Lia didn’t answer, which Dean knew meant she didn’t agree but would go along anyway. A few minutes after the ferry docked, she reported that Asad was in the bow with his bodyguard.
“I’m going to plant some video bugs,” she added.
Rockman gave her the usual cautions. Dean had his boat’s captain — a one-time army special forces soldier who’d retired to Turkey about a decade before — turn the craft toward the opposite shore, where the ferry’s next stop would be.
It wasn’t until two stops later that a pair of Middle Eastern businessmen drew near Asad. One of them called him sheik.
“Hey, here we go,” said Rockman. “Oh, yeah. Hang on while we see if we can ID these guys. Charlie, we’re going to download the video from the fly to your PDA so you can get a look at them, too.”
Dean took out his handheld computer and flipped into the feed from the Art Room. The slightly blotchy picture showed Asad sitting with two bearded men in tan suits.
“The guy on the far teft — we’ve just ID’d him as Tariq Asam,” said Rockman. “He’s a Saudi. We don’t know the other guy, not yet. We want to follow them.”
“I’ll get on at the next stop.”
“We have somebody there already, Charlie. They’ll get on and trail the Saudis. You stay with the boat.”
* * *
“Not you again,” said Lia, walking next to Pinchon at the food bar on the ferry.
“Funny. I thought the same thing.”
“The two guys with the tan suits in the bow are Saudis. You can’t miss them — they’re the only ones who have jackets on. They’re yours. Don’t lose them.”
“Where’s Grandpa?”
“Pinchon, just do your job, okay?”
“Baby, I thought you’d never ask.”
Lia ordered a bottled water, trying hard to ignore Pinohon as he walked away.
CHAPTER 48
“It looks like the Saudi and his partner are going to get off at Bebek,” Telach told Rubens. “Asad is staying put.”
Rubens stepped over to one of the consoles and keyed up a map of the greater Istanbul area. Bebek was a small town north of the city on the European side, a relatively well-to-do area that might be compared to some of the Gold Coast towns near Miami. As he had with the others, Asad had spoken sparingly to the men, but it was clear that they were part of the same offensive he was coordinating; he gave them a date only four days away, which Rubens assumed was the date for whatever attack they were planning.
“Should I have Lia get off with them?” asked Telach.
“No. Continue as planned,” said Rubens. “Let the CIA people stay with them. She can check in on them later. Have they said anything?”
“Nothing useful, but he did give them a Koran. Maybe it contains a message.”
“Tell Mr. Karr about that, in case it’s of use to him.”
Telach nodded. “What time are you leaving?”
Rubens glanced at his watch. He was supposed to be at the Capitol for George Hadash’s lying in state no later than eleven; he should leave within the next half hour.
“As soon as we are sure that Asad is getting off at Eminönü and going back to his safe house,” said Rubens, deciding Hadash would have wanted it that way.
* * *
While he had appeared on his share of news shows, George Hadash was not a political superstar, and Rubens wondered if the two hours designated for his lying in state would prove to be too long. But there was a long queue of people waiting outside hours before the doors were even opened, and as Rubens escorted Irena Hadash through the vestibule, he realized that two hours would not be enough. That was as it should be, he thought: better to have a surplus of grief than not enough.
Art Blanders, the secretary of defense, was standing nearby; he caught Rubens’ eye and started toward them. Rubens introduced Irena, along with her little girl. The kindergartener seemed perplexed by everything, but Rubens thought it was good that she was there; it gave her mother something to focus on besides grief.
“You’ve heard of Secretary Blanders, I’m sure,” said Rubens. “He’s been with the president for years, and was his chief of staff before going to the Pentagon. Your father often spoke highly of him.”
More than that: Hadash was the reason Blanders had the job; he’d personally lobbied the president to pick the former Naval officer, who at forty-five was the youngest cabinet member by at least a decade.
Still, Rubens worried that he sounded like a flatterer, or worse. He resolved to say nothing more, to do absolutely nothing that could be misinterpreted as using the death of his friend for personal gain. And, he would introduce Donna Bing in the most positive way; give her no room for complaint.
President Marcke swept in with his characteristic energy, a controlled firestorm charging up everyone around him. He wrapped his arm around Irena and led her a few feet away, her small frame practically disappearing in his. Left alone, Irena’s daughter Julia grabbed for the nearest familiar hand, which turned out to be Rubens’. Her small fingers gripped his tightly.
By the time Irena was her daughter’s age, her father and President Marcke — probably a congressman then, thought Rubens — had been friends for many years. How strange it must be to see a man who bounced you on his knee become president.
“And you, little girl, I hope you are well.” The president had returned and now stooped down to one knee, addressing Hadash’s granddaughter face-to-face. “Do you remember me?”
“You’re Gran’pa’s friend,” said the girl.
“Absolutely, Your grandpa was an important man. A great man who helped many people, including me. He’s with God now.”
“Mommy told me we have to share him.”
“Yes. Share him with God.” Marcke nodded solemnly. “Now he’s with all of us.”
Rubens felt a twinge of jealousy as the president escorted them inside. Other emotions — grief, mostly, but also concern about the Deep Black operation — mingled with his remembrances of Hadash. There was no man he’d learned more from, no better person to argue with, no one more generous with support and encouragement.
There was a brief ceremony near the casket. When it was done, the president bent over again and told Irena something, then turned and nodded to everyone before leaving. Rubens found himself next to Irena, part of what turned into a kind of reception line as she accepted the condolences of senators, congressmen, foreign dignitaries, and high-ranking administration officials. Some of them, he realized, might think he was more than just a friend.
The idea made him feel guilty, as if he’d intruded on Irena’s grief. But when he started to ease away, she reached for him, and so he stayed.
“Mr. Rubens,” said Donna Bing, materializing in the line.
“Dr. Bing.”
“When you have a moment today, we should speak. I would like an update on the matter we’ve been discussing.”
“Certainly.” Braced by the national security advisor’s undisguised animosity, Rubens straightened and stared ahead, looking at the long line of people who had come to pay his friend and mentor their last respects.
CHAPTER 49
Lia followed Asad off the ferry, staying close until he got into a taxi near the pier. The taxi was a new development, but it was apparently just a part of Asad’s precautions; it took him only a mile away where a new vehicle was waiting. From there, he was driven to a house on the eastern end of town where he hadn’t stayed before. She set up a surveillance net, working with Dean but never close enough to see him, before retreating.
When the Art Room decided that Asad was staying in for the night, Lia arranged to meet Charlie in a restaurant nearby, ostensibly to divvy up the overnight duties, though really just because she wanted to see him.
What bothered her even more than finding Terry Pinchon alive was finding that she still felt something for him — that there was emotion there, a real attraction she couldn’t deny. It scared her, not just because it cut against any logic — clearly
he didn’t care for her, clearly he was a jerk, clearly any attraction was a mistake, no more than skin deep — but because it made her unsure what she felt for Dean.
“You’re a little late,” said Dean when she found him inside the restaurant.
“Sorry.”
“You okay?”
“Of course I’m okay.”
Dean gave her one of his looks, then turned to the waiter and ordered a bottle of spring water.
“Art Room claims he’s in for the night,” said Dean when the man left. “Which one of us is going to sleep first?”
“You,” she said automatically. Then she regretted it — she wished she’d said they should sleep together. Not that they would have — they had to stay focused on the mission — but she wanted to let him know that she wanted to.
“Fine. You hungry?”
“No.” Out of synch now, she felt an urge to get away. She had to — she had to refocus herself, concentrate on the job, not her emotions. “I have to check on the team trailing the Saudis. They’re at a hotel on the Asian side. I’ll check on them and then turn in.”
“Is Pinchon on the team?”
“Does it matter?”
The words came out too quickly for her to take back. Dean raised his eyebrow, but said nothing.
“I’ll wake you up with a kiss,” she said. Her voice sounded phony in her ears, and she left before he could say anything.
CHAPTER 50
By the time Marid Dabir arrived in Karlsruhe, Germany, the European al-Qaeda organizer realized that he was being followed by one of the German security forces. He decided he had two alternatives, either to flee or proceed; fleeing was impossible, and so his course was set. To flee meant to fail, and failure meant he would never return to bin Laden’s side. Better to die immediately as a martyr than wander in the wilderness any longer.
Who had betrayed him? Logically, it must be someone in his network here, though that seemed beyond belief.
Dabir went to the house he had rented as an adjunct teacher of Middle Eastern history at Karlsruhe University, doing everything one might do after returning from a trip abroad: picking up the mail, checking phone messages, answering the e-mails from university colleagues that had accumulated while he was gone. He then went to his office at the school, checked on his mail there, and while picking up papers from his department chairman’s office, pilfered the wireless PDA from his desk. Back in his own office, Dabir retrieved a cell phone hidden behind his bookcase. He connected the chairman’s PDA to the telephone, then slipped a small flash memory card into the top of the handheld computer. A screen for an instant message service appeared. Dabir tapped the bottom of the screen and a keyboard appeared; he used it to write seven short messages, which were then sent through the instant message service to the terrorists he had recruited. He wrote in simple German; one of the programs contained on the card he had put into the computer encrypted the messages into a string of letters and numbers that could only be read by someone with the same program. Within a half-hour all of the recipients had sent back a reply: ja.
“Yes.” They were ready.
Dabir returned the handheld computer to the chairman’s office without being noticed, then went back outside to resume his errands. A balding man in a sports coat followed as he walked to his car; clearly he was from one of the intelligence services. Dabir let him tag along for the time being, confident he could get rid of him when the time was right.
CHAPTER 51
The afternoon sun turned the Rhine a deep, purplish blue, the German river moving majestically past the hills near Karlsruhe. It looked like a landscape painting come to life.
Aesthetics was never one of Tommy Karr’s strong suits, neither could he be called a naturalist. Still, he stared at the river with sharp intensity, his attention focused on the police boats zipping back and forth near the MiRO refinery on the opposite side of the river. Tankers and barges were thoroughly inspected before they were allowed into the lagoon near the refinery’s storage tanks at the northern side of the complex; two large tugboats would block the path of any vessel that failed to stop.
“The analysis showed that was the weak point,” said Hess, the BND officer Karr had been assigned to help. “Exploding a ship near the tanks — I don’t want to think about the effect.”
There were other ways to attack MiRO. Crude oil arrived via two different pipelines, one originating in Italy and the other in Bavaria. The large complex was served by several roads and a rail line. These were all being checked with admirable German efficiency. Even Karr and the BND were ordered out of their car at the main gate so it could be closely inspected, and each had to pass through a metal detector to enter the administration building.
“No guns?” Karr asked Hess as they walked down the hallway.
“Why would we need them?”
The guards, at least, had guns. Blaser 93 LRS2s — fancy tactical weapons popular with police SWAT teams because of their versatility — as well as the ubiquitous Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. The security director was rather proud of his men’s marksmanship scores, and Karr got the impression they could have mounted a pretty good rifle team. What they’d do against terrorists remained to be seen.
The massive complex had once been two different refineries; in an emergency, half the plant could be shut off from the other easily, with smaller sections cordoned off and secured piece by piece. The facility’s emergency procedures had been tested by a large fire a few years before, and regular drills were now held to deal with terrorist threats.
“We crush them like ants in the house,” said the security head as he ended the tour.
As impressive as his accent made that sound, Karr couldn’t help thinking that for every ant you saw, there were maybe a hundred more below the floor.
Besides the refinery, a major German nuclear research facility was located in the general area, and security had been tightened there as well. Given a choice between inspecting security there or having dinner in town, Karr went for the Wiener schnitzel.
German law provided no way of arresting Marid Dabir or even holding the suspected al-Qaeda plotter for questioning until either a crime had been committed or the police had overwhelming evidence that one was being planned. Dabir had no known connection to the local terrorist networks or radical groups on any of the various German watch lists. The Germans accepted the American intelligence indicating he was a terrorist, but for the moment the most they could do was place him under surveillance by the state police extraordinary crime unit and wait for him to commit a crime.
Just as Karr was finishing his veal, Hess received a call indicating that Dabir had boarded a train for Frankfurt am Main.
“I’d like to have a look at him,” Hess told Karr after she got off the phone. “Do you think you could pick him out at the train station if we flew up there?”
“As long as there’s Black Forest cake for dessert,” said Karr, “I can do anything.”
* * *
Dabir checked his watch, counting down the seconds as the train approached the stop just over the state border in Hesse. The man who had been trailing him had passed through the coach a few minutes before, undoubtedly to meet the detectives who would take over for him at the state line. As the train pulled to a stop, Dabir pushed the brim of his American-style baseball cap up, then slipped his hand up to prop his head and hunched against the window, feigning sleep. He was careful not to obscure too much of his face.
Having dodged secret police forces in Yemen and Egypt, he found European intelligence services laughingly easy to fool. The German tendency to be precise and punctual made them exceedingly easy to predict, and the raft of laws protecting potential suspects gave plenty of cover.
The train began moving again. Dabir caught a glimpse of two men in brown suits passing through the car — his new shadows, no doubt. He waited four or five minutes, then made a show of rousing and stretching. Precisely three minutes from the next stop, he got up and ambled slowly i
n the direction of the restroom in the next car. He stood in the aisle, waiting with his back to the train door for the room to clear.
Finally, the man who’d been inside came out. Dabir hesitated for a moment — just long enough for another man to slide in in front of him. Dabir quickly followed.
“The seat is next to the window, in the eighth row. A brown paper bag is in the empty space next to it,” Dabir told the man, a second-generation Palestinian who stood exactly as tall as he did. In fact, when Dabir’s cap was placed on his head and his jacket around his shoulders, he might have passed for a younger brother or even Dabir himself — exactly the idea.
“The train is entering the station,” said Dabir, pulling open the door. “Go quickly.”
Dabir untucked his shirt, then left the restroom, walking forward to the next set of doors as the train came to a halt.
* * *
When their helicopter landed in Frankfurt, Karr excused himself and checked in with the Art Room.
“German intelligence thinks Dabir is using instant messaging to pass communications to his network,” Telach told him. “They’ve detected some encrypted instant messages using PGP originating from Karlsruhe. They haven’t been to decrypt them.”
“Can we?”
“If they give them to us. We don’t have them. The problem is, they don’t know we know.”
Karr knew better than to ask how “we” knew. “PGP” stood for “Pretty Good Privacy,” a commonly available encryption system that, as its name implied, was decently secure as well as being fairly easy to use. Pretty good wasn’t good enough as far as the NSA was concerned; most European intelligence services, on the other hand, did not have a good track record with deciphering it quickly.
“So I have to be subtle, huh?” said Karr.
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