* * *
They were coming. Muhadesh was not certain until that moment. The pickup procedure had been laid out years before with safety and rapidity in mind, but there was no guarantee. He had ensured that they would come, however. The final answers were tucked away securely in his breast pocket with the other note—a request.
The whop whop of the approaching helicopter now assured him. No longer would he fear tomorrow, or the killing. He breathed deeply. The desert air tasted sweet and dry. His soul would be safe. That was his last concern, that his body not be desecrated by his vengeful countrymen.
Muhadesh undid the buckled holster cover and brought the Makarov up close to his ear. The sound was close now, off to his left. He half expected to feel the rotor wash.
“Thank you, al-Dir,” he said aloud, no longer afraid of today, or tomorrow, but still unaware that his last conscious act was motivated by the fear that was, truly, his soul’s undoing.
* * *
“There!” a bulky Marine shouted, pointing with his rifle and reaching behind with his free hand to tap Logan.
“Watcha got, Sergeant?” Logan leaned over against his restraints and pulled one earphone free.
“Over there, maybe three hundred yards. Looked like a muzzle flash.”
“Roger.” Logan patted the flak-jacketed soldier. “Major, one of the troops saw what may be a muzzle flash to starboard. Three hundred yards off.”
“Roger.” The Oceanhawk banked severely to the right, making the landlubber CIA officer grab for a handhold. He was jealous of the Recon Marines who swung easily with the roll of the helicopter.
The FLIR picked it up immediately. ‘Two sources, Maj. Come left.” The co-pilot adjusted the sensitivity of the FLIR. “One small, man-sized. The other’s a truck or something, no doubt.”
There would be no mistakes here. “Let’s sweep the area.” The pilot pulled back on the collective and brought the nose down, giving the SH-60 altitude and speed. He wanted to circle the area of the heat sources to make certain there were no surprises awaiting them. After two full sweeps the pilot brought the nose back around toward the sources.
“Dead ahead.” The co-pilot now had a better vantage point with the FLIR. Altitude gave a higher aspect to the scene, making the picture more obvious, and more ominous. “Just the two sources, but I don’t like it. See that one.” His finger pointed to a ghostly green spot of light on the screen.
The pilot didn’t like it either. “Lieutenant?”
In the cabin the Marine commander leaned farther in to escape the noise of the downwash. He pushed the boom mike almost into his mouth. “Go ahead!”
“We’re showing two sources: one man, looks prone, and a vehicle about ten yards beyond him. The area looks clean. I’m gonna set you down fifty yards this side of the guy. Roger?”
“Roger.” The lieutenant tapped the man to his left on the helmet, the sequence continuing around the cabin until all the Marines were alerted.
Logan felt hopelessly under armed with his seven-shot .45, but it would have to do. Really, he hoped it wouldn’t need to.
Suddenly everything slowed. The helicopter pitched backward and the main wheels touched the desert floor. A second later the cabin was empty, except for Logan, who felt very exposed to the night streaming in through both doors. He pulled the slide back on his Colt. At least it made him feel safer.
The thud scared the shit out of him. Everything looked surreal through the goggles. The Marines were back, six of them still around the edge, their legs hanging out as before, and two, including the lieutenant, were in the center over...a body? The helicopter threw everyone back as it rose and moved forward, banking hard to the right until it was heading due north.
“Seal it up,” the lieutenant ordered. His men followed it smartly, bringing their bodies fully into the helo and closing the windowless doors on each side. One slid a heavy fabric curtain closed between the cabin and the cockpit. “Glasses off. Lights.”
Where before there had been a world of dancing green specters, there was now the harshly lit tomb of the Oceanhawk’s interior. The floor jumped with the turbulence of the low-altitude flight, bouncing the Marines against the walls. Some still wore their Kevlar helmets, and all looked quite emotionless in their painted faces. Young white eyes stared at the form in the center of the cabin.
Logan safed his weapon. One of the arms had fallen to the floor from where it lay against the chest, and came to rest on Logan’s boot. There was blood on the arm, caked with sand, and there was blood all over the floor beneath the right side of the head. The face—the eyes were lifeless—stared toward him, and the left side of the head seemed caved in. He knelt next to the man, straddling one arm. Logan had never seen a dead person so close.
“Looks like he popped himself, mister,” the lieutenant commented. “In the right, out the left.” He noticed the civilian’s discomfort. “Your guy made an exit, that’s for sure.”
Why? Logan thought silently. DONNER had made such a damn fuss about ensuring the pickup. Didn’t he want to get out? Logan shook his head as he checked the man for the last message. We pushed him. His pockets were empty, as was the holster at his side, except for one. He pulled the three pieces of paper out, unfolding the wrong one first. It didn’t speak to the questions his superiors wanted answered, but it did, at least partly, answer Logan’s.
“Well,” Logan said aloud, though it was drowned out by the turbine noise, “you win, DONNER.”
He opened the other papers. Their messages, to his mind, were secondary to what he had just read, but still important. The single-spaced typewritten pages were in Italian, both DONNER’s and Logan’s second language. Translating took a moment. Logan had a sense of what the whole picture was from the discussions with his bosses back at Langley; these messages completed the picture and scared him. The little he knew about nuclear physics was enough. A goddamn butcher would shit his pants.
“Major?”
“Go ahead, Mr. Logan.”
“How long to the Vinson?” This had to get to Langley fast.
After a pause: “Thirty minutes. Tops.”
Logan put the papers in his leg pocket. He could wait half an hour, but could the world? It was an overly grandiose question, he decided, one that DONNER had obviously reasoned and answered for himself. Had the man figured it all out? Probably not; the note pointed in that direction.
There could have been a great conversation when DONNER came out. Logan had looked forward to that. Case officers didn’t usually get that luxury. Of course he might have been allowed to spend some time with him at a later date. That wouldn’t have been good enough, though, and now it mattered not at all.
No one would ever know what Muhadesh Algar had made himself live through, least of all himself. Logan only knew that one life was over for the man known as DONNER. Such a benign code name for the man. He had lived to the extreme while trying to absolve his guilt, though no one would know that either. In the end only one person would feel some sense of relief from a life destined to end in futility, and that relief itself would somehow seem less than absolute considering the sacrifice.
Sixteen
THE PUZZLE’S CENTER
Los Angeles
The line was silent. The director wasn’t known for his thoughtful pauses, leaving Art waiting uncomfortably.
“Who confirmed this?” The director’s voice hinted at irritation.
“Israeli Intelligence,” Art answered. “Meir Shari. He was their military liaison in D.C. when I met him. His information is solid.”
Jones had no doubt about that. The theory, though, was conjecture. There could be doubts about it. The problem was that it made sense, and couldn’t be confirmed or disproved. “We have a problem, then, Jefferson. If there is a third Khaled brother on that plane, and if the assassination was just meant to set things up as you think, there isn’t much we can do. And if you’re wrong, we might have to do something to prevent a possibility, something that just might
kill a bunch of people.”
“I know that,” Art said. “But if—”
“If you’re right...” Jones thought on that. The information didn’t really change the equation in Washington, but it would end any speculation about how to respond. This would seal it, no matter what was on the plane. “Get back to your partner, Jefferson. What you just told me is going to the president. Good work.”
Art didn’t wait to hear the click. He hung up first. All Carol saw was her boss sprinting by, his jacket in hand.
The Chevy was speeding out of the underground garage three minutes later. The USC Medical Center was fifteen minutes away by car, ten if he drove hell-bent. Art would. It was his friend in there. He had to be with him.
There was no way he could know that the same pattern of logic, influenced by his growing emotional stress, had governed his fateful decision ninety minutes before. But the decision to deal with that improper action had already been made at one level of the Bureau, and would soon be approved by the highest level, the one whom Art had just finished with.
Langley
Landau slid the message from Logan into the DONNER file and tossed it onto the desk. It was late, and dark, but the lights from the CIA’s perimeter were faintly visible through the DCI’s window. The aged director reached and turned off the only light in his office, on his desk.
The outside world became instantly clearer when the office went dark. Those lights that were only specks before were now cones of light shining on the grounds. The rain had subsided hours before. Everything looked clean and fresh outside.
“Why?” Landau asked the outside light.
“Herb, you in here?” Drummond asked into the office.
The DCI turned his chair. “Yep. Right here.” He switched on the desk lamp.
The DDI waited at the doorway, leaning in. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Come on in.”
Drummond came in, but didn’t sit. He saw the DONNER file on the desk. “DONNER?”
“He’s dead. He did it himself.”
It should have surprised the DDI, but it didn’t. Assets, behind the sterile name, were people, with reasons for doing things that no one would ever know. His experience had taught him that time and again, though the loss of an agent never became “acceptable,” just “preferable” to some alternative. “Don’t try and read too much into it.”
Landau looked up, a slight smile forming. “Easier said than done, you know.”
He did. “Did he get the information we needed?”
“Exactly what we needed. I’m heading over to the White House in a few. The good news is that it’s not a bomb.”
“And the bad?” There was always bad when a person prefaced his words that way.
“That what they’ve got on board is still dangerous, but it still requires the nuclear material, which we don’t know if they have. There’s no evidence they’ve removed any from Tajoura.” Landau’s tone conveyed the frustration in that statement.
Drummond knew he had to bring some unwanted certainty to the situation. “Herb, it looks like they do have it. One of our S&T teams doing a financial trace on this whole thing came up with some damning info. It seems the colonel was in the habit of buying scrap metal through a Tunisian front company. The kind of stuff that comes from dismantled industrial plants.”
“A lot of those left around after the forties,” Landau commented.
“One of those scrap shipments was particularly suspicious. Bad documentation, a money trail through PLO and other accounts.” Drummond drew a breath, wishing the discovery had been a mistake. But it wasn’t. “That scrap came from Osirak four days before the Iraqis rolled into Kuwait.”
The DCI snickered. “So Qaddafi was playing the good Arab brother for Hussein, keeping the uranium safely tucked away.” Landau leaned back, his fingers tapping in sequence on the desk edge. “And there wasn’t supposed to be any nuclear material at Osirak anyway.”
“We always suspected there was. Even the Israelis did when they bombed the reactor back in the eighties.” Drummond finally sat. “We’ll have to figure that one out later—a Soviet slipup, more than likely. Back in the pre-Gorby days. What’s interesting is that this all appears to have been in the works before our predecessors did their dirty work on the colonel.”
“Like we knew, he’s wanted nuclear weapons openly for a long time,” Landau said. “And now he has highly enriched uranium. Higher than Tajoura.”
“It can’t all be on the plane,” Drummond commented.
The DCI shook his head. “No way. We’ll have to check on how much could be left behind, but that could present a further problem.” Or an opportunity.
It was quiet for a short period that seemed much longer. The misaligned wheels of the night janitor’s cart were audible in the hallway. Drummond turned to check the door visually. “You know, old Harry’s probably the most well informed man in this country,” he said, giving the crusty old custodian of the executive level more credit than was deserved. “The things he must’ve heard, even in just meaningless conversations. He’s been here thirty-two years.”
Landau heard none of it. His mind was occupied with a thought. “Qaddafi was smart on this one, Greg.”
The DDI returned to the relevant discussion. “How so?”
“He gets all this set up, the hijackers, the thing on board, all of it. The assassination, too; that’s what I think. And once it’s all over, if he’s still alive, he has surplus uranium for whatever reasons he chooses.”
“Smart and dangerous.”
Landau acknowledged the correctness of the DDI’s statement. “And the clever misinformation, placed just where we’d find it. The bomb design scam. They obviously didn’t have the capability to build something of even its crude design.”
“Just to scare us. To make us wring our hands.”
“Right. And he had us, too. What’s really on there may not be as frightening, but it could be just as deadly.”
Drummond flashed a knowing smile. “Not-so-scary things aren’t as hard to deal with.”
“Neither are other things, now that we know.” The DCI knew that Bud would agree with that thought.
The White House
“Sir, there’s a phone call for you. It’s urgent.”
Bud looked at the DCI. Urgent held little meaning when a meeting with the president was about to begin. He hovered over the speakerphone for a moment. “Who is it?”
“Director Jones.”
He debated the decision. “Herb, go on in without me. Tell them I’ll be in in a minute.”
* * *
“Where the hell is he?” the president asked. His body involuntarily paced.
“He’ll be here,” Ellis responded. “It must be important or Jones wouldn’t have called in the first place: He knows what’s going on.”
The president wasn’t angry at his NSA, he was angry at the shifting situation. The revelation from the DCI that something, though not a bomb, was on the hijacked plane had clouded an earlier decision he made. “How, tell me, how can I order that plane shot down with this new information? How can I do that?”
Neither Meyerson nor Gonzales had an answer. Herb Landau, however, saw little need to alter the previous course.
“Sir,” the DCI began, “you still have no other option, in my mind.”
“Herb, when we thought that plane was carrying an atomic bomb, then we had no choice. But now, with whatever it is, I don’t know. Mass destruction is one thing, but this...”
“This thing can’t be as destructive as a bomb,” Gonzales said.
“Do you know that... for sure?” the DCI asked. The chief of staff signaled not. “Then until we know that, we have to assume it is.”
The president checked the time. “Bud shou—”
The NSA’s entry interrupted the sentence. “We have a whole new problem,” Bud spat out. He was almost breathless, and walked right to the president, who stood in rolled- up shirtsleeves by the fireplace.
Bud looked to Landau. “You filled them in?” The DCI nodded. “Sir, the intelligence that came out concerning what is on the plane, coupled with what the Agency discovered concerning the source of the uranium, is disturbing; it validates to a high degree what we’ve suspected, with only a difference in the aircraft’s cargo. What we’ve been missing is the why. Why are they doing this?”
“Correct,” Meyerson agreed. “What do they hope to gain?”
Bud nodded. His movements were quick and sharp, signaling the seriousness of the unknown to the others. “We have that now.”
“Let’s have it,” the president said. He walked over to his desk and sat down. Meyerson and Gonzales came over, too, standing at the desk’s edge. Landau followed, moving slowly and leaning forward on a chair back.
“I just got off the phone with Gordy Jones. He relayed some new information from L.A. They found the man they believe was the connection for the assassins. His name was Marcus Jackson.”
“Was?” The president knew what it meant.
“They attempted to arrest him. An FBI agent was seriously wounded and Jackson was killed.”
The president rubbed his upper lip with the edge of his fist. “Ellis, find out the injured agent’s name.” To Bud: “Go on.”
Bud’s breathing eased. “This is all hot, so bear with me. Some paper?” The president leaned forward and handed over a pad and pen. “We have two assassins, the Khaled brothers, with a deeply personal reason for doing what they did. You already know about their little sister. Now, they did it—there’s no doubt. The FBI has positive identification on them from several sources and witnesses. The question was who helped them, and how? Well, this Jackson fellow was in the perfect position to put them in place without drawing undue attention, and since he disappeared right after the killings they went looking for him. No luck right away, but they did find the pickup point for the weapons. Jackson had stashed them there for an easy pickup by the Khaleds—that way there was no face-to-face meeting, no direct link. And for his trouble he got a million bucks, free and clean.”
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