many as I’ve seen.”
“Guess I was used to working on a beer budget. You guys are on the champagne standard,” Charley said.
“This guy warrants it,” Dale said. He toyed with a pack of cigarettes on the table. “They’ll sweat him to fill out what Uday had to say, and we’ll find out if this Sad Holiday thing is for real or just a pipe dream for the planners.”
“I don’t know about all of you, but I need some sleep,” Charley said. “Time for this old dog to get toes-up. Anybody else?”
“Yes,” Hans said. “We’ll have a busy day tomorrow.”
AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS, BRITTA’S APARTMENT
“Your sleep is very troubled,” Britta said in the bright light of morning. The two of them lay together in bed, the sheets bunched up around their chests, mugs of steaming coffee in their hands. “What do you dream of?”
/> Youssef shrugged, embarrassed. “I’ve always had bad dreams,” he said. “Ever since I was a young boy.”
Britta reached out and stroked his hands. “You’re fine now.”
Youssef pulled his hand away and drank a long hot swallow from his cup.
“What’s wrong?” Britta said. “Youssef, what’s wrong?”
“I need to be out today,” he said. “I need some air, some exercise.”
Britta studied him, her hands cupped around her mug. “Of course we can do that,” she said. “It’s a beautiful day already. We can walk through the Jordaan today, it is a very lovely area, we can take coffee at a café, have a meal . . .”
“I need to be alone for a while.”
Britta moved so that she could see his profile, his lips turned down, the furrowed brow.
“Of course you can be alone,” she said. “But I don’t think you want to be alone. I think you are used to being alone and that is why you don’t know how to be with someone when you are troubled. You’ve been alone so much that you don’t know what a relief it is to be able to unburden yourself to someone who will listen to you. Like I can listen to you, Youssef. Like I want to listen to you.”
She watched the play of emotions across the young Arab’s fine features: longing, wonder, anger, and then a mask of stillness.
“What is it that you think about?” she said, softly insistent. “What is it that you can’t tell me? There’s something, I can see that. Tell me.”
“I had a friend,” Youssef said. “Palestinian. We were good friends, went to university together. But when we graduated, he went back to the West Bank to participate in the armed struggle against the Jews. He was captured by the Israelis, and they tortured him. He was a fine musician, he played the piano. They put his fingers in a drawer and a soldier kicked it shut. He never played piano again . . . he died in their custody, like so many others. He will never have a day in the sunshine in Amsterdam, he won’t have coffee in a café or take a light meal. There’s nothing for him except the memories in the minds of his friends, and the actions that we would take in his name.”
