The Reluctant Assassin Box Set

by Lee Jackson

  “Maybe nothing, but she walks around the buildings and inside them for no apparent reason. One of our men noticed her yesterday when she kept appearing. After the third sighting, he followed her. She’s alone and doesn’t seem to be waiting for anyone or have anything to do. She just walks around, sits for a while in various places, and continues on.”

  “Maybe she’s a tourist.”

  “Could be, but she doesn’t pay attention to the art pieces scattered around or take pictures. She just roams around the buildings. We didn’t see how she arrived yesterday or today, but she left by taxi last evening.”

  “What’s your concern?”

  Ramzi sighed and raised an eyebrow. “Everything is my concern as we get closer. I mentioned the woman to you by way of thinking out loud. You have more experience.” He closed his eyes and tossed his head back, surrendering a bit to stress. “Maybe I’m becoming paranoid.”

  Klaus studied Ramzi’s face. “Allah the merciful, peace be upon him, put us together. He must mean for us to collaborate. If you think this woman could be an issue, we should consider her carefully. How are your other preparations coming along?”

  Ramzi smiled, relieved that Klaus had not considered his angst to be ridiculous. “Everything is going according to plan.” He sighed again. “However, our brothers are becoming too eager. I only hope no one talks too much. You know our security is not the best when it comes to that.” His face took on a comical expression. “Then again, the Americans are so stupid. They underestimate us. They’ll listen to our brothers talking on the phones to jihadis at home and think they’re hearing the rantings of madmen, and they won’t believe anything is happening until it does.”

  Klaus chuckled and put an arm across Ramzi’s shoulder. “I pray that you are right, but anyway, disinformation is a tactic. Lots of repeated stories will camouflage our real plans.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s late. I’m going to clean up and go to bed.”

  He turned away, then added, as an afterthought, “What about the woman?”

  Ramzi waved a dismissive hand. “That’s probably nothing—just me being more anxious the closer we get to execution.”

  “Caution is a good thing,” Klaus said. “If she shows up again tomorrow, have your man take a picture. We’ll circulate it and have the other men watch out for her. If she’s doing something that’ll get in our way, we’ll deal with her.”

  A distressed expression crossed Ramzi’s face. “Ah, I almost forgot. One of the men took some pictures. Polaroid. They’re grainy, but you can make out the woman’s features.”

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out several photographs, and handed them to Klaus. “You can see that she is dressed for show. Scandalous. Walking around like that alone? We can only hope that she and all like her are taken down with the towers.”

  Klaus began flipping through them. The first two showed a tall woman at a distance away from the photographer. Klaus peered at them closely but saw nothing concerning. Then he turned to the third picture and gasped. There, in close relief, was Sofia Stahl-Xiquez.

  “It’s her,” he exclaimed. “That woman.”

  Startled, Ramzi took the photo and held it for close examination. “You know her?”

  “That’s Sofia.” Klaus’ face shone with malicious excitement. “That’s Atcho’s wife.”

  Ramzi looked up from the photo. “What do you want to do?”

  “If she shows up again tomorrow, take her,” he replied in a raspy voice, his eyes gleaming. “Put a team together. Be ready. Make it a public spectacle.”

  Ramzi eyed him with concern. “Do you think that’s a good idea? The police will search all over for her. With this mayor—”

  “David Dinkins?” Klaus snorted. “We’ll give him big crimes to worry about, and while he oversees a search for Sofia, we’ll blast a gigantic pothole for him to fill in.” He laughed again. “We’ll even give him a new worry to think about—radioactive air.”

  He whirled on Ramzi. “Bring this infidel witch to me, and while the authorities search for her, we’ll put our plans in motion.” He clasped his hands together and rubbed them in exultation. “Before the bombing, we’ll leave her mutilated body in a public place for the television cameras. Atcho will know I did this.”

  41

  Atcho fretted. He hadn’t known helplessness in many years. Isabel, Kattrina, and Jameson were safe in Montana, but the woman who had restored joy and meaning to his life had gone to places unknown. Meanwhile, Klaus threatened the huge population of New York City with a nuclear bomb.

  “Can’t crumble now,” he muttered under his breath, while admitting to himself that crumbling was all he felt like doing. His other instinct was to wring Sofia’s neck the next time he saw her.

  He sat across the conference table from Jim Dude in the New York City FBI offices at the Javits Center. Burly sat next to him. A window on the opposite wall opened to a cityscape, the Twin Towers glistening in the late afternoon sun.

  “Exactly what do you want me to do?” Dude asked. His voice remained businesslike, professional. “Your wife is a grown woman, free to come and go as she pleases. When did she leave?”

  “A little less than forty-eight hours ago.” He took a deep breath while collecting his thoughts. “My wife is a retired CIA operations officer,” he told Dude pointedly. “She left a note to tell me that Klaus must be stopped. I think that clearly indicates her intent.”

  “And you think she came here, to New York City.” Dude’s tone was flat.

  “That’s what my son-in-law thinks based on the last conversation he had with her as she was leaving.”

  “Did you check the airlines?” As Dude spoke, he leaned back in his chair and picked at the end of a pencil in his hand, his expression indicating that he anticipated the answer.

  Atcho nodded. “She must have used one of the many aliases she has stashed away. There’s no record of her having flown.”

  “Now that, we could investigate.”

  Atcho bristled. Burly placed a calming hand on his forearm.

  Dude reached across the conference table and picked up a telephone receiver. “Let me show you something,” he said while tapping in a number. He spoke into the phone in a low voice and then hung up.

  “You think we’re not sensitive to threats against us,” he said, “but that’s not fair. Our charter is to investigate crimes already committed, not—”

  “I got it,” Atcho interrupted, his voice laden with disgust. “We know who the attacker is, the general area where he intends to strike, and the weapon. But you can’t do anything about it.” He leaned forward so that his eyes locked with Dude’s. “Or won’t.”

  Dude held his glare.

  A secretary knocked on the door, carried a thick file to Dude, and left without saying a word.

  “This,” Dude said, holding the folder up for Atcho to see its thickness, “this is a fraction of the threats that we have on file.” He opened the folder. “Here, I’ll read you some snippets of conversation:

  “‘…we’re going to bomb the George Washington Bridge. Watch for it, brothers.’

  “‘…we’re going to bomb the White House.’

  “‘…two of our glorious jihadis will fly a plane into an office building. They will be martyrs…’”

  He flipped through several pages. “Here’s a doozy. ‘…we’re going to bomb the Statue of Liberty.’” He looked up at Atcho. “This file is from two years ago. Shall I go on?”

  Atcho sank back in his seat and shook his head. “I get the picture.”

  Dude’s expression softened. “I’m sympathetic to your effort, Atcho, I really am. But how many agents do you think I have to chase all this down? If I assigned all of them to do that, we still wouldn’t have sufficient coverage, and no crimes would be investigated. That includes rapes, murders, bank robberies, kidnappings…”

  Atcho heaved a sigh and nodded.

  Dude shifted his attention to Burly. “What is the CIA saying?”


  “Pretty much the same things as you are. I’m retired from the CIA and on contract. I don’t speak for it, but I can tell you that it is not perceiving an imminent threat.”

  “Even in light of the attack at Langley the other day?”

  Burly nodded. “They see that as a lone wolf attack.”

  The three men sat in silence a few moments, and then Dude redirected his gaze to Atcho and raised an eyebrow. “Atcho, I have to ask another question. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t.” His reluctance hung in the room.

  Atcho regarded him with a stony look.

  “How are you and Mrs. Xiquez getting along? Has it occurred to you that the pressure might be getting to her?”

  Atcho’s chair fell to the floor as he shoved it back and sprang to his feet. “You think my wife abandoned our son and granddaughter? You think she left me?” He whirled on Burly. “Let’s go. This was another waste of time.”

  As Atcho and Burly walked into the freezing February air, a man followed them closely. When they reached the sidewalk, he called to them.

  “Mr. Atcho, may I speak with you?” He called two more times before they heard him and turned to face him.

  “Mr. Xiquez—uh, Atcho. My name is Sam Shook. Tom O’Brian in Chicago suggested I meet up with you. I saw you leave Jim Dude’s office a minute ago.”

  Atcho studied the young man. He was lanky, in his late twenties, and had dark hair, sharp features, and an expression that dripped sincerity.

  “Mr. O’Brian filled me in pretty thoroughly, including”—he glanced momentarily at Burly and then back at Atcho—“what’s going on with your wife. Mr. Dude had briefed him.”

  “What are you supposed to do?”

  Sam picked up on Atcho’s impatient tenor. “I don’t know that I’m supposed to do anything, or that I can, other than listen. I think O’Brian told you that he mentored me. That included keeping me at his side while he developed his sense of terror and counterterror. Meager as I am by myself, I’m the main counterterror effort here in New York. Sometimes I go undercover. I get into the mosques, and I listen.”

  He looked around at the passing crowd and blew into his cupped hands to warm them while shivering against the cold. “Can we go somewhere to talk? Maybe we can share ideas and spark some more.”

  Atcho looked him over and nodded. “I don’t have much time. I need to find my wife.”

  “No one here would take O’Brian seriously,” Sam said. The three men sat in a coffee shop on West Broadway. “He let me work closely with him because I speak Arabic fluently and can pass as a Middle Easterner.”

  “How did that happen?” Burly asked.

  “I grew up in Lebanon, back when Beirut was still the Paris of the Mediterranean. My father was a construction superintendent. I ran the streets with the Arab kids.”

  “When did you return stateside?” Atcho asked.

  “I came for good in my early teens. I’d been going back and forth for most of my life, but my parents decided I needed to finish my education here.”

  “How did you wind up in the FBI?”

  “O’Brian recruited me. He’d known my father from a couple of cases he worked in Lebanon. He knew my academic record and that I was fluent in Arabic. I won a couple of athletic awards too, so he knew I could handle the physical requirements.”

  Atcho glanced at his watch. “This is all very nice, but how can you help us? I know the threat, but I really want to get Sofia away from here.”

  Sam gave him a tentative glance. “O’Brian routed her file to me. From where I stand, she can probably handle things on her end.”

  His face a mask, Atcho stared at Sam. “You checked out my wife’s background?”

  With rounded eyes and a taut jaw, Sam nodded. “I’m trying to help,” he said. “Look, I’m the only FBI special agent in New York City who will give you more than lip-service support. We all know you’re a national hero, so any of us will talk with you. But I’m the only one who knows fundamentalist Muslims. O’Brian tried to elevate attention on the questionable activities of some of them, and our superiors trotted him off to another city. If you want help, I’m it.”

  Atcho’s eyes bored into Sam. He said nothing.

  “Look,” Sam went on, still sincere but flashing impatience, “something is going down here in New York City soon. I can feel it. When I go to the mosque, men clump together and talk in whispers. I’ve tried to break into inner circles and I’m making progress, but I’m still not trusted. I glean only what I hear when people talk in close proximity, but I can’t appear to be trying to listen. The polite thing for me to do when they stare at me is to move away, and I do.”

  Burly leaned his heavy frame into the table. “What are you hearing?”

  Sam exhaled, looked around the small coffee shop, and shifted toward Burly.

  “Let me take a few steps back.” He dropped his face into his hands and his shoulders drooped as if they carried a great weight. When he looked up again, his eyes revealed a haunted expression.

  “A lot of Muslims hate us,” he said, and glanced around again as if wary of unwanted listeners. “They hate our culture, our lifestyles, and mainly they hate us because we are infidels. They don’t intend to assimilate into our culture. The aim of these extremists is either to change our culture or kill it—meaning, kill us.”

  Atcho looked at him skeptically. “Aren’t you being a little extreme?”

  Sam pulled back, startled. “You, of all people, say that?” He tossed his head back and forth in frustration. “You languished in a prison for seventeen years because a madman in Cuba wanted to play God. You took on a mission in Siberia because a lunatic wanted the Soviet nuclear arsenal. You were instrumental in liberating millions of people from behind the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall, and you stopped the disaster in Kuwait from becoming a global calamity, and you ask me if I’m being extreme?”

  He blew out a breath. “You’ve seen what extreme people do, and they don’t move quietly like I do. They don’t live within the confines of a constitution and the laws promulgated under it, and they don’t respect the rights of others. They kill and they burn, and they enslave by the millions, and that’s what they want for our country. You’ve seen it, and I’ve seen it.”

  Atcho crossed his arms and studied Sam. The young man reminded him of himself at a younger age, roughly thirty years ago, in the jungles of Cuba when he had so passionately confronted Burly, the same man who now sat by his side and had participated with him in so many life-and-death situations.

  “You’ve done your homework on me too,” he said gently. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to minimize what you have to say.” He glanced at his watch. “But please get to the point about how you can help.”

  Sam pushed his chair back, leaned over, and rested his elbows on his knees. He looked up at Atcho, his air almost one of despair. “They’re here,” he said. “New York is going to get hit, hard. I feel it in my bones, and your wife might find herself in the middle of it.”

  “Explain.”

  Sam dropped his head and closed his eyes. “There’s a man here in New York, a blind man his followers call Sheikh Omar. He preaches all the time at a local mosque. What comes out of his mouth is venomous. He hates the United States and rails against us. Frankly, I’m finding the line between the practice of free speech and advocating for the violent overthrow of our government to be incredibly thin. I think this guy crosses the line routinely. I’ve reported him. O’Brian tried to have our superiors investigate his activities, but we both got shunted aside like we’re being ridiculous.”

  “The point,” Atcho goaded Sam. “Get to the point.”

  Sam sighed. “Sorry. The sheikh is acting different now. He’s more circumspect in what he says. The groups of men whispering to each other have grown tighter, and the chatter has fallen off. It’s as if they’re cautioning each other to silence. At the same time, you can see a zeal in their eyes, like they know something is about to happen but don’t dare mention i
t outside of their own groups.”

  “And that’s what you think Sofia might be wandering into?”

  Sam drew himself back, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m going on what I know of her disappearance. I think you told Jim Dude that she left a note suggesting she was going to head things off at the pass, so to speak.”

  Atcho nodded.

  “Do you mind sharing what she said in her note?”

  “She told me to stay focused and not to worry about her. She said the target was unthinkable.”

  “Aren’t they all,” Sam observed, a touch of irony in his voice. “Do you think she’s identified the target, or thinks she has?”

  Atcho put both hands against his forehead, clasped his fingers together, and dragged his hands through his hair, his concern manifest.

  “That’s what I think. And she doesn’t want to raise alarms until she’s sure. She won’t want to divert resources and then find out she’s wrong. But knowing her”—Atcho heaved out a breath—“she’s probably nailed it.”

  The three men sat in silence for a spell. Atcho broke it.

  “Do you know about Klaus and his bomb?”

  “Only water-cooler talk. I know some believe he detonated a suitcase nuclear device in Afghanistan—a poor man’s underground test. But that’s never been confirmed. He supposedly tried to bomb three different facilities with similar devices, but you stopped him each time.” He grinned tiredly. “You’re a legend, Atcho.”

  Atcho shook his head. “Sure. One that no one listens to. One of those facilities he tried to bomb was my house. What do they say about his attempts?”

  “That maybe his bombs are the problem. Maybe they just don’t work.”

  Atcho folded his arms again and pursed his lips. Visions flashed through his mind of a huge cargo plane almost fatally landing in Moscow, of himself at the flight controls while Sofia applied a heat-generating device to the trigger mechanism of a suitcase bomb, hoping to melt it before it detonated.