Brothers In Arms (29 page)

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.

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.”