by Greg Rucka
“Kneeling there?” Cheng sat upright. “Oh, fuck me, Paul, don’t tell me they were praying when she killed them.”
“According to Chace, yes.”
Cheng stared at him, then sank back, shaking her head.
Crocker flicked ash, missing the tray and scattering it on his desk. It did nothing to help his mood.
“You’re going to take it straight on the chin,” Cheng said after a moment.
“Go to hell, Angela,” Crocker growled.
•
“She killed who?” Barclay demanded. He was on his feet behind his desk, both hands planted in fists on his blotter, and Crocker decided the shade his C had turned was probably most accurately described as cherry.
“Salih bin Muhammad bin Sultan,” Crocker answered. “One of the almost seven thousand princes of the House of Saud.”
“In a mosque?”
Crocker thought that Barclay was actually shaking with his fury.
“All of this is detailed in Minder One’s after-action report, sir.” Crocker motioned to the report resting on the stack of “Immediates” on Barclay’s desk.
“Oddly, no, it isn’t. Chace nowhere writes ‘I shot a Saudi prince in the back of the head as he was kneeling in prayer.’ In point of fact, there’s no mention of royalty of any kind. So you may, perhaps, understand my displeasure at finding your agents committing regicide!”
Crocker closed his mouth, deciding that now probably wasn’t the best time to point out that Chace hadn’t, in fact, killed a king but only a prince. To his side, also standing, Weldon shifted uneasily, then stopped as Barclay moved his glare to the Deputy Chief.
“How in the name of God did this happen, Donald?” Barclay shoved the copy of the after-action away from him. “You authorized Tanglefoot, why didn’t you put a stop to this?”
“Tanglefoot didn’t specify location or means, sir,” Weldon said tightly. “It simply undertook to fulfill HMG’s order, to effect the assassination of Dr. Faud—”
Barclay waved a furious hand and Weldon went silent.
For several seconds, none of the men moved and none of them spoke. Weldon shifted again, then straightened his tie and looked past Barclay, out the window. Crocker kept his hands behind his back, watching as the color slowly began fading from his C’s face. It left his ears last.
“I have been summoned to Number Ten,” Barclay said softly. “I have been asked to explain how it was that an SIS officer murdered two men in the holiest site in Yemen.”
“Then you should tell them it was done with efficiency and precision,” Crocker said.
“I beg your pardon?”
Crocker hesitated, then elaborated. “SIS fulfilled HMG’s request to the letter of the concept of operations, sir. Exactly as requested, and in short order of the request. While they may not like the result, Operation: Tanglefoot is a complete success. Minder One did exactly what she was sent to do, and did it brilliantly. Something I hope you will convey to the Prime Minister.”
“Oh, I shall convey it, Crocker.” Barclay’s glare superbly mixed outrage with incredulity. “Oh, yes, absolutely. And when the PM asks just what it is we’re supposed to tell the Saudis, I’ll direct his inquiry to you, shall I?”
“If Prince Salih bin Muhammad bin Sultan was meeting with Faud in San’a’, sir, the Prince was involved in Faud’s organization and activities, most likely as the source of their funding,” Crocker answered seriously. “If the Prime Minister wishes, I’m certain the Deputy Chief and D-Int would be happy to brief him on the Saudi royal family’s donations to organizations that promote and foster terrorism, not just in the Middle East but in the U.K. as well. Further, I’m sure Mr. David Kinney at Box would be happy to join them in the briefing, to provide the Security Services’ point of view on the situation.”
“Do you think this is a joke, Crocker?” Barclay snapped.
“I think very little is a joke, sir.”
“Then you must think the Prime Minister a fool, or an idiot, or worse that he isn’t already aware of these things.”
“Certainly he is aware of them. The question is to what extent, and to what extent politics dictates action rather than matters of security or intelligence.”
“Politics has always pulled the sled. As well it should. Left unchecked, you would have your Minders putting bullets in half of the leaders in the Middle East.”
Crocker’s jaw tightened, sending the start of a new headache climbing along his skull. “This Service exists to protect the British people, not to serve any elected official’s political agenda.”
“You assume that the Prime Minister’s agenda isn’t the same as yours. And you further—arrogantly—assume that you are in possession of more facts at any given moment than the PM and the Cabinet.”
“From what I’ve seen, sir,” Crocker said, “that conclusion is self-evident. The PM asked SIS to undertake retaliatory action. Operation: Tanglefoot was approved by me, Director Intelligence, the Deputy Chief, and yourself before presentation to the Cabinet. If the Cabinet was worried that Chace might track blood onto the carpet, they should have rejected the proposal. Now it’s done, and it’s far too late to wish it undone.”
“All true, and ultimately all bloody irrelevant when we’re asked to mollify the Saudis.”
“I’m not interested in mollifying the Saudis,” Crocker replied. “Neither should the Prime Minister be. For that matter, neither should you.”
“As I have stated time and time again, we follow our Government, we do not lead it, certainly not in policy.”
“Then we’re no better than the Americans chasing after Saudi oil.” Crocker paused, took a breath, trying to calm himself. Barclay’s gaze was unblinking, still enraged, and Weldon was still alternately interested in his necktie and the view just past Barclay’s shoulder of the window.
“Oil we depend upon, too, I would point out.”
“Halliburton doesn’t have a desk at SIS yet, do they?” Crocker said before he could catch himself.
Barclay’s scowl was of a quality to wither limbs.
“Look, sir, it is unfortunate that the Prince was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Crocker said after a moment’s pause. “But if he was clean, he wouldn’t have been there.”
Weldon cleared his throat. “The Saudis will claim that Salih was in the mosque to worship, and we won’t be able to prove otherwise. It looks like a cold-blooded slaughter, an affront not simply to the Saudis but to all of Islam.”
“Of course that’s how it bloody looks,” Crocker retorted, feeling his temper starting to slip. “That was the whole bloody point, and if the PM and the Cabinet didn’t see that when they ordered us to assassinate Faud, they damn well should’ve done. There was no way the assassination of a prominent imam could be interpreted as anything else, and that was the obvious goal of the operation.”
“You know damn well it wasn’t!” Barclay snarled. “The goal was the retaliatory killing of Faud for the attacks on the Underground, not to start a bloody war with the Saudis!”
“We haven’t started a war, sir. We’re trying to fight one.”
“Not by attacking two men in a mosque, not by murdering them that way!”
Crocker stared at Barclay, wondering how a man with so much similar experience, of so many shared years, could be so blind. When he answered, it was with a bitterness he hadn’t heard from himself in years.
“Perhaps when you speak to the Prime Minister, sir, you can inquire of him as to exactly which way he would rather we had murdered them?”
Barclay grimaced in disgust, poked at the intercom on his desk, and curtly called for his car.
“Are we still clean?” he asked both men coldly. “Did she at least get out clean?”
“Chace was at no point compromised, sir,” Weldon answered. “There’s no reason for the Saudis to think we had any hand in what transpired.”
“How certain are we of that?”
“Director Intelligence is still looking int
o it, but so far the Saudis seem to be following their usual response in incidents of this nature.”
“Their usual response?”
“They’re blaming the Israelis,” Crocker replied.
Barclay considered, then nodded, pulling on his overcoat.
“Well, that’s good news, at least,” he said.
24
Israel—Tel Aviv, Mossad Headquarters,
Office of the Metsada Division Chief
13 September 1023 Local (GMT+3.00)
“I love her, I want to send her flowers,” Borovsky said. “Even if they are screaming for our blood—as if that was anything new—I adore her, and I want to show her my affection.”
Landau, facing his computer and trying to compile his notes for the latest in the series of reports the Chief had demanded, ignored him.
“What is her name again?” Borovsky asked. “Her real name, not the work name, not that Italian name.”
Landau didn’t look up. “She’s head of their Special Section. I’m sure you have it on file.”
“I looked, her name is Chace, Tara Chace.”
Landau’s hands hovered over the keyboard for a moment. “Then why are you asking me?”
“It’s more fun this way. There was no picture of her, I think it was removed. Did you remove it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To keep you from drooling over it.”
“Is she beautiful? Is she beautiful, this woman who assassinates Saudi princes?”
“Go away, Viktor,” Landau said, resuming his typing. “I’m sure you have researchers requiring your guidance.”
“They’re all working, trust me. Every desk, all of them hard at work.”
“You see that I’m typing here? I need to have this finished for the midmorning distribution, Viktor. Please go away.”
Borovsky wouldn’t leave. “She fucked up on el-Sayd, though. I can forgive her that, perhaps. No woman is perfect, you know, they all have their flaws. Some talk too much, some are like ice in the bedroom, some cook food you wouldn’t feed to your enemies. This one didn’t kill exactly who we wanted, but I think I will get over that.”
Landau threw up his hands, swiveling his chair around from the computer to face Borovsky. “Viktor, why are you here?”
Borovsky showed him a big grin. “I wanted to talk about beautiful British agents with you.”
“I don’t want to talk about beautiful British agents with you.”
“I’m joking.” Borovsky opened the folder he was carrying, set it carefully in front of Landau. “This camp here, you see? It’s in Saudi, the Wadi-as-Sirhan.”
Landau looked at the satellite photos Borovsky had brought, slid through them one at a time, giving each image a cursory examination. The images were clear—at least as clear as satellite images ever were in this sort of thing—but Landau didn’t see anything immediately alarming. There were satellites that had resolution down to eighteen inches from orbit, the American Keyhole and post-Keyhole generations, where you could make out faces and features with superb quality. The images were so good, in fact, that Landau knew for a fact the Americans had submitted them for evidence in the trials of various terrorists.
These were not those, however, and although Borovsky’s team had tried to clean them up, the best Landau could discern was that, yes, as Borovsky had indicated, he was looking down on a camp of some sort. Three large tents, ten-men size, he guessed, and some detritus on the field around the location, boxes, crates, three or four fifty-gallon drums for fuel or something else.
“It’s a camp.” Landau closed the folder and shoved it back at Borovsky.
“Yes, that’s what I said. Training camp.”
“I don’t see training facilities.”
“They’re cleverer these days, you know that. They cover everything they can, right down to their firing ranges, these days. This, it’s in a wadi, they’ve put a canopy over it, netting, like that. The satellite thinks it’s seeing terrain.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Because I am a devious motherfucker, and I know their tricks. It’s a camp, Noah, and not just training the jihadis anymore, I think it’s moving to indoctrination.”
Landau reluctantly reached for the folder again, gave the pictures a second look, longer this time, conceding Borovsky’s point. The terrain was wrong in places, or so it appeared to him, too uniform and then, abruptly, too broken. But none of the pictures showed people; there was no sign that the camp was even occupied.
“Why no IR?”
“Since when has our infrared been any good? Wouldn’t matter. They stay under the netting as much as they can. Maybe they know the satellite’s orbit, maybe not, but we can’t get a good shot.”
“So you can’t guess at numbers?”
“I don’t like guessing, you know that.”
“I’m not seeing anyone on these shots, Viktor. The place looks abandoned.”
“It’s not. The barrels here? They’re new, they were moved in on Sunday, Noah. And this tent here, this one is new, too. Went up between Saturday night and Sunday morning. It’s not a good sign. They’ve been very careful to hide things from us; why show us this?”
“Someone slipped up.”
Borovsky shook his head. “You know better, my friend. You know better than to ever call the enemy a fool, or to accuse him of acting without care. We can see these because they could not hide them. And I will bet you when I see the shots tonight, they will show nothing, they will have found more netting to conceal it all.”
Landau adjusted his glasses, sliding them back up his nose. “What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying the camp is growing, Noah. From maybe sixty men to double that.”
“What was it before?”
“Training and staging that splinter HUM group.”
“So they’ve stepped up recruitment. Hardly surprising after Faud’s death.”
“Yes, in response to Faud’s death.” Borovsky leaned forward, more intent. “But indoctrination. We have intelligence coming out of the West Bank and Gaza that Hamas is doing something new with the bombers, with the suicide bombers. They’re not just keeping them in the mosques and brainwashing them with dreams of being shahid, they’re sending some of them away, out of country.
“Now we see this camp, and it’s adding tents, adding fuel for its generators, growing so fast they can’t hide themselves. I think this is where some of those kids are heading, Noah. I think they’re going for indoctrination, heavy shit, maybe even basic training, to get them into countries other than Israel. I think it’s going to start again, and I think if we don’t shut this place down soon, we’re going to be very, very sorry.”
“It’s in Saudi, the camp?”
Borovsky nodded. “Wadi-as-Sirhan. Eighty-odd klicks from the border with Jordan, Tabuk province.”
Landau nodded, thought, then closed the folder and swiveled his chair back to face his keyboard.
“We can’t touch it,” he said.
“Okay, you didn’t hear me because you’re deaf or there’s shit in your ears, I said—”
“We can’t touch it, Viktor. Impossible.” Landau found his place in his notes, resumed transcribing into the computer.
“Give it to the Chief, he’ll hand it to the IDF—”
“A military operation inside Saudi Arabia? You’re Head of Research, where’s your brain, Viktor?”
Borovsky was glaring at him, Landau could see it reflected in his monitor. “We’ve done such things before.”
“Not in the time frame you’re looking for.” Landau flipped the page on his notepad and had a momentary pause while he tried to decipher his own handwriting, then began typing some more. “If the Americans get a whiff, just the slightest hint, that we’re considering a move against Saudi, they’ll wet themselves, they will go insane. They’ll say we’re destabilizing the region, and that we’re going to provoke a war. Israeli troops on Saudi soil? Would light a fire
to make what’s been going on these past five years look like a match. It’s not going to happen, Viktor. Especially after the way we’ve been blamed for what the British did in Yemen.”
“Damn you, look at me,” Borovsky growled.
Landau stopped typing and looked at him.
“You say this and you say that.” Borovsky spun the folder angrily, nearly ripping its cover off as he opened it once more, revealing the photographs. “And I’m saying to you that this camp—this camp—right here is now actively brainwashing young Arab men and women to think it’s better to strap explosives to their bodies and to kill Jews than it is to live their lives working for peace! We have to act, we have to act to protect ourselves first, our allies second, and these children third!”
There was a pause and Landau stared at Borovsky, held it until the other man looked away, sinking reluctantly into a chair.
“I know how you feel, Viktor,” Noah said. “I know the frustration. But we cannot act on it. There’s no way.”
“You know what they do, right? They find these kids, these kids who are angry and scared because we’ve made them angry and scared, and they tell them, Hey, you’re sixteen, you’re eighteen, you’re twenty, your life is shit, isn’t it? But you die like this, you die a martyr, you go to Paradise, and your family, we’ll give them a big check. You just need to kill some Jews and yourself along with them, we’ll take care of your family.”
“I know.”
“This camp, this camp isn’t going to be only for us.”
“I know that, too.”
Borovsky held out his hands, palms up, as if out of words. The air conditioner in the room clicked off, and the only noise came from Landau’s desktop, the computer humming, waiting to be used again.
“Our job is to protect Israel,” Borovsky finally said, putting his hands down on the armrests of the chair, helping himself back to his feet. “I am always stunned when you tell me we can’t do that.”