A Gentleman's Game

by Greg Rucka

  “Is there a selection to be had, or has someone made the firearm decision for me?” Chace asked.

  “Chester reports that you rated highest with the P99 and the TPH,” Crocker said. “Assuming that you’ll be working close, we’re arming you with the TPH and a Gem-Tech Vortex suppressor.”

  “Twenty-five or twenty-two?”

  “Twenty-two,” Crocker said. “Quieter.”

  Chace nodded. The smaller round meant less noise, but it also meant even less damage, especially with the addition of the suppressor. Not only would she have to be close, she’d have to make each shot count and most likely need every one of them. With six in the clip and a seventh in the chamber, it wasn’t a lot to work with if things went wrong.

  “If it all goes off,” Ron said, “Minder One will have no other contact with Hewitt or the Station after the meeting at the Taj Sheba. If there’s trouble or if Minder One is blown, she’s to make her way to the safehouse on Maydan al-Qa’, running through the old Jewish Quarter. Clay house, basement access, there’s a map to it in the briefing. Minder One goes to ground, waits for the Station to contact her. There’s a waterpipe on the northern corner of the building, street-side, little bit of rope around it. She removes the rope to indicate the house is in use. If the rope isn’t there when she arrives, Minder One is to avoid the safehouse altogether and take whatever action she then deems necessary to complete or abort the mission.”

  “The basement?” Crocker asked.

  “Unlike the rest of San’a’, homes in the Jewish Quarter have basements,” Ron explained. “There was an imamic declaration forbidding them to build any structure taller than nine meters.”

  Crocker grunted.

  Ron looked to Chace. “Any questions?”

  “Think that covers it. I’ll nip home and get my things sorted, start practicing my Italian.”

  “Be back here by oh–three hundred,” Ron said. “Gibbons will be on the desk then, but he’ll have your documentation and tickets.”

  “Go over it again.” Crocker ground out his cigarette in the cracked ashtray on Ron’s desk. “Make certain you have it cold. I want drop-loaded and drop-cleared signals for the Qat Suq, as well as two alternate escape plans for Minder One to get out of the country if for some reason it goes to hell.”

  “There aren’t many places for her to go,” Ron said. “North and she’s in Saudi, west she’s in the Red Sea, east she’s in Oman, south she’s in the Gulf of Aden—”

  “I know the damn map. Two alternates.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When you’re finished, come see me,” Crocker told Chace, and then whirled and blew out of the Ops Room much as he had entered.

  Both Chace and Ron watched him go without comment.

  “Right, going over it again,” Ron said. “You’ll be traveling as Adriana Maribino, from Como. . . .”

  •

  “Close it,” Crocker said.

  Chace did as ordered, then took one of the seats in front of the desk and helped herself to one of the cigarettes remaining in Crocker’s pack, resting atop the red operations folder. He remained standing, staring out the window. Night had descended, and London’s lights flowed past, much like the Thames itself.

  “You’ve got it?” Crocker asked.

  “Perfettamente,” Chace answered. “Signorina Maribino è molto eccitata di visitare lo Yemen. Lei spera di essere rapita e stuprata fino allo sfinimento da uno stupendo indigeno.”

  “You won’t have time.”

  Chace grinned, then said, “I noticed the briefing had no mention of el-Sayd.”

  “You did, did you?”

  “I’m not all thick. Does that mean I don’t pursue?”

  “If the Mossad intel is correct, el-Sayd will be meeting with Faud. If, by chance, that’s when you hit, then el-Sayd becomes collateral and an unavoidable secondary target.” Crocker moved back to his chair, focused on Chace. “Am I clear?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “The primary target is your concern. You take the secondary only if the opportunity presents itself. I don’t want to burn Landau on this, but I want this blown even less. El-Sayd is a bonus, that’s all. You take what you can get, and then you get the hell out of Yemen.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Crocker leaned forward on his desk, and the stare he gave her now was as intense as any she could remember from him. “Understand something else. The security on Faud’s going to be tighter than Weldon’s wallet, and you’re not going in armed for a gunfight with his bodyguards. If you can’t get to target, if you see anything that makes you cranky, you abort. Don’t be reckless, Tara, it’ll get you killed, and I can’t afford to lose another Minder, not right now.”

  “Understood.”

  Crocker scowled, as genuinely unhappy as Chace could ever remember having seen him.

  “Go,” he said.

  17

  Israel—Tel Aviv, Mossad Headquarters,

  Office of the Metsada Division Chief

  6 September 1956 Local (GMT+3.00)

  Borovsky sat with his gangly legs crossed at the ankles and propped on Landau’s desk, oblivious to the folders he toppled every time he moved his feet. The desk lamp threw long shadows on the cinderblock walls of the office.

  “You know, the Arabs think by doing this, with my feet like this, I’m saying you’re like the dirt on which I walk.” Borovsky grinned. “They would say it was an insult, Noah, that I’m saying you’re less than dirt.”

  Landau, still on the telephone, glared at Borovsky in the hopes that the look alone would shut the man up. It seemed to work, but not until Borovsky had barked another of his laughs. He didn’t move his feet, however, until Landau was off the phone.

  “That was your new friend at SIS?” Borovsky asked.

  “Crocker, yes.”

  “They’re going to do it?”

  “They’ve already started. Their agent arrived in San’a’ Saturday night.”

  Borovsky’s face seemed to grow even narrower as he pondered this. “We have no intelligence that Faud’s even left that fucking desert he hides in as yet. And fuck only knows if el-Sayd is on the move.”

  Landau didn’t speak.

  Borovsky shook his head. “They don’t have a date. They’re shooting in the dark.”

  “No, Crocker would not allocate an agent on a hunch. Not even for Faud.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I wouldn’t. He won’t.”

  “Who did he send?”

  “He did not say, but I think it would be Chace, the head of his Special Section.”

  “He any good?”

  “She is the head of his Special Section, Viktor.”

  Borovsky’s surprise was apparent but short-lived. “That’s smart, that’s clever. We need more women, you know that? The women, they can be fucking vicious.”

  Landau ignored him, pinched the bridge of his nose above his eyeglasses, trying to think.

  “You think Crocker just told us to grab our ankles?” Borovsky asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure. It was always a possibility.”

  “I think we’re about to grab our ankles.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re Jews, Noah. If history has shown us anything, it’s that we get screwed in the ass at every opportunity. You gave the British a gift, a chance for revenge, in exchange for which we asked for the opportunity to defend ourselves. What do you think will happen?”

  “The decisions are political, not personal.”

  Borovsky shook his head, looking at Landau sadly. “Killing Faud is purely personal. It will not prevent another attack like they suffered. Faud is not the planner, he is the cheerleader. They’ve already cut us out, Noah. They sure as hell aren’t going to expose themselves to take el-Sayd, too.”

  “No, we know Faud and el-Sayd are going to meet. That’s the logical time to strike.”

  “You put too much faith in the British.”

  “Faith has nothing to do
with it. You’re Intelligence, Viktor, look at it logically.”

  “No, logic is for planners. I don’t plan, I interpret, and that is something else.” Borovsky folded his hands behind his head, sighing up at the ceiling. “We’re going to get screwed.”

  Landau nodded slightly, conceding what Borovsky had said. He’d known when he’d gone to Crocker that there was the possibility the Mossad would be left out of the loop, and he’d understood that risk. El-Sayd would never be London’s priority the way Faud was, and Landau could hardly fault the people at SIS for that. Each group ostensibly did what its commanding government felt was in its best interests. He bore Crocker no ill will.

  But just as SIS had to serve England, Landau and the Mossad had to serve Israel.

  “It’ll have to go past the Chief,” he said after a moment longer.

  “What will?”

  “Action.” Landau reached for his phone again. “Put together a briefing, Viktor. I want our man in Yemen by tomorrow night.”

  18

  Yemen—San’a’, Taj Sheba Hotel

  8 September 0711 Local (GMT+3.00)

  “Ciao?”

  “Miss Maribino?”

  “Sì?”

  “How did you sleep?”

  “Fine, fine. Grazie per chiedere.”

  “Glad to hear it. Enjoy your stay.”

  •

  Seventeen minutes later Chace heard two firm but gentle raps at her hotel room door. She rose from where she had been seated on the bed, cross-legged, going over her tourist map of San’a’, and moved to the short entry hall, pressing herself against the wall as she reached its end, to keep out of the line of sight from the peephole. It was a Wallace move, and in a situation like this, pure paranoia, but, she rationalized, paranoia keeps you alive a few minutes longer.

  Not that she had any reason to be paranoid. She’d been in Yemen for four days, and so far the greatest dangers had come from the potential of nonpotable water and the rather unsubtle advances of a young Frenchman from her tour group who had insisted on using her to practice his Italian.

  “Sì?” she called through the door. “Chi è?”

  “Miss Maribino? Mr. Hewitt. We met at the Al Dobaey restaurant last night?”

  Chace reached out, silently turned the deadbolt on the door back, pulled the lockbar, and then rotated the doorknob just far enough to dislodge the latch. Finished, she slid back, stepping into the doorway of the bathroom. It wouldn’t buy much time, but if it wasn’t Hewitt, the extra time would give her the initiative should it turn out to be needed.

  “Entra,” she said.

  The door opened, and Andrew Hewitt stepped into the room, searching for her behind his thin glasses. When he saw her watching him, he smiled in cheerful greeting, then stepped the rest of the way inside before closing the door after him. Chace waited until he threw the locks before she moved back to the bed, retrieved her cigarettes from the nightstand, and then resumed her previous posture and position. She lit a smoke, watching as Hewitt stepped out of the small hall, taking stock of the accommodations as she took stock of him.

  She put him in his early thirties at the most, and better-looking than his file photograph had made him out to be. Five foot eight, broad from the shoulders down, light brown and curly hair, eyes so light blue as to have moved on to gray. His skin, which back in England had probably been quite fair, had acquired the tan and character that come from exposure to strong sun for extended periods. He wore a tan linen coat over his lightweight suit, the shirt white, the tie blue, the belt black, as were his shoes, though a thin coating of dust clung to the latter. He carried a small briefcase, oxblood-colored leather, in his left hand.

  When he’d finished taking in the room, he smiled cheerfully at Chace a second time, then laid his briefcase on the foot of the bed and quickly worked the locks until they released. He lifted the lid, then turned the case to show Chace the contents. Inside, restrained with elastic straps to keep them from rattling about within, was a box of ammunition in .22, a Walther TPH that could easily have been the very same gun Chace had trained with at Fort Monkton, a Gem-Tech Vortex suppressor, a box of surgical gloves, and a rolled-up poster.

  “I trust you’ve been enjoying Yemen?” Hewitt said. “You’re still clean, I take it?”

  “Pristine.” If anyone had been going through her room or her things aside from the maid while she’d been out and about, they were better at hiding that fact than she was at spotting it. It wasn’t a real concern; there’d been no sign whatsoever that the Yemeni authorities even knew she existed, and a random wiretap on an Italian tourist visiting San’a’ was out of the question. They could speak freely here.

  Cigarette in her mouth, Chace reached into the case. She took two of the gloves first, setting them aside, then removed the Walther, the box of ammunition, and the suppressor, laying them out on the map before her. English was common enough in Yemen that the switch in languages didn’t throw her too much, but nonetheless, it took an effort not to answer him in Italian.

  “You’re certain?” Hewitt asked.

  “Positive,” she told him as she began checking the weapon. “No trouble at the airport, no shadows on the way to the hotel, nothing since. There’s a Frenchman in the group named Billiery; at first I thought he might be a plant. He’s not. He’s a student.”

  “Keeping his hands to himself, I hope?”

  “He is now,” Chace said. “I think it’s safe to say that the only people who know I’m here are the two of us and a handful of people in London.”

  “And another handful in Tel Aviv.”

  Chace looked up from the gun in her hand. “That suspicion or something more?”

  “Straight from D-Ops. I don’t know why he wanted it passed along, but there’s a lot I don’t know. Presumably it means something to you.”

  The cheerful grin came back, and Chace wondered if it was affect or sincerity. It didn’t much matter to her, and she wasn’t inclined to answer, so she shrugged and went back to examining the Walther. Content that it would do its job when called upon, she set it aside and moved onto the task of loading the clip.

  “What’s the word on Faud?”

  “Normally we’d lay down a bundle of riyals and buy information,” Hewitt said. “But London told us to go softly, so it proved a little more difficult. He arrived yesterday with his bodyguards, six of them. He’s staying with Saleh Al-Hebshi, in the Old City. Al-Hebshi is one of the louder resident Wahhabist imams, normally works out of the Al-Jami’ al-Kamir—the Great Mosque—but seems to be favoring the Qubbat Talha Mosque a little more of late. Hebshi was linked to one of the Yemenis who rammed the USS Cole in 2000.”

  “When yesterday?”

  “Did he arrive? Late afternoon. Arrived on a private jet from Jeddah, landed fifteen-forty, was met by Al-Hebshi at the airport. Taken by four-wheel-drive convoy to Al-Hebshi’s home.”

  “How large was the convoy?”

  “Three vehicles. Al-Hebshi had two guards of his own.” Hewitt’s look was full of sympathy. “I’m afraid you’re going to find it very hard to get Faud alone.”

  Chace finished with the clip, set it aside, and put out her cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand, then gave Hewitt a reappraisal. Number Twos were the legmen for London, while the Number Ones maintained cover and attended the day-to-day running of the Station. Most every One, and quite a few Twos, viewed a Minder’s arrival in their terrain with hostility or loathing or both. Minders were trouble for a Station, sent in to do a job, to get a result, and then to depart once more. For the Station, that quite often meant the residents had a mess to clean up, a politically sensitive, potentially law-breaking mess.

  So Chace was used to dealing with recalcitrant Twos and bitter Ones who wanted nothing more than for her to leave them alone.

  Hewitt didn’t seem to be one of those, and while she didn’t show it to him, she appreciated the fact.

  She swept the box and suppressor from the map, saying, “Show me where
Al-Hebshi lives.”

  “I’m ahead of you there.” Hewitt removed the poster from the case, slid the elastic off its end and onto his wrist, and then unrolled it in front of her, revealing a detailed map of the Old City. He used the gun and the box of ammunition to weigh the ends down. “Think you’ll find this a bit more useful than that one provided by the General Tourism Authority. You’ll see I’ve already marked the key spots.”

  She stared at him. “All of them?”

  Hewitt seemed confused for a second, then shook his head. “No, not all of them. The place you’re thinking of, I think, would be right about here.”

  He set an index finger on the map, indicating a block well outside the walls of the Old City. There was no other indication of the safehouse aside from the pressure of his finger on the paper.

  Chace nodded, and Hewitt retracted his finger. She studied the map, noting the streets and the street names, and particularly how the same street seemed to switch identities several times within the space of only a few blocks. The Great Mosque was marked, as was the Qubbat Talha. She stayed focused on the map for several minutes, long enough for Hewitt to realize that no questions were immediately forthcoming, and so he moved to one of the two chairs in the room, beside the television, and settled himself.

  It wouldn’t do, Chace decided. She had to get into the Old City away from the tour, learn the lay of the land herself. She’d have to see Al-Hebshi’s place, to verify what she already suspected: there was no way she’d be able to get to Faud as long as he was inside. And if Faud’s travel in San’a’ was, as she suspected, going to be conducted via four-wheel drive, she wasn’t likely to get a crack at him in transit, either. At least not a crack at him where a twenty-two-caliber semiautomatic with seven shots would make a difference.

  So far, almost every excursion she’d made had been within the confines of the tour group, an act to maintain cover more than anything else. The thought of wandering through San’a’ alone didn’t bother Chace; this wasn’t Saudi, and while women here still lived very different lives apart from the men, the same rules simply did not apply to foreign women, seen as a strange kind of “third sex.” As long as she remained culturally sensitive, traveling alone through the Old City wouldn’t be a problem, and she had packed the wardrobe to do just that. A long skirt that fell to her ankles, a loose top that fell almost to midthigh and would remain unbelted to hide her shape, and a scarf to conceal her hair were all that modesty demanded.