Rebecca, her husband, and their lawyer were in the car as well, and Rubens felt constrained to say he thought the judge was “a very nice fellow.”
“Very sharp,” said Ellen.
Was she talking to the other attorney or to him? Rubens said nothing until they were out in the parking lot and the others had walked off in the other direction.
“Is that timetable normal?” he asked.
“A little fast but not all that unusual. In a lot of instances, these decisions have to be made very expeditiously because medical care is involved. We could have a hearing on Friday and a decision right after that. Does it seem too fast?”
“No, I guess not.”
“The fact that the General is who he is will also push Judge Croner to get things settled very quickly,” added McGovern. “That’s why he tried to solve things without a formal process.”
“How did he try to solve things?” Rubens asked.
“Oh, that’s definitely what he was doing. If they had made more of an opening, he would have sounded them out in detail.”
“I’d appreciate it if you were more… forward,” Rubens told her.
“How so?”
“You could have defended me. I’m not representing the NSA.”
“That was obvious.”
“How? The judge doesn’t know me. When their lawyer said I was, you should have jumped right in. You did speak up, don’t get me wrong, but it was a little late.”
“Frankly, I would have preferred not saying anything at all,” she told him. “I only said that to keep you from talking. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Rubens, you’re not on trial. Neither is Rebecca. This isn’t that sort of proceeding. The real way to think about this, if you want to think about it, is to pretend you’re just watching. The judge invited you in as a courtesy. And the same with Rebecca,” she added before he could object. “The hearing is about the General and his competence. Not yours.”
“It’s about who watches his affairs.”
“It’s about his future. Didn’t you tell me his wishes should be honored? Isn’t that what’s important?” She touched his arm. “I’m sorry. I’m lecturing. Forgive me.”
Rubens pursed his lips.
“What you said about what to call the General, that was better than any brief,” she added. “It was very eloquent.”
“It was just what I felt.”
“‘That’s why it was eloquent.” She glanced at her watch. “It would have been better if it didn’t come to this, but now that the process is under way, things will have a momentum and logic of their own.”
“Why would it be better if it didn’t come to this?”
“Don’t you think that? These sorts of disagreements don’t do anyone any good.”
Yes, actually, he did think that. Why was he being so argumentative?
And why did he feel as if he were the one on trial?
“I may be somewhat busy over the next few days,” Rubens told McGovern. “But you can call the number I gave you at any time, day or night.”
“Days will be fine. I’ll see you, Mr. Rubens.”
43
As soon as Dean put his foot on the edge of the crate he heard it crack. He grabbed the ledge and pulled himself upward as the box collapsed in a heap.
“Too late to switch places with you now,” he whispered to Lia over the communications system.
He thought he heard her growl in response.
Dean balanced precariously on the narrow ledge as he pulled the handheld computer out to scan for a burglar alarm. There wasn’t one, and the two halves of the window were held together by a simple latch at the middle, which was easily undone by sliding his knife in through the crack. He used the knife to swing the far window away, then leaned over to peer inside. Besides making it possible to see into the dark office, Dean’s night-vision glasses could detect beams from infrared devices used on alarm systems. There were none, and a second scan with the PDA failed to turn up a motion detector or more sophisticated bugging device.
“I’m in,” he told Lia as he swung inside.
“I can see that.”
“They don’t have a PC.”
“Smart of them,” said Lia.
The group that had rented the office claimed to raise money for a service that trained nurses. It did actually do this, and in fact donated more than a hundred thousand dollars every year to schools in Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran. But such international operations provided a pretext for passing information among a host of individuals and countries.
While terrorists typically went to great lengths to keep their communications secret, experience had shown that offices such as these in friendly countries often had surprisingly lax security. It wasn’t a case of hubris so much as human nature: if a threat wasn’t imminent, it tended to be ignored. Dean’s briefer had predicted there would be no alarm systems or other common safeguards, and so far it appeared as if he were right.
However, there wasn’t a terribly lot to protect here: no computers and only two lateral files at the side of the office. Both were locked. Dean used the handheld computer to check for electronic security devices — he didn’t particularly want to blow himself up trying to get a bank statement. When he found none, he took out the lock pick and went to work on the lock.
Dean had taken a two-day course in the fine art of jimmying locks after joining Deep Black, but he hadn’t had much time to practice since then. The lock stayed stubbornly set.
And then he heard someone in the hall.
“Charlie, people coming your way,” said Lia. “I can see them turning on lights.”
No kidding, he thought, hiding behind the desk.
44
The garage was located in a warehouse that dated from the 1950s, a steel-fabricated structure whose sides were covered with dents and dimples, along with the faded splatters of a dozen paint jobs. It sat next to a rarely used railroad spur; when Mussa had first found the building the railroad had been an important part of his planning, but as it turned out he had used it only once. That was the way it went with such things, though — one might plan carefully and consider all of the alternatives, but in the end life made its own demands.
From the time he had bought it three years before until just six months ago, the warehouse had been part of Mussa’s business empire and main source of income. To call it an empire was aggrandizement; Mussa arranged for the exporting of automobiles from Europe to Africa. This involved several phases: obtaining the cars, preparing them for transit, and actually shipping them. The warehouse was involved in the middle phase. As a rule, the vehicles Mussa obtained were mechanically perfect; he rarely procured one more than twelve months old. However, his customers in Africa and the Middle East required certain modifications, new serial numbers on engine blocks being among the most critical. Generally, he changed the exterior color as well. Other modifications tended to be done to order — armor, secret compartments, and certain types of electrical equipment, including cell phone jammers, had become almost de rigueur.
The car export business had been lucrative, though not without its liabilities. Surprisingly, its greatest liability had been its effect on his conscience. While Mussa could justify his thefts intellectually — he was taking vehicles from heathens — there was a part of him that objected. In fact, the objections had grown greater as his wealth increased.
Two years before, he had heard an imam suggest that guilt was merely faith speaking. Mussa still remembered that talk; in many ways it had helped set him on his current path.
But even the most righteous man must live in this world. Driving across the crumbling macadam toward the plant at the back of the old factory area near Marseilles, he felt pride at all he had accomplished, and even greater pride at what he would achieve in just a few days.
Sparks from a welder’s torch inside the garage ended his brief reverie of self-congratulations.
“Non, non, non!” Mussa shouted, jumping from his car and running inside. The v
an was up on a lift, its undersides being reinforced and prepared for the extra springs. The five carefully fashioned explosives for the bomb assembly sat less than ten meters away.
Mussa’s emotions ran so strongly that he couldn’t even sputter a curse or an explanation; all he could do was point at the crates.
“Idiots!” he managed finally, speaking Arabic rather than French. “Idiots! Don’t I pay you enough not to kill yourselves?”
Heads down, the workers took the van down and began moving it to the far bay. They were running behind schedule, but Mussa decided not to chide them further; they would undoubtedly perceive any urge now to move faster as a contradiction of these orders, and besides, past experience showed that they were just as likely to react by slowing down as speeding up once he left their sight.
There was a more effective strategy.
“Listen to me for a moment,” he said loudly. “Listen. Stop what you are doing and listen.”
The half-dozen garagemen came over to him.
“I will return tomorrow to gather everything. If everything is in order and the van properly loaded, everyone who has worked on the project will receive an appropriate bonus,” he said.
The faces lit up with smiles. Mussa was not an ungenerous man, and all of those here had benefited from his bonuses before.
“Tomorrow, then,” he added, looking around. “It is understood?”
He strode from the building before the heads stopped bobbing. Outside he checked his watch, then got into the car. Three kilometers away, he pulled off the road and took one of the cell phones from his bag.
Donohue picked up on the first ring.
“You’re late,” he told Mussa.
“It couldn’t be helped. Have you considered my proposal?”
“Twice what you said.”
“I would be willing to take your price if we can add another matter at your usual fee,” said Mussa.
“I don’t do package deals.”
Mussa sensed a bluff.
“There was an error in your previous assignment. I am not blaming you, but it is a matter that needs correction. I am willing to pay to fix it,” continued Mussa, “as clearly someone on my side erred, but it must happen very soon.”
“I don’t do package deals.”
“Well then, that is that,” said Mussa. “Perhaps in the future we will have occasion to be of use to each other.”
He hesitated before hanging up — just long enough, as it turned out.
“What are the details?” said Donohue.
“The details will be forthcoming in the manner you specify,” said Mussa. “The time line is critical. Which will be explained.”
“If it has to be done on an expedited timetable, the scale changes.”
Mussa decided he could concede on that point. Getting rid of LaFoote was important: it was the last loose end that needed tying up. If Donohue didn’t do it, someone less dependable would have to.
“Well, of course. That is to be expected. And expenses will be covered,” added Mussa, suddenly feeling generous. “Reasonable ones, of course.”
“That’s already figured into the fee. But the sentiment is appreciated.”
The line clicked off. Pleased with himself, Mussa dropped the phone out of the car, then backed up to make sure he crushed it with his tire as he got back on the highway.
45
Lia adjusted the elastic band at the back of the night-vision glasses, twisting it so that it held tight against her hair. Most of the other ops loved the device, which looked like wraparound sunglasses and was only slightly heavier, but she could never get it to sit right on the bridge of her nose.
A light came on in the office where Dean was. Lia slipped the setting on the small, boxlike A2 rifle she held in her hand to burst fire; she could get three bullets almost instantaneously into the target, which was marked out with a cursor in her glasses. They’d picked up the gear at a small shop in town; Desk Three had literally hundreds of weapons and equipment caches stashed around the world.
“There’s one man inside the room with him,” she told the Art Room.
“We know,” said Sandy Chafetz in the Art Room. “We can hear him. He’s saying something to the other man — the person in the office is the manager and the other is a guard. He needs to retrieve something.”
“Where is Charlie?” asked Lia. The Art Room would be watching his location via an implanted radiation device accurate to within a few inches.
“Behind the desk,” said Chafetz. “The big desk on the right.”
Probably the manager’s desk, Lia thought. If he came back to get something, that’s where he was going.
“Diversion coming, Charlie,” she said, grabbing the small grenade she had clipped to the collar of her shirt. She pulled the pin and threw the grenade over the roof of the nearby charity building. The grenade was a miniature “flash-bang”—a special grenade that exploded with a very loud boom and a flash of light, often used as a diversionary tactic during hostage rescue operations. The grenade exploded in midair with a loud whap.
“All right, Charlie, your move,” Lia whispered.
* * *
When Lia’s grenade exploded, one of the men in the office began to shout and ran out into the hallway.
The other leaned forward over the desk from the front, pulling open the top right-hand drawer.
Dean, no more than two feet away, tensed his leg muscles, preparing to spring.
“He’s right over you, Charlie,” Lia whispered. “Shoot him.”
The desk creaked under the man’s weight. The second grenade seemed louder, and the man jerked back but then reached again for whatever it was he wanted. A second grenade exploded outside and the man in the hall yelled, apparently for him to come.
“He wants him to hurry,” said the translator. “He’s the guard and he’s worried about being away from his post.”
The man on the desk took something from the drawer and ran out.
“Lia — can you see what he got?” Dean whispered. His voice felt hoarse.
“You’re OK?” she asked.
“I didn’t see what he took.”
Lia saw a shadow moving through the building. She froze, paralyzed — she had wanted to follow, she had to follow, but she couldn’t.
What held her back? Fear?
Fear.
No, she told herself. She had to stow the A2 or it would attract attention. She went into the shadows at the side of the roof and grabbed her backpack rather than the A2’s case — there was no time to stow it away properly, and she certainly didn’t want to be without it. Her hands trembled as she climbed over the side to the drainpipe and shimmied down ten feet before dropping to the ground. She ran across the alley and made it to the side of the building just as a guard crossed on the street. The manager was behind him, carrying whatever it was he took from the office.
“Lia — give us the feed from your glasses. We’ll enhance it,” said Chafetz. The feed had to be enabled by the operative because the signal it transmitted to an overhead satellite network was easily detected.
Lia clicked the button at the back of the glasses. She increased the magnification as well, watching the man as he walked to a small Fiat across the street, the guard looking around warily as he got in.
“Charlie, he’s getting in a car,” said Lia.
“Yeah, I’m coming. Wait.”
“You see what he’s carrying?” Lia asked her runner.
“We have an image. It’s a phone coupler device — it’s an old-fashioned modem, used to put on telephone handsets. You see a laptop?”
“I didn’t, no.”
“I’m going to follow him,” said Dean. She heard him grunting, wrestling with something.
“How are you going to follow him?” she asked.
“On the bike. Describe the car.”
“Blue Fiat. Can’t see the plates. Just starting, driving west. Don’t come out on this block — the guard is watching.”
/> “Right. OK, good.”
Lia’s heart felt as if it were trying to stomp through her chest. She took a breath, then headed back toward the roof to retrieve the case she’d left behind.
* * *
The bicycle Dean had appropriated was an old single-geared type and, while sturdy, would not be confused with a racer. Dean huffed as he turned back toward the road where the car had headed. He had only a vague idea of the roads in the area, and the runner’s directions weren’t particularly helpful.
“Just tell me where there are pay phones around,” Dean said, pedaling furiously. He hit a rut and nearly did a header.
“Why do you think he’s going to a pay phone?” asked the runner.
“Well, for one thing, you’d never look for a data call from one, right? And I’m going to bet you’ve checked over phone lines in this city a million times for some connection with these guys and come up empty.”
For another — he was taking a wild guess and couldn’t think of anything else.
“Take a right,” said Chafetz. “Then a quick left — there’s a new set of stores near there.”
Dean took the turns, slowing as he started to run out of breath. He saw a man walking on the street ahead with a briefcase and a small box shaped like a dumbbell — the phone device he’d seen in the office.
“I see him; he’s on this block,” said Dean, pedaling past. “He’s going to one of the phones.”
“Charlie, this is great,” said Telach, breaking in. “But we need more time to map the pay phones out so we can intercept the call.”
“He hasn’t dialed yet,” said Dean, watching as the man pulled a laptop out and booted it up. It took almost a minute for the laptop to run through its start-up routine; as it did, the man got the phone device ready. “Looks like he’s almost ready to call,” said Dean finally.
“We still need another minute,” said Telach.
Dean swung the bike around without looking — and nearly got flattened by a bus he hadn’t even heard. He rode back in the direction of the man, who was just putting down his briefcase.
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