“Tell him, Jack,” Bell prompted.
“You know the guy we think might be a URC courier?”
“Hadi?”
“Right. Got something on his financials-a credit card. He’s moving-right now. An Alitalia 747 from da Vinci in Rome to Pearson outside Toronto.”
“And from there?”
“Chicago, but nothing beyond that on his credit card yet.”
“It’s either his destination or a dry-cleaning stop,” Bell said, using the old CIA tradecraft term for an SDR, or surveillance detection run. “Chicago’s a hub; he could be going anywhere, in country or out again.”
“How long do we have?” Granger asked.
“Four hours,” Jack replied.
Granger asked, “Rick, how solid are we on this guy?”
“Seventy-thirty. He’s on a known URC distribution list, does a lot of shuttling: here, Europe, South America. Best guess: He’s either a full-fledged courier or a stringer doing logistics for them. Either way, I think he’s worth the effort. We’ve got him on a plane, with a known destination and time. Doesn’t get much better than that.”
Granger was silent for a few moments, then: “Okay, get Kingfisher in the conference room. I’m coming down.”
So what’s happening?” asked Dominic Caruso, walking into the conference room. Save Clark and Chavez, the others were already assembled: Brian, Rick Bell, Jerry Rounds.
Jack explained briefly.
“Holy shit.”
“My words exactly.”
“When’s the plane get in?”
“Three-twenty, the schedule says,” Jack replied.
Sam Granger walked in and took his seat at the head of the conference table. “Okay, it’s eight-forty here, figure seventy, seventy-five minutes to Toronto. We don’t have much time to do anything. Not without official support anyway. When are Clark and Chavez due in?”
Rick Bell checked his watch. “’Bout forty minutes.”
“Let’s see if we can get them in on this. Jack, you got Hadi’s pedigree?”
“Yeah.”
He handed out the documents, and there was sixty seconds of silence as everyone flipped through the pages. Brian asked, “Do we have a photo of this guy?”
“Nope,” Jack answered. “No description at all.”
“Rome to Toronto-on from there to Chicago and then… No information, right?”
“Correct,” Jack confirmed with a nod.
“If this was a Bureau op,” Dominic said, “we’d contact the RCMP and flood plainclothes guys into the airport and try to ID the guy, then follow him to wherever he’s going. But we can’t do that, can we?”
“Fly to Toronto,” Jack said. “Use the Mark-1 eyeball and pray for luck. Let’s assume we can ID the bird. Then what can we do?”
“Covert surveillance,” Dominic said. “Try to follow him to wherever the hell he’s going. Ain’t gonna be easy. Even if we succeed, we can’t arrest him, can’t interview him, can’t do much of anything, unless somebody wants to green-light a takedown.”
“No chance,” Granger said. “He’s the only shot at a bird dog we’ve ever had with the URC. We either tail him, tag him, or snag him-in that order.”
“We gather information,” Bell told them. “Whatever we get, it’s more than we have now. Small steps, guys.”
“Let’s go see the boss,” Granger said.
We have a bird in the air,” Jack told Hendley a few minutes later. “Subject name is Hadi, on his way to Toronto. His plane arrives after three Eastern Time.”
“Want to try to eyeball the guy?” Hendley asked.
“It’s a potential curveball hanging over the plate,” Rounds said. “But our subject information is a little thin,” he had to admit.
“What, exactly, do we have?” Hendley asked. Jack handed over the printout, and Hendley set it on his desktop to read. “Good catch,” he said, looking up briefly. “Okay. Let’s send everybody-”
“Clark and Chavez are almost wheels-down. Gonna see if we can intercept them.”
“Good. Jack, Dom, Brian, draw credit cards and cell phones from the second floor.”
They all drove together to BWI Airport in Brian’s Mercedes C-Class sedan. There was a 737 scheduled to leave for Canada in seventy-five minutes, Rounds told them via phone. Tickets were waiting for all of them. Once inside the terminal, they picked up their tickets, located Clark and Chavez’s flight on the board, and headed out.
Brian asked Dominic, “How’re the Canadian cops?”
“Brit tradition, and some of their own. The RCMP-the Mounties-go way back, and they’re pretty good at investigations, but I’ve never interacted with them.”
“Bright red coats,” Brian said. “But that can make easy targets, especially on the back of a horse.”
“They’re good guys, too,” Dominic reminded his brother.
Brian chuckled. “Just a random observation.”
Clark and Chavez came off the jetway, saw Jack and the others, and walked over. “Door-to-door service?” Clark asked.
“We got something cooking. You guys up for a little tag?”
Chavez said, “As long as you find me Starbucks first.”
Jack explained the situation as they exited the security checkpoint and returned to the ticketing desk for Clark and Chavez’s passes. “So how do we do this?” Jack asked Clark, as they went back through security.
“Look for a guy who looks like he doesn’t belong. He’s sort of a trained spook. He presumably knows how to be invisible. You look for that. He won’t be looking around like most tourists do, won’t be doing anything to call attention to himself, but he probably also will not be overly familiar with the location. So a business type who doesn’t know the turf. When he looks around, he’ll be doing it carefully. He’ll probably be careful-looking for surveillance. You’ve been taught how to do that. Look for somebody else who’s doing what you were taught. It’s more art than science.”
“So what the hell do we do?” Brian demanded.
“Look like an American tourist. Turn everything off, all the training. Just be a normal schlub. Nobody notices them. Unless you’re in Redland-in the old USSR, for example. You especially never smile. The Russians almost never smile, weird thing about their culture. It ain’t easy, I know. But I been doing it for almost thirty years. It’s a little easier to remember when your ass is on the line,” he concluded with a smile.
“How many times?”
“Russia? More than once, and I was scared every time. You went in naked, no gun, no place to run to, just a ‘legend,’ a little backstopped cover if you were lucky.”
“‘Backstopped.’”
“Background that would stand up to light scrutiny. The hotel you stayed at in the last city, employer’s phone number… Stuff like that.”
“Been meaning to ask you,” Dominic said. “What about these guys, the current class of enemies?”
Clark thought this over. “Part of me says they’re all the same-different motivation, different outlook, all that, but doing the same shit. But the other part of me isn’t so sure. This bunch at least believes in God, but then they violate the rules of their own religion. Sociopathic personalities? Hell, I don’t know. They have their version of the world, and we have ours, and the twain don’t meet.”
The flight was called, and they went aboard together. Five seats abreast, separated by the aisle, all in coach. Chavez, with his short legs, didn’t mind, though Clark did. As he grew older, he got stiffer. The usual safety routine. Clark had his belt on and snugged in. He’d learned over the years not to dismiss safety rules in any of their manifestations. The 737-400 taxied out and rotated off the ground as routinely as if the pilot were driving a car. Clark lifted the in-flight magazine and started flipping through the catalog section. He stopped, looking at a toolbox ad.
“So how exactly are we going to do this?” Jack asked Clark.
“Play it by ear,” Clark replied, then turned back to his catalog.
/> The landing was almost as smooth as the takeoff, followed by the rollout and taxi trip to the terminal, and deplaning, and the usual shuffling walk-off. And the terminal was as nondescript as all the others around the world. They turned left and walked down the wide, anonymous concourse. Signs directed them to international arrivals, and it was just enough of a walk to get the blood flowing in their legs. Information TV monitors told them that the Alitalia flight was still ninety minutes out. A quick check of the area told them that it was easily surveilled. So much the better, there was a casual eatery in direct line of sight, with the usual plastic chairs surrounding plastic tables.
“Okay, guys, we have maybe two hours, counting processing the mutt through customs,” Clark thought aloud.
“That’s all?” Jack wondered.
“Maybe they’ll have a dog wander past the bags, sniffing for drugs, but not much more than that. The Canadians aren’t being all that careful. Bad guys transit Canada. They don’t stay here to do mischief. Good luck for them, I guess. It allows them to save money on security expenditures.”
“If the bad guys are casual here, you could bag a few fairly easily and put them on a boat to Buffalo.”
“And then,” Dominic continued the thought, “they’d make enemies they really don’t need. It’s business.”
“Good point,” Chavez said. “Business is business, and you let a sleeping dog alone, until you get bit. I wonder when they’ll have that happen to them.”
“Depends on the bad guys, but making enemies gratuitously is not good for business. Remember, a terrorist is a businessman whose business is killing people. Maybe they’re ideologically driven, but business is still business.”
“How many have you bagged?” Dominic asked Clark.
“A few, all in Europe. They’re not well trained. Alert, and they can be sly like a fox, but that isn’t the same as training. So you just exercise caution and take them down. Helps to shoot them in the back. Hard for them to return fire that way.”
Dominic frowned. “Huh.”
“Ain’t supposed to be fair. This isn’t the Olympics.”
“I suppose.”
“But it goes against your grain, doesn’t it?”
Dominic gave this a moment’s thought, then shrugged. “I don’t know about grain-just a different mind-set.”
Clark smiled grimly. “Welcome to the other side of the looking glass.” He checked his watch. The flight would be descending now.
It struck Hadi that the ground under an airplane always looked the same-but different. Distant but inviting as you came back down. Like America, all the roads and cars coming into view. He gauged height by whether or not he could see individual cars and trucks. The “Air Show” setting on his mini-TV said that altitude was 4,910 feet and dropping, ground speed 295, well down from their cruising height and speed over the ocean. They’d land soon. Ten minutes, according to the computer. Time for him to wake up all the way. The stewardess took his coffee cup away. Italian coffee was much like that of his distant youth in its acidity, and truth be told, he much enjoyed Italian food, though they served pork far too much, and though he drank wine, he drew the line well short of pig flesh. He’d get off, waltz through customs and immigration, spot his greeter, and get his ticket on to Chicago from him, who’d drive him also to his connecting flight for United Airlines Flight 1108, and he’d have a cigarette but not much of a chat.
He had to be alert coming through customs and immigration. He had nothing to declare, of course, not even a bottle of Italian wine. Business traveler, he was supposed to be, for whom such a trip was routine. Jewel dealer, that was his cover. He knew enough to have a brief conversation on the subject. Not enough to impress or fool a real Jewish diamond merchant, of course, but he knew how to deflect any conversation, even to fake an accent. Well, he was a business traveler of sorts, and this sort of trip was routine, though this was his first-ever visit to Canada. One more infidel country, with simple and gentle rules for people in transit, and they’d be just as happy to see him on his way, taking no notice of him as long as he didn’t carry a firearm or commit a crime.
The touchdown was a little rough. Perhaps the flight crew was weary as well. What a terrible life they had, Hadi thought. Sitting down all day, not walking around, constantly changing their body clocks to different places and times. But all men had their places in the world, and theirs was well paid, just unpleasant, even for infidels. His job and his cover compelled him to be pleasant to all he met. That included infidels who routinely ate pig. It was hard, but it was required by his place in life. The airliner stopped, and with the other 153 people aboard, he stood, collected his carry-on bag, and stumbled to the door.
You could tell the Canadian officials in their navy-blue visored caps, blank expressions, and scanning eyes. Greeters who didn’t care a whit about those whom they greeted to their infidel country. There were probably mosques within a mile or so, but he would not go near one of those. The local government might permit Muslims to worship Allah in a place of their own, but surely they were all watched, and the entrants photographed. His job was to be invisible.
It’s down,” Clark said, looking at the TV monitor hanging twenty feet away.
“All we know is that he takes a piss standing up,” Dominic reminded them.
Where’s the nearest head? Clark thought. A lot of people made a head call soon after deplaning, after being too nervous to use the one on the airplane. Wouldn’t be a bad idea to camp out on that possibility. Spooks were not robots. Every one had his own peculiarities, and those, once identified, made them vulnerable. It struck him that he’d never been a counterspy. Identifying spooks was something he’d always worked to prevent… but maybe that gave him the resources needed to do the job? He’d see. They were after an Arab, probably late thirties to middle forties, male. Height, weight, hair color, and eye color were all unknowns. He was a trained operator. He’d probably act like a trained operator.
Well, he was being met. They knew that much. Somebody to hand him a ticket for a connecting flight. Probably not as well trained. Probably a stringer. Maybe somebody hoping to earn a promotion in whatever organization he belonged to. Maybe as smart but not as experienced or as well trained. Somebody who knew his inbound asset by sight? Maybe, maybe not. Probably a driver. He’d be looking to make the pickup. Scanning the faces for recognition. Holding a sign? Yeah, maybe THE EMIR SENT ME, Clark thought with a snort. He’d seen some dumb ones in his time, but never that dumb. Might as well eat a gun outside the terminal with TV cameras watching. These guys might not be pros the way he thought of the term, but neither would they be stupid. Somebody had trained them or instructed their organization on how to teach them fieldcraft. It wasn’t that hard. The nuances came with experience, but the basics were things a half-smart guy could figure out on his own. The four of them were standing in line. That wasn’t smart. He shuffled over to Dominic.
“Break into pairs, opposite sides of the railings. Dominic, you and Brian. Jack, you’re with Ding and me.”
Dominic and Brian moved down the escalator and away, curling back to a place opposite Clark and Chavez. John tapped his nose, and the twins repeated the signal.
“What are you thinking, Domingo?” John asked.
“Who, them? Good instincts, a little rough around the edges, but that’s natural. If trouble develops, I think they’ll handle it okay.”
“Fair enough for a ninja,” Clark responded.
“We own the night, baby.” That had been quite a while ago, but it was part of Domingo’s core identity. He was a hard one to spot. Short as he was, people often overlooked him. His eyes could give him away, but only if you took the time to scan his face, and he really wasn’t big enough for any tough guy to worry about, until you were on your back, wondering how the hell you got there. Times had changed since his SEAL days. Third SOG had had a few John Wayne types, but the new ones looked more like marathon runners, short and skinny. They tended to live longer, being harder t
o hit. But their eyes were different, and that’s where the danger was. If you were smart enough to notice.
“Little nervous,” Jack admitted.
“Nice and casual,” Clark replied. “Don’t try too hard. And never look directly into the subject’s eyes, except maybe to check out the way he was looking around, but only briefly and carefully.”
Who are you, Hadi? Clark thought. Why are you here? Where are you going? Whom do you want to meet? None of which was he likely to ask or have answers for. But the mind did its own thing all the time, the more so for a fairly intelligent and active mind.
49
HADI COULD have been the first in line, but he manufactured a false delay to avoid that possibility. He didn’t have to pretend to be tired. Counting the feeder flight from Marseille and the layover at Milan, he’d been in the air for fifteen hours, and the reduced partial-pressure of oxygen had taken its toll on his body. One more reason to wonder about the flight crew and their miserable jobs.
“Hello, Mr. Klein,” the immigration clerk said with what appeared to be a smile.
“Good day,” Hadi replied, reminding himself again of his false identity. Fortunately, no one had tried to speak with him on the flight, except the flight attendant, who kept his wineglass fully attended. And the food had been tolerable, a pleasant surprise.
“The purpose of your visit?” the clerk asked, studying Hadi’s face.
“Business.” It was even true.
“Duration?”
“Not sure yet, but probably four or five days. Is that important?”
“Only to you, sir.” The clerk scanned the passport, ran the cover through the barcode reader, wondering if the red light would go on-but they almost never did, and it didn’t this time. “Nothing to declare?”
Dead or Alive Page 39