Nelson Demille - [John Corey 2]

by Lions Game(Lit)

  He watched for a half minute, interested, but disinterested.

  The General was very much alive and was trying to speak, though he was choking on his blood.

  Khalil stepped closer and looked at the General's face. Their eyes met.

  Khalil said, "I could have killed you with an ax, the way I killed Colonel Hambrecht. But you were very brave and I respect that. So, you will not suffer much longer. I can't promise the same for your other squadron mates."

  General Waycliff tried to speak, but pink, foamy blood erupted from his mouth. Finally, he managed to say to his weeping wife, "Gail . . ."

  Khalil put the muzzle of the automatic to the side of Gail Waycliff's head, above her ear, and fired a shot through the skull and brain.

  She toppled over beside her husband.

  General Waycliff's hand reached out to touch his wife, then he picked his head up to look at her.

  Khalil watched for a few seconds, then said to General Waycliff, "She died in far less pain than my mother."

  General Waycliff turned his head and looked at Asad Khalil. Terrance Waycliff's eyes were wide open and blood frothed at his lips. He said, "Enough . . ." He coughed. " . . . enough killing . . . go back . . ."

  "I'm not finished here. I'll go home when your friends are all dead."

  The General lay on the floor, but said nothing further. His hand found his wife's hand, and he squeezed it.

  Khalil waited, but the man was taking his time dying. Finally, Khalil crouched beside the couple and removed the General's watch and his Air Force Academy ring, then found the General's wallet in his hip pocket. He also took Mrs. Waycliff's watch and rings, then ripped her pearl necklace off.

  He remained crouched beside them, then put his fingers over the General's chest wound where the blood covered his service ribbons. Khalil took his hand away and put his fingers to his lips, licking the blood off, savoring the blood and the moment.

  General Waycliff's eyes moved, and he watched in horror as the man licked the blood from his fingers. He tried to speak, but began coughing again, spitting up more blood.

  Khalil kept his eyes fixed on the General's eyes, and they stared at each other. Finally, the General began breathing in short, wheezing spasms. Then, the breathing stopped. Khalil felt the man's heart, then his wrist, then the artery in his neck. Satisfied that General Terrance Waycliff was finally dead, Khalil stood and looked down at both bodies. He said, "May you burn in hell."

  CHAPTER 28

  By noon, even Kate, Ted, and Jack looked thoroughly debriefed. In fact, if we'd been any more debriefed, all we'd have left in our heads were empty sinus cavities. I mean, jeez, these people knew how to get the last piece of information out of you without resorting to electric shock.

  Anyway, it was now lunchtime in Hooverland, and they left us alone for lunch, thank God, but advised us to dine in the company cafeteria. They didn't give us lunch vouchers, so we actually had to pay for the privilege, though as I recall the chow was government-subsidized.

  The cafeteria-style lunchroom was pleasant enough, but there was a reduced Sunday menu. What was offered tended toward healthy and wholesome—a salad bar, yogurt, vegetables, fruit juices, and herbal teas. I had a tuna salad and a cup of coffee that tasted like embalming fluid.

  The people around us appeared to be the cast of a J. Edgar Hoover training film called Good Grooming Leads to More Arrests.

  There were only a few black guys in the lunchroom, looking like chocolate chips in a bowl of oatmeal. Washington may be the capital of cultural diversity, but change comes slowly in some organizations. I wondered what the bosses here actually thought of the ATTF in New York, in particular the NYPD guys, who when assembled look like the alien bar scene in Star Wars.

  Anyway, maybe I was being uncharitable toward my hosts. The FBI was actually a pretty good law enforcement agency whose main problem was image. The politically correct crowd didn't like them, the media could swing either way, but the public for the most part still adored them. Other law enforcement agencies were impressed by their work, envious of their power and money, and pissed off at their arrogance. It's not easy being great.

  Jack Koenig, eating a salad, said, "I can't tell if the ATTF is going to stay on the case, or if the Counterterrorism section here is going to take it away from us."

  Kate commented, "This is precisely the kind of case we were created for."

  I guess it was. But parent organizations don't always like their weird offspring. The Army, for instance, never liked its own Special Forces with its fruity green berets. The NYPD never liked its anti-crime unit made up of guys who looked and dressed like derelicts and muggers. The spit-and-polish establishment neither trusts nor understands its own down-and-dirty special units, and they don't give a rat's ass how effective the irregular troops are. Weird people, especially when they're effective, are a threat to the status quo.

  Kate added, "We have a good track record in New York."

  Koenig thought a moment, then replied, "I suppose it depends on where Khalil is, or where they think he is. Probably they'll let us work the New York metro area without interference. Overseas will go to the CIA, and the rest of the country and Canada will go to Washington."

  Ted Nash said nothing, and neither did I. Nash was holding so many cards so close to his chest that he didn't need a bib for his yogurt. I was holding no cards, and I was totally clueless about how these people carved up the turf.

  But I did know that ATTF people, based in the New York metro area, often were sent to different parts of the country or even the world when a case began in New York. In fact, one of the things that Dom Fanelli told me when he was pushing this job on me was that ATTF people went to Paris a lot to wine, dine, and seduce French women and recruit them to spy on suspicious Arabs. I didn't actually believe this, but I knew there was a possibility of hitting the Federal expense account hard for a trip to Europe. But enough about patriotism. The question was, If it happens on your turf, do you follow it to the ends of the earth? Or do you stop at the border?

  The most frustrating homicide case I could remember was three years ago, when a rapist-murderer was loose on the East Side, and we couldn't get a fix on the guy. Then he goes down to Georgia for a week to see a friend, and some local yokel cop stops him for DWI, and the local yokels have a brand-new computer bought with Federal bucks and for no reason other than boredom, they run the guy's prints through to the FBI, and lo and behold, they match the prints we found at a crime scene. So we get an extradition order, and yours truly has to go down to Hominy Grits, Georgia, to extradite the perp, and I have to put up with twenty-four hours of Police Chief Corn Pone ribbing me about all kinds of crap, mostly about New York City, plus I got lessons in criminal investigation and how to spot a killer and if I ever needed any help again, just give him a call. That sucked big-time.

  But back to the lunchroom at FBI Headquarters. I could tell by Koenig's musings that he wasn't sure the ATTF was in a strong position to pursue or resolve this case. He said, "If Khalil is caught in Europe, two or three countries will want a crack at him before we get him, unless the U.S. government can persuade a friendly country that he should be extradited here for what amounts to a crime of mass murder."

  Though some of this legal stuff seemed to be for my benefit, I already knew most of this. I was a cop for almost twenty years, I taught at John Jay for five years, and I lived with a lawyer for almost two years. In fact, that was the only time in my life that I got to fuck a lawyer, rather than vice versa.

  Anyway, Koenig's major concern was that we had dropped the ball at the goal line, and we were about to be sent to the showers. Actually, this was my concern, too.

  To make matters worse, one of our team, Ted Nash by name, was about to get traded back to the team he started with. And this team had a better shot at winning this kind of game. An image of Police Chief Corn Pone flashed through my mind, but now he had Ted Nash's face, and he was pointing to Asad Khalil behind bars and saying to me, "
See, Corey, I got him. Let me tell you how I did it. I was in this cafe on Rue St. Germaine—that's Paris, Corey—and I was talking to an asset." And then I pulled my gun and capped him.

  In fact, Ted was babbling, and I tuned in. Ted was saying, "I'm going to Paris tomorrow to talk to our embassy people. It's a good idea to begin where it began, then work backwards from there." He went on.

  I wondered if I could sever his windpipe with my salad fork.

  Kate and Jack chatted a bit about jurisdiction, extradition, Federal and state indictments, and so forth. Lawyer crap. Kate said to me, "I'm sure it's the same with the police. The officers who start the case work it through to the end, which keeps the chain of evidence unbroken and makes the testimony of the case officers less open to attack by the defense."

  And so on. I mean, jeez, we haven't even caught this scumbag yet and they're perfecting a case. This is what happens when lawyers become cops. This is the crap I had to put up with when I dealt with ADAs and District Attorney investigators. This country is sinking in legalities, which I guess is okay when you're dealing with your average all-American criminal. I mean, you need to keep an eye on the Constitution and make sure no one gets railroaded. But somebody should invent a different kind of court with different rules for somebody like Asad Khalil. The guy doesn't even pay taxes, except maybe sales tax.

  Anyway, as the lunch hour ended, Mr. Koenig said to us, "You all did a fine job this morning. I know this is not pleasant, but we're here to help and to be useful. I'm very proud of the three of you."

  I felt the tuna turn in my tummy. But Kate seemed pleased. Ted didn't give a rat's ass, which meant we finally had something in common.

  CHAPTER 29

  A sad Khalil retraced his route to the Beltway, and by 10:15 A.M. he was traveling south on Interstate 95, away from the city of Washington. There were, he knew, no further tolls on the roads or the bridges between here and his destination.

  As he drove, he rummaged through the pillowcase and extracted the loose cash he'd found in the General's bedroom, the cash from the General's wallet, and the cash from the handbag of the General's wife, which he had taken from the foyer. All together, there was close to $200. The money from the motel office had been $440, but some of that had been his. Gamal Jabbar's wallet had contained less than $100. He made a quick calculation in his mind and added up a total of about $1,100. Certainly, he thought, this would be enough for the next few days.

  He approached a bridge that crossed a small river and pulled his car over into the narrow emergency shoulder, putting his flasher lights on. Khalil got out of the car quickly, carrying the tied pillowcase, which contained the General's pistol and the valuables from his house. Khalil moved to the rail of the bridge, looked both ways, then looked down into the river to be sure there was no boat below, and let the bag fall over the railing.

  He got back into his car and continued. He would have liked to keep some souvenirs of his visit, especially the General's ring and the photos of his children. But he knew from past experience in Europe that he needed to be able to survive a random and cursory search. He had no intention of allowing such a search, but it could happen, and he had to be prepared for such a possibility.

  He took the first exit he saw and drove off the ramp where three service stations appeared before him. He pulled into the one called Exxon and drove to the line of gasoline pumps marked SELF-SERVICE. This was no different from Europe, they told him, and he could use the bank credit card he had with him, but he didn't want to leave a paper trail this early in his mission, so he decided to pay in cash.

  He completed the refueling procedure, then went to a glass booth where he put two twenty-dollar bills through the small opening. The man glanced at him, and Khalil thought the quick look was not friendly. The man put his change on the ledge and announced the amount, then turned away from him. Asad took the change and went back to his car and got in.

  He drove back to the Interstate and continued south.

  This was the state of Virginia, he knew, and he noticed that the trees were more fully leafed here than in New York or New Jersey. His digital outside thermometer told him it was 76 degrees Fahrenheit. He pushed a button on the console and the temperature was displayed as 25 degrees Celsius. This was a pleasant temperature, he thought, but there was too much humidity here.

  He continued on, keeping up with traffic that moved at over 75 miles per hour, much faster than north of Washington, and ten miles an hour faster than the posted speed limit. One of his briefing officers in Tripoli, Boris, the Russian KGB man who had lived five years in America, had told him, "The police in the South are known to stop vehicles that have license plates from the North. Especially from New York."

  Khalil had asked why, and Boris told him, "There was a great civil war between the North and the South in which the South was defeated. They harbor much animosity because of this."

  He'd inquired, "When was this civil war?"

  "Over a hundred years ago." Boris explained the war to him briefly, then added, "The Americans forgive their foreign enemies in ten years, but they don't forgive each other so quickly." Boris added, "But if you stay on the Interstate highway, it will be better. This is a route heavily traveled by people from the North, who take their vacation in Florida. Your automobile will not attract undue attention."

  The Russian further informed him, "Many people from New York are Jews, and the police in the South may stop a car from New York for that reason." The Russian had laughed and told him, "If they stop you, tell them you don't like Jews either."

  Khalil thought about all of this. They had tried to make light of his driving in the South, but clearly they knew less about this place than they knew of the territory between New York and Washington. Clearly, too, this was a place that could cause him problems. He thought of the gasoline attendant, thought of his New York license plates, and also thought of his appearance. Boris had also told him, "There are not many races of people in the South—mostly they are black Africans or Europeans. To them, you look like neither. But when you get to Florida, it will be better. There are many races in Florida, and many skin colors. They may think you are South American, but many people in Florida speak Spanish and you do not. So, if you need to explain yourself, say you are Brazilian. In Brazil, they speak Portuguese and very few Americans speak that language.

  But if it is the police you are talking to, then you are Egyptian, just as it says on all your identification."

  Khalil reflected on Boris' advice. In Europe, there were many visitors, businessmen, and residents from Arabic countries, but in America, outside of the area of New York, his appearance might be noticed, despite what Malik had said to the contrary.

  Khalil had discussed this with Malik, who told him, "Don't let that idiot Russian worry you. In America you only have to smile, don't look suspicious, keep your hands out of your pockets, carry an American newspaper or magazine, tip fifteen percent, don't stand too close when you speak, bathe often, and tell everyone to have a good day."

  Khalil smiled at the image of Malik telling him about Americans. Malik had concluded his assessment of Americans by saying, "They are like Europeans, but their thinking is more simple. Be direct, but not abrupt. Be friendly, but not familiar. They have a limited knowledge of geography and other cultures, less so than the Europeans. So if you want to be a Greek, be a Greek. Your Italian is good, so be from Sardinia. They've never heard of the place anyway."

  Khalil directed his attention back to the road. The Sunday afternoon traffic was sometimes heavy, sometimes light. There were few trucks on the road because it was the Christian Sabbath. The scenes on either side of the road were mostly of fields and forest with many pine trees. Occasionally, he would see what appeared to be a factory or a warehouse, but like the Autobahn, this road did not come close to cities or areas of population. It was difficult to imagine here that America held over 250 million people. His own country held not even five million, yet Libya had given the Americans much to worr
y about since the Great Leader had deposed the stupid King Idris many years ago.

  Khalil finally let his thoughts go back to the house of General Waycliff. He had been saving these thoughts, like a sweet dessert, to be enjoyed at his leisure.

  He re-created the entire scene in his mind, and tried to imagine how he might have gotten more pleasure from it. Perhaps, he thought, he should have made the General beg for his life, or made the wife get on her knees and kiss his feet. But he had the impression that they wouldn't beg. In fact, he had extracted all he could from them, and any further attempts to make them plead for mercy would have been unsatisfying. They knew they were going to die as soon as he revealed his purpose in being there.

  He thought, however, that he could have made their deaths more painful, but he was restricted by the necessity of making the murders look as though they were part of a theft. He needed time to complete his mission before the American Intelligence organizations began to comprehend what was happening.

  Asad Khalil knew that at any point in his visits to the men of the Al Azziziyah squadron, the police could be waiting for him. He accepted this possibility and took comfort in what he had already accomplished in Europe, at the New York airport, and now at the house of General Waycliff.

  It would be good if he could complete his list, but if he could not, then someone else would. He would like to return to Libya, but it was not important that he do so. To die in the land of the infidel on his Jihad was a triumph and an honor. His place in Paradise was already secure.

  Asad Khalil felt as good at this moment as he'd ever felt since that terrible night.

  Bahira. I am doing this for you as well.

  He approached the city of Richmond, and the traffic became heavier. He had to follow the signs that took him in a circle around the city, on a highway called 1-295, then finally back to 1-95, heading south again.

  At 1:15 P.M., he saw a sign that said WELCOME TO NORTH CAROLINA.

  He looked around, but noticed little difference from the state of Virginia. The Russian had warned him that the police in North Carolina were slightly more suspicious than the police in Virginia. The police in the next state, South Carolina, would be even more likely to stop him for no reason, and so would the police in Georgia.