Angels of Wrath (31 page)

“Which one?”

Birk shook his head. “You are supposed to be the spy. I cannot keep track of these mosques. They are all alike to me.”

Ferg got up, winking at Thera.

“Five hundred thousand, firm,” said Birk.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

~ * ~

11

DAMASCUS

THE NEXT MORNING . . .

Corrine tried twice more to get hold of Tischler without getting a response. When she told Ferguson about it, he didn’t seem surprised.

“His man may have already filled him in,” Ferguson told her.

“Wouldn’t it be polite to return my call? He doesn’t know what it’s about.”

“It would be
smart
to return your call, because he doesn’t know what you want, even if he thinks he does,” said Ferguson. “But Tischler doesn’t
do
polite. Think of it this way: he figures you’re going to tell him his man is a screwup.”

“How is he a screwup?”

“He should have skulked away without seeing you, taking the chance that you wouldn’t notice or might not remember, and knowing that even if you did, you’re supposed to be an ally and ought to know enough to keep your mouth shut. This way there was no chance that you wouldn’t notice him.”

“I thought Mossad people don’t screw up.”

“They’re human,” said Ferguson.

“If he’s not going to call me back, the hell with him.”

“I guess,” said Ferguson. He paused a moment, then changed the subject. “Listen, I need a million dollars.”

“What?”

“I can probably get the price down a bit, but it’s going to be in that neighborhood.”

“For what?”

Ferguson explained that he wanted to buy the Russian ship-to-ship missile Birk had for sale.

“I’ll have to talk to Washington,” she said doubtfully.

“They’re going to tell you it’s not in the budget,” said Ferguson. “The program to buy nuclear-capable cruise missiles ran out of funds eight months ago.”

“Well, then, why are you asking me?”

“Because it’s an opportunity to take a pretty potent missile off the market,” said Ferguson. “And because it’ll make my next request seem much more reasonable.”

“Which is?”

“First, let me ask you: are you still ruling out an air strike? Van says he can get some Stealth Fighters overhead in a half hour. Personally, I prefer B-52s.”

“Absolutely, positively not. No aggression on Syrian soil. Nothing like that. We’re trying to improve relations, not end them for all time.”

“All right. I’m going to need a hundred thousand dollars, greenbacks, in the next couple of days. I can’t finesse it with local counterfeit or Euros.”

“For what? Another missile?”

“No. I need some mortars and some other weapons, along with some Semtex, and I’m going to have to overpay to get them.”

“Mortars? You’re out of your mind.”

“That has nothing to do with it,” said Ferguson. “The sooner the better. I’ll make the arrangements myself if you tell Corrigan it’s cool.”

“It’s
not
cool.”

“Look, I need the money. Otherwise I’m going to have to rob a bank, and I don’t really have time.”

“You
wouldn’t
rob a bank.”

“I will if I have to.” Ferguson gave her a brief rundown of what he needed the money for. “I know it’s a rip-off, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I want to make it look at least plausible that a rival group hit them. With Fouad’s help, I’ll start spreading the rumor tonight that there’s another group coming to town. We’ll make some rentals, set up a paper trail. All we have to do is give the Syrians a few little tidbits so they can claim it wasn’t the U.S., and we’ll be all right.”

“The U.S. government cannot condone the operation of an international outlaw, much less make a deal with him. You can’t go and buy mortars, for cryin’ out loud.”

“Jeez, Madame Counselor, where have you been for the last century? Even Washington bought arms on the black market.”

“You are not George Washington.”

“You were just going to check on a cruise missile.”

“You said it could carry a nuke.” Corrine sighed. “Tell me you’re not going to kill Khazaal with these mortars.”

“Never mind. I’ll rob the bank.”

“Ferguson, don’t blackmail me.”

“Now there’s an approach I hadn’t thought of.”

“Are you going to kill him?”

“Not if I can help it. And not with the mortars.”

“Every cent better be accounted for. Every cent.”

“I’ll get the invoice in triplicate.”

“Be serious, Ferg. You can’t cause an international incident here. You cannot.”

“That’s why I need the money. Look, this is basically what we did to get Kiro in Chechnya.”

“That was in Chechnya. No one cares what happens there.”

“The Russians do.”

Corrine realized that he had her checkmated at every turn. Once again, she felt like a complete amateur and not, she had to admit, without reason. She thought that she had proven herself in the dirty-bomb operation. And she had—with everyone
but
the most important person, Ferguson. She was never going to win him over. In his eyes, she was always going to be the outsider, the “suit” he had to work around to get his job done. Which was baloney.

“You live dangerously, Bob. I respect that. And I appreciate the fact that you saved my life. But if you go too far here, I’m not going to be there to reel you in.”

“He who lives by the sword, right?”

She could just about see his smirk in front of her.

“I need you to do one more thing for me,” he added. “It’s a little dangerous, so I’ll understand—”

“What?” she snapped, angry that he was manipulating her so transparently.

“There’s a Russian coming into Damascus in a few hours. I was going to send Guns and one of the rentals I picked up from you down there, but I have him working another angle. If you could help out—”

“What do you need?”

“I’m going to use two people who are agents of ours in town, but I don’t want to give them more information than necessary, especially ahead of time,” said Ferguson. “All you have to do is point out who they have to follow, put them on the plane, and that’s that.”

“What if he doesn’t take the plane?”

“Same deal. They should be able to handle it. I’ll have a photo sent to the embassy.”

“All right.”

“One other thing.”

“Yes?”

“He’d be easier to follow if he had a tracking device. One’s being delivered to you personally in half an hour. You twist it to turn it on. Tell them not to twist it until they’re ready to leave it. The battery’s pretty limited. It’s a tiny little bug, smaller than your fingernail. Well, smaller than my fingernail.”

“I have small fingernails.”

“There’s nobody in the airport I trust to get it on his baggage behind the scenes, so it has to go on him.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“Not you,
them.”

“How are they supposed to do it?”

“They’ll figure it out. I don’t need to know operational details.”

“Very funny.”

“You sure you can do it? If not, I can get someone from the embassy. I just don’t trust the people there.”

Was this some sort of test, she wondered.

“I can handle it,” Corrine told him. “Look, I appreciate the fact that you saved my life.”

“Yeah, well, don’t rub it in. We all do things we regret.”

“You can’t turn it off, can you?”

“Would you respect me if I could?”

She killed the connection before he could hear her laugh.

~ * ~

12

LATAKIA

The operation Ferguson had sent Guns on was a long-shot play, one of those stabs in the dark that you made every so often in hopes of winning big time.

The mosque Thomas had linked to Khazaal was Al-Norui Khad in the southwestern corner of the city. Fouad’s brief foray into gossip made it seem possible; the mosque’s resident imam, or teacher, was considered one of the more strident in town, though whether that translated into support for the Iraq resistance was a fair question.

One way to answer that question, Ferguson thought, was to send in a visitor who spoke Russian and could be mistaken for Vassenka.

“It’s either you or me,” he told Guns. “Your accent’s probably better, and my face has been in town before.”

“I’ll do it.”

“We’ll send Fouad in with you. And Monsoon,” added Ferguson. “Because Monsoon’s Arabic is good, right?”

Monsoon ripped off a passage from the Koran.

“All right then,” said Ferguson, echoing his lines. “Blessed be to all of us, peace to the good people of the Book.”

Like many mosques, Al-Norui Khad was actually a collection of buildings interconnected and related, all gathered around an old wall. Though not a very large mosque, even for Latakia, Al-Norui Khad had a good-sized minaret, the tower traditionally used to call believers to prayer. A small dome sat over the sanctuary at the western end of the complex, and there were three other fair-sized buildings that extended inward from the walls. An old inlet from the sea extended in a lagoon along the southern wall. There was only one entrance from the street, which made it easy to watch the mosque. Rankin planted a pair of video cameras in lampposts on either side of the block.

Fouad rambled in first, unarmed but with a bug so they could hear any advice he gave. An elaborate mosaic with blue, yellow, and white stones marked the pathway through the gate and opened into a bricked space beyond the wall. A pair of two-story yellow stone buildings sat on either side of the entrance, looking as if they had grown out from the wall. One was being used as a school, infirmary, and social center; the other, much more dilapidated, seemed not to have been used for some time. Fouad kept up a running commentary, as though he were a crazy man talking to himself as well as others. There were a dozen or so men on the grounds, some on their way to pray and others on errands related to the school or other concerns. A man watched over a book stall; another handed pamphlets out to visitors. Fouad found an administrator’s office and mumbled the route as he retraced his steps. This was where Guns should go and mention that he had recently come from Chechnya and was looking for a place to stay.

The mosque itself sat just beyond the school building. Like several other holy sites in the Middle East, its stones had been converted to Islamic use from an earlier faith, in this case a small church built by Christians sometime around
a.d
. 600 or 700, which itself was erected over the site of a temple used by Zoroastrinns. The Muslim alterations had enlarged the basic footprint and raised the walls as well as added the dome. Had it not been for a plaque declaring that the building had once belonged to Christians, only an expert would have known. The
qibla
wall oriented the faithful toward Mecca when they prayed; the space around the courtyard or
sahn
was dominated by thick pillars that held the roof.