Direct Action

26

6 NOVEMBER 2003

7:22P.M.

TOM FROZE,the key to his apartment six inches from the dead bolt. The intrusion device he’d carefully placed before leaving in the morning had been disturbed. That meant someone had tried to gain entry-or was waiting for him inside.

His heart started to thump. Slowly, he backed away from the door so he could gather his thoughts.

He’d been careful-or so he thought. Given the level of static surveillance around the embassy, he’d performed a cleaning route, taking an indirect course from Le Griffonnier to the Miromesnil metro stop. There, instead of heading southwest toward Passy, he went the opposite way, to Gare St. Lazare. He’d left the metro and used the station’s multiple exits and entryways to confuse any pursuers, crossed the square against the light, and then walked against the traffic flow up the rue de la Pépinière, turned the corner at Place St. Augustin, and dropped into the metro, switched lines twice, rode to Villiers, then on to Étoile. There, he changed lines again, took the metro two stops to Franklin D. Roosevelt, meandered for six minutes, letting two trains come and go, then caught the third one to Trocadéro. He raced through the passageway, changed lines once more, and rode one stop to the Passy stop-a three-minute walk from his apartment. At no time had he sensed he was being pinged.

And yet the signs were clear. Someone had made surreptitious entry into his apartment. Theminuterie light went out. Tom reacted. Quickly, he brought himself under control. He slid along the wall to the light button and pressed it. Then he carefully made his way back to his doorway, stopped, and waited until the light went out again.

He dropped to hands and knees, pressed his eye to the threshold, peered through the crack. There were lights on.

Behind him, he heard mechanical grinding. He jumped to his feet. The elevator stopped. He heard the inside being pulled open. Theminuterie went on, the elevator door was pushed outward, and Tom’s neighbor Madame Grenier stepped into the corridor.

She acknowledged his presence with a regal nod. “Good evening, Monsieur Stafford.”

“Good evening, Madame Grenier.” He waited until she found her own keys, unlocked the door across the corridor from his, and went inside.

He slid the key into the bolt. Turned it. Put pressure on the handle. Pushed downward. Eased the door open slowly.

No reaction. The foyer light was on but the rest of the apartment was dark. Stealthily, Tom made his way into the small kitchen on his left. Pulled the biggest chef’s knife he had from the butcher-block holder on the counter, held the weapon point up behind his back, and headed for the living room. That’s where the concealed safe was.

But the living room was empty. He stood there for a moment, straining to hear any anomalous sounds. There were none. The pipes gurgled. He could hear the muffled traffic noise from the street. He gnawed on his lower lip for a few seconds, steeled himself, then started for the bedroom.

Halfway across the big Sarouk, he stepped on a loose floorboard that sounded-at least to Tom-as loud as an air horn. He cursed his clumsiness and gripped the knife tighter.

And then, from the bedroom, came MJ’s voice. “Tom? Tom, is that you?”

“MJ?” He exhaled a huge, noisy sigh of relief. “My God, what a wonderful surprise,” he called out, quickly looking for some place to put the knife down. He set it on the coffee table then went to the bedroom. “What on earth are you doing here?”

She sat up in the bed. She was wearing one of his shirts. Her long hair was all askew. She’d taken off her makeup. She looked absolutely, sleepily, sexily magnificent. “I guess I conked out. Didn’t you get my message?”

He took her into his arms. “No-I mean, what are youdoing here?”

“They suspended me. So I decided-”

“They? Who? What?”

She smiled at him indulgently. “Don’t worry. It’s the best thing that ever happened.” She caressed his cheek. “Mrs. ST. JOHN went ballistic when I told her I’d been in Israel. She thought it had something to do with the photographs. She threatened to revoke my clearance, Tom.”

“Can she do that?”

“Who cares.”

“I do.”

MJ looked at him. “Why?”

“Because you’ll need your clearance to work for 4627.” He embraced her. “Suspended, huh? Good. You’re right. Best thing that ever happened.” He stroked her hair. “We’ll celebrate.” He kissed her gently on the lips. “But we’ll celebrate tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” She pulled him closer. “What about tonight?”

“Tonight I’ve got a date with a bald Israeli.”

27

7 NOVEMBER 2003

1:04A.M.

30 BOULEVARD BARBÈS, PARIS

REUVEN HAD BEEN BUSY.He’d isolated Ben Said’s safe house through the process of deduction and through experience-field smarts. Terrorists already understood that safe houses could be identified through the utilities. If you had ten apartments in a building, all of them allegedly occupied full-time, and one had an electric bill that was only 10 percent of the others, it was logical to deduce that either the occupant spent a lot of time on the road or that you’d located a safe house. So the bad guys compensated these days by leaving their lights on.

Reuven also knew that in Paris, no terrorist worth his WMD would ever use the local phone system. Parisian phones both public and private were too damn easy to bug. DST had the capability of eavesdropping on any line in the city within minutes, and unlike the FBI, they didn’t need to beg for search warrants or have their FISA paperwork approved by some ACLU-loving judge to get the go-ahead.

So in Paris, terrorists tended to communicate either in person or by e-mail. Or, to make calls these days, the bad guys often used prepaid cell phones, which they’d change on a daily or even twice-daily basis. The phones themselves were cheap, and the prepaid SIM cards, available anywhere in Europe, made it easy to switch numbers and carriers.

Bottom line: the safe house would be the only apartment in the building that either didn’t have phone service at all or didn’t bill any outgoing calls. So Reuven had used his contacts and checked the building’s utility records. As he suspected, the electric bills were all pretty much the same. But the phone bill for the rearmost apartment on thedeuxième étage was less than half of all the others. Plus, according to a gossipy neighbor, there was seldom anybody home.

Reuven suggested an early-morning insertion because rue Lambert would be deserted after midnight. The construction site adjacent to L’Étrier was locked up tight at 5P.M. and opened at eight in the morning. The bistro closed down by ten, the café half an hour later. Normally, Reuven said, the street was all tucked in and bedded down by 11P.M. And the early risers didn’t start moving until 6:30 or so. That gave Tom and him a roughly two-hour window to do what they had to do.

Even so, the approach would have to be on foot. Vehicles stick out like sore thumbs on streets like rue Lambert no matter what the hour, and the last thing Tom wanted was to give some bored gendarme pause for concern. So just after one in the morning, they cruised the neighborhood in one of the dinged-up 4627 vans until they finally found a parking spot on the boulevard Barbès, about a block and a half south of the Château Rouge metro stop. It was a bit farther from the target than they wanted to be, but given the parking situation in Paris-which is tight no matter what the hour-it could have been worse.

They sat, lights out, for twenty minutes and noticed nothing untoward. Traffic was light. There were no repeaters cruising. So they climbed out into the damp chill, locked the van, and walked north. They were both in disguise. Reuven wore a chef’s baggy checked trousers and carried a leather-wrapped roll of knives inside of which were concealed the silent drill and video cameras. Tom, also in chef’s clothes, carried a large cloth shopping bag that bore the logo of the Charles de Gaulle duty-free shops. The bag contained what appeared to be food and wine. Actually, the bottles and packages held dye and plaster, as well as an assortment of other supplies in case of contingencies.

Reuven had spent the past few days walking the neighborhood and he knew it as well as any native. His insertion route took them north along the store-lined boulevard to rue Custine, a two-way street that had light nighttime traffic. They’d veer onto rue Custine, make their way to rue Nicolet, then approach the target from the south side of rue Lambert. Once there, they’d head straight for the door and make entry.

Indeed, getting inside was going to be the easiest part of the evening’s work. Reuven had managed to make a copy of the outside door key. It hadn’t been hard. It took him less than two days of surveillance to get a sense of the street’s rhythms. He’d targeted an elderly woman resident of the house-watched as she’d gone shopping, then bumped her as she struggled, her arms filled with groceries, to pull keys out. Of course she’d dropped them and Reuven, hugely apologetic for his clumsiness, had retrieved them for her, found the door key, opened the door, then handed them back.

She’d never noticed him palm her house key and press it into the small tin of modeling clay he held in his hand. He didn’t even have to make impressions of both sides. The door lock was a cheap one-he’d be able to fabricate a duplicate out of a blank in a matter of minutes.

1:35A.M. They’d just passed a shuttered KFC chicken joint and crossed onto rue Custine when a vehicle passed them, moving slowly. Light-colored Citroën. Parisian tags. A single silhouette inside. Neither Tom nor Reuven reacted. They stayed on the eastern side of rue Custine, two slightly intoxicated guys weaving slightly as they walked, after a long night.

They’d just crossed rue Doudeauville when they heard a car approaching from the rear. As it passed, Reuven gave Tom an imperceptible nudge. Same Citroën. Not good. Cops? Maybe. DST? Possible. Bad guys? Not out of the question, either. Whichever one didn’t matter. What mattered was they’d been noticed. Not only noticed, but whoever it was had wanted them to know they’d been noticed.

They continued on another block, moving past the insertion point. On the corner of rue Labat they saw a van parked close enough to the intersection so that it almost protruded into the right-of-way. Tom almost didn’t give it a second glance-until the vehicle rocked ever so slightly as they crossed the street. There were people inside. More sentinels.

The two men kept moving until they were out of sight of the van. They were now faced with a tough decision. They’d been spotted-twice. And if the opposition was on its toes (and they had no reason to believe it wasn’t), they’d been videoed. The question now became whether to proceed or to pack it in and try again another night using another set of identities and prosthetics.

Tom looked at his Israeli colleague. “So?”

“So?” Reuven shrugged. “So, obviously we’re blown.” He paused. “What do you want to do?”

Tom thought about it. “I think we go provocative.”

“Rue Lambert?”

“What other choice do we have? They know we’re here. And a hundred euros says that after tonight, he closes this place down and who knows how long it’ll take us to find his next safe house. I want to know what he’s doing that’s so important.”

“I agree.” The Israeli nodded. “So,nazuz -let’s move.”

1:41A.M. They walked along the opposite side of rue Lambert, moving north to south, nattering at each other in low tones. Tom glanced across the narrow street toward the target doorway. A homeless man accompanied by a scroungy dog was huddled there, asleep or passed out.

Reuven whispered, “What a coincidence, huh?”

Tom snorted. “Yeah, right.” He knew there are no such things as coincidences. There were a lot of doorways in this neighborhood, and this bum was the only vagrant they’d seen. Provocatively, they crossed the street and passed directly in front of the sleeping man.

The dog’s ears flattened against its head and it growled as Tom and Reuven approached. The man stirred, as if roused from a deep sleep. He was dressed for the street: three or four layers of old clothes. His hair was matted into dreadlocks. His untied shoes were scuffed raw. The man looked at them through hooded, wary eyes, then lay back down, belching loudly as they drew abreast.

“Goddamn, Jean-Pierre,” Reuven muttered as they passed. “I thought you said this was a shortcut.”

“Screw you, Philippe,” Tom answered.

They continued to the bottom of the street and turned the corner, heading east.

Reuven said, “You saw the watcher behind us?”

Tom nodded. For a fleeting instant there had been a silhouette in a doorway near the corner of where Nicolet dead-ended into rue Bachelet. Tom swung his head around to catch a second look. He saw nothing. He was certain something big was going on. The opposition had the neighborhood sealed off. “Was it like this yesterday?”

“No.”

So the development was recent. The implications were troubling-a leak, or a penetration of 4627. But he couldn’t worry about those possibilities now. He had to concentrate on the current situation. “The guy down the street from us. Did you see his hands?”

“Hands were at his sides,” Reuven said.

“Agreed. That tells me he doesn’t have night vision.”

The Israeli slowed down. “So,nu?”

“That means,” Tom said, “we go to Plan C.”

“You’re a funny fellow.”

Tom paused just long enough to look at the Israeli. “What do you think?”

“One: I’ve never seen a street person in six days of surveilling this neighborhood. Now we see one-two if you count the guy behind us. Two: the guy we passed looked pretty authentic, but he smelled clean. I caught a whiff of soap. Three: you saw how his shoes were all scuffed up? But the soles were brand-new rubber.” He looked at Tom. “You?”

“Agreed. I missed the soap. But I caught the shoes.”

“So?”

“Tells me there’s activity up there-important enough for them to set both static and mobile security. I want a look-see.” He stared at the Israeli. “Possible?”

“Of course. There’s an alley near the top of rue Ramey,” Reuven said in response. “It’s right at the sight-line periphery of the van on rue Labat. But it’s overcast tonight and I think if you’re careful you’ll be able to get over the wall without them seeing you. You go in and you head south. You climb three more walls and cross three tiny yards. There are no dogs, so you shouldn’t be bothered. The yard after the third wall backs up against the target house. There’s two exterior drainpipes running from the ground to the roof. The one on the left-hand side takes you past the safe-house window-two floors aboveground. If you pull a good Spider-Man and hang on one-handed, you might even be able to get video.”

Tom said, “Hmm.”

“It all depends whether or not they’ve left the shades up-and how you feel about whatchamacallit shinnying up drainpipes these days.” He looked at Tom. “I hope you still remember your rock-climbing skills from Dartmouth.”

Tom suppressed a double take and answered the Israeli matter-offactly. “It’s kind of like riding a bicycle, Reuven-you don’t forget.” But he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “How the hell did you know about rock-climbing?”

Reuven allowed himself to crack a hint of a grin. “What, you don’t think I ran a thorough profile on you back when you and I were butting heads?”

28

1:45A.M. They continued walking east on rue Nicolet, crossing midblock onto the south side of the street. The move was relatively secure because Reuven knew the single streetlamp between the foot of rue Lambert and rue Ramey wasn’t working. He knew it wasn’t working because he’d shattered it the previous night with a ball bearing fired from a small slingshot. When no one had reacted to the sound, he’d taken the time to sweep up the glass shards and get rid of them. The ploy had worked: the lamp hadn’t been replaced yet.

The third house from the corner had a large recessed portico. “Go there.” Reuven nudged Tom into the doorway. The Israeli checked over his shoulder, then followed. He knew the watcher down the street couldn’t see them without exposing himself.

1:46:14. Tom ripped his long web belt out, shed the gray-and-white-checked chef’s trousers, turned them inside out, pulled them back on over his black running shoes, then rethreaded the belt. He did the same with the red-and-blue Paris Ste. Germaine anorak he wore over a set of black thermals. The anorak reversed into solid black.

1:46:17. Reuven unrolled the package of chef’s knives. He paused, then handed Tom one of the pencil-like miniature video cameras. “Use the high-resolution night-vision lens.”

“Good idea.” Tom slipped the camera into the fanny pack he’d carried inside the shopping bag of food. Then Tom worked a radio earpiece into his ear, attached the mike to the collar of his jersey, ran the wire down to his waist, clipped a secure radio receiver to the fanny-pack belt, turned the unit on, tugged on it to make sure it was securely seated, then plugged the earpiece in.

The radios were for emergency use only. In Hollywood, they jabber on their radios during black ops the way teenagers use cell phones in shopping malls. In reality, you never speak unless it’s a life-and-death situation. Radio transmissions-even secure ones-can bleed into other frequencies. Indeed, terrorists in hiding often keep TV sets turned on. If the screen starts picking up snow or other interference, it is a sure sign that there are folks talking on UHF or VHF radios in the vicinity.

1:46:27. Reuven attached his own radio, which also had a throat mike, then watched as Tom took off the long-billed baseball hat he’d been wearing, pulled a black knit watch cap from the shopping bag, and jammed it onto his head. The American affixed a fake mustache onto his upper lip and allowed Reuven to adjust it.

1:46:33. Reuven pulled a hat out of the shopping bag, exchanged hairpieces, and reversed his jacket and trousers, altering his shape and his silhouette.

1:46:44. Tom handed Reuven the shopping bag. He pulled on the pair of thin, black Kevlar-lined leather duty gloves he’d bought out of a law enforcement catalog. “Go-see you later.”

In response, Reuven gave his colleague an upturned thumb.

“Very funny.”

“I’ll give you one tap on the radio when I’m clear of rue Nicolet. Only move then.”

“Understood. See you at the rendezvous.”

1:46:51A.M. The Israeli slung the long handles of the shopping bag over his right shoulder and strode boldly down the three steps, turned left, and marched up the street. He’d constructed his cleaning route so as to make things as difficult as possible for the opposition. It wouldn’t be hard, either. First of all, they appeared to be using single watchers. Bad tactics. When Reuven had set up the hit on Palestinian intelligence chief Atif B’sisou in Montparnasse, he’d used four three-man teams to seal the area. No matter how the Palestinians might have reacted, Reuven had been confident there’d be at least one Israeli team on them every second.

Reuven pulled the cap down on his head and headed straight for rue Bachelet. It was a rule of combat: when ambushed, counterambush. When attacked, counterattack. Do not shy away. Get in your adversary’s face-which is exactly what he was doing now. There were only two possibilities: the watcher would go passive, in which case he’d shift his position to keep Reuven from seeing him. If he did that, Reuven would lose him on the cleaning route. Or he’d go provocative and aggressive, in which case Reuven would deal with him using the suppressed Glock he’d carried in the small of his back, but which now rested in his right hand, concealed by the shopping bag’s big outer pocket.

In either case, Reuven would turn right onto rue Bachelet and follow the one-way street with the traffic flow, then veer west and scamper up the long stairway at the end of rue Becquerel. Any pursuers would immediately become obvious. Moreover, they’d have to really scramble to cut him off at the stairway’s top end on rue Lamarck.

Rue Lamarck was a scythe-shaped, one-way street. The long handle of which extended as far west as the avenue de St. Ouen. The scythe’s blade ran around the eastern base of the Sacré Coeur cathedral compound. And running off that section of rue Lamarck were a bunch of the tiny, narrow, no-more-than-alley-wide streets common to the Montmartre district. Reuven would use those passageways to lose any pursuers. He’d complete his cleaning route by circling clear around Sacré Coeur, then move east and south once more, waiting for Tom near the Château Rouge metro stop. It was a piece of cake. Maybe.

1:47:33. Careful to stay on the outer part of the narrow sidewalk, Reuven came abreast of the doorway where he’d spotted the watcher. He glanced left. The doorway was empty. The guy had obviously shifted position while he and Tom were doing their fast change. That was good news/bad news. Good news was that he’d gone passive. Bad news was he was out there somewhere, prowling and potentially dangerous. Either way, it was time for Tom to get moving. Reuven reached down with his left hand and tapped the transmit button on the radio once.

1:47:39. As Reuven made his way around half a dozen parked motorcycles at the end of rue Nicolet and turned onto rue Bachelet he realized the opposition had been doing some contingency planning, too. The two streetlights, which less than twenty-four hours earlier had given the street of antique houses the postcard look of Toulouse-Lautrec’s nineteenth-century Montmartre, were now both extinguished. The entire length of the 170-meter-long street was plunged into ominous, murky darkness. Things had gone from Le Lapin Agile toRififi.

1:47:42. Reuven’s mind and body both reacted to his surroundings, but his physical appearance never changed. Combat was mental. That’s what they taught you in theMat’kal. It required training, discipline, and confidence.

1:47:43. Reuven crossed the narrow street.Scan and breathe. Scan and breathe. That was what the firearms instructors drilled into you day after day on the range. Do not succumb to tunnel vision. Take in oxygen. Keep every instinct keened. Ears open. Nose open. Miss nothing. Become a sponge. Anticipate.

1:47:45. Reuven’s radar sensed movement behind him. Then his ears caught the faint but nonetheless distinct scrape of running shoes against asphalt, moving in quick, potentially violent fashion. The motion in itself was eloquent. It told the Israeli his opposition was armed with a knife or a garrote, not a gun. And then the smells hit him: garlic, tobacco, and sweat-even in the chill, there was sweat.

1:47:46. Reuven feinted right but moved left, rolling over the low hood of a car and dropping into a crouch as a body came hurtling past the spot where his left shoulder had been. He heard the whoosh of the blade as it slashed air.

He caught a glimpse of the man wielding it. Dressed inbanlieue hiphop and carrying a big folding knife with a curved blade.An amateur. Only amateurs use knives that big. Maybe. But maybe also a professional-a gangsta paid a hundred euros to make this look like a street robbery.

1:47:48. Reuven tucked the shopping bag tightly under his right arm. He brought the Glock up, parallel to the pavement.

1:47:49. His left hand racked the slide, loading a round into the pistol’s chamber. Simultaneously, Reuven swung the suppressor’s muzzle across his assailant’s sweatshirt-covered chest, almost as if he were swinging a paintbrush, and as the muzzle crossed center mass, he pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession-thwop-thwop.

The target went down. But instead of dying, he groaned loudly, cursed in guttural Arabic, rolled away from Reuven, and tried to pull himself to his feet. He’d never even let go of the big knife.

The son of a whore’s wearing a vest. Reuven shifted the Glock into a two-handed grip, stepped up, and using the car to steady himself, put a carefully aimed third round into the side of the hip-hop’s head.

1:47:52. The hip-hop dropped heavily, splayed out on the sidewalk facedown, thrashing like he’d been jolted with a Taser. He bucked half a dozen times then went still. A puddle of dark blood began to drain from the head wound.

1:47:57. Reuven backed away from the car, breathing through his mouth to make sure he took in a lot of oxygen. He pointed the muzzle of the Glock slightly downward-the stance they called low ready at the range-swinging the weapon left/right, right/left, his eyes searching the darkened street for anomalies. He thought he heard the faint sound of shoe leather on concrete moving away from him, but he couldn’t be absolutely sure.

1:48:03. Reuven looked up and scanned the windows. Thank God it was all quiet. There were no lights; no nosy neighbors. He dropped to his knees and crawled around until he’d retrieved his three 9mm shell casings from the street and shoved them in his pocket. Then he approached the dead hiphop and rolled the corpse with his toe, careful to stay away from the large puddle of blood leaking from the side of the man’s shattered temple. He’d been right: the hip-hop had the look of an Algerian or Moroccanbanlieue gangbanger-right down to the jailhouse tattoo on the back of his hand.

1:48:29. The Israeli patted the dead man down. There was a wallet, a pager, and a cell phone. Reuven stuffed them into the shopping bag. Gingerly, he pulled the hip-hop’s sweatshirt up. There were five hundred-euro bills secured in the Velcro straps of the bulletproof vest. He took them, too. The money was folded around a small piece of yellow paper-one of those silly Post-it sticky notes.

Reuven held the paper up and squinted in the darkness. On the Post-it was writtenRaynouard. The numerals were Arabic-17. The address was Tom’s.

The Israeli started up the street at a dead run, heading for the long flight of stairs. He knew there was an all-night taxi stand near the intersection of rue Lamarck and rue Caulaincourt.

29

1:47:39A.M. When he heard the singletsk in his ear, Tom slipped out of the doorway, kept close to the building, and made his way slowly up the street. The key was to do everything slowly and evenly. No jerky movement. Nothing that would attract attention. At night, sudden movement normally causes people to shift their eyes-change focus, use peripheral vision. And Tom didn’t want anybody doing that. He wanted his adversaries staring straight at him because that way they were likely to miss him. Of course, if they had night-vision equipment, it wouldn’t matter. But better safe than stupid.

1:47:52. Tom crossed the foot of rue Nicolet. He’d started to ease around the corner onto rue Ramey when he saw headlights coming in his direction. He stopped, stepped back, and retreated into a doorway.

The car-it was a small convertible-continued south on rue Ramey. As soon as its taillights had disappeared, Tom stepped out, made his way to the corner, and turned north. He was about halfway up the block when the intersection of rue Labat came into view. He continued cautiously until he dared to look across the street and saw the van was gone. That struck Tom as strange. Static surveillance units seldom shifted their positions because doing so drew attention to them.

Tom had once spent thirty-eight hours straight on a two-man static surveillance. It had been in Cairo, in the summer. After about twenty-six hours in hundred-plus-degree heat, he’d come down with a horrible case of turista. All the Imodium, of course, was stored safely in the medicine cabinet back at his apartment, and so the last half day had been without question the most uncomfortable twelve hours in his entire life. He didn’t want to think how nasty it had been for his unfortunate partner.

1:48A.M. The mouth of the alley was sealed by a two-and-a-half-meter wall-just over eight feet-topped with an occasional shard of glass. There was no gate. The wall was smooth-there were no dogs’ teeth to help him gain any purchase.

He paused, took a deep breath, then sprang, catching the exposed cap of the brick wall with his fingertips. He pulled himself straight up vertically, as if he were chinning on a bar. In truth, he hadn’t done any rock-climbing since college. He ran, of course, and when he’d been at Langley, he’d occasionally lifted some free weights down in the clandestine personnel gym. But since he’d moved to Paris, his exercise sessions had been sporadic at best-and now he was going to suffer the painful consequences.

But he kept going. When Tom’s nose was level with the top of the wall, he threw his arm up and over, careful not to impale himself on the pieces of broken bottle. Then, inch by inch, Tom struggled until he’d pulled himself over the top of the wall. It was no fun.

Exhausted, he rolled and dropped into the first of the three yards. He was careful to land evenly. He didn’t need a sprained ankle. Not tonight.

1:50. He caught his breath and scanned his surroundings. It was just as Reuven had described: a postage stamp of a yard. A tree, bare in the November chill, stood in the center of the four-by-four-meter plot. Laundry was hung out. Tom picked his way past the rear of the house, trod carefully in the darkness up to the far wall, and jumped tippy-toe like a six-year-old at a candy counter to see if he could make out what was on top. This wall came topped with a single strand of what appeared to be rusty barbed wire. More fun and games. He shook his head and sprang for the lip of the wall.

1:53A.M. Tom stood, head tilted back, looking up toward the second floor, his gloved right hand resting on the shiny black-painted cast-iron drain-pipe. It was perhaps four inches in diameter-about the size of a healthy hickory sapling. But a lot smoother. The good news was that pipe joints protruded every four feet or so, and they’d give him something to catch on in case he lost his grip and started to slide. Tom exhaled, reached up, grabbed the first joint, wrapped his legs around the pipe, and pulled. By the time he was eight feet off the ground, he was sweating.

He remembered, in the way ironic memories sometimes intrude, that Sam Waterman had once told him, “Kiddo, pain is simply weakness leaving the body.” The thought brought a grim smile to his face. If what Sam said was true, Tom would be left completely without weakness by the end of his night’s work.

1:58. He was almost at the halfway point-which meant his nose was almost level with the first-floor windows. He looked down. It had taken him more than five minutes to climb less than eighteen feet.

2:02. Three-quarters of the way home. He’d developed a rhythm. He used his upper-body strength (what there was of it) to pull himself up a few precious inches. His legs were wrapped around the pipe, his feet jammed against the rough brick wall. He’d pull, and squeeze, pull and squeeze, and rise a few inches with each painful repetition.

2:06. Tom’s head came level with the sill of the target window. Exhausted, he reached up to the next pipe joint and, using the last of his strength, wrestled himself the final half foot into position. Rivulets of sweat running into his eyes, he hung there totally spent, his weight supported by the half an inch of pipe joint his sneakered insteps rested on. After about fifteen seconds, he rubbed his face against his sleeve, breathed deeply, and then set to work.

First, he slid his right hand around the drainpipe to keep himself from slipping. With his left hand he loosened the inch-and-a-half-wide web belt around his waist, pulled it out through the trouser loops, ran it behind the pipe, cinched the pressure buckle tight, and then took hold of the belt with his left hand and wrapped the strap three times around his hand and wrist. Now, by using the belt, he could swing himself back and forth, giving himself the reach he needed to see inside the window.

2:07. Using his right hand, Tom retrieved the camera from his fanny pack. He said a silent prayer to the gods of video transmission and activated the device. Holding it securely in his hand, he swung himself to his right, sidling up to the window.

It was shut tight. He brought himself back, feet clamped on the pipe joint and left hand holding firmly on to the webbing, while he considered his next moves.

He shoved the camera back into the fanny pack and-taking no chances-zipped the compartment shut. Then he swung back toward the window as far as he could. It took him two tries, but he finally was able to touch the cracked paint of the outer sash with his fingertips.

That wasn’t enough. He swung back to the drainpipe. Now he took his right foot off the pipe joint altogether, skidded his left instep around the lip of the joint, unwrapped the web belt to give himself another five inches of reach, then pushed off once more.

This time he swung low enough so that his right hand was actually able to grasp the wooden sill. Not daring to breathe, he held himself there, fully extended for some seconds, the unwilling hero of his own Harold Lloyd cinema verité feature film.

When he’d finally convinced himself he wasn’t going to fall, he gripped the sill and pulled his body as low as possible. Carefully, he brought his face close to the dirty glass.

2:09:21. The shade had been pulled down. Of course it had-he’d seen no light emanating from the window from the yard below. But now, with his nose just inches from the glass, he saw roughly an inch, maybe an inch and a half, of open space at the bottom of the window shade.

Using every bit of his strength, Tom unwrapped the belt one more wind and extended himself another two inches. Now he was at the very end of his tether, and his left toe on the pipe joint was all that kept him from falling. Still, he strained to peer inside. It was impossible.

He let go of the sill and swung back, heaving a huge sigh when he had both hands and both feet firmly on the drainpipe. He fiddled with the web belt until he had it wrapped exactly the way he’d need it. Tom extracted the camera from the fanny pack. Then he slipped his right foot off the pipe joint, leaned out, and swung back toward the window.

He eased his right hand past the sill, held the camera lens up to the glass, and moved the pencil-size instrument, oh so slowly, from left to right, hoping that Murphy’s Law would, this one time, not be in effect, and that the camera’s low-light-capable lens would capture whatever was in the room-and even perhaps, some images of what lay beyond.

2:13A.M. He’d counted to a hundred and eighty-roughly three minutes of video. If the gods were indeed smiling on him tonight, the camera’s transmissions were secure on the battery-powered recorder in the 4627 van. Well, he’d know everything there was to know in a few minutes.

Gently, Tom set the camera into the fanny pack and zipped the pouch closed. He pendulumed back to the drainpipe, where he hung for some seconds, the sweat pouring off his face and neck. His feet were so numb he couldn’t feel his toes.

He unwrapped the web belt from his hand, pulled it around the pipe, and buckled it around his waist. He tightened the Velcro tabs on the backs of his gloves so his wet hands wouldn’t slip on the painted cast iron.

He slipped his hands around the drainpipe as if it were a firehouse pole, eased his feet off the joint, and slid down until his running shoes caught on the next lowest protrusion. He stopped momentarily, then repeated the action, faster each time, dropping another four feet, then another, then another.

2:19. Tom peered over the wall at the end of the alley. The intersection was deserted. He jumped, pulled, scrambled, rolled over the top, dropped onto the pavement, and headed south toward the rendezvous point at a slow jog.

He’d just reached the foot of rue Ramey when Reuven’s voice exploded in his ear. “Change of plans.” It took Tom an instant to realize Reuven was speaking in Arabic.

Tom answered in kind. “Go.”

“I’m at your flat.”

“What?”

“MJ’s all right-nothing happened. No time to talk. Grab the truck. Meet us out front. I’ll explain.”

“Us? But-”

“Just move-movenow.” Reuven’s belligerent attitude didn’t brook any opposition.

“On my way.”

30

2:48A.M. They were waiting in the vestibule. Reuven ushered MJ into the front seat of the truck, slammed the door shut, then went around to the side, opened the cargo bay, loaded her suitcase, and hoisted himself inside. “Office, Tom. Go to the office-now. I called Tony Wyman. He’ll meet us there.”

Tom wanted answers before they moved. He looked at the confused, frightened expression on his fiancée’s face and enveloped her in his arms. “It’s all right, sweetie. Everything’s going to be just fine.”

Then he turned toward the Israeli. “What the hell’s up?”

“That fellow on the street had your address on him,” Reuven machine-gunned in rapid French. “Since you told me this wonderful woman had shown up unexpectedly, I thought it prudent to get over here.”

“Why in God’s name didn’t you get hold of me?”

“Because you had a job to do, my friend-something I couldn’t do. And because I was on the case.” Reuven smacked his fist into his palm. “The sons of bitches are onto you. I don’t know how, but they are.”

Tom had more than an inkling how. They were onto him because Tom had been the last person to talk to Shahram Shahristani. They were onto him because they were keeping the American embassy under constant surveillance and he’d turned up there and left with a known CIA case officer. The same case officer they’d seen talking to Shahram Shahristani. They’d known because they were competent adversaries and they could put two and two together.

Reuven broke into Tom’s train of thought. “Did you see anything up there?”

“The shades were down and the lights were out. I saw nothing. But there was a gap between the shade and the sill and I used the camera.”

Reuven lifted the painter’s tarp to reveal the rack of video equipment. “While you head for the office I want to see what you got.”

3:19A.M. Reuven had scrambled the staff and 4627’s offices were in condition red. A pair of security cars sealed off the front and rear exits. The entrance to the five-story building was manned by an armed guard. Inside, roving two-man teams patrolled the corridors.

Tom had never seen Tony Wyman without a tie. Now Wyman, in a pressed pair of jeans and a thick cashmere turtleneck, monocle screwed into his right eye, squinted intently at the high-resolution plasma screen in Tom’s office. A police scanner played softly in the background as Reuven explained what Wyman was looking at.

“Tom-freeze the picture. Those are detonators,” the Israeli said, pointing at a slightly fuzzy image of objects roughly the size of tongue depressors. “Ben Said disassembles the backpacks piece by piece. He inserts several thin sheets of explosive to replace the layer of padding between the inner and outer linings at the bottom and back side of the bag. Then he removes one of the stiffeners they use where the backpack straps connect to the body of the rucksack, and replaces it with the detonator.”

Reuven pointed at the half dozen detonators lying on a kitchen towel-kitchen because the wordsCuisine et Tradition in dark lettering were visible on the portion of the towel that was draped over the edge of the table. “I can’t be sure, but it seems pretty straightforward. The bottom end-the business end if you will-is pressed into the plastic explosive. It follows that the middle section is probably the battery that sends the electric charge into the explosive and detonates it. And the top is actually a small receiver and antenna-similar to what’s inside a cell phone.”

Tony Wyman nodded.

“Then he reassembles everything carefully.”

Wyman said: “Where does he get the thread?”

Reuven’s eyes brightened. “Good point.”

MJ looked at the Israeli. “Huh?”

“He has to sew the backpacks using the original needle holes and a thread that looks exactly like this-” Reuven reached across MJ, pulled her own Vuitton backpack from where she’d hung it over the arm of her chair, and tilted it. “Look at the stitching. The thread is unique. He had to have an inside source.” The Israeli returned the backpack and scratched himself a note. “I’ll check it out.”

“Good.” Wyman nodded. “How many bombs, Reuven?”

“If I could count the detonators, I’d know better,” the Israeli said.

“There are eight backpacks, Tony,” Tom said. “But there may be more.”

“Makes sense.” Wyman looked at Tom. “Do we have the place covered? I don’t want Ben Said disappearing on us.”

“Reuven took care of it.”

“I called some friends from the old days,” Reuven said. “Corsicans. Trustworthy. Nothing happens without us knowing.”

MJ pointed at the screen. “Why not just alert the French? Let them take care of everything?”

“They’d get the bombs and that’s all,” Tom said. “I want Ben Said.”

She crossed her arms. “The bombs are better than nothing.”

“They’re nothing without the bomb maker, MJ,” Wyman said. “He shifts locations, identities, whatever, and starts all over again. Now that he’s perfected the detonator design, we’re talking a matter of what-weeks?”

Reuven nodded. “Maximum.”

“So?”

“This time it’s high-fashion backpacks,” Wyman said. “And we have a real leg up because we know that. Next time it could be anything. Attaché cases. Carry-ons. Shaving kits. Makeup bags.”

MJ cocked her head in Wyman’s direction. “But won’t he shift his base of operation anyway if he knows you’re onto him?”

“It’s possible,” Wyman said, looking at her.

“But harder to do than it might appear,” Reuven said.

She looked at the Israeli. “Why?”

“Because,” Tom interrupted, “of two factors. The first is that, from everything Shahram Shahristani told me the day he was killed, Ben Said’s IED designs are unique. That’s how he makes his money. He doesn’t sell his know-how. He sells finished products. Also, he tends to oversee the jobs himself. He was in Gaza. Now he’s here, because this is where the bombs are going to be used. My guess is some of that is ego, but it’s also to ensure that whoever buys his designs doesn’t reverse-engineer them and steal the proprietary stuff.”

“Second,” Reuven broke in, “we’re not talking about making Molotov cocktails or homemade mortars,” Reuven said. “Those you can put together anyplace. These devices are precision IEDs. Moreover, it’s amazing what can be traced these days. You need a more or less sterile environment. No dust, no dander, because you have to be meticulous about the postexplosion forensics. A microscopic bit of soil that’s unique to a certain place. Or a tiny fragment of a towel-they can trace those things nowadays. So the environment can’t contain anything that forensics sniffers or the latest generation of airport screening devices might detect.”

The Israeli noted the skeptical expression on MJ’s face. “Look for yourself, MJ.” Reuven tapped the screen. “Run it from the beginning, Tom.”

“Huh?” Tom was distracted by the police scanner. “Listen.”

Tony Wyman turned toward the radio and the four of them fell silent. The police were responding to a possible homicide on rue Bachelet.

Tom turned toward the Israeli. “Reuven?”

“Later,” the Israeli said in Arabic, his eyes flicking toward MJ. “I’ll fill you in on the details later.” He switched back to English. “Run from the beginning, please.”

Tom dutifully clicked the mouse on the screen. The DVD began with out-of-focus moving images followed by a lot of black. “That’s from when I stowed the camera in the fanny pack.” He fast-forwarded until he saw the image of the safe-house wall. “Okay. Here’s where it gets interesting.”

He clicked onspeed thenslow. The jerkiness decreased and the camera started to pan smoothly across the room. In the foreground, the green-tinged video showed a folding picnic table draped with plastic sheeting on which sat several Vuitton backpacks in various stages of disassembly. To its left, at an oblique angle, was another, smaller picnic table, also draped in dark plastic, which held the detonators. In the gap behind those two tables sat a third. It was more substantial than the other two-more like a drop-leaf dining table. In its center Tom could make out a large sewing machine sitting atop a small crate. The right-hand side of the table was visible through the backpacks, revealing what appeared to be a pasta roller bolted to the end of the drop leaf.

The camera moved on, its autofocusing lens now concentrating on the back wall of the room. Some sort of plastic sheeting had been hung. As the camera panned, Tom saw that every one of the walls was covered in plastic sheeting.

Tom slowed the DVD’s speed so he could look more closely and waited until the camera moved from right to left. The plastic over the window made it harder to see, but the objects on the tables were still identifiable.

“Okay,” Reuven said. “Now…stop.”

Tom froze the image.

Reuven used his pen to point at the bomb-making materials on the tables. “Breaking this down won’t be easy. This isn’t the kind of thing you throw in a garbage bag and move. The backpacks have to be handled carefully. After all, they have to look new.” He looked at Tom. “Show the pasta maker, Tom.”

Tom double-clicked and the image of the long table with the sewing machine popped onto the screen.

Reuven waited until the camera panned between the backpacks to the end of the table that held the pasta maker. Just visible next to the machine were a trio of cookie racks on which sat six-inch strips of what looked like fresh-made lasagna. “Okay, stop.”

Tony Wyman squinted, then said, “Yes?”

“That’s the explosive,” Reuven said.

MJ said, “Just lying there? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“No.” Tom’s hand caressed her shoulder. “The explosive itself is inert-it’s not dangerous until the detonator’s inserted. But look at how thin it has to be.”

“You’re right.” Reuven pointed to the racks. “Looks to me like it’s what-two, three millimeters at most.”

Wyman looked at the Israeli. “Is that significant?”

“For sure. Plastique isn’t elastic the same way pasta dough is. It’s more like modeling clay, or Silly Putty. It’s easy to cut, and roll, and form into shaped charges. But it’s damned hard to roll into thin, delicate sheets unless you happen to have the right equipment. Obviously, all Ben Said was able to get was this pasta roller. Once the son of a bitch has rolled out the explosive, it becomes very, very fragile. From what we can see here, my guess is he’s rolled about three, maybe four knapsacks’ worth.” Reuven looked at Wyman. “Believe me, he’s not going to want to do the job twice.”

Tony Wyman shook his head. “He’s using a goddamn everyday pasta roller.”

“Can you think of something less likely to attract attention?” Reuven tapped the plasma screen. “With the exception of the explosives and the detonators, there’s nothing in this room that can’t be bought off the shelf.”

The Israeli tapped the screen then turned back toward Tony Wyman. “Look-these guys are smart. You were able to destroy Abu Nidal’s organization because it was hierarchical. You cut the head off, and the beast dies. These guys work out of anonymous, self-supporting cells. Or they’re loners like Ben Said. They also study their targets. They probe for weaknesses. They bide their time. They’re patient, experienced, dangerous, well disciplined, and above all they’re resourceful. So while the FBI or Shabak or DST double-checks every building-supply or fertilizer manufacturer looking for fancy-schmancy, our boy goes to Monoprix or BHV, pays cash, and walks away with everything he needs right off the housewares and small-electronics shelves.”

“Makes one wonder.” MJ played with her hair.

Tom said, “Wonder what?”

“Where he got the explosives. Where did they come from? Did he make them in the next room? Where’s his laboratory? Did he bring them into this place in a shopping bag or in his briefcase? How did they get from wherever they were manufactured to that table?”

The three men looked at one another and realized no one had an answer.

Tony Wyman’s monocle dropped onto his chest. “Roll the video again, Tom. From the top.”

Tom clicked on the play button, then the slow button, and the camera panned slowly left to right. The four of them watched for more than two and a half minutes in silence.

Finally, Wyman said, “Hold on the backpacks, will you?”

Tom ran the disk fast-forward until the table with the backpacks was centered on the screen. He paused the DVD and looked over at his boss.

Tony Wyman said, “Can you give me a print of the table with the backpacks? I don’t care about the packs, but I want to see the whole table, legs and all.”

“Sure.” Tom cropped the image just as his boss had asked and clicked the printer icon. Thirty seconds later, he handed tony Tony a borderless eight-by-ten-inch photograph.

Wyman plugged the monocle into his right eye and studied the picture intently. After a quarter of a minute, he said, “Hmm.”

Then he gave Tom an intense look. “Can you do the same thing for me with the table holding the detonators?”

“Sure.” Tom had no idea at all where tony Tony was heading.

31

3:38A.M. Tony Wyman held the photographs side by side directly in front of his long nose and examined them closely, one then the other. He said “Hmm” again. He looked at Tom, swiveled his chair, and said, “Come see.”

Tom came around and peered over Wyman’s shoulder, squinted, then shrugged. “What am I looking for?”

Wyman used his right pinkie to summon Reuven. “Now you. What do you see?”

The Israeli leaned over Wyman’s other shoulder. “Tables. Backpacks. Detonators. A kitchen towel.”

Wyman peered over at MJ. “You’re the professional here, m’dear.”

MJ took the two photos from Wyman, laid them on Tom’s desk, then rummaged through her purse but came up empty. “I guess I left my glasses back at Tom’s. Tony, can I borrow your monocle?”

Wyman dropped the gold-rimmed glass into her palm. She put the black silk ribbon around her neck, then affixed the lens in her right eye. “Whoa, this is way too strong for me.” She tried to use the monocle as a magnifying glass, but that technique didn’t work, either. A frustrated MJ handed the monocle back to Wyman. “I can’t see anything worth a damn, Tony.”

Wyman’s fingers drummed on the desktop. Then he stood up. “Aha. Follow me.”

The three of them traipsed after him, followed by the two security guards Wyman had stationed outside Tom’s door. They took the elevator down one level, then padded on an Oriental rug down an L-shaped corridor to the back of the town house and through sliding pocket doors into 4627’s research room.

In many ways the place resembled a law library: dark wood bookcases and file cabinets, and a quartet of leather club chairs, each with its own reading lamp. In one corner, MJ saw a computer whose 4627 Company screen saver bounced back and forth across the width of the flat screen. There were also a pair of long tables. On one of them sat a stack of reference books-thesauruses and dictionaries in a dozen languages. The other, which sat adjacent to a five-drawer, legal-size file cabinet of city and country maps, held 4627’s world atlases. And attached to the end of the map table was a hinged, black metal, twelve-power magnifying lamp.

Wyman laid the photos on the table, flipped the protective cover from the thick magnifying glass, turned the light on, and stepped back.“Mademoiselle, s’il vous plaît?”

Using the lamp’s handle, MJ played the eight-inch glass over the photographs, working systematically left to right and then back again. When she’d finished with the first picture, she repeated her actions with the second. The three men stood quietly, Wyman rocking back and forth on his heels, his right hand playing with the change in his trouser pocket.

Finally, MJ looked over at tony Tony. “I see anomalies in these photographs,” she said.

Wyman flashed her a wicked grin and spoke in a Long John Silver accent. “And they be what sorts of anomalies, Marilyn Jean?”

“Why would Ben Said have two containers of olive oil in what you’ve told me is a room he’s trying to keep as sterile as possible.”

Reuven Ayalon cocked his head in MJ’s direction. “Olive oil. You’re sure?”

“Either olive oil or a bulk container of imported olives.” MJ stood aside. “Take a look, Reuven.”

The Israeli played the magnifying glass over the photograph. Finally, he looked up. “She’s right-but I think it’s a barrel of olives, not the oil.” He backed away so Tom could take a peek.

Tom peered at the photo. Then he gave MJ an anxious look. When she nodded at him, he said, “Give MJ a couple of minutes to play with these. I think she can make things a lot clearer than I did.”

3:56A.M. Tom waved the eight-by-ten at Tony Wyman. “She got it,” he said proudly. “She’s a genius.”

MJ blushed. “Not according to Mrs. Sin-Gin.”

Tony Wyman took the photo. “My Arabic’s rusty,” he said. “But I think it readsBoissons Maghreb Exports.” He looked at Tom. “The name sounds familiar. What’s the significance?”

“It’s an import-export company. Belongs to a Moroccan named Yahia Hamzi. He’s the third man in Shahram’s surveillance photos. Shahram described him as Ben Said’s banker.

“Dianne Lamb, our little bomber girl in Israel, met Hamzi here in Paris,” Tom said. “At a Lebanese restaurant in the seventeenth.”

“I found the place,” Reuven interrupted. “It’s called Rimal. It’s on boulevard Malesherbes.”

“Lamb was told his name was Talal Massoud,” Tom interrupted. “And that he was the editor ofAl Arabia, the magazine that employed Malik Suleiman-the Tel Aviv disco bomber.”

Reuven picked up: “Hamzi’s a regular.”

Wyman cocked his head in Tom’s direction. “Does two plus two equal four here, gentlemen?”

“If you’re thinking what I am, the answer’s yes.” Tom turned to Reuven. “What do you think?”

“I agree.”

MJ gave Tom a puzzled look. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“That last day when I had lunch with Shahram,” Tom said. “He told me Ben Said’s new explosive was terribly difficult to make. Said it had to be cooked in small batches. Said that Ben Said used up his entire stock of the new stuff in the Gaza explosion.”

“So?”

So, one: we can extrapolate that he’s running short. Aside from what’s been rolled out and is sitting on the drying racks, I don’t see any plastique in the room-no bricks, or mounds of anything to be rolled out.” He scanned the room. “Does anybody?”

“No,” said MJ, “but I don’t know what to look for.”

“There’s nothing there,” Reuven said authoritatively.

Tony Wyman gave the Israeli a probing stare. “So everything’s on the drying racks?”

Reuven didn’t back down. “That’s what I think.”

“Next,” Tom said. “Reuven’s earlier surveillance indicated no activity on rue Lambert. That tells me Ben Said wasn’t on scene.” He looked at Tony Wyman. “But last night-there were hostiles.”

“So?”

“Indicates one of two things: either DST’s got something working or Ben Said’s getting close.” Tom put his arm around MJ’s shoulder. “Here’s my two-plus-two: you asked how Ben Said moves the explosive once it’s been fabricated. How does he get it to the safe house. Obvious answer, given the photo: the explosive gets shipped in a container of Maghreb’s imported olives. Maghreb is Yahia Hamzi’s firm. Shahram told me Hamzi was Ben Said’s banker. But was Shahram being literal or figurative? Maybe he was saying Hamzi moves stuff around for Ben Said-launders the goods, or the cash, or whatever, if you will. Okay. Now, let’s posit the explosives are fabricated in Morocco in small batches-just as Shahram said. Then they’re shipped to Paris-or wherever-in Maghreb olive containers.”

MJ played with Tom’s fingers. “Wouldn’t the oil affect the plastique?”

“Not at all,” Reuven said. “And getting rid of the oil coating would be as simple as using soap and water.”

MJ’s eyes went wide. “Holy cow.”

“Tom,” Tony Wyman said, “I think we need to speak with Mr. Hamzi about these matters.” He swiveled toward the Israeli. “In private, of course. Is there some way you might arrange that, Reuven?”

“Are there time constraints?”

“Obviously, the sooner the better. Sometime in the next twenty-four hours would be optimum.” Wyman looked at Tom. “You look dubious, Tom. Am I asking the impossible?”

“Nothing’s impossible, Tony.” Tom found it significant that Wyman had directed the initial question to Reuven. That was because Reuven had done these kinds of ops before and Tom hadn’t. Besides, Wyman had worked with Mossad in the past-when he’d targeted Abu Nidal.

Many of the CIA’s Arabists-Charlie Hoskinson was one-tended to keep the Israelis at arm’s length. They distrusted Mossad’s motives. Wyman, it was said, had liaised with Mossad off the books on some European operations during the Gates and Webster era, when Langley was institutionally opposed to any sort of risky or audacious operation.

But talk about risky. Snatching Hamzi was way beyond risky. It was dangerous. The French tended to frown on kidnapping in their capital. But there had to be a way.

Tom looked at Tony Wyman. Wyman expected results, not excuses. And he was obviously waiting for Tom to say something-Tom could almost hear the ticking of the clock in Wyman’s brain.

He let his mind go free-float with the white sound of the police scanner.Wheelbarrows, Tom. Think wheelbarrows. And then the answer came to him in a sudden epiphany-create dread. It was so simple it had to work. “We question Hamzi in Israel,” Tom exclaimed.

Tony Wyman gave him a skeptical look. “Isn’t that a bit complicated, Tom? Planes. Unwilling passengers.” He looked at Tom. “Remember when Mubarak tried to smuggle that dissident out of Frankfurt in the trunk?”

He turned to MJ as Reuven and Tom stifled guffaws. They knew the story. “Once upon a time, the Mukhabarat el-Aama-that’s Egypt’s intelligence service-kidnapped a bothersome anti-Mubarak dissident in Germany. They snatched him from Freiburg where he was teaching political science and preaching revolution. They drugged him, stuffed him in a trunk, and tried to ship him back to Cairo as diplomatic mail. Problem was, the son of a bitch woke up just as the Germans were loading the trunk on the plane. There was one hell of a diplomatic flap and the incident caused Mubarak all sorts of political embarrassment in the Western press.” Wyman looked at Tom and Reuven. “We don’t need any flaps, guys.”

“And we won’t have any because I’m not being literal,” Tom interjected. “We use the warehouse. We build a cell, a hallway, an interrogation room. We snatch Hamzi. We put him to sleep. He wakes up in a cell. He hears Hebrew being spoken outside the door. He hears other prisoners talking in Arabic. The guards-what he sees of them-are wearing Israeli uniforms. What’s he going to think? He’ll swear he’s been kidnapped by Mossad and flown to Israel.”

Tom looked at the smile spreading across Reuven’s face. “We re-create Qadima. We squeeze Hamzi. After he gives us what we want, he goes to sleep again-andbadda bing, he wakes up in Paris.”

“I like it,” Wyman said. “Because if we succeed, Tel Aviv will get all the blame.” He cast a quizzical look at Reuven. “And how are you with that outcome?”

“I’m retired, remember.” Reuven shrugged. “Besides, the people at Gelilot are big boys. They’ve been blamed for a lot worse things than kidnapping.”

“Good,” Wyman said. “The question is, can we accomplish this within a workable time frame?”

“For what you want, twenty-four hours is tight. So perhaps things will take slightly longer,” Reuven said. “The construction alone will take almost a day, I think.”

Tom said, “If we keep an eye on Hamzi, we should be all right.”

Reuven said: “I’d like to use one of my former networks.”

“Which one?” Wyman played with his monocle.

“The Corsicans. They’re already involved-running the surveillance on rue Lambert. They’re expensive, of course. But they’re good, they’re quick-and they’re very discreet.”

“Corsicans.” Wyman’s head bobbed in agreement. “Works for me.” Tony had employed Corsicans before and they were everything Reuven said they were.

“Reuven.” Tom cocked his head in the Israeli’s direction. “Is there any chance we might snag Salah for this?”

The Israeli reacted. “Y’know,” he said, “that’s an interesting idea.”

Wyman looked over at Tom. “Who’s Salah?”

“He runs the interrogation center where I interviewed Dianne Lamb.”

Wyman played with the monocle’s silk ribbon. “I’m not sure I like it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like the possibility of competing agendas,” Wyman said. “Salah isn’t our unilateral or our employee. He’s liaison. That means he’ll be doing Gelilot’s work as well as ours.”

“Sometimes, Tony,” Reuven broke in, “that’s not so bad. Besides, I think in this particular case, Gelilot’s agenda and ours will run parallel-at least in the short term.” He gave the American time to think about what he’d said. “And Salah’s one of the best in the world at wringing information out of these people.”

“Can we trust him?”

“Look.” The Israeli crossed his arms. “Say you’re right. Say he’ll report to Gelilot everything he learns. Okay, sooner or later, they’ll use it-to their advantage and maybe not to ours, or to Langley’s. But Salah won’t hold back on us-and neither will Mossad.”

Wyman gave the Israeli a penetrating stare. “Why, Reuven?”

“First of all because we’re giving Mossad access to someone who might give up something useful. And second because in a sense, we’re carrying Gelilot’s water on this whole Ben Said business.”

“How so?”

“Gelilot screwed up on Ben Said. They didn’t catch the pattern. We-through Tom’s good work and Shahram’s instincts-did.”

“And?”

“And, let’s say we snag Ben Said. Do we-the 4627 Company-take the credit? Of course not. Because what is 4627? It’s a private risk-assessment firm. Operationally, we don’t exist. Operationally, we are entirely in the black. So who takes credit when we succeed, eh?” The Israeli paused, then quickly answered his own question. “Nobody does-and everybody does.”

The Israeli looked around the room. “My old boss at Gelilot, Shamir, was a tough bird. A real prick-let me tell you, when the son of a bitch became prime minister, he was just as tough and unyielding. And whenever something fatal happened to one of our enemies-like the Black September murderers who planned and perpetrated the 1972 Olympics assassinations being tracked down and killed one by one, or the Fatah terrorists who bombed Israeli diplomats and then subsequently disappeared off the face of the earth-Israel, of course, would get the blame. And the government always denied, denied, denied. No comment. But Shamir always used to tell those of us who worked in the embassies, ‘Never, never, never,’ he’d insist, ‘deny the stories too loudly. Leave the sons of bitches guessing. Whether or not it was us, always leave them guessing.’”

The Israeli’s palms came together. “So, like I said: let’s say we snag Ben Said. Make him disappear. The putzes who write forThe Guardian andThe Independent will scream accusations at Mossad. And Mossad? Mossad won’t deny it too loudly. The left-wing American press and the left-wing French press, they’ll accuse CIA. And guess what: CIA won’t deny it too loudly, either. Why? Because CIA is in such bad shape that any suggestion at all that Langley might have pulled off a successful operation against a bin Laden-level terrorist will make the seventh floor happy.”

Reuven looked at Tony Wyman. “So, I say we bring Salah on, and we do what we do, and who says what afterward, or what their long-term agendas might be, none of that matters. Not one bit.”

Tom said, “I think Reuven’s right, Tony.”

Wyman said, “I’m inclined to agree.” He rapped the table and nodded. “Do it.”

“Done.” Tom started to leave, then turned back toward his boss. “Tony, can you set MJ up in a secure place for a couple of days?”

“Good point.” Wyman smiled at MJ. “I’ll put you at the Sofitel Faubourg, mademoiselle. That’s where I’m staying. The room service is good, and because it’s on the same block as the American embassy, there are hundreds of SWAT cops around to make sure no one from thebanlieues gets anywhere close.”

MJ frowned. “What am I-under some kind of house arrest?”

Tom took her by the shoulders. “These people play rough. I think you should lay low-at least for a couple of days.”

“I think you just want me out of the way while you guys play cops and robbers.” She looked at him critically. “And where willyou be staying?”

“Staying?” Tom gave her a reassuring smile, trying to hide the fact that she’d hit the nail on the head. Tomdid want her out of the way in case events turned sour. He fell back on tradecraft:charm, deflect, redirect. “Sweetheart, I don’t think I’m going to be getting much rest in the next forty-eight hours.”

32

7 NOVEMBER 2003

11:34A.M.

4627 WAREHOUSE, ST. DENIS

BY 7:30, REUVEN’S CORSICAN IN CHIEF, who identified himself to Tom simply as Milo, had assembled a twenty-five-man crew of carpenters, bricklayers, electricians, and painters in the 4627 warehouse. Milo was built like a whiskey barrel. He stood about five-foot-nine and his upper arms were as big as most men’s thighs. His plaid flannel shirt was open halfway down his hairy chest, revealing a jewel-encrusted crucifix suspended from heavy gold links wrought in the style of an anchor chain. The links were as thick as a baby’s fingers.

Milo smelled of tobacco, garlic, and brandy. Under what Tom took to be his perpetual five-o’clock shadow, a long, nasty scar ran from just behind his right ear, across his cheek and lower lip, all the way to the upper left corner of his mouth. The upward thrust of the scar gave the Corsican a decidedly sinister yet slightly goofy look-Tom was reminded of the ludicrous expression frozen on Jack Nicholson’s face when he played the Joker in one of the Batman movies.

At 7:55, Tom gave Milo a rough floor plan of what he wanted. The Corsican asked half a dozen brusque questions, then summoned his people-most of whom looked like his relatives-into a scrum. Milo made a short speech, then barked a series of orders in a dialect Tom found completely impenetrable.

Just after noon, Tom’s cell phone rang. “Game on,” Reuven’s voice boomed. “Arrival this evening.”

“Bon.”Tom tried to shield the phone from the noise of the air hammers and circular saws and continued in Arabic. “Is our friend bringing the perfume and the CD?”

“Both,” Reuven said. “No problem.”

“What about the other place?” Tom was talking about rue Lambert.

“No movement. No developments.”

“When do I see you?”

“Later. I have errands to run. Bye.” The phone went dead in Tom’s ear. He turned and looked with satisfaction at the progress being made. The warehouse now resembled a movie set. Lights, some of them big scoops covered with colored gel, others with barn doors to limit and focus the throw of the light, hung from scaffolding. There were walls joined together by oversize clamps and ramps covered with padding to mask any sound of footsteps. The vehicles had all been moved to one side of the place so there was ample room around the perimeter of the set. As Tom watched, two Corsicans strung speaker wire for the two amplified subbass speakers that from above could create a cornucopia of wall-vibrating sounds running the gamut from the window-rattling noise of about-to-land military aircraft to the ominous rumble of close-by thunder. Another pair of laborers were un-coiling flexible plastic air-conditioning conduit, which Salah would use both to create heat and cold in the cell and interrogation room and to pump in the manipulative odor ofparfum pénitentiaire that would create the requisite feeling of dread in Yahia Hamzi.

7P.M. The interrogation center was ready for painting. Tom did a walk-through. It was quite remarkable-as if a little piece of Qadima prison had been flown from Israel and enclosed in a well-insulated outer shell here on the St. Denis-Aubervilliers border. From the outside, you were obviously looking at a stage set. But from the inside, the place was totally, frighteningly, realistically convincing. It was built around a corridor about twenty feet long. The corridor walls were real masonry-except the cinder blocks were a half-inch-thick facade. The floor was covered with thick rubber pads.

At each end, the corridor took a ninety-degree left turn-which ended after only four feet. But Hamzi wouldn’t ever be allowed to discover the ruse. On the right side of the corridor were four scarred steel doors, each one with a peephole five feet above the ground, and a food slot at waist level. Three of the doors were dummies-there was nothing behind them. The fourth led to the cell they’d keep Hamzi in.

Seven feet from the end of the corridor on the left-hand side was the doorway to the ten-foot-square interrogation room. They’d poured quick-setting concrete over inch-thick plywood to make the flooring. The door was made of solid steel and clanged like a prison door should when it was slammed shut. The furnishings were as close to Qadima as Milo’s crew could get their big hairy hands on. There was a utilitarian gray metal desk and two olive-drab straight-backed metal frame chairs. The legs of the interrogatee’s chair had been cut down before the chair itself was bolted into the floor so that Hamzi would sit three inches lower than Salah.

There were three video cameras hidden in the walls. Concealed in the center desk drawer was a voice stress recorder, whose remote readout screen Salah could see simply by glancing down. The temperature of the interrogation room could be adjusted within minutes to whatever Salah wanted.

Down the hall was Hamzi’s eight-by-six-foot cell. The cell was designed and furnished to Reuven’s specifications, which he’d phoned in at about two. There was a steel bed frame, on which rested a one-inch-thick mattress made of cheap foam covered in itchy, urine-stained canvas, a threadbare blanket the size of a bath towel, and a pillow that reeked of old vomit.

The cell’s floor, like the interrogation room’s, was concrete. And the bed, which sat jammed against the sidewall, was bolted into it. Four air vents played directly into the small space so that no matter where its occupant might try to hide, there would be an unending flow of cold or hot air. Directly under the bed was another small vent, camouflaged to look like an unused drain built into the floor. It was connected to the plastic conduit they’d use to pump the dread-causing odor into the cell.

The ceiling, which held three clusters of lights encased in dirty, thick, protective covers, was nine feet off the ground. Across from the bed was a single, perpetually dripping spigot that emptied into a six-inch open drain in the floor. The drain was rigged to clog on command. Next to the drain was a metal pail-the cell’s toilet. High on the wall above the spigot was a single frosted windowpane covered by bars and grime-covered wire mesh. The outside lighting could be adjusted-evening, morning, nighttime.

Then there were the speakers. They were positioned behind the walls and above the corridor. From a sound console in the control room that was being built in the warehouse office, every sound, from hobnail-boot steps, to the sounds of torture, to the traffic noise outside the “prison,” could be controlled.

The painting was critical. The cell had been finished in rough plaster that resembled the stuccolike material common to prisons all over the Middle East. Now it had to be “aged,” then covered with Arabic graffiti that had to appear as if it had been encrusted many times over with paint to remove the offending marks. The subtext of the cell was “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

For its part, the interrogation room had to evoke a grungy, penal-institutional reaction that would-on sight alone-convince Hamzi that the only way he’d survive his ordeal was to tell everything he knew. To help achieve this, Salah had sent instructions to have the room painted in a drab, phlegmlike green.

As a further inducement, on Salah’s instructions, one of Milo’s Corsicans visited a butcher shop where he bought a kilo of fresh beef liver. The liver was perforated with a fork, then the bloody offal was sponged onto the floor adjacent to the chair. The resulting blood puddles were dried with a hair dryer to darken and age them, and then swiped with a towel, as if someone had tried to clean up the mess but hadn’t quite succeeded.

Tom spent a few minutes sitting in the interrogatee’s chair looking at the liver stains. They were subtle but evocative. Talk about performance art. You had to really work at the visual problem for a while before you finally comprehended what you were looking at. Which, of course, is why it was all so intimidating.

Sitting in the cut-down chair, Tom had to admit to himself that Salah’s trompe l’oeil mind game was terrifyingly effective. Painstaking attention to detail, he concluded, was everything in these circumstances.

7:15P.M. Reuven arrived to create the cell’s graffiti. Tom watched as the Israeli scratched messages, curses, and random numbers into the stucco with his fingernails, raking the walls so hard he drew blood. He was working like a man possessed. Less than twenty-four hours ago, Reuven had taken a life. And yet the effects of that violent act seemed not to show at all. Not outwardly, at least.

By 7:40, Reuven had finished and was ready for the painters. He pronounced his work satisfactory, washed his lacerated fingers with hydrogen peroxide, and headed out for de Gaulle to pick up Salah from the Air France flight.

Tom watched him slip out the door. He was an impenetrable, unreadable man, the Israeli was. He was to be sure a valuable ally. Indeed, 4627 was lucky to have found him because in the business of intelligence gathering, where personal connections and wide access were everything, Reuven had what seemed to be an endless supply of both. But once in a while over the last week and a half, Tom had found himself wondering what really drove Reuven Ayalon. What made the man tick?

The answer was, Tom Stafford had no idea. Reuven was as compartmentalized an individual as he’d ever met. There were circles within circles within circles. Which was why Tom now felt a hiccup of…unease. Being a street guy, a fisher of men, Tom had an unshakable instinct that there was something covert in play here-some hidden element to the Reuven Ayalon equation-that he didn’t yet comprehend, and perhaps never would. There was no logical rationale for this reaction. Except…whenever he started to think deeply about Reuven Ayalon-tried to get inside the man’s character and analyze his motivations-Sam Waterman’s old catchphrase “retirement is just another form of cover” always seemed to slip into Tom’s consciousness. Except…except…Reuven detested the current head of Mossad. He’d said as much-more than once. “He’s worse than Tenet,” is how the Israeli had put it. “Believe me-I didn’t have to leave my job. I wanted to. It was impossible to work anymore.”

11:30P.M. Salah came through the narrow warehouse doorway, bringing a sudden chill into the big space where Tom was pacing. He appeared smaller than Tom remembered him-but then, the last time he’d seen Salah, the man had been dressed in olive-drab coveralls. Now he wore a long black double-breasted overcoat that dwarfed his small frame. He carried a worn brown leather briefcase. Reuven followed behind with Salah’s luggage, a bright green soft-sided suitcase.

Tom’s face lit up. He waved off the Corsican security guard and jogged to the door.“Ahlan,” he said, taking Salah by the shoulders and embracing him in the Middle Eastern fashion. “Welcome.”

The little man’s eyes sparkled. “I am glad to be here. Glad to be of help,” he said in Kurdish-accented Arabic.

Salah let the briefcase fall to the floor and shrugged out of his coat, revealing a worn black wool sport jacket whose left arm was pinned to the shoulder. The Israeli dropped to one knee and opened the scarred briefcase flap, rummaged inside, and handed Tom a package wrapped in brown paper and butcher’s twine.

“For you and your fiancée,” Salah said. “From my wife, Hannah.”

Tom was genuinely touched. He unwrapped the paper. Inside was a plastic baggie holding perhaps a dozen small rectangular pieces of dark brown candy dusted with powdered sugar.

Salah said, “This is calledloozina. It is very sweet, and very good. In our part of Iraq-Kurdistan-it is supposed to bring good luck to a marriage.”

“I am honored. We are honored.”

“You are welcome.” Salah stepped back and looked around. “This is immense,” he said. “Very large. Very impressive.”

“It works for us,” Tom responded, not knowing quite what to say. He looked at the little man, who was rubbing at his mustache with the back of his right index finger. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Perhaps you would like to rest.”

Salah dropped his hand, closed the briefcase, and stood up. “Reuven has brought me up to speed,” he said. “I would like a small glass of whiskey-Scotch. J &B, if you have it, without ice or water. And then”-the Israeli pointed at the outer shell of the interrogation center-“I would like to see what you have built in there.” He looked at Tom. “We have much to prepare for.”

33

8 NOVEMBER 2003

9:38A.M.

NATIONAL ROUTE 309, FORÊT DE MONTMORENCY

TOM CHECKED FOR PURSUIT VEHICLESin his rearview mirror. He saw nothing, but even so, he downshifted and hit the BMW’s throttle, kicking the black motorcycle upward of 180 kilometers an hour through the highway’s soft curves.

He’d come out of St. Denis and headed due north, then turned northwest, then south, then north again on the A15 superhighway, driving almost all the way to Pontoise. Then he’d reversed course, wheeled the big bike around, and taken back roads, running the perimeter of the denuded trees and evergreens of the Forêt de Montmorency. At Domont, he turned south onto Route 309 and drove through the forest, to Sannois. From there, Tom headed north and east, taking the back roads to Cormeilles-en-Parisis.

10:21A.M. Tom slipped into the town from the southeast. Dressed in reinforced black leather from head to toe, a shiny black helmet with reflective visor covering his face, he looked like a character out ofStar Wars. Underneath the leather he wore jeans and a turtleneck. And in the left-hand saddlebag was a tweed sport coat.

Because he was following Waterman’s First Law of Espionage, Tom wasn’t taking any chances. Expect the unexpected was the watchword of his particular faith. So, beneath the visor, he wore a prosthetic that altered his appearance just in case Margolis had set him up to appear on candid camera. In his saddlebags were magnetized license plates that could be slapped on at a moment’s notice. And by peeling off the appliqué that covered the front fender, rear fender, and the gas tank, the BMW could meta-morphose from bright cobalt blue to black in a matter of seconds. He’d punched up a map of Cormeilles-en-Parisis on the computer, highlighted the streets he’d have to travel, and taped it to the gas tank so he wouldn’t have to hesitate or ask directions.

10:23. He drove slowly past the garages on rue Joffre, then turned east and cruised the residential neighborhoods. Like many of Paris’s bedroom suburbs, the center of Cormeilles-en-Parisis had block after block of cookie-cutter apartment buildings. As you approached the outskirts, there were single-family dwellings that, except for their architectural style and their lack of SUVs in the driveways, could have been bedroom communities in Reston, or Yonkers, or Evanston.

10:30. He turned down rue Marceau, checking the map as he banked left. Margolis’s apartment house would be on rue General de Gaulle, which would be a left turn from rue Marceau about a hundred and fifty meters down the block. Tom eased up on the throttle and pulled to the curb to allow a delivery van to pass him.

That was strange. It was Saturday. In union-run France, deliveries were customarily done Monday through Friday, between eight and four. Tom sat at the curb and watched.

Just past rue Charles de Gaulle, the van U-turned and set up so that its back window faced the intersection. As it did, Tom gunned the BMW and drove past, noting and memorizing the license-plate number-another anomaly because thedépartement d’immatriculation numeral on the plate was 64-which meant the van was registered in the Pyrenees, on the Spanish border. Strange for a delivery van with a Parisian address stenciled on its side. So Tom didn’t turn onto rue General de Gaulle. He went to the next block and turned right. Then he drove two blocks, turned right again, drove four blocks, and turned right again on a residential street named rue Baudin and continued on until he crossed rue Marceau.

Two blocks past rue Marceau, at Place Marie, he turned right again, veering onto avenue Parmentier, which ran more or less north-south from the edge of town to the railroad station. He pulled to the curb. Something was just not right. Tom reached for his cell phone. Then he shoved it back in his black leather jacket. Too easy to intercept calls. He’d handle this by himself.

He checked his six, then merged into the light traffic and steered the Beemer down avenue Parmentier. The street actually had some character. There were mature oaks and poplars lining the broad sidewalks. There were a couple of decent-looking restaurants, some nice cafés-and not a Starbucks or McDonald’s in sight, which is more than the Champs-Élysées could claim.

10:42. Tom drove until he came to rue General de Gaulle, turned right, drove half a block, found six feet of empty curb between cars, and pulled over. Motor idling, he reached into the right-hand saddlebag and withdrew a small pair of range-finding binoculars, which he trained down the street.

Two blocks ahead on the right-hand side stood Margolis’s apartment house-a four-story redbrick shoe box of a place. From the look of it, it had probably been built in the early seventies. If he stretched, Tom could just make out the van on rue Marceau. Now he refocused the binocs, panning them back and forth on rue General de Gaulle.

God damn. There were two surveillance teams on the street. Eight guys, evenly divided in a pair of black Citroën sedans with Paris-issued private plates parked on opposite sides of the street. The cars were facing each other so the men could chase down either end of rue General de Gaulle.

There was a second van, too. It was gray, and despite the Paris address on its side, the van had a license plate ending in 23, which meant it had been issued in Creuse. Van Two sat at the near intersection on…Tom checked his map…rue Roosevelt. It was a trap. And frigging Adam Margolis was the bait.

Tom ran his field glasses over the setup. How obvious could you get? They’d prepositioned for a by-the-numbers traffic stop. The vans would seal the street off, the sedans would block the car, and the bad guy would be toast. At least that’s the way it looked on paper. In real life, however, it was the eight dumbshits in the two Citroëns who’d be toast. Because they’d made a very basic error in their operational planning.

From the way the trap was set, it was obvious to Tom they’d assumed he’d be driving a car. Why? Because Henry J. NOTKINS and his boss, Harry Z. INCHBALD, were idiots.

In fact, Tom could make out INCHBALD in the front seat of the Citroën facing him. It was Liam McWhirter, all right, even though he was wearing a Harpo Marx wig, fake eyeglasses, and a light disguise prosthetic: still the same red-faced, porcine drunk. Tom adjusted the binoculars. Jeezus, McWhirter was even wearing his trademark wrinkled blue button-down Brooks Brothers shirt under the tan Nautica golf jacket.

Tom panned the other seven, but found no familiar faces. He went back to McWhirter, who was holding his radio upside down, speaking into the mike out of the side of his mouth. Nothing like being obvious. What the hell were these guys trying to do?

Tom had told Margolis he’d be driving. He hadn’t saidwhat he’d be driving. But Margolis assumed it would be a car-and that, no doubt, is what he’d told Harry Z.

Too bad. Tom shut the engine off, raised his visor, and adjusted the prosthetic. Then he pulled a detailed road map ofParis et environs out of his saddlebag. He sat sideways on the BMW’s saddle, arms crossed, studying the map, and worked out two alternate evasion and escape plans, just in case he’d need them.

10:55. Adam Margolis, CIA bait boy, appeared on the front steps of the apartment house. He was carrying a legal-size brown envelope. Tom adjusted the focus on his binoculars and looked into the windshield of the Citroën facing him. Harry Z. INCHBALD pointed at Margolis, smacked the driver’s arm, and spoke into the radio. The driver reached down and forward with his right hand. Turning the ignition key, no doubt. Tom watched the big sedan vibrate slightly as the driver gunned the engine. He focused on the other Citroën, and the two vans. All the drivers were revving engines. They were good to go.

So was Tom. But he didn’t go anywhere near Henry J. NOTKINS or Harry Z. INCHBALD. That move would have been pure Hollywood bull puckey. Sure, if Tom were being played by Brad Pitt in a Jerry Bruckheimer movie directed by Michael Ritchie, he’d gun the bike, roar down the street, veering at the last minute onto the sidewalk, where he’d knock a couple of fruit stands into next week, slalom past terrified knots of pedestrians, snatch the envelope out of Margolis’s hand, and thread the needle at the end of the blocked-off street (missing the blocking van by microns). Then, after using a parked car as a ski jump for the motorcycle, he’d skedaddle. The two Citroëns and two vans would careen after him, and there’d be a wild, six-minutewham-bam-slam jump-cut chase against on-coming traffic that would end with all the bad guys’ vehicles wrecked, Tom in the clear, and moviegoers on the edge of their seats.

So much for fantasy. Tom, who had once rear-ended his Agency vehicle and spent thirteen hours on the damn postaction paperwork justifying the expense, backed the bike around the corner, shut the motor off, then wrestled the Beemer onto its stand. Then he went back and surreptitiously observed McWhirter’s wannabe trap for another half minute. He made brief mental notes.

Then he pulled one of the two untraceable 4627 prepaid cell phones he was carrying out of his leather jacket, dialed 17, which is the two-digit toll-free number for the Paris region Gendarmerie Nationale, and, using a Marseillaise accent, told the police operator there was a kidnapping of an American diplomat in progress on rue General de Gaulle in Cormeilles-en-Parisis and that four vehicles were involved. Tom recited the license-plate numbers, described the positions of the Citroëns and the vans on the street, and hung up. Quickly, he pulled the battery out of the cell phone and stomped it with his boot heel. Without a battery, the phone’s position could not be tracked-even by DST.

He strolled back to the BMW, straddled the bike, rolled it off the stand, and turned the ignition key.

11:03. From six blocks away, Tom heard the approaching hee-haw of police cars before the four cars of Americans did. When he saw the two black SWAT vans heading toward rue General de Gaulle, he knew the gendarmes weren’t taking any chances. Before Harry Z. INCHBALD’s team knew what was happening, they’d be swarmed by submachine-gun-toting cops in black fatigues, pulled out of the vehicles, and proned on the ground.

11:04. Tom raised the visor of his helmet, removed the prosthetic, peeled all the remaining cement off his skin, and dropped everything into a plastic baggie, which got stored in one of the saddlebags. Then he backed up the bike, turned it around, and rode to avenue Parmentier. There, he found a café, parked, pulled off his helmet, secured it to the saddle, went to the bar, and ordered a doublecafé crème and apain au chocolat.

11:58A.M. Tom paid for the food, returned to the bike, and drove at a leisurely pace back to rue General de Gaulle. He circled the area so he could observe the street from both ends. There was no sign of the Americans-or the police. He drove a couple of blocks farther east, then pulled to the curb and dialed the cell-phone number Adam Margolis had given him.

It was answered after three rings. “This is Adam.”

“Hi, Adam. Guess who.”

There was a pause. “You son of a bitch.”

“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” Tom played the innocent. “I’m running about an hour late, and I’d-” The phone went dead in Tom’s ear.

Too bad. The kid obviously had no sense of humor. Well, the problem was endemic at Langley these days. They’d all forgotten how to laugh at themselves.

Tom kicked the bike into gear and headed back to St. Denis. At least one thing was clear from the morning’s exercise: 4627 was now officially persona non grata at Paris station.

34

10 NOVEMBER 2003

2:45P.M.

223 RUE DU FAUBOURG ST. HONORÉ

TOM FLIPPED HIS CELL PHONE CLOSED. “Two containers addressed to Yahia Hamzi’s Boissons Maghreb cleared customs at Orly this morning. He sent his truck to thezone de fret. Our guy at Orly says the bill of lading lists wine and olives. The containers came via Air France cargo. Five pallets.”

“Good.” Reuven Ayalon drummed his fingers on the desk. “Now we wait to see what Hamzi does.” He punched a number into his cell phone. “Let’s see where he is now.” Reuven waited, then spoke in rapid Arabic. He listened, then flipped the phone shut. “He’s still at lunch-he drove to Rimal and he’s eating alone. But he just took a phone call.”

Antony Wyman looked over at Tom. “We’re set, right?”

Tom tapped his cell phone. “Ready and waiting.” Reuven had engineered a false-flag op. He’d decided that the Corsicans would stick out in Pantin. And so, as Reuven explained it to Tom and Tony Wyman, he’d had Milo’s Corsican Mafia contacts recruit a couple of gangbangers from an Algerian drug gang to do the snatch. It was a straight cash deal. The Algerians were told Hamzi was behind in his vig payments and the Corsicans wanted him. Payment was two thousand euros in used banknotes: a grand in advance and the rest on the safe delivery of Hamzi and his Mercedes to a prearranged location in Malakoff, a southern suburb of Paris convenient to thepériphérique.

From there, the Corsicans would drive Hamzi to a location in Bagnolet, where Reuven and Tom would meet them. Reuven would set the hook-tell Hamzi he was being flown to Israel for interrogation-then administer a dose of ketamine potent enough to knock the Moroccan out for a couple of hours. The rest would be up to Salah.

Who didn’t have a lot of time to break the Moroccan. If the explosives were indeed in the Orly shipment, then Ben Said was almost certainly in Paris. And he’d want to get his hands on the goods so he could finish rigging the bombs. The interrogation process had to be completed in a matter of hours.

2:52. Tony Wyman paced the research room like a caged animal. He was uncharacteristically nervous. He’d spent the weekend working to unravel the Adam Margolis fiasco-and he didn’t like what he’d discovered. The order to lure Tom Stafford into a compromising situation had come straight from the seventh floor. That actually made sense in a perverted sort of way. If the seventh floor could prove Tom had acted improperly, it could arbitrarily yank his clearance. That would, in turn, put 4627’s entire CIA contract in jeopardy-a loss of more than $30 million over the next twenty months.

But why jettison 4627? It was one of the few sources of accurate and actionable intelligence product coming to Langley these days. Tony debriefed Tom, of course-but without concrete results. They’d even done a chronology and created a time line, starting when Shahram said he’d taken the surveillance pictures of Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said on rue Lambert and ending with the Iranian’s murder. But nothing made sense.

Oh, they were being gamed. Instinctively, Wyman understood that. But he had no real idea what the game was, or why it was being played. He marched over to the long walnut table and looked down at the chronology again.There was something missing from this puzzle. But what?

Tom had set up an operations center in the 4627 research room over the weekend. They’d had secure phone terminals, three computers, video equipment, and a color laser printer brought in from upstairs. The room itself was pretty secure. There were no windows, the outer walls were well insulated and had white sound running through conduits, and 4627’s technicians swept the place twice a day. He looked across the room to where MJ was Googling something or other on one of the computers.

She’d insisted on accompanying Tony Wyman to the office. “I’m going crazy in that damn hotel room,” is how she’d put it. Wyman agreed readily. She’d already proven herself to be an asset. When she and Tom married, Wyman had already decided, they’d become 4627’s first tandem.

Wyman looked over at her. “MJ?”

She swiveled her chair to face him. “Tony?”

“Do me a favor, will you?” He tapped the folder containing the chronology. “Take a look at this and tell me what’s missing.”

“No problem.”

She logged off the computer, went to the sideboard, and made herself a mug of hot chocolate, which she carried to the side table sitting next to one of the leather club chairs. Then she retrieved the two-page chronology, took a yellow legal pad and a pencil from the long walnut table, dropped into the chair, pulled her reading glasses out of her hair, and stuck them on the end of her nose.

Tom watched her settle in, thinking she was the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth.

3:11P.M. “Tony,” MJ said, “what about me?”

Wyman’s monocle dropped onto his vest. “What about you what?”

“I’m not in the chronology.”

Wyman gave her a quizzical look. “So?”

“October tenth: Shahram calls Paris station. October twelfth: Shahram visits the embassy. October twelfth: Shahram goes into hiding. October fifteenth: Gaza.” She paused. “Okay, now I add myself into the time line. FiveP.M., October sixteenth: I send the name Imad Mugniyah to Mrs. ST. JOHN. Very early October seventeenth: Mrs. ST. JOHN calls the seventh floor about my Imad Mugniyah photo. Before I get in, she’s already rejected the picture and she’s looking for a way to get rid of me.” She looked at Tony Wyman. “But the seventh floor has already heard about Imad Mugniyah-a week before.”

“Hmm.” Wyman scratched his chin.

“Then,” MJ continued, “roughly the same time as Mrs. Sin-Gin is telling me to go to hell, Tom is having lunch with Shahram. Shahram gives Tom pictures of Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said. Shahram knew he’d been set up the previous Sunday. Giving Tom those pictures and the information about Ben Said was his…I don’t know, his insurance, his…something.”

“Not insurance,” Tom broke in. “Look, Shahram had his own agenda with Langley. Maybe he was running a scam, maybe not. It’s possible Shahram wanted to see if he could still put the squeeze on the Agency. It’s also possible he felt justified about asking twenty-five mil if he facilitated Imad’s capture. But then Langley slammed him-didn’t just turn him down but painted a big target on his back.” Tom paused. “Look, Tony, I think Shahram truly believed he’d developed valid information, and he hated these people enough to want to get it out. So he called me.”

“Hoping we’d put it to good use,” Reuven said.

“Good use?” Tony Wyman pulled a vermeil Montblanc rollerball out of his vest and played with it.

“Actionable intelligence. We’d get our hands on Ben Said,” Tom said.

Tony Wyman twirled the Montblanc. “And then what?”

“Turn him over.”

“To whom?”

Tom shrugged. “Ultimately that’s your call, Tony. But if Ben Said was responsible for Jim McGee’s death, we should have him extradited to the U.S.”

“That means a trial. It means a media circus.”

“What about the French?”

“There’s no death penalty in Europe,” Reuven said.

“Which is why the French will never let him be extradited,” Tom added.

Tony Wyman slid the pen back into his vest. “This is all very preliminary,” he said. “It’s a distraction. Right now I’d like to know Langley’s motivation for throwing a wrench at us.” He looked at the others. “That affects our bottom line, lady and gentlemen.”

“Protection of the status quo,” Tom said. “Everybody keeps their jobs.” He tapped the photos MJ had printed from the video he’d shot in Ben Said’s bomb lab. “Can you imagine how long anybody on the seventh floor would be employed if you took these pictures and showed them to Porter Goss. Goss wants George Tenet’s job bad.”

Tony Wyman gave Tom a wary look. “Porter and I were in the same training class-and we’ve stayed in touch.” Wyman scratched his chin. “As I recall, he was an adequate operator.” He paused. “I agree-he wants Tenet’s job, and having one of our own as DCI could improve the situation at DO. But I’m not in favor of a coup-at least for the present.”

“Why?”

“It’s not in our interests.” Wyman’s voice took on an edginess. “Because we have no resolution, Tom. No bad guys in handcuffs. No bombs for show-and-tell.”

Wyman was deflecting. Tom couldn’t believe it. “Tony, I’m serious. Look at what’s happening in the press. Langley is leaking like a sieve these days. It’s goddamn unprecedented. All sorts of stories about how the White House cooked the books on Iraq. Stories about how CIA tried to warn the president that there were no WMDs.” Tom slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “It’s all chaff, Tony. Disinformation. What the Sovs used to call active measures. You know it as well as I do. The president asks the DCI whether or not there are WMDs, and the DCI tells him, ‘It’s a slam dunk,’ even though anyone at Langley worth their salt had doubts about the depth of the program. And now the seventh floor is trying to weasel out of the responsibility for giving everyone-everyone from the White House to the Pentagon to State-either bad intelligence or no intelligence at all. This whole rotten situation is about job security, Tony. No more, no less. We should take what we know to Porter Goss and let him run with it.”

“The answer is no,” Wyman snapped. “Let me be blunt here, Tom: 4627 is not in the business of staging coups at CIA.”

“Maybe we should be.”

“Perhaps you and Reuven should worry more about refining the details of the current operation to ensure we don’t have any flaps and less about the machinations of Washington politics.” There was about thirty seconds of dead air. Then Tony Wyman said, “Thank you, MJ. Your contributions have been enormously valuable.” He picked up the two sheets of time line and the yellow legal pad on which MJ had written her notes, and tucked them under his arm. “You guys keep at it,” he said. “I’m going to make some phone calls.”

When Wyman had left the room, Tom turned to Reuven and spoke in Arabic. “What do you think?”

The Israeli shrugged. “I think he’s a boss. Bosses do what bosses do.” Reuven’s cell phone chirped. He flicked it open and said,“Parle-moi.” Fifteen seconds later, he snapped the instrument shut. “The shipment just left Orly. Our guy’s headed for Boissons Maghreb,” he said. “If he loads any containers of olives into his car, we’ll snatch him.” He looked at Tom. “Let’s get to the warehouse.”

RUE DU CONGO, PANTIN

4:54P.M.

They were using the small EUREC truck. Reuven, in repairman’s coveralls, a black knit cap, and a bushy mustache attached to his upper lip sat behind the wheel, a cell phone clapped to his ear and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Tom was set up in the rear of the blueÉCLAIRAGE &SIGNALIZATION truck behind a black gauze sniper’s screen that made him invisible to anyone staring through the windshield but didn’t impede the vision of his light-gathering Steiner binoculars or the telephoto lens of the digital Nikon single-lens reflex he’d set up on a tripod. Behind Tom, Milo stretched out, eyes closed, on a dirty cot mattress.

Tom turned toward Milo. “Where are the Algerians?”

“Around,” Milo grunted.

“Not obvious, I hope.”

Milo propped himself up on an elbow. “Didyou see them?”

“Not yet.”

“You won’t.” The Corsican lay back down and rested an arm across his eyes.

They’d set up on the south side of rue du Congo, just past the intersection of rue Auger, giving themselves an unobstructed view of the block-square commercial zone of small warehouses, contractors’ storage sheds, and light-industrial companies. They were roughly 175 yards from Bois-sons Maghreb, well within the range of Tom’s 500mm telephoto lens. Hamzi’s facility was, in fact, not a proper warehouse at all, but a deep, moderately wide storefront with basement storage. The place sat between an electrical contractor and a restaurant-supply house. The heavy steel trap-doors to the basement were propped open and the hydraulic lift was level with the sidewalk. Obviously, they were waiting for a shipment.

5:19. The truck from Orly eased up onto the curb and blocked the sidewalk to make unloading easier. Two burly Arabs unbuckled the rubberized canvas sides of the truck, revealing three plastic-wrapped pallets holding what appeared to be cases of wine and two pallets on which were stacked dozens of two-foot-high yellow plastic barrels of olives. Tom shot a dozen or so photos.

5:22. It was growing dark rapidly. As Tom affixed the night-vision device to the camera lens, the truck crew stopped work and lit up cigarettes. That, too, was captured on the Nikon’s memory stick.

5:47. Hamzi arrived in a champagne-colored Mercedes 500-series coupe with Paris plates whose grille and bumpers had been gold-plated. The Moroccan drove up onto the sidewalk and parked.

Reuven heard Tom say, “Pimp your ride much, Yahia?” As the Moroccan exited the car, Tom muttered to himself and shot more pictures.

5:48. Hamzi took a look around-a wary coyote sniffing the wind. He looked much the same as he had in Shahram’s surveillance photo: clean-shaven, a round, dark face set off by thick-framed eyeglasses with tinted lenses, and a full head of curly black hair. He was dressed in a dark raglansleeved wool overcoat, under which he wore his customary light-colored suit and open-necked shirt. The Moroccan’s body language betrayed nothing untoward. He turned his attention to the cargo and gesticulated, berating the crew, who ground out their cigarettes on the pavement and resumed unloading.

5:53. It had gone completely dark. The first load of wine cartons descended into the Maghreb cellar. The pallets of olives were still untouched. Tom increased the power of the lens, focusing on Hamzi’s head, watching as the Moroccan watched the elevator disappear. Suddenly Hamzi whirled, looking straight into Tom’s lens, as if he sensed the American’s presence.

Rattled, Tom hit the shutter and captured the expression on Hamzi’s face. As he did, it occurred to him that the Moroccan might have heard the shutter, even though the Nikon’s shutter was digital not mechanical. Even though Tom was more than a hundred and fifty yards away and the truck was just one shadow among many.

Tom was nervous. He edged forward and whispered, “Time to make the adjustment, Reuven?”

He had no evidence that they’d been compromised. But there was something about Hamzi’s actions that made Tom uneasy. It was almost as if the Moroccan knew he was being watched. Was it them? Was it the Algerians? Had there been a slip somewhere? Ops like this were risky and hugely prone to compromise. You could never be sure what was what. Tom said, “Reuven?”

“Your op,” the Israeli said. “Your call.”

Tom chewed his upper lip for several seconds, watching Hamzi. The Moroccan was talking to his crew. Then he turned away and looked into the darkness, staring straight into Tom’s eyes once again. Tom almost dropped the camera onto his lap. “We move, Reuven.”

5:55:14P.M. Tom slapped the Israeli’s shoulder. “Go.”

Reuven turned the ignition key, eased the truck off the curb, drove fifty feet, and without signaling made a quick right turn into a narrow passageway heading south. Once they were out of sight of rue du Congo, the Israeli floored the truck and sped eighty yards to where the passageway spilled into a narrow, crooked street that ran east to west. Before Reuven had started the engine, Tom had already collapsed the tripod. Once the truck was moving, he ripped the sniper screen down and stuffed it, along with the tripod, camera, NV, and binoculars, into a black canvas satchel.

5:55:47. At the end of the passageway, Reuven brought the truck to a stop and jumped onto the pavement. Tom followed him. The Israeli rapped the side of the truck with his knuckles. “Milo-back to the warehouse, please.”

“My pleasure.” The Corsican slid behind the wheel and drove off.

5:55:56. They’d prepositioned a black Audi sedan. Reuven used a remote control to unlock the door of the big car and switch the ignition on. The car’s side and rear windows were heavily tinted and its interior lights had been turned off.

5:56:11. Tom climbed into the passenger seat. He clutched the satchel on his lap, unzipped the top flap, and retrieved the sniper’s gauze veil. “Go.”

5:56:25. Reuven edged the car into the street. All lights out, he drove about sixty yards and stopped.

5:56:36. Tom handed the Israeli one side of the sniper’s veil.

5:56:38. Reuven took it and pressed the corner up against the far upper left-hand side of the windshield, attaching the gauze with a small tab of Velcro. Then he attached the bottom to a Velcro patch on the lower edge of the dashboard. Tom mirror-imaged Reuven’s actions on the right-hand side of the windshield.

5:56:43. They were perhaps sixty feet south of the rue du Congo intersection. As Tom retrieved the camera, Reuven edged the Audi forward crawling foot by foot until they were able to see the Boissons Maghreb storefront.

5:57:30. The truck was still there all right-complete with the pallets of wine and olives just as they’d been less than three minutes before. But the sidewalk in front of the storefront was deserted. And Yahia Hamzi and his gold-plated Mercedes were nowhere to be seen.

35

“MERDE.”Tom ripped the gauze off and slammed the dash.

“Got an idea.” Reuven gunned the Audi, swerved right at the corner, then took his first right again. “If he’s going back into town, this is the shortest way.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Then we’re screwed. But he’s not carrying any olives. The two pallets were still wrapped securely. I don’t think he’s making the drop.”

“Are you sure?”

The Israeli snorted. “I’m a trained observer, remember?”

Tom was in no mood for jokes and said so.

“Take it easy, boychik.” Reuven took a reassuring tone. He handled the big car smoothly. Reuven swung left onto a busy avenue, chockablock with brightly lit stores and sidewalks crowded now that the Ramadan fast had ended. Tom caught a glimpse of the street sign. It read AV. J. LOLIVE.

“There!” Reuven said. “Look. That’s him.” Quickly, the Israeli pulled the car over to the curb. “About half a block ahead-he double-parked on the right.”

Tom rummaged for his binoculars. The car was Hamzi’s all right. Stopped on a block of cafés, newspaper stands, and small supermarkets. The Moroccan had double-parked outside a greasy spoon, leaving his flashers on.

Tom started to lift the field glasses to his eyes but Reuven slapped them back onto his lap. “No,” the Israeli said in Arabic. “Don’t.”

“Sorry.” Tom had gotten so excited he’d forgotten his tradecraft. He checked the pedestrian traffic. Pairs of bearded men in skullcaps walked arm in arm, their wives in burkas trailing behind carrying the grocery bags. The refrigerated display window of a halal butcher opposite Tom flaunted whole goats and half lambs, their entrails hanging from the partially skinned corpses. Somewhere close by,banlieue gangbangers were playing Rai rap on a boom box. Reuven was right: they’d crossed into an alternative Islamic universe.

Tom squinted at the steamy window and read the Arabic aloud. “Abu Ali Café.” He started to exit the Audi, but Reuven grabbed his arm. “Stay put.”

Tom shook off the Israeli’s hand. “I want to see what he’s doing,” he said in French.

Reuven shook his head and continued in Arabic. “It doesn’t matter what he’s doing-he’ll get back in the car in a minute-the flashers are going.” The Israeli’s tone was rebuking. “C’mon, man-take a look at the people in the street. It’s like we turned the corner and suddenly we’re in Beirut, or Oran. Look at yourself. You put your gringo ass anywhere near that place, you’ll blow us.”

“What if he’s meeting Ben Said there? Or phoning him?”

“If he is,” Reuven said, “we’ll find out about it soon enough.” The Israeli rubbed his hands together. “Wait him out, Tom. Time is on our side-not his.”

Tom wasn’t entirely convinced. Then he saw Hamzi come out the door of the café juggling a pair of oversize brown plastic bags. The Moroccan opened the car door, leaned inside, and dropped his cargo on the floor of the front passenger seat. Then he climbed in, closed the door on the driver’s side, checked his side mirror, pulled into the rush-hour traffic, and accelerated away.

“Food for the troops.” Reuven let Hamzi get past the metro sign at avenue Hoche, two hundred meters ahead, only then nosing the Audi forward. “He’ll veer left before thepériphérique. That’ll take him back to rue du Congo.” He followed Hamzi’s trail but turned right at the metro stop, paused long enough to allow a burka-clad woman to cross against the light, then steered onto a one-way street. “This’ll take us back where we began this little diversion.” He looked at Tom’s worried expression and spoke in English. “We’ll get there before he does. Trust me.”

7:22P.M. Tom stared through the night-vision device and watched the last of the wine disappear into the cellar. All that remained now were the two pallets of olives. The heavy traffic flow on rue du Congo had dwindled to a trickle-a vehicle only every seventy, eighty seconds. Hamzi’s Mercedes sat on the sidewalk behind the truck. Hamzi himself had disappeared inside his storefront with the two bags of takeout and hadn’t reappeared in more than an hour.

“So?” His eyes still on Boissons Maghreb, Tom nudged Reuven. “How do we activate the Algerians?”

Reuven tapped the cell phone in his hand. “One call.”

“Are they close?”

Reuven remained silent.

“How does it all work, Reuven? What happens if there’s a hitch?”

“If there’s a hitch we work around it.”

“And?”

“And what? We take this one step at a time, Tom. One step at a time.” He looked analytically at the American. “This is your first, isn’t it?”

“My first.”

“What you people call direct action.”

Tom swallowed hard. Then his head bobbed up and down once. “Affirmative.”

“Listen to me: it’s all right to be nervous. You’re jumpy. That’s natural, too-so long as it’s just the two of us. But you can’t ever show it. Not to outsiders.”

“I know, Reuven.”

“Listen to me,” the Israeli continued. “Direct action is different from everything else you’ve ever done. It’s more than mind games, or exploiting vulnerabilities, or spot, assess, develop, recruit, and run-all the agent stuff you’re so very good at.” He paused. “Direct action is full contact, Tom. It’s life-and-death. It’s the soldiering part of what we do.”

“But…”

The Israeli looked at Tom. “You’re ambivalent.”

Tom shrugged, his hand inadvertently brushing the black gauze affixed between them and the windshield.

“You were never in the Army.”

“No.”

“Me, I’m a big believer in universal service. It’s a great leveler. In Israel, we form friendships in the Army that last a lifetime. One reason is that we stay in the same reserve unit for years and years. Train with the same people. Fight with the same people.”

“What’s your point?”

“My particular unit,” Reuven said, “honed very special skills. We were trained to observe our enemies for long periods of time without attracting attention, and then kill them quickly. Not by the hundreds, either. But by ones and twos, or sixes and sevens. Sometimes during hostage rescue situations-up close, with great speed, surprise, and violence of action. Sometimes looking them in the eyes as they died. Sometimes sniping them from great distances, and sometimes executing them asleep in their beds.”

He gave Tom a quick glance, gauging his reaction. “Killing,” Reuven said, “is a skill-a craft, if you will. Your man McGee had it. He was no murderer, no sociopath. But he understood what had to be done-and when it was necessary he took the proper action.”

He gave Tom another fleeting look, and Tom saw the sadness in the Israeli’s eyes. Then he realized it wasn’t sadness at all. It was weariness. It was the bone-tiring fatigue that came from so many years of shadow warfare, so many years of intensity, passion, and rage.

Reuven continued: “There is no joy in taking life. But there are people in this world who need to be killed. Removed permanently, because of the threat they present.”

The Israeli paused. “That may sound cold. But Israel has been at war a long time, Tom. Every day is life-and-death for us. And so we are used to making hard decisions about taking human lives. You can use any term you like:direct action, lethal finding, targeted killing, assassination. The nomenclature is simply a bureaucratic determination. The goal is the same: to forever remove a specific threat; a threat so severe that if we let that threat persist, our citizens will die. So we do what we have to do-and we suffer the consequences on the world stage with our eyes open.”

He paused. “Y’know, for years, America thought of terror as a law enforcement problem. We in Israel never did. We always knew it was war. Call it what you will-warfare on the cheap, asymmetrical warfare, warfare by other means, insurgency-terrorism is war. Dirty war, but war nonetheless. And the object of war is to kill more of the enemy than they kill of you.”

“I know.”

“Well, for years, you Americans allowed terrorists to kill more of your people than you killed terrorists without suffering consequences. All those planes hijacked. All those Americans murdered in Beirut, in Khartoum, in Mogadishu, in Pakistan, in Kenya, in Jordan, in Tanzania, in Saudi-and in Israel. Now, after 9/11, you finally began to see some light. To deal with terrorism as what it is: unrestricted warfare.”

“But the cycle of violence, Reuven.”

The Israeli made a dismissive gesture. “Ach,the so-called cycle of violence is a lie. If the cycle-of-violence argument were true, then the Germans would still be suicide-bombing Brits and Americans for the tens of thousands of German civilians who were slaughtered during World War Two’s firebombing raids.” He looked at the American. “Here is the truth, Tom. This man, Ben Said, has to be stopped.”

“I agree. So why not turn him over to the French-do what MJ suggested?”

“My reaction? Bottom line? Because of what he knows,” Reuven said. “Look, this guy is a specialist. A genius who has managed a quantum leap in the construction of small, deadly, explosive devices.” The Israeli paused. “That’s why I say it’s important-imperative-that he takes his secrets to his grave.” Something external caught Reuven’s attention and he peered through the Audi’s windshield. “I don’t think Tony Wyman or Charlie Hoskinson would disagree, either. Already, this animal has done quite enough damage. Quite enough for a lifetime.”

The hard expression on Reuven’s face calcified. “Believe me-I know the extent of the damage the Ben Saids of the world can cause.”

That was when Tom really got what Sam Waterman had been talking about when he’d told Tom that retirement was just another form of cover. Understood why Reuven had agreed so readily to run 4627’s Tel Aviv operation. Why the Israeli had been working so feverishly for the past couple of weeks. Why he’d pulled strings to get Tom access at Qadima. Why he’d been able to arrange in a matter of minutes for Salah to come to Paris. Why he’d scratched his hands bloody creating the graffiti on the cell wall at the warehouse.It was personal.

Tom shifted on the leather seat so he could see Reuven’s reaction. “You think it was one of Ben Said’s suicide vests that killed Leah.”

If Tom had expected a visible epiphany, he didn’t get one. The Israeli’s face showed no reaction-not a quiver. No lump in throat. No sigh of angst. No deeply evocative moan. It was Reuven’s absolute silence that was so damned eloquent. All Tom heard were the ambient noises of the street and his own measured breathing.

After about a minute, Reuven shattered the vacuum. “If you display anything but steely resolve, you’ll lose control of the op, Tom. And you know as well as I do that control is everything, especially when you’re working false flag or through an access agent.”

The reason behind Reuven’s penchant for deflection, Tom understood, was that there were some doors, some compartments, some hidden emotional and operational caches that the practitioners of their particular trade refused to open for anyone-even the best of friends. Especially the best of friends. Tom nodded. “Gotcha, Reuven.”

“I hope so.” Reuven turned toward the American. “Now, when we grab Hamzi, you’ll get behind the wheel of this car. Don’t let anyone see your face-even with a prosthetic. Don’t say anything. Don’t freeze. And for God’s sake, don’t react.”

“React to what?”

“Remember.” Once again, the Israeli deflected Tom’s question. “Whatever happens, your job tonight is to getthis car back to the warehouse. Full stop. My responsibilities lie with Hamzi and the barrels.” He looked at Tom. “Got it?”

“We’ll meet back at the warehouse, then.” Tom nodded. And although he was uncomfortable with the subtext of whatever Reuven’s operational decision with regard to Ben Said might turn out to be, he decided he could live with that part of it. “Got it, Reuven.”

9:04P.M. The last load of olives disappeared belowground. Tom watched as the two steel doors were dropped and a heavy lock was run through the hasp that protruded at sidewalk level. One of the cargo loaders swung into the cab of the truck, started the ignition, eased into the deserted street, and drove off. Thirty seconds later, two of Hamzi’s employees came out the front door carrying eight-foot metal poles with handles on one end and hooks on the other. They reached up, snagged the outer edges of the corrugated steel security curtain, and yanked it downward.

From their vantage point eighty yards away, Tom and Reuven could hear the dissonant sound of metal on metal. As the Maghreb workers locked the curtain in place, Reuven retrieved a hands-free unit from the Audi’s console. He stuck the plug into the top of his cell phone and screwed the foam earpiece into his right ear. The microphone rested against his clavicle.

9:17. Hamzi came through Boissons Maghreb’s front door. He was carrying two bottles of wine. He unlocked the Mercedes, laid the bottles on the front passenger seat, slammed the door, and locked the car again. Then he went back inside.

9:23. Hamzi appeared again. This time he was wearing his overcoat. He wore it cape-style, thrown over his shoulders collar up, in the affected European fashion. Hamzi went to the rear of his car. He hit his remote. The running lights flashed three times and the trunk popped open. The Moroccan reached in and adjusted something. Then he signaled the doorway. Two of his helpers appeared. Each was carrying a pair of two-foot-high blue plastic barrels. Hamzi took them one at a time and placed them in the Mercedes’ trunk. He reached down, produced a long bungee cord, and secured the barrels together to prevent them from tipping over. He stared for an instant, and then, satisfied with his work, slammed the trunk door closed.

Reuven pressed the transmit button on his cell phone. There were about five seconds of silence, and then he said in Arabic, “Go shopping.”

36

9:24 P . M .

RUE DU CONGO

HAMZI TURNED AND,GESTICULATING, obviously gave instructions to his people. Then he climbed into the car and turned the ignition switch.

Showtime.Reuven allowed the Mercedes to drive off. Tom reacted, but the Israeli said, “Not to worry, boychik, he’s covered. We let the work get done, then we do our jobs.”

9:27. Reuven retrieved a pair of thin leather driving gloves from the console and pulled them on. Then he turned the ignition key and put the car in gear, accelerating smoothly onto rue du Congo then immediately swinging left, to head north on a narrow one-way street.

Reuven steered with his left hand, his right index finger pressing against the cell-phone earpiece, his expression one of intense concentration. “Gotcha,” he said. “On my way.”

There was a blinking traffic light ahead. Reuven ran it then immediately swung right, onto the quai that ran parallel to the Canal de l’Orecq. Tom looked over at the Israeli, his face a mask of concern. “Jeezus-what about Hamzi’s cell phone?”

“The intercept vehicles have frequency jammers.” Reuven floored the big sedan, flattening Tom against the passenger seat. “Hold on.”

“They havewhat?” Algerian gangbangers didn’t have access to frequency jammers.

Reuven ignored Tom’s question. He accelerated past one of the canal locks then drifted left, onto a narrow bridge that spanned the canal. Tom took a quick glance as Reuven sped north, then west. Jeezus H. Keerist, they were less than half a block from the Pantin Garde Nationale barracks.

Tires squealing, Reuven four-wheel-drifted around a corner. He sped east until he reached the chain-link perimeter fence that marked the big commuter rail storage and maintenance facility. He turned south, then east again, finally threading the needle past a set of steel-and-concrete barriers into a narrow, dark street that looked as if it had been flattened by bombs. Reuven looked at Tom. “Everything demolished,” he said disparagingly, “to make way for a branch of IKEA. Progress, eh?”

There, in the Audi’s headlights, was Hamzi’s Mercedes. The Moroccan’s car was trapped in a pincer by two dark-colored late-model sedans with Paris license plates. Behind the Mercedes were a pair of motorcycles. As Reuven pulled up, Tom could see the motorcycle riders. They wore black leather and visored helmets that covered their faces. The drivers, dressed in dark jeans and leather jackets, had balaclavas. All four were armed: two pointed long, dark semiautomatic pistols at the Mercedes. The other pair held miniature submachine guns with suppressors fixed onto their stubby barrels.

The Mercedes had stalled out. Inside, the Moroccan was looking wildly around, screaming into what was obviously a useless cell phone.

“Goddamnit-what are they waiting for, the Messiah?” The Israeli slammed to a screeching stop, smashed his palm into the dash and extinguished the headlights, jumped out of the car, and ran to the door of the Mercedes.

With a gloved hand he smashed the window, reached inside, switched the car’s lights off, yanked the door open, jerked Hamzi out onto the street, pulled the cell phone out of the Moroccan’s hand, body-slammed him onto the ground, and dropped onto his back. Hamzi’s thick-framed glasses skittered across the macadam.

For an instant, Hamzi froze. Then he must have realized he was struggling for his life, and he tried to roll out of Reuven’s grasp. But Reuven wasn’t going anywhere. Tom could sense the man’s desperation as he bucked and kicked.

Reuven must have caught sight of Tom because suddenly he whirled, looked back toward the Audi, and shouted, “Go-go-go!”

Tom heard. But he couldn’t move. Everything was wrong. The snatch wasn’t going according to plan. Not even close. He and Reuven were scheduled to take control of Hamzi in Bagnolet. Not here. Not so close to Boissons Maghreb.

The Moroccan screamed. Reuven grabbed Hamzi by the hair and yanked his head backward. He twisted the Moroccan’s neck. Hamzi struggled even more wildly. He kicked and screamed and tried to pull himself off the ground. Reuven smashed the side of the Moroccan’s head into the pavement and Hamzi crumpled. He still struggled, but the fight had gone out of him.

Finally, the others piled on. The subgun-toting motorcycle riders slung their weapons and held Hamzi down. Another assaulter clapped a gloved hand over the Moroccan’s mouth. The second balaclava wearer handed Reuven a large black canvas satchel. The Israeli unzipped the bag and rummaged through until he found what he was looking for: a small leather case. He opened the case, extracted a syringe-looking device, pulled the needle protector off, and plunged the syrette right through Hamzi’s overcoat into the man’s hip.

The Moroccan went limp. Reuven stood up. He replaced the syringe in its case and dropped the case into the satchel. He looked at one of the leather-clad figures and pointed at his submachine gun. It, too, was placed in the bag.

Then Reuven produced a roll of tape and bound Hamzi’s legs together at the ankles. The Moroccan’s arms were also quickly pinioned. Then Reuven grabbed Hamzi under his arms and dragged him back to the Mercedes. Reuven let Hamzi’s body slip to the ground. He opened the Mercedes’ rear door and, with the help of one of the black-clad men, pulled the Moroccan onto the rear seat. The black satchel was tossed in next. Finally, Hamzi’s body was covered with a dark blanket that one of the black-clad figures handed to Reuven. Someone handed Hamzi’s glasses to the Israeli, who dropped them into the breast pocket of his coveralls.

Tom still sat transfixed. Dumbstruck. The whole sequence hadn’t taken more than half a minute. They’d rehearsed this. They’d had to.

That was when Reuven looked over to where he was sitting frozen in the passenger seat of the Audi. “Why in God’s name are you sitting like a statue?” he shouted at Tom in Arabic. “Remember what I told you? Get the hell out of here.”

Reuven flicked his cell phone open, punched a number, and spoke rapid Hebrew. Then he whistled once sharply and circled an index finger in the air next to his head. The four others jumped on the bikes, wheelied, and sped off into the night.

Only Reuven and Tom remained. Reuven slid behind the wheel of the Mercedes and slammed the door shut. He looked back. “Damnit, Tom-”

“I’m going.” Tom pulled himself out of the Audi, went around the hood of the car, dropped into the driver’s seat, adjusted it, snapped the door shut, and slammed the car into gear. His head was spinning. These weren’t Algerians. Gangbangers. Drug enforcers. The whole thing was too slick, too professional. Corsicans, maybe. Who knew who they were. Who knew what the hell was going on.

And then Tom realized exactly what the hell was going on.

Because Reuven had told him,“Control is everything, especially when you’re working false flag or through an access agent.” And like some frigging greenhorn he’d nodded dumbly and said,“Gotcha, Reuven.”

This was a false-flag op, all right. A goddamnMossad false-flag op. Reuven was in control. Hadn’t Shahram been trained by Israelis? They’d no doubt recruited him years ago. And Reuven? His portfolio in Paris had included Iran. Tom’s mind flashed back to Herzlyia. The retired Shin Bet man Amos Aricha had known Ben Said was formulating the new explosive in small batches. Only Shahram had known that factoid.

Reuven had known about Ben Said all along. He’d recruited Tom as the access agent. And if anything went wrong, 4627 were the patsies who’d take the fall. Tom slammed the steering wheel with such force that he bent it. “Reuven, you goddamn son of a bitch.”

He stomped the brakes, threw the car into reverse, and backed up violently, smacking the rear bumper of the Audi into the Mercedes, jamming it into the intercept cars.

He set the parking brake, jumped out, ran to the Mercedes, and pounded on the roof of the car with his fist. “Goddamnit, Reuven-open up.”

Reuven swiveled around, threw the Mercedes into reverse, powered up the big sedan…and accelerated. The smell of burning rubber rose into the night air. But the Audi didn’t budge.

“Goddamnit to hell, Reuven-” Tom’s pounding put a dimple, then a crease, in the roof of the German car. “Let me in or you go nowhere.”

The Israeli lowered the passenger-side window. “Move the Audi, Tom.”

“Then what?”

The Israeli thought about it. “Then you can come with me.”

“All the way?”

Reuven scratched under his hairpiece. “To the end,” he finally said. “We’ll play it out together.” He looked at Tom and his voice softened just a bit. “You’ve earned it.”

Tom pondered the offer. “Keys, Reuven.”

The Israeli blinked. “What?”

“Give me the keys first.”

Reuven examined Tom’s face. Then he grimaced, and with a sigh pulled the keys out of the ignition and handed them to the American. “Happy now?”

“No, I’m royally pissed-at me more than at you.” Tom shoved the keys in his pocket, strode back to the Audi, and moved it out of the way, handling the vehicle roughly. He turned off the ignition and was just about to lock the doors when Reuven exited the Mercedes.

Tom pulled himself out of the Audi and went around to the opposite side of the car to put distance between himself and Reuven. He was both disappointed and disgusted with himself. He was as blind as Tenet’s CIA. He’d had no idea what the man’s actual intentions were. He’d relied on a liaison relationship and that relationship had screwed him. Tom stood, fists clenched, as the Israeli approached.

Reuven reacted to Tom’s body language and raised his hands in mock surrender. “Relax, boychik,” he said. “Since you’re coming with me, we’d better wipe this car down and get everything out of it. Then I’ll torch it.”

“But the cops’ll track the registration.”

“Not this one-unless they keep track of Audis stolen in Turkey.” He gestured toward Tom’s hands. “Believe me, there’s no records.” He paused. “When you get into Hamzi’s car, touch nothing, or use your handkerchief. You’re not wearing gloves and I’m not carrying an extra pair. I don’t think leaving fingerprints or evidence is a good idea.”

37

10:19P.M. Reuven collapsed onto the steering wheel of Hamzi’s Mercedes and wiped sweat off his face with a handkerchief. It was cold in the car because there was no driver’s-side front window. They’d brushed the broken glass off the seat and removed as much of it as they could, but there were still shards on the floor by Tom’s feet. Even in the chill, Reuven’s collar was wet with perspiration. It was the only outward sign of the stress he’d been under.

They’d driven in silence for about eighteen minutes through northeast Paris, Reuven carefully observing all the traffic laws while Tom sat, arms crossed, fuming. At 10:17, they pulled up to a deserted garage just off the rue Simplon, about six blocks from the Gare du Nord.

Reuven obviously had a remote device in his pocket because the big roll-up door raised as they cruised up the street and drove straight inside.

The door descended behind them now, sealing them inside with an ominous thud that echoed inside the cavernous, empty space.

Reuven opened his door and rolled out onto the concrete. “Quick, Tom. Help me pull him out-but touch nothing except Hamzi.”

“He called you, didn’t he? Before he called me.” The two of them eased Hamzi’s inert form onto the ground.

“Pull off his coat and toss it in the car.”

“He called you, goddamnit. Shahram. He was your agent.”

“Not now, not now.” Reuven yanked the black satchel out of the Mercedes. “On the front wall, Tom-lights. Just at the left-hand side of the door. Turn them on.”

“Wasn’t he, Reuven?” Tom held fast. “Tell me.”

The Israeli gave Tom a long, forlorn stare. “Not my agent,” he said. “It was closer to a peer relationship-we shared information. Kaplan, my old boss at Gelilot, was his instructor in the 1960s. Kaplan introduced us. I never formally recruited Shahram. But we dealt with one another for twenty years. Almost twenty-one.”

“He contacted you. He had to. Because you told Amos Aricha about Ben Said’s explosives-how he made them in small batches.”

“Amos is a bigmouth.” The Israeli sighed. “Shahram called right after he’d come from your embassy-he realized he’d been targeted. He couldn’t talk on the open line, of course. But he said just enough to make me very anxious for him. I told him to call you.”

“Oh God.” Tom heaved a huge groan. He made his way across the smooth concrete and found the switch. He flipped it up and two sodium work lights came on, flooding the garage interior with sallow, greenish yellow light. Tom stood by the door, welcoming the draft chilling his ankles. He felt dizzy, light-headed, nauseated. Circles within circles. Jeezus H. Keerist.What if, what if, what if…

Tom’s mind muddle was interrupted by Reuven’s voice. “Tom-come help me.” Reuven had rolled Hamzi onto his chest. “Here.” The Israeli slit the Moroccan’s bonds. “First, we take his jacket off.”

Tom complied on autopilot. “How long will he be out?”

“Depends. If he has a weak heart, forever. If not, maybe six, seven hours.”

“You never intended to interrogate him.”

“Not true, boychik. But the majority of the interrogation will be done…elsewhere.” They shifted Hamzi’s position. Reuven looked down at the inert Moroccan with disdain. “This guy needs to go on a diet.” He was right: moving Hamzi around was like trying to manipulate a sack of potatoes.

They struggled with the Moroccan’s arms. Tom pulled on a sleeve and heard the sound of ripping cloth.

“Careful, boychik,” Reuven said. “We’re going to need these clothes.”

“Sorry.” Tom adjusted his grip. Finally, they eased Hamzi out of his suit coat.

Reuven took it and began a methodical search. He checked each of the pockets carefully. One held a gold and tortoiseshell enamel Dupont lighter. Reuven opened the top and flicked it on to make sure it worked. Then he removed the fill plug to make sure nothing was concealed inside. The lighter went onto the floor. There was a glasses case in Hamzi’s breast pocket. That, too, was scrutinized without results. Then Reuven turned the suit coat inside out. He worked his hands up and down the sleeves inch by inch, his fingers probing for secret compartments or foreign materials sewn into the lining. He ran his hands around the shoulder pads. “Nothing.”

He looked over at Tom, who was watching. “Pull off his shoes.”

Tom eased the brown loafers off Hamzi’s feet. Reuven dropped the suit coat to the floor, undid the Moroccan’s belt, and began to pull Hamzi’s trousers off.

“Check the soles and heels. See if anything is stored there.”

Tom ran his finger around the edge of the thin sole on the right shoe. There was nothing untoward about the shoe’s construction. He checked the shank. It was flexible. He played with the heel. It was attached solidly. He repeated his actions with the left shoe. “Nothing.”

“Check the lining.”

“What are we looking for?” Tom held the shoe up to the light and peered inside. It looked normal. He examined the right shoe. “Nothing, Reuven.”

“Stuff. Anything. Everything.” The Israeli went over Hamzi’s belt inch by inch. He found nothing. The belt was dropped onto the floor and Reuven started unfastening Hamzi’s trousers. “Pull the linings out of his shoes.”

Tom used his fingernail to peel the faux leather back from the heel, then stripped the lining away from the last. The damn thing was cemented securely, and it took Tom some effort, but he finally removed it. There was nothing underneath. No secret compartment, no writing. He picked up the left shoe and began again.

Except this time the lining peeled back easily. It had been secured with rubber cement. And on the back side was a small yellow Post-it, on which were written numerals in Arabic: -30679.

“Reuven!” Tom held the lining up. “Safe combination?”

“Doubt it.” The Israeli was examining the contents of Hamzi’s wallet. “He’d know his safe combination by heart. I think it’s the punch code for the safe house. Ben Said’s a professional. He’d change the code weekly at a minimum-probably daily when he’s around.”

“And he’s around.”

Reuven jerked his thumb at the trunk of Hamzi’s car. “What do you think?”

Tom started to answer, but the big garage door jerked upward noisily. “Reuven?”

“Reinforcements.” Even so, the Israeli moved behind the Mercedes and Tom noticed that he’d picked up the black satchel and thrown it over his shoulder, and that his hand was inside the bag-probably holding the submachine gun.

A graphite-gray Citroën saloon with opaquely tinted windows eased into the garage. The heavy door dropped as soon as the car cleared the threshold.

Tom squinted, trying to see through the dark glass. The driver was uniformed-a chauffeur. Then he saw Salah pull himself out of the front seat of the car.

The Israeli smiled-obviously delighted-when he saw Tom. He gestured graciously with his good arm.“Salaam wallahkum, Tom,” he said in Arabic. “I am glad Reuven brought you. As it is written in the Koran, ‘God will bless the true believers.’”

Tom didn’t feel like a true anything.

“Salah,” he said. “What’s this all about?”

“Tawil balak-give it time.” The little man rushed past him and scampered behind the Mercedes, where he drew Reuven off to the side.

The trunk of the Citroën popped open. Then Salah’s driver stepped out of the big car. It was Milo. “Good evening,” he said to Tom.

Milo removed his chauffeur’s cap and laid it on top of the dash. “You will excuse me?”

The Corsican walked to the rear, extracted a big screwdriver and two white-and-black diplomatic license plates from the trunk, exchanged the car’s plates, and dropped the old ones into a garbage container. He pulled a pair of heavyweight black nylon satchels out of the Citroën’s trunk and set them on the garage floor. Then he walked to where Salah and Reuven were speaking and interrupted them long enough to ask a quick question.

Tom saw Reuven nod and toss Milo something from the bag that still hung from his shoulder. Then Milo went over to where Hamzi lay, rebound the Moroccan’s arms and legs, taped his mouth, then flipped him up onto his shoulder, carried him to the Citroën, eased him into the vehicle’s trunk, slammed the lid shut, and double-locked it.

Tom watched as Milo retrieved his chauffeur’s cap. “Where’s he going? Back to our warehouse?”

“For a few hours,” Salah said. “Your boss wants to know about several matters. And there are a few loose ends we’d like to tie up on our end.”

“And then?”

“And then? We’ll drop him off at the Moroccan embassy. The Mukhabarat will want to talk to Monsieur Hamzi, even though he hasn’t been to Morocco in years himself. We’ve alerted them to his…connections.”

“Rabat.” Milo smiled. “King Mohamad-he pay good, you know, right, Reuven?”

Tom was listening just hard enough to hear the sound of the second shoe dropping. He looked at Salah, then at Reuven, then back at Salah. “You’re retired, aren’t you?”

“Sometimes,” Salah said obliquely. “I work on contract basis for my old employers. Sometimes Reuven and I and some others do projects together. Like your 4627 Company.” He smiled slyly at Tom’s reaction. “What-you think CIA is the only agency that has to farm out what it can’t do itself?”

Reuven walked up. “Money, money, money is all these guys ever talk about. Nothing but the bottom line.” He tapped Milo’s chest. “Did you find me one?”

Milo said, “Yes, but there’s no time to make it work.”

“Just put it in,” Reuven said. “It doesn’t have to move.”

“It? What?” Tom looked at Milo, confused.

“New window,” Reuven said, jerking a thumb at Hamzi’s Mercedes as Milo put on a pair of work gloves and eased a curved piece of auto glass out of the rear of the Citroën. “Car needs a new window.”

The Israeli looked at Tom. “Salah brought you a change of clothes,” he said, switching into English. “And something for your head. But before that, we have to deal with the olive barrels. I don’t want to risk the explosive falling into the wrong hands.”

11:34P.M. The trousers were about two inches too short for the Israeli and the waist was at least three inches too big. But at any distance more than six feet away, even in daylight, Tom had to admit Reuven Ayalon would pass for Yahia Hamzi’s twin.

That was because the Israeli understood two of the basic principles of disguise. First, he understood that the object of disguise is to play a trompe l’oeil with the mind of the observer by allowing the observer’s mind to

think it sees what it is seeing. Reuven had studied enough psychology to understand that the human mind views the world in patterns; patterns that allow every one of us to make the scores of intuitive shortcuts we make on a daily basis. These patterns are because one particular memory section of the brain has the ability to draw a firm conclusion based on experience and patterns without having to go through endless comparisons. Thus, when someone is asked to identify a photograph of a mustached man in a bowler hat and striped baggy trousers who is holding a cane, the brain skips the intermediate steps of trying to identify every single person with a mustache we’ve ever seen because the memory section remembers watchingThe Gold Rush and tells the mouth to say “Charlie Chaplin.”

Why? Because that’s the pattern the mind has been programmed to accept. The pattern is preconditioned by prior experience, prior exposure.

Reuven understood that if a disguise reinforces the key elements of appearance, it will fool the brain into jumping to the right-which will be the wrong-conclusion. Two and two will equal four. In Hamzi’s case, the key elements were the Moroccan’s curly, pseudo-Afro hairstyle, his heavy-framed, rose-tinted eyeglasses, and his habitual light-colored suit. All three of those elements had stuck, Tom remembered, in Dianne Lamb’s memory.

So even if Reuven was a few centimeters taller than Hamzi and twelve kilos lighter, if he built his disguise around that basic trio of key elements, the brains of anyone who knew Hamzi would instantaneously fill in the blanks and send the Yahia Hamzi recognition signal into that person’s consciousness.

Second, Reuven understood the quacks-like-a-duck rule. If he looked like Yahia Hamzi, and he drove Yahia Hamzi’s car, and he was schlepping barrels of Yahia Hamzi’s Boissons Maghreb olives, then he had to be-quack-quack-Yahia Hamzi.

Tom watched as the Israeli squatted and arranged the hairpiece’s ringlets in the Citroën’s rearview mirror. Then Reuven stood up and theatrically whipped Hamzi’s overcoat around his shoulders just the way the Moroccan did. Reuven struck a pose. “Not bad for quick-and-dirty, eh?”

He pulled two pairs of flesh-colored latex gloves out of the satchel Milo had brought, pulled one pair on, and handed the other to Tom. “You’ll need these.” Reuven put two fingers into his mouth and gave a shrill whistle. “Time to move, boys.”

38

11 NOVEMBER 2003

12:09A.M.

RUE LAMBERT

REUVEN PULLED THE MERCEDESup onto the curb in front of L’Étrier. The bistro was shut down for the night. The street was empty-no watchers visible, although both men understood they were probably being surveilled. The Israeli switched the headlights off and popped the trunk. He swiveled toward Tom and spoke in soft French. “You remember the number?”

“Three zero six seven nine.”

“Justement.”He cracked his door, turned to Tom, and snapped his fingers.“Nazuz, habibi.”

Tom nodded and exited, went to the rear of the car, which was directly opposite the front door of the safe-house building, undid the bungee cord, retrieved two of the blue plastic barrels, and hefted them into his arms. They were cumbersome, not to mention the fact that they weighed fifteen kilos each. Salah had given Tom a short black leather jacket, a black mock T-neck sweater, a pair of dark trousers that almost fit around the waist, and a light prosthetic that altered Tom’s appearance and hairstyle. Since it was one of those one-size-fits-all apparatuses, Tom felt conspicuous wearing it. But Reuven had insisted.

They’d discussed the plan on the way over. Tom would help carry the barrels upstairs. Then he’d leave, drive Hamzi’s car away, stash it close by but out of sight, and return to the safe house by clambering up the damnable water pipe. Only this time Reuven would have dropped a climbing rope to make the ascent easier.

Reuven slammed the driver’s-side door. The Israeli had all of Hamzi’s pocket litter-including his fist-size clump of keys. He followed Tom to the trunk, picked up one of the barrels and his black satchel, then slammed the trunk shut and hit the remote. The Mercedes’s lights blinked twice. With his head, Reuven signaled Tom to follow him. The Israeli cradled the barrel in his left arm. In his right was Hamzi’s key chain.

There were two dozen keys on the big ring. But Reuven had decided that only three could be the safe-house front-door key. Because the building was being renovated, the original wood door had been removed. In its place was a utilitarian steel slab with sprung hinges, wide enough for wheelbar-rows to move through, and a big, industrial-strength latch-bolt lock.

Since Ben Said would have the safe house under surveillance, everything Reuven did had to be self-assured. No fumbling, no awkwardness. He’d rearranged the keys so that the three prime candidates were right on top of the pile.

With Tom in tow, Reuven went up the two steps to the door and inserted a key. It didn’t fit. He cursed in Arabic, hefted the barrel, shook the key ring in obvious frustration, selected a second key, and slid it into the lock.

The cylinder ratcheted as it turned, making more noise than Tom would have liked. Reuven scowled, pulled the door open, held it while Tom went through into the entryway, then followed, pulling the metal-reinforced wood shut firmly behind him. “Mahmoud, you wait,” Reuven said in Moroccan-accented Arabic. “I’ll get theminuterie.” He fumbled slightly, then found the button and pressed it. “Come,” he growled. “Follow me.”

The building was a wreck. The ground-floor walls had been demolished. There was plaster and dust everywhere. Bare bulbs hanging from exposed wires provided the illumination. The hallway smelled of stale cigarette smoke and old cooking oil. “The French,” Reuven said, continuing his Arabic monologue. “They live like dogs.”

He led the way to a narrow stairway, the marble treads concave with age and thick with plaster and wood shavings. “Up,” he said, reverting into French,“deuxième étage.”

12:13. Tom’s shoulders were burning by the time they reached the third floor, but happy to be past the construction that clogged the ground and first floors. At the landing, Reuven stopped long enough to let the lights go out. Then he pressed theminuterie.

Reuven peered down the hallway. It was deserted. He scanned the black-and-white tile flooring, saw something, tapped Tom’s arm, and pointed. There were footprints in the fine dust.

Reuven’s hand instructed Tom to stay where he was. The Israeli crept forward. Then he straightened up and signaled for Tom to follow.

12:14. They stood in front of the safe-house door. Tom leaned against the wall, eased into a squatting position, and let the olive barrels slide down gently onto the corridor’s tiled surface. “Heavy, Yahia,” he said, wiping at his face with the patterned handkerchief that Salah had pre-positioned in his right-hand trouser pocket.

Reuven grunted. He’d placed the blue barrel on the floor next to his leg, although the black satchel still hung over his shoulder.

Now he produced a tiny LED flashlight in his left hand. Where it had come from Tom had no idea. The Israeli cast his eye down at the keys in his hand, looked at the single lock on the door, and selected the one he hoped would fit.

Tom watched as the Israeli shone the red light on the door lock. The door itself was nothing special-solid wood, with a brass escutcheon and a single-cylinder dead-bolt lock of the most common type. He glanced up and down the door frame. There was no keypad for the security device. And then he took a quick glimpse up and down the hallway and understood Ben Said’s thinking. Every door had only one lock. And there were no burglar alarms visible anywhere.

So the security device would be inside. The question was, where had Ben Said put it-and if they didn’t get to the damn thing in time, where would the alarm go off?

Well, they’d find out soon enough.

12:14:41. Reuven turned the key. Tom heard the dead bolt click three times. That was unusual. Most dead bolts opened on two turns of the key.

Reuven pressed the handle down and pushed the door inward.

Tom heard a muted but unmistakable electronic squeal from inside the safe house-as if an infrared beam had tripped an alarm box.

12:14:50. Reuven stepped across the threshold. Tom followed. The Israeli closed the door behind them and panned the light, moving it quickly but evenly left to right, right to left.

Tom followed the light as it played back and forth. In the corners of the foyer, he glimpsed an infrared beam projector. The receiver base would be just opposite. If the door was even cracked, the beam would be interrupted.

They were in a narrow foyer perhaps eight feet square. To Tom’s left was a short corridor. Straight ahead was a long, narrow room, the entrance to which was blocked by a sheet of clear plastic attached to the wall by wide, dark tape. It didn’t take Tom more than a millisecond to get his bearings. The drainpipe he’d climbed was straight ahead and to his right. Beyond the plastic sheeting were the tables with the backpacks, detonators, and the pasta machine that Ben Said used to roll out his explosives.

12:14:53. Reuven hissed, breaking Tom’s concentration. The Israeli was shining his light on the floor molding to their right. Taped to it was a four-inch block of plastic explosive. Wires from the explosive led to what looked like a cell phone.

The beam from Reuven’s light played on the left-hand floor molding, revealing a second, identical IED.

12:14:55. Reuven shifted the light. Straight ahead, on a small wood table-the kind that flanks sofas and holds a lamp-sat a rectangular dark box about the size and thickness of a paperback book. There was a calculator keypad embedded into the top of the box.

12:14:57. Reuven went to the box, picked it up, and punched the five-number code onto the keypad. The wailing, which was coming from somewhere beyond the plastic sheeting, stopped, and Tom reveled in the sudden silence. He inhaled deeply-realizing at that instant that he hadn’t taken a breath since they’d crossed the threshold.

12:15:02. Reuven flipped Tom the keys to Hamzi’s Mercedes. Using his hands, the Israeli signaled Tom to go back downstairs, get the last of the olive containers, and bring them all into the safe house, but not to close the door until he’d finished.

12:15:44. Reuven examined the box. The keypad indeed belonged to a cheap calculator-the kind you could find at any office-supply store for less than five euros. The box itself weighed about half a pound. It was made of some sort of injection-molded carbon fiber or preformed Kydex-like material. The seams were bonded-invisible. Reuven guessed that there was either a self-destruct or a doomsday device inside, which would go off if any attempt was made to get inside.

He dropped the box into the pocket of Hamzi’s suit coat and went to the explosive charge, dropped to one knee, checked it, and removed the detonator, rendering the IED safe.

Next, Reuven took a look at the safe-house door. He focused his light on the bolt hole and peered inside. The hole had been chiseled out much deeper than usual. At its rearmost point, Reuven could see a metal contact plate to which a pair of black wires had been soldered.

Obviously, when the dead bolt was turned three times a contact was made and the keypad box armed itself.

Reuven closed the door then searched the short corridor, his LED probing the floor and walls inch by inch. There was a bathroom on the right-hand side. He entered it and found nothing untoward. Next to the bathroom was another door. Carefully, the Israeli opened it. When he shone the light down, he discovered another infrared-triggered IED, which he disarmed.

When Reuven was confident there were no more active booby traps, he returned to the foyer and focused his attention on the plastic sheeting. Carefully, he went to the left-hand corner of the arch leading to the next room, pried the end of the tape that sealed the sheeting to the floor, and gently pulled it free. Carefully, he worked his way across the six-foot opening until the entire bottom flap of plastic had been unfastened.

He repeated his action with the left-hand-side vertical strip, pulling just over four feet of tape free of the wall, turning when he heard Tom’s shoes scrape across the floor as the American carried the first of the blue olive barrels into the safe house.

Reuven stood. “Bring that second barrel at once, Mahmoud,” he said. “Don’t dawdle like an Egyptian.”

Tom gave the Israeli a dirty look.

12:22A.M. Tom stacked the last of the barrels in the foyer. He nodded at the plastic where Reuven had removed the tape. Reuven nodded and shone the red LED around the seam, then, tucking the big black satchel under his arm like a football, led the way into the room with the tables of detonators and knapsack bomb components.

12:27:16. Obviously, they were in what had been thesalon. To the right was a small kitchen. Straight ahead was the window adjacent to the drain-pipe Tom had climbed. Reuven pointed the light at the far wall next to the windows. Flanking each windowsill, hidden from outside view and undisturbed by the plastic sheet that covered the window, were more infrared sensors and receptor units. Taped six inches below the bottom edge of the sill apron were small explosive charges hardwired to the receptors.

Reuven pulled a small monocular from his trouser pocket, examined the right-hand-window booby trap, quickly established that it, too, was inert, and pulled the detonator out. Then he repeated his action on the left-window unit.

Before Tom had time to think about the nasty possibilities had he broken into the safe house the other night, Reuven tapped his shoulder. The Israeli pointed at the sidewall.

Tom shrugged, asking, “What the hell do you want now?”

Reuven demonstrated by pulling up one of the strips of tape that held the plastic sheeting to the wall. He motioned for Tom to do the same on the opposite side.

Tom complied. They removed the roughly eight-by-twelve-foot section of plastic from the wall. Then, under Reuven’s direction, they laid it on the floor and retaped it securely. They repeated the sequence with a second piece of plastic sheeting, covering most of thesalon and about half the foyer flooring.

12:40A.M. They examined the detonators on the kitchen towel.“Merde.” Reuven frowned. He didn’t like what he saw. There were five detonators and components of eight knapsacks-perhaps even nine. The numbers didn’t add up. Well, there was no way to deal with the problem now.

Reuven scooped up the detonators, produced a handkerchief, and carefully folded them into it. He pulled Tom close, stuffed the package into the American’s pocket, and whispered into his ear, “Handle carefully. We’ll want to dissect one of these and see how he designed them.”

12:42. Reuven went to the long table that held the sewing machine and the pasta maker. He removed all of Ben Said’s carefully rolled-out explosives, wadded them up, wrapped them in the plastic sheeting he’d removed from the window, and handed them to Tom, who took one of the empty olive barrels from under the picnic table and dropped the package into it.

The Israeli pulled a pocket secretary and a pen from his breast pocket and wrote a short note, which he showed to Tom. Tom’s expression told Reuven that he’d received the message loud and clear.

The Israeli reached into the waistband of his trousers, retrieved the Glock with its stubby suppressor. He demonstrated to Tom that the weapon was loaded by easing the slide back about half an inch and displaying the 9mm round in the pistol’s chamber. Then he closed the slide and handed the pistol to Tom, who somewhat self-consciously stuck the gun inside his waistband, positioning it in the small of his back, just as Reuven had done.

12:44. Tom played with the weapon’s position until he found the most comfortable one. Then he tightened his belt one notch and jiggled his body. The gun was secure. He pulled Hamzi’s keys out of his trouser pocket and showed them to Reuven.

In Arabic, Reuven said, “You take the car, Mahmoud. Leave it in the usual spot. I’ll find my own way home.”

“Yes, Yahia.” Tom turned to go. Reuven pointed at the barrel that held Ben Said’s explosives. Tom picked it up and tucked it under his arm. Then Reuven handed him the plastic box with its security keypad. Tom squeezed through the flap of plastic sheeting, resecured the tape in position, placed the box on its table, then headed for the door.

“Lock the door securely closed behind you, boy,” Reuven’s voice commanded.

12:47:15A.M. Tom was just below the first-floor landing when he heard someone turn the front door lock noisily. He’d been making his way foot by foot in the darkness, picking his way over the construction detritus, counting the steps to monitor his progress. It was easier than he’d thought: his night vision was sharp enough that he could make out more or less where he was going.

Now all of a sudden theminuterie below came on and for an instant he was blinded. He heard voices stage-whispering in Arabic and French. There was a bump-as if a suitcase had been dropped-and then he thought he heard a voice mutter, “Khara alaay-well, shit on me.” The words were indistinct. But they told him there was more than one person down there.

My God. Ben Said. And he’s not alone.Holding tight to the barrel under his arm, Tom raced up eight steps to the first-floor landing, trying to remember where the obstacles were. At the top he adjusted his load, then dashed tippy-toe thirteen paces to the stairwell leading to the second floor, praying that he wouldn’t trip. As he went, he worked Hamzi’s keys out of his trouser pocket, trying desperately to keep them from jingling, fighting to make no sound whatsoever-not even daring to breathe.

12:47:21. There were twenty-two steps between the first and second floors. His heart pounding so loudly he felt they must have heard it below, Tom found the safe-house key on step nineteen-just as theminuterie light went out. He kept climbing, his arm around the barrel, his fingers resting lightly in the banister. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. He reached for the newel cap that signified the landing. Turned left in the darkness toward the safe-house door.

12:47:40. The lights came on.Oh God, oh, damn, oh Christ. They were coming up the stairs. He wondered how many of them there were. They sounded like a herd of goddamn rogue elephants, a frigging buffalo stampede.

12:47:42. Tom stood in front of the safe-house door, telling himself it was going to be all right.Don’t drop the barrel. Don’t drop the key. Take the key in your hand. Hold the damn thing securely. Put it into the lock. Turn once. Turn again. Turn once more. Open the damn door.

12:47:45. Tom yanked the key out of the lock and pressed the door handle downward. From inside he could hear the muted sound of the alarm as the door broke the plane of the infrared beam.

He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “It’s me,” he whispered. “Ben Said and others. They’re right behind me.”

Without waiting for a response, Tom ran for the table.Oh Christ oh God what’s the number? It had suddenly evaporated from his consciousness. He found the box, squinted in the dim light, and desperately punched 3-0-6-7-9 into the keypad.

The wailing stopped. He ran back to the door and, careful not to disrupt the infrared beam, inserted the key into the lock and turned the bolt once-twice-thrice. Only then did he dare suck air into his lungs.

“Bedroom.”Reuven hissed at him from the darkness beyond the plastic curtain. “Keep low-don’t let them see a silhouette. Use the pistol. Stay until I call you.”

Tom started to set the olive barrel down then realized it was a bad idea. He shifted his weight to balance the load, reached into his waistband, pulled out the Glock, and started to tighten his finger around the trigger. He jerked his finger out of the trigger guard as if he’d touched a live wire.I’d probably shoot myself in the foot.

He indexed his trigger finger along the frame and pointed the Glock’s muzzle downward. Behind the stubby suppressor he could make out three greenish spots. The gun had night sights. As Tom moved, he held the weapon up so the front dot was even with the two rear dots. That would be his whatchamacallit sight picture. That’s how the instructors at the Farm had referred to it.

Desperately, he tried to remember what they’d taught him about pistol shooting. He couldn’t recall much. In fact, Tom couldn’t remember the last time he’d fired a gun.

12:48:08. He’d just reached the bedroom door when the alarm went off. Instinctively, his finger dropped onto the trigger. He backed just inside the door, dropped to one knee, eased the barrel onto the floor, concealed himself behind the jamb, put the weapon up, held it securely in a two-handed grip, and trained it down the eight-foot corridor. Christ, this was close quarters.

39

12:48:11A.M. Tom heard the sound of a key in the front door lock. The bolt turned. He jumped at the sound and then cursed himself. The bolt turned twice more. Tom heard the door handle move. Then the alarm squealed and he started again.

The door eased open. Tom held his breath as the ambient light from theminuterie outside washed into the tiny foyer.

As if in slow motion, a wraithlike figure in a long, flowing overcoat moved through the doorway, heading for the table. Tom counted the seconds off:a thousand one, a thousand two, a thousand three.

The alarm shut off. Now a second, then a third shadow came through the door. The third shadow was carrying a big case-like a three-suiter or a wheeled garment bag. For an instant, Tom thought he saw weapons in their hands. Then the door closed behind them and it went dark again. He held the Glock up high, his eyes completely focused on the three green dots that told him where he was aiming.

The third man-the one with the suitcase-turned to face the corridor. Did he have something in his free hand?

Tom followed suitcase man with the sights on the pistol. His lungs were bursting for oxygen, but he couldn’t bring himself to breathe.

The shadow moved slightly. Now he was partially obscured. But Tom could almost smell him, he was so close.

Tom could hear his heart pounding. He froze, trying to become invisible.

From the part of the foyer Tom couldn’t see came a voice, speaking accent-free Arabic. “Yahia? Yahia? C’mon out, old friend. We have to talk.” The voice was smooth, coaxing, almost feminine in tone. Suddenly Tom’s nostrils flared and he caught the sweet citrus scent of aftershave or cologne. He refocused his eyes and realized that Suitcase Man had moved closer-he was less than two yards away.

And then came six rapid shots-no louder than a hammer striking nails.Thruup-ruup-ruup, thruup-ruup-ruup.

The shadow in the corridor jumped-turned toward the sound of the shots.

Panicked, Tom jerked the Glock’s trigger twice. The pistol surprised him. There was noboom-boom, only a pair ofthwoks.

Suddenly the doorjamb next to his head splintered. Tom froze, blinded by the bright orange muzzle blast of the weapon that wasoh-my-God pointed right at him. He tried to disappear-to become a puddle on the floor. But he found himself completely unable to move. He was helpless. Incapable of motion. It was like being in the middle of a nightmare.

The doorknob just behind Tom’s head shattered. He felt something slice into his scalp. And still there was no discernible gunshot sound-only muffled bursts.Thruup-ruup-ruup.

Tom tried to control the pistol in his hands. But the gun took on a life of its own, firing one-two-three-four-five-six-seven shots before he could bring the trigger under control.

He tried to focus on his sights. But all he could see was the muzzle flash as his adversary came closer-closer-closer moving in stop-time slow motion, now just over an arm’s length away.

Tom forced himself to lower the Glock’s muzzle until he could see over the top of it.

He saw the green dot-that was the front sight. Beyond it was the looming outline of the man trying to kill him.

Frantically, he pulled the trigger.

The pistol fired once and then the slide locked back. Tom tried to force it forward, but the goddamn thing was stuck-it wouldn’t move.

He was a dead man. Heart pumping, he closed his eyes, anticipating the bullet that would kill him.

And then there was only silence.

Tom opened his eyes. He could feel the pulse racing in his wrists. He dropped the Glock onto the floor. Scrambled onto his hands and knees and crawled past the corpse. His hand landed in a puddle and he stifled a gasp. “Reuven?”

Suddenly the lights in the foyer came on. Tom was blinded. When he looked up, Reuven was staring down at him.

“C’mon,” the Israeli said hoarsely. “No time to waste, boychik.”

Tom tried to focus. “What?”

“No time. Get up, Tom. On your feet.”

Dumbly, Tom did as he was told. He stepped over the man he’d just killed. There was blood-a lot of it-and brain matter splattered on the floor.

Reuven rolled the corpse with his foot. “You hithim more than once,” he said. “Good shooting.”

“It was luck,” Tom protested. “Dumb stupid luck.”

“Remember what Shamir said: never deny too loudly.”

Tom stared at what he’d done and his knees buckled.

Reuven caught him. “Easy, boy.”

Tom felt really queasy. He began to see spots and the room started to turn.

“Breathe, Tom,” Reuven instructed him. “Take in oxygen.”

Tom sucked air into his nose and mouth and thought he could smell blood. He opened his mouth wide in a silent, panicked yawn. Maybe that would help stifle the sickness he was feeling.

It didn’t. He took a deep breath and felt a little better. Took a second and third and the spots disappeared. Tom shook the Israeli’s hand off. “I’m okay. Okay.”

“Sure you are.”

Tom reached for the handkerchief in his pocket and blew his nose. Sucked oxygen into his lungs. Wiped at his eyes. He returned his gaze to the corpse at his feet and a new wave of nausea almost swept him off his feet.

Reuven took him by the arm and led him into the foyer.

As he approached the other corpses, a second wave of panic amplified by doubt washed over Tom-they’d killed the wrong people. And then he bent down and forced himself to examine the corpse of the man who’d silenced the alarm. It was the same individual who was in Shahram’s surveillance photo and MJ’s picture from Gaza. It was Tariq Ben Said-or whatever his name really was. Tom heaved a huge sigh of relief.

Ben Said and a second man lay atop the plastic sheeting, arms and legs splayed out. Reuven had head-shot them-a neat triangle of bullet holes between the bridge of their noses and their upper lips. The realization that the Israeli had sucker-punched them caused another emotional tsunami to wash over Tom. They’d actually murdered these men. Killed them in cold blood.

Reuven must have read his thoughts. “What? You thought I’d tell them, ‘Go for your guns,’ like this was some old Western movie?” He bent down and started to rifle through Ben Said’s pockets. “This isn’t the Marquis of Queensbury, Tom. This is real life.”

The Israeli pulled a German passport from Ben Said’s jacket. “Let’s see who he is this week.” Reuven opened the document and squinted. “Lothar Abdat, born twenty-seven March 1956 in Hamburg.”

He flipped through the pages. There was a credit-card receipt and Reuven peered at it. “Air France-the main office on Champs-Élysées.” He patted Ben Said down. “But no ticket.” He reached into the bomb maker’s trouser pockets and turned them inside out, spilling coins and keys onto the plastic, and pawed through them. Reuven gave Tom an encouraging look. “Take the other one. See what he’s carrying.”

1:14A.M. They’d stowed almost everything they could in the wheeled duffel bag. They’d pulled the clothes off the three bodies. As Tom packed Ben Said’s explosives and the detonators, Reuven used a kit in his satchel to take the corpses’ fingerprints, as well as saliva and hair samples for DNA testing. Now he picked up the Vuitton knapsacks one by one, counting the various components on the folding table as he lifted them up and dropped them into the duffel.

Tom had regained his composure. It actually hadn’t taken him long, something that surprised him because he, like most Americans, was both unaccustomed and unprepared to deal with the sorts of lethal encounters that typified this brutal new form of warfare.

Reuven looked over at him. “Double-check for shell casings, okay? We’re still missing one nine-millimeter and one twenty-two-caliber.”

“Okay.” Tom went to the foyer and dropped to his knees, his fingers searching along the floor molding of the short corridor. Reuven had fired six times. He’d fired ten shots. The man he’d killed had shot three times. So far they’d recovered only seventeen casings.

He found the missing 9mm shell just behind the bedroom door frame. He still disagreed with Reuven’s “kill them all and let Allah sort it out” approach to terrorism. But in one respect, the Israeli was absolutely on the mark: America’s unpreparedness and its inability to deal on a societal level with this new kind of war were indeed things that had to change.

The Marquis of Queensbury and his bookwere out the window. Bin Laden and al-Qa’ida certainly didn’t play by any rules. And it was a rough game that was getting rougher by the day. The bad guys had beheaded Danny Pearl in Pakistan. Now insurgents were taking hostages in Iraq and beheading them, too. It wouldn’t be too long before it happened closer to home.

The world was turning upside down.Was? Tom snorted loud enough to make Reuven look up. Hell-the world had already turned upside down. It used to be so damn uncomplicated. Terrorist groups were hierarchical. Cut off the head and the rest of the organization died. That was true of all the old-line groups: the Red Army Faction; Brigate Rosse, Baader Meinhoff; PLO, PFLP, Japanese Red Army, Sendero Luminoso. All of them were hierarchical.

He finally came up with the missing.22-caliber casing, which had wedged behind a loose piece of floor molding. Those neat and tidy days were gone forever. If Task Force 121 got lucky in Afghanistan or Pakistan and grabbed Usama today, al-Qa’ida would still continue to wage war on the West. Because it wasn’t a terrorist organization in the conventional sense. It was a cell-based politico-military organization with stand-alone guerrilla and terror operations like Ben Said’s running concurrently in a score of countries. The same thing was true of Islamist terror groups in Indonesia, the Philippines, Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco.

The old terrorists tended to be Marxist or Communist inspired and supported-so-called people’s liberation movements. Al-Qa’ida and other Islamist movements were more insidious. They exploited local nationalism and Islamic fervor, transmogrifying terror into a particularly effective-and deadly-fusion of politics, ideology, and religion. And it was going to be a protracted series of battles. If the current situation were overlaid on a World War II time line, the U.S. was still in the first months after Pearl Harbor. Moreover, CIA was almost entirely ill-equipped to deal with Islamists.

But then, so was 4627. Tom broke his thought train and looked over at Reuven. “What about the bodies?”

“Milo will handle them in the morning. This place will be totallysanitaire by tomorrow night. The cars we give to him, too-Ben Said had car keys in his jacket. We’ll find it and drive to the warehouse. They’ll go to the grinder-with these three.”

Reuven caught the horrified expression on Tom’s face and ignored it. “My guess? Your fiancée was right and I was wrong. Ben Said was about to tie up loose ends. Get rid of Hamzi. Shift the operation. Cover his tracks.” The Israeli paused. “But that’s not the problem.”

“What is?”

Reuven jerked a thumb toward the knapsack parts. “There were four detonators and six whole knapsacks, right?”

“Yup.” Tom nodded.

“Well, there were enough parts to make three more knapsacks on the table.”

“So?”

“How many Montsouris packs did Hamzi order?”

Tom thought about it for a few seconds “Twelve.”

“One for Dianne Lamb,” Reuven said, “six on the table, and three in parts. That leaves two unaccounted for.” The Israeli paused. “And then there’s the Air France receipt.” He looked at Tom, his expression grave. “We’re behind the curve. Ben Said’s operation is already in play.”

40

11 NOVEMBER 2003

9:12A.M.

223 RUE DU FAUBOURG ST. HONORÉ

THEY’D LAID EVERYTHINGfrom the safe house out on the long library table. Tony Wyman picked up one of the wads of explosive and sniffed. “No odor at all.” He shook his head. “How in God’s name did he do it?”

“We’ll know in a couple of days.” Reuven rubbed his shaved head. He looked exhausted-emotionally wrung dry. The Israeli looked at his watch. “When’s your IED guy getting here?”

Reflexively, Wyman checked his own wrist. “Any minute now.”

Tom slapped the telephone receiver down. “Got it. Thanks.”

Reuven cocked his head in Tom’s direction. “So?”

“He had tickets on the Air France Flight 068 to Los Angeles. Business class, departing Wednesday November twenty-sixth, returning Friday the twenty-eighth on Air France Flight 069. Second trip: Air France 070, departing Wednesday the tenth December, returning the twelfth on Air France Flight 071.” He checked his notes. “That’s a lot of flying in a short time.”

“Scouting trip,” Tony Wyman said. “Has to be. It’s a common AQN tactic. They’re known to do thorough target assessments.” Tom knew Wyman was correct. He had friends in the Federal Air Marshals Service who, for a period of months, had noted an increase in provocative behavior on domestic flights all over the United States. Subsequent investigations had determined that al-Qa’ida was probing for weaknesses in the system.

Still, Tom was dubious. “Ben Said wouldn’t travel just to scope out the plane-check for marshals on the flight or evaluate the security. It wasn’t his style.” Indeed, the bomber had put himself at considerable risk by taking an Air France flight in the past. But there’d been a deeper purpose when he’d flown to Israel: to test the detonators.

“There’s more,” Tom insisted. “There has to be.” He frowned at Reuven. “It might have been helpful for us to be able to ask the man himself.”

Reuven’s expression grew cold. “Don’t go there.”

“Why not? It’s a valid question. Why kill him in cold blood? Why did we have to kill them all before we’d had a chance to learn anything?”

“It was necessary.” Reuven turned away.

“C’mon, Reuven-why?”

The Israeli answered him with silence.

“You can’t squeeze water from a stone, Reuven. You can’t get answers from a corpse.”

“Maybe”-the Israeli whirled around-“you’d have preferred to spend two or three months double-checking everything he told us so we can separate the fabrications from the truth. If, that is, he’d even given us a grain of truth in the first place?”

“You don’t know unless you try.”

“I know he won’t make any more bombs,” Reuven growled. “I know he won’t blow up any more women and children. I know he won’t kill any more 4627 people. Maybe for you that’s not good enough, boychik. For me, it is.” Fists clenched, he advanced on Tom.

Who wasn’t about to give an inch. “He doesn’t have to make more bombs, Reuven. By your own count, there are two of them still out there-and no way to find them now that he’s dead.”

“Enough.” Wyman stepped between the two. “This bickering is getting us nowhere.” He looked at Tom. “What’s done is done. I’ll-”

He was interrupted by urgent knocking on the library door. One of the 4627 security people opened it. “Mr. Wyman? There’s a Roger Semerad downstairs asking to see you.”

Wyman’s face lit up. “Please-escort him up here right away.” He turned toward the others. “Roger’s retired FBI. He was their top explosive forensics guy until he contracted multiple sclerosis just over six years ago. He’d always been something of a maverick-and his wisecracking got on Director Freeh’s nerves. So Freeh eased him out-right into the arms of Deutsche Telecom. Now he’s based in Bonn as DT’s head of technical security. I called him last night-asked him to make the drive over, just in case.”

“Isn’t it a long way to come on spec?”

“Not for Roger. He drives a Bentley turbo. Believe me-he looks for just about any excuse to make a road trip.”

9:28A.M. Roger Semerad was a big guy with a voice to match, a face full of salt-and-pepper beard, and a bone-crushing handshake. He got around in a small black electric cart equipped with a clip-on headlight, an old-fashioned bulb-powered bicycle horn clamped to the handlebars, and a bumper sticker that readEVEN MY DOG IS A CONSERVATIVE.

He high-fived Tony Wyman then gave Tom and Reuven, whom he’d caught staring at him out of his peripheral vision, a penetrating second glance. “Here’s the story in a nutshell, fellas,” he said. “I’m Roger. I got MS. Can’t hardly feel my legs anymore, so I need the scooter, and which is also why I’m driving an automatic Bentley instead of a Ferrari. And just in case you wanted to know, frigging MS screws with you worse than a cheap gin hangover.”

There was a moment of self-conscious silence as Tom and Reuven suddenly found the pattern on the rug hugely fascinating.

Semerad cocked his head at Tony Wyman. “Think they got it, Tonio?”

“Hope so.”

“Me, too,” Semerad growled. “That said, let’s get to the problem solving.”

He scootered across the room to eyeball the display on the library table. “You guys gonna compete with the Cameroonians at themarché puces?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, you ain’t gonna go very far on that slim inventory, Tonio. Kinda meager.”

“All depends how it’s used,” Tom said. “We think it’s enough to bring down a couple of planes, maybe more.”

“Tell you what.” Semerad took a quick turn around the library then parked himself in front of Wyman. “I’m gonna set up in that there corner.” He pointed toward the map table and its magnifying light. “Alls I need is for someone to unstrap the case off the back of this contraption and I’m happy to go to work.”

Tom gave him a skeptical glance. “Don’t you want to know what we’re looking for?”

“Nope. I kinda like to find out for myself.” He steered the cart over to the table and plucked a detonator off the green felt, hefted it, then looked it up and down. “Nice,” he said. “Whose work?”

Tom stood with his arms crossed. “We’ll let you tell us, since you like to find things out on your own.”

Semerad laughed. “Touché, kiddo.” He tooted his horn twice and wriggled his eyebrows in a passable Harpo Marx. “Gangway, gents. The cavalry has arrive-ed.”

11:55A.M. “Frigging incredible.” Roger Semerad raised the jeweler’s loupe on its headband and wiped perspiration out of the corners of his eyes with a huge blue-and-white handkerchief. “This guy’s a genius-if he weren’t a frigging criminal, I’d hire him.” When his remark was greeted by silence he waited until the others had gathered around him. “He’s managed to miniaturize a SIM card and a PDA processor and use ’em to create his detonator package.”

Wyman said, “SIM card like in a cell phone?”

“You got it, Tony. A Subscriber Identity Module. In technical language it’s the thingy that stores all your subscriber info like your account number and your phonebook. Can’t use a phone without a SIM card these days.”

“So basically what we’ve got here is a cell phone without the phone.”

Semerad nodded. “In a way.”

“So how does it become a detonator? Don’t you need a ringer to trigger the explosion?”

“That’s how it’s commonly done. Like the car bombs and IEDs we’re seeing in Iraq now. ETA-the Basque separatists-and the IRA have been using cell phones for years. They wire cell-phone ringers to detonating caps. Place a call or send an instant message to the doctored phone and kablooey. Believe me, it’s not rocket science. But there’s no ringer here. That’s the creative part. He’s replaced the ringer with a computer chip.”

Tom shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

“This guy, he pulled the processor out of a PDA-like my Palm Tungsten over there, but a much older model. You know that all computer chips create heat, right?”

Tom nodded.

“Most of the newer chips have what you might call a throttle control on them. They’re programmed to shut down if they get too hot.”

“Understood.”

Semerad held up the detonator. “Well, there’s no governor on the chip in this doohickey.”

Wyman popped the monocle out of his eye. “Which means…”

“Which means when the cell-phone component responds to a call and a specific code is keyed in, it sets the chip running. And the chip keeps getting hotter and hotter. And I mean hot. Red-hot. Fire-in-the-hole hot.”

Wyman shook his head. “But heat alone doesn’t set plastic explosive off, does it, Roger?”

“You need something that produces energy to set off your explosive-like a percussion cap or even the cell-phone ringer. In this case, your bombmaker has been real inventive. First he slipped some explosive into the body of the detonator-that way, when the bomb goes off the detonator itself is destroyed, leaving very little in the way of forensic evidence. And then he’s managed to create a brief but powerful electrical charge by combining the technologies in the SIM card and the PDA chip.” He shook his head in amazement. “This guy is incredible. He’s transferred all the elements-even the carbon fiber antenna-onto some sort of flexible membrane to cut down on weight and signature. He’s miniaturized the equivalent of an electric blasting cap, a remotely operated blasting machine, and a self-destruction device and fit everything into a package that weighs, what? I’d venture less than fifty grams.” He gestured toward the Vuitton knapsacks, then looked over at Wyman. “Tonio, I’d wager a big pile ofdinero that this damned thing is completely undetectable passing through airport security.”

Reuven looked at the detonator components. “Time frame?”

“To explosion from the time the sequence is initiated? Maybe five seconds.”

The Israeli frowned. “Range?”

“Worldwide. You could place the call from anywhere-even do it online.”

“Jeezus H.” Tom shook his head. “Can you tell us what telephone number has been assigned to this particular SIM card?”

“Sure-if I had the right equipment.”

“Which is where?”

“Well, they’d have it at Verizon, or Sprint.”

Tom’s eyes widened. “The U.S. cellular companies?”

“Yup. This isn’t a European SIM. All the local SIM cards are GSMs. This one is CDMA. Which means it’s Verizon or Sprint.” Semerad backed his scooter up. “You guys got broadband?”

Tom nodded. “Sure.”

“You let me plug my laptop into your connection and I’ll pull down what you need in a matter of minutes.”

1:21P.M. Roger Semerad squinted at the computer’s screen. “The detonator SIMs are all for Los Angeles-area numbers.”

Tony Wyman looked at Tom. “What were the dates of those flights?”

Tom checked his notes. “Outbound Wednesday, November twenty-sixth; returning Friday, November twenty-eighth. Outbound Wednesday, December tenth; returning Friday the twelfth.”

“I think,” Wyman said, “we can rule out an attack over Thanksgiving.”

“Why?” Tom asked. “He’s scheduled himself to be in Los Angeles over Thanksgiving. What better time for an attack than during the peak holiday travel time.”

“No,” Reuven said. “The al-Qa’ida model is to stage simultaneous attacks, not a series. They carried out the operations against your embassies in Kenya and Tanzania within minutes of each other. On 9/11, they hijacked four aircraft almost simultaneously. It’s the AQN pattern.”

Wyman played with his monocle. “You read it as attacks on Flights 068 and 070, and attacks on Flights 069 and 071 all on one day.”

“Two days,” Tom said. “All of Ben Said’s tickets were for a Wednesday and a Friday,” Tom said. And then he clapped his hand over his mouth. “Oh, my God-it’s Christmas. It has to be Christmas.”

Wyman pulled a pocket secretary out of his jacket pocket and flipped through it. “Tom’s right. This year, Thanksgiving and Christmas both fall on Thursdays.”

He paused. “Fits the al-Qa’ida pattern of scoping out the flights first-hand. Satisfies the simultaneous-attack criterion, too.”

“But that’s not enough.”

Wyman turned toward Tom. “Why not?”

Tom looked at his boss. “Wheelbarrows, Tony.”

“What?”

“Roger said the SIMs all came from phones registered in the Los Angeles area. Now, you can make a call from anywhere to anywhere on a cell phone. What this tells me is that Ben Said bought his cell phones in Los Angeles because that’s where he’s going to use them.”

Wyman frowned. “That’s awfully thin, Tom.”

“Maybe. But it’s what I think.”

Roger Semerad wheeled his scooter next to Tom and said, “Wasn’t al-Qa’ida going to strike at LAX during the Y2K New Year celebration?”

Wyman nodded. “The guy coming from Canada with the explosives in his car, right?”

“That’s the one.” Semerad played with the handlebar of his scooter. “Isn’t one of AQN’s benchmarks that they like to hit targets more than once?”

Wyman spent half a minute in silence. “If we go ahead, we’re doing so on very circumstantial evidence.”

Tom said, “That doesn’t make it any less valid.”

Finally, Wyman turned to Reuven. “You head back to Tel Aviv and get the DNA work done.”

The Israeli saluted.

“And make sure your man Salah gets us copies of everything he pulls out of Hamzi.”

The Israeli nodded in agreement. “Will do.”

Wyman cocked his head in Reuven’s direction. “By the way, what do you guys call your company?”

Reuven didn’t hesitate. “Hawkeye.”

“Well, next time-if there is one-we operate jointly, Hawkeye’s going to split the expenses. I can’t afford to float you people.”

“What about seventy-thirty,” Reuven said. “You’re established. We’re just starting out.”

“Half and half, Reuven, it’s the American way.” He paused. “But you get to use our facilities here and in Washington-not that you haven’t been doing that already.” Wyman turned to Tom. “Write this up. You know what to leave out and what to include. I’ll check it over. Then we’ll head for Washington. I want you and MJ with me when I present this package to CTC.” He caught Tom’s look of amazement. “Your fiancée had a lot to do with this,” he said. “If she hadn’t had the grit to bring the Gaza material to Paris in the first place, we probably wouldn’t be standing here.”

Tom beamed.

“You work with her.”

“I’m on it.”

“Good. We’re handing them twenty-four-karat material, Tom. And I can assure you they don’t get twenty-four-karat very often these days.”