The Teeth of the Tiger Read online

  Tony Wills, his normal luncheon mate, was nowhere to be seen. So, he looked around and spotted Dave Cunningham, not surprisingly eating alone. Jack headed that way.

  “Hey, Dave, mind if I sit down?” he asked.

  “Take a seat,” Cunningham said, cordially enough.

  “How’s the numbers business?”

  “Exciting,” was the implausible reply. Then he elaborated. “You know, the access we have into those European banks is amazing. If the Department of Justice had this sort of access, they’d really clean up—except you can’t introduce this kind of evidence into a court of law.”

  “Yeah, Dave, the Constitution can really be a drag. And all those damned civil-rights laws.”

  Cunningham nearly choked on his egg salad on white. “Don’t you start. The FBI runs a lot of operations that are a little shady—usually because some informant lays stuff on us, maybe because somebody asked, or maybe not, and they spin that off—but within the rules of criminal procedure. Usually it’s part of a plea bargain. There are not enough crooked lawyers to handle all of their needs. The Mafia guys, I mean.”

  “I know Pat Martin. Dad thinks a lot of him.”

  “He’s honest and very, very smart. He really ought to be a judge. That’s where honest lawyers belong.”

  “Doesn’t pay very much.” Jack’s official salary at The Campus was well above anything any federal employee made. Not bad for entry level.

  “That is a problem, but—”

  “But there’s nothing all that admirable about poverty, my dad says. He toyed with the idea of zeroing out salaries for elected officials so that they’d have to know what real work was, but he eventually decided that it would make them even more susceptible to bribery.”

  The accountant picked up on that: “You know, Jack, it’s amazing how little you need to bribe a member of Congress. Makes the bribes hard to identify,” the CPA groused. “Like being down in the weeds for an aircraft.”

  “What about our terrorist friends?”

  “Some of them like a comfortable life. A lot of them come from moneyed families, and they like their luxuries.”

  “Like Sali.”

  Dave nodded. “He has expensive tastes. His car costs a lot of money. Very impractical. The mileage it gets must be awful, especially in a city like London. The gas prices over there are pretty steep.”

  “But mainly he takes cabs.”

  “He can afford it. It probably makes sense. Parking a car in the financial district must be costly, too, and the cabs in London are good.” He looked up. “You know that. You’ve been to London a lot.”

  “Some,” Jack agreed. “Nice city, nice people.” He didn’t have to add that a protective detail of Secret Service agents and local cops didn’t hurt much. “Any further thoughts on our friend Sali?”

  “I need to go over the data more closely, but like I said, he sure acts like a player. If he was a New York Mafia subject, I’d figure him for an apprentice consiglieri.”

  Jack nearly gagged on his cream soda. “That high up?”

  “Golden Rule, Jack. He who has the gold makes the rules. Sali has access to a ton of money. His family’s richer than you appreciate. We’re talking four or five billion dollars here.”

  “That much?” Ryan was surprised.

  “Take another look at the money accounts he’s learning to manage. He hasn’t played with as much as fifteen percent of it. His father probably limits what he’s allowed to do. He’s in the capital-preservation business, remember. The guy who owns the money, his father, won’t hand him the whole pile to play with, regardless of his educational background. In the money business, it’s what you learn after you hang your degrees on the wall that really matters. The boy shows promise, but he’s still following his zipper everywhere he goes. That’s not an unusual thing for a rich young kid, but if you have a few gigabucks in your wallet, you want to keep your boy on a leash. Besides, what he appears to be funding—well, what we suspect he’s funding—isn’t really capital-intensive. You spotted some trades on the margins. That was pretty smart. Did you notice that when he flies home to Saudi, he charters a G-V?”

  “Uh, no,” Jack admitted. “I didn’t look into that. I just figured he flies first-class everywhere.”

  “He does, same way you and your father used to. Real first class. Jack, nothing is too small to check out.”

  “What do you think of his credit card usage?”

  “Entirely routine, but that’s noteworthy even so. He could charge anything if he wanted to, but he seems to pay cash for a lot of expenditures—and he spends less cash than he converts to his own use. Like with those hookers. The Saudis don’t care about that, so he’s paying cash there because he wants to, not because he has to. He’s trying to keep some parts of his life covert for reasons not immediately apparent. Maybe just practice. I would not be surprised to find out that he’s got more credit cards than the ones we know about—unused accounts. I’ll be riffling through his bank accounts later today. He doesn’t really know about how to be covert yet. Too young, too inexperienced, no formal training. But, yes, I think he’s a player, hoping to move into the big leagues pretty soon. The young and rich are not known for their patience,” Cunningham concluded.

  I should have guessed that myself, Junior told himself. I need to think this stuff through better. Another important lesson. Nothing too small to be checked out. What sort of guy are we dealing with? How does he see the world? How does he want to change the world? His father had always told him how important it was to look at the world through the eyes of your adversary, to crawl inside his brain and then look out at the world.

  Sali is a guy driven by his passions in women—but was there more to it? Was he hiring the hookers because they were good screws or because he was screwing the enemy? The Islamic world thought of America and the U.K. as essentially the same enemy. Same language, same arrogance, damned sure the same military, since the Brits and Americans cooperated so closely on so many things. That was worth considering. Make no assumptions without looking out through his eyeballs. Not a bad lesson for one lunchtime.

  ROANOKE SLID off to their right. Both sides of I-81 were composed of rolling green hills, mostly farms, many of them dairy farms, judging from all the cows. Green highway signs telling of roads that, for his purpose, led nowhere. And more of the white-painted boxy churches. They passed school buses, but no police cars. He’d heard that some American states put highway police in ordinary-looking cars, ones not very different from his own, but probably with additional radio antennas. He wondered if the drivers wore cowboy hats here. That’d be decidedly out of place, even in an area with so many cows. “The Cow,” the Second Sura of the Koran, he thought. If Allah tells you to slaughter a cow, you must slaughter it without asking too many questions. Not an old cow, nor a young one, just a cow pleasing to the Lord. Were not all sacrifices pleasing to Allah, so long as they were not sacrifices founded in conceit? Surely they were, if offered in the humility of the Faithful, for Allah welcomed and was pleased by the offerings of the truly Faithful.

  Yes.

  And he and his friends would make more sacrifices by slaughtering the unbelievers.

  Yes.

  Then he saw a sign for INTERSTATE HIGHWAY 64—but it was to the west, the wrong one. They had to go east, to cross the eastern mountains. Mustafa closed his eyes and remembered the map he’d looked at so many times. North for about an hour, then east. Yes.

  “BRIAN, THOSE shoes are going to come apart in the next few days.”

  “Hey, Dom, I ran my first four-and-a-half-minute mile in these,” the Marine objected. You remembered and treasured such moments.

  “Maybe so, but next time you try that, they’re going to come apart and beat the shit out of your ankle.”

  “Think so? Bet you a buck you’re wrong.”

  “You’re on,” Dominic said at once. They shook hands formally on the wager.

  “They look pretty scruffy to me, too,” Alexand
er observed.

  “You want me to buy new T-shirts, too, Mom?”

  “They’ll self-destruct in another month,” Dominic thought aloud.

  “Oh, yeah! Well, I outshot your ass with my Beretta this morning.”

  “Luck happens,” Enzo sniffed. “See if you can make it two in a row.”

  “I’ll put five bucks on that.”

  “Deal.” Another handshake. “I could get rich this way,” Dominic said. Then it was time to think about dinner. Veal Piccata tonight. He had a thing for good veal, and the local stores had nice stuff. Pity about the calf, but he hadn’t been the one to cut its throat.

  THERE: I-64, next exit. Mustafa was tired enough that he might have given the driving over to Abdullah, but he wanted to finish himself, and he figured he could handle another hour. They were heading for a pass in the next range of mountains. Traffic was heavy, but in the other direction. They climbed up the highway toward . . . yes, there it was, a shallow mountain pass with a hotel on the south side—and then out onto a vista of a most pleasant valley to the south. A sign proclaimed its name, but the letters were too confusing for him to get them into his head as a coherent word. He did take in the view, off to his right. Paradise itself could scarcely have been more lovely—there was even a place to pull over, get out and take in the sight. But, of course, they had not the time. It was fitting that the drive was gently downhill, and it changed his mood entirely. Less than an hour to go. One more smoke to celebrate the timing. In the back, Rafi and Zuhayr were awake again, taking in the scenery. It would be their last such opportunity.

  One day of rest and reconnaissance—time to coordinate via e-mail with their three other teams—and then they could accomplish their mission. That would be followed by Allah’s Own Embrace. A very happy thought.

  CHAPTER 13

  MEETING PLACE

  AFTER TWO thousand-plus miles of driving, the arrival was entirely anticlimactic. Not a kilometer off Interstate 64 was a Holiday Inn Express, which looked satisfactory, especially since there was a Roy Rogers immediately next door and a Dunkin’ Donuts not a hundred meters uphill. Mustafa walked in and took two connecting rooms, paying with his Visa card out of the Liechtenstein bank. Tomorrow they’d go exploring, but for now all that beckoned was sleep. Even food was not important at this moment. He moved the car to the first-floor rooms he’d just leased, and switched off the engine. Rafi and Zuhayr unlocked the doors, then came back to open the trunk. They took their few bags in, and under them the four submachine guns still wrapped in thick, cheap blankets.

  “We are here, comrades,” Mustafa announced, entering the room. It was an entirely ordinary motel, not the more luxurious hotels they’d become accustomed to. They had one bathroom and a small TV each. The connecting door was opened. Mustafa allowed himself to fall backward on his bed, a double, but all for him. Some things were left to be done, however.

  “Comrades, the guns must always be hidden, and the shades drawn at all times. We’ve come too far for foolish risks,” he warned them. “This city has a police force, and do not think they are fools. We journey to Paradise at a time of our choosing, not at a time determined by an error. Remember that.” And then he sat up, and removed his shoes. He thought about a shower, but he was too tired for that, and tomorrow would come soon enough.

  “Which way to Mecca?” Rafi asked.

  Mustafa had to think about that for a second, divining the direct line to Mecca and to the city’s centerpiece, the Kaaba stone, the very center of the Islamic universe, to which they directed the Salat, verses from the Holy Koran said five times per day, recited from the knees.

  “That way,” he said, pointing southeast, on a line that transected northern Africa on its way to that holiest of Holy Places.

  Rafi unrolled his prayer rug, and went to his knees. He was late in his prayers, but he had not forgotten his religious duty.

  For his own part, Mustafa whispered to himself, “lest it be forgotten,” in the hope that Allah would forgive him in his current state of fatigue. But was not Allah infinitely merciful? And besides, this was hardly a great sin. Mustafa removed his socks, and lay back in the bed, where sleep found him in less than a minute.

  In the next room over, Abdullah finished his own Salat, and then plugged his computer into the side of the telephone. He dialed up an 800 number and heard the warbling screech as his computer linked up with the network. In another few seconds, he learned that he had mail. Three letters, plus the usual trash. The e-mails he downloaded and saved, and then he logged off, having been online a mere fifteen seconds, another security measure they’d all been briefed on.

  WHAT ABDULLAH didn’t know was that one of the four accounts had been intercepted and partially decrypted by the National Security Agency. When his account—identified only by a partial word and some numbers—tapped into Saeed’s, it was also identified, but only as a recipient, not an originator.

  Saeed’s team had been the first to arrive at its destination of Colorado Springs, Colorado—the city was identified only by a code name—and was comfortably camped out in a motel ten kilometers from its objective. Sabawi, the Iraqi, was in Des Moines, Iowa, and Mehdi in Provo, Utah. Both of those teams were also in place and ready for the operation to commence. Less than thirty-six hours to execute their mission.

  He’d let Mustafa do the replies. The reply was, in fact, already programmed: “190, 2” designating the 190th verse of the Second Sura. Not exactly a battle cry, but rather an affirmation of the Faith that had brought them here. The meaning was: Proceed with your mission.

  BRIAN AND Dominic were watching the History Channel on their cable system, something about Hitler and the Holocaust. It had been studied so much you’d think it’d defy efforts to find something new, yet somehow historians managed every so often. Some of it was probably because of the voluminous records the Germans had left behind in the Hartz Mountain caves, which would probably be the subject of scholarly study for the next few centuries, as people continued to try to discern the thought processes of the human monsters who’d first envisioned and then committed such crimes.

  “Brian,” Dominic asked, “what do you make of this stuff?”

  “One pistol shot could have prevented it, I suppose. Problem is, nobody can see that far into the future—not even gypsy fortune-tellers. Hell, Adolf whacked a bunch of them, too. Why didn’t they get the hell out of town?”

  “You know, Hitler lived most of his life with only one bodyguard. In Berlin, he lived in a second-floor apartment, with a downstairs entrance, right? He had one SS troop, probably not even a sergeant, guarding the door. Pop him, open the door, go upstairs, and waste the motherfucker. Would have saved a lot of lives, bro,” Dominic concluded, reaching for his white wine.

  “Damn. You sure about that?”

  “The Secret Service teaches that. They send one of their instructors down to Quantico to lecture every class on security issues. The fact surprised us, too. A lot of questions on it. The guy said you could walk right past the SS guard on your way to the liquor store, like. Easy hit, man. Easier’n hell. The thinking is that Adolf thought he was immortal, that there wasn’t a bullet anywhere with his name on it. Hey, we had a President whacked on a train platform waiting for his train to arrive. Which one was it? Chester Arthur, I think. McKinley got shot by a guy who walked right up to him with a bandage around his hand. I guess people were a little careless back then.”

  “Damn. It’d make our job a lot easier, but I’d still prefer a rifle from five hundred meters or so.”

  “No sense of adventure, Aldo?”

  “Ain’t nobody paying me enough money to play kamikaze, Enzo. No future in that, y’know?”

  “What about those suicide bombers over in the Mideast?”

  “Different culture, man. Don’t you remember from second grade? You can’t commit suicide because it’s a mortal sin and you can’t go to confession after. Sister Frances Mary made that pretty clear, I thought.”

  Dominic
laughed. “Damn, haven’t thought of her in a while, but she always thought you were the cat’s ass.”

  “That’s ’cause I didn’t screw around in class like you did.”

  “What about in the Marines?”

  “Screwing around? The sergeants took care of that before it came to my attention. Nobody messed with Gunny Sullivan, not even Colonel Winston.” He looked at the TV for another minute or so. “You know, Enzo, maybe there are times when one bullet can prevent a lot of grief. That Hitler needed his ticket punched. But even trained military officers couldn’t bring it off.”

  “The guy who placed the bomb just assumed that everybody in the building had to be dead, without going back inside to make sure. They say it every day in the FBI Academy, bro—assumptions are the mother of all fuckups.”

  “You want to make sure, yeah. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice.”

  “Amen,” Dominic agreed.

  IT HAD gotten to the point that Jack Ryan, Jr., woke up to the morning news on NPR expecting to hear about something dreadful. He guessed that came from seeing so much raw intelligence information, but without the judgment to know what was hot and what was not.

  But though he did not know all that much, what he did know was more than a little worrying. He’d become fixated by Uda bin Sali—probably because Sali was the only “player” he knew much about. And that had to be because Sali was his personal case study. He had to figure this bird out, because if he didn’t he’d be . . . encouraged to seek other employment ... ? He hadn’t seen that possibility until now, which by itself did not speak well for his future in the spook business. Of course, his father had taken a long time to find something he was good at—nine years, in fact, after graduating Boston College—and he himself had not yet lived one whole year past his Georgetown sheepskin. So, would he make the grade at The Campus? He was about the youngest person there. Even the secretary pool was composed of women older than he was. Damn, that was an entirely new thought.