Brothers In Arms

by Marcus Wynne

  That vaccine coursed through Youssef’s veins. He would not be allowed to martyr himself, because he was the one and only operative sent to accomplish the mission. The planners had discussed and discarded a plan to send suicide vectors in large numbers because it left too plain a trail leading back to the source. They preferred instead to rely on one specially trained and highly motivated volunteer who was immune to the disease, someone who would not be hampered by disease or symptoms while carrying out his mission.

  He was the One.

  The thought of that filled him with great satisfaction tempered with fear. Much rode on his thin shoulders, and the aloneness of being the One had already set in. It was difficult to work alone on a mission of such magnitude. Despite the lecture and briefings, Youssef still keenly felt his enforced solitude. He justified his dalliance with Britta with operational reasoning; it was a good idea to change the place he slept, and staying with a woman gave him many resources as well as made him harder to spot; couples attracted less attention than a single man on his own.

  He thought of that, and doodled aimlessly on the edges of his map. There was a youth hostel right in the heart of Washington, DC, a large one where his comings and goings would not stick out. What if he took Britta with him? He dismissed the thought almost as quickly as he thought of it; she would be quickly exposed to the disease and there would be no doubt about that. No, Britta would stay where she was.

  The One traveled alone.

  ATHENS, GREECE

  Ahmad bin Faisal lingered over his meal. He’d had a simple country salad with big chunks of cucumber, feta cheese, and tomatoes drenched in olive oil and balsamic vinegar along with a crusty bread, then a platter of roast lamb, rich with the scent of garlic and wine and olive oil. He drank only orange juice with his meal, as the sense of being watched nagged at him, and many of his associates would look askance at a man of his rank enjoying a bottle of Demestika red wine with his meal. When he’d eaten his fill, he pushed away the plate and enjoyed a rich cup of coffee and a slice of baklava pastry. After the bill came, he called to the waiter and said, “Does Christou still work here?”

  The waiter laughed. “He doesn’t work here, he owns this place.”

  “Is he in?”

  “Yes, I’ll get him for you.”

  The waiter disappeared into the back of the taverna and after a few moments came back accompanied by a short man, so fat that he looked like a ball with legs. His stringy hair was combed over a huge bald spot.

  “Hello, Christou,” bin Faisal said.

  “Many greetings to you, my old friend,” Christou said. His voice was surprisingly deep and melodic; he sounded as though he could sing.

  “It’s been a long time since our business has allowed us to visit,” bin Faisal said.

  “Why didn’t you let me know you were here?” Christou said. “Give me your bill.”

  He took the paper ticket and tucked it in his pocket. “Your money is no good tonight, my friend. Will you join me for some retsina?”

  “My religion doesn’t permit me the retsina, friend, but I would gladly drink coffee.”

  “Coffee it is.”

  The fat man gestured to the waiter for another cup, then poured himself a glass of the fiery retsina liquor and sat down at bin Faisal’s table.

  “Is your trip pleasure or business, or a little of both?” he asked bin Faisal.

  “I try to take pleasure in my business, old friend. But business is the principal reason. I may have a problem that you could help me with.”

  “I don’t know what a simple restaurant owner could do for you,” Christou said coyly.

  “Perhaps the friends of a simple restaurant owner could help me,” bin Faisal said.

  “There is always that possibility.”

  “Perhaps your friends would watch over me for a short time . . . I need to ensure that no one follows me.”

  Christou’s face grew hard. “You think you are being watched and you come here?”

  “I took precautions,” bin Faisal said, a faint tone of defensiveness in his normally calm and cultured voice. “We are merely two people enjoying a drink together.”

  “Yes,” Christou said. He looked around the tiny taverna at the few people there. Nothing looked out of place. He looked at Bin Faisal and let his eyes narrow, the folds of fat in his face making his eyes look like the twin barrels of a gun. “Let us hope your precautions were sufficient. Mine will be. Such a task, that involves expenses. Some of my friends cannot afford to work for free.”

  “I wouldn’t ask them to work for free,” bin Faisal said. “Of course I have considered expenses and whatever your friends would charge I would pay. I realize that such a favor is an expensive undertaking.”

  The fat man nodded his head affirmatively. “Yes,” he said. “Things are much more difficult; the authorities never let up their pressure.”

  “It seems that they never grow closer. You are fortunate in your choice of friends.”

  “It is because all parties involved are very careful. It would be good for you to remember that, my friend.”

  “I will. How long will it take to put into place?”

  “When can you pay?”

  “I can arrange wire transfer, or I can pay you cash now.”

  “I trust you, my friend,” the Greek said. “Stay and enjoy your coffee. When you leave here, you’ll be watched. Give us some time, say an hour. You have no need to rush home to your empty hotel room, do you?”

  “Thank you, Christou,” bin Faisal said. “I enjoy your company.”

  “Excuse me then,” the fat man said. He got up out of his seat and nimbly nudged it beneath the table, then said, “Let me make a phone call and then I’ll return.”

  Bin Faisal watched him go, then looked carefully around the tiny taverna. There were only Greeks except for one table where three American women and one American man sat. From their loud and careless conversation he took them to be flight attendants from an American airline. They didn’t have the look he was familiar with, and they paid him no attention, intent instead on their own conversation, so he ruled them out.

  Leaving here would be a different story. He still wasn’t sure, but when he left, he’d have the finest streetwalkers the efficient organization of November Seventeenth could provide.

  All around the little taverna, the surveillance team and special operating group mounted by Hans the Dutchman stirred. There were streetwalkers and vehicle teams, camera teams and gunfighters, and spare bodies and vehicles standing off away from the taverna, ready to roll at a moment’s notice. They watched as patrons came and went from the taverna, but bin Faisal didn’t come out. They had eyes on the rear exit and the side alley, but except for a cook who stood out there and urinated, no one came out that way, either.

  “He’s still in there?” Dale said.

  “Yes,” Hans said.

  “Are you going to put somebody inside?”

  “It’s a very small restaurant,” Hans said. “If I put someone in there, I lose them for the street afterward. Bin Faisal would remember them.”

  Charley nodded in agreement. “Hans is doing fine, Dale. Let them run with it . . . it won’t do to spook the game right now.”

  “Right,” Dale said. “Let’s just hope there isn’t another way out of there.”

  A countersurveillance security team has a specific function: its job is to identify any surveillance on a given subject and, depending on the mission, either neutralize them or merely watch them watch the subject. It’s one of the more difficult and demanding of the black arts, requiring a level of expertise on the street at least as high as the people they’re going up against, and the ability to read the players’ minds and read their moves as though they were playing a mobile and three-dimensional game of chess. November Seventeenth had some of the very best surveillance people in the business; their highly professional and high-profile assassinations took place only after long and extensive surveillance provided them with the
information to pick a time and place for the killing. The five-person team, three men and two women, who approached the taverna were among the best the terrorist organization could field.

  And they saw things that other people would not.

  They noticed vehicles parked along the street with two men sitting in them, not talking to each other. They noticed people lingering in the street as though they were waiting for someone. They noticed how every route out of the taverna seemed to have vehicles and people that were out of place.

  And that told them what they had come to see. They had a hasty conversation, and decided to lay back along a route they would have their subject walk. Forming a series of static posts, they would be able to identify the mobile surveillance as it followed their quarry past the static posts, giving the terrorists the opportunity to identify each vehicle and individual.

  Then it would be time for further action.

  “I have bad news for you, my friend,” Christou said. “You were followed here.” The fat man looked around the nearly deserted restaurant. Only a single couple occupied a table near the door, far from bin Faisal’s table. “They are waiting for you outside.”

  “Who are they?”

  “We don’t know that yet,” Christou said. “They are very good, though. You can be forgiven for not seeing them.”

  “I’m sorry for bringing this trouble to your door.”

  “It’s not a problem,” Christou said. “As you said, we are merely two people enjoying a drink together. But it will be different when you leave here. You will want to walk straight down the hill to the main street, turn left, and follow that back to your hotel. Don’t do any countersurveillance, don’t look around, just stroll back to your hotel. Have a cigarette on the way, take your time. Our people will be watching you and watching the others.”

  “I understand. I thank you, my old friend.”

  “We now have an interest in this,” Christou said. “It may be that this is an opportunity for an action on our part. But that decision is not mine. You have a part to play tonight, though. Play it well.”

  Bin Faisal took his napkin and touched his lips, then his forehead. “I will do my best,” he said.

  “Then it’s time for you to go,” Christou said.

  He walked the Arab to the front door and slapped his shoulder in a friendly fashion, then opened the door and stood there for a moment with bin Faisal.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said in his melodic voice. “Please come again.”

  Bin Faisal smiled at him and said, “I will. Thank you for such a delicious dinner.”

  The two men parted ways, Christou back in his restaurant and bin Faisal alone on the sidewalk. He took out a cigarette and lit it with his silver lighter, and took a good moment to draw on it. Bin Faisal was extremely nervous; this was not the sort of thing he was used to. He noticed that his hand was trembling and that there was sweat on the metal of his lighter. He had to force himself not to look around, and felt as though he looked hunted. Throwing back his shoulders and taking a deep breath, he started walking down the uneven pavement of the hill to the main street below.

  “Subject is moving,” came a tinny voice over the earpiece the operators in Hans group all wore.

  Dale shifted on his tiny seat in the back of the delivery van parked a block away and craned to look over the shoulder of the camera operator who operated a camera hidden in a ventilator hood in the top of the van.

  “Where is he?” Dale said.

  “Right there,” the operator said. He twisted his toggle slightly so as to better capture the image of Ahmad bin Faisal on the small monitor in front of him. “We’ve got him cold coming and going.”

  All around bin Faisal there were subtle movements. Cars started, and began to slowly pull out. People who had been lingering for a long while began to move, some with him, some along side streets not visible to him, prompted and guided by the small voices in their earpieces.

  “They are very professional,” one of the female terrorists said to her male partner as they lingered in a doorway, kissing. “It is a large team . . . I count two vehicles for sure with two men each in them, and four streetwalkers. That’s on the street, not counting what they may have standing off.”

  “I wonder if they are Americans,” the man said. “If so, their command and control element will be farther out. Let’s go and see how they work.”

  He pulled himself off the body of his partner, and took her hand. They strolled out, a block and a half behind bin Faisal, apparently just another Greek couple enjoying the summer night air, on their way to a club or disco.

  Hans’s surveillance team was focused on their quarry. Surveillance is so difficult that it takes all the resources available to a team just to keep up with their subject, and so limits the amount of energy they can put toward watching their own backs. That’s why they have gunfighters and security for the surveillance team. But those hardworking and conscientious operators have to be able to keep up with the surveillance operation and they can’t lag behind.

  So two of the gunfighters on the tail end of the moving box around bin Faisal took brief notice of the young Greek couple walking hand in hand behind them, evaluated them, and dismissed them.

  Bin Faisal felt as though someone very large and very heavy was standing on his chest. He forced himself to relax, taking deep breaths, and once choking on the cigarette smoke he inhaled too deeply. He kept one hand in his pocket and the other one held his cigarette, which he drew on greedily. His stomach churned, and for a moment he was angry that his wonderful meal was spoiled. That was the least of his worries, he reminded himself, and got his mind back on what was happening. Right now, it seemed as though nothing was. There were a few cars that passed him coming down the hill, and there were people out walking, but people walked every night in Athens and its traffic was famously dense and thick and impatient.

  He could see nothing, and he fought down the urge to look around for signs of the surveillance he knew surrounded him. The skin on the back of his neck seemed to tingle as the fine hairs there stood up in an atavistic response to being the hunted one, and for a moment the terrorist administrator had the sense of what it must be like for one of his operators out in the field, alone. Fear like this was new to Ahmad bin Faisal, and seemed so far away from his meetings in paneled rooms. This was the fear the street operator knew, and bin Faisal had a flash of self-awareness that comes at times like this and he knew that he could never do what he sent others out to do; this was not something his constitution could manage.

  It was enough for him to keep putting one foot in front of the other. At the bottom of the hill, he paused and ground out his cigarette butt beneath one loafer-shod foot. He took out another and was grimly satisfied that his hand seemed to stop trembling. Maybe it was because he was on a busy thoroughfare now, dense with traffic and pedestrians, brightly lit, and well away from the dark street he had just walked down, alone but not, consumed with his own thoughts.

  “That old boy is shaking like a dog shitting peach pits,” Charley said. “Look at him . . . he’s made the surveillance.”

  “He is nervous,” Hans said. “That doesn’t mean he’s made us.”

  “What’s he got to be so nervous about?” Dale said.

  “He is not a street operator,” Hans said. “He hasn’t made us. He may think he has, but he hasn’t. He’s just not used to the street.”

  “Let’s hope that’s the case,” Dale said. “Let’s see how he does out here.”

  “They would have their command and control in that van,” the woman said, turning and smiling brightly at her companion as though she was delighted with his company.

  “Yes. That makes four vehicles counting the van, and seven streetwalkers.”

  “Those last two in the formation, I think they are fighters.”

  “Yes, or reserve walkers.”

  Across the street, a man with the paper folded up was reading the sports results beneath a street lamp. He c
ursed loudly, then crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the trash bin outside the closed storefront he stood outside of. He took out a pack of cigarettes, lit the last one, and tossed the crumpled pack underhanded to the trash bin, then began to stroll along, seemingly concentrated on his cigarette. He walked a little more quickly, coming up behind the two young and muscular men in dark leather jackets who walked in front of them.

  “Hey!” he called in Greek. “What time do you have?”

  The two men looked over their shoulder at him and said nothing.

  “Hey!” the man said. “Didn’t you hear me? What time do you have?”

  One of the men shrugged and held his hands up. The smoking man switched to English and said in a thick accent, “Sorry, do you have time?”

  The other man glanced at a thick watch on his wrist and held it out so the smoking man could see it.

  “Thank you,” the smoking man said, studying the watch. “You are American?”

  “Yes,” the younger of the two men said.

  “Welcome to my country!” the Greek man said.

  “Thank you,” the younger man said. “Good night.”

  “Why hurry?” the Greek man said.

  “We have to meet someone,” the other man said.

  The two younger men picked up their pace, leaving the Greek behind. He watched them go, slowed his own pace, and noticed how the leather jackets they wore bulged just behind each one’s right hip slightly when they walked.

  They were gunfighters and the bulge was their hidden pistol.

  The Greek recognized a fighter when he saw one. After all, he was one himself, and he had killed Americans before.