by By Jon Land
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YOU FORGET THAT WE ARE STILL INSULATED BY THE TRUE SOLDIERS OF PROMETHEUS.
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EVEN WE ARE NO LONGER CONVINCED OF THAT.
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I SUGGEST CONTACT BETWEEN US BE PUT OFF UNTIL A LATER TIME WHEN THE TRUE EXTENT OF DAMAGE CAN BE ASCERTAINED.
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NOT ACCEPTABLE. THE RISK IS SIMPLY TOO GREAT. WE MUST INSIST THE OPERATION BE TERMINATED.
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WE CONCUR.
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THERE IS NO OTHER CHOICE.
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U.S. WE AWAIT YOUR RESPONSE...UNITED STATES, PLEASE RESPOND.
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UNITED STATES HAS LOGGED OFF
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* * * *
Chapter 76
T
he Hague had seemed the perfect site for the International Criminal Court since the court’s very inception. Already the seat for the Permanent Court of Arbitration and renowned for its hosting of a series of landmark peace conferences, The Hague enjoyed both the status and the credibility to provide the International Criminal Court with instant acceptance from the international community.
The Hague also served as the seat of government for the Netherlands, the offices clustered in a striking series of brick and stone buildings along an artificial lake called the Vyver. The vast offices and space required for the court’s smooth function was created by relocating a number of governmental headquarters to the outlying provinces, decentralizing state government in favor of further boosting The Hague’s international appeal.
With the International Criminal Court’s ceremonial, if not official, opening scheduled for today, diplomats and dignitaries had been streaming in for days, led by United Nations officials responsible for charting the court’s course and its general oversight.
“I could get used to this,” Ben said, as Danielle wheeled him through Amsterdam’s airport.
It had been her idea to use the wheelchair as cover, obtaining one as easy as having a flight attendant call ahead from the plane to request it be waiting at the gate. She had to assume that the enemy forces behind this plot had put out alerts for them all over Europe. Short of elaborate disguises, Danielle knew, the best way to avoid detection was to slide through the dragnet utterly ignored by those watching for something else entirely.
No one pays, attention to wheelchairs, much less one occupied by a man being pushed by a woman.
Ben wasn’t convinced at first but fell into the ruse easily, not abandoning it until Danielle pretended to help him climb into a cab bound for the area of The Hague’s government complex.
“We still have to get to Arguayo,” he reminded.
“Leave that to me,” Danielle smiled, taking his hand in hers.
Determining Arguayo’s interview schedule had been as easy as knowing the proper phone number to call, not here in the Netherlands, but at the general’s office in New York where duplicate copies were kept. That phone call had yielded Danielle the information that two journalists from a major German newsmagazine, a male and a female, had been given the final slot of the morning.
Danielle then called back pretending to be Arguayo’s Hague-based assistant with a request for the reporters’ contact number. The general was running late, Danielle explained, and needed to push the interview back until the afternoon. A third phone call to the Germans canceled their interview altogether, leaving Ben and Danielle only the task of acquiring press credentials. That was hardly difficult considering the multitude of media personnel about and the relatively lax security precautions employed to match names and faces with actual identities. All Ben and Danielle had to do was wait for two journalists to emerge from the building and discard their credentials, their assignment complete.
The official seating of the eight judges of the International Criminal Court, while not a huge media event, had still managed to attract hundreds of journalists from all over the world. Not surprisingly, the area around The Hague’s government complex was crowded with both tourists and press members, all kept back behind hastily constructed security barriers until the official convocation. Even at that point, only a few members of the public would be allowed through, and before it United Nations officials were busy giving background interviews in suites of offices overlooking the Vyver.
As chief of U.N. security, much of the responsibility for cases to be heard by the new court fell upon General Alexis Arguayo. Accordingly, he had a full slate of interviews booked throughout the morning in half-hour blocks.
The questions for the first several hours proved to be strictly run-of-the-mill and Arguayo had encountered no difficulty answering them in a refined, scholarly manner. His eleven a.m. interview, his last until another series began in the afternoon hours following the official convocation, was with a pair of German journalists. He managed to squeeze in a few minutes of paperwork in the lag between one interview ending and the next one about to take place. He heard the door open and his assistant usher the Germans inside.
Arguayo capped his pen and looked up smiling, rising politely. “So nice to make your—”
He stopped, freezing halfway out of his chair.
“Good morning, General,” greeted Danielle Barnea.
* * * *
Chapter 77
B
en held his position by the door while Danielle continued to face Arguayo, watching his hands. He had, after all, been a legendary fighter long before he entered the world of diplomacy.
He scowled at Danielle, then focused his gaze on Ben. “I thought you were dead.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“It’s finished, General, “ Danielle warned in Russian.
Arguayo’s eyes bulged. He tensed, then slowly relaxed as he smiled thinly at Danielle. “Most impressive, Inspector Barnea. I see the esteem in which I held you was justified.”
“Unfortunate that’s going to lead to your undoing.”
“Have you managed to smuggle a gun into the building, Inspector Barnea?” Arguayo made a show out of gazing down at her hands. “Then again, with your legendary prowess, you don’t really need one, do you? You should have stayed an assassin. It
’s what you do best.”
Arguayo slid a hand into his pocket. Ben and Danielle both stiffened, relaxing only when Arguayo’s fingers emerged holding a cigar.
“Sorry to disappoint you both, but I’m unarmed,” Arguayo said, lifting a lighter and puffing his cigar to life. “I assume we can dispense with the pleasantries.”
“It’s time for you to go home,” Ben told him.
“A difficult prospect when one has no home. Everything I knew in Russia is gone. But it will all come back. It’s happening already, slowly, behind the scenes.”
“And once the United States is decimated by this attack . . .”
“Exactly, Inspector,” Arguayo agreed, gloating.
“Too bad that’s never going to happen,” Danielle said.
Arguayo rested the cigar on the sill of his ashtray. He sat back leisurely in his chair. “I was warned about the two of you, you know, warned about your penchant for flaunting procedure and making up the rules as you went along, warned that we did not need your kind in the U.N.”
“And yet we ended up assigned to investigate the very massacre you perpetrated.”
“You were assigned to investigate the massacre before I was able to intervene. You have twenty-five minutes, by the way, before security comes to escort me to the convocation.”
“Plenty of time.”
“You think the two of you can stop Prometheus?” Arguayo chuckled under his breath, shaking his head.
Danielle took a step closer to his desk. “With you helping us, yes.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Out of concern for your family, of course.”
Arguayo pulled the cigar from his mouth, the smoke drifting toward the ceiling. “My family is dead, Inspector.”
“Is that why you’ve been making regular monthly deposits in Venezuela’s Banco Commercial?”
Arguayo smiled tightly. “My congratulations.”
“I like to know who I’m doing business with,” Danielle told him.
“And what do you intend to do, Inspector Barnea? Track my wife and children down, then come back still looking for answers I can’t give you?”
“Not at all,” Danielle said quite calmly.
“We intend to tell the truth to the Venezuelan rebels you so forcibly put down,” Ben followed. “Let them find your family.”
Arguayo’s lower lip began to tremble, as he watched Danielle slide a cell phone from her pocket.
“The rebel leader’s name is Guillermo Paz,” she said, showing him a Venezuelan exchange already keyed up on the screen. “Paz was recently paroled in an amnesty agreement worked out with the government. He’s standing by right now waiting for my call. So, General, should I hit the Send button or not?”
* * * *
Chapter 78
Y
ou’ll pay for this,” Arguayo muttered, seething.
“Not before your wife and children do,” Danielle said, still holding the cell phone.
“There’s nothing I can do to help you, Inspectors. No threat can change that.”
“You can tell us who the other moles are,” Ben told him. “And where we can find them.”
Arguayo almost laughed. “You think I know that? I’ve never met or spoken with a single one of them. All of our correspondence has been . . .”
“Go on,” Danielle prodded.
“Our correspondence has been via e-mail the last few years. Encrypted reference points. Impossible to trace.”
“And coordinated by who exactly?”
Arguayo remained silent, watching as she hit the Send button and eased the cell phone to her ear.
“Please hold, Mr. Paz,” Danielle said, covering the phone’s microphone with her hand as she continued to glare at Arguayo. “General?”
“All right! All right! The coordination was handled by the American agent.”
“You brought him Black Sands after your interrogation of Ibrahim al-Kursami revealed its existence,” Ben concluded.
“I brought the plot to the entire group. The opportunity to make sure it went forward was deemed too wonderful to pass up.”
“With these Iraqi dissidents functioning as part of Al Awdah, receiving the blame,” Danielle picked up.
“The perfect scenario,” Arguayo acknowledged. “The United States pays a terrible price while our existence remains cloaked.”
“Until Bureij.”
“I never imagined you would trace the origins of the massacre to Buchenwald, to those old men and the prophecy they uncovered.”
“So everything unraveled because of this prophecy?” Danielle wondered, shaking her head.
“Much more than just a prophecy, Inspector, as you have apparently learned. We couldn’t take the chance that someone who could hurt us would notice. Eliminating the links was deemed the safest choice.”
“In the paranoid world you grew out of, I suppose it would be,” Danielle said. “How fitting you should destroy yourselves instead.”
Arguayo didn’t seem fazed. “The plot can’t be stopped, Inspector. It’s too late. I know nothing of the specifics.”
“But you can help us get to someone who does, General.”
“And who is that?”
“Sharif ali-Aziz Moussan. Better hurry,” Danielle continued, removing her hand from the cell phone’s microphone. “Your friend Guillermo Paz is waiting.”
* * * *
Chapter 79
M
ary Winters had set the dining-room table with three settings of their best china. She looked over her work proudly, not seeming to notice that the plates, bowls, cups, and silverware were misarranged.
“Jason told me he was coming for dinner,” she said, shuffling past Franklin Winters back into the kitchen.
Normally Winters would pass the statement off as another of the delusions typical of the disease ravaging her. Since yesterday, though, he’d thought of nothing other than Major Jamal Jefferson’s claim that eleven bodies likely belonging to his son’s A-team had been found, leaving one unaccounted for. So today he followed Mary back into the kitchen where she was peering into the refrigerator in search of something she had already forgotten.
“Mary?”
She didn’t seem to hear him, just kept staring blankly forward at the collection of food.
“Mary.”
“A roast would be nice, but I don’t know what’s become of it. The damn maid must have stolen it. I told you to fire her.”
Winters grasped his wife at the shoulders and eased him around toward her. “When did you see Jason, Mary?”
“Yesterday in the backyard. While you were out.”
“In the backyard,” Winters repeated.
“He must have forgotten his lunch box again.”
“He spoke to you?”
“He’s growing up fast. Looks just like his father. My husband. Said he missed me.” She twisted out of Winters’s grasp and turned back for the refrigerator. “Now, what am I going to make him for dinner. . . .”
The doorbell rang and Winters left his wife staring at the lettuce. He excused himself even though he knew Mary wasn’t listening.
“We need to talk, sir,” Jamal Jefferson said, as soon as he opened the front door.
“Come in, Major.”
Jefferson gazed back toward the street before entering, made sure the door was closed behind him before walking past Winters.
Franklin Winters followed him into the study. “You’ve learned something.”
Jefferson took a deep breath before turning. “The eleven corpses were all shot in the head execution style. Their bodies showed significant evidence of additional wounds, including those associated with torture.”
Winters’s throat had gone bone dry. “Was my son one of them?”
“The identifications were unofficial. Nothing on paper. Nothing anyone would admit to on the record.”
“Was my son one of the dead?”
Jefferson pressed his lips briefly together. “No, s
ir, he wasn’t.”
It took a moment for Jefferson’s words to sink in. Winters’s legs suddenly felt rubbery. He took a few steps sideways and leaned against the bookcase. “He survived. . . .”
“We don’t know that, Mr. Ambassador.”
“Yes, we do. Otherwise his body would have been counted among the others. There’d be twelve instead of eleven.”