by Mike Brogan
A wall-mounted television showed the G8 leaders preparing to leave the Hôtel de Ville. The announcer said:
“This just in… three armed terrorists,
members of Al Qaeda, were killed by an ESI
SWAT team in the small alcove of a Grand
Place building minutes before the G8 leaders
arrived.”
Exactly as planned, Stahl thought.
He thought back to when he’d phoned de Waha last night and given him a heads up on the attack. Then today, he called him again and told him “Stahl and the brothers are in the secret room.”
Then, as he expected, the SWAT team broke in, massacred the brothers and found Axel Braun’s passport in Yusef’s police jacket. They looked at the passport photo, a photo that Stahl had computer-altered to merge his face with Yusef’s, and then concluded they’d killed Valek Stahl.
Finally, they congratulated themselves, let their guard down.
Idiots!
Perhaps, he should feel some remorse for sacrificing Yusef and his brothers, but he didn’t. They were merely bullets in Jihad’s gun. A means to a much more important goal. His! And they had long voiced their willingness to die for the jihad.
Of course, they died martyrs. Maybe not willing, but still, martyrs who died believing they were furthering the Al Qaeda cause and that paradise and seventy-two virgins awaited them. They died achieving their goal. They died happy. And he was happy to accommodate them.
Stahl removed his sunglasses and noticed the gray-haired woman paying extra attention to him. Perhaps because he was a stranger. To be safe, Stahl lifted a newspaper in front of his face.
And saw his own face.
His old face actually. Nothing like his new look.
Which made him wonder again, why the old woman was so interested in him?
He drank more coffee and read about the one-on-one meetings between the President of the United States and the President of Russia. Their last, of course.
A minute later, as Stahl lowered the paper, he caught the woman staring at him again.
What’s with her? She can’t possibly recognize me. My hair, beard and collagen injections have transformed my face.
But he decided not to take any chances. He’d read about studies that prove some people have a rare genetic gift, a unique and uncanny ability to identify faces, even identify an aged adult from their baby picture. She could be one.
He put his sunglasses on, finished his coffee, placed money on the table and walked out. The nosy woman watched him leave. Let her watch. It would all be over very soon.
Stahl drove out onto the Avenue Tervuren where crowds were already forming to watch the leaders drive by.
He drove through the large forest, the Forêt de Soignes. He’d knew this forest well. He liked how the tall thick trees bent over the road, blocking out the sun, creating darkness.
He was about to cast the world into darkness.
Minutes later, he saw the sprawling Royal Museum of Central Africa. Locals called it the Congo Museum. He drove through the iron gates at the side of the Congo Museum. The leaders would soon enter through the same gates.
And soon after, they would enter the gates of hell.
Stahl pulled into the side lot. He drove behind rows of parked cars and vans to his pre-determined spot next to the wide stairs that descended into the massive gardens.
He was precisely eighty-six-yards from what American television announcers would soon call Europe’s ‘ground zero.’
A yellow mini-bus with elementary school children parked beside him. He smiled at them and they smiled back. He wondered if later they’d tell their parents they parked next to the man who assassinated the eight most powerful leaders in the world. They probably would. After all, he’d be part of history. Like Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s assassin.
Only I’m killing eight world leaders.
He felt good about that.
A Peugeot with a family parked in front of him. He reached over, picked up his hand-sized television he’d bought at the nearby INNO store and turned it on. The picture flickered to life and he watched the smiling G8 leaders waving at people in the crowds from the limousines crawling out of the Grand Place.
He turned his special cell phone on, and the little red light glowed. The battery icon indicated full power. The system was set.
He leaned back and smiled at the television, his partner in the righteous jihad today. He would watch the leaders walk into the museum and gather around the fascinating display.
He would speed-dial G 8.
He would watch them die.
And… he would vanish in the panic and chaos.
Soon, Papa… soon I will repay them for you…
Stahl watched more police and anti-terrorist teams arrive and take up positions. On the roof, snipers perched like hawks. They held what looked like Belgian A3G sniper rifles, or the Carabine Automatique Leger, a scaled-down weapon Stahl liked. Excellent weapons.
Just one problem. By the time the police realized what happened, they wouldn’t know who to aim the guns at… and he’d be long gone.
Stahl glanced at his television. The leaders were driving toward the Congo Museum in their shiny limousines.
They would leave the Congo Museum in hearses.
THIRTY EIGHT
In the St. Bernard Restaurant, Camille Segers shuffled the cards, trying to remember where she’d seen the stranger who’d just left. She had an excellent memory for faces, thanks to retouching them for thirty-four years at Chaffee’s Portraits. She’d made wrinkles and warts vanish, eyes change colors, hair thicken, frowns smile, and years disappear.
And she was positive she’d seen the stranger’s face somewhere recently. But where?
She sipped more wine as a Stella Artois commercial blasted onto the television. Suddenly her memory clicked in.
“Got it!”
“Got what?” her husband, Pierre, asked.
“TV!”
Her fellow card players stared at her.
“That’s where I saw him!”
“Who in hell are you talking about?”
“That tall stranger who just left.”
“Who cares!”
“The police care! They put his picture on television. The poor man has a real bad disease. Some kind of meningitis. He needs medical attention real fast for chrissakes!”
Pierre stared at her. “You’re losing it, Camille! The man in here had black hair and a beard. The man on TV had brown-blond hair and no beard.”
“Old photo maybe. When he removed his glasses, I saw his eyes, deep close-set eyes, slight slant. Strange eyes. Hell, you can’t change that. And when he walked past, I saw his nose. Little white, L-shaped scar on the bridge. Same as on the TV picture. It’s him alright!”
“Rubbish!”
“Same word you used in grade school when I told you the Germans were invading in ‘40.”
Pierre clammed up.
Camille fished out her cell phone and dialed the number on the television. A male officer answered.
“Hello, I’m Camille Segers at the St. Bernard Restaurant in Sint-Pieters-Woluwe.”
“Yes… ”
“And I just saw the man you’re looking for.”
“Which man?” The officer yawned.
“The man on TV with the real bad meningitis.”
Another yawn. “You’re certain ma’am?”
“Of course. You think I call the police every day?”
“Some people do.”
“I’m not some people. And I also saw him drive away.”
“In what?”
“A silver Opel Insignia.”
The cop sputtered. “Did you say a silver Opel Insignia?”
“Sure did.”
“My God, we just learned about the Opel a minute ago.”
“You want the license plate number?”
“What? Yes!”
“BBL-738.”
“You’re right! You really did se
e him!”
“How many times I gotta tell you?”
“When did - ?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
“Did he drive toward the Congo Museum?”
“He turned in that direction.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Please wait there for an officer to come talk to you.”
“Make it fast! I’m playing canasta at Yolanda’s in thirty minutes. She gets real snippy if I’m late.”
THIRTY NINE
My enemies arrive… Stahl realized as the Belgian police helicopter descended like a bird of prey over the sprawling Congo Museum grounds.
The downwash from the rotors flattened the red and white flowers in the gardens and pushed tiny ripples across the massive reflecting pool.
The chopper touched down, sending dust devils swirling into the air. Moments later, two men and a tall woman stepped out.
Stahl recognized the first man: Jean de Waha, Belgian’s Director General of G8 Summit security. Stahl had studied the man’s impressive bio and work habits for months.
The second man, tall, powerfully-built and wearing an American-cut suit, had his back to Stahl. As the man turned, Stahl blinked a few times, then squinted to be sure. No question about it. He was looking at a CIA operative he’d been hired to terminate two years ago, a man named Donovan Rourke. A man lucky to be alive.
Stahl remembered breaking into Rourke’s apartment not far from here. When Rourke wasn’t home, he’d carried out plan B – terminated Rourke’s wife. Her death achieved the client objective: rendered Rourke ineffective. In fact, the man became such a basket case, the CIA transferred him back to Langley headquarters. Once there, he ceased to be a problem for Stahl’s employer.
But now, Stahl realized with no small pleasure, I may have a chance to finish the job, get some ‘closure’ as the Americans say. And repay him for the difficulty he’s caused me in the last few days.
Stahl looked at the attractive woman. Tall and thin with smooth, honey-hued skin and dark, silky hair. She wore a stylish royal blue suit and the way she and Rourke glanced at each other suggested something personal between them, maybe romantic.
A chubby, bald museum official hurried outside and ushered them in through the museum’s side door.
* * *
Inside the museum, Donovan, de Waha and Maccabee stared at a wall of television monitors revealing the galleries the leaders would soon walk through. Donovan saw armed guards in each gallery.
He turned and looked outside at the anti-terrorist teams patrolling the perimeter. Plainclothes officers walked through the crowds looking for Stahl. Blue vans jammed with paramilitary squads were parked in strategic locations around the museum. Security looked tight. Everything looked safe.
An illusion, Donovan knew.
Because Stahl was here. He had to be. This was the last time the leaders were together. From here, they would depart separately for their flights back home.
It would happen here.
The Congo Museum.
Stahl’s plan all along.
Which meant he was either near the museum, or in the museum. Or, he’d planted Herr Rutten’s weapon, an explosive probably, inside the museum.
So why hadn’t a gallery-by-gallery sweep minutes ago detected some hint of an explosive? And why hadn’t a similar sweep detected an airborne chemical or biological weapon?
The answer was simple. Stahl’s weapon was undetectable.
Herr Rutten must have used a sophisticated ozone or microscopic nanobot-masking device. Some experts said ozone and nanobots might mask the scent of an explosive so well even dogs and electronic sniffers could not detect it.
Whatever the case, the weapon had to be here.
So was Stahl. His ego required that he see his end game, see his creation’s devastation, see his history-changing catastrophe take place, see the bleeding corpses.
See it all in person.
Donovan dabbed perspiration from his brow, walked out into the hallway and ran his fingers along the cool marble wall. He remembered when little Tish ran her toy train along this same wall. She made such a racket, Emma and he took her outside to play in the gardens.
Two weeks later Emma was dead. Murdered by the same man now planning eight more murders here in this museum in a matter of minutes.
Maccabee walked up beside him. “Hey there, Mister”
He turned and smiled.
“You look kinda lost.”
“Lost and found… last night,” he said, suddenly flooded with love for her.
She smiled back as de Waha rushed over with the head of museum security, a man named Frans Kramers.
“We just completed the final check of the museum,” Kramers said. “The museum is cleared. No explosives, no bio or chemical weapons found.”
“Basement?” Donovan asked.
“Clean.”
“Ventilation systems??”
“Nothing.”
“The dogs?”
“Nothing.”
“How much time before the limos arrive?”
De Waha checked his watch. “Six minutes.”
Despite the excellent security, despite Kramer’s assurances, despite the weapons sweeps, Donovan couldn’t relax. Stahl’s weapon was here!
“Jean… ?”
“Yeah?”
“Stahl has to hit here!”
De Waha nodded.
“Let’s try again to cancel this tour.”
“I tried five minutes ago.”
“And?”
“The authorities turned me down again. Unanimous decision by the leaders.”
“Why?”
“Their image,” De Waha said.
“For chrissakes, they’ve already got thousands of image photos and video!”
“No, their image toward Africa. They’ve been criticized for neglecting Africa’s problems: genocide, famine, AIDS, disease. They want the leaders seen in this African museum, showing they care. If they cancel this museum tour, the world will see it as further proof that the world leaders don’t care about Africa. As they tour, TV announcers and commercials will talk about G8’s bold new plans to help solve Africa’s problems. So that’s a good thing.”
“But not if the leaders die here!”
De Waha nodded. “I tried… ”
Donovan knew he had. “I wouldn’t be surprised that Stahl chose this African museum tour because he knew the leaders could not afford the bad PR from canceling the tour.”
De Waha nodded. “Probably. But the leaders also insisted on something else.”
“What?”
“They insisted that Stahl not be allowed to determine their agenda.”
“Understandable, but then their agenda may include their own funerals.”
De Waha shrugged.
Donovan felt frustrated, like someone was holding a blowtorch to his skin. He had to move, walk, do something. “Frans, could you hurry us through the galleries for one last look. Maybe we’ll get lucky, see something.”
Kramers glanced at his watch. “We’ll have to rush!”
He led them quickly into the first gallery, which displayed mining products from the Congo. Donovan scanned the display cases filled with big chunks of copper, uranium and cobalt. Are these big chunks really what they appear to be? Could they be C4 or PETN explosives?
“How many items in the museum?” Donovan asked.
“You won’t believe it.”
“Try me.”
“250,000 rock samples, 56,000 wood samples, and somewhere around 10 million animals and life forms.”
Jesus! Impossible to screen them all.
Still, he wondered if Stahl might have replicated a larger object, like a statue or animal, using an explosive and then somehow made it undetectable. But experts said no way.
Experts also said the Titanic could not sink.
They walked quickly into the second gallery, a display of beautiful African woodcarvings. Everything seemed normal, safe. The next gallery was filled with a l
arge collection of objects from several Congo villages and the Matadi-Leopoldville railway.
The adjoining room displayed native spears and weapons from the tribes of southern central Africa. Again, nothing looked threatening except the spears and knives, but they were locked up in cases.
“How much time?” Donovan asked.
“Three minutes,” Kramers said.
“Let’s hurry through the remaining galleries,” de Waha said. They rushed into a gallery containing rare metals and minerals. Donovan saw rows of brilliant diamonds sparkling at him from a display case.
Outside, a car alarm started beeping. Donovan looked out a side window and saw the parking area jammed with cars.
“Jean, those cars in the lot… ”
“Yeah?”
“Were they swept for explosives?”
“Yes. Officers with hand-held sniffers and dogs have been checking them for the last fifteen minutes.”
“Is security checking the drivers and passengers?”
“Yes. Both ground security and roof snipers.”
Donovan was anxious about the proximity of the cars to the museum, especially those within one hundred feet. Cars could hide hundreds of pounds of explosives. On the other hand, the cars seemed too far away, and the museum walls far too thick for a car explosion to injure the leaders. The blast would only kill people in the immediate blast area.
Stahl’s explosive was inside the museum where the blast would kill the eight leaders.
Donovan heard the motorcade sirens drawing near.
Kramers hurried them into a large room, The Elephant Gallery, where several large African animals looked like they’d just crept out of the jungle. In the middle stood the enormous elephant that little Tish had been afraid of.
He looked at the majestic beast with its long trunk and ivory tusks flaring out. The twelve thousand pound elephant stood on its natural African terrain of tall grass and rocks in sandy soil. As Donovan walked past the elephant, its dark eyes seemed to follow him, as though trying to communicate, maybe warn him. A cold draft swept across Donovan’s face.