Bloodmoney

30

When the Dubai flight landed at Brussels Airport, Sophie Marx was met by two security officers from the U.S. Embassy. They spotted her as she cleared customs and wordlessly flanked her on either side. She was happy to see them, though they were not exactly invisible. They had that overtrained look of security officers: big burly arms, and thick around the chest as refrigerators. The driver was waiting in the arrivals lane; when they were all seated in the armored Mercedes, the two security officers introduced themselves, Ted and Luis, or at least those were their work names. They were both from the station; they said that a team from Joint Special Operations Command was waiting at the rendezvous.

“How was the flight?” asked Ted. From bellhops to bodyguards, that was always the first question people seemed to ask any traveler. Marx said that the flight had been fine.

“I gather some folks are after you,” said Luis.

“So it seems. But you never know until the bomb goes off.”

“And you don’t know then, either, if it’s a good bomb,” said Ted. “It’s just lights out.”

Marx closed her eyes. She hadn’t slept well for days, and she dozed off as the Mercedes rolled toward the city. It was nice to have these big American men watching over her.

The meeting point was an apartment at the Citadines, a residence hotel off the Avenue Louise in the center of town. It was early morning, and the city was just coming to life, the sidewalks beginning to fill with gray civil servants heading to their jobs at the European Commission. As Marx emerged from the limousine, a frail beggar woman thrust forward her child and pleaded for money. Marx dropped into the cup some Pakistani rupees, which was all she had in her pockets, and the woman cursed her in a strange dialect.

Up in the apartment, three bulky members of the U.S. paramilitary team were already installed, looking at maps of the city. They were dressed in plain clothes, but the leader was evidently the man bent tight over the map like a human torsion spring. The others addressed him as Major Kirby.

“You’re one tough lady,” said the major after shaking Marx’s hand.

“More lucky than tough,” she said.

“That’s even better. Hope it rubs off.”

He pointed to his map of the city, laid out on the coffee table.

“We’ve had, like, twelve hours to work on this, which is impossible, frankly. But my boss talked to your boss, whoever he is, and I gather we have no choice but to move right away. And to do it unilaterally, without telling the Belgians, which is never a good idea, but what the hell, right?”

“Whatever you say, Major. I’m not even sure who my boss is anymore, but I think his name is Hoffman.”

Kirby shrugged. He was wired and impatient. He wanted to get on with it.

“Look,” he said, “we’re here because the agency isn’t supposed to do this anymore, interrogation and rendition and all that, and the military can do whatever it wants, so long as we call it ‘force protection,’ or ‘tactical intelligence,’ or ‘preparation of the battlefield,’ so the lawyers can say it’s Title Ten. But basically, we’re working for you, okay?”

“Sounds good to me. Any title you like.”

“All they told us was that you have some kind of urgent security problem, which my boss says wasn’t explained to him. Which must mean it’s pretty damn serious, right, if they can’t even tell us what it is?”

“Yes, Major, I promise you that it’s extremely damn serious. Four of our people have been killed and more on the way if we don’t get a handle on this soon. What’s your ops plan?”

“The ID we have been given on the target is Joseph Sabah. Correct? For security, we are just going to call him Harry from here on. Okay?”

Marx nodded.

Major Kirby pointed to the lower right quadrant of the Brussels map, southeast of the city center. He spoke the place names very carefully, not wanting to botch them.

“Harry lives here, on Avenue…George…Bergmann. His apartment is a few blocks east of a big park called Bois…de…la…Cambre. Did I say that right?”

“Sort of,” answered Marx. “Nobody would mistake you for a Belgian.”

“Thank you,” said Major Kirby. “Okay, Harry has a dog, a little yapper dog. What is it, Sergeant?”

“A miniature poodle, sir.”

“Right. So every evening when Harry gets home from his job at this SWIFT place south of the city in, lemme look…La…Hulpe, he takes this dog out for a walk to do his business in the park, in this Bois…de…la…Cambre.”

“You can just call it the park, Major, that’s fine,” said Marx.

“Roger that. Harry walked his dog last night, and we were able to get one of our friends to access the surveillance cameras in the park. He took the dog there every night for the last week, same route, pretty much. So, gents and lady, we are going to assume that he goes to the park every freaking night, and that when he gets home from work tonight he will take little bowser on that same route for his evening walk.”

“And we will be waiting in the park?” asked Marx.

“Not exactly ‘we,’ ma’am, if that includes you. ‘We’ will be there, meaning me and my two JSOC brothers, plus Ted and Luis from the station. But you, meaning you, will be at the safe house where we are going to interrogate this clown, assuming we do this right.”

“Okay, but I’m good luck. You said so yourself.”

“We’ll just have to live with that. Let’s finish our pre-op. Ma’am, you may want to get some rest. There’s a bedroom down the hall.” He looked at the other four men.

“Okay, brothers. De oppressso liber.”

“Why did you say that?” asked Marx.

“Special Forces motto. Liberate the oppressed.”

“Oh,” said Marx. “Nice.”

A voice piped up from the side of the room. It was one of the two other soldiers, who hadn’t spoken yet.

“IYAAYAS,” he said, speaking the letters quickly.

“What the hell does that mean?” queried Marx.

“Unofficial shooters’ motto, ma’am,” said the soldier. “‘If you ain’t ammo, you ain’t shit.’”

“Please, gentlemen,” she said. “Grow up.”

The armored Mercedes returned to the Citadines at noon and transported Sophie Marx to a house in a leafy suburb south of Brussels, on the way to Waterloo. A member of the station was already there, preparing the room where the interrogation would take place. He had closed the blinds and the curtains and was moving furniture around, trying to make it look like Grandma’s living room. The very word “interrogation” seemed to make him squeamish. He had been told to bring food for the “suspect” and the interrogators, as well as several cans of dog food.

Marx went upstairs to call Hoffman, but he didn’t answer his phone. She rang Perkins again, and when he didn’t pick up, either, she gave up trying. She knew she should call Gertz, but she didn’t know what she would say to him, and if he ordered her home, she would refuse. So the best course, she decided, was to take another nap.

At 6:10, the surveillance team at SWIFT’s headquarters on Avenue Adele in La Hulpe, south of the city, reported to the team in the Citadines that they had spotted “Harry” leaving work.

“Showtime,” said Major Kirby. Two of the five men in the apartment had already set off, but the remaining three now departed and walked to the Metro station on Avenue Louise. They were carrying sports bags, marked with the symbols of Adidas and Nike, which contained their weapons: Three Heckler amp; Koch Mark 23 semiautomatic pistols with suppressors, the special operator’s weapon of choice.

The three traveled by subway to Schuman station, melding into the wave of homeward-bound commuters; they found the Brussels railway line, which they took to the Watermael junction. They exited the station and walked west a half mile into the park, where they stationed themselves at the agreed watch posts.

The park cut a deep, green elliptical swath in the southern tier of the city. It was a smaller version of Paris’s Bois de Boulogne: woods and meadows, with sandy paths bordering a kidney-shaped pond in the center of the park.

Joseph Sabah was driving north toward home in his gray Peugeot, meanwhile. He parked in the garage of his apartment building, changed out of his suit into a pair of blue jeans and hugged his dog, Emile, who had greeted his master’s return by racing around in a circle in the living room of the apartment. The dog was now standing in the kitchen next to the leash, waiting for his walk.

Sabah fastened the leash to Emile’s collar and descended the stairs to the street. It was still light outside, the sky illuminated on this summer day as if by a low-watt bulb. The dog couldn’t wait to do his business; he dropped a turd a block from home. Sabah scooped it up in a plastic bag and continued on toward the park; he was carrying a second bag for later in the journey.

They walked along Avenue George Bergmann, the dog sniffing a few of his fellows along the way, and crossed into the park on the Avenue de l’Oree. The dog knew the route. He pulled Sabah south toward the pond on their left, stopping every few seconds when he encountered a new smell. Sabah tugged ineffectually at his leash.

Major Kirby was sitting on a bench along the Avenue de Flores, just inside the park. He saw “Harry” enter and spoke into the microphone in his sleeve to his colleagues, who were arrayed at other looking posts. It was light, and people were out strolling, so it wasn’t easy to conceal their movements. It was so much easier to grab people in the dark.

The team slowly converged toward Sabah, two ahead of him, three behind. He was so slow, stopping and starting with the dog. The idea was to take him on his way back home, when it was darker, but it was still the soft half-light of a summer evening. The trees seemed to enfold the space; amid the green, the noise of the city fell away. You could hear birds calling to each other as they settled down for the night.

Sabah was crossing a wide expanse of grass now, entirely open, which took him to the northern edge of the pond. The dog relieved himself a second time; he was tired and ready to head home. Sabah took out his second bag and gingerly scooped up the droppings. The dog was tugging on the leash now, pulling his master homeward. They cut an arc across the lawn toward a path through the woods that would take them out via the Avenue Victoria.

“Now,” said Kirby into his sleeve. “Close on him.”

Two members of the team entered the wooded path and traversed it seventy yards to the end, where they waited. There were a few people along the path; Kirby had hoped it would be empty by that hour, but they had to work with what they had.

Sabah entered the canopy of trees, the two plastic bags swinging from his hand. Kirby and the other following members of the team were coming up behind. They were on either side of him now, keeping pace. Sabah looked at them, blankly at first, but then more anxiously as they matched his steps. They were in the middle of the wooded area. Kirby looked ahead and behind. He saw only two Belgians, sitting on benches, tired from their walks. This was their best chance.

“Go,” he said. The two men astride Sabah continued to flank him, but now the two at the far end moved rapidly toward them. Sabah was looking anxiously, left and right and ahead, and the dog was barking. One of Kirby’s men in the forward team bumped Sabah as he passed, jabbing him with a needle.

Sabah cried out and the dog yammered, but a moment later the target’s body was crumpling and the two men astride quickly converged to prop him up, pulling his arms over their shoulders and putting a cloth to his mouth so he couldn’t make any more noise. One of the Belgians looked up for a moment. But the team kept going, as if helping a friend home. The dog’s yelps ended suddenly, thanks to another needle, and one of Kirby’s men picked him up and cradled him in his arms.

Kirby called for the driver who had been idling just outside the park to meet them at the Avenue Victoria where it curved toward Franklin Roosevelt. His van was marked with the insignia of the Belgian Croix-Rouge.

The driver was there waiting, clad in the yellow vest of an emergency worker, when they emerged from the grove of trees: two men supporting a sagging body between them; a third carrying a small, furry animal. The door of the van was open, and the group quickly entered. Several passersby stopped to watch, in the curious way people do when they see something unusual happening, but they didn’t attempt to intervene. The van pulled away. Fifty yards up the road, another car picked up the other two members of the team, and in an instant they were off, heading south on the N5 toward Waterloo.