Brothers In Arms (39 page)

Charley eased his chair back and stood. He walked slowly, deliberately, weighting each foot, till he stood behind the hooded man, whose shoulders shook as they rose in an attempt at self-protection. Charley rested his hands on the Arab’s shoulders and felt how he trembled, like a guitar string pulled to the point of breaking.

He was almost there.

“We can protect you,” Charley said. “Your colleagues in Al-Bashir, they don’t want you to talk to us. We know that. But they are forever out of reach now. There’s only you. And us. We can make things very good for you . . . once you help us. Give me a little something now, something I can give the people I work for, something to show that you mean to help us.”

Bin Faisal’s voice quavered. “What do you want?”

“Tell me who your contact with November Seventeenth is. Tell me who you contacted to set up the hit.”

The man’s lips moved soundlessly, twisting beneath the hood. Then he said, “. . . The only contact I have is a man named Christou. If I needed to make contact, I was to go there and have dinner and ask for him, tell him what I needed.”

“Go where, Ahmad?”

“To his restaurant, Christou’s it’s called, after him.”

“I know this place. That’s good, Ahmad. You went there last night?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you tell him?”

A convulsive twitch ran through the man’s whole body. Charley reached down and touched his chest and felt the runaway pounding of his heart.

“Easy, Ahmad,” Charley said. “Take a deep breath, that’s right, now hold it, then let it out slowly. That’s right. Once more. Good. Now tell me what you told Christou.”

“I told him that I thought I was being followed. That I would pay for someone to watch my back.”

“Did you tell him to kill the watchers?”

“No! I didn’t,” bin Faisal said. “I had nothing to do with that. I had no idea that was going to happen.”

Charley checked the tape in his recorder.

“I believe you, Ahmad,” he said. “Tell me something else, now. Tell me about Sad Holiday.”

The sudden twitch and dip of the Arab’s shoulders were eloquent.

Charley lifted his hands as though he were a pianist at the end of a recital. He walked around the bound man and sat back in his chair facing his prisoner.

“Careful, Ahmad,” Charley said, watching the other man’s chest rise as he prepared to speak. “Be careful here. Remember what I said.”

“What do you want me to tell you?”

“Tell me about Sad Holiday, Ahmad. You know what I’m talking about. It’s your project. You can be proud of what you’ve done so far. But it’s over, and I want to know more about it.”

Charley let the man be silent for a long time. Then he said, “Would you like a cigarette, Ahmad? I know that you smoke. Perhaps a cigarette would help you remember.”

Bin Faisal remained silent.

Charley reached out and delicately unbuttoned bin Faisal’s shirt pocket and took out his silver cigarette case and gold lighter.

“Very nice,” he said. “When I traveled in the Middle East, I used to smoke these.”

He took a Turkish cigarette out of the case, snapped the case closed, then tapped the cigarette lightly to settle the tobacco. He lit the cigarette in the bright blue flame of the gold lighter and took a long, appreciative draw of the smoke before he got up and loosened the hood ties around bin Faisal’s neck. He lifted the hood, keeping the Arab’s eyes and head covered, then held the cigarette for the man to suck. There were tear tracks on bin Faisal’s face; fresh moisture glistened beside his nose and on his upper lip.

“There, there,” Charley said. “It’s all right. Just enjoy your cigarette. Don’t think about anything else; you’ll have plenty of time to think about those other things. Just enjoy this moment for what it is. Taste your cigarette. Enjoy.”

The skin of bin Faisal’s lips clung to the moist paper of the cigarette. The cigarette trembled in his mouth.

“That’s right,” Charley said. “Think about that.”

He plucked the cigarette from the Arab’s lips, then ground it out on the floor beneath his boot.

“Did you think I was going to burn you?” Charley said. “That’s old fashioned and, frankly, beneath us. You and I, we’re reasonable men. My colleagues, though . . . you are responsible for the death of their men. You may not completely understand just how close men can be to one another when they have worked together and suffered together and been afraid together. It creates a bond, you see. A bond like no other. And losing someone from that bond, it’s like
losing a child or a loved one. So think carefully before you answer me, Ahmad. What is Sad Holiday?”

Ahmad bin Faisal bowed his head as though to the executioner’s axe.

“It is a program . . .” he said, “. . . to spread smallpox through the United States . . .”

Ahmad bin Faisal talked and Charley Payne listened. Tape cassette after tape cassette went in and out of Charley’s small tape recorder. Finally, Charley said, “You’ve done well, Ahmad. This is all good. But now I want to know something you haven’t said. Who is the One, Ahmad? Tell me about him. Who is he? Where is he? How will he know to begin his mission?”

The Arab’s voice was low and hoarse. “He is a young man. His name is Youssef bin Hassan. He is an Arab. He lived in Saudi Arabia and went to school in England. He was last in Amsterdam . . . and he has already begun his mission.”

Charley leaned forward, his face only inches from bin Faisal’s. “What do you mean he’s already begun his mission?”

Bin Faisal flinched and turned his face away even as he spoke. “He was given the go-ahead. He will go to the United States by a means and at a time of his choosing. He is to have no further contact with us . . . so as not to betray his mission. The only means of communication we have with him is one-way. He checks every day a pornographic Web site and looks for certain photos with names known to him. He downloads those photos and then runs a program on his computer that will take a tiny piece of code out of the picture and translate it. That’s how we communicate with him.”

Charley forced himself to remain calm. “He was in Amsterdam with you? The young man you met there?”

“If you saw us there, then you saw him. He is the One.”

“What about the smallpox agent?”

“I brought it to him in Amsterdam. It requires minimal care to keep it active. It’s fully weaponized that way.”

“What’s his fallback? If he can’t get the agent into the States, how do you get him more?”

“There is a diplomat in the Egyptian mission who is one of us. He’s used the diplomatic pouch to convey material for us before. He also has the agent. If there was a problem, the One was to proceed to Washington, DC and leave a signal, a chalk slash on the side of a mailbox near the Egyptian embassy on a Tuesday or a Thursday before nine
A.M
. That is the signal to meet the next day at a certain bench on the National Mall near the Smithsonian Museum. That is where the handover would take place.”

“What is the Egyptian’s name?”

“Ramzi Abdullah. He is a vice-consul.”

“You must have a signal to stop the operation in the event of compromise, Ahmad. How do you stop him?”

“There is no stopping him. Once launched, he is expected to accomplish his mission. That was the intent. Once he was launched, he would be unstoppable.”

“Think carefully. There is no way to stop him?”

“Only if you can find him in time. We have no way to stop him.” The Arab paused and licked his cracked lips. “May I have water?”

Charley stood and left the room. On his way to the kitchen, he passed the table where the
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survivors huddled around a camera monitor tuned to bin Faisal’s chamber. A tape recorder, plugged into the monitor, turned slowly. The men looked up at Charley and gave him a thumbs-up as he filled a glass of water and returned to the room. He closed the door quietly behind him, then came forward and held the glass for the bound man, who sipped eagerly, as a child would, at the glass.

“Take it easy,” Charley said. “Don’t choke.”

Bin Faisal drank the entire glass, then held his head higher. “I don’t know how you can stop him. He has been instructed to ignore any message telling him to stop once he’s released. The communication channel was set up to be one-way to pass on additional target information or warn him of any threat against him. It is because he is alone that he is expected to succeed.”

“We’re not going to let that happen,” Charley said. “You’re going to help us stop him, aren’t you, Ahmad?”

The Arab lowered his head once more, as though staring through his hood at the scuffed toes of his expensive loafers.

“Yes,” he said. “I will help you.”

Afterward, Charley shook off the congratulations of the
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survivors and the newly arrived interrogation crew. He went by himself, first into the room where the body bags lay, and he stood and looked at them and breathed in the foul odor of drying blood. Then he went into the makeshift medical room, where the trauma team that had ridden in with the interrogators worked over the limp body of Dale Miller. He sat once again in the corner of the room, pressing himself back, making himself small and out of the way, and watched the electronic monitors that captured the steady beat, beat, beat of Dale’s heart.

Youssef bin Hassan left the Golden Tulip travel agency and lingered a moment, looking back through the window plastered with cheap bills advertising cut-rate fares for destinations all over the world. His image was distorted by the faded and peeling paper on the other side of the glass. A one-way ticket to Toronto, Canada was in his courier bag. There was a well-beaten clandestine route from Toronto to New York state; the immigration authorities along the northern border were less stringent than elsewhere. He’d considered a direct flight to Washington, DC; his documents were good enough. But he’d decided for caution and the circuitous route to his target.

There were new lines in his face, he decided, and he didn’t know if they were from lack of sleep or from worry. He turned away from his reflection in the glass and let the crowd take him down to the canal, and he walked along there, letting the gentle curve of the sidewalk following the canal take him where it would. Thoughts of Britta fought for his attention, and he tried to put away the memory of her face, coloring as she orgasmed beneath him, her plump white body straining up against him again and again. He tried not to think of her gentle ways, and the look on her face when he had left her, angry and hurt and disappointed.

She made him question what he was doing.

But he had the tenets of his training to cling to. He had a mission to perform, and he was out doing his work, preparing the logistics of his insertion, just as he should be.

Then why did he feel so wrong?

He wasn’t wrong. He had to remind himself of that. What he was doing was vital and important. Powerful men had handpicked him to be the One, the One who brought the crippling blow to the Great Satan. That was what he needed to remember, not Britta beneath him in her narrow bed and the way it felt, after, to lay there together and not speak.

What would she say, what would she think, if she knew he was the One?