by Tom Clancy
"I know," Brian responded. "He had it coming. It's just that — well, it's not like Afghanistan, y'know?"
"Yeah, this time we got to do to him what they tried to do to you. It's not our fault he's a bad guy. It's not our fault he thought the mall shoot was almost as good as getting laid. He did have it coming. Maybe he didn't shoot anybody, but he damned sure bought the guns, okay?" Dominic asked as reasonably as circumstances allowed.
"I ain't going to light a candle for him. Just — damn it, this isn't what we're supposed to do in a civilized world."
"What civilized world is that, bro? We offed a guy who needed to meet God. If God wants to forgive him, that's His business. You know, there're people who think anybody in uniform is a mercenary killer. Baby-killers, that sort of thing."
"Well, that's just fucked up," Brian snarled back. "What I'm afraid of is, what if we turn into them?"
"Well, we can always back off a job, can't we? And they told us they'll always give us the reason for the hit. We won't turn into them, Aldo. I won't let it happen. Neither will you. So, we have things to do, right?"
"I suppose." Brian took a big pull on the beer and pulled the gold pen from his coat pocket. He had to recharge it. That took less than three minutes, and it was again ready to rock and roll. Then he twisted it back to a writing instrument and put it back in his coat pocket. "I'll be okay, Enzo. You're not supposed to feel good about killing a guy on the street. Though I still wonder if it doesn't make sense simply to pick the guy up and interrogate him."
"The Brits have civil-rights rules like ours. If he asks for a lawyer — you know he's been briefed to do that, right? — the cops can't even ask him the time, just like at home. All he has to do is smile and keep his trap shut. That's one of the drawbacks of civilization. It makes sense for criminals, I suppose, most of them, but these guys aren't criminals. It's a form of warfare, not street crime. That's the problem, and you can't hardly threaten a guy who wants to die in the performance of his duty. All you can do is stop him, and stopping a person like that means his heart has to discontinue beating."
Another pull on the beer. "Yeah, Enzo. I'm okay. I wonder who our next subject is."
"Give 'em an hour to chew on it. How about a walk?"
"Works for me." Brian stood, and in a minute they were back out on the street.
It was a little too obvious. The British Telecom van was just pulling away, but the Aston Martin was still in place. He wondered if the Brits would put a black-bag team into the house to toss it for interesting things, but that black sports car was right here, and it sure looked sexy.
"Wish you could get it in the estate sale?" Brian asked.
"Can't drive it at home. Wheel's on the wrong side," Dominic pointed out. But his brother was right. It was felonious for such a car to go to waste. Berkeley Square was pretty enough, but too small for anything except letting the infants crawl around on the grass and get some fresh air and sun. The house would probably be sold, too, and it would go for a large sum. Lawyers—"solicitors" over here — to tie things up, taking their cut before returning the residuary property to whatever family a snake left behind. "Hungry yet?"
"I could eat something," Brian allowed. So they walked some more. They headed toward Piccadilly and found a place called Pret A Manger, which served sandwiches and cold drinks. After a total of forty minutes away from the hotel, they headed back in and Brian lit up his computer again.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED CONFIRMED BY LOCAL SOURCES. MISSION CLEAN, the message from The Campus read, and went on: SEATS CONFIRMED FLIGHT BA0943 DEPART HEATHROW TOMORROW 07:55 ARRIVE MUNICH 10:45. TICKETS AT COUNTER. There was a page of details, followed by ENDS.
"Okay," Brian observed. "We have another job."
"Already?" Dominic was surprised at the efficiency of The Campus.
Brian wasn't. "I guess they're not paying us to be tourists, bro."
* * *
"You know, we need to get the twins out of Dodge quicker," Tom Davis remarked.
"If they're covert, it's not necessary," Hendley said.
"If somebody spots them somehow or other, better that they should not be around. You can't interview a ghost," Davis pointed out. "If the police have nothing to track, then they have less to think about. They can query the passenger list on a flight, but if the names they look for — assuming they have names — just go about normal business, then they have a blank wall with no evidence hanging on it. Better yet, if whatever face might or might not have been spotted just evaporates, then they have gornischt, and they're most likely to write it off as an eyewitness who couldn't be trusted anyway." It is not widely appreciated that police agencies trust eyewitnesses the least of all forms of criminal evidence. Their reports are too volatile, and too unreliable to be of much use in a court of law.
* * *
"And?" sir Percival asked.
"CPK-MB, and troponin are greatly elevated, and the lab says his cholesterol was two hundred thirteen," Dr. Gregory said. "High for one his age. No evidence whatever of drugs of any sort, not even aspirin. So, we have enzyme evidence of a coronary incident, and that's all at the moment."
"Well, we'll have to crack his chest," Dr. Nutter observed, "but that was in the cards anyway. Even with elevated cholesterol, he's young for a major cardiovascular obstruction, don't you think?"
"Were I to wager, sir, I think prolonged QT interval, or arrhythmia." Both of which left little postmortem evidence except in a negative sense, unfortunately, but both of which were uniformly fatal.
"Correct." Gregory seemed a bright young medical school graduate, and like most of them, exceedingly earnest. "In we go," Nutter said, reaching for the big skin knife. Then they'd use the rib cutters. But he was pretty sure what they'd find. The poor bastard had died of heart failure, probably caused by a sudden — and unexplained — onset of cardiac arrhythmia. But whatever caused it, it had been as lethal as a bullet in the brain. "Nothing else on the toxicology scan?"
"No, sir, nothing whatever." Gregory held up the computer printout. Except for reference marks on the paper, it was almost entirely blank. And that pretty much settled that.
* * *
It was like listening to a World Series game on the radio, but without the color-commentary filler. Somebody at the Security Service was eager to let CIA know what was going on with the subject about which Langley clearly had some interest, and so whatever dribs and drabs of information came in were immediately dispatched to CIA, and thence to Fort Meade, which was scanning the ether waves for any resulting interest from the terrorist community around the world. The latter's news service, it appeared, was not as efficient as its enemies had hoped.
* * *
"Hello, detective Willow," Rosalie Parker said with her customary want-to-fuck-me smile. She made love for a living, but that didn't mean that she disliked it. She breezed in wearing her visitor's badge and took her seat opposite his desk. "So, what can I do for you this fine day?"
"Bad news, Miss Parker." Bert Willow was formal and polite, even with whores. "Your friend Uda bin Sali is dead."
"What?" Her eyes went wide with shock. "What happened?"
"We're not sure. He just dropped down on the street, just across the street from his office. It appears that he had a heart attack."
"Really?" Rosalie was surprised. "But he seemed so healthy. There was never a hint that anything was wrong with him. I mean, just last night…"
"Yes, I saw that in the file," Willow responded. "Do you know if he ever used drugs of any sort?"
"No, never. He occasionally drank, but even that not much."
To Willow's eyes, she was shocked and greatly surprised, but there wasn't a hint of tears in her eyes. No, for her, Uda had been a business client, a source of income, and little more. The poor bastard had probably thought otherwise. Doubly bad luck for him, then. But that wasn't really Willow's concern, was it?
"Anything unusual in your most recent meeting?" the cop asked.
"No, not really. He w
as quite randy, but, you know, some years ago I had a john die on me — I mean, he came and went, as they say. It was bloody awful, not the sort of thing you forget, and so I keep an eye on my clients for that. I mean, I'd never leave one to die. I'm not a barbarian, you know. I really do have a heart," she assured the cop.
Well, your friend Sali doesn't anymore, Willow thought, without saying it. "I see. So last night he was completely normal?"
"Entirely. Not a single sign that anything was amiss." She paused to work on her composure. Better to appear more regretful, lest he think her to be an uncaring robot. "This is terrible news. He was so generous, and always polite. How very sad for him."
"And for you," Willow said in sympathy. After all, she'd just lost a major source of income.
"Oh. Yes, oh yes, for me too, love," she said, catching up with the news finally. But she didn't even try to fool the detective with tears. Waste of time. He'd see right through it. Pity about Sali. She'd miss the presents. Well, surely she'd get some more referral business. Her world hadn't ended. Just his. And that was his bad luck — with some thrown in for her, but nothing she couldn't recover from.
"Miss Parker, did he ever give you any hints on his business activities?"
"Mostly, he talked about real estate, you know, buying and selling those posh houses. Once, he took me to a house he was buying in the West End, said he wanted my opinion on painting it, but I think he was just trying to show me how important he was."
"Ever meet any of his friends?"
"Not too many — three, maybe four, I think. All were Arabs, most about his age, perhaps five years older, but not more than that. They all looked me over closely, but no business resulted from it. That surprised me. Arabs can be horny buggers, but they are good at paying a girl. You think he might have been involved in illegal activity?" she asked delicately.
"It's a possibility," Willow allowed.
"Never saw a hint of it, love. If he played with bad boys, it was out of my sight entirely. Love to help you, but there's nothing to say." She seemed sincere to the detective, but he reminded himself that when it came to dissimulation, a whore of this class could probably have shamed Dame Judith Anderson.
"Well, thank you for coming in. If anything — anything at all — comes to mind, do give me a call."
"That I will, love." She stood and smiled her way out the door. He was a nice chap, this Detective Willow. Pity he couldn't afford her.
Bert Willow was already back on his computer, typing up his contact report. Miss Parker actually seemed a nice girl, literate and very charming. Part of that had been learned for her business persona, but maybe part of it was genuine. If so, he hoped she'd find a new line of work before her character was completely destroyed. He was a romantic, Willow was, and someday it might be his downfall. And he knew it, but he had no desire to change himself for his job as she had probably done. Fifteen minutes later, he e-mailed the report to Thames House, and then printed it up for the Sali file, which would in due course go to the closed files in Central Records, probably never to be heard from again.
* * *
"Told you," Jack said to his roomie.
"Well, then you can pat yourself on the back," Wills responded. "So, what's the story, or do I have to call up the documents?"
"Uda bin Sali dropped dead of an apparent heart attack. His Security Service tail didn't see anything unusual, just the guy collapsing on the street. Zap, no more Uda to swap funds for the bad guys."
"How do you feel about it?" Wills asked.
"It's fine with me, Tony. He played with the wrong kids, on the wrong playground. End of story," Ryan the younger said coldly. I wonder how they did it? he wondered more quietly. "Was it our guys helping him along, you think?"
"Not our department. We provide information to others. What they do with it out of our sight is not for us to speculate upon."
"Aye, aye, sir." The remainder of the day looked as though it would be pretty dull after such a fast beginning.
* * *
Mohammed got the news over his computer — rather, he was told in code to call a cutout named Ayman Ghailani whose cell phone number he had committed to memory. For that purpose, he took a walk outside. You had to be careful using hotel phones. Once on the street, he walked to a park and sat down on a bench, with a pad and pen in his hand.
"Ayman, this is Mohammed. What is new?"
"Uda is dead," the cutout reported somewhat breathlessly.
"What happened?" Mohammed asked.
"We're not sure. He fell near his office and was taken to the nearest hospital. He died there," was the reply.
"He was not arrested, not killed by the Jews?"
"No, there is no report of that."
"So, it was a natural death?"
"So it appears at this time."
I wonder if he did the funds transfer before he left this life? Mohammed thought. "I see…" He didn't, of course, but he had to fill the silence with some words. "So, there is no reason to suspect foul play?"
"Not at this time, no. But when one of our people dies, one always—"
"Yes, I know, Ayman. One always suspects. Does his father know?"
"That is how I found out."
His father will probably be glad to be rid of the wastrel, Mohammed thought. "Who do we have to make sure of the cause of death?"
"Ahmed Mohammed Hamed Ali lives in London. Perhaps through a solicitor…?"
"Good idea. See that it is done." A pause. "Has anyone told the Emir?"
"No, I don't think so."
"See to it." It was a minor matter, but, even so, he was supposed to know everything.
"I shall," Ayman promised.
"Very well. That is all, then." And Mohammed thumbed the kill button on his cell phone.
He was back in Vienna. He liked the city. For one thing, they'd handled the Jews here once, and many Viennese managed to control their regrets over it. For another, it was a good place to be a man with money. Fine restaurants staffed by people who knew the value of skilled service to their betters. The former imperial city had a lot of cultural history to appreciate when he was of a mind to be a tourist, which happened more often than one might imagine. Mohammed found that he often did his best thinking when looking at something of no importance to his work. Today, an art museum, perhaps. He'd let Ayman do the scut work for now. A London solicitor would root about for information surrounding Uda's death, and, being a good mercenary, he'd let them know of anything untoward. But sometimes people simply died. It was the hand of Allah, which was not something easily understood, and never predicted.
* * *
Or maybe not so dull. NSA cross-decked some new message traffic after lunch. Jack did some mental arithmetic and decided it was evening on the other side of the pond. The electronic weenies of the Italian Carabinieri — their federal police, who walked about in rather spiffy uniforms — had made some intercepts, which they'd forwarded to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, and which had gone right up on the satellite to Fort Belvoir — the main East Coast downlink. Somebody named Mohammed had called somebody named Ayman — they knew this from the recorded conversation, which had also mentioned the death of Uda bin Sali, which had caused an electronic "Bingo" on various computers, flagging it for a signals-intelligence analyst, and causing the embassy puke to squirt the bird.
"'Has anyone told the Emir?' Who the hell is the Emir?" Jack asked.
"That's a nobleman's title, like a duke or something," Wills answered. "What's the context?"
"Here." Jack handed a printed sheet across.
"That looks interesting." Wills turned and queried his computer for EMIR, and got only one reference. "According to this, it's a name or title that cropped up about a year ago in a tapped conversation, context uncertain, and nothing significant since. The Agency thinks it's probably shorthand for a medium-sized hitter in their organization."
"In this context, looks bigger than that to me," Jack thought aloud.
"Maybe," Tony conced
ed. "There's a lot about these guys that we don't know yet. Langley will probably write it off to somebody in a supervisory position. That's what I would do," he concluded, but not confidently.
"We have anybody on staff who knows Arabic?"
"Two guys who speak the language — from the Monterey school — but no experts on the culture, no."
"I think it's worth a look."
"Then write it up and we'll see what they think. Langley has a bunch of mind readers, and some of them are pretty good."
"Mohammed is the most senior guy we know in this outfit. Here, he's referring to somebody senior to himself. That is something we need to check out," the younger Ryan pronounced with all the power he possessed.
For his part, Wills knew that his roomie was right. He'd also just implicitly identified the biggest problem in the intelligence business. Too much data, too little analytical time. The best play would be to fake an inquiry to CIA from NSA and to NSA from CIA, asking for some thoughts on this particular issue. But they had to be careful with that. Requests for data happened a million times a day, and, due to the volume, they were never, ever checked — the comm link was secure, after all, wasn't it? But asking for time from analysts could too easily result in a telephone call, which required both a number and a person to pick up the phone. That could lead to a leak, and leaks were the single thing The Campus could not afford. And so, inquiries of this kind went to the top floor. Maybe twice a year. The Campus was a parasite on the body of the intelligence community. Such creatures were not supposed to have a mouth for speaking, but only for sucking blood.
"Write your ideas up for Rick Bell, and he'll discuss it with the Senator," Wills advised.
"Great," Jack grumbled. He hadn't learned patience yet. More to the point, he hadn't learned much about bureaucracies. Even The Campus had one. The funny thing was that if he'd been a midlevel analyst at Langley, he could have picked up a phone, dialed a number, and talked to the right person for an expert opinion, or something close to it. But this wasn't Langley. CIA was actually pretty good about obtaining and processing information. It was doing something effective with it that constantly befuddled the government agency. Jack wrote up his request and the reasons for it, wondering what would result.