by Rachel Lee
"Good," Renate said. "Then we start surveillance on the computer room employees. One of them is sure to be single and male. And I will get the key card from him."
Her tone left no doubt that she would do anything, anything at all, to achieve the downfall of those who had killed her family. Whatever conscience she might once have owned had been blown away by a bomb in a simple church.
Vienna, Austria
Yawi Hassan had spent the day in a café on the Gellerplatz, watching the apartment house two blocks down Quellenstraße. Three hours earlier, laughing children had streamed from the Catholic school across the street. Yawi was struck by the irony: terrorists who had murdered thousands of Catholics on Christmas Day were hiding out in an apartment house two blocks from a Catholic school.
Now a last group of students, young teenage boys, Yawi guessed, freshly showered after an athletic practice, approached him. With his limited German, Yawi realized they were asking him to settle a dispute over which Austrian football club would be strongest that year. Although he knew nothing of Austrian football, Yawi chose from among the team names the boys pressed upon him.
"Rapid ist sehr gut," Yawi said.
"Ja!" answered the boy who had offered that club. "Rapid wird immer dominieren! Die san leiwand!"
As the boy broke into a wide grin, the other boys objected. Much to Yawi's relief, for he had not understood the boy's reply, they took the disagreement with them as they walked to the tram station. He smiled and shook his head as they left. In whatever language, in whatever culture, boys would be boys.
Now alone again, Yawi reviewed the plan in his head. All the pieces were in place. The last of their seven targets had returned to the apartment only a few minutes before, after a quick stop at a corner market. Even now, Yawi knew that his men were moving into their final preassault positions.
The target was a third-floor apartment, and Yawi and his men had gone over the interior layout several times. Each of his men had a specific assignment from the moment they burst into the open front room. They had rehearsed the assault in an identical apartment building across town until everyone on the team could perform his mission in total darkness and absolute silence. There would be no arrests tonight. Their orders were clear.
Kill them all.
"Ready," a quiet voice whispered in Yawi's earphone.
Yawi strolled down the street, taking a final look around. His secondary objectives were to minimize civilian casualties and to extract his men without their being identified. He saw no Polizei in evidence, and at this late dinner hour, there was little traffic on the street.
"Two minutes," he whispered.
Ninety seconds later, he entered the building and began to ascend the back stairs. He didn't need to check to ensure that the back exit was neither locked nor blocked. The Austrians were very careful about such matters. And even if they hadn't been, his men had already verified that fact. As he climbed the stairs, he screwed a silencer on his Tek-9 automatic pistol and cycled the bolt to chamber a round.
Yawi reached the third-floor landing and pulled his ski mask down over his face, then placed his left hand on the shoulder of the last man in his team. That man in turn placed his left hand on the shoulder of the next, until the fifth commando, first in the line, placed his left hand on the door leading from the stairwell into the interior corridor. Now, simply by squeezing the shoulder of the man in front of him, Yawi gave the silent signal to go. In less than a second, the message had been relayed to the lead man, and he pushed open the door.
The corridor was clear, and they moved silently, each holding up fingers to count the doors they passed. One…two…three…four. Yawi checked each man's count, for in the stress of an assault, he knew not to overlook even the smallest, most basic detail. Certain that they were at the right door, he patted the shoulder of the man in front of him.
That action was repeated up the line, and the lead man extracted a tiny video camera with a fish-eye tubular lens. As the tube slid beneath the door frame, Yawi studied the distorted image on the handheld monitor. He counted six people in the room, two on a sofa along the left wall, two in the kitchen area to the back and two at a small dinner table. A shadow moving in the distance marked the seventh target, walking along the back hallway.
As the lead commando withdrew the camera tube, Yawi relayed the information to his men with hand signals. Each nodded. Now the second man squeezed two small gobs of putty into the gap between the door and its frame, one at the catch for the doorknob, the other at the dead bolt. As that man pressed detonators into the plastic explosive, Yawi and the others readied flash grenades. The second man held up a thumb.
All was ready.
The men flattened themselves against the wall, and Yawi nodded. The second man squeezed a tiny plunger, and two muffled pops sounded almost simultaneously. Yawi felt a momentary rush of satisfaction. His man had done his job precisely as he had been trained, using the minimum amount of explosive necessary to blow the door. The satisfaction was quickly lost in the moment, however, for now he and his men burst into motion.
The lead man kicked the door open, and four flash grenades were tossed in immediately. Two seconds later, the grenades exploded with a rushing whoosh, as Yawi and his men shielded their eyes against the blinding, blue-white glare.
"Go!" he snapped.
The command was unnecessary, for his men were already in motion. The first two men burst in, pistols leveled, marking their targets, the quiet pops as they fired lost in the cries of panic within. Yawi followed and saw that two of the targets were already slumping to the floor, red holes punched in their chests.
Yawi pressed on toward the back of the apartment, his arms extended, left hand beneath his right, supporting the weight of the weapon, moving it side to side, tracking with every turn of his head. A light beneath the bathroom door flicked off, and Yawi fired through the door at the same instant that it seemed to spout holes from within.
He felt the three rapid punches in his chest, knocking him back against the wall, but kept firing, the flimsy door now almost disintegrating before his eyes. He realized he was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, with an unbelievable tightness in his chest, making it all but impossible to breathe.
Through a gaping hole in the door, he watched his target rise and come toward him, gun in one hand, the other vainly trying to staunch the angry geysers of blood spurting from the side of his neck. Yawi was dimly aware of one of his comrades coming around the corner to check on him, of the target turning and raising his pistol, of three more shots, of the target finally crumpling to the floor, half-atop him.
Mission accomplished, Uncle, Yawi thought. We killed them all.
And then the darkness swelled around him.
Frankfurt, Germany
It all sounded so simple, but Lawton knew it wasn't. Nothing could be that simple. He drew Renate from the back room into one of the executive offices. "We need to talk."
"About what?"
"This sounds too simple."
"Anything sounds simple when it is laid out this way."
Damn, she was so distant again, as if everything that made her Renate had flown away to another star system.
"Renate, listen to me."
"I am listening, Law."
"Then think about it. If this bank really contains the kind of information you think it does, why isn't it better guarded? The entire Frankfurt Brotherhood could take a fall if their computer records were breached."
She turned to face him directly. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying the only reason they'd do this is if their records are so heavily encrypted that we'll probably be wasting our time anyway."
She shook her head. "First we go for their communications. We hack into their computer system and view their private Internet messages. If we find what we need there, we can talk about what to do next to nail them. But trust me, if we follow the money we'll find them."
"But how will we break their e
ncryption? Even the NSA can't hack SWIFTNET. When they want the information, they get a subpoena."
She gave him a tight smile. "You must have faith in me. And in Assif. We have done this before."
"Why do I feel like there's something you're not telling me?" he asked.
"Because there are some things that it's better not to know," she replied, her icy eyes fixed on him. "Trust me, Lawton. I know what I'm doing here. And we will get what we need."
She left to rejoin the others, and he followed reluctantly, thinking that he didn't mind putting his neck in a noose if he could be certain it would serve a purpose. He wasn't sure of that with this job yet.
Niko was regaling Assif with the story of the murder of Jürgen Ponto.
"He was the head of the Dresdner Bank, back in the 1970s. It was a terrible time in Germany, in Europe. Lots of terrorist groups active. Suzanne Albrecht was Ponto's godchild, the daughter of a man he'd known since childhood. But he didn't know she'd joined the Red Army Faction. She showed up at his door carrying a bouquet of roses, acting like the loving godchild. Then she and her two companions tried to kidnap him. He fought back. They shot him five times."
"Wow," said Assif, shaking his head. "His godchild?"
Niko nodded. "It makes you think, doesn't it? You can know someone from the day they were born and still not know them at all."
"He was the enemy," Renate said quietly.
"The anger of disaffected youth," Niko said. "So easy to twist young minds."
Assif's face froze as he looked at the television news. "Yes. And it's happening again."
8
Saint-Arnans-la-Bastide, France
General Jules Soult sat in the comfortable leather armchair in his library. He puffed on a cigar and studied the papers that had arrived by pouch from Frau Schmidt only a short while ago. The courier was cooling his heels outside, awaiting Soult's response.
It would be positive, of course. He had every intention of taking over intelligence operations for the European Union Department of Collective Security. He also intended to make very sure that these documents he was to sign would hamper him in no important way.
He was quite pleased to discover that there was nothing to object to in the papers before him. He was assigned full intelligence responsibility and ordered to report directly to Frau Schmidt herself. Apparently the good German woman had no desire for any dirt to get past the two of them. That pleased him.
His operational budget would be generous, and while his operatives were forbidden to use deadly force except in self-defense, Soult wasn't worried about that detail. His people would ensure that he retained plausible deniability.
Satisfied, he signed and initialed the first set of documents, keeping a copy for himself, and slipped the executed version back into the pouch. He touched a button on his desk, and moments later his butler appeared. An English butler, of course. There was something about the way the English buttled that remained without compare.
"For the courier. Then I should like my brandy."
The man bowed, accepting the pouch. "At once, Monsieur le Général."
Soult sent the butler on his way, then reached into his top right desk drawer and pulled out a remote control. With the touch of a few buttons, the library wall to one side opened and revealed a large-screen television. As always, it was already tuned to a news network. Today he chose to listen to one out of Germany. It always paid to have a wide variety of sources.
What he saw pleased him immensely. Students in Berlin were burning pictures of Osama bin Laden. The Islamic Center in Vienna had suffered from graffiti and broken windows. The violence was still only in the stage of small outbreaks. But it would provide perfect cover for what was to come.
He was still smiling when his butler returned with his Napoleon brandy on a silver salver. The man placed the snifter carefully on Soult's desk and began to bow out.
"Wait, Devon."
The butler paused and straightened to attention. "Monsieur?"
"Have you seen the news about the public attacking mosques? And protesting?"
"Yes, sir."
Soult turned to look the man in the eye. "What do you think of it?"
"I can understand the anger, monsieur, but the actions accomplish nothing of purpose."
Soult nodded slowly, and dipped the mouth end of his cigar in the brandy for a moment. "What would be your idea of a proper response?"
Devon's eyes widened only a fraction, and only momentarily, before he resumed his customarily formal demeanor. "I'm quite sure I don't know, sir. I am merely a butler."
Soult chuckled. "And a diplomatic one at that. Don't you feel the least urge to strike back, to seek vengeance, no, justice, for these atrocities?"
Devon hesitated. "What I feel, sir, is not necessarily a wise response. Yes, I feel loathing for persons who could commit such crimes. But does that give me the right to take the law into my own hands?"
With that, before he could be questioned any further, Devon and his salver disappeared from the library.
Soult studied the curl of smoke rising from his cigar, then glanced at the news again. Devon would bear watching, he decided. Then, a moment later, he changed his mind. Devon had spoken as a rational, mature man who had been raised in a culture of law. And everything that he himself was about to do would be under the color of law. And if it were so, then Devon should have no reason to object, not that Soult had any intention of letting his butler in on his secrets. Still, he knew better than to presume that a butler—even one as impeccably trained as Devon—would be oblivious to what happened around him.
Reaching for the phone, he placed a call. When his comrade answered, Soult spoke in flawless Spanish. "I have the position, but I must attend to administrative details before I can issue a contract. However, you may begin your recruiting efforts immediately."
He hung up and sat back in his chair. Everything was going as it should. Another smile creased his face. Every revolution required an army, and soon he would have his. What's more, the very government he intended to seize would be paying for that army. The effortless irony of his plans gave him a heady feeling of power, almost a rush. Better than Napoleon brandy and Cuban cigars.
But even as he was feeling smugly content, the news broke away from its coverage of random acts of malice to something far more deadly.
"Today in Vienna," the reporter said, "special agents of the EU and the United States carried out a joint strike on a terrorist cell believed to have been involved in Black Christmas…."
Soult sat forward quickly, brandy forgotten, and turned up the volume. Pictures of bodies being carried out flashed across the screen, along with exterior shots of a nondescript concrete apartment house of a type that had become common after the war, a type Soult felt was a blight on the beauty of Europe.
Bodies. Nine terrorists killed in a fierce gun battle. And then the face of the American president, Harrison Rice. "This is only the beginning," the president said. "We will hunt down these terrorists to the last man. In cooperation with our European allies, we will not allow these atrocities to go unavenged. Thank you."
Soult sat back slowly. For the first time that day, he sensed something at work that was beyond his knowledge. Beyond his control.
Every bit of triumph he had been feeling vanished like a puff of smoke from the end of his cigar.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Ahmed Ahsami watched the television, absolutely livid. His men had gone in there to take out those terrorists, but the situation had been snatched away. Among the nine "terrorists" whose pictures were now being broadcast to the world was Yawi. His sister's son.
He slammed his hand down on his desk over and over, grief and anger warring on a scale that was beyond speech, beyond description. At that moment he could have blasted the entire world into oblivion.
Someone was using him. Someone he thought was an ally. Nothing else could possibly explain this. The information had come to him about the location of the ter
rorists, but it had apparently gone to someone else, as well. How else could Austrian and American commandos have arrived just minutes after the survivors on his team had withdrawn? That could not have happened by coincidence.
His nephew and Isa had been killed, offered up like sacrificial lambs, and were now being labeled as part of the terrorist cell. And the American president was standing smugly before a bank of microphones, his Alabama drawl and artificially confident smile reminiscent of nothing so much as a plantation owner swearing that rebelling slaves would be hunted down.
Why? Why had someone done this? To prevent him from showing his message to the world, that Arabs could police Arabs? That there could be peace? That the rest of the world needn't intervene in the affairs of Muslims?
He slammed his hand on the desk again, heedless of the pain. He had been used. Again. And now blood would spill. Thoughts of fealty to Allah faded as his rage grew. Blood would spill. The blood of his betrayers.
Reaching for his phone, he called the Vatican. Either Veltroni was involved or he would know who was. Either way, he would feel Ahmed's wrath.
Washington, D.C.
Harrison Rice sat in the Oval Office, his back to the room, watching the early-winter night settle over the snow-covered gardens. From time to time someone would enter the room and tell him that his approval rating was shooting through the roof since his press conference announcing the successful raid in Vienna.
Strangely, he felt little joy in hearing that his approval rating was somewhere in the eightieth percentile, having leaped up from the basement into which it had fallen following Black Christmas.
What he felt, what he truly felt, was relief that he could avoid the use of nuclear weapons. At least for a little while. But thinking that over, he was surprised at how swiftly Bentley had wanted him to announce the raid in Vienna and claim the credit. Too fast, thought Rice. No time to even absorb events or get the full details. Just get out there and say, "Look what we've done."
Rice knew his strings were being pulled, and he found it distasteful and ugly. He wished there was some way he could fight back. He had no intention of leading the world into annihilation for the sake of agendas that were hidden from him.