Whatever the Cost

EPILOGUE

Chang Wubei greeted the Defense Minister with a sigh. ‘So it is over,’ he said.

‘For now,’ Kang Xing agreed. ‘For now.’ He regarded the young man closely though his hooded eyes. Chang Wubei was one of the People’s Republic of China’s four Vice Premiers, and a man some thought might one day rise to the top post, supplanting Tsang Feng as president to become the nation’s Paramount Leader.

Kang was one of those who believed that this would happen; was in fact doing everything in his power to make it happen. But not for Chang’s sake, and not because he thought Chang would make a good leader; it was because the man was easily led, and Kang was the one who would be doing the leading.

But Chang liked to think that he was in charge, and Kang was happy to play along.

‘What happened?’ Chang demanded. ‘I still do not understand why we helped the Americans.’

‘We had to,’ Kang explained patiently, as if to a child. ‘When the weapon was stolen and the Korean RGB’s plan was dead in the water, what profit was there in it for us? We could have used the unification of Korea in various ways, but a terrorist attack on America? It would have changed the status quo too much; far too much. And so — with the knowledge we had regarding Camp Fourteen — we were able to salvage something from the situation by helping our American allies.’ He shrugged. ‘We could not foresee the hijacking of the Fu Yu Shan.’

Chang nodded his head in thought. ‘Is it true that General U was executed?’

Kang nodded his head. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘My sources tell me that U Chun-su was killed by firing squad for his ‘repeated failures’. The North Koreans also believe that Major Ho Sang-ok was killed in the blast that destroyed Camp Fourteen.’

‘But he wasn’t?’ Chang asked in surprise.

‘No, he wasn’t,’ Kang said, aiming to impress the young man with his knowledge. ‘The Americans have him.’

Worry clouded Chang’s features. ‘Will he tell them about us?’

‘Ho doesn’t know anything about us,’ Kang said confidently. ‘I brought the plan to them carefully, through agents. Ho knows nothing that could harm us.’

‘Does President Kim know that it was an American attack on the camp?’

‘He knows that it is only the Americans who could have done it, but he has no proof; and without proof, he can do nothing.’

‘Shall we provide him with proof?’ Chang asked.

Kang shook his head in response. This was exactly why Chang needed guiding; he had yet to learn how things worked, how long-term strategy should be used.

‘No,’ Kang said, ‘remember the plan. We must think long-term if we are to achieve the Chinese supremacy we both dream of, and which that idiot Tsang Feng is too weak to attempt. We will use this knowledge when it suits us to do so, yes?’

Chang nodded his head, and Kang could see that the man barely had a clue as to what he meant.

But that suited Kang just fine; he had more than enough plans for the both of them.

Cole looked across the café at the man sitting in the corner, sure it was him.

He was in the Fifth Arrondissement of Paris, the so-called Arab Quarter which was home to many of the French capital’s vast Arab population.

Beyond the Middle East itself, France had one of the highest concentrations of Arabic people in the world, and was a perfect place for an Arabic terrorist mastermind to lose himself, if all avenues had been closed to him back home.

Which, in the case of Abd al-Aziz Quraishi, they had been.

It had taken months of effort by the CIA and the NSA, but their staff had literally worked round the clock to locate Quraishi, who had become overnight the most wanted man in the world.

There had been false lead after false lead, but eventually a customer at this café had thought he’d recognized another regular from the e-fit pictures that were shown almost daily on the news channels, showing how Quraishi might look with various disguises, or even with plastic surgery. It had been the one with the grey hair and long beard that had matched.

The customer had gone to the local gendarmerie, who had reported the sighting — along with hundreds of others, none of which were expected to bear fruit — to the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence.

After a week of waiting for authorization, a surveillance team had started shadowing the old man from the café; and although they found nothing suspicious, they had found him similar enough to the modified pictures to report the finding to the American CIA.

A CIA team had then received permission to run its own surveillance, and soon discovered that the old man was careful to leave no fingerprints anywhere they could be taken from, and performed a great deal more counter-surveillance than most retired Arabic men who had nothing to hide.

And it was then that James Dorrell notified President Abrams to tell her what they had found, and ask for further instructions.

And President Abrams had turned the information over to the commander of America’s newest first-strike paramilitary intelligence agency, known internally only as Force One.

As well as getting Cole out of Saudi Arabia in a hurry, President Abrams had also listened to something else that he wanted — to get back into full-time work with the American government, as head of his own agency; a spearhead against the ongoing war on terror.

And its first mission was going to be dealing with The Lion of Arabian Islamic Jihad.

Abrams had agreed to Cole’s request, which is what led to him sitting in the window seat of the homely little café, looking over his menu at the old man in the corner — a man who had wanted to kill millions of people, who had wanted to wipe America off the face of the earth.

Cole adjusted his weight in his chair, thinking of how the previous months had changed him. Gone was the self-loathing of his Thailand incarnation; gone too were doubts, the insecurities, the fears that had plagued him throughout that last mission.

He had come out the other side a different person, resolved to the fact that his family was gone, and they were never coming back; he had reacquired his calling in life, and had made the decision to follow that calling as passionately, as furiously, as professionally and as courageously as he could.

He had healed physically over the past few months as well, his ear fully rebuilt and his arm almost as good as it was before. There were jokes that he’d had more surgery than most movie stars and models, and Cole had laughed along, because the jokes were true.

But now, after months of waiting, he had his target in his sights.

He moved, gesturing for a waitress, sure to move himself into the old man’s field of view; watched as the man tried to conceal his recognition, the spark of fear that passed through his eyes. Continued to watch as the old man got unsteadily to his feet and shuffled through the café, past the counter and towards the rest rooms at the rear.

Yes, Cole thought as he stood, it’s him.

Quraishi had no idea how they had found him; only that he had been found, and he needed to escape.

Now.

He couldn’t believe how badly things had gone during the past few months; previously friendly countries had closed their doors to him, other organizations wanted nothing to do with him.

On the one hand, they seemed to think that his plan had perhaps been too extreme, just too much; and on the other, they realized that anyone associating with him would bring down the full might of the American military on their heads, and they could certainly do without that.

Quraishi pushed through into the small service corridor, heading for the rear fire exit; knowing that the place would be surrounded, yet knowing he had to risk it nevertheless. What other options did he have?

He reached into his robes, turning from his old-man shuffle to a steady run as he passed through the door, and pulled out a Beretta 9mm pistol.

In one smooth motion, he also activated the explosive vest he wore underneath his robes.

Whatever might happen, he was sure that they would never take him alive.

Jake Navarone was waiting outside when the old man kicked open the fire door and raced into the dirty back alley.

After reaching the emergency RV back in North Korea, Navarone and his SEALs had been subjected to one hell of a ride back to China, the choppers keeping so low that they often seemed to actually be below the tree line; but they had made it home safely, and within three days Navarone had been back eating shrimp gumbo with his family in Tampa.

He had been awarded the Navy Cross for his actions at Camp 14, but he knew it wasn’t decorations he wanted; it was the opportunity to take the fight to the enemy.

The agent called Mark Cole, the infamous ‘Asset’, had apparently learned about Navarone through his old friend Ike Treyborne; and when he had been approached by the man for a place on the Force One team, Navarone had jumped at the chance.

And now here he was, face to face with the man responsible for it all — Abd al-Aziz Quraishi.

Navarone saw the pistol, but also something else; the man’s other hand was lost deep in the sleeve of his robe, but he was holding something there, like a button…

Cole’s bullet found its mark, hitting Quraishi in the spine, immediately shutting down his nervous system and making him unable to activate the vest he had been wearing under his robes.

Cole had noticed it when he had got up to walk, the hard bulk barely concealed under the billowing robes.

He nodded across the alley to Navarone, who nodded back, moving in towards the writhing, pain-wracked body of Quraishi.

‘Damn you!’ Quraishi said as he squirmed on the floor. ‘Damn you!’ He screamed in pain, unable to squeeze either the trigger or the button. He kept on trying, but it was useless; no signals were being sent. ‘You won’t take me in!’ he cried. ‘You won’t! You won’t!’

Cole and Navarone watched the man as he writhed on the floor, blood spilling from the wound in his back onto the dirty concrete of the alley, and raised their handguns.

‘Who said we wanted to take you in?’ Cole asked. ‘I shot you in the back so you couldn’t kill yourself.’ He smiled. ‘I didn’t want you to have the satisfaction.’

‘But…’ Quraishi gasped.

‘But nothing,’ Cole said, cutting him off. ‘This is how Force One deals with terrorists’

He nodded at Navarone, and both men emptied their magazines into the collapsed form of Quraishi, the once-feared Lion of Arabian Islamic Jihad.

Yes, Cole thought with satisfaction; because with terrorists, there could be no other way.

Seeing the man on Rue Monge had shaken Aoki Yamaguchi to the core.

He was supposed to be dead.

And yet she knew that his body had never been found — or at least never confirmed. The house in the Austrian hamlet of Kreith had been incinerated, and there had been such a glut of dead bodies and charred remains that it had been impossible to identify any one particular individual.

Yamaguchi had travelled there herself, had stood over the supposed grave of Mark Cole — or Mark Kowalski, as he had also been known according to her own extensive research into the man — and had shed a tear.

It had been her aim in life to meet the man.

Confront the man.

But the carnage that had greeted her in Kreith had robbed her of that purpose, and the tears had been ones of regret.

But now she knew he was still alive; and Yamaguchi vowed to herself that she wouldn’t let Mark Cole slip through her fingers so easily again.