Brothers In Arms

by Marcus Wynne

  “What sign?”

  “Nothing,” Charley said. “Lots of nothing. So we wait. The only thing that’s happened is that he’s read the e-mail message. Today.”

  “So he’s here.”

  “He’s here.”

  “What about his directions on the Web site?”

  “The hackers have been through there with a fine-toothed comb. They inserted our message right where it should be.”

  “Do you think that will work?”

  “It’s the best shot we’ve got. He was told to ignore any messages telling him to stop once he got his final go-ahead. Total fail-safe. This is the best we can come up with to get him into our ambush.”

  Ray nodded. “You’ve talked to the shooters?”

  “Yes. They’re good. They’re talking with the CDC team now.”

  “We’ve got people from Fort Detrick as well.”

  “The more the merrier,” Charley said. “But we’ll stay lean and mean with our team till we roll this boy up. Then you can cut loose as many of the bug boys as you want.”

  “What else do you need from me?”

  “Just keep signing the checks, Ray. Really. We’re good to go.”

  They both looked up as an assistant, a blond woman with a pinched face, came in and went directly to a computer monitor. She tapped quickly on the keyboard, then said, “You’ll both want to see this. We have a hit.”

  Charley and Ray went around the table to the monitor. The image of Isabelle Andouille on the National Mall filled the screen, with a smaller photo of her inset into the image.

  “She’s one of them, isn’t she?” the assistant said. “The Twins.”

  “What the hell is she doing here?” Ray said.

  Charley sat down beside the assistant. Several other assistants and operators came into the room and clustered around the terminal, but he ignored them. “Take me through it,” he said. “Tell me the story.”

  The woman’s face became less pinched as she worked the keyboard. “Here it is. She came up on the face scanner five minutes ago. She was part of a group of bicyclists, but she split off and went to the benches, not the target bench, but right next to it. Then she took off her helmet and sunglasses, had a drink, geared up again, and rode off.”

  “What did she do while she was there?” Charley said.

  “That’s it. She looked around at the Air and Space Museum, but not like she was doing a survey.”

  “Do we know what she was doing before she went to the bench?” Charley said.

  “Just riding with a group of bicyclists. Then she broke away and went midway across the lawn, then the rest of the way to the bench. That’s it.”

  “What was she looking for?” Ray said.

  Charley patted the assistant on the shoulder. “Thanks. Good work.”

  He stared at the screen and the familiar face of Isabelle. What was she doing here? What would bring her here to the States except some connection with the One?

  “She wants to lead us to him,” Charley said.

  Ray looked puzzled. “What?”

  “Like she did in Amsterdam. Somehow she’s onto his tail, she wants to find him and finger him. Either to take him out or to turn him over to us. She knows about Sad Holiday.”

  “That’s a stretch. How would she know?”

  “Why else right here, right now? What else would she be doing? She and Marie wouldn’t mount another operation in the States after we warned them off. It has to be Sad Holiday.”

  Charley turned to the assistant and said, “Any idea of where she went?”

  She shook her head no. “The teams stayed put. By the time we got it sorted out, she was away on her bike. We’ve told them not to move till we have a positive ID on the One—that’s what they did, they stayed in place. We could put an additional team in, have them patrol the area and see if they spot her.”

  “Do that,” Charley said. “And tell the teams in the field to stand by. The One is in the area.”

  Ray said, “Is that your call?”

  “That’s my call,” Charley said. The timbre of the hunter was in his voice. “He’s here. And Isabelle is going to lead us right to him.”

  WASHINGTON, DC, NEAR THE EGYPTIAN EMBASSY

  After a fitful night filled with uncomfortable and half-remembered dreams, Youssef woke and prepared himself for his operation. He made his way near to the Egyptian embassy, and stopped at the Internet café he had seen the day before during his reconnaissance. Cyber Joe’s, it was called, and a wooden sign with a steaming cup of coffee and a laptop carved in it hung over the door. The smell of fresh coffee thickened the air inside the café. The tables were mostly occupied with early morning customers reading the Washington Post over their cups of coffee. Long rows of Apple I-Macs lined the walls, and there was a separate section of small desks enclosed in cubicles.

  “Can I help you?” said the man at the front counter. He was dressed in a black T-shirt and black jeans, and his gestures and expression had a languid femininity about them. He made Youssef nervous.

  “Are those laptop cubicles there?” Youssef said.

  “That’s what they are. Would you like to use one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well step right up here, and I’ll take care of you.”

  The man seemed amused by Youssef. He took Youssef’s cash and handed him back his change, letting his fingers linger in the palm of Youssef’s hand.

  “There you go,” he said. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “No,” Youssef said. He pulled his hand away and dropped the coins into his front pocket, wiping his hand on his pants leg, a motion that didn’t go unnoticed by the other man.

  “Suit yourself, big boy. Have fun on the Net.”

  Youssef went to the cubicle farthest from the counter and closest to the window. He plugged the T-1 line into the Ethernet port on his laptop and logged on. He looked around; the gay man at the front counter looked at him, then away. Youssef typed in the URL of a pornographic pay site. On the site, he clicked MEMBERS, then entered his password. He ran the cursor down a long row of buttons till he found one that said TEEN SEX. A pageful of thumbnail images came up. He scrolled through them till he found one titled SAMANTHA. When he clicked on the image, it expanded into the picture of a young brunette girl with a shaved pubic area inserting a massive black dildo into herself. He downloaded the image, then exited the Web site and logged off the Internet. He clicked on the image icon and the picture expanded to fill his screen again. A few keystrokes activated a separate program, one that rendered the photograph into bits and bytes and then extracted a particular line of code that was buried in the image of the young girl’s thigh. That line of code went to his desktop, and then he ran another program that decrypted the ones and zeros and turned it into text: PRODUCT YOU RECEIVED IN AMSTERDAM IS FLAWED, EXCHANGE FOR NEW PRODUCT FROM LOCAL CONTACT.

  Youssef studied the words for a moment, then carefully deleted the text, the encrypted line of code, and the pornographic image. He unplugged his laptop and left the cubicle and went to the front counter. The gay man took his time looking up from the newspaper he was reading.

  “Yes?”

  “There is an art store near here. Which way is it?”

  The gay man looked Youssef up and down. “You don’t look like the art type.”

  “The store,” Youssef said. “Which way?”

  “Out the door, turn right, and walk. You can’t miss it. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, sweetheart.”

  Youssef’s hands shook as he slid his laptop back into his courier bag. He almost dropped the computer while fumbling with the door, the low laughter of the gay man ringing in his ears. Outside, he stood for a moment and turned his face up to the sun as though bathing in the shower of light. He took off the straw hat he wore and let the sun beat down on his head through his close-cropped hair, then he replaced his hat and slung his courier bag. The sign for the art store he’d seen was clear even from a block away; it too was a woode
n sign, with an artist’s easel and the words ART SUPPLIES carved on it.

  Inside the store he stood and studied the long rows of shelves. He asked a passing clerk, “Where do you have chalk?”

  “Aisle four, halfway down on your right.”

  Youssef took a box of plain white chalk from the shelf and went to the cash register and paid for his purchase. Once he was outside, he opened the box and took a stick and put it in his front pants pocket where his hand could rest on it. The open box of chalk went into his courier bag.

  From here, it was only a short walk to the mailbox near the Egyptian embassy.

  On the far side of the street, Isabelle strolled along, staying behind Youssef. All her senses were on alert; something was not right with the young Arab. At the hostel he kept himself apart from the other guests; on the street he didn’t practice even minimal countersurveillance. It was as if he didn’t care, or else he was so sure of his cover that he had become careless. She wasn’t sure which was the case, but in any instance he was far too careless for an operator working in the very heart of the enemy. He seemed preoccupied with his thoughts instead of tuning up his situational awareness; something seemed to weigh on his mind while he went through the motions of an operator preparing. Isabelle felt frustrated. The young Arab’s actions gave her little clue to what his intention might be. He had probably received instructions via e-mail at the Internet café; he had done that in Amsterdam. But she didn’t dare get close enough to him to tell. Her disguise would serve to protect her at a distance, but up close . . . Youssef would remember her from their lengthy lunch and meetings in Amsterdam.

  Isabelle put her frustration away and concentrated instead on watching the street ahead. While the Arab seemed oblivious to his surroundings, she could not afford to be. Here in Washington, DC there were many different agencies to worry about, intelligence both foreign and domestic, as well as law enforcement. She’d worked here often and was confident in her ability to operate, but she had no idea what Youssef might lead her into. It was especially dangerous in this quiet neighborhood with its tree-lined streets and row houses. There were many foreign embassies here, and subsequently a larger law-enforcement and security presence. She looked the part of a tourist, in a loose-fitting denim dress that fell to her knees and a large straw hat and black sunglasses hiding her face, with a guidebook and map sticking out of the oversized shoulder bag she carried. So she walked slowly, pacing her quarry across the street, wondering why his head was bowed and his shoulders bent as though beneath a heavy load.

  Marcus Williams and Robert Sanders huddled in the back of a dusty white panel truck parked around the corner from the Egyptian embassy, directly across the street from the mailbox where the One was to make his clandestine signal to his contact. Battery-powered fans moved the air around, and a big bucket of dry ice in front of one fan served as an air conditioner. Despite those efforts, both men dripped sweat.

  One monitor ran from a small camera mounted flush against the inside wall, its lens pressed against a pinhole hidden outside by the paint job. The camera was focused on the mailbox and provided a clear view of anyone near it. Another camera was mounted in the false ventilation hood on top of the truck; with pan and tilt capability, it zoomed in on anyone of interest in the general area. Leads from the monitors ran into a small server powered by batteries; the results of the constant scanning of faces came up on the monitor beside it. There had been a flurry of activity earlier, when the early morning work rush was on, and people stopped at the mailbox to drop letters while walking to the bus stop around the corner or on their way to work. The computer program had turned up no hits on those faces, and since then there had been only a few individuals mailing letters.

  Williams checked the power-cable connection on the back of the small server, and looked at the gauge on the battery pack. Plenty of juice left for the day stretching out before them. He fished a plastic bottle of spring water out of a bucket filled with melting ice.

  “Water?” he said, holding a dripping bottle out to Sanders.

  “Yeah,” Sanders said. “Thanks.”

  He twisted the cap off and drained the quart bottle in a long series of gulps. Williams watched him, then gestured at a gallon plastic water jug half-full of urine.

  “You’ll have to piss again, drinking like that.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Sanders said. “I don’t need borderline dehydration. Too damn hot to play around.”

  Williams shrugged and sipped from his own bottle, slowing, rinsing his mouth before swallowing. “Want to switch?”

  “Sure.”

  Sanders edged from his folding stool and squeezed past his partner and slid into the undersized lawn chair Williams favored.

  “I don’t know how you get your ass into this thing,” Sanders grumbled.

  “Got to be lean and mean.”

  The radio crackled. “OP, this is Zero, radio check.”

  Sanders picked up his microphone and said, “Zero, this is OP, I have you five by five.”

  “Zero, out.”

  “Payne working the radio himself again?” Williams said.

  “Sounds like it. He likes hands-on.”

  “Probably sick of the boss breathing down his neck.”

  The radio crackled again. “OP, this is Gun, radio check.”

  Sanders said, “Gun, this is OP, I have you five by five.”

  “Roger, Gun out.”

  Sanders replaced the microphone in its cradle. “I feel sorry for the shooters,” he said. “It’s hot as hell out there and they can’t run the AC.”

  “They’ll get over it,” Williams said. He adjusted one of the fans to blow directly into his face. “Surveillance turns out to be a pretty good gig, huh? You could be out there sweating with the gunfighters.”

  “Yeah,” Sanders said. “Instead I’m in here sweating with you. Some good gig.”

  On the camera monitor, a dark-skinned young man in a straw hat with a courier bag slung across his back, walked toward the mailbox.

  Youssef had stood off for a time, lingering in the shade of a tree, leaning against the concrete planter box and sipping from his bottle of water. He looked like just another pedestrian desperate for a moment’s relief from the oppressive heat. While he waited, watching the mailbox, he scanned the streets for signs of surveillance: people lingering for too long, parked cars with passengers, delivery vans or trucks that seemed out of place. The problem was that there were all of those things on these streets, and they seemed to be the norm. There is a rhythm to a street during the workday, a flow of pedestrians and cars that has its own beat. Youssef struggled to find that beat, to look for the watchers who would be still notes in the rhythm of the street. After a few minutes, driven by the sense of impatience that had been growing in him, he decided the best course was to just get on with it.

  The longer he waited, the less likely he was to do it.

  That thought surprised him. He hadn’t consciously considered not making his meeting until this moment. What would he do? Walk away from the mission, abandon the job of the One? The thought nagged at him, but he put it aside, as he put aside his thoughts of Britta, and instead concentrated on what needed to be done.

  He took a deep breath, as though diving into a pool, and crossed the street at the crosswalk when the light changed. He turned to his left, momentarily alone as the other pedestrians went their way, and slipped his hand into his pocket and palmed the long piece of chalk. His heart pounded, and he stopped for a brief moment, as though he were admiring the architecture of the old Colonials on the street. Then he walked to the mailbox, paused again, then took his hand out of his pocket and dragged his hand and the chalk down the side of the blue mailbox.

  The chalk broke in his hand, and the piece that remained skittered across the heavily painted surface without leaving a mark. Youssef tried again. The chalk squeaked on the slick surface and left only a few pieces in the pits and bubbles of thick paint. His breath caught in his chest; he had a momen
t of panic. He was spending too much time on the target. He drew the shortened chalk stick across the concrete planter beside the mailbox, leaving a long horizontal streak. Then he slipped the chalk back into his pocket and walked away.

  Surely they would not tell him to leave a chalk mark on something that couldn’t be marked on. They must have meant the concrete planter, which took the chalk well. He hoped he was right. A sudden foreboding came over him, and he hurried away, glancing once over his shoulder. A bus pulled into the bus stop just past the mailbox, and heeding a sudden urge, Youssef boarded.

  “How much?” he asked, extending a handful of change to the driver. “I’m a visitor here.”

  The driver, a thin Hispanic man with a patina of sweat on his face and a light-blue uniform shirt darkened in the armpits and back, plucked out a few coins and dropped them into the fare box, then tore off a paper transfer slip and handed it to Youssef.

  “Thank you,” Youssef said, as the bus pulled from the curb. He walked all the way to the back of the bus and sat sideways on the rearmost seat, where he could look out the rear window and watch the mailbox as the bus rumbled through traffic. There was nothing there that hadn’t been there before, but something, perhaps the sixth sense of the hunted, told him to get away. He watched till he couldn’t see the mailbox anymore, then turned front, then back once more.

  “Did you get that? Did you get that?” Williams hissed. “The one in the hat.”

  Sanders frantically worked the control toggle for the camera mounted beneath the false ventilation hood.

  “I lost him! Damn it!” Sanders said. “He’s walking away.”

  “Did you get his face?”

  “Yeah . . . the hat breaks up the image, puts too many shadows on the face . . .” Sanders muttered, punching keys on the keyboard. “Put the shooters on him.”