Brothers In Arms (19 page)

“He is moving fast. There’s somebody pushing him.”

“You think?”

“I know. Callan and me, we’ve got history going back to Delta. He was a troop sergeant and I was the youngest kid on the block. He’s a master of circumlocution when he wants to tell you something without being blunt about it.”

“Circumlocution? I love it when you talk like that.”

“He’s running us for somebody else.”

“We figured that. Agency?”

“That or my old outfit.”

“That’s a high-speed operation,” Charley said. “We didn’t know much about what you guys did, but we heard bits and pieces. It’s too small a community for that not to come out. And you’re right . . . this has a different flavor than a straight-up Agency gig. If there is such a thing.”

“He was clear with me,” Dale said. “We’re just supposed to back them off, let them know they’ve been played against us by someone who didn’t give them the whole picture, maybe even wanted them to get whacked in the process. And see how they take that, see if we can’t leverage their anger into them letting us know who’s paying for the hit. Then we track it back to the source.”

“Are they getting good take out of Uday? Maybe that will fill in the picture some more.”

“Filling in the picture is what this is all about,” Dale said.

They parked the car in the long-term parking lot, then went to the ticket counter separately to pick up their tickets. They went through the security screening process without speaking to each other. Once onboard, they sat apart, and passed the long flight to Schiopol airport in Amsterdam as though they didn’t know one another. In Amsterdam, they walked the long concourses, again separately, to customs and went through easily without being stopped or their
carry-on bags searched. Outside of the customs area, they walked along until they saw a man holding a sign that said
MILLER
on it.

Dale walked up to the man, nodded, and started walking with him. Charley lagged behind, looking for surveillance. He saw nothing, so once they were outside, he lengthened his stride to catch up to the two men. The man who’d come to greet them was a short, chubby Dutchman with bright red cheeks and brilliant blue eyes.

“I’m Hans,” the Dutchman said.

He led them to his car, a full-size navy blue Mercedes, and put their bags in the trunk. They got in and he drove away, carefully maneuvering the car through the busy traffic exiting the airport. He eased onto the highway and drove toward Amsterdam.

“I was thinking of taking the train,” Hans said. “But we will be more comfortable in my car. You have reservations in your names at the hotel Artos, near the Central Train Station. It will be very convenient for you.” He took a thick, oversized manila envelope from beneath the seat and handed it to Dale. “This is information you will find useful. You can get a VCR player in your room if you request it, here’s some tape.” He handed over a videocassette.

“Do you have some tools for us?” Charley said.

“Yes, in the trunk. I’ll give them to you when we arrive at the hotel,” Hans said. “Two Glock nineteens, one spare magazine for each, with Winchester Silvertip ammunition. You didn’t ask for holsters.”

“That’s fine,” Charley said. They didn’t want holsters. If they needed to ditch the weapons, they wanted to be able to do so without having to strip off holsters that might give them away.

It was a longish drive in the heavy traffic to downtown Amsterdam.

“I needn’t tell you that these women are very dangerous,” Hans said. “I don’t mean you any disrespect when I warn you not to take them lightly because they are beautiful women. They have killed many men and they are highly skilled at using that beauty against us.”

“Have you run up against them before?” Charley said.

“I have seen their handiwork firsthand,” Hans said. “They are
total professionals, and they kill without hesitation, especially if they feel they are threatened. Someday I would like to talk to them. One can only admire their work.”

Charley laughed. “You’re a braver man than me, Hans. I’d rather shoot them from one hundred yards away with a scoped rifle. We’ve seen what they can do at close quarters.”

“You have?” Hans said. “I would like to hear about that.”

“Some other time,” Dale said. “Let’s get on with what we’re here to do.”

“Of course,” Hans said. He pulled up in the crowded parking lot of the Central Train Station. He pointed across the canal at a towering hotel just across the bridge.

“There is where you will find your rooms,” he said. “If you need anything, feel free to call at any time on my mobile phone . . . I will keep it clear for you.”

The short Dutchman engaged the parking brake, then got out of the car and opened the trunk. He handed each man their carry-on bags, then took out an aluminum camera case.

“You’ll find what we discussed in this case,” he said. “Everything else you might need is in the envelope. The information is all current, and I have my team in place right now. Once you are ready, I can put you with them and you will see for yourself.”

“That sounds good,” Dale said. “Thanks for everything, Hans. We’ll be in touch.”

“Yes, please do,” Hans said. “And I look forward to hearing the tale.”

The Dutchman got back into his car and drove away, waving a hand out the window.

“Nice guy,” Charley said.

“Remember need to know, Charley?” Dale said.

“He probably knows more than we do about what we’re supposed to be doing,” Charley said. “He’s an operator and on our side.”

“Let’s get to the hotel.”

Dale checked in first. Once he had his room assignment, he told Charley, who then checked in and requested a room on the same
floor. They got rooms across the hall from each other. They met in Dale’s room, where Charley took a large bottle of Heineken from the minibar and cracked it open.

“You can’t get this good stuff in the States,” he said. “This is stronger and has a better flavor.”

Dale nodded and cleared the table of its menus and brochures on the sights of Amsterdam. He opened the oversized manila envelope and carefully laid its contents out on the tabletop. There were stacks of photographs, including aerial shots, detailed street maps with annotations, plastic overlays for the maps and photographs, and a surveillance log. He plucked out a photograph of the two women and a child.

“I didn’t know they had a kid,” Dale said.

“Is it theirs?” Charley said.

“Looks like it.” Dale took a sheet of single-spaced printed material from the stack. “They live on a converted canal barge, a kind of houseboat.”

“How far from here?”

“We’ll be able to walk it.”

The two men pored over the documents, pulled the maps out, and looked at aerial photographs that covered the houseboat and the neighborhood around it. They studied the urban terrain with the intensity of doctors looking at X rays of a critical patient. They wanted to know every inch of the ground for the confrontation they had coming. The Twins would have good information security; they would be living a low-key, low-profile life, fully integrated into their neighborhood, with a plausible cover story for their neighbors.

The dossier worked up by Hans’s surveillance team confirmed that. The Twins’ cover was that they were flight attendants for KLM; they took it to the point where they left for assignments clad in KLM flight-attendant uniforms. Their child, Ilse, was popular in the neighborhood with other children, and stayed with Marie Garvais’s mother when the two went operational. They were quiet and stayed to themselves, interacting mostly with other parents of preschool-aged children, and their lesbian lifestyle attracted no attention in tolerant Amsterdam.

Dale and Charley studied the photographs with interest.

“Isabelle never smiles except when she’s with their kid, you see that?” Charley said. He flipped through the sheaf of surveillance photographs. “Every single one of these, she’s either frowning or neutral. Marie, she’s a cheery little thing, smiles a lot.”

“What’s that tell you?”

“Don’t know, Ranger,” Charley said. “But I remember her face when she was tracking me with that Skorpion. Stone-cold serious, that one.”

“That’s both of them,” Dale said.

They studied the maps of Amsterdam and tracked out the various routes that would take them by the Twins’ houseboat. They ordered up a VCR player from the front desk, and studied the video tape Hans’s surveillance team had made, showing the Twins at home in their houseboat.

“They know how to live a cover,” Dale said. “They’ve been here for ten years in the same spot, same address.”

“It’s a wonder they’ve never had anybody track them back.”

“Anybody who did probably didn’t survive the meeting,” Dale said. “They’re cautious and professional in their business dealings—they don’t meet people at their home and they’ve never worked an operation in this city.”

“Stone pros,” Charley said with real admiration. “Every step of the way.”

“They’ve got the advantage, being women,” Dale said. “Most operators would stop looking for a threat once they got a shot of their legs. They’ve used that to their advantage time and again. Most men will hesitate before shooting a woman, but these two won’t blink an eye before dropping you.”

Charley nodded. “Do we need to think about the approach?”

“We go with the plan. We brace them directly on a staged walk-up right outside their home, or in the immediate neighborhood. We make it clear who we are and who we’re working for and we tell them in no uncertain terms that they’ve been played against us. Then we see which way it goes. I’m betting that they won’t have a
problem giving up their paymaster once they get the full story.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Charley said.

“Pretty soon,” Dale said. “Shall we do a walk-through?”

“You think they’d remember us from Minneapolis?”

“Doubtful. They only got a glimpse of the two of us, and we were all shooting.”

“Then let’s go.”

Ahmad bin Faisal turned away from the computer atop his desk, and stood. He walked slowly around the room and considered Youssef’s request for a face-to-face meeting in Amsterdam. Such a meeting would serve two good purposes: he could verify Youssef’s preparation and hand over the vials of the genetically engineered smallpox; and he could meet with the Twins and see to the conclusion of their contract. Youssef’s thinly disguised plea for help in dealing with the Twins didn’t disturb him. The younger Arab was only a mouthpiece and could not be expected to make such adjustments on his own. In truth, the Twins’ argument that the contract was no longer feasible was a good one; the Al-Bashir network, despite its resources, had not been able to discover the whereabouts of either Rhaman Uday or his wife since the attempt at the Torture Center. All the support cells had discovered was that the targets were gone, and that the wife had gone before the husband. The husband had disappeared in such a fashion to lead the operational planners in Al-Bashir to believe that the US government had taken him up.

That would be problematic. But there was nothing to be done about it. While Uday might divulge some details of the operation to the US authorities, bin Faisal and his peers believed that the Iraqi’s
fragile mental condition would mask the precious information long enough for them to launch the operation against the US.

They were counting on that.

As they counted on the One.

Bin Faisal pursed his lips and thought about the fragility of the one operator the project hinged on. An older, more seasoned operative might have been a better choice, but Youssef’s excellent, near-native English, his experience abroad, and the exposure to various lifestyles through his wealthy upbringing gave him a profile that a seasoned mujaheddin would have a hard time matching. And Youssef had displayed an exceptional operational mind while in training in the Sudanese camps. He had done a credible job on his shakedown runs in Amsterdam. Even his failed attempt to get the Twins to take up the contract was handled well.

So his fragility, while a factor, was outweighed by his operational strengths.

Bin Faisal picked up his telephone and spoke to his private secretary and had him book a flight to Amsterdam.