Intercept

by Patrick Robinson

  If the headmaster here had been called Abraham instead of Mark, he could have moved ahead and tackled the real problem. That signal the Brits had intercepted would finally have been clarified.

  But all was still confusion. And still he did not know the whereabouts of the guys he was supposed to rub out. It could just as easily be a bunch of bank robbers in Mountainside Farm. This Canaan set-up may still be a terrorist target, but he needed that last elusive piece of evidence. And he was not going to get it here, sitting socializing with the austere Ms. Marie Calvert.

  Just then there were footsteps in the corridor and a tall, dark-haired man of around fifty walked into the office. He immediately turned to Mack, probably on the grounds that this might be a prospective $30,000-a-year parent. According to the receptionist at the hotel, the place was full of the scions of Wall Street investment houses.

  “Hello, I’m Mark Jenson,” he said. “I hope Marie is helping.”

  Mack stood up and held out his right hand, “Charles O’Brien,” he said. “I’m awfully sorry to bother such a busy place, but I’m trying to find a cousin, Frank Brooks, and I mistakenly thought he worked here. Math teacher.”

  “Not here,” said Jenson. “Any other clues?”

  “Well, I was just telling Ms. Calvert that Frank said his boss was called Abraham.”

  “Abraham—hmmmm, that’s a very big name around here. But I don’t know of a headmaster Abraham.”

  “In what way?”

  “This Academy has one great celebratory day of the year aside from the regular Jewish festivals like Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana. It’s the annual day we open the school to parents and relatives with a choral festival and the school play, followed by a recital by the school orchestra and individual musicians. Matter of fact it’s next Friday. It’s named in honor of our spiritual founder. Abraham’s Day.”

  10

  MACK MADE A WORLD-CLASS effort at feigning nonchalance as he stood up, shook hands with Mark Jenson, nodded politely to Marie Calvert, thanked them both, and walked calmly back toward the entrance hall with a slow and rhythmic stride.

  What he wanted to do was charge down the corridor, slam through the huge door like a cartoon character leaving a splintered silhouette, jump across the Blackberry River, and take Ibrahim and the Towelheads and throttle them en masse, before they could do any damage.

  Steady, Mack. This needs real thought, because the success or failure of this mission depends on secrecy. That had always to be in Mack’s mind, and he knew it. He simply could not phone Mark Jenson back and tell him to double and treble school security on Abraham’s Day. Neither could he phone the police. Because that would lead directly to questions, identification, reports, records, and probably the release of Ibrahim and the rest on the grounds they had, as yet, done nothing provably wrong.

  Mack had to face it, as he walked across the wide front courtyard of Canaan Academy. He had always been, and would always be, that same “Shadow Warrior” of his old command, always working in secret. And the only people on earth from whom he could seek assistance were other men of the shadows—Johnny Strauss and Benny Shalit.

  Mack now knew he had found the terrorist target—Canaan Academy on Abraham’s Day. He’d read all the communiqués worked out by the Intelligence agencies, and he was left with one chilling thought: That the al-Qaeda attack on the Russian school in 2004 was conducted by the same enemy he himself now faced, and that enemy considered that the Russian school had been an enormous triumph.

  Al-Qaeda had not just carried out their murderous attack on any old day, they had gone for the most special day in the semester—the opening day of the Russian school year, September 1, the traditional Day of Knowledge. The most festive day in the Russian academic calendar, when parents and relatives were invited to attend all the celebratory events.

  Now here was Mack at the Canaan Academy, with “Abraham’s Day,” an identical celebration of learning and achievement, just eight days away. He knew when and where al-Qaeda would attack again, and it was entirely up to him to stop them.

  Mack now had all the pieces in place except for one: He wanted to know who really owned Mountainside Farm—who had received that convoluted veiled telephone call from the Middle East, and then bolted to northwest Connecticut to purchase, in cash, a base for a terrorist operation.

  In Mack’s mind, there was no doubt that this was Faisal al-Assad, but he wanted proof. Because if Faisal had indeed been the lynchpin in this operation, Mack, along with Johnny and Benny, was going to need some important answers.

  Mack climbed into the Nissan, pulled out his cell phone, and dialed Banda Fine Arts in New York. Johnny Strauss answered, and Mack spoke to him in the manner of a kind of telegram: “Please check computerized Connecticut property tax records for Mountainside Farm, West Norfolk, Connecticut 06058. New owner important. Query: Faisal al-Assad, 300 East Sixty-Ninth Street. I’ll call back in an hour.”

  Strauss moved immediately, calling a member of the Sayanim, a Connecticut State Senator, who was back on the line in thirty minutes. “This property was purchased several days ago by a New Yorker named Faisal al-Assad in cash. It’s registered as a working farm, but it’s only thirty acres, and there are no tax records for income on either produce or livestock.”

  “You’re a hero, Jake,” said Strauss. “This is everything I wanted.”

  Mack called back early, and just said, “Is it him?”

  “Affirmative,” said Strauss. “What now?”

  “I want to get after him,” replied Mack. “I’m calling Benny. If al-Assad bought that farm for Ibrahim, he’s as guilty as the rest. But Benny will come up with some background, and I think we need to know it.”

  BEN SHALIT moved quickly after speaking with Mack. He ran every possible check on Faisal al-Assad, both through the Mossad operation in the Washington embassy and the head office in Tel Aviv. There was little on him, except that the Saudi corporation, for which he worked, was owned by those titans of the Arabian construction industry, the bin Ladens.

  This did not automatically make him guilty of anything, since the family had unloaded Osama as a total embarrassment several years ago. Nonetheless, there were still some relatively suspicious incidents.

  Al-Assad had twice been photographed by the Mossad in company with Shakir Khan, once at a government reception in Islamabad, and once, much more significantly, at a hotel in Madrid, three weeks before al-Qaeda bombed the four trains heading into the huge downtown Atocha station.

  No one ever pinned anything on either Khan or al-Assad, but London’s Scotland Yard was always profoundly suspicious of both men. After the massacre on the Spanish railway, both British and Spanish police delved deeply into al-Qaeda’s continued presence in the Spanish capital. And they turned up some immensely pertinent details.

  One involved the founder of the Spanish al-Qaeda cell, the Syrian Imad Yarkas, who established a strong association with the known jihadist Amer el Azizi, and with the Jordanian killer Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It was they who dispatched an al-Qaeda field operative to videotape New York, including the Twin Towers, before 9/11.

  Also in 2001, Spanish police swooped down on the Spanish terrorist cell and arrested Yarkas and sixty-two others. They ransacked their headquarters and found Faisal al-Assad’s phone number among the computerized records and on cell phones.

  They never located him and made no attempt to contact him when he reappeared three or four years later in New York as a very senior international executive for the bin Laden construction empire. And this was extremely awkward for the Americans, because the Saudi firm now contained some of the richest men in Arabia, personal friends of the king and many of the princes.

  Bin Laden’s family firm had built several palaces and restored ancient holy buildings for the royal rulers, and it was plainly not politic to start arresting their top executives and business ambassadors in New York City, whatever they may have done in previous years.

  But now things were looking very diff
erent, and there was no longer any doubt as to the guilt of the man who had bought the farm as headquarters for the operation. Faisal al-Assad would need to do some fast talking. Because Johnny and Benny were not investigators or arresting officers. They were executioners, and they operated on behalf of their embattled nation, under the hidden flag of the Mossad.

  Then came another sudden and totally unexpected development. Jarvis Goldman, the banking Sayanim from Gotham National, called Strauss to inform him a $2 million wire transfer to Faisal al-Assad’s account had just come in, but not from Saudi Arabia as usual.

  “It came in from the Anglo-Saudi Investment Bank on Lombard Street, London,” said Jarvis. “Account of a law firm named Howard, Marks, and Cuthbert. I thought you may want to know that.”

  The name meant nothing to either Strauss or Shalit. But they checked with the Mossad basement in Washington, and almost received a round of applause.

  The London attorneys, re-housed in new offices, had been the victims of the early morning blast on the night of the Guantanamo verdicts, the legal decision that had freed Ibrahim and his team. Their offices had been obliterated by the Mossad bomb, but no one had died, and no one had ever discovered who blew up the building. But it was understood that Howard, Marks, and Cuthbert was a critical link in the legal chain that was working on freeing the Guantanamo inmates. Now it looked as if they might be in deeper than that.

  But now the noose was really tightening around the neck of Faisal al-Assad. Metaphorically, that is. Benny Shalit almost always used a garrote. The two Mossad men called Mack Bedford back and said he needed to come down to New York. They were going to visit the man who had helped organize the mass murder and wounding of two thousand people in Madrid, and who had now arranged the financing for the coming operation against the Jewish students. Johnny and Ben might need extra muscle, because Faisal might by now have extra bodyguards.

  Running against the commuter traffic, Mack hit FDR Drive at 5 p.m. and ran south to the East Fifty-Third Street exit. He took a turn south on Second Avenue, crossed to Park, and came up right on the doorman’s whistle at the Waldorf Astoria, facing north.

  “Checking in, sir?”

  “Hell, no,” replied Mack, leaving the engine running. “I live here.”

  He collected his room key and headed upstairs, glad to have a world headquarters in the city, even if it was costing, someone, around five hundred dollars a day. Directly inside the door was a small envelope on the carpet. Inside was a single sheet of message paper that read, “7:30 p.m. southwest corner Sixty-Ninth and Lexington. I’ll be there, Benny.”

  Mack made a quick check of the wardrobe and the message service. His clothes were all in place, his laundry was back. There were no messages.

  Devoid of any meaningful exercise since he had snapped Ali’s right hip in half, he decided to complete the SEALs normal training routine: four hundred push-ups, divided with four thirty-second breaks. Then he ordered room service and ran a bath while he ate.

  He tipped about a half-pint of bath oil into the hot water and realized too late he’d grabbed the ladies bottle; he emerged from the water a half-hour later smelling like a Japanese brothel.

  Night was closing in on the northeast coast, and he’d noticed an early chill in the air when he arrived. It was about ten degrees warmer than in the Connecticut mountains, but it was still cool, and getting cooler.

  Mack wore a dark tan turtleneck under a suede jacket in the same color. He debated wearing regular shoes, but decided on his soft combat boots, just in case he needed a fast foothold on a shiny wood floor. “Fucking empires have been won and lost on decisions like that,” he muttered.

  He shoved his slim black leather gloves into his jacket pocket along with his wraparound black sunglasses, placed the “Do Not Disturb” sign on his door handle, and left.

  A swift walk through the hotel to the rear entrance, near the famous old Bull & Bear Restaurant, brought him out on Lexington, where he turned north and headed up the west side of the street. It was close to a mile up to Sixty-Ninth, and Mack strode out in the cool autumn evening, crossing the wide two-way thoroughfare of East Fifty-Seventh Street, and up past Bloomingdale’s.

  When he reached Sixty-Ninth Street he headed to the northwest corner, where he concealed himself in a doorway and watched the corner across the street. What if the note on his carpet had not been written by Benny? What if Johnny’s organization had been compromised? What if al-Assad’s cutthroats were somehow expecting him?

  There were a lot of ways to die in the line of duty, but Mack elected to eliminate one of them, by not waiting like a sitting duck, idling in the gun-sights of the most ruthless and dangerous men in the world. He decided to stay well hidden till Benny showed. And Benny was late.

  He was just beginning to wonder what happened to Benny when he pulled up in a cab ten minutes later, looking around for Mack.

  Mack crossed the street to join Benny, and together they walked up to Second Avenue to meet Johnny, who was already inside the locked building.

  “Neat,” said Benny.

  “Thank you,” said Strauss.

  “You got an apartment number?” asked Mack.

  “Sure,” said Johnny. “It’s on the buzzer list outside the front door. Faisal al-Assad, plain as day. Twenty-one D.”

  “Do we have a plan?” asked Mack. “I mean, do you want to question him? Ask him precisely who’s in Mountainside Farm?”

  “Yes. But it might be tricky if he’s got bodyguards in there with him,” replied Benny. “This guy’s a friend of the friggin’ King of Saudi Arabia right? My guys know all about him.”

  “That’s why the police have not picked him up,” said Johnny. “These days no one wants the king to be pissed off.”

  “Well, what do you plan to do? Walk in, then kill him and the bodyguards?” said Mack with deliberate oversimplification.

  “We’ll play it by ear,” said Johnny. “But this Faisal guy is involved in mass murder, and we’re not leaving him alive. I don’t want to kill bodyguards. But we may have to keep them quiet.”

  “Guess we better get up there and find out what’s what,” said Mack. “I’m here to help, but I’m not going to take out Assad. Those are not my orders.”

  “No need. I’ll do it,” said Benny, the man from the Mossad.

  They walked to the empty elevator and were slightly disoriented when a young woman in a dark business suit appeared to come out of nowhere and joined them, pressing the button for the twenty-seventh floor. Johnny reached over and pressed eighteen, twenty, and twenty-four. No one spoke and they disembarked, each on one of the wrong floors.

  Five minutes later, they met up at the stairs on the twenty-first floor. Standard undercover procedure.

  Now they walked down the corridor to number 21D. Mack stood back and Benny rang the bell. No reply. Benny rang again. Silence.

  “Fuck,” said Johnny. He tried to open the door, but it was locked. He tried to open it with a credit card, sliding the card between the door and the doorpost, level with the handle, and to everyone’s amazement, the door opened.

  Benny stepped softly into the foyer and checked behind the door. “Two other locks, none of them active,” he said.

  “He’s gotta be here,” said Strauss. “No one goes out without locking in Manhattan. Maybe he’s asleep.”

  They walked quietly into the main room, which was beautifully furnished. Three striking marine paintings and a couple expensive-looking prints signed by Andrew Wyeth hung on the walls. But the place was quiet. The kitchen was tidy, but empty, with no sign of anyone having taken nourishment or even had a drink, or even coffee.

  They walked down a short corridor to the master bedroom. Empty. They opened the closets. Almost empty. They opened the bedroom drawers. Bereft. Checked the hall closet for coats. None. Mack picked up the phone. Dead. Switched on the cable television. No signal.

  “Fuck me,” said Benny. “He’s gone.”

  “Mountainside Farm?” a
sked Johnny.

  “Yeah, right,” replied Mack. “How about Guantanamo Bay? I don’t think so. This tricky little sonofabitch is on his way home to Riyadh.”

  The three of them wandered disconsolately around the apartment, checking drawers, opening closets. But there was nothing much to be found. Faisal had packed his stuff and cleared out.

  Except for a somewhat esoteric clue in the waste basket next to a large antique desk.

  “What is it?” asked Benny.

  “It’s not much,” said Mack. “But I think we might have solved the Penn Station bomb mystery. Those four little bastards crossed from one side of this country to the other by train, and they stayed here.” He showed them the Amtrak rail ticket stubs he’d found in the trash. The date was correct, and they were stamped in light blue, big letters: CARDINAL. “I just found their tickets.”

  MACK MOVED HIS STUFF from the Waldorf Astoria to the Blackberry River Hotel the following morning. The drive took him almost three hours, and he was glad for the time alone. He needed to think.

  Because his prime task was one of surveillance, he not only had to make positive identification that the four ex-Guantanamo prisoners were in residence at Mountainside Farm, he had to establish precisely how they intended to hit the academy. Only then could he make his decisive move to end their attack and their lives. But first he needed to know their plan.

  Mack had no doubt his top-secret mission was achievable, although he suspected it might involve of lot of night-work. Freezing cold night-work. Goddamned dangerous night-work.

  He pulled into the parking lot of the Blackberry River Hotel at around 2 p.m. and headed directly to his room, which appeared to be just as he had left it the previous evening. He was tired after the long drive and crashed out on the bed for a couple of hours. He read the local newspaper, the Register Citizen, and went downstairs for a beer and a steak at around 7 p.m., adopting a similar procedure to his previous evening. After dinner, he made a quick change into his combat gear: his Navy sweater and scarf, heavy parka, boots, binoculars, gloves, and knife sheathed and tucked into his waistband.