Brothers In Arms

by Marcus Wynne

  “There, there,” Charley said. “It’s all right. Just enjoy your cigarette. Don’t think about anything else; you’ll have plenty of time to think about those other things. Just enjoy this moment for what it is. Taste your cigarette. Enjoy.”

  The skin of bin Faisal’s lips clung to the moist paper of the cigarette. The cigarette trembled in his mouth.

  “That’s right,” Charley said. “Think about that.”

  He plucked the cigarette from the Arab’s lips, then ground it out on the floor beneath his boot.

  “Did you think I was going to burn you?” Charley said. “That’s old fashioned and, frankly, beneath us. You and I, we’re reasonable men. My colleagues, though . . . you are responsible for the death of their men. You may not completely understand just how close men can be to one another when they have worked together and suffered together and been afraid together. It creates a bond, you see. A bond like no other. And losing someone from that bond, it’s like losing a child or a loved one. So think carefully before you answer me, Ahmad. What is Sad Holiday?”

  Ahmad bin Faisal bowed his head as though to the executioner’s axe.

  “It is a program . . .” he said, “. . . to spread smallpox through the United States . . .”

  Ahmad bin Faisal talked and Charley Payne listened. Tape cassette after tape cassette went in and out of Charley’s small tape recorder. Finally, Charley said, “You’ve done well, Ahmad. This is all good. But now I want to know something you haven’t said. Who is the One, Ahmad? Tell me about him. Who is he? Where is he? How will he know to begin his mission?”

  The Arab’s voice was low and hoarse. “He is a young man. His name is Youssef bin Hassan. He is an Arab. He lived in Saudi Arabia and went to school in England. He was last in Amsterdam . . . and he has already begun his mission.”

  Charley leaned forward, his face only inches from bin Faisal’s. “What do you mean he’s already begun his mission?”

  Bin Faisal flinched and turned his face away even as he spoke. “He was given the go-ahead. He will go to the United States by a means and at a time of his choosing. He is to have no further contact with us . . . so as not to betray his mission. The only means of communication we have with him is one-way. He checks every day a pornographic Web site and looks for certain photos with names known to him. He downloads those photos and then runs a program on his computer that will take a tiny piece of code out of the picture and translate it. That’s how we communicate with him.”

  Charley forced himself to remain calm. “He was in Amsterdam with you? The young man you met there?”

  “If you saw us there, then you saw him. He is the One.”

  “What about the smallpox agent?”

  “I brought it to him in Amsterdam. It requires minimal care to keep it active. It’s fully weaponized that way.”

  “What’s his fallback? If he can’t get the agent into the States, how do you get him more?”

  “There is a diplomat in the Egyptian mission who is one of us. He’s used the diplomatic pouch to convey material for us before. He also has the agent. If there was a problem, the One was to proceed to Washington, DC and leave a signal, a chalk slash on the side of a mailbox near the Egyptian embassy on a Tuesday or a Thursday before nine A.M. That is the signal to meet the next day at a certain bench on the National Mall near the Smithsonian Museum. That is where the handover would take place.”

  “What is the Egyptian’s name?”

  “Ramzi Abdullah. He is a vice-consul.”

  “You must have a signal to stop the operation in the event of compromise, Ahmad. How do you stop him?”

  “There is no stopping him. Once launched, he is expected to accomplish his mission. That was the intent. Once he was launched, he would be unstoppable.”

  “Think carefully. There is no way to stop him?”

  “Only if you can find him in time. We have no way to stop him.” The Arab paused and licked his cracked lips. “May I have water?”

  Charley stood and left the room. On his way to the kitchen, he passed the table where the DOMINANCE RAIN survivors huddled around a camera monitor tuned to bin Faisal’s chamber. A tape recorder, plugged into the monitor, turned slowly. The men looked up at Charley and gave him a thumbs-up as he filled a glass of water and returned to the room. He closed the door quietly behind him, then came forward and held the glass for the bound man, who sipped eagerly, as a child would, at the glass.

  “Take it easy,” Charley said. “Don’t choke.”

  Bin Faisal drank the entire glass, then held his head higher. “I don’t know how you can stop him. He has been instructed to ignore any message telling him to stop once he’s released. The communication channel was set up to be one-way to pass on additional target information or warn him of any threat against him. It is because he is alone that he is expected to succeed.”

  “We’re not going to let that happen,” Charley said. “You’re going to help us stop him, aren’t you, Ahmad?”

  The Arab lowered his head once more, as though staring through his hood at the scuffed toes of his expensive loafers.

  “Yes,” he said. “I will help you.”

  Afterward, Charley shook off the congratulations of the DOMINANCE RAIN survivors and the newly arrived interrogation crew. He went by himself, first into the room where the body bags lay, and he stood and looked at them and breathed in the foul odor of drying blood. Then he went into the makeshift medical room, where the trauma team that had ridden in with the interrogators worked over the limp body of Dale Miller. He sat once again in the corner of the room, pressing himself back, making himself small and out of the way, and watched the electronic monitors that captured the steady beat, beat, beat of Dale’s heart.

  AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

  Youssef bin Hassan left the Golden Tulip travel agency and lingered a moment, looking back through the window plastered with cheap bills advertising cut-rate fares for destinations all over the world. His image was distorted by the faded and peeling paper on the other side of the glass. A one-way ticket to Toronto, Canada was in his courier bag. There was a well-beaten clandestine route from Toronto to New York state; the immigration authorities along the northern border were less stringent than elsewhere. He’d considered a direct flight to Washington, DC; his documents were good enough. But he’d decided for caution and the circuitous route to his target.

  There were new lines in his face, he decided, and he didn’t know if they were from lack of sleep or from worry. He turned away from his reflection in the glass and let the crowd take him down to the canal, and he walked along there, letting the gentle curve of the sidewalk following the canal take him where it would. Thoughts of Britta fought for his attention, and he tried to put away the memory of her face, coloring as she orgasmed beneath him, her plump white body straining up against him again and again. He tried not to think of her gentle ways, and the look on her face when he had left her, angry and hurt and disappointed.

  She made him question what he was doing.

  But he had the tenets of his training to cling to. He had a mission to perform, and he was out doing his work, preparing the logistics of his insertion, just as he should be.

  Then why did he feel so wrong?

  He wasn’t wrong. He had to remind himself of that. What he was doing was vital and important. Powerful men had handpicked him to be the One, the One who brought the crippling blow to the Great Satan. That was what he needed to remember, not Britta beneath him in her narrow bed and the way it felt, after, to lay there together and not speak.

  What would she say, what would she think, if she knew he was the One?

  He stopped, and leaned on the metal railing and looked down into the murky waters of the canal. His reflection was muddled by swirls of oil and scum. The discipline he’d learned in the classrooms in Sudan asserted itself and he used it to clear his mind of the conflicting thoughts and let the needs of his mission rise up. He had to put her out of his mind and make himself ready t
o move. He had everything necessary now: his computer, the viral agent, papers, and a plane ticket. Clothing, toiletries, and other incidentals he could buy along the way. He would need to, so he could check a bag. To do otherwise would draw too much attention to him when he traveled by air. He needed nothing else.

  Except a clear mind.

  It would be easy if he could only stay angry at her, rage at her naiveté and inexperience, hate her for her childish view of the world. But a part of him wondered if she wasn’t right, and questioned the drive that had kept him going all these long months. Hatred and anger had fueled him, but his time with her had washed much of that from him.

  And he hated being alone. With her in his life it had been so easy. He had justified it as living his cover, but it was so much more than that.

  His wanderings had taken him past the Dam and toward the Central Station. He saw the gabled gilt façade of the station through the narrow streets lined with tall row houses. There was no need to hurry for a train; one left every ten minutes for the airport. He stopped outside a small café, where a single empty table seemed particularly forlorn in the busy stream of pedestrians walking briskly past. Inside, he paid for a coffee, then took it outside and sat down at the table. The sun was bright overhead, and fought to filter down through the tall narrow houses to the canal’s side street. But Youssef sat in shadow.

  He would drink his coffee. And then he would decide.

  Across the canal, in front of a dress store with a large plate glass window that provided a mirror image of the coffee shop on the far side, Isabelle Andouille studied the reflection of Youssef bin Hassan. She had followed him since his stormy departure from Britta’s tiny apartment, and tracked him through the streets to the Golden Tulip travel agency. It was the work of a moment and a mild subterfuge to find his destination.

  “My friend Joseph?” she said breathlessly to the heavy Dutchman at his desk. “He just left? Did he buy a ticket for America?”

  “Your friend?” the Dutchman said, smiling at the beautiful woman. “No, he’s going to Toronto. Maybe he’ll drive to America. Are you going with him? Would you like a ticket?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “If I go, he’ll pay! Thank you!”

  Then she was out on the street and behind Youssef, so preoccupied that he practiced no countersurveillance or tradecraft. He just ambled aimlessly along, oblivious to everything but his own thoughts. Twice she thought of closing with him, bumping him with her shoulder and going for his neck with the razor-edged knife she kept palmed in one hand, but something cautioned her—she needed to know more.

  Toronto. He would be going the soft route into the United States, crossing into New York. From there he could disappear into the teeming masses and end up anywhere. She remembered the books she’d seen him buy. Washington, DC. That would be easy enough from New York. There was a train as well as regular short flights.

  She touched the tip of her tongue to her lips.

  Kill him now, or kill him later? Serve him up to the Americans or simply make him disappear?

  She had things to decide.

  ENROUTE TO VIRGINIA/DOMINANCE RAIN

  HEADQUARTERS, FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA

  The open cargo bay of a C-141 is a noisy, vibrating place while in flight. Charley Payne sat in a netted seat hung from one bulkhead, where he rocked in time to the bumps and jolts of the jet aircraft as it climbed to its cruising altitude. Across from him, a full medical team was clustered around the raised table where Dale Miller was firmly strapped. The IV bags on the tree beside him bent in the direction of the aircraft’s climb. The tubes that ran from his nose and mouth shook with the noise of the jet turbines. They had done the best they could, but the best was only enough to stabilize him till they could get him to a fully equipped surgical theater adequate for delicate neurosurgery. The bullet lodged in his brain had done enough damage on its entry, but the bleeding and swelling of the delicate brain tissue around it promised to do more. Dale stayed in his coma, a serene look on his face beneath the tubes and surgical tape, and the lead doctor on the team had told Charley that Dale might remain in that coma forever.

  In the center of the aircraft cargo bay were several wooden pallets that supported large wooden crates with US diplomatic seals on them. Those boxes contained stainless-steel coffins, one for each of the fallen US operators from Athens. Even through the sealed coffins and wooden crates, there was a faint odor of decay and blood. Or so Charley thought.

  He stretched out his feet and braced them on the metal floor. The seat’s constant swaying annoyed him. After a minute of fumbling for purchase, he gave up and got out of the seat. He went down the length of the aircraft to the small window beside the rear ramp and looked out. The blue of ocean was small beneath him. They were over the Mediterranean and would soon be out over the Atlantic, bound for Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. He’d leave Dale to the doctors, and the bodies to the cargo handlers, and go to a safe house in Fairfax, Virginia for his debriefing, where he would meet Callan’s boss, Ray Dalton.

  “Ray’s the man behind all this,” Callan had said. “He runs the shooters, he writes the checks.”

  “Outfit?” Charley said.

  “Yep. Stand-alone special project, that’s him.”

  “Dale used to work for him.”

  “ ‘Used to’ is the operative phrase. Dale wouldn’t have had anything to do with this if he’d known Dalton was behind it.”

  “I don’t have that same history.”

  “That’s why I’m telling you this. If you want to play, and get some payback, you’re going to have to make nice with the big boss.”

  “You all need me.”

  “That’s true,” Callan said. “But that doesn’t necessarily add up to a ringside seat when it’s killing time.”

  “I want that.”

  “I know you do. So make nice when necessary. It probably won’t be . . . he knows he needs you, and you’re well equipped to see this through. Just don’t let your well-known temper fuck things up for you.”

  Charley laughed and shook his head at the memory of that conversation. He craned his head to look up through the porthole at the sky and the scattered clouds they flew through. He wondered what Dale would have made of all this. Dale. Charley thought of the younger man kicked back in a chair in Sebastian Joe’s outdoor courtyard, sipping a latte and watching the women go by. It was strange how the two of them had been in the same neighborhood, traveling in the same tiny circle of mutual acquaintances and neighbors, and yet had never bumped into each other before the shooting at the art store. Fate was strange.

  He worked his way back to his hanging seat, and situated himself. He stared at Dale and the medical team that labored over him, and wondered if Dale would ever again sit in his favorite spot in Sebastian Joe’s courtyard.

  Ray Dalton hunched over his desk like a predatory bird and studied Charley Payne with interest. He’d read Payne’s file thoroughly; the two-inch-thick folder still sat on his desk. After reading it and before Payne had arrived, he’d called Payne’s last supervisor in the Special Activities Staff.

  “Charging Charley?” said the supervisor, a weary veteran of years on the sharp edge of clandestine operations. “One of the very best guys I ever had. And one of the worst. Top-shelf out on the street or in the field—hard-working, never complained, immaculate tradecraft, top-notch skills, a vital member of the team. But he’s stubborn as all hell, hard to handle when things don’t go his way, a bit of a prima donna. He’s emotional, he’s an artist. I was glad he had his photography to give vent for that. But he just took things too personally. You know how it goes . . . orders come down, ours not to question why, ours just to do or die. Charley never saw it that way. He chafes under supervision, and he hates managers, especially upper managers. He’s got no patience with the way things have to be done in an organization. So he went his way. That’s all I’ve got on Charley Payne. He’s not in any trouble, is he?”

  “No trouble,” Ray said. �
��We’re looking at him for something.”

  “He won’t come back,” the supervisor said. “Not enough money in the bank to bring him back. And if you try to leverage him, he’ll find a way to screw you, believe me.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Ray said. “Thanks for your insights. They’re useful.”

  “No problem. Call again if you need to.”

  The memory of that phone call was fresh in his mind. Payne looked tired and drawn, the lines in his face especially deep. But he didn’t seem impatient. He slouched in one of the easy chairs, his long legs kicked out in front of him and crossed at the ankles, relaxed as a cat lazing in the sun. No, Payne looked as though he’d been thinking through what might come from this meeting, and he’d made up his mind to be patient.

  That was a good sign.

  And since he was best in the field, Ray had every intention of leaving him there.

  “We have his picture and his name on the border with Customs and Immigration,” Ray said. “He’s flagged as a known terrorist, and there are special instructions to seize and handle all his baggage and personal belongings as suspect. But we’ve been directed not to bring up the smallpox angle.”

  Payne shifted forward in his seat, and Ray lifted one hand to ward off the protest he saw coming.

  “That comes from the president, Payne. The position is that spreading that information would cause a nationwide panic and a run on medical resources we’re not prepared to handle—at least not yet. The Center for Disease Control and select regional public health officials have been told to heighten their surveillance for any suspicious outbreaks, but smallpox is just one of the list they watch for. The official position is that there’s a heightened threat of biological warfare—but that’s been there for a while.”